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.
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