Well I am back in Las Vegas. It's a whole lot warmer here. Finals are over, thank goodness. Finals were terrible, but I kept my goal of not eating ice cream or getting on facebook while finals were going on, and I was quite proud of myself. Let me clarify though, finals were only terrible because of the amount of stress I put into them. I actually didn't do so bad. I think I am going to get all A's and A-'s.
Well I am reunited with my family once again, and it is great. I got home Friday night, and right afterwards we went to their ward Christmas party. Saturday night, we saw the live Nativity. Sunday night we went to a concert for the Las Vegas Mormon Youth Symphony and Chorus. Monday night we went Christmas caroling. And tonight we had the missionaries over for dinner. So, so far we've had something to do every night. And Friday we are going to see the Nutcracker. So excited!!
So lately I've been thinking a lot about my major and my future and I have finally officially decided that I have absolutely no idea whatsoever what I want to do. Not a clue. I like writing. I like drawing and art. I want to help people. I want to make a difference in the world. And nothing I find feels quite right for me. I walked in to college with a perfect view of what I wanted to do. I was going to major in English and become an author of fiction. I thought I would never ever change my mind. And then I started taking all these amazing classes that opened my mind until I realized that there is a world of opportunity out there and I have absolutely no idea what I want to do. Life is frustrating like that.
On a brighter note, Christmastime has gotten me into a very thankful mood as I remember all of the things I have been blessed with. I have been blessed with the opportunity to actually go to BYU. I have been blessed with supporting parents. I have been blessed with great friends and roommates. I have been blessed with an eternal family. I have been blessed with a strong mind, good learning abilities, and many talents. I have been blessed with growing up in the church. And I have been blessed with a body.
Recently, I got to really thinking about the spirit world and how different it would be to not have a body. I imagined what it would be like to be put into a body with all of the memories of not having one and how eternally grateful I would be. Imagine what it would be like, to experience taste for the first time. To experience the sensation of smell for the first time. To finally have control over your arms and legs. To feel the blood run through them for the first time and to feel the pounding of your heart deep within you. To see clearly all of the colors of the rainbow with brand new eyes. To run and jump and leap and twirl and dance all with the control of legs you have never had before. For the first time, you can actually pick something up. You can throw, you can hug, you can draw. You take a deep breath, filling your lungs full of air, and slowly let the air out, feeling how good it is to be alive. You have to touch absolutely everything, to feel the difference in texture under your fingers between walls, grass, wood, water, dirt, carpet, flowers, animal fur. You are overcome with emotion and you cry for the first time. It is all so new, so wonderful.
I thought about this and how so often we look at ourselves and see all of the imperfections. We need to remember to be grateful for our bodies and the amazing gifts they are, because once upon a time, we didn't have any bodies. Don't really know what this has to do with Christmas, but I've been thinking a lot about this lately and felt I should share it. So remember to stay cheerful and grateful for what you have and Merry Christmas!
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Winding down in the semester
Today was my last day of classes. Next week is finals and then next Friday I go home again! Yay! I'm so excited. It was so nice to go home for Thanksgiving a couple weeks ago. We went to Disneyland that weekend and that was an absolute bast! I love that place. Well the past couple weeks have been more than a little bit stressful. I had three Spanish projects and two English projects due this week. Finally got the last one turned in today. Now I just have to worry about finals, and since I don't have classes, it won't be as stressful as midterms. I hope.
Today is cleaning checks. That will be nice to have our apartment all clean again. Last week, we moved the table into the hallway and all of our beds into the kitchen and slept in the kitchen. We slept in there every night. And to get to the other side of the hallway was like going through an obstacle course with the table in the hallway. It was fun, but it got old really fast. It's nice to be back in my room and the table back in the kitchen. However, it hasn't been clean since the sleepover in the kitchen, so that's why I'm looking forward to cleaning checks.
Sunday was the Christmas Devotional, and Lexi and I were invited to watch it with another dorm. Originally we were going to go as a group to Salt Lake and see it live, but there was a severe weather watch, so we just watched it in their kitchen instead and that was really nice. I'm really happy it is Christmastime. We have Christmas decorations all in our dorm and a Christmas tree. But it was nice to watch the Devotional and remember the true meaning of Christmas. Christmas isn't about the presents, or the food, or the songs, or the decorations, or even about the family. Christmas is about the birth of Christ. I think we all lose track every now and again what Christmas is all about. We try to remember it is about love and spending time with family, but while that is nice and very important, there is an even greater meaning to Christmas: Christ. I hope we can remember that this Christmas season.
Well I have made a goal not to get on facebook again until after finals are over, so I will post this, and then it is goodbye to facebook for me.
Well that is all for now!
Today is cleaning checks. That will be nice to have our apartment all clean again. Last week, we moved the table into the hallway and all of our beds into the kitchen and slept in the kitchen. We slept in there every night. And to get to the other side of the hallway was like going through an obstacle course with the table in the hallway. It was fun, but it got old really fast. It's nice to be back in my room and the table back in the kitchen. However, it hasn't been clean since the sleepover in the kitchen, so that's why I'm looking forward to cleaning checks.
Sunday was the Christmas Devotional, and Lexi and I were invited to watch it with another dorm. Originally we were going to go as a group to Salt Lake and see it live, but there was a severe weather watch, so we just watched it in their kitchen instead and that was really nice. I'm really happy it is Christmastime. We have Christmas decorations all in our dorm and a Christmas tree. But it was nice to watch the Devotional and remember the true meaning of Christmas. Christmas isn't about the presents, or the food, or the songs, or the decorations, or even about the family. Christmas is about the birth of Christ. I think we all lose track every now and again what Christmas is all about. We try to remember it is about love and spending time with family, but while that is nice and very important, there is an even greater meaning to Christmas: Christ. I hope we can remember that this Christmas season.
Well I have made a goal not to get on facebook again until after finals are over, so I will post this, and then it is goodbye to facebook for me.
Well that is all for now!
Friday, November 18, 2011
A Week of Stress, Essays, and Blessings
This week has been crazy busy. But then, again, every week is. Sunday, I made a goal to stay happy and optimistic all week no matter how stressful it got. I did really well until Thursday night. I had to write a 2200 word paper which was due the next day (today) and I had not even started. And it wasn't that I had really procrastinated it. I mean, of course I had, but it wasn't like I was putting it off to hang out with people or anything fun like that; I was just doing OTHER homework, like the American Heritage paper that was due Thursday. So yeah, I was stressed out and I took my laptop to the library to work on it there for the rest of the night. I even skipped my voice class to give me more time to work on the essay. Then, while I was texting my mom about my plans to get down to Vegas for Thanksgiving, my phone died. So I had to go all the way BACK to my dorm to charge my phone so I could finish the conversation. That stressed me out so bad, I think I was ready to hit someone. Then one of my FHE brothers, who is also in American Heritage, tapped me on the shoulder on the way back to my dorm and asked me how I was doing. After telling him how stressed I was because I hadn't even started my essay yet, he offered to send me an email with some examples of things to use in the paper. It was such a blessing! I was able to get most of it done (with the help of ice cream) last night and this morning I finished it and turned it in. That is such a relief to get that off my hands.
Oh and did I mention that yesterday I also took a Spanish test? Yeah, it was a pretty stressful day.
Today has been a pretty great day so far though. My Anthropology lab got cancelled and our quiz in Spanish got cancelled and my Spanish class got out early. Lexi and I cleaned up our room and it spells a lot like pledge, Windex, and 409 right now -a wonderful smell.
Oh yeah, last Saturday I participated in Dance Sport. That was so much fun! Dance Sport is a competition for ballroom dance. My partner and I danced the cha-cha. It was kind of stressful in the beginning because my partner slept in and so we missed round one of Dance Sport. With each round, the judges select who they like to continue on to the next level. We missed it. But the man in charge said he would sneak us into round 2. I was so nervous! But when I found out we got to go to round 3, I started to relax and just have fun with it. And I did! I really love the cha-cha. We made it through the first seven rounds all the way to the quarterfinals which was later that night (the first 7 rounds were in the morning). Didn't get past the quarterfinals, but it was still a WHOLE LOT farther than I expected us to get.
Then Sunday morning before church, our FHE group took family pictures. We are missing one girl so we will have to retake them some time, but it was a lot of fun taking those pictures. The guys were being pretty silly, and we were all laughing pretty hard.
Monday night was FHE, and that was a dinner at the Bishop's house. It was nice to have a real meal that I didn't have to cook. We squeezed most of our FHE group at a little table in their living room and we joked around and laughed a lot. It was so much fun! Our FHE boys are absolutely amazing. They are so sweet and funny. Three, possibly four, of them are leaving at the end of the semester, however, and that is making all of us girls very sad. Two are going on a mission. Two are just leaving us. I am going to miss them so much.
Well tonight there is a stake dance and next week I am only going to classes on Monday, and then Tuesday morning I am taking the shuttle to St. George where my sister will pick me up and take me home to Vegas for Thanksgiving! I am so excited!! I miss my family so much.
Well that is my week so far. Tomorrow we have cleaning checks and then I will probably be taking it easy after such a hard week. Can't wait until next week!
Oh and did I mention that yesterday I also took a Spanish test? Yeah, it was a pretty stressful day.
Today has been a pretty great day so far though. My Anthropology lab got cancelled and our quiz in Spanish got cancelled and my Spanish class got out early. Lexi and I cleaned up our room and it spells a lot like pledge, Windex, and 409 right now -a wonderful smell.
Oh yeah, last Saturday I participated in Dance Sport. That was so much fun! Dance Sport is a competition for ballroom dance. My partner and I danced the cha-cha. It was kind of stressful in the beginning because my partner slept in and so we missed round one of Dance Sport. With each round, the judges select who they like to continue on to the next level. We missed it. But the man in charge said he would sneak us into round 2. I was so nervous! But when I found out we got to go to round 3, I started to relax and just have fun with it. And I did! I really love the cha-cha. We made it through the first seven rounds all the way to the quarterfinals which was later that night (the first 7 rounds were in the morning). Didn't get past the quarterfinals, but it was still a WHOLE LOT farther than I expected us to get.
Then Sunday morning before church, our FHE group took family pictures. We are missing one girl so we will have to retake them some time, but it was a lot of fun taking those pictures. The guys were being pretty silly, and we were all laughing pretty hard.
Monday night was FHE, and that was a dinner at the Bishop's house. It was nice to have a real meal that I didn't have to cook. We squeezed most of our FHE group at a little table in their living room and we joked around and laughed a lot. It was so much fun! Our FHE boys are absolutely amazing. They are so sweet and funny. Three, possibly four, of them are leaving at the end of the semester, however, and that is making all of us girls very sad. Two are going on a mission. Two are just leaving us. I am going to miss them so much.
Well tonight there is a stake dance and next week I am only going to classes on Monday, and then Tuesday morning I am taking the shuttle to St. George where my sister will pick me up and take me home to Vegas for Thanksgiving! I am so excited!! I miss my family so much.
Well that is my week so far. Tomorrow we have cleaning checks and then I will probably be taking it easy after such a hard week. Can't wait until next week!
Friday, November 11, 2011
Starting a Blog
I decided to start a blog about my life at BYU. Since I have been at BYU, so much has happened to me and I figured this would be a good way of updating my family and friends on my life. I skype with my family about once a week, but then I only get to talk to whoever is actually there at the time. And while I check my facebook quite often, I don't post very often and when I do, the little box just isn't enough space to catch everyone up on my life. Hopefully this way anyone who wants to know what is going on with me can find out easily.
So a little explanation about my life so far at BYU:
I am staying in Heritage Halls. It is apartment styled so I cook my own food. As such, I have learned so many recipes and can honestly say that I like cooking now. I used to not like cooking because I always burnt or in some other way ruined what I was cooking. But now I cook all the time and I love it. I miss home food though. I can make hamburgers, pizza pasta, spaghetti, burritos, enchiladas, tri-tip, mexican chicken, fried chicken, fajitas, and more pasta, but I REALLY miss my mom's food. I've also learned how hard it is to eat healthy here as I don't have that much time to cook, and healthy food is so much more expensive than unhealthy food.
Well I either walk or ride my bike everywhere I go (no car). When I first came here, I thought campus was so huge and it would take me forever to get to my classes and I thought my feet were going to die from walking all over. Now I'm so used to it, it doesn't seem far at all. I have classes kind of on and off during the day so I walk back and forth from campus to my dorm all day long.
Well I am taking 17 and 1/2 credits. And it is KILLING me. Everytime I tell someone how many credits I have, they ask me if I'm insane. Seriously, no joke, they ask me that EVERY time. I just tell them, yes I am crazy. The honest truth is that I did not know that 17 and 1/2 is a lot of credits. Nobody told me. I took a year of college prior to coming to BYU, and nobody ever mentioned to me that 17 and 1/2 is an insane amount. Well you live and you learn. Somehow I'm not dead yet. Next semester I'm only taking 13 credits. I'm very excited for that.
I just got through a week of midterms. It was insane. I was so stressed out and I was so busy I hardly had time to breathe. Every minute of time outside of class was devoted to studying. At one point though I ran into my RA (Resident Advisor) and after crying to her about how stressed I was, she told me the most profound statement I had every heard in my life: "Homework and Eternal Salvation are not the same thing." My jaw dropped when I heard this and I screamed out "YOU'RE RIGHT! I can fail this class and STILL go to the Celestial Kingdom!!" It made me feel so much better. Of course I was still stressed (old habits die hard), but I kept reminding myself of this and it made Thursday (the day I took four tests in one day) slightly better.
Well I am so ready for the Hollidays. My roommate Lexi and I decorated our window with snowflakes. I can't wait for Thanksgiving so I can go home and eat, but I really can't wait until Christmas. Our dorm has been listening to Christmas songs since the day before Halloween.
Speaking of Roommates, I've got some really great ones. There are six of us altogether, two girls per room. My roommate is Alexis Berry (Lexi). She is my best friend and we went to high school together. We are all pretty crazy but awesome. Last Saturday we had a super bonding moment between all of us after Stake Conference.
Okay, so Stake Conference was all about marriage and how we all need to get married. And all the examples they gave were couples getting engaged one week after their first date. So after Stake Conference, we as roommates sat in a circle in the kitchen passing around a container of frosting and venting about how NONE of us are ready for marriage. Seriously? What is with the people here at BYU? I love it here and I love the people, but some times I think they are all just a little bit too obsessed with "I got to get married right away." Whatever happened to the courtship stage?! I want to make sure I know who it is I'm marrying!
Anyways, I'll move on from that topic because I could probably go on about that for a while. Seriously though, it's not that I'm against getting married, it's the idea of marrying a complete stranger that freaks me out.
ANYWAYS...BYU seriously is great. I love all of my classes, the professors are great, you feel the spirit every single day, we can talk freely about the gospel in the middle of class, we say a prayer before class starts (which is so great when we have to take a test), there is a devotional every Tuesday with an awesome speaker everytime. Last Tuesday, President Monson spoke to us. It was SO COOL! They always have some sort of activity going on too. Sunday nights is tunnel singing, where a huge group of people meet in this one tunnel and we sing hymns and it's really cool. I so encourage everyone to come to BYU. It is such a great experience.
Well I have to leave for class soon and this is pretty long as it is, so I will leave it at that. A little bit of what my life at BYU has been like.
So a little explanation about my life so far at BYU:
I am staying in Heritage Halls. It is apartment styled so I cook my own food. As such, I have learned so many recipes and can honestly say that I like cooking now. I used to not like cooking because I always burnt or in some other way ruined what I was cooking. But now I cook all the time and I love it. I miss home food though. I can make hamburgers, pizza pasta, spaghetti, burritos, enchiladas, tri-tip, mexican chicken, fried chicken, fajitas, and more pasta, but I REALLY miss my mom's food. I've also learned how hard it is to eat healthy here as I don't have that much time to cook, and healthy food is so much more expensive than unhealthy food.
Well I either walk or ride my bike everywhere I go (no car). When I first came here, I thought campus was so huge and it would take me forever to get to my classes and I thought my feet were going to die from walking all over. Now I'm so used to it, it doesn't seem far at all. I have classes kind of on and off during the day so I walk back and forth from campus to my dorm all day long.
Well I am taking 17 and 1/2 credits. And it is KILLING me. Everytime I tell someone how many credits I have, they ask me if I'm insane. Seriously, no joke, they ask me that EVERY time. I just tell them, yes I am crazy. The honest truth is that I did not know that 17 and 1/2 is a lot of credits. Nobody told me. I took a year of college prior to coming to BYU, and nobody ever mentioned to me that 17 and 1/2 is an insane amount. Well you live and you learn. Somehow I'm not dead yet. Next semester I'm only taking 13 credits. I'm very excited for that.
I just got through a week of midterms. It was insane. I was so stressed out and I was so busy I hardly had time to breathe. Every minute of time outside of class was devoted to studying. At one point though I ran into my RA (Resident Advisor) and after crying to her about how stressed I was, she told me the most profound statement I had every heard in my life: "Homework and Eternal Salvation are not the same thing." My jaw dropped when I heard this and I screamed out "YOU'RE RIGHT! I can fail this class and STILL go to the Celestial Kingdom!!" It made me feel so much better. Of course I was still stressed (old habits die hard), but I kept reminding myself of this and it made Thursday (the day I took four tests in one day) slightly better.
Well I am so ready for the Hollidays. My roommate Lexi and I decorated our window with snowflakes. I can't wait for Thanksgiving so I can go home and eat, but I really can't wait until Christmas. Our dorm has been listening to Christmas songs since the day before Halloween.
Speaking of Roommates, I've got some really great ones. There are six of us altogether, two girls per room. My roommate is Alexis Berry (Lexi). She is my best friend and we went to high school together. We are all pretty crazy but awesome. Last Saturday we had a super bonding moment between all of us after Stake Conference.
Okay, so Stake Conference was all about marriage and how we all need to get married. And all the examples they gave were couples getting engaged one week after their first date. So after Stake Conference, we as roommates sat in a circle in the kitchen passing around a container of frosting and venting about how NONE of us are ready for marriage. Seriously? What is with the people here at BYU? I love it here and I love the people, but some times I think they are all just a little bit too obsessed with "I got to get married right away." Whatever happened to the courtship stage?! I want to make sure I know who it is I'm marrying!
Anyways, I'll move on from that topic because I could probably go on about that for a while. Seriously though, it's not that I'm against getting married, it's the idea of marrying a complete stranger that freaks me out.
ANYWAYS...BYU seriously is great. I love all of my classes, the professors are great, you feel the spirit every single day, we can talk freely about the gospel in the middle of class, we say a prayer before class starts (which is so great when we have to take a test), there is a devotional every Tuesday with an awesome speaker everytime. Last Tuesday, President Monson spoke to us. It was SO COOL! They always have some sort of activity going on too. Sunday nights is tunnel singing, where a huge group of people meet in this one tunnel and we sing hymns and it's really cool. I so encourage everyone to come to BYU. It is such a great experience.
Well I have to leave for class soon and this is pretty long as it is, so I will leave it at that. A little bit of what my life at BYU has been like.
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