Last week was week of welcome at my university in Long Beach, and there where a lot of exciting things happening at my university with all the clubs introducing themselves and a huge carnival/party at the university!

On Wednesday and Thursday all of the clubs put up small tents with information to introduce themselves to the new students. There where so many different clubs for so many different interests, there was e.g. a dental club, a sailing club, a karate club, a microbiology club and many many more.

I signed up for a snowboarding club that will make a few trips up to the mountains during winter. I am really excited about that because I love snowboarding and it feels so strange that it is possible to snowboard here in California where there are palm trees everywhere. I cannot wait to see the mountains, I have heard that they are beautiful!

I also found a club that works to raise awareness and fight stigmatization of mental health problems and I am really happy about that since fighting stigmatization of mental health problems is one of my strongest passions and something I want to work with in the future!

Here are some pictures from the event on Thursday, and keep on scrolling for pictures of the carnival and my first gifs ever!

There where several sororities and fraternities looking for new members. I am not at all interested in joining a sorority but I would like to go to one sorority party, just to see if they are similar in real life as in the movies.

And there where even some people were playing Quidditch on the lawn. The picture is quite bad but if you look carefully you are able to see that they are riding sticks and they have three round goals on poles just like in Hogwarts, but a lot smaller.

On Friday evening there was a really big event at my university. It was like a mix of a carnival and a party with different rides, games, bouncy castles and performances. I went there together with some other exchange students and we had a lot of fun!

You could try archery, but there was a really long line and I did not have patience to wait for my turn. There was also a funny game where the players had to try to make a guy fall into a pool of water by throwing a ball at a lever that made his chair collapse.

And the campus police had their own game where you could through donuts through a hole and I thought it was funny! It is nice to see that the police have some humor.

I also found out that my university has a disco bowling hall and billiard tables where you can play during gap hours and recess. Is that not weird? I wonder if all American universities are like this?

The bouncy castles where definitely the best part of the carnival! I had forgotten how much energy it takes to jump in one of these and I was out of breath already after ten minutes.

I have not been jumping in a bouncy castle since I was around 10 years old and it was SO MUCH FUN as you can see from the gifs below! This is the first time ever that I have made a gif so please be gentle with your judgments.

Thank you for checking in once again!

And to my boyfriend, family and friends reading this back at home - I miss you!

mialinnea