For background on this series of blogs, see this intro post.
Commentary
Even though the study abroad experience as a whole was absolutely amazing, there were some not so great days sprinkled in. This journal entry, along with the next two, will give you some insight into some of my not so good days. This day was definitely one of the worst, if not the worst day, while I was there.
I knew going into the semester that I would be missing storm season in Oklahoma. Since I was into storm chasing at the time, I was bummed about that, but it didn’t stop me from participating in study abroad. It just so happened on this day that there were several tornadoes around Norman, OK. My best friend from college, who I normally would have gone storm chasing with, ended up getting some great pictures of a couple of the tornadoes. I had yet to really get a good look at a tornado (and still have yet to, although I no longer storm chase), so it pretty much ruined my day when I found this out. So don’t be surprised if there ends up being a day or two where, for some reason, you really wish you hadn’t done the study abroad.
The Journal Entry
Let’s just say I’ve had better days than I had today. Haha. First off, last night after I got ready for bed, I listened to my iPod for a while, until the new Storm Prediciton Center (SPC) outlook came out. When that came out I got up and read through it. Then I sent Jason a message just giving him a heads up about the possible bad weather. Elizabeth caught me while I was on Facebook and reminded me there was a show called “Wild Weather of Melbourne” on sometime. It didn’t end up starting until about 11:20. Our 2211 professor was on the show. That was pretty cool. The show itself was kind of disappointing though. It seemed more of a show to push global warming than anything else. Anyway, that got over at about 12:20, and then I went to bed. I got up this morning at 7 so I could check out what was going on in OK. When I got up they were having bad storms up in north OK. There was already a PDS tornado watch out. I went to the News 9 website and saw they were streaming live, so I brought that up. While I was watching that I ate breakfast. Eventually the storms started firing up in central and southern OK. There was a quick tornado in Yukon, and then another pretty good funnel on the west side of OKC. Pretty quickly after that there was a tornado reported in Moore, and then about the same time the News 9 helicopter spotted a tornado just outside Norman to the east. It was a huge tornado. The funnel actually went right over the weather center, and first touched down about 200 yds from the weather center. To make a long story short, there were about 3-4 tornadoes just in the Moore/Norman area alone. At least two of them were quite large ones. And of course, all my friends back home got to see at least the funnel go over the weather center. John got some amazing pictures of the tornado when it was huge east of Norman and another large tornado NE of Norman. I watched all this unfold live on the internet. You talk about frustrating. It actually wasn’t bad a first, but it has just been getting worse as the day has gone on and people have posted statuses and pictures and all on Facebook. It was really hard to convince myself to go to 3360, but I went. As soon as I got back I brought up News 9 again. The storms had moved past but they were just showing all the damage and stuff. Mom called me on Skype and we talked a little bit. I wasn’t too talkative though because I was so frustrated and I was trying to watch News 9. I got lunch at about 12:40, and then went up to Elizabeth’s room at about 1:15 to work on 3360. We did that until about 2:30. Then I came to my room, got my stuff together, and went to 3360 tute. It wasn’t too bad today, but not great. After the tute I came back to my room and then went on a run. It was pretty chilly today. I was wishing I had worn a sweater at the beginning of my run. After my workout, I got a shower, and then went and exchanged my sheets. After I got back I got dinner and then made my bed. After that I studied for 3040. We have a test in there tomorrow morning. After I did that, I started writing this. It is now 10:20. I am going to get ready for bed since I didn’t get a whole lot of sleep once again last night. Missing that tornado outbreak is gonna have me mad for quite a while.
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