Ashland Day 1 - Sara Onitsuka

Today was the first day of our trip. Although it consisted mostly of traveling, it was still sooooo much fun! We left at about 9:45am, and headed to Oregon State University, where we toured the college, ate some delicious food in their Cafeteria, and went to observe the OSU choir rehearsal. Here's a video of them warming up...they were really good.

On the way to Ashland from OSU (Corvallis), which took around three and a half hours, everyone was getting pretty tired of just traveling. We were all so ready to get off the bus and get goin'!

Finally, after a loooong ride, we made it to Ashland. Ashland is really into their Shakespeare festival - in fact, the whole city promotes it. There were signs everywhere, and a lot of the shops had names relating to Shakespeare (for example: "To CD or not to CD").

Driving a few minutes more, we arrived in front of our hotel/inn. It's the cutest place ever!

All of our rooms have two queen beds (I'm in a room with Maddy, April, and Allison holla at them), and there's a pool in the hotel too! We went swimming tonight, although I didn't bring my camera to the pool unfortunately.

We put all our stuff in our rooms and just chilled for a while, until we regrouped and walked to get some dinner. Everyone was advised to eat a smaller lunch, so we were pretty hungry by that time. On our way to dinner, we found the infamous Lithia water fountains, which are enriched with the supposedly healthy mineral "Lithia".

Basically, it smells like rotten eggs and doesn't taste any better. I tried it...it was nasty.

......Yeah. It was an experience for sure.

We had some time to kill, so the majority of the Blues went to a nearby park.....

....and played on the playground:

We climbed up onto this rock at the park, and I was lifted into the air like Simba from the Lion King. I think someone has a video of this????

It was already like 9pm, but our day wasn't over yet! We went back to the hotel and celebrated Maddy and Claire's birthdays, since they're both turning 18 on this trip. Then, a lot of us went swimming in the pool, because we were so sweaty and hot at that point.

I realized, from all these experiences today, how much I love this group of people. The next few days are going to be an absolute blast :)

Well, it's already 12:30am and we need to be all ready to go by 9:50am tomorrow, so I better go to sleep.

Catch you all tomorrow!