Guest Blog

Many of you may not know me but I am Paige’s oldest brother, Alex.  Last weekend my wife (Ayla), my son (Austin) and I surprised Paige at Family Weekend at IWU. We totally surprised Paige by showing up at a service project that she was finishing up with the Rays on Saturday. Mom was videotaping the walk to the car because she knew we were waiting by the car (Paige thought Mom videotaping a walk to the car was totally normal).  Paige couldn’t believe the amount of people who were involved in the surprise!  The Rays, Vankerkoffs, both the Oler and Manson sides of the family and Kim Oyler; thank you all for keeping this from Paige, the surprise was awesome!

This was the first time that any of us had visited IWU and I believe I can speak for Ayla when I say we were blown away by what we saw!  Paige took us on a tour of the campus and we could not believe what a nice campus IWU presents.  Every building looked like it was built in the last 3 years!  I went to Eastern Illinois University where all of the buildings were built in the 60s and 70s so this was very amazing to me.  She took us to her dorm room where she showed that on her floor they have a small 24 hour workout room.  What a cool idea!  If you are too tired or it is too cold out and you want to get a run in you just walk across the hall.

After our tour of the campus Paige took us to McConn Coffee Shop for a quick cup of coffee while Paige went and bought a pair of IWU socks for Austin.  I was very impressed by the coffee at McConn and with the atmosphere.  Ayla and I were both shocked at the amount of people at the Student Center in the middle of the afternoon on a Saturday.  Where we went to school most of the students on 65 degree Fall Saturday afternoon are partying or recovering from partying or sleeping in their room watching football.  Very cool community atmosphere.

During our drive back to St. Louis we mentioned numerous times how impressed we were with how nice the campus was and how nice the people were.  We now understand why Paige tells us that she goes to school at “Disney World”.  I believe she made an incredible decision to go to IWU.  It was great to finally see where Paige goes to school understand why she chose to go there.  We are very glad we made the drive and that it all worked out as well as it did. We love you Paige

-AO3