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.

Semester Three

I am so sorry that I have been a terrible person and a slacker and haven't posted in over a month. I do feel bad though. I have been meaning to write a new post for weeks, but finishing up last semester and starting this new one has been just a little time consuming. And let me tell you, a lot sure has happened since my last post!

About a month ago, for FHE we had a silly string fight. It was hilarious! We used 28 cans of silly string (I think) and we got a little crazy. It was a lot of silly string to clean up. It was a blast, and a good way to end the FHE for the semester.

Since I last wrote, it was April Fool's Day. My lovely roommates Christie and Mikaela love to go all out on pranks. They colored the milk in the fridge, and they did silly things like putting toast in the showers. The best one was a prank that Christie pulled on Mikaela. I found it the next night when I went to turn off their bedroom light when we left one night. Take a look.

So that same night that I found this wonderful poster, we had a closing social for my ward (the people I go to church with). We had dinner and a talent show. Man, it was hilarious! My FHE group decided to have a brownie eating contest. We changed it up a little bit though. You know those funny videos where two people are working together--where the second person is being the arms of the first person--like putting makeup on the other person or something? We did that with our brownie eating contest. It was great. I was shoving brownies in Emily's face, and it was just hilarious because I couldn't see what was going on, but I was acting as her hands. Yeah. That was quite the night.

A few weeks ago, the church held General Conference. For those of you who don't know what that is, it is where the leaders for the entire church hold a conference for all the members around the world. My wonderful roommates and I stayed at home and watched it in our living room on TV. It is so wonderful to be able to hear words from God's living prophets! I feel so blessed to have this opportunity twice a year to listen to this conference.

Most people in the church have fun traditions that they do with their families during Conference. We, as roommates, did a few of these that each of our families do, and we started a few on our own. We had subway for lunch in between sessions on Saturday, and then made cinnamon rolls for the morning session on Sunday. We also moved all our mattresses out to our living room all weekend, and so we had lots of fun spending the weekend together.

Now that semester is over, and I had loads of fun finishing my classes. They were a lot of work, but the best things requires work and effort. I learned so much, and I especially loved getting back in the swing of things within the graphic design world. Even though my graphic design class was a lot of work, it was my favorite and most rewarding class. I learned things about the software I will be using the rest of my career (Adobe Creative Suite) that I never knew, and I was able to brush up on my art knowledge. It was great to take that class because I just felt like I belonged.

Between semesters, I went home and spent that week with my family. It was nice to have the break, but I am so glad to be back in Rexburg. It has really begun to feel like home here. it is going to be hard to leave it for a couple years for my mission. Anyway, while I was home, I had a great time with my family and the friends that I got to see. There were some fun adventures like finding a Styrofoam head at Hobby Lobby with its nose broken off (it looked like that Egyptian sphinx that is missing its nose) and going to see the ever hilarious Mr. CVHS with MaKormick. Man, that was a fun night! I don't get to see him enough since I went to school. I'm super duper excited that he will get to have the BYU-Idaho experience when he comes here next year!

So it's a new semester now, and I am excited, but the workload is going to be crazy. I am taking some classes that I am not necessarily looking forward to. My english class is going to be a lot of work, but I am actually excited about that one. I am also super-duper excited for my culture class in which I will be learning about art, dance, theatre, and music history. It is right up my alley, and should be a blast. I am also taking a Book of Mormon class (we are required to take religion classes) and I love it so much! I am taking from one of my favorite religion teachers, and I'm sure I will have a wonderful experience in that class as I prepare for my mission. I am taking several classes that have to do with my major, and some of them are going to be less enjoyable than others. I am taking Web Design, Computer Programming, and Typography. Hopefully I can learn everything that I need to from these classes because they are pretty important to my career. And in other news about this new semester, we only have four girls in our apartment when there would normally be six! There are Sophia, Christie, Mikaela, and myself in this apartment. No one new, just the four of us that were already here last semester. It's kind of nice. There is tons of room in the bathrooms and kitchen now! I even get my own bedroom, which is weird, but having the space it nice.

Oh, and I have an exciting update on my mission papers. Over the past month, I have had my final three interviews, the last of which was this morning. After that last interview, my paperwork was sent to the Church Headquarters in Salt Lake City. They will be seen by the church leaders, and then they will determine where I am going to go. This means that I will have my call here in a few weeks. Man. That just feels crazy! I will post on here where I am going as soon as I find out. I am pretty anxious to find out though.

Bipolar Weather, S'mores, and Indexing

We have had such bipolar weather here these past few weeks! All of last week was absolutely gorgeous to the point that when I went to that William Joseph concert, I didn't have to wear a coat, and I wasn't freezing. The terrible thing though? I woke up the next morning to several inches of snow. That should not even be possible! I mean, come on. That's just wrong! I hate it when the weather teases me like that. You see, I absolutely love Spring. It is my favorite season by far. There is just nothing that compares to the beauty that is all around. The weather is the perfect temperature, I absolutely love the fresh rain that comes with it, and the bright colors are gorgeous. On the other side of the spectrum, I hate winter very very passionately. It might be because I don't do any winter sports. I have never gone skiing or snowboarding, which many find hard to believe because I lived in Spokane for several years, and there are many ski hills nearby. Almost everyone from Spokane goes skiing and/or snowboarding. I also hate going ice skating, and for good reason too. I don't tend to have good experiences, like this one. Beyond that part of disliking winter, I don't even like the snow in general. Some people say that "it is beautiful" and other dumb stuff like that. I personally would rather see the varying shades of brown in all of the dead plants than the single color white that happens to get everywhere. Call me crazy, but that's just my opinion.

Anyway, sorry about that rant, but I just had to let it out. My life has been loads of fun since that concert. We had another fun church activity, and afterward we had lots of friends over to play games, then we went and roasted s'mores and starbursts. I am so very very glad that we have amazing friends here. It has made this college experience amazing!

Last week Emily and I went and got pedicures together. Man, my feet needed that! That is one of the advantages to living where I live in Rexburg. I get lots of perks for living in my complex, and it's just the best. I even get laundry paid for (sorry, that's kind of random), and we have a hot tub that we have access to that I just enjoyed with a few of my roommates last night. It is the best. I seriously suggest, if you are going to BYU-Idaho, that you live in a complex that is a part of Rexburg Housing. They are great!

In other news, I am almost done filling out my mission papers. I just have to get something stupid that the computer doesn't like figured out, and then upload my picture. How exciting is that? And Emily is most likely getting her call this week, so we will know where my awesome roommate is going here soon! Also along those church-y lines, I started indexing for the first time ever last Monday. For those of you who don't know, indexing is looking at old documents like censuses, marriage documents, and stuff like that, and then making an electronic version of them by processing all the information and typing it into the computer to create a large information database. It is actually pretty exciting. I have been doing Canadian census records, and it is amazing to me how much the little things like doing indexing can make the biggest difference. Everyone that I go to church with here has been working on this a lot, and last Sunday and Monday alone, we did over 2600 names. I love my church!

Dates, and the Lack Thereof

Happy ending of the "month of love" or something icky and romantic like that. With Valentines Day and all, most people generally thing of February with the colors pink and red. They imagine a bunch of fluffy, sugary romantic stuff with lots of chocolate and roses. Not single people though. I had the wonderful opportunity of spending the month as a very single person. It was the best. I realized that it doesn't take a Valentines kiss or date to make this day special. Yes. I am now single, but it's okay. Trust me. Anyway, this Valentines Day, my friends Eric brought roses to some of his best friends (girls) here in Rexburg to brighten our day and to let us know how much our friendship means to him. Let me tell you, he is seriously one of the most amazing guys that I know. I am so grateful to have him in my life as such a good friend. I also realized that I am a poor college students. Emily and I didn't have have vases, so we put our roses in one of my water bottles. That is the true measure of creativity that you find while at college.

Also for Valentines Day, my friend Courtney and I made Valentines for everyone in our group for our American Foundations class. She came over the day before, and we just made the goofiest Valentines that I almost have ever seen! I am so glad that she is in my science and American foundations classes because otherwise, I would probably be bored to death!

The day after Valentines day, we had a church activity, which got pretty intense since it was a giant game of twister. After this activity, several of us got together and spent the rest of the night together, until curfew that is. We started out by doing some trash bag curling. I would upload the video if I could, but I don't have a way to do that, so I am just going to leave that to your imagination. It was hilarious! After this, we played a few rounds of sardines (for those of you who sadly don't know, it is a really fun hide-and-seek game) inside the MC, which is the building on campus here that has the cafeteria type area and common areas. It was ridiculous, and I have discovered that some people are really really good at hiding. After playing a couple rounds of sardines, we went to get ice cream, and then made a random run to the store before we all had to be back by curfew. I honestly wish all of my weekends were this fun. That night, the four of us that we home that weekend all slept out in our living room together. That was an adventure for sure, but it was lots of fun. The next day, we went to my roommate Sophia's boyfriend's apartment for dinner with his roommates. They fixed us a wonderful dinner, and then we had fun playing different fun games like "what if" with them after dinner.

In my graphic design class, we just finished our shapes project, which was lots of fun. We took different basic shapes in black and white and made a piece of art that used the elements and principles of design to create a visually pleasing design. Mine turned out alright, and with the project, I definitely learned how to come up with many different designs. The project we are working on now is creating a logo for a company that we make up. I will have to post what my final logo looks like when I'm done with it.

Oh yeah, and by the way, I just went on a blind date two weeks ago. As strange as it sounds, our church leaders (stake leaders for those of you that are LDS) set up a bunch of blind dates for people that wanted to go, provided dinner, and planned the date. All of us got together, had dinner, and had a fun night doing silly things. We were sitting at tables with four couples at each, and after we had eaten dinner, we had a contest with the airplanes that we made with our tables that night and then got up and embarrassed ourselves by doing a goofy skit to introduce ourselves in front of everyone else.

Just last Friday night, Emily and I went to go see William Joseph on campus. He was AMAZING!!!!! If you don't know who he is, you need to find out! As someone who has studied piano classically, and at the university level for a bit, I feel like I can fully appreciate his talent and dedication to the piano. He put on a fantastic show that I will never forget, and I was thrilled to get to meet him after the show. He plays the piano with such incredible emotion, and has immaculate technique and artistry on the piano. If you EVER get the chance to go see him, I would highly suggest it. Not only is he an incredible performer, but he is a truly humble person. He loves to give credit to all those that perform with him, and those that are behind the scenes as well. He also tells some pretty good stories. All over, it was a two thumbs up performance for sure, complete with a double encore.