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. :)