July 1

July 1
Why is it that the good times always fly by so quickly? In moments of bliss you look around, examining how awesome life can be at times. Your friends are there, laughing, enjoying life with you. The sun is there, lighting up the sky to bring joy to your gathering. And for this long moment, the grassy knolls of yore materialize beneath your feet. Yet, to those outside this moment, the bystanders who walk on normally, nothing has changed. Soon, as this good time comes to a close, you fall back into normalcy and time goes back to normal. As the time warp ends, you become like everyone else around you. The world crawls slowly once more, and you begin to wonder why those good times can't last. Or...you don't think at all and continue with your day.
Sitting here in Middle Earth, I wonder why this moment feels so long. It's only been 3 days, and yet it feels like I've been here for quite a while. The first two days were kinda rough. Awkwardness was everywhere. But now, it seems that almost everyone has come out of their shells, including me. The first day...I literally was silent. It was one of the oddest things. My roommates, and I didn't talk at all. For a while, I didn't even mind. It seemed that we were all quietly sheepish. Day 2 was different. We exchanged some quick words at breakfast. Colby showed us one of the songs he mixed. It wasn't bad at all. Today, we actually talked a bit more, but they have homework. Colby is in the music cluster, and Stephen is in the puzzle cluster. Even though I'm in Chemistry, I have almost nothing to do but think about college apps and worry about the summer work that I can't do because I'm at camp.
My cluster is different from my roommates. We spent so much time together. The 20 of us ate lunch at our eight-shaped table (GO CLUSTER 8!!!). The first day was a bit weird, but now things are falling in. It's funny how you meet new people, and they remind you of your other friends. That's how it is for most of the people in my cluster. Let's see...Kendell is like an amped up version of Ken. Ashley is somewhat like Athena but much snappier. I almost thought that Rebekah was the person I volunteered with at Kaiser until I realized that she was taller than me X_X. Brendan is like a clone of Max. Henry reminds me of Elton and Victor combined. Daniel reminds me of Nathan but quieter. Michael reminds me of Wellington. I think I've seen Regina somewhere before, but I can't remember where. It's so odd when your brain fails to match things up properly. Anyway, we're a really close knit cluster even after just three days. After playing so many silly games, we had to get to know each other.
Overall, the cloaking field has been of little use at COSMOS. It drained to much energy so I lowered it whenever given the opportunity. Besides, I have very little use for it. Although I actually had to reset the FCS today after a breach in the phaseshift caught me off guard, damage to the E-carbon was minimal and easily repaired.
Now, in terms of the science stuff...most of what I've done is review. It's like AP chem all over again. But the teachers are good. I got to work with some grad students on spectroscopy. Who knew that shining light at a chemical could tell you so much. We didn't get to use a laser but the entire place was a laser lab. I saw one laser with a power output of 100W...it wasn't on XD. Tomorrow is going to be another lab, and I can't wait. This time we actually get to use the laser, and it goes PEW PEW PEW PEW PEW very very fast. It's a pulse laser with picosecond pulses.