Redemption Bracket

I got a phone call Friday night that if I wanted to, I could be in the redemption finals for ping pong. I gladly agreed and headed over to play some ping pong. There were about 20 people there to watch so it was kind of intimidating, especially since I knew maybe 1 or 2 of them. My first game I played a guy named Boyd Bills. He was practicing when I got there so I was a little worried about it. Once we started playing though he wasn't as good as I originally thought, I was too consistent for him and I ended up beating him. His roommates later said that it was a good thing because he needed to be humbles. So then I played another guy and he was pretty instense. He had a sweet serve that was difficult for me to get bac, but once I got that down I did pretty well and beat him to. That was good enough to make me the champion of the redemption bracket, I'm really making a name for myself in this ward.
Tonight our apt was in charge of ward prayer so I decided to write a rap to introduce ourselves. We were all going to write it together but I ended up writing all of it but that's ok because it was fun to write. We dressed up gangster style and performed it. It was just Bridget, Jackie, Jerika and me. It turned out really well and everyone seemed to like it. There was one part where I talk about Boyd Bills that I beat in ping pong and that really got a rise out of him and the ward, it was sweet. So here's what the rap was if you want to read it. We also videoed ourselves doing it so I will attach that later. We figured this would either make us seem like a fun house or a totally insane house. Our house name is "The Villa", so we called it "The Villa Rap"


We are the villa, for rilla

First there are the Terry sistas
They hail from the South
Down in Spanish Fork
So you better get their numbers, all you mistas

Kids are their passion
So they want to teach,
They spent their summer
on the Hawaiian Beach

We are the villa, for rilla

First there is Marina,
You may have seen ha
She’s got the long brown hair,
But she ain’t at ward prayer

Marina may be older
But the younger one
Claims to have
the bigger guns

We are the villa, for rilla

Jer-i-ka is the next in line
She kinda struggles to be on time.
She likes to read and pretends to run
You’d never guess it, but she loves the sun


Bridget is a science lover
But MFHD is her Major
She comes from the state of Idaho,
If you see her, why don’t you say “hello”

We are the villa, for rilla

Jackie went to Guatamala,
Now it’s plain to see,
All she wants now
Is a Guatamalan Honey

Camille’s in love with a place called France,
And she looks like a fool when she tries to dance.
But you better watch out for her ping pong skills
If you don’t know what I mean just ask Boyd Bills.

So here you have it,
The girls of the villa,
Don’t wait another minute
And come meet them for rilla.

We are villa, for rilla.

So here's the video of our sweet rap, I know you've all ben waiting for it. This rendition is not quite as good as the real thing, but it'll do. Hope you enjoy!

Soccer--oh dear

So I played in my first ever soccer game (excluding the time I played when I was in kindergarton, I actually think I was better then than I am now). Lucky for me, our whole team was bad, so I didn't stick out TOO much. I did a lot of running around, pretending like I had somewhat of a clue as to what I was doing. I'm pretty sure, in fact, I would say 90% sure, that I passed it to the other team more than to my own teammates...I'm sure my team appreciated that. The final score of the game, are you ready? was 1-8. You may be thinking "oh my, you got slaughtered!" Now this is true, but we also got on the board, so I'll take it. I was pretty decked out with a new pair of puma cleats (they are little boys so I got a great deal), some sweet soccer socks and shin guards; because of my sweet get-up, people thought I played soccer. As soon as I touched the ball, they quickly realized that this was not the case. I was also playing my ward that I am in now, our bishopric showed up to watch (we have a really supportive bishopric, I'm impressed) and they were a bit disheartened to see I was playing for the other team. It didn't take them long to realize that they didn't really want me on the team. I guess I'm really not THAT bad.....ok yes I am, we should get some video of it so you can witness the horrendous soccer skills of Camille.
After my soccer game I went country dancing with Jerika and we met Kyle and friends. My country dancing is a wee bit rusty and I was flailing around quite a bit. All the twists and turns and oh dear, don't even get me started on the cha cha (sp?) I just look like one big fool out there. With the line dances I got pretty good at just kinda jumping around to make it look like I knew what I was doing, except for when I turned the wrong direction and would smack right into the person next to me who was actually doing it right. It was a lot of fun and an active night. I was almost dropped on a lift, not because of Kyle's error, but because I'm perhaps a little larger than he thought and I was turning or going the opposite direction he wanted me to, he had a nice save though and I didn't hit the ground. Jerika was watching from the side and had a pretty good laugh about it.
I know you're probably going crazy wondering how Speedy is doing. Speedy is doing just fine...well I think so. He pretty much doesn't move. I leave in the morning, then come back at night and he is in the exact same spot he was when I left. I pick him up every once in awhile to see if he is moving and he does, so as long as he's not dead, I'm happy :). Well, that's the latest with me.

Flying Bikes and Wet Toes

I'm not doing a very good job at writing in this regularly. I usually can't justify taking a half hour to write on my blog when I have lots of other homework and things to do, but then I remember that I actually do have to write regularly for one of my classes. So here is my weekend in a nutshell.
Friday was my roommate Marina's birthday so we did some celebrating there. I was just trying to post pictures of it but I was being denied because of some error. Anyway, we went to dinner at McGrath's fish house. It was quite delicious. Most of us filled up on bread, salad and popcorn shrimp before our food came so we took about two bites and called it quits. However, Marina was offered a dessert of her choice and she chose the mile high mud pie. This mud pie is pretty much a slice of heaven. It was really big and we all took our spoons and dove in. No room for dinner but more than enough room for dessert.
After dinner, David had invited us to go to some Ogio wearhouse where they have bmx bikes and ramps and a big foam pit. After this night I was convinced that Dave and I aren't related at all. Dave went down the ramp on his bmx bike and did a backflip, still on the bike, into the foam pit. I got nervous just jumping into the foam pit. We were all entertained watching other people do tricks. Afterwards we came back and had some delcious cake and ice cream.
Saturday was a sweet day because it was the football game. It was a good game that we won 31-6 I believe. Right about the end it started raining pretty hard though and the true "fully invested" fans were the only ones remaining by the end. Yes, I am fully invested. We were pretty soaked by the end but luckily I had seen on my igoogle homepage that it was supposed to rain so I had come prepared with a rain jacket. Thank you google.
Saturday night there was talk of going country dancing but those plans fell through and I ended doing quite a bit of homework, crashing on our front room floor for an hour, then drifting over to Paul's to help him with his fantasy hockey team and watch the movie Green Mile-edited of course. Green mile is a pretty interesting movie for those of you who haven't seen it. I do recommend edited though.
So that's what's going on on the Camille front. I haven't found out when my next tennis match is, it looks like I have a freebee this week so I need to turn my attention to soccer--my first game is wednesday so that should be interesting. Well, sorry for the boring post, not a lot of time but I needed to get it out there. Sianara (sp?)

Another Victory for Cammy D

I'm going to have to make this post quick because my student teaching application is anxiously awaiting for me to complete it. I had my second intramural tennis match tonight and I must say, I was a little bit worried about it because I had played this same girl in the preliminary round and she, as my good friend Liz Clason Jones would say, "kicked my trash". She had an incredible serve that placed the ball right into the corner of the box, and she would switch it up so I wouldn't know which corner she was going for. Her stroke and overall game just seemed better than me.
So I was a little nervous about this match but I came out pretty strong. I won the first 5 games so I was definitely on a roll and she was getting rather frustrated. But she got her game back a little bit and started winning some games. So it was 6-3 but then I won the next two games and finshed her off 8-3. I was pretty pumped up because I really did think she was a good player, I just seemed to be in groove. It may have been my good fan support...Jake, Stacey and Jerika were there again, and Bridget came this time too. Jerika is convinced she is my good luck charm so now I am going to make her come to every match--lucky her. I only hope I can have the same luck in soccer!

Ping Pong Rally's On

You could call me a sport fanatic if you wish. Last night was packed full of sporting events/situations. First of all, I got a friendly phone call from my good friend Aleni (rhymes with colony, you can thank Jess for that one). Her phone call started with "Camille! We need you on our intramural soccer team!" After verifying with her that I was the correct Camille that she intended to call, I proceeded to explain to her that Soccer is not my sport. I can pretty much hold my own in all other sports, but soccer? That's a whole other dimension that I am not familiar with. To me, soccer is just a lot of running and falling because running and kicking is a most extreme combination for us clutzy folk. I am easily persuaded and she told me that she did not want to have to "beg". So, to spare some ridiculous begging, I agreed to be on the team--this is going to be one heck of an adventure. I've had several people offer to explain the positions and rules to me as well as even coach me a little bit, I'm sure they have no idea what they are getting themselves into.
On a more successful note, I played my first singles intramural tennis match last night. I had a weak and wimpy start to say the least. She didn't hit it very hard so I had a difficult time being aggressive with the ball. I did a lot of dinky ones back, kept my feet glued to the ground and my knees straight, barely even breaking a sweat. I quickly and frustratingly found myself down 5-1 (we play a pro set to 8). At this point I realized that something had to change. I have no doubt that I could have taken care of this match in a few minutes if I was still in my high school game, but I have since lost my mental game and a little bit of skill and agressiveness since then. So I decided that it couldn't hurt to completely change how I was playing. I started looking for opportunities to go to the net and I was pleasantly surprised to find that this intimidated her quite a bit. I started rushing the net even when I didn't have a good approach shot just so that I could intimidate her. I also had some pretty sweet net game...I started hitting winners and it felt good. My adreniline was pumping and I was bouncing up and down to stay pumped up. It wasn't long before I found myself sitting at 6-5...I had won 5 straight games to pull into the lead. I had a momentary break down where I was a little too complacent and she won another game to where it tied it 6-6. I kept telling myself that I could not let her get to 7. I squeaked by another win to put it at 7-6 then it came down to deuce in the last game...the point was a long rally and I was saved a couple times by a few close balls, but I came out on top! It was a most sweet victory I must say...I forgot how much I love the game of tennis. I had a few supporters as well: Stacey, Jake and Jerika were all there to cheer me on. I should also do a shout out to Jake who also came out on top (although quite a bit easier winning at 8-1).
Oh don't worry, the night is not over yet. We also went to Dave's intramural flag football game. The other team was pretty fast and good at pitching the ball to each other as they ran down the field. That's all I'll say on that subject, I'm sure Dave can tell you more...maybe he'll post something on his blog, maybe not. After arriving home at about 10:30 and showering, I get a call from my next ping pong opponent. I am in a ward ping pong tournament where there are 64 people playing, so it is just like march madness. The guys that set up are pretty into it and created a huge poster size copy of the bracket with the BYU logo in the background. Monday night I played my first game against the counselor in the bishopric. He is a young fellow and just got married about a month ago which is weird that he is already back into a singles ward. He is also probably a good 2 feet taller than me, you may think I am exaggerating, but I'm really not. Anyway, I played him best out of three games to 11 (I guess that is how they set up the official way of playing for this tournament). It was kind of an embarssing victory because he only got a few points in the two games I played him. I am indeed grateful that we had a ping pong table growing up and Dave and Jake were patient enough to play me every now and then when they needed a break from each other. So I was on to round 2 which brings me to last night when my next ping pong opponent called me. I had heard rumors circulating around the ward circuit that this guy was quite the ping pong player and had shut out his first opponent with no mercy. He even had some sort of funny nickname like "Austin I'm a big shot and can school you all in ping pong Hatchet" I made that up but it was some sort of ridiculous nickname like that. Anyway, we started playing and he was a little taken back by my ability to return anything he dished at me. He had a great spin serve but everything else didn't have any spin so we had incredibly long rallies. We played best out of 5 games this time because no one was waiting for the table. In all of our games he only beat me by a few points and I beat him in one of the games. I was disappointed I couldn't tally up another victory for the night but it was a lot of fun playing him and all the guys that were there watching were rather impressed at my ping to the pong skills.
Well, that's all for now folks. My first soccer game is next week (it was actually supposed to be last night but thank heavens I had a tennis match at the exact same time) and it is ironic because we are playing the ward I am in now..luckily I don't know any of the girls. I'll have to tell you how that soccer game goes because there is no doubt that it will be comical.

Camping 101

Last night we (Jerika, Marina, Emily, Kimi, Bridget, Cameron (jerika's brother), Andrew (his friend), Joe and Jameson) took a trip up to Whiting Campground, up by Mapleton, and set up camp. It was certainly an interesting and different experience than the usual "camping in style" and being waited on hand and foot by mom. Marina, Emily and the Terry sisters' mom put together some deluxe tin foil dinners that included everything you could imagine: hamburger, red onions, green onions, celery, lil smokeys, potatos, carrots and I'm sure there was more. I quickly realized that I was the most experienced camper out of the bunch as I took over preparing the charcoals and arranging and checking on the dinners--either that or I was just the hungriest out of the bunch. This first picture is of me checking the tin foil dinners--they were most delicious I must say. Although I didn't have mom there to bring out the camping bins with a list of anything and everything we may need, I was impressed by the preparation that Marina and Emily put together. We had plenty of food and utinsels to last us.
We spent the majority of the night setting up tents, preparing food and eating the food. There were a couple rounds of psychiatrist and some bear stories...apparantly there are bears in the area so we had to be extra cautious in making sure there wasn't any food left out when we went to bed. Oh speaking of bed, setting it up was a most enjoyable experience. Jerika and I got banned to the two person tent while the rest of the girls were in the much larger, luxurious tent. About the time I was getting sleepy it had occurred to me that I had not yet set up my bed. Jerika and I busted out the new air matress, stuck it into the tent and began blowing it up with the pump. This pump was a real joy. It had little to no power and barely pushed any air in at all. We decided to leave it for awhile and went and had some mallows and hung out. After about a half hour we mosied on back over there to check on how our precious bed was doing--it wasn't doing well. It had air in it, but it had gotten to the point where the pump just wasn't powerful enough to push any more air into it. We laid on it to see how it felt and our bums hit the ground. I decided to take to blowing it up with my gigantic lungs. I couldn't take my mouth off the nozzel thing though because the air would just go back out, so I had to breath in through my nose (my stuffy nose that is) and blow out through my mouth. After awhile and feeling as though I would pass out at any second, the mattress finally felt firm enough. It actually got to be pretty firm, and I had a great sleep. It was surprisingly warm for a canyon and I kept plenty warm with just a blanket on top of me throughout the night.

The clean up the next morning was rather funny. It pained me to roll up a tent without wiping it off each roll, but apparantly, as Jerika says "We're camping, it's supposed to be dirty". I looked around for the small broom and dustpan then realized that maybe that was just a Morris thing. I was grateful for my camping experience as the tent set up and take down was rather simple. This last picture was after the bear stories and Jerika and Kimi found it necessary to make bear claws. I told the story of the little girl who was chased by a bear and lost her pants. I'm not a very good story teller and the story somehow came out funny instead of spiritual. After I finished telling the story someone asked "Wait, why was this story in the friend?" and it was then that I realized I had left out the whole praying part and the only thing I could remember is her pants falling off. That became the joke of the night.

Camping was a whole lot of fun even though it was mostly just eating and watching the fire burning....but that's the best part.

Speedy

Today I spent a couple of hours shopping for a pet, a pet whom I now affectionately call Speedy. As you can see from the picture, it is in fact, a hermit crab. For my science class we were asked to purchase an invertabrate, keep it alive for the semester, and experiment on it without killing it. You may be asking "How will this help you become a better teacher?" I am asking myself the same question and have yet to find the answer--I love useless projects. I am sharing the pet with 3 other girls who are as amateur at this as I am. It took us a quick couple minutes to locate the hermit crab but took us the remainder of the time to find a good home for it and purchase food and everything else a hermit crab may need. These hermit crabs are pretty demanding. We had to buy calcium tablets, sand, bark, salt (so he can take salt baths), a structure for him to sleep under during the day and a mister to keep him moist. Luckily I don't have to keep Speedy at my house all the time or it would surely die; I just hope it survives the weeks it does have to stay at my house. We decided that we would make the switch at school, so there is one point where I will actually have to take Speedy with me to work--I'm certainly looking forward to that day. That was the most exciting/interesting thing about my day. I'm now getting ready to go camping, that should be an interesting experience.

Joining the Blogging World

When Dave, the last one I thought would be on this thing, told me he had a blog, I felt I had not choice but to get one. Actually, that's a little bit dramatic. I decided to check out his blog and I saw a link that said "create your blog" or something to that effect. I clicked on the link and before I knew it I had a nice little message that said I had created a blog--fancy that. I am the last of the Morris clan to get a blog, I'm proud that I held out for as long as I did.

For one of my classes I have to be writing about my life everyday. I'm getting to the last pages of my journal (that Shane gave me for Christmas almost 4 years ago) and I am a much quicker typer than writer so I decided that since I now have this new blog, I could do my writing on here. Don't get too excited, I'll leave out all the personal details of my everyday life. However, I do have to put something in here to make it exciting since I'm assuming, if any of you are bored enough, you may just get on here and read it.

I'll start with my happenings of today. It started when my alarm went off for the umpteenth time and I decided I would finally roll out of bed. After getting out of the shower, I felt a little sick to my stomach. I have had a bad cold all week so I guess this was just yet another symptom. Well, it was at this point that I thought about what classes I would be attending. It donned (sp?) on me that I had not checked what assignments were due. I pulled out my syllabus for the first time since receiving it, and sure enough, my first assignment was due. Instead of facing the humiliation of not turning it, I decided, for the first time ever since being at BYU, to go back to sleep and skip class. When I woke again later and was a little bit more coherent, I was mortified at what I had done. I proceeded to tell people throughout the day of the serious wrong I had done, but the reaction was always not what I expected. The typical response was "Wow, you're such a nerd if that is the first time you have ever skipped class". I don't feel so bad anymore, but to think I could spent my whole life (I never even skipped in high school) without ever skipping class. Oh well, the wrong is done, and I must pay.

Welp, speaking of homework. It is 12:23am and I still have homework to do for tomorrow. This blog was a reason to not do my homework but now that my eyes are drooping I'm realizing that the sooner I get my homework done, the quicker I can go to bed. So for now, peace, love and happiness.