The last two months have been just crazy, and I don't know how on Earth I can cover it all in one post. I never let my blog go so long, but the last semester was just insane, and then as soon as I got home, we have been working hard each week getting our house ready to sell. Yes, my family is moving. We don't know where, but I will probably come back from Brazil to a new home. My family will stay in Spokane for a while, at least the next semester for my siblings in school. Anyway, now to tell about all of the exciting things that I did. Get ready for quite the post.
First off, I got all of my visa paperwork off to Salt Lake. All I have to do now is wait. Hopefully I will get my visa in time to go to Brazil. If I don't, I will go to the training center in Provo, and then to somewhere in the U.S. until I get my visa if I still don't have it yet. We will see. I will do whatever I have to.
Okay. Now for all the crazy events. First, my ward (the congregation I go to church with) had a big paint fight on Saturday, June 14th! We drove from Rexburg out to the Rigby Sand Dunes with tons of paint. We had taken trashcans (new and clean of course) and filled them about halfway with water, and then dumped a gallon of bright, neon paint into each one. We had five colors (I think) and everyone was just covered in paint by the end.
It was seriously so much fun, and I look forward to doing it again after I return from Brazil because apparently it is an annual thing. I am super stoked for that! Let my tell you though, cleaning off afterwards was quite a pain.
The week after (Saturday, June 21st), a group of my friends and I drove over to the Teton Mountains and hiked on a little offshoot up to the Darby Wind Caves. Because of the snow, someone had slipped and broken their leg the same day we went, so not all of us went up to the caves. I was with the part of the group that stayed just below the caves. Considering that some of our group members were stuck in that very cave for around 29 hours I believe just over a year before, I was not too keen on going and getting myself stuck in the cave. Reader's digest even just did an
article about when they got stuck in the cave. It was interesting to hear the story from their perspective, go hiking there, and then read the article. I was very grateful for their safe return from the cave. They loved it though. They took pictures at all these different places, like where they ran to keep warm, or tried to dig themselves out.
Isn't it just gorgeous! It doesn't look super high from here, but it was really at the top of the Tetons. I'm not even sure how high it is elevation wise, but it was pretty high up.
My amazing friend Julianna and I became hiking buddies that day. She is the best, and I am so excited that she gets to go to China here soon, if she isn't gone yet, to teach English through the ILP program. She is the best, and I'm super glad that we got to be such good friends this last semester.
I had the best friends in the world to do the hike with. That is one of the things that I loved about going to school in Rexburg. Even though Rexburg is a tiny college town, we always find such fun things to do. That is the power of good friends. I feel so blessed that I know all these people (and many more friends that weren't on this hike). I kid you not though, Rexburg is the place to be!
So I feel like I did a whole lot of things after this that were super exciting, but I can't remember. Probably because I don't have pictures or Facebook posts about any of them. Because of this, I am just going to skip to the things that I do remember. Trust me, there is still plenty to talk about.
The next big thing that I can remember was the Fourth of July. My dad's family had a reunion up in Island Park (it's pretty close to Rexburg). It was fun to see family, and super nice to get a little break from school. For the Fourth, we went and saw an amazing firework show off the lake in Island Park. I wish I could post all the pictures I took of that! After going through them all, I still have over 300 good pictures of the fireworks!
Yes, we were really that close! It was a little frightening at times because we did have some small pieces come down on us, but the show was spectacular! It lasted for quite a while too (I think it was somewhere around 30-45 minutes long).
After that, of course I continued to watch the World Cup, and to my great dismay, Brazil lost to Germany in the semi-finals. That game was so ridiculous that I didn't even feel like I was watching soccer (or, fútbol if we are being technical). Germany's shots looked just like replays because they were so close together! It didn't help at all either that I have a few friends that served missions in Germany. They stopped by my apartment after the game just to rub it in. I am still proud of Brazil and am very excited to go there next month (hopefully!).
Following that, we had one of the biggest scares of our lives in my apartment. We were just sitting one fine Monday evening (July 14th to be exact) doing homework when I heard some sound coming from our coat closet every once and a while. It sounded like a cat puling it's claws out of furniture. Finally, I got up, opened the closet, looked a round a little, but I didn't see anything. When I had opened the closet however, it smelled awful. Like skunk, but not quite as much. I didn't want to do too much digging around, but when our friend Scott walked past, I asked him frantically to come in and help us. Gratefully, he did, and helped us fix our problem. According to my lovely roommate Christie, this is what happened (or at least what she posted on Facebook the morning after):
On behalf of Apt 103 I'd just like to apologize to all of Birch for all the screaming you may have heard last night. We discovered a large, jumping mouse/rat in our front closet and were kind of freaking out as Scott chased it down. No worries, he caught it (for which we are eternally grateful!!!) and it has run away into the wild in search of a new place to poop. We figure it got in through the front door at some point seeing as there aren't any holes in the walls or anything...
Soooooo, other girls at Birch, don't leave your door open unless you put some sort of guard in front of it!! There is a hobo rat on the loose.
Yikes right! It was one of the nastiest things that I have ever seen, but what we didn't know was what was going to happen the very next day: The Rexburg Flash Flood. My apartment was super lucky. While I did live on the basement floor of the complex, we were incredibly blessed. Most complexes around us had waist-deep water on the basement levels. In ours, the water just got to mid-calf, and luckily, only our carpet got wet (in my apartment anyway).
This was taken right outside my apartment. My head is the one sticking out the top of the window. Isn't that just crazy? That's not even the worst of it at all either! This was taken pretty close to the beginning, so the water level still did go up a ton after this. By this point, we had to climb in and out of our windows and keep our doors locked up with towels on the other side. Luckily, all of our belongings were okay, but we had to move all of our things out the next day and move into another apartment complex down the street. That was the toughest part of it all. That was definitely not the way any of us had expected we would say goodbye to our apartment that semester. The apartment we moved into was brand new and super nice, but it was annoying to have to move during finals week. No one wants to do that. Everything ended up being okay, and we are all super grateful for the help of all the amazing guys we know that helped us move and the love and support that was felt through the whole Rexburg community.
One last thing. I promise. During the last few weeks of the semester, my roommates and I pranked some of our guy friends during the night. It started out with caution tape that we got from volunteering at a fun run on campus, and then evolved into:
- Toilet paper all around the doorway and raisins peeled open and stuck on the door
- String woven in a web around the doorway and pictures with Nicholas Cage's face photoshopped onto them stuck all over the door
- Toasted bread strung on floss and woven across the door, fried eggs and more toast hanging from the top of the door frame, more raisins on the door, thin banana slices on the door, a plate of muffins and cinnamon rolls for them to enjoy, and cups with juice packets in them.
We got more and more into it as the pranks went on. We even dressed in all black and wore masks sometimes as we went to prank each time.
Needless to say, we had a ton of fun, but no matter how hard we tried, one of the apartments could never figure out that it was us. We had to just tell them at the end of the semester because after all that work, who wouldn't want credit?
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