It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood!

So I'm all moved into my new apartment. University Park. 700N 225E (which is just south of campus.) It's a nice place:



It features a modest kitchen and living room, as well as three two-man bedrooms. The place is small, but it suits my purposes. It gives me a place to sleep, shower, store my stuff, and surf:



The internet here is amazing by off-campus standards.

Perhaps the best part of this new place is that our ward (which consists of University Park and three adjacent complexes) meets in an actual meetinghouse, and not a classroom! It's great! Check out our chapel:



It's one of those old-school red-brick LDS chapels.

Today also wraps up my first week of school. Not bad so far. I only have five actual engineering classes left in my major, and I'm taking three of them this semester. It's a great feeling to have come this far. Nevertheless, thanks to a few GE's and a bunch of ROTC classes, I can't finish my degree until next December. Among the classes I'm taking now is concrete design, a graduate-level course. My friend warned me the class would be "death and a half", but so far it seems okay. Our professor is an old Brazilian guy with a...unique sense of humor.

Best of all, our class meets in this newly-renovated lab:



I love those colorful chairs.

I'm also taking the ROTC Ranger Challenge class. RC is an intercollegiate athletic team within Army ROTC. I'm not in the best shape ever, so I probably will not make the actual team. Still, as long as I come and work out with them, I'll get credit for the class. I figured it's a good work-out, and good practice. We meet every morning at 5:30am at the Smith Field House (located conveniently within walking distance of my apartment!) This morning we took the APFT (Army Physical Fitness Test), it consisted of two minutes of push-ups, two minutes of sit-ups, and a two-mile run. I did better than I thought I would, but not as good as I hoped. My goal is to get a perfect score by the end of the semester. This morning, after the last cadet crossed the finish line for the two mile run, the colonel had us immediately form up again to repeat the whole test. Ugh. It was brutal, but invigorating.