Blood, Saltines and the Wall Street Journal

So today was my first time ever giving blood. Once I turned 16 and was able to give blood...I think that is the age...we couldn't because of the whole France ordeal. Well, since I no longer have that excuse I figured it was about time I gave my blood. I figured if I scheduled it at 1:00 that that would give me plenty of time to give it and get to work by 2:00. However, they were extremely booked so by the time I was actually giving my blood, it was already after 2:00. I was kinda nervous but not really. As I was sitting there there was this girl that got really pale looking and sickly and a lot of people had to attend to her to make sure she was ok. I was just really hoping that I didn't pass out. They did have some difficulty once they got the needle in me the blood stopped flowing for some reason so they had to move it around a bit and wiggle it til it worked and that was rather painful. But the actually blood giving wasn't bad at all, I didn't even really notice it. So that was my giving blood experience. Be proud, be proud. I saved 3 lives today.

So FHE was an interesting experience tonight. We played a game where you tied a saltine to your beltloop hanging down by floss (so it hung from the top of your pants, just over your rear end)...then everyone gets a newspaper, and when it begins you start trying to smash other people's crackers. It is certainly an interesting game and a lot of pain as we beat each other with newspapers but it was real fun. We should play it as a family sometime. I'm pretty sure I know who would win (Landon is pretty aggressive these days).

Well that was my exciting news. This is my last night of freedom as Practicum starts tomorrow and I will pretty much die at that point. Oh well! Wish me luck.

Go Ducks

I'm not doing so well at keeping posts on my blog. I think it's because school finally picked up this week and that's all I have been doing so that is pretty boring to write about. In fact, I don't really have anything to write about right now but I need to write something, so here it is.

I watched the ducks game today. That was an exciting game and I'm glad the ducks were victorious. I am still wearing my ducks shirt for support. Speaking of ducks, the weather was beautiful today, it was finally warm enough to go outside in just jeans and a t-shirt! It was great, I wanted to spend all day outside but I actually spent it all inside.

Last night was fun. I really wanted to go to a corn maze but despite my efforts in planning it, it sort of fell through and we ended up not going. So I went to girls volleyball game in which they dominated at. Then after the volleyball game I invited myself to go to dinner with Kyle. We went to the Bombay house which is Indian food...curry and all. I was pretty impressed...especially with this cocunut shrimp stuff they had...and their naan bread...mmm delish. Dinner took quite awhile but it was lots of fun. Afterwards we went back to my house and picked up Jerika and went to Melissa's dance party (I work with Melissa). When we walked in we saw quite a few people from work which was not what I was expecting. We had our own little dance circle going on. Turns out I'm not such a good dancer...I guess I already knew that, but it always solidifies it when I go places like this. The most horrifying thing walked through the door of Melissa's apartment though...it was grown man in a diaper...I kid you not. That was all he was wearing with a small shirt...so we all got to see his hairy thighs. You think I kid, but this is true...I kid not. That really put a damper on things.

We danced a little longer, ate some good food, then headed out of there. We just came back to our house and there were lots of people here that I didn't know. I was dead tired at this point and just sort of sat against the wall and zoned out. But that was my fun friday night. Today is saturday and I think we are going to go see Hairspray so that should be a treat. That's all for now folks.

Octopus Tentatacles

So I forgot to add this with my last post. I went to an elementary school yesterday to assess a child's reading level. The student is asked to read a passage at their instructional level, then we ask him questions afterwards to see how much of the story he understood and how much he can remember. On our drive back to BYU, a girl in my class told of how the girl she was assessing was asked to read a passage on Octupuses. One of the comprehension questions at the end of the passage was "How does an octupus move?" to which the shy girl quietly replied "the octopus moves by his testicles". She said she had a hard time keeping a straight face after that and the girl continued to call them testicles instead of tentacles. I just thought that was a funny story...that poor girl is going to go home to her parents and tell them what she learned in school! The girl that is in my class never corrected her so who knows how long she'll go without knowing the proper term!

Return with Honor

You may be thinking by the title of this post that this will be a spiritual journal. Well not exactly, I leave my spiritual journal for the non-public eyes. Return with honor is written on the inside of the BYU football team's locker door. That's right, I was in the BYU football team's locker room. For our supervisor meetings, Lori and Rob asked us to submit four suggestions of trainings that we would like to do. They gave us a deadline for submitting these suggestions and of course I waited until the very last minute. I couldn't think of anything I wanted to be trained on so I just wrote down that I wanted a tour of the BYU football stadium. Turns out they took my suggestion seriously and this week we got to take a tour. It was a little bit better than SWEET! We got to see where the coaches sit who aren't on the field, where the General Authorities watch the game, where the press watches and announcecs the game, where they have pregame stuff (I can't remember the name of the room). We also go to see the locker room four BYU and for the visitors (the visitor's locker room is pretty shabby). We also go to see the room where they hold press conferences. Jake, Rob and AJ sat down acting as if they were recapping on the game while Jenny videoed them. Melissa came up with the idea to run into the video and yell "go BYU"...well I thought that she meant run behind them...so I ran behind them and started yelling it but then realized that there wasn't much room between the chair and the wall so I stumbled my way out of the screen tripping all over the place, it was rather embarassing. Jenny took lots of pictures so I'll see if I can get those as well as get the video of my priceless stumbling.

I haven't posted a blog for quite sometime which isnt good because I am supposed to writing at least 3 times a week...whoops! I think it is because we no longer have internet at our house so I have to do it when I am on campus and I kept forgetting. Anyway, so I'll do a real quick recap of my latest happenings. Last weekend was pretty fun. Friday night I went with a group of people to Friday Night live. There we ate some good food, watched a comedy show, played ping-ping with our hands (they had a room full of ping pong tables with ping pong balls but only a couple of paddles, they didn't really think ahead for that one, so Kyle and I decided we would just play with our hands...it wasn't very successful if you could imagine), fenced (yes that's right, in the white unattractive suits with the helmet and all, too bad we didn't have a camera with us). After friday night live we went to some dance party that was at a house in Kyle's ward. It was held outside and there weren't many people dancing but we got our groove on, then moved on. There was a man in a gorilla suit that was also dancing the night away. After we left the dance party we headed over to Kyle's to play a game of curses. If you haven't heard of that game, it is pretty much the game to make a fool of yourself in as many ways as possible--tons of fun.

When we walked into the apartment it was really funny because Kimi said "Wow, your guys' apartment is so spiritual...with the prophets on the wall, and that picture of Moroni", It was actually a picture of George Washington at Valley Forge so we all had a pretty good laugh about that. George and Moroni, they're pretty interchangeable anyway.

School is just about to get insane...all my projects are due next week right before I go into practicum and I am now entering panic mode...procrastination really is a bad thing. This weekend should be jam packed with entertainment though! Tonight I have a soccer game to attend, a work party, then Becky's birthday bash. Then tomorrow I have a football game, then a bon fire extravaganza...it shall be great!

Onomatopoeia

Today I went to Geneva Elementary school and taught two mini-lessons: one on onomatopoeias and one on personificiations. I only taught three students at a time so I don't think I can call it real teaching, but I even had a difficult time holding the attention of just these three students--it's going to be really interesting when I go out and teach in a couple of weeks. The first group I taught really seemed to grasp the concept of onomatopoeias and were making all sorts of noises by the end of the lesson. It was entertaining to me how honest these kids were. I hit my hand on the carpet and said "Does that sound like "pat, pat, pat, pat?" and the kid said "No! That's not even close to the same sound". It always kindo f catches me off guard when kids disagree with me because I thought since I was the authority figure here that they always agreed...that's clearly a common misconception.

This weekend was the most relaxing weekend I have had in a long time. As most of you know I spent the majority of it sleeping, and yes, I'm sad to admit, even a little during the actual conference sessions. I did however, greatly enjoy the sessions and talks that I was alert for. I was touched by, I believe it was Elder Costa's (sp?) talk about the promises of tomorrow. I'm not totally sure it was him but just how he talked about how we live our lives assuming that those around us will still be here tomorrow, that we will still be here, and we always have tomorrow. That, as we know, isn't always the case. So I will tell you all I love you and am grateful for your tremendous influence in my life. I would not be the person I am today (at least all the good parts) if it weren't for my incredibly awesome family and friends. Well, let's hope we all will still be here tomorrow, but it's a start.

I have been asked to give a 3 minute talk about my impressions or experiences I had at conference, or powerful things that touched me. Since I have only three minutes I want to make it good bu nothing significant is coming to mind. If anything stood out for any of you at conference or you had a significant experience that you would be willing to share, by all means let me know.

Having the opportunity to go to the Conference for the Saturday Morning Session was an amazing experience. I loved being so close to the apostles and prophets and seeing the spirit emanate from them. I also loved how each of the apostles escorted their wives out of the conference center, not that they would just ditch them and leave them to fend for themselves, but still it was cute.

Sunday I watched the morning session at Dave's and made Pancakes with Aleni. We were a little disheartened at the bare cupboards. I kid you not, there are a good 4 or 5 cupboards that are completely empty. We barely have enough room for all of our food. So rummaged around for the necessities and fixed ourselves some yummy pancakes then nestled in on their nice leather couches in front of their big t.v. For the afternoon we made a pizza. It looked really sketch when we pulled it out of the oven but it ended up tasting rather delectable. We watched the afternoon session over at Paul's where they have a projector so it was even bigger than Dave's tv, no offense Dave. We were feeling pretty lazy in the afternoon so we decided to take a nice bike ride to enjoy the Sunday afternoon weather. We headed over to Dave's to say hi and were surprised to find Dave cooking dinner (and not just for him, but for a few other guys as well, you'll have to ask him about that). The busy-ness and the overload of the guys intimdated us so we didn't stay long.

This picture is of me in front of Dave's apartment on our bike ride...isn't a beautiful day?!

After Dave's we visited other people then walked around then watched a movie. So that was pretty much my weekend. It was loads of fun to spend it with the family!

I have my next tennis match tonight, pray for me, seriously.

Forfeit-I'll take it.

Last night I had another tennis match but the girl never showed up. Everytime I told someone that, they gave me an explanation as to why she didn't show up: she must have heard how badly I had beaten the other girl, she must have heard my sunday villa rap, she must have seen my ginormous forearms (that's from my high school picture of me playing tennis on the front page of the sports section in the Daily Tidings, for some reason, my forearm looks abmormally large) and other reasons of intimidation. I'm not exactly sure why she wouldn't show up if she had already made it that far, but I'll take it. Granted, I would rather play and win but it's nice to advance to the finals. So the bracket is set up such that there are only two of us left who have never lost and we play probably sometime next week. Then whoever wins out of us two will play the winner of the losers bracket and whoever wins that is the overall champion. I'm well on my way to getting a t-shirt but I'm thinking the next matches are going to be a lot tougher because if they have made it this far they are probably pretty dang good where I have only made it this far because of a forfeit.
This week has been filled with a lot of down time as it has been my easiest week for homework. I had good intentions of finishing or working on a lot of the major assignments due next week but I found myself busy with other things such as watching friends, or relaxing or going to bed a little earlier...I didn't say productive things, I just said things.
I had a meeting with a counselor of the bishopric last night and he expressed his disappointment at missing ward prayer. I thought it was pretty comical that he was so depressed about missing it. He said he was going to go but ended up not eating dinner til really late so by the time they finished it was almost ward prayer so he decided to skip. He had heard through the grapevine that it was a pretty exciting ward prayer and has been regretting his decision to miss it ever since. I tried to convey to him that he really didn't miss much, but he wasn't convinced. I also got called to be in charge of Ward Prayer, I guess since I made it so exciting on Sunday night they decided to make it a permanent deal, but I'm thinkin no one can top our Villa Rap. It was also, thanks to Jake, showed at work and at training for work so now my employees have lost all respect for me, or gained all respect. I think they see me in a whole new light now!