'Twas the week before Christmas, and the two weeks after....

Hello, ladies and gentlemen who are not in Provo, Utah! Since it's been so long since I posted, I will try to cover everything that's happened since then....

If I remember right, my last posting was the Sunday before finals week. Well, during finals week, I had a wonderful time completing easy tests and skated through simple assignments. NOT. The calculus final killed me, the philosophy final made me exasperated, the English research paper (on the philosophy of healthcare) nearly didn't get done, and the International Politics reading/reviewing took way longer than I thought it would. I pretty much studied straight through, although on Wednesday my plan for a compassionate service committee project got done when we made cookies and gave free massages in the lobby for an hour. It was great. But the tests finally got done, I got all the cleaning done and checked out, picked up a few books from the library to read on the plane, and got all of my overstuffed bags out the door! I got a ride from my Relief Society President's grandparents, because she was leaving on a flight 45 minutes after mine. We got to the airport early, so I found my way to the gate with the help of another BYU student and sat there reading. I was a little bit excited that I brought a baked potato in and ate it for dinner at the gate. I was surprised at the low level of airport security; that was probably just a result of my gender, age, location, and race, though. (I guess you don't get a lot of white female 18-year-old terrorists in Salt Lake, for some reason...)

I got on the flight and sat across from a guy I knew from Late Summer Honors, which was awkward. I read the entire way home, and then met two other BYU students on the way to baggage pickup. Finally everyone arrived, and I was so happy! Marta and Tess had come with Mom and Dad and I was really excited to see all of them! We went to eat at a burger joint and had a fabulous banana cream pie. The drive home was wonderful and I had a great time just catching up with everyone.

Okay, just fyi if you were with me over Christmas break, the next part is going to be review for you, because I'm just writing it down for journaling purposes. That being said.... The next day Luke, Marta, and I went to the seminary party/auction with Julianne and Amanda (I drove). When we got home (which was amazing, by the way - it was wonderful just to be able to drive back home :) we did Christmasy things like baking and such. I was invited to one of my high school friends' parties, but I decided to stay home and hang with the fam instead. We decorated the tree and made persimmon bars, haystacks, apricot-oatmeal bars, and Pfeffernodix.

The next day I loved being at church with people I hadn't seen in four months, and our ward caroling party was marvelous (do you like my collection of superlatives?). Then, in the days leading up to Christmas, we cooked, cleaned, went to Manteca (Tess, Marta, Luke, and I) to shop, had a sugar cookie party with Luke and Marta's friends, watched The Blind Side (Mom and I), and had an overall fantastic time. At least I did.... I also borrowed books from Sister Spangler and got caught up on reading, which I hadn't done all semester. On Christmas Eve, I made a feast with leek tart, stuffed mushrooms, veggies, punch, cookies, and one other side dish that I can't remember. That evening we put on our Victorian masks and went caroling to people in our ward with tea rings.

Christmas day was amazing, of course. I had spent the night in Marta and Tess's room, so we got the traditional coming down the stairs on Christmas morning shot. Dad was super-thoughtful and got me boots and what I call sleeping bags for my feet. Mom picked out the perfect yellow peacoat, and Tess got me Mulan. :) Everyone pretty much read my mind and got me exactly what I wanted/needed. We all got nerf guns and had several nerf wars. I really enjoyed picking out what I thought everyone would like this Christmas and discovered that budget constraints can actually allow a greater degree of thoughtfulness, because you have to decide on what's just right.

The rest of the week was really very fun. We mostly hung around at home, although the girls and I staffed a wedding reception at the chapel on Monday. It was great just to spend some time with the fam. We watched movies (Star Trek, HP 6, Mulan, Wolverine, and several others), played games, cleaned the house, and had some of my favorite home-cooked meals (borscht and chicken curry are amazing!). And on New Year's Eve I went babysitting for three hours and got $50, always a nice addition for a college student. We sorted out finances and had a wonderful week with the entire family home. Then on Saturday I had to leave :( We drove down to Oakland and Dad told us about his mission in Louisiana (with a transfer in Missouri). I really enjoyed hearing about it, and I kind of want to go there now, to see the weather and architecture if nothing else. It was interesting thinking about the fact that Dad was only a year older than I am now when he left on his mission, because I don't feel like I'd be ready for that at all, in spite of the fact that I am already at college and I live about two minutes away from the MTC... So we drove down to Oakland, where Mom and Dad dropped us kids off at the Oakland zoo while they went to the temple. We had a marvelous time seeing the sun bears and squirrel monkeys in particular, and it was really fun to see a zoo together, especially since I hadn't been to the zoo with Levi or Tess since they were babies. After the zoo, we went out to eat at a little pizza place and had delicious Thai-style pizza. Then came the hard part; the drop-off. Dad, Marta, and Luke came inside while I checked in, and I ran back to give them one more hug just as I got to the front of the security line. It was rather difficult walking away. After they left, and I got to my gate, I went into the bathroom, blew my nose, and calmed down a little. Then I called to let them know I'd made it in okay, and fell apart. I was in the middle of the gate, on the phone, and it's a really good thing I had tissues for my sinus infection, because I seriously needed them.

When I got on the plane, Matt Relei was there along with Mckay (the guy from Late Summer Honors who had been on my last flight). However, I didn't sit near either of them; I sat next to the one guy on the plane who ordered beer (probably 85-90% of the people on the plane were BYU students). But anyways.... I got in to the airport, met up with my RS president Lisa and her sister Amy, and then waited for my bags to arrive. Finally they did, and we went out to meet Ken, who was picking us up. It took us a while to find him but then we were on the road again, headed to Provo.

When I got back, I was reminded 1) how cold Provo is compared to California, 2) how ugly my apartment is, and 3) how strange it was to be on my own. It felt surreal to go back into the apartment, like I was stepping into a dream. As soon as I got home I needed to tidy my room, because I'd had to pack in a hurry. So I did that, inventoried my food, and finally got to bed when I was too exhausted to be sad that I wasn't at home.

The next day at church there were only about half of the people who are normally there. It was a great testimony meeting though, and we got to meet a lot of our new people (mostly guys). That evening the rest of the roommates arrived and I was in bed by 10:00.

Monday morning I started classes. I had Isaiah first, at 9, and it was amazing. Sister Madsen is awesome, and her understanding of the scriptures is very deep. (It made me laugh when she said that Isaiah is the one class the Savior commanded us to take - study the writings of Isaiah...:) Next I had swimming, at 11. It was pretty cool, but 35 minutes twice a week isn't a lot. Honors Psychology was awful - the teacher talked in monotone and told us that he would use our test-taking for experimental purposes - using weird test administration practices to psychologically analyze us. (This would make tests harder and lower our grades). I decided that I didn't want to be a part of this, so I went back to my apartment for lunch and dropped it. I signed up for Political Inquiry instead. At 3 I had chemistry with Professor Dearden, which was fairly unamazing. I needed to take it so I could take Physiology though, so I will have to live with it. At 5 I had Intro to Islam. My teacher, Dr. Schulthies had received her doctorate only a few days before, so she is very excited about the subject and makes the class interesting. We read an excerpt from a book called Islam in the Eyes of the West, and it was really cool. After that I went to the library, studied, and then went back to my apartment. I found out that Amy had been really stressed and had bought a box of donuts and a carton of peanut butter ice cream to drown her sorrow. But I did some more homework and finally went to bed!

Tuesday I woke up and found out that Amy had been sick all night. I used my new thermometer to find out that she didn't have a fever, so we all figured she had just gotten sick from eating so much sugar the night before..... That day I started a whole new round of classes. At 8 I had Chemistry recitation, which is led by a TA rather than the professor and in a smaller group. It consists mostly of doing worksheets. On that first day, though, I accidentally went to the wrong recitation group, and had to switch halfway through. I wasn't overly impressed with my TA or the people in my section, unfortunately. Oh well. At 10 I had basketball. The people in the class looked okay, but the "teacher" is a grad student who has never played basketball in his life and has control issues. Sigh. I had the rest of Tuesday free until 4, when I had Preview of Nursing. After the first hour in the two-hour class, I left. Maybe it's just me, but I think that the people teaching classes at BYU should actually have enough academic talent to get in to BYU in the first place. However, that's not why I left the class - it just wasn't my thing. Before my next class I finished my application to be a TA for Professor Hudson, and dropped it off at her office, although she wasn't there. At 6 I went to my Great Works in Art class, and it looked fairly fun. It's weird, because that's my only Honors class this semester, and last semester I had four, but it was nice to be in an Honors course again, over in the Maeser building. At 7:20 I had I Sys 101, aka Powerpoint. You pretty much don't have to go to class because everything is online, but for the first day attendance is mandatory. And an otherwise super-boring class was made okay because Matt Relei was there, so we caught up on college life, since we hadn't really talked since Orientation in August. After all of that I went to my apartment and found out that Amy had been sick all day and couldn't keep anything down. She was also quite dehydrated. After several frantic phone calls to parents (thanks mom!) and various healthcare providers, Amy's sister Jessica came to take her to the hospital so they could check her out and give her some fluids. It was quite the drama.

Oh, important sidenote here. I decided at the beginning of the year that I was going to read the entire standard works this year. So every night I read 1.5 -2 pages of the BOM and 4.5-5 pages of the Bible (Once I finish the Bible I will move on to the D&C and the Pearl of Great Price).

Anyways, on to Wednesday. I went to Isaiah, Swimming (at 10 now, because Political Inquiry starts at 11), and Political Inquiry. I found out that I'm going to be late every day to Political Inquiry, but the class itself was pretty good. We went over grammar, which is an important part of the course, because the class is essentially a writing class, specifically aimed at political research papers. I tuned a lot of it out, because as you may know I'm fairly good at grammar, although this blog doesn't really show that... I did my homework for chemistry and discovered that we have to watch a lecture online and do the book reading before each class period. I think they believe that chemistry is the only class we're taking. I went home after Chemistry and found out that Amy hadn't eaten anything all day, although she wasn't quite as dehydrated as before. Then, at about 4:20, Shyler got a call from her mom, telling her that her 3-month old niece had died. It was awful, and very sad. They'd known she was going to die eventually, but it was still a horrible shock. I finally left and went to Islam at 5. Islam was good again, very interesting. I suggest that anyone who likes to learn ask me for book recommendations about Islam, because our teacher assigned some really cool books for us to read. I was dreading going back to the apartment, but I went back and found out that Shyler's niece had been resuscitated, but during the resuscitation her stomach had burst. So Shyler had gone to Salt Lake to say good-bye. My roommates and I were all very depressed going to bed that night.

Thursday morning I had chemistry at 8 again, and things proceeded smoothly. I had b-ball at 10, and we pretty much just played pick-up games with assigned teams. It was great. That was the end of classes for the day, so I went to my apartment and did laundry, finished some homework, and just kind of loafed about. I had a political inquiry review at 4, so I went to that and then came back and studied some more! So fun! Then I got distracted by my roommates watching the DVD of Michael Jackson's greatest music videos that Kirsi had gotten for Christmas, so I watched it with them. Who knew MJ wasn't always so creepy! We had a ton of fun, and then Ashley and I decided to learn the thriller dance, so we found an online site and learned the dance. At the end of the evening we felt so accomplished :)

Friday I only had Political Inquiry lab (same as chem recitation, with a TA leading) and Chemistry. My Political Inquiry TA is pretty cool and the class seemed sharp, so it looked promising. Chemistry was as fun as usual. When I got back to my apartment I did a little bit of work and then hung out with the roomies. Most everyone went out (Shyler was in SLC with her family), but Amy, who had only just started to eat, stayed home with me and we watched Ella Enchanted. We had so much fun that we decided to go to the library and check out books by Gail Carson Levine to read. It was so much better than actually doing homework...

Saturday I got up and went apartment shopping with Heidi and Alyssa. We looked at a lot of cool places, but the one I liked best was called the Regency. Hopefully we'll live there. We apartment-shopped for about 3 hours and then I came back to do some dishes and go grocery shopping. I had sold a book from last semester online, and the shipping address was for Orem, so I'd contacted the guy and we met that afternoon at the grocery store, to save on shipping costs. I got back, studied a bit, and then went to Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs with Robert. Let's just say that college students are not exactly the target audience. It was a bit dumb, although there were a few funny/cute parts. Then I came home and watched the end of Forever Strong with Amy. I will have to watch the whole thing some day soon, I think...

Sunday I had a compassionate service meeting at 10, a hall council meeting at 12, hall meeting at 12:30, and church at 1:30. The talks were great, Sunday school was crazy because some class from another ward was in our room, and I had a fun time in Relief Society. That evening, ward prayer was interesting because we got to meet all of the new people in our ward. Shyler had gotten a job at the creamery, from 5-8 every morning (hahaha) so she is now going to bed at 8 pm. It has been very nice because I can actually turn on the lights when I get up in the morning (before 10:00, gasp!).

So that was a week ago. I will write about this last week tomorrow/soon, but I really need to go to sleep now, so I will post this and finish later.

Love you all!!

Eliza