The Quality Inn

I heard the bells. . . in Tennessee

I'm sitting at the Day's Inn in Clarksville, TN and tomorrow I'll be in St. Louis by noon with the rest of my family for Kevin's wedding. Catherine and Lindsey are fighting over pillows and whisper-arguing (which is getting rather heated for whispers). . . I was exiled to the dusty roll-away cot. Gross. I do wish I were in my green down sleeping bag somewhere in the Appalachian Smokey's.

Christmas was super-fabulous. Catherine, Lindsey and I probably went through about 175 Christmas carols in three hours on Christmas Eve. We went for our Christmas day jog and ate leftovers from our holiday feast the night before. I watched the end of A Christmas Carol and I have decided that with age I have become even more sentimental. I nearly started leaping for joy when Scrooge was allowed to opportunity to correct his terrible attitude and undo the wrongs he had done. It was all I could do hold back the tears. Really that is magnificant! He asks the ghost of Christmas future "is there any way to go back and correct what I've done? Is this a shadow of what will happen, or what may happen?" I feel like I've felt that on a smaller scale before, but it is miraculous that we can be free from the trap of our own mistakes, neglect and disobedience through Christ!

White Christmas

We have a foot of snow. It is so beautiful, but makes riding my bike to work a bit more difficult for one reason: the snow and slush on the road pegs me right in the face and gets all over my coat and backpack. We threw snowballs at a random couple outside of the library. It made me laugh. I feel like I've consumed more sugar in the last few days than I have the entire semester. Yuck. I had a Christmas get-together with some of the missionaries from the LA mission yesterday. It was really fun to see everyone-- especially the people that just got home.

The Slackline Wizard

The many faces of me

It's funny how with the end of a relationship I suddenly have time to blog again. . . even during finals. I don't know if it's that I all of the sudden have the time or if I need the emotional outlet or something to "talk" to (I can hardly consider a computer screen and black and white text "talking" . . . even with the delayed comments from the few readers that frequent the Post-it note novel). I don't think I've ever valued the virtue/trait/characteristic of genuineness like I have now. I just want to be honest and have others be honest with me. Without prentenses or fear of vulnerability.

i'm at school. I think that means I'm supposed to study.

I'm at the library working on my research project. This project is unreal. . .it never ends. I think I've written 35 pages on it already this semester. And to make things worse, now that our study has been conducted and we are analyzing our data -- our results are nothing.

I have decided that I have an incredible short term memory. I can remember anything for about an hour. Today I crammed for my Spanish test and came off conquer.

Once upon a time in Mexico. . .

This past weekend was phenomenal. No joke. I went to Mexcio and I don't even think I could do it justice. I felt like it was storybook style. Everything seemed like a dream-- whether it was passing out bags of beans and rice, blankets and singing Christmas songs to families and children running around on hillsides living in shacks, or whether I was paddling out on a surfboard through crystal blue water watching the sunset in front of me and the full moon rise over the cliffs behind me. I got to eat mango on a stick with"chile y limon", joke with old men and women in spanish, play with dirty little kids and pass out presents, decorate the orphange and play games with them.

It was actually quite a shock. When I went to Tijuana before, we didn't really interact with families, but this time I was put in the group to pass out the humanitarian stuff and it was amazing. Matt was handing out toys to these little kids and they were running up to him in the street with their dirty little faces and small hands reaching for anything and everything.

Our group (there were 100 of us) camped on the beach tucked between huge mountain cliffs. The last night we were there (Saturday after our beach dance party) was SOOO windy. It would literally push me and my sleeping bag and howl! I loved it! Surfing was such a blast also. The organization (Kaiizen) had a VW van with 6 surfboards strapped to the top and wetsuits. Most of the people weren't too proactive, so I got the wetsuit the whole time and for the last 30 minutes Matt taught me how to surf and I got up about 4 times. It was such a blast!! The waves were some of the best I've ever swam in.

We had our own little church service in the car yesterday (including talks, thoughts, prayers and hymns) and watched the temperature fall from 77 degrees in Mexcio to 1 degree when we got to Provo. But I must admit that listening to Christmas songs helped ease the transition into a "winter wonderland."