I Had the Time of My Life.... Journal Entry

Wow, this week was eventful and super fun!!!
Sunday I invited a bunch of people over to have breakfast dinner. I made the pancakes and hash browns, and other people brought stuff to go along with it. It was really fun. They all stayed for a couple hours after and we just talked and laughed. It’s a really fun group of girls (and a few guys scattered in).
Monday was just FHE. We didn’t do much. Our little group went to a bishopric member’s house and had a fire in his backyard making Smores.
Tuesday we went to Ethel’s Chocolate Factory in Henderson. It was really fun. There was a little self-guided tour and we got to watch them make the chocolate and all the big machinery. At the end of the tour they gave us a couple little samples of chocolates. The gift shop was outrageously priced. One truffle, which was by far the cheapest thing, was $2 and they were tiny. So we just glanced around and walked out. Outside of the factory is one of the world’s largest cactus gardens. It was so cool. We walked all around, got cool pictures, and even ate the prickly pear cactus fruit (on accident of course). It was nasty. That night four of us went to the Halloween Carnival down the street. We’d been so excited to go because they had little carnival rides and big posters that said “Free Pumpkins”. We were going to take them home and paint them. There was a catch – we had to buy an all-day ride pass for the pumpkin. One of the rides looks so fun every time I drive by, so that’s when one I wanted to go on. It was a bungee jump on. Nobody was in lie so we tried convincing the boy running the ride to let us on for free. He said we couldn’t even go on it because you have to be less than 100 pounds. Turns out that was how all the rides were. Super lame… so we took silly pictures instead. Oh, but there was one thing we got to do: we got to go through the “straw maze”. It was about 20 bales of hay, you could see everything, and it took less than 30 seconds to finish. It was hysterical. We figure it’s just for little tiny kids.
Wednesday we went on the self-guided home tours. It was fun to see the Vegas house layout. I like Idaho houses much better, but there were some really fancy things through some of them, but for the most part they all looked the same. They are very small, don’t have basements, and are odd-shaped. It was really fun though, I love home tours.
Thursday, Lori, Stacey and I went to the temple right after school. It’s a shorter drive from our school than from our apartment. It was so great. I absolutely love going to them temple. It seriously just feels like home walking in. If any of you have been there for baptisms thought you will know how tiny the font is. I am always afraid I will hit my head on the back side. There were not a lot of people there at all, so it only took about an hour. Afterwards, we thought we’d go to “Steak and Shake” which is at the casino right by our house that is ultra-cheap. I went there with Val and Laura. It’s fun to go.
Friday was amazing. It was one of my favorite days since I’ve been here. Melanie, Lori, and I went to check out Student Rush discounts for Phantom of the Opera in the Venetian. While we were there I wanted to go see the outside of the wax museum just to see what it might look like. While we were standing there taking pictures, one of the workers said she’d give us a good discount if we were students, so of course we had to take it. I HIGHLY recommend the wax museum to anyone going to Vegas. It was so extremely cool. I would totally go back. There was a haunted part for Halloween, but we opted out of that, even though it was free for us. An older couple behind us said it was the scariest haunted thing they’d ever been to. We heard tons of screams coming out. I guess there are wax statues in there that come alive and run after you and it’s really dark. It was scary just walking by because one of the statues came alive just right there. We got AWESOME pictures. Once we were done there we went outside. The Mirage is right across the street and the Volcano was about to go off. We watched that. It was really cool – not as cool as the Bellagio fountains, but really cool none the less. Next we met Stacey at the Luxor. We had heard there were really cool elevators that went sideways (the Luxor is a pyramid casino that is decorated Egyptian). We tried to find them, but didn’t have much luck. There were some cool elevators. One that Stacey and I got on required a room key, which of course we didn’t have, so we waited for guest to walk on, use their key, and went to the top. It was cool to look around there, and we got to peek inside one of the rooms, which was insane!
Saturday morning we went to the Venetian to get tickets for The Phantom. The night before the man said that any college ID can get you tickets for $35 (compared to $175!!!) We were thrilled. When we got there that morning the man said they had to be Nevada IDs. I was bossy and said that the man the night before told us $35 and that was what we expected. He gave it to us :) I was totally mad though – we had been told one thing and had looked forward to it. I think that guy was just being a mean guy. But we got tickets! We ran across the street to look inside the Mirage and to take cool pictures. It was lots of fun. After, since it was finally a nice day, we went to the pool and played there for a while until I had to go inside to write my talk for Sunday and to grade tons of papers. At 7 we went to The Phantom!!! It was Amazing! It was so much fun to be there. We got all dressed up. It was just so much fun. The chandelier even fell, and they had fire and fireworks, and all sorts of really cool things. It was so much fun!
Today we are celebrating Canadian Thanksgiving, which was last Monday because Stacey is from Canada. She says that it’s not really a big deal there, but we are making it one here! We are having potatoes, stuffing, salad, desert, rolls, and …. Crockpot chicken rather than turkey. I’m really excited.