Personal History, Part 3

Very brief recap:
April 1990: I was born in Santa Maria, CA
Summer 1992... about: Moved to Orange, CA
Summer 1999: Moved to Danville, CA
Summer 2000: Moved to Bellingham, WA
Summer 2003: Moved back to Danville, CA
December 2004: Moved to Edwardsville, IL
May 2008: Graduated high school

I think this will be mostly a picture post. Hope that's okay.

Finally the time came for the one move in my life that I was expecting. Early in 2008 I got accepted to Brigham Young University, which had been my dream since I was young. It's where my parents went (and eventually met), and three of my siblings were already living in the area, so I got to be close to them once again. Graduation came and went, and my dad and I packed up a couple cars to take out to Utah. Neither one was actually for me, just some of the stuff packed in them; one of the cars was a friend's, and we were taking it out to Utah for them, and the other was for my sister. But I was going to be living in on-campus housing anyway, so I didn't exactly need one. Here are a few pics of the drive out:

Miles of... flatness...

Hey! That's me!

That white car was double-ended. The gimmick was that, on the side, it said something along the lines of "Always moving forward"

College was definitely an experience I thought I was prepared for, but, like most freshmen starting out, it proved to be harder than I initially thought. Thankfully, the whole experience was made better by finding a lot of new friends throughout the whole time I was there – a skill I felt I had mastered from how many times I had gone to somewhere new before.

Halloween costumes with my roommates, minus one who was taking the picture 

Between semesters, I made an igloo of sorts from the snow on the basketball court outside of our apartment. I'd never lived in a place with so much snow before, so I was kinda excited for it all.

My FHE family from freshman year

Random dance parties weren't unheard of in our dorm...

Book/note burning ceremony after the second semester

I've got to be grateful to Facebook for preserving these photos for me. I swear, there are some things that I feel like I have a great memory for, but others I have almost no recollection of.

After that first year, I was blessed enough to be able to go on a mission. My call came right around the time of finals, and a lot of my family and friends were able to be there when I opened it:

So, summing up quickly my summer after freshman year, I kept working in the MTC cafeteria for a while, then went home to Illinois to pack up and get ready to go. I was lucky enough to get my passport and visa early, compared to many South American-bound missionaries who followed me, so I started flying to Brazil on August 25th and got to the MTC there on the 26th.