This is the last Passion Blog before break!
Even though I have spent most of my posts talking about amazing trips I have been on across the country and National Parks, but one of my favorite posts to write was about my Newman backpacking trip. I didn’t have to scroll back year through my phone, or google our trails, or try to rack my brain to remember funny things that happened because I had just experienced it. It was almost a continuation of my Orion backpacking trip in August in that it was a way to orient myself within Penn State.

On the Orion backpacking trip in August, I was thrown in a group with complete strangers who all had very different interests and morals and values. To be honest we spent the week cursing like sailors (this was basically my first time using bad language and I don’t’ think I’ll be doing it again). I learned about their backgrounds, religions, states of origin (mostly PA haha), and their life goals. If was awesome to become immediate best friends with people who I never would have talked to.

Courtesy of Darren Seigmeister

Barely two months later, I went on the Newman backpacking trip “out of the shallows.” On that trip, I was with my new best friends and my boyfriend, is basically the same state parks that Orion had been in. But instead of being surrounded by new opinions, I was surrounded by people with the same values, who I was able to trust just as quickly. Even though we all came in with similar value and morals, we all shared our different dream and hopes and fears of the future.Both of these trips introduced me to Penn State and helped me gain amazing friends. Orion helped me meet other people once I got here, including those Newman backpacking people. I was lucky enough to get an awesome purple water bottle with the Aurora logo. People everywhere would ask me about my trip, and if they had been on it we would compare stories.

One of the best days of this semester was my birthday, Sept. 1^st. My first week of classes had just ended and I felt pretty confident that I would be academically successful. And was relieved. My parents had surprised me by showing up to the Penn State game the day before and brought me food and spent time with me after the game.

The next day (my actual birthday), it was kind of rainy and I didn’t really know what to do. I saw in the Newman Groupme chat that there was a picnic that day at Whipple Dam state park. And that you needed to sign up two days earlier. Oops. I took a risk and texted them, hey any room left in the cars? There was! So I showed up at Pasquerilla early because I had already attended 9:30am Mass. This was one of the best days of my life.

I brought my awesome purple Aurora Nalgene water bottle and ended up connecting with a cool guy names Jack (a sophomore) who had participated in Orion the year before. We talked about our large Irish Catholic families from Philadelphia and then ate cosmic brownies (which I haven’t had in years) in a cool picnic area of the park. We were interrupted by another student who had also been on Orion and wanted to share his experience. (The interrupting guy Luke, is now my boyfriend) hahahahaha.

All of the hiking and team bonding exercises and total curve balls that have been thrown at me on my adventures prepared me to embrace and take on the spontaneous opportunities that have come my way and my experiences have helped me to adapt to life at Penn State. I am so blessed to have finally found my niche and Penn State is my home now (just ask Google Maps which lists Atherton and my home and my house as a “significant location”).