Twelve Days of Christmas Past! (Day 7 & 6)

As you may or may not have noticed, I did not do Day 7 yesterday...that's because you get double the fun today!!

I actually decided to do both Day 7 and Day 6 together because the two of them combined are amazing amounts of fun. It was such an awesome event that it constitutes two days worth of holiday goodness!

So here we go!!

This summer I got to, well, basically go to Space Camp with the ROTC. We spent three weeks in Colorado Springs, Colorado at the Air Force Academy doing space-y things. Here's just some of the totally awesome things we did.


First off, this is me in my super-duper deluxe Academy Room. For anyone that has ever wondered what it's like at the Academy, this is it. Pretty much nothing there. Yeah. Go figure my roommate, and great friend Jaki, caught me on my cell phone. She would.


We also went bowling I don't know how many times at the Academy's bowling lanes. (There's not a WHOLE lot for "normal people" to do on their campus...) Each time was an adventure, let's just put it that way. I didn't realize the Academy cadets could throw down so much alcohol....(don't worry, they were of age). ROTC cadets weren't allowed to drink because of our regulations with the program, but it was HILARIOUS watching everyone else get drunk. Good times.

Oh, that's Teef (well, Sajjad Abdullateef, but who wants to say that?? just kidding!) on my left. He's one of those people that you can't believe you've gone your whole life without being their friend. I really hope we run into each other again some day!

The Academy is famous for their Cadets Chapel and we spent some time there too. Here's a few pics, sorry they are sideways.


Another cool thing we got to do was go to the Academy's observatory. Yes, they have their own observatory. This is a picture of the telescope we got to look through.


To see this:


And this:


Yeah, that's Saturn. Sweet huh?? Anyway, we also spent some time in Denver getting tours from Lockheed Martin and Ball Aerospace, but while we were there we got to go to a Science Museum.

Okay, I'm a geek. I study mechanical engineering. I play video games. And I like science museums. Here's one of the pics from the space section of the museum.

So I did something for the absolutely first time in my whole life during this trip. I. built. a. rocket. Yes, it was from a kit, before you ask, but I did it. And I'm dang proud of that. And it didn't explode during launch like some of my previous attempts have. That was good news!

Now, I will digress for a moment to show you a few of the way funnier things that ROTC cadets got themselves into to entertain themselves during the long days of sitting at the Air Force Academy. Like...shoving Jaki into big laundry dryers, and...

Killing Luke by not getting done with our laundry fast enough, which drove him to insanity (i.e., sunbathing) and....

Being the only like 5 girls on the whole trip, we just had to take a moment to reflect on our femininity, which drove us to paint our toenails, and....

Even Josh got in on the action for a minute.

Okay, back to the "real stuff."

While we were there, we also got to do some sightseeing in beautiful Colorado (mind you, it was May at the time, so it was warm too!). I didn't go with the group when they went to Pike's Peak since I was sick that day, but I did go to Royal Gorge. That place is incredible!!


We got to learn how to drive these awesome fifteen passengers vans (and yes, I curb checked many a time in the Wal-Mart parking lot) and so we drove them everywhere. Anyway, on the way to Royal Gorge we saw this sign:

Go figure, huh? Nope, I'm just going to leave my gigantic fifteen passenger butt right in the road when I wreck it. Yup.

And this is me on the Royal Gorge bridge.

It was really windy, so I think that's what I was doing. Flying or something. Don't ask.

So that was my trip to Colorado in a very, very tiny nutshell. I have millions of other pictures and could go on and on for a week about it. I had an absolute blast and have made some pretty amazing friends! I can't wait to bump into them again on Active Duty!


For the Seventh & Sixth Day of Christmas Past, I became a space cadet!