The Adventures of Holly Mo: September 2009

After moving into our new apartment, my roommates and I decided to have a girls night in order to show people our new home and have fun by taking advantage of the living room and tv. We invited over a bunch of friends and asked them to bring desserts to share while we watched a chick flick. We had a pretty good turnout and enjoyed lots of yummy snacks. My personal favorite was a cream cheese lemon bar magnificence. I need to remember to get that recipe from her...

Here are some pictures I snapped because I knew that my sister would be expecting the full story :)

Kelsey, me, and Karina - the hostesses

part of the crowd as we picked a movie

the other half and the table of goodies

The night was a lot of fun and it was awesome to hang out with all these girls and enjoy one of my personal favorite Chick Flicks - Never Been Kissed :)

Before all of that fun though, we had a little unexpected adventure. On our way back from Walmart we looked to the side of the road and saw this scene:

So naturally we pulled over to park and dug for the camera. Thanks to the little boy who was just walking away after giving Mario and Luigi high-fives, we got this memorable shot with the famous Italian brothers

A Friday night well spent!

Classes started last Monday and they all went really well. I have some cool teachers and interesting classes. I think its gonna be a great semester. Monday and Wednesday are my really busy days- I have class @ 9 [History], 10 [Intro to English Language (Linguistics)], 11 [Humanities], 12 [Genealogy], and 2 [Physical Science Lab]. Its not too hard to just go straight from one to the other because I am enjoying the classes and it is nice to not have to sit around killing time for a while. Last year I would just go back to my dorm between classes, but that isn't so easy when I live off campus.

Tuesday and Thursday I don't have class until 12 [New Testament], and then I have one more at 2 [Physical Science], so that is a nice break after my busy days.

Friday I have classes @ 9 [History], 10 [Linguistics], and 11 [Humanities] - and then it is the weekend :)

So besides going to my classes last week I also looked for a job and got hired by the BYU Catering as a Waitstaff! I am excited for this because it will work around my schedule and I have heard great things about people who have worked for them before. I will start working there sometime this upcoming week.

But the REAL interesting and unexpected adventures came later in the week... through talking to some old friends who happen to work in Off-Campus Housing this year, my roommates and I found out some interesting information about our apartment. It is a pretty long story, but the readers digest version goes something like this: there was illegal activity going on as some unapproved construction was being done (which we had been lied to about), our apartment was constantly at 80 degrees, there were holes in the walls which showed crumbling foundation or which were just covered with ply wood, it was in poor condition, and we were told that we needed to get out of there as soon as we could.

We knew that our apartment was ghetto, but we were trying to make it work. After we learned more information and talked to BYU employees who knew more about what we should have been receiving as tenants, we began to search for a new apartment. This was on Thursday. We ended up searching and calling around that day for a new place to live. Friday we spoke with our landlord and were released from our contracts quite easily. Basically our landlord didn't want to deal with us and our situation and told us that "it would be best to just have a clean start. You should probably just start looking for another place to live." Yeah - it was too easy to get out of our housing contract... another sign of the sketchiness of the apartment complex and the people running it.

Friday evening I ended up signing a contract at a new very nice apartment complex with my roommate Kelsey while Dani and Karina were looking into other housing options. Saturday morning I got my full refund of all that I had payed to Crown Apartments and after a little battle with the landlord and his manager/lawyer from New Zealand, whose only argument was to threaten to take back our checks and tell us we were rude [when they were the shady characters], we were told to be out of the apartment that day. Kelsey and I packed up everything and prepared to move to Alpine Village as our other roommates went to look at other complexes and houses which had available contracts.

In the end Karina decided to come to Alpine with Kelsey and I, while Dani chose to sign with another apartment complex near where we were living in Crown. We were sad to not all be together, but at the same time Kelsey, Karina, and I were SO excited because where we were moving is an extremely nice place. It is more like a hotel than a college apartment. We had tons of help thanks to Kelsey's brother being in town for the weekend and there were several cars and guys to help move all of our belongings to our new home in a matter of a few hours.

It was a CRAZY few days, but we are so grateful for all that has happened. So many things lined up perfectly for us to get out of that awful situation. We were extremely fortunate and feel very blessed to be able to live here now. The weekend was spent thanking those that helped us move, and in getting our new apartment all set up. It was not how we expected to be spending our first weekend of the semester, but it has all worked out pretty well :)

Here is where I lived before [Crown Apartments]
**these pictures make it look much nicer than it actually was**