My experience playing Lacrosse!

Hi all, Silje here! 

I haven't talked to you guys in a while! A lot has happened since Thanksgiving when I last wrote, including going home to Norway over Christmas, a hectic J-term, preparing at the office for our new international students that arrived in February and Spring semester. But, good news; spring semester also means lacrosse season! For those of you that might not know, I played lacrosse during my high school exchange year in Colorado and fell in love with the sport. The second I decided to go to PLU, I knew that I wanted to pick up my lacrosse stick again and play during my three years here. This is my second season with PLU and I am having such a great time with the team at practice and games. Since lacrosse season is, unfortunately, coming to an end in a couple weeks, I am gonna tell you a little bit about my experience with playing sports in college and I'm gonna include some sports and club sports that you can look into playing here at PLU as well! 

Headed to Idaho for a tournament against University
of Idaho and Portland State! (6+ hour road trip)

As I said earlier, I played lacrosse for the first time ever during my senior year of high school as an exchange student. They don't have lacrosse in Norway, so I think that is why I was so interested in trying it, and I am glad I did. I was terrified for my first practice last year because I hadn't played in so long but it went well! I remembered more than I thought I would and most of my skills came back rather quickly. Lacrosse practices are 4 times a week for 2 hours in the evening, and weekends are off unless we have a game. During our off-weekends, we sometimes do team bondings: before Christmas, we had a Christmas party together where we did Secret Santa, we have gotten together to watch other schools play and we also had a Halloween party! 

Idaho tournament

We have played multiple universities this season, including the University of Idaho and Montana State University. This means that we got to travel! Traveling with the team is really fun and you really get to know each other better on a 6-hour road trip + overnight stays in a hotel. At first, I was worried that participating in a sport would be really expensive because of the trips but we had fundraisers before the season where we worked at the Harry Styles Concert and the Seahawks football game (a lot of fun) so that we could raise money to cover our travel expenses for our games out of state. The season is coming to an end in about two weeks, but we still have three more games coming up that we are really excited for; one game in Portland, and two home games here at PLU - Wish us luck! 

After the game against Montana State University
(Notice the snow...)

At PLU, lacrosse is a club sport, which means that there are no official try-outs and a lot of the players might be brand new to the sport. There are also varsity sports teams at PLU, for example soccer or basketball, where they require you to have experience and where you need to try out before the coaches decide if you will make the team or not. If you aren't too familiar with sports, want to try out a completely new sport, or have something a little lower time commitment then a club sport is the way to go. Currently, the club sports at PLU are: Men's wrestling, women's wrestling, men's lacrosse, women's lacrosse (highly recommend), men's rowing (women's rowing is a varsity sports team here), men's ultimate frisbee, and women's ultimate frisbee. 

In addition to club sports, PLU offers a variety of interest clubs for example business clubs, investing clubs, or even a Rubik's cube club. I always tell new students to look into the different sports and clubs and to join any that sounds interesting because it is a great way to meet new people and make friends with similar interests as you. 

Delayed at Bozeman Airport, Montana

I hope this sparked some interest in checking out the different clubs and maybe trying out a new sport or hobby! 

Until next time, 

~ Silje

Trying Something New: My Life as a Rower

Hi again, I hope everyone in Washington is staying warm! In my last blog post, I mentioned something about joining the rowing team. I wanted to reflect about my experience on the PLU rowing team through this blog post, and share my experiences during the five week pre-season.

Photo taken from the @golutes Instagram page

Some of you might be wondering why I decided to join the team so late in my college career. I had two reasons for this: I really missed being part of athletics and my schedule for my last semester allowed me to try something new. In middle school and high school, athletics was a very big part of my life. I participated in cross country for seven years, field hockey for four years, basketball for four years and track an field for a year. However, I decided not to join a team at PLU because I wanted to focus on my academics and music. During my senior cross country season in high school, one of my coaches suggested me to join rowing, since his daughter rowed at Seattle Pacific University and really enjoyed it. Even though I didn't join the PLU rowing team right away, I thought about this suggestion a lot throughout my first three years at PLU. 

I also joined the team because I had a less intense course load for my last semester. Throughout college, I took the maximum number of credits that I was allowed, had on-campus jobs and participated in music and research for psychology. Since I am only taking three classes during my last semester, I thought it was a good time to try something new. After talking to friends at PLU and other universities who participated in rowing, I decided that it was something I wanted to do. 

Rowing practice at America Lake. Photo taken by Ticia Hackney

Overall, my experience on the team was very positive. Though the full season does not start until February, I got to row in two regattas (boat races) and participated in practices. I enjoyed doing a physically rigorous sport, and it was rewarding to be able to challenge myself and see myself improve every time I rowed. I also got to meet a lot of wonderful people and make new friends! Even though I wish I'd decided to join rowing earlier, I'm really thankful for the chance I got to join the team even for a short time. I'm hoping this is something I can do again in the future after I graduate.

Go Lutes!

Loana

Team picture after our first regatta!

Starting My Last Semester at PLU

I just started my last full semester at PLU a few weeks ago! Fall New Student Orientation was a success! We had a great group of students from countries such as Norway, Denmark, Saudi Arabia, China, France, Japan, South Africa, and a few other countries. Though we had many information heavy sessions that were important, we also had opportunities to have fun and get to know each other. I had a really awesome orientation group, and I'm happy that I got to hangout with these new students for my last orientation!

My orientation group! Photo credit to Frances Steelquist :D

Although I will here for J-term finishing my last P.E. class, I decided to not come back for the Spring semester as I originally planned since I realized that I will be done with my required 128 credit hours a semester early. However, since I am done with all my requirements for my psychology degree including my senior Capstone, I am only taking 13 credits and finishing my last Gen Ed classes. I'm taking Religion 331 (New Testament Studies), Anthropology 101 (Introduction to Human Biodiversity), Sociology 495 (Internship for Sociology), and saxophone quartet.




Since I do not have an academically demanding semester and am not involved in music as I used to be during previous semesters, I decided to give athletics a try and join the Women's Rowing Team. Though I've never rowed before, my high school cross country coach's daughter rowed for Seattle Pacific University, and he encouraged me to join rowing when he heard that I was planning on attending PLU. However, since I knew that I was going to be busy with classes, music, and work, I decided not to participate in athletics my first three years. So when I realized that I was going to have an easier semester, I decided to go for it and try it out. Rowing practice started this week, and I am really happy with the choice I made! Even though I know that it's not going to be easy, I really missed being part of a team and I'm glad I get to do this one last time before I graduate PLU. Though part of me wishes that I decided to join earlier, I'm really excited to see where this semester will take me as I get ready to apply for graduate schools and jobs.

I hope everyone has a good semester!


Loana

Exciting start to Fall!

Hi everyone!

This is Joel. I'm back and I'm so excited to begin blogging again here at PLU! For this week's blog, I will specifically talk about the first day of school, and some fun things that the new international students did on their first day!

The day started off perfectly. Morning classes were canceled for the opening convocation of fall semester. This meant that I had only one class for the day, and it was my Behavior in Organizations class (BUSA 305). I wanted to attend the opening convocation but at the same time, I needed sleep and also needed to prepare for the start of the school year.

The highlight of the day was definitely when some of the new international students decided to play soccer later in the evening! Soccer's my favorite sport, I love watching and playing soccer. But before that, I offered to take a few Danish students shopping for soccer gear!

Us at Dick's Sporting Goods (L to R: Lars, Jesper, Flemming and myself)

After that was done, we headed back to school and prepared for the big event, the soccer match itself. We had a great turnout, 12 people showed up and 9 of them were new international students. The students were mainly from Norway and Denmark, but we also had a Saudi Arabian, myself, from Malaysia and my coworker, Pape, from Senegal.

Us at half-time!

We spent a fun-filled 2 hours playing soccer, making new friends and most importantly, exercising. As a new student in a new environment, it's always great and important to stay fit and healthy. Playing a sport and having fun at the same time is an awesome way to do it. Here are some more pictures of the game! Photo credits go to Vilde Bonsak! This is my blog post for this week and I hope you had fun reading it. See you soon :)

Sincerely,

Joel Goh