goodbye january...

January..you were a good month I have to admit. Not the best but there's nothing to complain about. You were full of the good and the bad but I learned from those bad so it makes it worth it. So thank you January. Thank you.

If I could use three words to describe this week they would be cold, freezing and hey just for fun let's go with cold again. We had gotten a good amount snow since we've been here but not this last week but the week before things started to warm up. We had our huge piles of snow on the side from when the snow was plowed but all the ice and snow from the roads and sidewalks had melted. We even had 3-4 days with blue skies, still cold but BLUE SKIES! without the snow everywhere it almost tricked me into thinking it was fall.
But alas this last week Rexburg has killed my optimism. We got a huge storm over the weekend and the couple days after that the snow just kept coming. We got 3 inches one day, then another 3 inches and more and more. But probably the worst day was when it was -7 outside walking to classes. I have never been somewhere where it has been so cold that I got a headache walking for 10 minutes in it. It warmed up to 6 degrees that day (yay??). It's gotten a little better but now we have a good inch of ice underneath everything which isn't going to go away anytime soon.
One good thing came out of it though. Right outside our apartments there's a round about and out one side of our windows is a street leading to it. This was right after it got freezing and the roads were way icier than people thought... so we may have spent a Sunday afternoon huddled around a window watching people crash around the round about. Some guy just went straight into the snow drift. There were a couple close calls with cars coming in too fast and breaking too late and almost hitting people coming around the round about. Some guy in a little bitty car almost went sideways through the round-a-bout. And we got to laugh at a couple goober pedestrians who fell on their butts walking across. We got pretty good at judging if they were going to fast and if they could break in time. We're not bad people I promise.

bless their hearts
construction on our new auditorium continues through the cold

the view from my bedroom window

we were going to go ice-skating for FHE but our brothers said it was too cold...
(L-R: Holly, Kelly, Me and our new roommate Jeanette)

Yesterday we had our second basketball game and although I think I did fairly well, not awesome, but not bad our team just couldn't put it together. It was just a combination of bad. Our girl that can't miss a shot kept traveling, we just couldn't get a good grip on the ball etc etc. We lost 88-68 but we knew this team was good and they were a bit stacked. Their star player (who's a really dirty player) is actually engaged to the coach so you know... whatever. We brush it off and we learn. I liked a quote my coach used at the end. He said you can learn a chapter from a win, but you can learn a book from a loss. We'll figure it out and rock the rest of our games. When we see these girls again they won't be able to recognize us. Oh yeah and I randomly have a ton of bruises everywhere. 1) inside left thigh 2) right leg inch below my knee 3) right leg inch above my knee on the outside 4) a major one on my right knee 5) on my right bicep. I never use to bruise this easily... oh well battle wounds. :)

ps. I miss my family.

This one's for you mom. It's little squirrel prints in the snow!! CUTE!!

Go Green!

See this jersey,



this is no ordinary jersey.





This is the jersey of a winner.

I had my first basketball game today. I am on the Spartans in the competitive league here. I was a little nervous about getting into basketball again, for one because it was the last game of my senior year of high school that I tore my ACL and I hadn't really done any competitive sports playing since high school. (sorry dad, thursday basketball at the church doesn't quite do the job). But I have easily fallen into the ol routine and let me tell you, it. feels. good.

We played the Bruins today all in their nice blue colored jerseys and their tallness and stuff. But boy howdy did we rock their socks right off their feet. It was tied up for the first half but then the second half came and we turned it on. The final score was 77-63 (that's a pretty high scoring game for a girls team and the first game of the season). Our team chemistry was amazing. Our coaches said they had never had a team play so well the first game of the season. I scored 6 pts which were all in the last 10 minutes of the second half. I contributed more to the defensive side of the game for the rest. Tall girls ain't got nothing on me. I'm the tallest on my team at 5'9'' and this other team had a couple girls that were at least 6'. Oh and how bout this for a mouthful, three girl's names on my team Chanel, Shandy, and Sohjin, we just call her Sohj and Stacy. For the love.

aaaaaaaaaand its snowing. Last week it was blue skies and all the snow had melted except for the piled snow on the sides. Naive poor Jessica thought it was going to last. But alas it has been snowing all night and all day and we now have 2 more inches of that pure white cold stuff.

My Apologies

I think I spend more blogs apologizing for not keeping up on the latest happenings in my life.
I just get busy and forget and then a parent nudges me and reminds me that I need to update my blog. So I'm sorry and I promise to try and keep up.

So since you last heard from me I have gone to disneyland and back for the New Year. I'll put up some pictures but there won't be a whole lot of new info if you keep up on Megan's blog. (She's always making me look bad...keeping up on her blog all the time.. psh.)

And now I find myself in my beautiful Rexburg. Chantell and I cannot believe that it was a year ago that we left for China. FOR CHINA. What am I doing here. Sometimes its this overwhelming feeling of insignificance and sadness in remembering that we were actually over there. We were part of something so much bigger than ourselves. But then we remember all of our good times and we know that they had to end sometime and now is our time to focus on other things in our lives, mainly education. I just look at pictures and can't believe that I got to see those kids and people every day. There will always be a string attached to my heart and China that is always pulling me there.
But all is well. I'm where I'm supposed to be. This is my first winter here in Rexburg (since last winter was deferred for China) and let's just say I wish I was on Summer/Fall track. I have gotten well acquainted with ice and snow, and an expert walker on ice without falling. :) I'm proud to report that I have not fallen yet.
My schedule is good this semester. It spaced itself out very well. I'm in my second semester of Chinese and we all got a rude awakening the first day of class that we were not in fact in 101 anymore. I do not have Shen Laoshi as a teacher, this year we have Bao Laoshi (Michael Paul). He went on his mission to Taiwan and then worked in China for a couple years. He is an excellent teacher and I feel like I'm going to progress a lot this semester. He is introducing us to a new routine of how class is going to work. Monday, Wednesday and Thursday are ACT days where we speak the language, go over dialogue etc. Which makes Tuesday our FACT day where he teaches the lesson and we get to ask all of our technical questions. Did you catch that? Tuesday is the only day we are allowed to speak in English. We can ask how to say things in Chinese but we have to ask it in Chinese. Zhongwen zenme shuo...? So its intense but I absolutely love it. I have a good study group of about 5 of us from our 101 class and we're all pretty good friends. There's just something that attracts me to this language (couldn't be because I lived there for 6 months could it? ;) But for some reason I retain these things amazingly well. It's that reason that I'm taking it and want to go farther with it. Sometimes I can't explain how I remember what this word is or what this means... I just know it?...
Other than that I'm taking a New Testament class from my Book of Mormon professor who if you don't know I absolutely LOVE his classes. Then I have a design and color class, the next step in being able to take higher level art classes. The professors good he's the kind of outdoorsy guy that likes fly fishing and I would assume painting pictures of Idaho landscapes. Just a chill guy who loves his red plaid flannel shirt. But he knows his stuff. Then I'm also taking Eng311 which is advance writing and reading but as I've come to find out this class is more about insightful learning, reading, re-reading, writing, re-writing. It's an awesome professor focused on us actually learning in a way that will change our lives forever. I'm also in an Art Seminar class which is required for art students to take 4x where you attend 4-5 seminars from different artists in different categories. And FA100. It's required for every BYUI student. You can take it for 0 or 1 credit. I'm doing 1 credit just because I didn't have enough for my scholarship. This class is going to concerts, dances, art galleries etc. It's to get you to experience art in many different forms. So I go to the events taking place on campus write paragraphs about them and turn them in and I'm good to go.

There will be more to come. Again I'm sorry for the crunch blogging trying to cram huge periods of time in a little paragraph.

Just know that I'm alive and happy. :)