Mission Call!

So I am super sorry that it has taken me so long to post this because I got my call a couple weeks ago, and I'm just now posting it. My visa paperwork has taken up so much of my time, so I haven't really had a chance to post yet. Ready? I am going to spend 18 months of my life in...the Brazil, Ribierão Preto Mission! I am going to leave on September 17th to go to the MTC (Missionary Training Center) in Brazil, that is if I get my Visa by then. If not, then I will go to the MTC in Provo, Utah and then stay in the states until I get my Visa.

So there is where my mission is located. Ribierão Preto is in the state of São Paulo in Brazil if that helps you visualize where it is. The weather is supposed to be just beautiful! 70-80 degree weather or so normally, or so I've been told, with warm rain in the Summer. I have also been told that this area is called the California of Brazil because of the type of weather. 

I am a little bit worried about doing Portuguese thought. I will be speaking Portuguese the entire time I am in Brazil. This only worries me because I have spent my entire life hearing Spanish, and I spend several years learning Spanish. I know that this will help for several reasons, including the similarities in the structure of the languages and the fact that I have already started training my brain to learn another language. I am just nervous about the different sounds that I'm not used to hearing. That is what freaks me out a little bit. I know I will be just fine, but it still seems daunting to me.

In other news, I had a wonderful weekend! Friday night was a blast, which was good because I had a hard last bit of the week, so I needed something fun to raise my spirits. I had some complications come in the paperwork for my Visa, and this left me super-duper stressed all of Wednesday afternoon and Thursday. I am so thankful though that things got so much better on Friday. Around 8 pm, Christie, Mikaela, and I went to the park and chilled in the beautiful sunshine. We passed a frisbee around for a while, then went over to a bonfire with several of our friends around 9. Once the bonfire was done, we carried a lovesac that belonged to our friend Juliana from Logan and Andy's apartment to hers. It wasn't that far of a walk, but all of us looked silly carrying that around Rexburg. Once this was back safely in Juliana's apartment, we went on yet another adventure. Brianne, Andy, Christie, Mikaela, and I found a parking garage in the new complex by our apartments and climbed up to the top. That was a pretty good view of Rexburg! From five stories up, you really could tell how stinking small our little college town is. After that, we went and got Froyo at Kiwi Loco, and then went home. We tried to watch a movie, but we all ended up going to bed after a little bit. Yeah. It was quite the evening. I hope you all had a great weekend too!

First Website

Not that any thing too important or exciting happened this week, but I do have a little bit of exciting news. In my programming class, I wrote up my first website! It doesn't have a URL, but it was very exciting to learn some simple code. That's how I wrote the website. I used a text editor and wrote out the HTML code. It was so cool, but kind of tedious and boring. The page was simple, with just had a basic heading, a short description, and a table of names. I am going to, however, make a more exciting web page for my web design class. That page will be done at the end of the semester, and I am excited to learn all of the cool stuff from that class.

Yesterday was fun. My roommates and I went on a picnic with Andy. It was so fun to just be with some great friends, and the sun felt wonderful! Having this sunshine is something of a luxury here, but hopefully we will be able to enjoy it more often since it is Spring, and the weather is getting better. On our little picnic, we all made sandwiches, and then sat at Porter Park in a little circle of grass eating them and talking. We stayed there for a couple of hours because it was just so beautiful! It was a little windy though, so my hair kept flying in my face almost every time I tried to take a bite.

I started my first typography project this week. It took me so many hours of sitting and drawing to get my thumbnails done, but it was worth it. I think it is going to be the best way for me to familiarize myself with all the different fonts that I have to learn.