Catching up

I have a nasty cold today, so I'm using my time stuck in bed for something useful for once. It's been a hard semester, so all thoughts of my blog kind of went out the window. My apologies.

Kleptopatra-Roman Ruins Murder Mystery Party. This was party was tons of fun, and I loved getting to see my friends before we all left for college again, or missions.

 "We're so elegant" Taken before Robyn and I went to see the Opera "Die Fledermaus," put on by BYU. It was hilarious, we had a great time, and really enjoyed the music. Thumbs up all around.

 Almost everyone at BYU dresses up for Halloween. Some people get really creative. I borrowed my friend's Pascal and went as Rapunzel from Tangled.

The bookshelf I share with my roommate Roma. At first when I moved in, we had brought half of the very same books, so I switched mine out to add to our variety. Its always nice to have roommates you can talk books with. Plus, that box on the top of the stack is a Harry Potter wand. Obviously this was meant to be...

 I'm official! You have to get a background clearance before you can go observe classes at High Schools and Middle Schools in the education program. They don't want me corrupting our society's children...

Roomies

These were some of my roommates for spring term. They were great girls and I loved getting to know them. Karen (left) is from California and was a total neat freak which I loved. Michaela (middle) is from Oklahoma and is very fun and spunky. Mandy (right) was my room-room mate, and I adore her. She is so nice and understanding and fun. I love being around her.

These are some of the kids from my FHE group. For some reason, we don't have a single picture with all of us in it. I guess it is hard to get everyone to come to the same thing when you have 12 busy college students. In any case, we had a lot of fun. These kids were lots of fun to be around and we ended up being pretty good friends. This particular picture was taken at Michaela's uncle's house where we got to go swimming.

This picture is from going to Spicy Corea with Michaela and Mandy. We had to stop at this adorable boutique along the way. I gave in and bought the hat. =) We had a great girl's night.

Crazy English Major

So it turned out that my American Literature class was pretty great, I learned a lot, and enjoyed the discussions. It was also a good learning experience as far as papers go. I was pretty proud of what I accomplished. The only problem is that when I write papers...it's messy. I like to see everything at once when I write my rough draft, which means my desk looks like this on a good day:

The book that I wrote my paper on, Hope Leslie, was actually very good. If you like historical fiction, it is definitely a keeper.

My secret essay writing code...that I can sometimes read

This last year has been full of little miracles. I made it through all my classes and enjoyed them most of the time. I even got a B in Economics, which turned out to be a pretty cutthroat class. Now I am working on my application to the English Education program. Sometimes I wonder if it is right, but I look at all the classes I get to take and get excited every time. 

Some miracles this year:

-I got 63 on my practice economics final after studying for days, I got an 81 on the real final the next day.

-I met some really great girls and have some good friends at college now.

-I learned how to balance living all my myself

-I went to the temple one morning and the class after there was an assignment due that I didn't know about, but the teacher had decided to delay the due date. Coincidence? I think not.

-My home teachers gave me a blessing and all my fears dissappeared in seconds when I was having a really hard day.

-The people in my home ward are always willing to bring up the things that I have forgotten at home.

-I earned full tuition for the next year, which takes a huge load off of my shoulders.

-There are so many more little blessings that I can't even begin to list them. I feel very loved.

Classes

So. Pretty much all I do is school. Which means the only news I have is related to school. I'm sorry. However, I will try to give you the lowdown on my classes this semester:

-American Literature: Pretty much this is the hardest class I have ever taken in my life. For the test last week we had to identify the name and author of three passages we had read, identify the author of two passages we had not read, write two essays using information from everything we had read, and identify three dates chosen from a list of forty. In ninety minutes. It was probably the most stressful class I have ever taken. Also, American literature isn't really my favorite. Honestly, if it took people two hundred years to figure out what you were writing about, you made it too hard. I'll take Dickens over Melville any day.

-Literary Criticism and Analysis: Well, this class is pretty much a watered down version of A.P. English. The test is a little like American Literature though. Mostly we are learning about different types of literary criticism, like psychoanalysis or marxism. It's not fantastic, but it's not horrible either. Unfortunately, I have to get the basic classes out of the way before I can take the fun ones.

-Book of Mormon part II- I really enjoy this class. The teacher is, as one girl put it, "a doll." He's this really sweet grandpa with a love of dumb jokes. He has a talent for teaching, and the class is pretty interesting.

-Spanish 101: This class is every day. It does weird things to my mind because I leave for other classes and I'm trying to figure out how to talk to somebody in Spanish with my limited vocabulary until I realize that I can speak in English again. This class keeps me pretty busy because on top of studying I have to have about 2 tests, two hours of conversation, and one hour of lab every week. Thankfully the teacher is really sweet and does a good job of explaining things. I'm still pretty limited, but I'm getting better.

-Intro to Humanities: This class is much more my style. We sit in a lecture hall and learn about different kinds of art. So far we have done poetry, dance (from folk to modern), painting, and sculpture. Most of our homework involves going to things like dance performances or museum exhibits. I love just getting to sit there and soak up all the fun facts about these artists and styles.

New Music? I think yes!

I can't say that much of excitement has happened to me lately, mostly I just study. But I did discover some new music while writing my paper on Contemporary Dance. So here are a couple of the songs I found.

Breaking News! Bibliocide at BYU!

So. Today I remembered that I have a blog, and that I should probably write something on it. But blogs aren't too much fun without pictures, and I didn't take any pictures. I remedied that as quick as I could so that you would have something to look at.

The inversion is gone! For a while everything looked disgustingly murky. The only good thing was that it made the campus into a fantastic skating rink for a day...we had to skate to all our classes Here is somebody's video of our lovely weather. =) I actually didn't fall once, which is very impressive, considering that I am the Queen of Klutz.

This is my rosebush that I bought on clearance at Smith's. If you need something to pray for, it sure could use them. Its kind of struggling...

Gory, I know. Feel free to cover your eyes from the horror. Luckily, blogs don't have ratings, because that picture is definitely an "R". I have declared it bibliocide by Carter Ward through obsessive reading.

Breathing is Good for Your Health

This blog seems to be turning into more of a once a month update than once a week or so update. But now that I have remembered to breathe, I will try to resurrect it.

Finals week was about as crazy as everybody said. I only had three finals, but it was enough to keep me busy studying. I had my last flute recital the saturday before finals. I played the first movement of Fantasie by Gabriel Faure. It is a very beautiful piece. Sometimes I feel sad that I am not going to pursue my flute further, but I know that it was the right decision to set it aside for a while. As much as I love playing beautiful music, I don't think I would be entirely happy as a professional musician.

My 4.0 has been ruined already. Thank you Social Dance. Yes. I have always been a horrible dancer, I tell my feet to go one way and they insist on going the other. If we were having a conversation it would go like this:

Me: Left foot please step back.
Right Foot: How come Left always gets to go first? It's not fair!
Left Foot: Right took my turn! I'll get you for that!
Me: Wait, which foot were you? Left. Left, stop stepping on my partner's toes, it makes me feel bad.
Left: You forgot my name again! Surely you should remember your own feet's names. I am insulted!
Me: Sorry. Now Right, go forward then right and stay on your toes.
Right: Ooh, but look over there!
Me: No. No. You're supposed to go right. Left, you follow.
Left: I refuse. I can make my own decisions. I think I will slide right here instead.
Teacher: "Don't look at your feet. They will still be there."
Me: (snort) FAT chance...

It has been a great first semester and I will certainly miss some of my classes. However, it is very nice to be home with my family and to take a break. I have spent most of it reading since I have had almost no time at all to read my own books at college. Some suggestions for you if you get bored this Christmas:

The Rent Collector (Camron Wright): This book is about a young mother living in the dump in Cambodia. She has several run ins with the grumpy, drunk rent collector. In pursuing a way to raise her family out of poverty and ignorance the woman discovers that the rent collector has some stories of her own. I would recommend this book to EVERYONE.

Mistwood (Leah Cypess): This is a clever fantasy about a girl who is supposed to be "the shifter", an ancient force of nature meant to protect the royal family. However she has no memory of her past lives and she knows that the current prince is lying to her about something...

Unwind (Neal Shusterman): This book is a thought provoking science fiction about the sanctity of life. In the futuristic setting, abortion is illegal, but unwanted children can be left on somebody else's doorstep where the new family is required to keep it. And to make up for it, parents can sign away children between 13-18 to be unwound, to be organ donors, like the three main characters. Lev is a tithe, signed away by his parents as an act of piety. Risa is a ward of the state, that they can't afford to keep. And Connor is a rebellious teenager who's parents don't know how to handle him. These three come together to survive and fight back in a world that doesn't value them for themselves. Because there must be something more than flesh. How else does a truck driver's hand know card tricks he never learned, or a boy's brain remember a place he's never been? Okay. So this book sounds creepy, but it is really amazing and well put together. My mom and I both loved it and highly recommend it.

These are just a few of our favorites recently, so enjoy!

I also have loved coming back to my homeward. Freshman singles wards are interesting... It's a good ward, and often the teachers are great, but I really love my home ward. At home there are so many people who are so much wiser and have lots of amazing thoughts to contribute that I don't get to hear in the singles ward. I am friends with a lot of the people in my home ward, and it's nice to sit around people that I've known for a long time, even if I never talk to them. And then there's the little kids. I love little kids. They can be kind of noisy sometimes, but I love how fun and sweet they are. Life is so much less exciting without kids around all the time.

I wish everyone a wonderful Christmas. Always remember how much Christ loves you.