The Azusa Pacific Blog

You can thank my fellow 3rd North sisters for the title of this blog. Can’t you tell we are freshman? We apparently haven’t learned the art of spelling. There are currently 5 of us watching Pride and Prejudice with girls popping in and talking. Actually, we are barely watching the movie and mostly talking. I love it.

Orientation was pretty crazy. It was a bit stressful, really interesting, but mostly overwhelming for me. Which isn’t true for everyone, some kids had no problem with it all.  Overwhelming isn’t also a bad thing though, Orientation is guaranteed slight chaos anywhere you go I think. But this chaos was actually quite organized; APU has an impressive schedule that they stuck to. There was so much to do! There always was a friendly face to help us out though.  The events were really cool including a football game!

Ready to help us move in and direct us where to go :)

The main chaos for me was getting to know people, organizing all my stuff, and the many trips to Target my parents have taken for me. I forgot a lot of small stuff on top of the fact that we could only take so much down here in our car. Let’s just say I over-packed a bit. So far all the stuff has come in handy except maybe the art-like stuff though. I’ve brought. I may have been laying against a few boxes cornered in the backseat, but it worked! Thankfully my dorm room is pretty spacious and as lots of places for drawers and boxes :).

My almost completed dorm room :)

Another thing you’ll experience as a freshman is Alpha Groups! An Alpha Group is a random mix of freshman assigned to a sophomore who helps us through orientation and our first semester of freshman year. I really do like my Alpha group. My leader Jen is nice, sincere and really chill. Our group gets along pretty well and we were all open the first night, sharing the fun and scary parts of Orientation. It’s been nice just to talk about Orientation together and know that other people are coming without knowing anyone else.

A few members of my Alpha group on the trolley :)

I’ll definitely be talking more about my hall (3^rd North!!) in my next blog! I was planning on staying on the topic of orientation so I guess I’ll just make hall stories relate :) The first night of Orientation I stopped by my RA’s room to just say hi. An RA is a Resident Adviser, which basically means an upperclassman has decided to live in our hall all year to support, counsel, and love on us. Her roommate is called a RAR (Resident Advisor’s roommate) and they usually aren’t very involved in the hall.  Instead, Jaclyn decided that she is going to be super involved with 3^rd North and we all think it is awesome!! They invited me to come hangout with them in the dorms and watch a movie with them. It was so nice! Megan is such an awesome RA and it was nice just to be able just relax and hang out.

The next night I went to the football game with my alpha leader Jenn, another Alpha leader Bianca and a girl from her group. It was really cool to experience the game with all of the APU students. The field was packed! It was really fun but we decided to leave before the game was over so we could head to Tutti Fruity.

Hanging out at the football game.

Tutti Fruity is a frozen yogurt place right across from the college.  APU students get a discount and it very delicious! Our alpha leaders took us to a sophomore living area and we played slap uno with a bunch of their friends. It was really neat to see all of the different living areas, plus be able to meet people who could talk about their fun experiences at APU. I even met someone who lived in my city for a few years and went to my high school’s rival which was really exciting! I haven’t met a lot of people from around where I lived.

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While writing my blog earlier I overheard a conversation between a hall sister and her family. I wasn’t eavesdropping I swear! Both of our doors were open (which is the best way to meet people in your hall). I asked her afterwards if I could use something she said in my blog anonymously. She said yes so here it goes:

“I’ve never been anywhere where people are so genuine and real. I don’t know how to act sometimes because I can truly just be myself and it’s not a problem. For the first time I can act like me and everyone is okay with it. They’re here because they believe in God and they are so open about their faith.”

Beautiful (and very true) words from a ‘sister’ in my hall.