Bring it, fool.

Ok so I am finally, finally, finally in the groove. This is starting the third week of the semester, and holy bijoly it has taken so long to get into the swing of things. I just have felt so unmotivated, and blah. Part of it can be attributed to the fact that for about 4 days Christina, Oceane, and I blew off pretty much everything to hanging out with Abe before he went to Paris. Part of it can be attributed to the fact that it is winter, and cold. Part of it can be attributed to the fact that I have had serious, as Christina calls it "wanderlust." Part of it can be attributed to the fact that I just haven't organized myself and everything yet. But this morning was so great. I just woke up... and was like ok. I'm ready. I'm totally in the groove now. I'm really happy about that. And then I was talking to Oceane after school, and she was feeling the same way as me, just not in the groove, all that, and she was like hey now I feel great and motivated and everything.

I'm so happy now. Bring it on. I'm so ready.

So I'm applying to be an RA in the FLSR this fall. I really, really hope to get it, cuz I think it would be a really good job for me. It would pay well, which I desperately need, I wouldn't have to go anywhere far away to work... it would relieve a lot of my stress I think, just to know that I have a good, well-paying job. So I'm in the middle of applying for that now.

Christina and I changed our room around last week. We made.... bunkbeds!! It's great. We have so much more room, it feels all spacious and stuff, which for a college apartment room, is saying a lot. I'm on the bottom, she's on the top. That was actually her idea, because, as she put it... "Well Steph, if you fell off your bed, you have so much more mass, so there would be a higher likelihood of breaking a bone or something..." Hmmmmm.... well at least I have the bottom bunk. :) No broken bones for me.

The crown jewel

Today was a success. Even though I was so tired during school, and I skipped 2 classes and its only the 2nd week of the semester, that doesn't even matter because today, I accomplished something of extreme significance.

First, some background. In the French house, there is a foosball table, however in french its called babyfoot. Anyways, So, in uh maybe November, me and Christina have started to play. Never played before. Abraham finally insisted we learn. He's been teaching us/playing with us even when we were absolutely horrible. The first game we played with him, it was me and Christina on a team, against Abe, who was only allowed to use one arm. He beat us. bad. 10 to 1. Yeah.

But we've been getting a lot better. It's very encouraging. But the thing is that well, we've been doing pretty well, me and Christina, but we usually can't play on the same team, and win. We play on opposite teams, usually with either David, or Abe, or some other people.

But not tonight.

Tonight, me and Christina played on the same team. I was defense, she was offense. We played against Gab and Gina, who are both very good fussball players. The first part of the game, we were trailing by just a few points. But then, we tied up at 7 points. Then we were up 9-7. Then they scored, so it was 9-8. By this point, I was so excited that I was shaking. Christina scored the winning goal. Yeaaaaaahhhhh!!!!! FREAK OUT. David and Abe were watching, so there were witnesses.

Suffice it to say, I am very proud of what I have accomplished today. We have come a long way.

Now I we need to switch positions, both me and Christina have only played our one position. I am nothing at offense, and Christina is nothing at defense.

But that's for another day. Today I am soooo excited!!! woot.

a new year, new semester, new classes...

I'm not sure if I believe in New Years Resolutions. It's just that so many resolutions seem to be forgotten two weeks later. Changes are just that, long term differences in life. I love goals and I love a new, fresh start. I definitely like looking back at the past few months or year, and analyzing what I've done and where I'm going. I think goals can be a driving force in life.

2009 is gonna be an awesome year. I can just feel it. Looking ahead at things that are gonna be happening... I'm way stoked.

I'm back in Provo now, I got back late last night, and when I walked into my apartment, Oceane was there! I was seriously so excited. I've missed her and Christina a lot during break. We talked for a long time, like 2 hours or something, last night. I don't think our heating is working/on in our apartment. It's cooooold. I looked at the thermostat,it says its on and everything, but... I slept with 3 blankets last night and was still freezing. Oh well.

Yikes oh boy. So the new semester starts on Monday. I need another week just to play. Good grief. But here are my new classes: I'll be taking 4 dietetics classes: Clinical Nutrition 2, Nutrition throughout the life cycle, food service systems, Pendulum Court, and then French Civ 2, social dance 3, hepe, and hopefully university orchestra. It kinda seems like a lot of classes, but its only 15.5 credits. That's what I just keep telling myself. I'm looking forward to all these classes though. I think they'll all be pretty interesting.

If music is the food of love, play on.

Ok Christmas this year was freakin awesome. Seriously. So, this year, my parents gave me a flute. A NICE flute. I've been playing on the same one I used when I was just barely starting, in 5th grade. It works, but lets just say I just can't get any better on it. This new flute is... oh its pretty. Since, oh probably my sophomore and junior year of high school I've looked at nice flutes, either from the salespeople who came by the band room, or my friend's instruments, or whatever. This new flute, the tone is so much warmer, its easier to stay on pitch, vibrato sounds better, high notes come out so much clearer, tonal quality is great, especially when I am doing crescendos/ decrescendos it's easier to maintain a good tone. I'm basically in love.

My parents said that they are gonna buy me some good music too, so I'll have some stuff to play. And playing this new flute the past couple of days really makes me want to play in an orchestra. In high school, we just had band, no orchestra option, but I know there is a University Orchestra at BYU. Non-audition, just for whoever wants to play their instrument. So I want to sign up for that. Problem is that there are no flutes spots open. I think I'm just gonna go on the first day of class and try to add it. And keep checking to see if flute spots open up.

Unrelated to music: I want to know my grades now! It's so frustrating having to wait for weeks after the end of finals to know what I did. I just want them to be posted so I can stop checking 50 times a day, and stop worrying about how I did.

Random Facts

So I just wanted to talk about some of the things I do, or things I've learned how to do recently. I dunno... they're kinda fun. :) They keep me amused at least.

1. Cut hair. I haven't been to beauty school or anything, my mom just knows how to cut hair, and so she taught me. I can cut guys hair pretty well, because I've had 5 brothers to practice on, and girls hair all right. I've just had less practice on girls, because I don't have any sisters to practice on. I like knowing how to do this cuz I can cut my friends' hair, and when I have them, my kids too, and save everyone a lot of money in the process.



2. Tie a tie. I recently learned how to tie a tie - double winsor style. Maybe not a huge feat, but something that it was about time I learned how to do.



3. Balloon artist. This one is really fun. I twist balloons into shapes, like animals, motorcyles, aliens, helicopters, flowers, hats... you name it.





4. Babyfoot aka Fussball. So this semester Abe got me and Christina to start playing babyfoot (the french name for fussball)... and boy let me tell you it is addictive. We've gone from being frighfully horrible to, well, better.



5. French. I love French. I breathe French. I adore everything about it. I've been studying it since I was a freshmen in high school, so about uh 7 years or something. 3 years of serious study at college. A 10 day trip to Paris and LaRochelle with my dad and Jonathan when I was a senior in high school. A 3 month study abroad in Paris when I was a sophomore in college. Living in the French house now. Teaching gospel doctrine... in French. Minoring in French. Dreaming about French cheese. Planning on doing an internship somewhere in France this summer. It's my LIFE.

Who knew?

It's funny how certain events and situations can make you feel close to people. It's crazy how you can become really good friends with people you might have never talked to, had you both not been put together in some way or for some reason.

Case in point. One of my friends in high school, Tia. Our interests and our personalities were rather different. It took us a while to become friends, but after we started driving together to seminary every morning, we ended up becoming great friends. There's something that irreversibly brings people together about waking up every morning at 5:30 for 4 years to drive in sub-zero temperatures, sub-sub zero windchills, and piles of snow and layers of ice to study the scriptures.

Kate Toone. We actually realized later on that we had had some classes together our freshmen year of college, but never got to know each other until we were roommates together in Paris, doing study abroad. I remember the first afternoon in Paris, when we just found out that we were gonna be roommmates... we just kinda looked at each other and were both like "ok, alright, sweet." And it was freakin' amazing. Again, there's something about sharing Paris, France, and Europe every day with someone awesome that makes you inseparable.

Most recently. The French house. Oceane and Christina. I swear we are all the same person in so many ways. I know exactly what every one of their expressions means. We made it through the "chaos cloud" week even stronger than before. The term kindred spirit comes to mind. Seeing that we are all either majoring in French (tina), minoring in French (me), or are French (oceane), the chances of us seeing each other in passing in class or at a French club event are fairly high, but unless we had all decided to live in the French house, the chances of us being friends... yeah not so high.

Even on a smaller scale. There are certain people that I've had classes with, or that I pass on campus and recognize. I don't know them at all, but it still feels like we're buddies.

For some of my friends, I sorta knew them for a while, even for a few months, but then somewhere in there we start hanging out more and more often, and suddenly, that person that was an "acquaintance" has just become one of your best friends.

You never know who you're gonna meet, or what effects certain decisions will make on the people that become your friends and some of the most important people in your life. I've decided that life is just funny like that.

Finals, finals finals.

Finally, finals are over! Every year, about a week or two before finals, I just get really sick of school and don’t want to do anything. And from what I’ve heard, I think that’s pretty normal. This year was worse than normal though. The last two weeks of school before finals, wow, I just don’t know what happened. I had about zero motivation to do anything. I mean, I did the bare minimum to get by… barely… but that’s about it. Finally, then, the day right before finals started, the last day of reading days, I asked for a blessing. It was exactly what I needed, as soon as the blessing was over, I got up and was just like ok well time to study, and I was able to buckle down and get a good 5 or so hours of studying in that day.

I learned a lot this school year. One of those things was how to study. I realize that if I studied a little bit every day for my difficult classes, studying for midterms was more like a concentrated review instead of cramming, and studying for finals was more like a brushup instead of relearning everything. Maybe that’s a really basic strategy, and even though I knew it and used it before, this semester was the first time that I actually really embraced it. :)

I think the class I’m the most excited for to be over is pathophysiology. Yikes. It takes a whole breath just to say the name. It has been one of the most difficult classes I have taken to date, and the tests were… yeah definitely the hardest I’ve had to take. It seems like I was ALWAYS studying for that class. I think my friends would agree. The light in Christina and mine’s room always buzzed, and it drove us nuts, so we always did our homework out in the kitchen or living room. Thus, since the guys, David, Abe and Carlos, pretty much lived in our apartment too, I swear whenever David would ask me what I was studying… the reply was always: patho.

But now its over. hallelujah!

It snowed about 8 inches today. It looks like Christmas :) The high for tomorrow is about 2 degrees fahrenheit. Good ole Minnesota.

Film Review

So last night I watched the Dark Knight with Oceane, Christina, Gina, and David, and overall, I did not like the film. Ok, the special effects were awesome, the acting was very good, and Batman is hot, yes, but, in my opinion, the film was way too dark. I figure that when I get done with a movie and I just feel kinda sick and gross inside, well thats a pretty good indication that the movie was not a good one. Yes it was thought- provoking, this is true, discussing and showing whether people are intrinsicly good or intrinsicly bad, or the way that people think, these things were all very well done. But what pushed me over the line in terms of deciding whether or not I liked it, and whether or not I would recommend it, was that I felt, like many horror movies, it glorified evil and sadistic-ness. Not exactly my kind of movie.

However, me and Christina and Oceane are in the middle of watching A&E's Pride and Prejudice. For the past few days we've been watching chunks of it every night until we fall asleep. We've dragged our mattresses into the living room and have just left them there during the day. We have some Christmas lights up, so we all like sleeping under them.

Hopping On

Thanks to my two fabulous roommates - Christiana and Oceane... I decided to jump on the blog bandwagon and start one myself. So right now... lets see I just took a final in French Civilization. I'm soooo glad thats done. I've still got 4 finals left to take, and considering that I have not studied a ton in the past 2 weeks, well, lets just say I will probably be taking them at the last possible time. Right now I am sitting around my kitchen table, listening to Oceane, Gina and Susan discuss some sort of French current events in French.

Ok so a plug for the French house! The French house is part of the Foreign Language Student Residences, fondly referred to as the FLSR, and we have a bunch of different languages. My apartment is part of the French House, there are 4 apartments and everyone speaks French and we (almost) always speak French. It's SO fun. I love it. My French has definitely gotten better and everyone who lives with me is just as obsessed about French stuff and international stuff as I am. It's basically the next best option to actually living in a foreign country, and it does kinda rock my world.