Syd Rich: Wake Me Up When September Ends

JUST KIDDING SEPTEMBER IS AWESOME.
For reals, we are not even one week into September and it's already been an eventful month.

So rewind to Wednesday a visitor arrived from Australia named Bekah. I believe in the Spring of 2013 she attended the University of Arizona but then moved back to Australia and has now come back to visit all of her friends and make some new ones. This was my first time meeting her but between all the stories that Steph and EJ tell about her I feel like I have known her for quite awhile. She's going to be staying at my place for ten days to party with the beezies. To celebrate her coming we went to a super fancy dinner... taco bell.

Thursday night we decided to celebrate Bekah's presence "Aussie" style by going to Outback Steakhouse. Fun fact: Bekah says the restaurant is not very australian at all, AND aussie fries are jsut french fries... super lame. But they do have good steak and some nice Australian decorations so that was cool.

Afterwards people came over to play some games while I watched Big Brother... nothing comes in the way of me watching Big Brother.

On Friday during dollar lunch there was an epic dance battle between Annabeth and Joren (one of the students I work with). It was so awesome but I can't describe how awesome... it was one of those you had to be there moments. But I must admit I think Annabeth won the battle and no one has EVER done that before

Friday night we decided to fulfill one of the things on Bekah's bucketlist: go star gazing in the desert. Unfortunately for Bekah (but fortunately for Arizona) we have been having some beautiful overcast weather... so very few stars were visible that night. But it was fun to go out to the desert with EJ, Rory, Dakota, Matt, Steph and Bekah even though EJ made us hike up a very steep incline which he described as "just a short walk to the top".
This was the best picture I could get...

After star gazing for about 15 minutes we hiked back down and decided to reward ourselves with some slurpees from 7-11 and then went back to my place to watch about 15 minutes of House Bunny before we kicked everyone out so we could get a solid amount of rest for the exciting day that was Saturday.

SO SATURDAY MORNING Steph really wanted to go to the Reid Park Zoo so she could see the baby elephant (who by the way is the first elephant ever born in Arizona) and enjoy all the other creatures.

I failed to get a picture on my telephone of Steph and Bekah feeding the giraffes... it's somewhere on facebook and my laziness is kicking in... so just imagine it here...

Could you tell she was excited?

No excitement... at all...

The Aussie riding the elephant

The most eventful part of the zoo trip was the adventure with the tortoises. Some children said they were fighting, some parents of those children said they were just talking, but indeed neither of those things was what they were doing... they were mating. But I would not say it was consensual... the little tortoise was running slowly for it's life while the larger one tried to attack it.

Here is a picture of the chase...

The little one was too slippery for the big one so the big one had to grip on with it's giant neck.

The worst but funniest part of it all was the sound that the big tortoise was making... it was so disturbing.

You just have to watch the video to understand. If you are friends with me on facebook you should be able to view it...

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10152672857067456

Steph was super sassy in the jungle

#gojags

This was my face when I watched the tortoises.

After the zoo we went to walmart and then to smashburger for some lunch and then back home to rest/nap for the YSA activity up on Mount Lemmon.

We left around 2:30 to start the hour and a half drive up to Camp Zion on Mount Lemmon. We went through some crazy bipolar storms. At one moment you could barely see out the front window because of how hard it was raining and in the next moment the air was completely dry. Luckily I had the perfect playlist to go along with the drive and had some entertaining people in the car... like Annabeth...

Once we got to Camp Zion we were SUPPOSED to participate in the service project like good people...but since I had never been there before we went exploring instead and along the way we were bad examples and brought some friends with us. After some adventuring there was dinner and then some more adventuring before the devotional started. Brother Bauer gave the devotional since Brother Dalton couldn't make it, but it was awesome anyway. I love being in the mountains and I definitely think I can feel the spirit much stronger there than a church building. After the devotional there was a wicked awesome dance. It was great because whenever you got super hot on the dance floor you just stepped away from the crowd into the cold air and cooled down almost immediately. The dance was probably my favorite part of the event, it's so much fun jamming and dancing with a bunch of friends and of course a bunch of strangers.

Now for the pictures (which I know is what you're all looking at anyway)