A Topic Worth Blogging About!

I haven't blogged about anything recently, because nothing interesting has happened. I work, I sleep, I eat.....that's about it. There isn't much excitement there, so there hasn't been anything that I saw worthy of putting on my blog.

But now I have exciting stuff in my life!

First, I have to start with a sad story. My good friends, the Thrailkills, recently lost Neal, the father of the family, after he had fought leukemia and other illnesses. When Marci called me to tell me that he was going to die I just cried with her on the phone for a while. Then I decided that I really needed to go to Idaho for the memorial service, and just to see the family. On Tuesday, the 8th, I found out that the memorial service would be held on Friday the 11th. That meant that I needed to quickly find a plane ticket without paying ridiculous last minute prices. I did manage to find one! So then I quickly packed all my stuff so I could take off on an adventure to Idaho!

The plane ride out there was pretty interesting. I flew into Salt Lake City, so that I could pick up a car that my grandparents were letting me use for the weekend (THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!) But getting out to Salt Lake was a little ridiculous. I flew from Baltimore to Dallas, Dallas to Los Angeles, and then Los Angeles to Salt Lake. For both of my layovers I was supposed to have enough time to get off the plane, perhaps take a bathroom break or buy some food, and then get on my next plane. Well, that did not happen at either layover. We arrived in Dallas earlier than scheduled, but another plane was running super late taking off, so our gate wasn't open. Eventually, after sitting there for half an hour we were able to get into a different empty gate. Unfortunately, I now had only 15 minuted until my next flight stopped boarding. Adding to that misfortune, I had to get to a different terminal clear on the other side of the airport. The fastest way there was the sky train. I got on the sky train, and then guess what! More bad luck. The sky train had technical difficulties and had to stop for a while. By the time it got started up again and over to where I needed to be I only had a few minutes left, but thankfully I made it to my next flight on time. I was already having so much bad luck that I guess more had to be added to it so that the universe could laugh at my misfortune. I was stuck on a middle seat on that flight in the middle section, between a larger woman who wanted to sleep the whole time, and sometimes flopped over towards my seat, and an asian guy who, no joke, set up this whole little work area consisting of 2 iPads and an iPad mini, plus a mouse, a keyboard, and headphones. He also fell asleep. Then, I REALLY needed to go to the bathroom, but I would feel bad waking one of the people I was sitting next to up so that I could get out. I decided that whichever of them woke up first would be the one that had to move. The asian guy with the mini office woke up first and I felt bad asking him to move his whole setup so that I could get by, but thankfully he didn't seem too upset by it. Anyways, adding to more bad luck that plane landed super late, so when the plane landed I only had about 20 minutes until my next plane took off. I felt kind of rude, but I squished past a ton of people to get off the plane before them. Then, I found out that because my next flight was on a tiny commuter plane I had to take this bus to a completely different terminal specifically for tiny commuter planes. Well, that was not good. I had 10 minutes until my plane took off. I asked if they could call and let the next flight know I was on my way, but they said it was leaving whether I was there or not, so I started running to the place I needed to be to catch the dumb bus. When I get over to the bus place the guy wouldn't let me on the bus because it was full. I kind of freaked out at him, and our conversation went a little like this:
Airport guy: "Sorry miss, but that bus is full"
Me: "MY FLIGHT LEAVES IN 5 MINUTES!!!! I NEED TO BE ON THAT BUS"
Airport guy: "Oh......okay.....well I'll see if we can make room"
Me: "Please let me on the bus!!!"
Airport guy: "Okay, you can get on the bus"
I think I scared him a little bit, but I got to my plane 30 seconds before they closed the doors, and 1 minute before they took off, so scaring the airport guy was okay in that situation. I promise I'm a normal person and don't usually freak out at people like that...

Anyways, even though the layovers were a bit crazy, I got to Salt Lake as scheduled, so that was good. Then I met up with Mahea, and we got some dinner, then picked up Chloe from the Frontrunner station, and then made the drive up to Idaho. We visited the Thrailkills, and then Chloe went to stay with her aunt, and Mahea and I stayed with my aunt and my grandma (another huge THANK YOU to them!)

The next day was the memorial service, and it was all very nice. Of course it was sad and I cried a lot, but I think I laughed just as much, if not more than I cried. Neal Thrailkill was a big goof, so it's only appropriate that we laugh at all the funny stories of him at his funeral. I was also very glad to see Sister Silver at the funeral and hear an update on her family, and especially Stewart after his accident while on his mission. I'm so glad he's doing well!

After we got back to the house, we just had to take pictures. What else do you do when you're with Marci Thrailkill and a big group of friends? We took fun pictures of all of us together, we took subtly awkward pictures, we took silly pictures, and basically we just took pictures of everything. Now I have tons of pictures I can pick from for my Facebook profile! I think that probably half of my profile pictures are taken by Marci because she's amazing!

The next day, on saturday, we went exploring in Shelley, Idaho, and Chloe helped us find this awesome treehouse that some of her aunt's friends had built. It was amazing! It wasn't just a little treehouse, it was probably a 5 story tall treehouse, with bridges and ladders and hammocks! It was so cool! Although some of it was a little bit scary....the bridge seemed like it was going to break at any moment, but I guess that just adds to the excitement of it all, right?

On sunday, we went to church at the Thrailkills ward, and guess what! I ended up being the sunday school teacher for the 16-18 year old class. That was a bit random, but hey, it all worked out. I guess stuff like that happens to you when you're a future missionary just waiting to leave...people make you do stuff. Later on Sunday I went to dinner at my Aunt Elaine and Uncle Brad's house along with my Aunt Judy and my grandma. That was pretty nice. I don't get to see all the family from Idaho that often.

On Monday Mahea and I left Idaho Falls to drive down to Utah again. We stopped by BYU campus and visited people for a few hours. (If you are my friend and are currently at BYU and I did not see you I'M SORRY! I would have loved to see all of you....but I was only there for a few hours) I only ended up visiting a couple of friends. I said hi to Ryan Nebeker, my best friend from freshman year at BYU, so that was good to be able to say hi and catch up with him before leaving on my mission. I also got to see Tim Nysetvold, who I haven't seen in 3 and a half years! It's weird, because it seems like so long, but it also seems like it hasn't been that long at all. While I was with Tim, we stopped by to say hi to Spencer Waters, so that was good. We gave him some prune juice, just because. One thing I do have to say about BYU is it's so weird to go back especially with all the construction they're doing! I got so lost in the Heritage Halls because there are a ton of new ones! I do miss BYU a lot, and I'm super excited to be a student there again after my mission!

On Tuesday I flew back home to DC. Nothing crazy happened with the flights this time, but I do have exciting news from my first flight from Salt Lake to Phoenix!!! I saw the Grand Canyon for the first time ever!!! I was looking out my window pretty much the whole flight because we were passing over some awesome mountains and rock formations, and then all of a sudden, there's this HUGE canyon, and I know that it just has to be the Grand Canyon so instead of just glancing out the window, I was starting intensely at it. The guy sitting next to me said "Why do you keep looking out your window? It's just rocks down there" I said "No, that's not just rocks, that's the Grand Canyon, and I've never seen it before!" To which he replied, "I don't think that's the Grand Canyon. How are you so sure it's the Grand Canyon if you've never seen it before?" I just said "Well, it's a really big canyon" and kept staring out my window. A few minutes later the pilot comes on the intercom system and says "Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to invite you all to take a look out the window as we pass over the Grand Canyon." So ha! I was right! And the Grand Canyon was pretty awesome!

So now I'm home safe and sound. Maybe I'll update this post with some pictures tomorrow, but for now it's late and I'm going to bed. Don't expect another blog post anytime soon, because my life will probably go back to work, sleep, and eating, with occasional Netflix in there too. Not much excitement there.

Mission Call!

I got my mission call in the mail a few days ago! I'm going to be going to the Brazil Salvador South mission on December 18th!

This Whole Mission Thing is Messing With My Sleep!

I have recently finished my papers for my application to serve as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Ever since I've finished my papers I've been having weird dreams about when I'll be called to serve or where I'll be called to serve.

The first dream was shortly after I finished my part of the papers. I had a dream where I knew where I was going on my mission, but everyone was telling me it wasn't a real mission and it was upsetting me! I can understand why they were saying that though, because last I checked, a mission to a haunted house in California to preach to ghosts isn't a mission in real life.

Then a while later I had another dream. This time I didn't know where I was going, but I knew that I was supposed to report to the Missionary Training Center on August 2nd. I was super confused by this and I tried telling them that I wouldn't be 19 by then so I shouldn't be old enough to go into the MTC. The response that they had was that I could either go then or I could wait 10 years to go.

Last night I had another dream and this one was the only one so far where I've had both a destination and a report date that actually made sense. In my dream last night I was called to the Brazil Fortaleza mission, Portuguese speaking, and my date to report to the MTC was August 28th. This actually all made sense because that is a real mission, and the report date is on a wednesday, which is the day that missionaries do report to the MTC. The only weird thing about this one is that I put my availability date as October 1st, but I have known people who have been called for a date earlier than what they put as their availability date.

Hopefully all these crazy dreams will end soon and in a few weeks I should find out where I'm going and when I'll be going!

Take the Helm

Here is the next post from the Launching Leaders program. I know that it's 2 in one day, but I didn't have the idea of blogging these until today!

In order to be successful, you need to know the difference between being proactive and reactive. We have been raised all our lives to be reactive, for example, your mother tells you to clear your plate, so you go clear your plate, or your teacher tells you to write an essay, so you go write that essay. You can get along just fine in life doing that, but in order to really be successful you need to be proactive. Do things because you want to, not because anybody tells you to. Become what you want to become.

Part of becoming proactive and successful is creating a plan. Elder Ritchie says take a few minutes out of every day to make a plan. It doesn't have to be elaborate, just make a list of what you would do if the day turned out just the way you wanted it to. After you've made this list, mark next to each item an A, B, or C. A is for things that absolutely must be done that day. B is for things that would be good to do, but are not absolutely essential, and C is for things that would be nice to do, but don't really matter all that much. I'll make an example list briefly for my day today:

• Go to work - A
• Deposit my paycheck in the bank - B
• Do laundry - B
• Clean up my bedroom - B
• Go to my friend's house for a get-together with some of our high school friends - B
• Check Facebook - C
• Update my blog - C
• Scripture study - A

There's more that I could put on that list, but that's probably good for now. So far today I've only done my C things on my list, so that's probably not too good. Those should usually be last, if you've done everything else on the list.

Another piece of advice that Elder Ritchie gave us was to draft yourself a personal Constitution. To begin, identify your values. These begin with the statement "I am." Then you need to prioritize your values so that the most important ones to you are first. He also talked of the importance about closing the gap between your stated values and how you really live your life. He has seen people who put the value "I am a loving father and husband" before their value "I work hard and am financially independent" but then these people spend all their time at work making money, and not enough time with their families. Writing and prioritizing your values is a good way to discover any gaps and attempt to fix them. Next, in the steps to write your Constitution is to establish your goals. Write things like "I will (insert goal here) by the time I'm 35" or "I will (insert goal here) when I get each paycheck." After you establish your goals, you need to use your values and goals to determine how you will accomplish your goals for today. This goes back to making the plans daily. Your values should reflect in your list. Ultimately, using your Constitution and your Plans you should be able to determine what you want to become in life and be set on a good path to take you there.

Elder Ritchie did give us a warning though. He said not to get stuck in your comfort zone. He compared your comfort zone to being a bouncy ball stuck in a cone. All that the bouncy ball has to do in its life to become successful is to bounce around. If you drop a bouncy ball in a cone, then it will bounce a few times, but then eventually come to a rest and stop bouncing as it settles into the cone. This is like us. We have things that we need to do to become successful, and if we settle in a comfort zone we may say that we're still making progress so it can't be that bad, but eventually we will come to a rest and stop progressing. Don't be distracted by unproductive things like too much Facebook, or Pinterest, or TV shows or video games. There are even other things that can be distracting and may hinder your progression even if it seems like you are still progressing. You need to continuously set goals for yourself to avoid being stuck in a comfort zone or to get out of a comfort zone that you are stuck in.

When you take control of your own life, then you can steer yourself wherever you may want to go to become successful in life. Time is a series of continuous events that you need to manage well in order to be successful.

The Secret to Success

I have the opportunity to attend a series of seminars given by Elder and Sister Ritchie called "Launching Leaders." They have a lot of great advice about how to be successful in life. As part of their teaching, they have suggested that we take notes, review those notes, and then share what we have learned with others. I think blogging what I have learned is a good way to review and share what I have learned.

First of all, the promises of what will happen if you follow everything in the Launching Leaders program are:
1. You will have increased productivity
2. You will have a higher self-esteem
3. You will be happier

We also learned the formula for success. To do this we looked at advice given by J. Paul Getty, the founder of Getty Oil who made billions of dollars, as well as advice given to Elder Ritchie from the LDS apostle David B Haight. When this advice is combined to make one list then that is the Formula for Success.

1. Get up early. This means like when the sun is rising, not what feels early to you. Elder Ritchie suggested that "early" should be between 5:30 and 6:30 a.m. I'll have to work on this one a little bit, because I do love sleeping in, but I know I am definitely more productive when I wake up earlier.

2. Work hard. This one should be pretty self-explanatory. You won't get anywhere if you only give a small effort into what you're doing

3. Get your education. This doesn't necessarily mean you have to go to years and years of college to get a certain degree. It could be college, or it could be whatever training you need to do what you want to do in life.

4. Find your oil. You do not literally have to find oil, but find something that people will come to you for. J Paul Getty became so successful because people wanted the goods he had to offer, which in his case was oil. Find something you can make or do that people will want to come to you for.

5. Make your mark. Get your name out there, become known. Leave some impression of yourself, some way for people to remember you.

6. Be prepared to serve. Elder Ritchie says that this step is the most important out of the six steps in the Formula for Success. So many times people will follow the above 5 steps then find themselves rich and successful but then they become prideful and arrogant. This always becomes your downfall. You need to have the intent to give back to the world in some way. Use your success to somehow make the world a better place.


I am so glad that I have been able to have the opportunity to attend this series of lectures and I will post more after each lecture that I go to!

The End of Another Semester

I finished! I am officially done with my freshman year of college. Today was the last day of finals, so I took my two remaining finals today. I took physics in the morning, and then I had my Honors Civilizations 201 final scheduled for 5:45 p.m. As I went to the Maeser Building at about 4:00 to study with a study group, I saw the line for the testing center. Those poor souls! It was the longest line I have ever seen! It stretched back to about where the science center is, and apparently when the line was at its longest it reached all the way to the library! That is insane. But anyways, I'm done! Yay! Now I just have to wait until monday to go home. I'll see how many adventures I can fit in during that time!

Geology!

This past weekend (the 12th-13th, when I started writing this post) my Geology 111 class went on a field trip. We traveled down to the Saint George area, and we made some stops along the way to look at different places of geological interest in Utah. Basically all of Utah is of geological interest, so we made stops about every 45 minutes on the way down to our campsite. The van ride was a lot of fun. The van that I was in named itself the Party Van. By the end of the trip, everyone in that van had a nickname. My nickname was Jenna. This came about because the boys in the van didn't know my name, so they shouted "Jenna!" to get my attention and ask what my name was. Even after they found out that my name was Lauren, and not Jenna, the name Jenna just stuck. We had a lot of fun in our van, getting to know the other people in our class. We shared stories, wrote a geology rap, had a period of time when we were all asleep (except for the driver!) for about 45 minutes...yeah, I can see why we were the party van...Haha. Another thing that surprised me about the van ride is what those 12 passenger vans can do! We were going about 95mph at one point, we did some serious offroading, drove pretty much straight up the side of a mountain, and other crazy stuff like that. I have a video of us going down the mountain. Going up was much scarier though. Although, watching this video, this does look pretty terrifying! Also, I have no idea if the video has sound or not.

Anyways, on the first day we:
touched a fault line,

 analyzed the age of a huge landslide,

stood on top of a rhyolite dome,

stood on a basalt flow,

walked through a lava tube,

swam in a hot spring, and went cliff diving on the first day. The cliff diving was at our campsite. The water in the Sand Hollow Reservoir was so cold! It was about 55 degrees, which may not sound too cold, but it is! After jumping in, I swam out to the island in the middle of the reservoir, and I feel like I was starting to get hypothermia. It was hard to breathe because the cold water was making my lungs contract, all my muscles were freezing up, I started getting a little dizzy, but thankfully by that time I had reached the island so I could get out of the water before anything really bad happened. After exploring the island with Chelsey, we swam back. As soon as we got back, other people from the class had gotten the raft out to go pick everyone else up from the island so that they wouldn't have to swim back in the cold water. Oh well.

On the second day some people from the class found a bigger cliff to jump off of.

They had a lot of fun with that.

Then we left our campsite and went to see more geology! We saw a river that was fed by hot springs, but later on there was no hot water because of the types of rock and what can filter through it, then we looked off of a scenic overlook and described the different geological events we saw,

then we saw some interesting rock deformations, and then we found dinosaur footprints! I wish that I had pictures, but I didn't have my camera with me :( After that we went back to BYU. On the way back our van shared awkward date stories, and it was very entertaining! It was a really fun weekend!

My First BYU Police Encounter

On Saturday I was cleaning up some stuff in my room, and I had s'mores materials leftover from my geology camping trip (which I still need to write a blog post about....) and I knew I wasn't going to eat a whole box of graham crackers before the end of the semester. I don't even like graham crackers. Well, I figured the ducks would like my leftover graham crackers, so at about 9 p.m. I knocked on Jess's door and asked her if she wanted to go to the duckpond with me to feed them graham crackers. She gave me a really weird look, like I was crazy, but she agreed to go. So we went and fed graham crackers to the ducks. Then on our way back from the duckpond, while walking down the hill to Helaman Halls we saw some people from our ward up on the top level of the parking garage, then Matt and Riley threw a water balloon at us! Well, this meant war. We had a bag of marshmallows in my s'mores supplies that had been opened, and had gone stale, so they were rock solid. We ran up to the top of the parking garage and found a game of real-life MarioKart going on. We started throwing our rock hard marshmallows at Riley and Matt because they were the main offenders. Then we found their stash of water balloons, so we got one and hid. When Riley came by pushing his shopping cart with some girl in it, we tried to throw it at them, but we missed. Then we decided to get another water balloon to try to hit the cart that Matt was pushing with Isaac in it. While we were hiding in the bushes a cop car pulled up and asked what was going on. It probably did look pretty ridiculous. There were 4 shopping carts with people in them rolling around a parking garage with balloons attached to them, throwing banana peels, mushrooms, and water balloons at the other carts. Isaac explained the game in full detail to the cop, and the cop said "Oh, that sounds fun! Keep on doing what you're doing, but I'll have to ask you to stop if someone calls in and complains about it." After that, Jess and I left back to our dorm. However, we weren't done with our revenge. Not at all.

We wanted to find water balloons to get them back. However, we didn't know where to find water balloons at that time of night and quickly. It was around 11:30 p.m. by then. I had a bag of powdered sugar in my room, so we decided we would throw that at them. They were already covered in water from the water balloons, so the powdered sugar would stick nicely. In the hallway, we ran into Monique who told us that she had balloons! She joined in our revenge plot and we filled up four water balloons with super cold water and got a container full of powdered sugar. We ran up from the bottom of the parking garage and attacked with the water balloons and powdered sugar and we had a lot of fun! I really needed something fun like that to relieve the stress of finals week.

Coincidence? I Think Not!

So this post is a little different from my normal stuff, but interesting, nonetheless.

When dealing with the Book of Mormon, a lot of people I've known have said that it's fake and that Joseph Smith made it all up. Sometimes it's hard to try to find ways to convince them that it's not just some big hoax that was completely made up. However, I love finding little things that just fit with the Book of Mormon histories that help to provide evidences of its truthfulness.

Some examples of these little things are:

•  the way that things are phrased in the Book of Mormon, which fits the style of ancient hebrew poetry, which Joseph Smith wouldn't have known unless he devoted a lot of time to the study of ancient hebrew poetry
• the Aztec God, Quetzalcoatl, who, according to wikipedia, was "the patron god of the Aztec priesthood, of learning and knowledge." Although in many Aztec descriptions, Quetzalcoatl is represented as a snake type figure and not all the descriptions match up with Christ's visit to the Americas, there are many similarities. Part of the reason that Cortés was able to conquer the Aztecs so easily was because they believed him to be Quetzalcoatl returning to the earth, as he said he would before he left. So, it may be kind of a stretch, but this bears many similarities to Christ's visit to the Nephites; establishing priesthood, promising to return after he has left.
• there's some stuff with word selection and translation, but I don't remember which words, and I'm too lazy to go back and look that up
• Other stuff that I'm too lazy to look up, because mainly I just want to get to the fantastic story that my geology professor told my class today

And here's the fantastic story!

So in the Book of Mormon, in the beginning,  before Lehi's family has started their journey across the ocean, there is a land they stay in called Bountiful. This is where they stay after they have left Jerusalem, and before making the boat. It is described as east of Nahom, where Ishmael was buried. Well, Nahom is a real place that has been discovered on the Arabian peninsula. It is a place that already had a name, so Lehi did not name it, and archaeologists have discovered a place called NHM (in semitic languages the vowels are spoken and not written) which seems to match up pretty well with where the Book of Mormon describes it to be. So that seemed to match up, but people wondered about the land Bountiful, where it is written that there was much fruit and honey, and also plenty of wood to build a ship, and iron ore to make tools. To many people it seemed that a place like this could not exist somewhere on the Arabian peninsula where Lehi's family traveled. Well, my geology teacher was asked to travel over there, because he had previously worked in that part of the world and had good connections, to see if he could find a place that fit the description of where Bountiful was described to be that contained iron ore. Also, this iron ore was molded with wood fire and bellows, which normally cannot reach a temperature high enough to melt iron. 

Anyways, my geology teacher was off on this expedition, and was looking for a place that would make sense. What he found was this place called Dhofar. It is this little area by the ocean that is green and beautiful. Everywhere around it is desert, but this area receives monsoon rains which are stopped by the mountains surrounding this place, so all of the rain is dumped in this area, causing it to be green and lush, with waterfalls and springs. There is plenty of vegetation, so here is where Nephi could have gotten his wood to build his ship! 

However, there was still the problem of iron ore. In order to have iron ore, it is necessary to have igneous rock formations. Most of the Arabian peninsula is not igneous rock, except for a section right by the Gulf of Oman, and one more tiny, little section, in Dhofar. Well, my teacher was investigating this and found a strange mixture of minerals in a rock one day. There seemed to be calcite along with iron. He found this because of the rusty color of the iron, but it didn't appear to be anything that iron usually mixed with. Anyways, he took a sample of this rock to perform some tests on it. In order to hold true with what the Book of Mormon said, this iron had to be malleable by being heated to temperatures that could be produced by a wood fire and bellows, a task that seemed impossible to do because of the high heat necessary to melt iron. However, when tests were performed on the rock samples, it turns out that with this mixture of calcite and iron, the calcite acted as a catalyst that lowered the melting point of the iron, so it was indeed able to be melted at temperatures that could be reached by a large wood fire and bellows!

I thought that this was pretty amazing. Even though it is not solid proof that the Book of Mormon is true, it is definitely something. Joseph Smith wouldn't have known much about the geography of the Arabian peninsula or about the one tiny little place with vegetation, or the fact that it contains a very rare mixture of minerals that could do what the Book of Mormon says. 

Anyways, that's just some thoughts I had. I thought it was really interesting :) I'm not saying that you have to believe it, or that this definitely means that it's true, because the only way to know that is to pray about it, but it's fun to think about.

35 Days

In 35 days I will be able to fly home from this semester of school! That's a few days after the semester ends, but it's when plane tickets were cheap. After this semester of school I won't be returning to BYU for 2 years because I'll spend the summer working, then I'll serve as a missionary for my church. I'll be gone for 18 months for that, and then when I get back I'll work during the summer again before returning to school.

Anyways, I am so excited to go home! I love it here at BYU, but sometimes I get homesick. Today was my little sister's 6th birthday and she called me because she was missing me and wanted to talk to me. Here was a part of our conversation:

Me: What are you doing to celebrate your birthday today?
Geral: I'm having a candyland birthday party and we have sooooo much candy and a lot of games planned and cupcakes that we are going to decorate with candy and dancing and it will be soooo much fun! You should come to my birthday party too!
Me: I'm sorry, but I can't. I have school today and I'm too far away to make it there in time even if I took a plane.
Geral: But it's spring break! You should come home for spring break!
Me: I don't have a spring break. If I did then I would come home for your birthday!
Geral: Oh, I just miss you so much. *little sniffle*
Me: Are you okay?
Geral: Yeah, a sad tear just fell down my face, but now it's gone because I need to be happy for my birthday party.

I miss her (and the rest of my family) about as much as she misses me and I would have loved to go to her candyland birthday party, even though I was informed by my sister Sarah that "10 six year olds+candy+games+candy+dancing+candy= 1 massive headache" I think it would be really funny to see a ton of six year olds all hyped up on sugar and dancing around!

Anyways, that's all I have to say right now because it is now past 11:00 and I'm trying to get to bed earlier because I get up early for my job. I don't work tomorrow, but I was thinking about going to the gym. Maybe. We'll see how I feel about that in the morning.

"byu kissing blog"

The title of this post is the top Google search result that has led people to my blog. This is wrong because:

1. Why are you searching for a byu kissing blog? That's weird.
2. This blog never actually has said anything about kissing...it's just part of the title of the blog 
3. This is not what I want my blog to be known as!

It's kind of funny, but at the same time really weird. Like I really want to know why so many people are Google searching "byu kissing blog" and I want to know what they're trying to find when they search for it.

Well, that's all my thoughts for right now. And if you're looking at this blog because you Googled "byu kissing blog" and it led you here, then sorry, but this probably isn't what you're looking for, but good luck on your quest to find a blog about kissing at BYU! 

Blueberry Pancakes

Working at the MTC cafeteria can be very interesting. I'm sure that everyone there is very smart, but sometimes the missionaries there do stuff or ask questions that just leave you with either the question "What??" or "How?!" For example, there is always cream cheese EVERYWHERE after breakfast. Like the missionaries must be throwing around globs of cream cheese or something with how much I've had to clean up. I don't even understand how that happens. Or another example is that I've been asked where cereal is by a missionary, when there is literally a row of cereal dispensers on every single wall of that cafeteria. Well, today I had an interesting experience involving blueberry pancakes.

So today in my line we were serving pancakes. Plain, normal, nothing in them pancakes. For some reason all the missionaries seemed to be expecting blueberry pancakes though. I think at least 1/5 of the people that came by my line asked if the pancakes were blueberry pancakes. I don't understand why they were even asking that. The pancakes obviously did not have any blueberries in them at all. They were just plain pancakes, so I don't know what the deal was. However, the missionaries continued to ask if the pancakes were blueberry pancakes. Us servers decided to start getting creative with our answers because we were tired of so many people asking if the pancakes had blueberries and continuously answering "No" so we decided to shake things up a bit. Here are a few of the conversations we had with the missionaries:

Missionary: "Uh, excuse me, are these blueberry pancakes?"
Server: "Yeah"
Missionary: "Then where are the blueberries?"
Server: "If you don't see blueberries, then why would you ask if they're blueberry pancakes?"

Missionary: (sounding very sad) "Aww, no blueberries?"
Server: "No, the blueberries were a lie"

Missionary: "Where are the blueberries?!"
Me: "The cooks accidentally used them all to make the blueberry scones"
Missionary: "Really? So they were going to make blueberry pancakes, but ran out of blueberries?"
Me: "No, they were going to make plain pancakes, but just made blueberry scones also"

We had many conversations like that. I really have no idea why all the missionaries kept asking about blueberry pancakes! So far the best guess I've heard is that they all started some joke or something that they'd ask the servers about blueberry pancakes and see what they said. I don't know if that's right, but if it is then the missionaries sure have an interesting way of entertaining themselves.

Why I Hate Thursdays

Sleep is great. I love sleep. I just don't want to go to sleep right now because that means that it will be thursday when I wake up. I hate thursdays.

What brings about this hatred of thursdays? Well, I just am always so busy on thursdays, and it's awful! Here's a schedule of how my thursdays are:

5:45 a.m. - Wake up for work
6:05 a.m. - Leave my room to walk to work
Somewhere between 9:30 and 10:15 a.m. - finish work, walk home
10:40ish a.m. - Take a shower, get ready for classes, maybe finish up any last-minute homework
11:40 a.m. - Leave to go to class
12:00-12:50 p.m. - American Heritage Lab
1:00-1:20 p.m. - Get something from the shortest line in the Cougareat for lunch
1:30-2:45 p.m. - Geology
3:00-3:50 p.m. - Book of Mormon
4:00-5:15 p.m. - Physics
5:30-8:00 p.m. - Dinner/homework/a nap if I'm really exhausted
8:00 p.m. - Ward indexing party if I'm not busy with something else

Then after that I finally get to have a break. But not tomorrow! Tomorrow I need to take a Book of Mormon midterm, so that will probably happen around 6:00 or so. Probably after I get dinner.

So that is why I hate thursdays. Now I guess I'll go to sleep and hope that somehow when I wake up tomorrow it won't be thursday

I Got a Job!

So I have been looking for a job here at BYU for a little while now. I've applied to quite a few, but unfortunately never actually gotten one. I applied to work at the Cannon Center, the Cougareat, and Legends Grill, but they all wanted lunchtime hours, which I did not have available. I applied for a few janitorial jobs, but those were all filled too fast, so there were no more spots available for me. I would check the job website occasionally, but many of the jobs weren't jobs that I could do. Then, one day I was at the library and I logged onto the job website and saw a lot of postings for the MTC cafeteria, and quite a few shifts were available when I was available! I called the number it had on the application right then and they scheduled an interview with me the very next day! At the interview, basically they just wanted to make sure that I would be able to do anything I had to for the job, and that was it. I started work just 2 days later, serving breakfast at the MTC!

My first day of work wasn't too bad. It was kind of stressful just because it was the first day of work and I had no idea what was going on. I was able to figure things out pretty quickly though.

The next day of work was kind of horrible. I was assigned to be a runner at one of the serving stations, which just means that I make sure all the food bins are always full so the servers can keep serving, and I would run dishes to the scullery if I needed to. Anyways, when I got to my station, none of the servers were there, and nothing was set up. I had to set everything up by myself. We were serving biscuits and gravy and also hard boiled eggs at that station, so I got the biscuits and the eggs out, but I couldn't find the gravy in the warming station. I asked the cooks where the gravy was, and they had just started making it. Well, this was unfortunate because there was already a big line of missionaries waiting for food. Thankfully one of the cooks made a smaller pot of gravy quicker than the rest of the gravy would be done, so I could start serving. By this time, there was one other server there, but there were supposed to be more. Eventually they all got there, but that doesn't mean the problems were solved. We had a few missionaries come up to us to inform us that their hard boiled eggs were not hard boiled. For some reason the tub of hard boiled eggs was hard boiled eggs, with a few raw eggs mixed in. I don't know who thought that was a good idea....but it was really gross.

Then I worked on Monday also, and that wasn't bad! The only problem is that work is kind of early so I get a little tired throughout the day, but I think my job is a good job!

Be Careful What You Wish For

Recently I've noticed that I get distracted from doing homework too much. I'll start chatting with one of my friends on Facebook, or I'll get distracted pinning things on pinterest, or I'll start watching an episode of a tv show on Hulu, so basically my computer distracted me a lot. I knew that I needed to focus more on my homework and studying because I didn't get the best grades last semester. They weren't awful, but I knew that I could do better. So I decided to pray that I would be able to be more focused on my work and be able to do everything that I needed to do. Well, now I know why the phrase "be careful what you wish for" or in this case, pray for, is so true. On Friday my computer broke. I have no idea why, but it would not turn on at all. I was pretty upset by this, because computers are very necessary for everything that needs to be done in college. I check what my homework is online, I submit assignments online, I check on my grades online. Now my computer was broken, so that meant I'd have to walk all the way to the library to do the things I needed to do. I tried a few things to see if my computer would start working, but no luck.

On Saturday my computer was still broken, and most of my friends were off doing fun stuff while I was in my room. This is normally when I would find some tv show or spend a while on pinterest looking up recipes for yummy food, but my computer was broken, so I couldn't do that. I ended up cleaning my room, which I would need to do anyways because I had a cleaning check that night, and I did a lot of homework. I read half of the Iliad for my Civilizations class, I organized my notes for my classes and went over what I had learned, I read quite a bit from the Book of Mormon and caught up on that reading that I was supposed to be doing, and I got a lot of work done! Then, on Saturday night as I was lying in bed, I was still kind of upset that my computer was broken. Then I had the thought, "You did pray to have less distractions. Mostly all of your distractions were on the computer. Look at how much you got done today without your computer there to distract you."

So I guess it was kind of a good thing that my computer broke....maybe... I did indeed get a lot done, and I don't have as many distractions. It is a little obnoxious to walk to the library to use a computer, but I guess this was an answer to my prayer to be able to focus and have less distractions.

Missionaries! Yay!

So many people got their mission calls today! As I was scrolling through my facebook newsfeed, it made me really happy to see all these mission calls to exciting places! Today, just for Helaman Halls, there were 56 mission calls received! I know there were more than that for all the other freshman housing places like Heritage and Wyview. It makes me so happy to see all these students my age willingly giving up 18-24 months of their life to preach the gospel all around the world. To other people it seems crazy that so many teenagers in their prime years of life would willingly do this, but this just helps show me that this church is true, and these teenagers all feel the love of their Heavenly Father and want to share that with everybody. I'm so excited to be able to serve a mission very soon! I can't wait to get started on my mission papers when I get home from BYU

New Semester

I just finished the first week of winter semester and so far it's been pretty great! My mornings are mostly free which is good because I can sleep in a little bit, and then do my homework in the mornings when I can focus the best. I was hoping to perhaps get a job in the mornings, but unfortunately that hasn't worked out yet. My classes this semester are much more reading-heavy than my classes last semester, but it should be perfectly manageable if I focus on doing my work and staying ahead of things. I also got a new roommate this semester, and she's great!

Other updates so far:
It is very cold. It is also very icy. This means that walking to classes is very slippery. It doesn't really help that snow has been falling for the past 3 days and just gets compressed into thick, slick ice by the many people walking on it.
My jazz dance class is killing my legs. I haven't stretched this much since cheerleading, but hopefully that means I'll get my flexibility back!
There was a pretty great party last night with awesome bounce houses/obstacle courses and an awesome dance!

This semester should be pretty good

Winter Break

Going home for winter break was great! I got to spend a lot of time with my family, and see some friends that I hadn't been able to see for a while. It was also very relaxing because it's the first break I've had that was actually a break, without any homework or projects that needed to be done.

Here are some highlights from break:
1. Taking silly pictures in the car with my sister

2. Seeing this advertisement in the mall. I don't know why it made me laugh so much, but I laughed a lot when I saw it

3. Getting my IB diploma

4. Visiting South Lakes and seeing some of my high school teachers
5. Going to some museums in DC and seeing the festival of lights at the DC temple
6. Seeing friends I hadn't seen in a while
7. Having a shower that has decent water pressure and temperature control