I went up to Arcata a while ago to visit Humboldt State and I meant to make a post, but never got around to it. I have time right now, so I guess I'll just do it now. Only two months late, but whatever.
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| Dorms! |
On October 31 (on Halloween), I flew out to Arcata for a recruiting trip. Three hours from Oregon, nestled between the beautiful red wood forests of Northern California and the sand dunes of the coast, is Humboldt State. It's so green and pretty there. You definitely don't see that much green back home.
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| The view of Humboldt County from the plane! |
When I arrived at the airport in Arcata, the coach was there to pick us up and drive us to campus. "Us" being me and another recruit from Tustin. We drove through the school and Coach pinpointed major areas on campus. We would go on a more thorough tour later. We were then transferred over from the head coach to the assistant coach.
He took us to a workout location, talked to us about the team, the coaching, and he told us a little bit about his background. We went on a campus tour and then to lunch after.
The weather was so different from home. It rains there. They actually have cloudy days more than seven days a year and it's freaking cold there! If it's under a comfortable 70 degrees, I will endlessly complain about it. It was like 50 to low forties there, that's insane. It was coooooold. Something I realized is that the further north you go, the people get more chill. Everyone is so busy down south and that can sometimes translate to rude personalities. Everyone is also really materialistic in Southern California.
People up north don't care and I love that. They don't care if you drink and they couldn't care less if you didn't. They don't care if you dress up like it's Halloween everyday. And I was informed that there are people who do dress up in "costumes" everyday on campus, but no one cares. People will still talk to you and want to be your friend and I think that's amazing.
After the tour we met in the head coach's office and talked about how their season was going and we looked at meet results before getting geared up for a run with the team. Meeting and running with the team was so much fun! Everyone was in costume and we were running around town in costumes. We went into a lot of stores and jogged around. We ran through the redwoods and running there is so magical.
After the run I went back to Rachel's room. She was my host and she was so nice! We hung out in her room for a bit, had dinner, then we met with the other girls on the team to get ready to go to a party at the track house! The story behind the track house is that an ex-coach rents out the house to some of the guys on the team. It's about a 15 minute walk from campus.
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| Rosie the Riveter! |
There were three other recruits at the party. Stephanie was one of them and she was really cool! We have actually met up at meets since then and we still talk. She dressed up as a baseball player and I was Rosie the riveter. Ryan was one of my favorite guys on the team. He's gay, so he dressed up as a rainbow. He likes to make other guys feel awkward and is always making gay comments to make straight guys uncomfortable. My other favorite guy was CM. His name itself was pretty cool. I mean, isn't CM a cool name? It's two letters. I don't really remember what he dressed up as. He gave off a seventies hippie vibe. His personality was really relaxed and he was pretty cool
The party was a normal college party. There was weed, alcohol, street fights, cops. The athletes are definitely the partiers.
The day after, we went on a hike and it was the best hike I've ever been on. I'll include a video below.
The thing about Arcata is that it's beautiful, but it isn't a place I can see myself living in for four years. I wish I was the outdoorsy type, but I'm not. I'm a city girl and Arcata is a tiny town in the middle of nowhere. I need to be around tons of people and noise. I need stimulants. I'm pretty sure I'd go insane without any stimulation and a city provides just that. Also, there isn't a mall there :o
Arcata is a place I would go to on vacation for about two weeks, but It's just not for me.
You should visit sometime,
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| The Red Woods. |
Adz.
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The workout location! It's kind of hard to tell, but that's a lake.
The clouds/mountains are reflecting off of it. |
