Students travel far and wide, head home for Christmas
By TAI ARCENEAUX
With 10 days left until the last day of finals, excitement is building
as students get ready to escape school and enjoy the holiday season. This
is especially true for students who are not from the Fresno area and have
not been able to frequently travel home.
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In front of the USU Christmas tree, senior Brittney Watson talks
on her cell phone while studying. Photo by Cole Davis |
For Misty Newsome, a sophomore from Ridgecrest, Calif., Thanksgiving
was the first time this semester she made the four-hour trek to her Mojave
Desert-area home.
“For the holiday I’ll spend some time at home,” she
said. “And then I will go to Missouri to see my dad for two weeks.”
Aaron Sprague, a participant in a national student exchange program, will
be packing his bags for Maine. He chose the option to stay in California
for a semester and will be going back to Bar Harbor, Maine to graduate
in the spring.
“It will be nice to see my mom, dad and sis,” he said. “We
usually do something big for Christmas.”
Sprague said the family gets together and goes to mass on Christmas Eve
around 4:30 p.m.
“We would go to the more traditional midnight mass, but we are usually
to busy celebrating during that time,” he said.
But one of the things Sprague is not looking forward to is the winter
in Maine.
“Even though I am from Maine, I am not much of a winter-lover,”
he said. “The snow gets a little old out there. In California, it
is much nicer.”
Alexander Beck also had to adjust to the California weather from his native
Germany, but is ecstatic to be going home.
Beck also chose the option to attend Fresno State for a semester while
participating in an international student exchange program.
“I can’t wait to get back home; it has been so long,”
he said. “I am excited to see my family and my girlfriend and my
little doggies.”
Beck also can’t wait to start in on his family’s holiday tradition
of tree trimming.
“We usually get a ten-foot tree from the woods and put it in the
middle of our spiraling staircase,” he said.
“Sometimes we get the tree after it has been snowing so it can
sometimes be a hassle to clean up the melted snow.”
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