Leap

During my first semester of college there was a writing class, English 111, that I was required to take. I ended up LOVING my teacher! In fact, she's probably my favorite teacher so far. Anyway, a few weeks into the class we read an excerpt from an essay written by Brian Doyle. The essay is called "Leap" and was written about September 11th as seen from the people on the ground outside the trade center towers. More specifically it's about watching people jump from the towers--two people in particular. When we first read it in class, it was so powerful and even now I can't read it without getting choked up. But it was this next passage especially that I love so much. It might be strange, but I used to doodle it over and over again all the time during classes. Today was the first time in months that I'd even thought of it, but I want to share it with you. It goes:

I keep going back to his hand and her hand, nestled in each other with such extraordinary, ordinary, succinct, ancient, naked, perfect, stunning, simple, ferocious love.

Read it again. The second time, think about every adjective as it pertains to love. I've had this passage memorized for months; drawn it over, and over, and over, and over again. But every time I do, it just...it's just so beautiful, it makes my heart hurt. When I finally do get married, that's the kind of love I want. 

 The rest of the essay is really short and very, very powerful and can be found here

Dancing

I'm not very graceful. Growing up I was more of the basketball/softball/polevault type than the ballet/tap/jazz type of girl, but so often now I wish I was a decent dancer. Anyway, I dance at school, for those of you who don't know. I've taken two semesters of ballroom and one of modern. I completely stink at modern and am slightly better at ballroom but I LOVE ballroom dancing and watching other people dance and pretending it's me. 

My favorite TV show right now is "So You Think You Can Dance" and this is my favorite video from last season (season 5). It's kind of a sad video, but watching it makes me...happy? Not exactly, but it's just so beautiful. I love it :) And I want to share it with you all so here goes:

(ps: you don't get to hear the story behind it so it kind of looks like he's going to kill/eat her, which makes sense when you know that he represents an addiction)

 I don't know how to post just the video so here's the link. Please watch it?

I was an EFY counselor!!

I realized that I never posted about my EFY experience this summer!

After waiting since I was 13 to be an EFY counselor, my dream finally came true! My cousin Madi and I got to be counselors in Ogden and it was so much fun! Different than being a participant, but I loved it all the same. This is me with my beautiful girlies who I love and miss very very much. They are all so sweet and beautiful and they strengthened me with their testimonies and love. 

 From left to right: Lexi, Cece, Mckenna, Jill, Mekayla, Carly, Me, Jasmine, McKenzi, and Sheila. I love you girls!

These are my co counselors-- Kristina, Talmage, and Sean. Sean also has celiac disease and saved me from trying to live for an entire week off of nut thins, craisins, and princess fruit snacks. Thanks Sean :)

Also I found out today that Kristina and I have church in the same building and I almost started crying when I saw her. It's not like I know her better than anyone here, it was just good to see someone that I kind of know. She's the greatest girl ever and I just love her. I'm so grateful for the opportunity I got to be a counselor with her--she taught me how to be better.

Service Abroad

I'm dropping out of school and moving to Russia!

maybe:)

I've found a program called international language program (ILP) that sounds like the most amazing thing in the world! You either go to Russia, the Ukraine, China, or Mexico for somewhere between 4-6 months and teach english to little kids! It's through the "dualingual system" developed by a former BYU professor, which basically means that you don't need to know the child's native language to teach. And they really stress on the website how it's more like having a party every day than teaching because it's through things like playacting, dancing, cooking, and just playing around that the children learn--how fun! And I want to go to Russia, which runs from mid-January to June, so I'd miss both semesters but I don't really care:) Since I'm technically going to be a teacher anyways, I think this would be a great opportunity.

AND (oh man, this just keeps getting better!) though it's not run by the church, they stress very strongly that the standards they expect you and your host families to live by is very similar to that of the honor code at BYU or BYU-I. 

I've wanted to do some type of study abroad for a long time, and while I can take a few credits online while I do this, it's more of a service abroad than study abroad but I want to do it SO BAD! AND, it's less than three thousand dollars for the whole time, which is like...less than tuition alone. PLUS, when you go to Russia, you get the opportunity to travel to the Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Finland, and Sweden! Plus bi-weekly lessons in Russian language and culture.

And then I can go on a mission to Russia in 3 years

:]

http://www.ilp.org/

Endoscopy

Everything went great yesterday, thanks to everyone who kept me in their prayers. I don't remember much about the surgery-- I was supposed to swallow the scope while I was still awake but I told the doctor I didn't think I could do it and he was really nice and put me to sleep before he...um...scoped me. And that was the last thing I remember before waking up three hours later! 

The people at this hospital (EIRMAC, in IF) were a LOT nicer than the people at Madison Memorial. If I have to go back to get another iron transfusion, I'm going to EIRMAC. 

So now we wait about a week for a definite diagnosis and then I'll meet with a dietician! Eating gluten free is a little hard, but it's fun when I can find new things that taste good:)

Recently

So. For the last few years I've been having this really weird mysterious abdominal pain that 5 CDA doctors continually mis-diagnose as. . . ovarian cysts. . . pulled muscle. . . and various other WRONG things. Well I got to rexburg and FINALLY found out what it is! The doctor here on campus is like 95% sure I have Celiac Disease, which is an allergy/intolerance to gluten. Everything has gluten in it. EVERYTHING has gluten in it! So. . . scene-- I'm at his office and he basically tells me "You have celiac disease. Bye." So I went home and called my mom and my dad and they both said i should go and buy gluten free food. Which is what I did. It was a pretty big shock and I definitely cried a lot, but I gave all of my gluten-full food to my roommates and hit up the health food section at Broulims. But then, my mom called him the next morning and he told her that I should eat like I have been until they can do a biopsy of my small intestine. BIOSPY! That's surgery!

 So blah blah blah mom picked me up and I spent last weekend in Logan, friday night in IF at Patti and Nathan's, then went to a doctor in IF who FINALLY (this is doctor number SIX, mind you) decides to do something about my iron, as well. Yesterday I went to the hospital at 1:30 to get an iron infusion that they told me would take two hours and I would be out by 4 at the latest. WRONG! I finally get checked in at 2 and they take me to some pediatric room so amanda and I stole a whole bunch of candy and stickers :) About 2:30 they came in and put the IV needle in my arm, but still no iron. About 3 they transfered me to a room with a TV, which was nice. 3:45 rolls around and they FINALLY hooked me to the bag of iron, which looked more like motor oil or pepsi syrup or espresso or something. Well after about an hour, which is supposed to be halfway through, we made the observation that there wasn't very much of the stuff gone out of the bag. A few minutes later the nurse comes in and says "Whoops, we lied! We usually don't give this much to people, so it's going to be four hours instead of two!"

kill me

So I suffered through four more hours of my arm feeling like it was falling off (one of the nurses nicely bumped up the speed with which it was going in, which was pretty fast and my arm hurt really bad), a few bites of hospital food (replaced by a smuggled sonic burger and tots), and eventually went home. 

They didn't tell me until they were taking the IV out that this thing has negative side affects. I felt like i'd been hit by a truck and left to die. Threw up the smuggled sonic burger and tots, had almost every blanket from my apartment on me, a fever of 102, and was shaking like a maraca in a mariachi band. So I had to miss school today, which I also missed monday from being in the doctor's office, and I have to miss friday for the surgery. So I'm pretty much going to fail all my classes, but at least now we know what's wrong with me, right?

In the Mirror

I can't sleep. It's a disease I've recently acquired. Technically I just finished the homework I've been working on for the past 11 hours...gotta love those midterms:) Anyways, last night I couldn't sleep either and wrote down some...feelings. I'm wide awake now so here goes. PS: I realize the rhymes are pretty cheesey. I could make them more eloquent and refined, and maybe one day I will. But for now this is it's original, raw form.

In the mirror I thought I could see

What the world expected me to be.

But the mirror shows a disappointment to the world,

So much on the shoulders of one ordinary girl.

Not thin enough, not pretty enough, not smart enough, or strong,

Becoming bruised and broken as the world drags me along.

But now you'll be happy to hear it's true

I'm starting to see what I couldn't see in myself

through you.

I reach to you through the darkness that covers my eyes,

You hold me tight and dispel the dark, the fear, the lies.

I can't believe my eyes, I'm beginning to see

A beautiful girl in the mirror before me.