October 27, 2009

Tuesday

It’s been a week since I’ve written, but not much has gone on. That Thursday after my birthday, I spent a lot of the day really down. Since Dan and I had gotten into a little fight the night before (entirely my fault about something SO not worth it), he was upset with me, and I didn’t like how I felt all day long. About mid-afternoon I started to feel better, but then I read for my Sociology class, and it made me depressed all over again. I also went to visit my visiting teaching companion, Kendra Manwaring. I had called her a couple of Sundays ago, and we set up to meet before going to visit teach, so that we weren’t strangers on our first visit. She’s a nice girl, a tiny bit awkward. She has a little 3 month old baby, so cute. And she’s quite the athlete. She just did a triathlon with her husband a couple of weekends ago, which I think is really cool, and I really admire her for it. Kind of an interesting day. Dan and I ended the day well, though, because we decided not to be upset with each other (I felt really bad about it anyways), and things were better.

Friday we had a fun date. We both stayed on campus a little later that day to work on homework and get some studying done. Once we got home, we sort of messed around, ate some dinner, watched some TV, and did a little bit of studying. It was pretty good. Then we went to see “Where the Wild Things Are” in the theaters. Daniel really wanted to see it all last week, and the weekend before when it came out. But we had Kat and Mike over, and then it was my birthday…so we finally went to see it Friday. It wasn’t very good at all. It was really depressing the whole way through. And we were both expecting some fabulous happy ending …. But it never came. The kid wasn’t happy, the monsters he left weren’t happy, nothing was ever resolved, and we didn’t really like it. It was definitely disappointing; I was afraid it would be, but I was still curious and wanting to see it. It’s nothing like the book.

Dan and I spent all day studying on Saturday. Really. All day. We had a lot of studying to catch up on, especially me. I was three reading assignments behind in my chemistry class. Anyway, we only took a short break to work out, and then we used some of the gift cards we got from the wedding to go to Outback Steakhouse for dinner. When we got home, we studied some more, and then I needed a break, so we started watching “Sense and Sensibility”.

We had a really good Sunday. I got my calling on Sunday. I’m on the committee for enrichment meetings. Lately, I have been feeling kind of down about our ward, just because we’ve been here for 2 months, and I feel like I don’t know anyone yet. But I also feel like I’ve been making a better effort than I usually do, so I was really frustrated. This last Sunday, I met a new girl, who I actually visit teach, and I talked with some other girls I’ve met before. Plus, I’ve been more willing to make comments in Relief Society and Sunday School, and it’s really a more rewarding experience at church when I am more involved. Anyway, when we got back from church, I went visiting teaching. It was fun to visit with the girl we visited, Jamie Clark. She’s an art education major, and she is doing her student teaching right now, graduating in December. She’s way nice, and I really like her. When I got home, Dan and I took a nap together. I slept for longer than I had planned/wanted to. But I felt very refreshed afterwards. Adam and Liz came over after I napped, and we talked with them for a while. They are planning to take a trip to Italy at the end of this school year (they both served missions in Italy), and they were telling us how we could come with them. We were making all these plans and calculating (or rather, letting Adam calculate) how much it would cost to go for both of us. I really enjoyed the planning. I really want to go, but Dan’s super-wary of money (as he should be…as I should be), and he doesn’t seem convinced that we could do it. It would be so amazing to go with people who have been there already and know all the good places to visit and eat and stuff. We would probably not even have to pay for living arrangements, because members that they know could house us while we are there. Oh, man! I want to go so bad with them! It would be SOOOO incredible, and I have always wanted to go to Italy.

Anyway, after Liz and Adam left, we went to Dan’s family’s house, because they had a special birthday dinner for me, with 7layer salad, chicken cordon bleu, brownies…Mmmm! It was fun. I really love them! They make me feel so welcome and loved. They’re all so kind; that’s one thing I really love about them, they’re all so kind to each other…at least from what I observe.

Yesterday started the 2-week period of craziness for me. So after dropping Daniel off and finding a treasure of a parking spot right at the bottom of where my class is, I went non-stop at school. I went to all of my classes, and in the break I had, I worked on my pathophysiology presentation. I got that done when I got home from school. For Family Home Evening, Daniel and I had a short discussion about music (based on the For Strength of Youth pamphlet), and then we carved pumpkins (the ones we got from the pumpkin patch) while we finished watching “Sense and Sensibility”. It was fun. Our pumpkins are cute.

Today, I spent all day studying, with a few breaks. I stopped to watch devotional, which was really good. The speaker was a man who has worked to build schools for children, mainly girls, in Afghanistan. It really inspired me to do more service and get into humanitarian work. Maybe that’s what I’ll do after I graduate. Then I watched Gilmore Girls while folding laundry, and washed dishes. Then, at 6pm, Dan and I went to the other section for guitar class, came home, ate, and had some visits. Our home teacher came to see us, and then right after, the Bishopric came to visit.

I registered for my last semester at BYU yesterday. It was bitter-sweet. I’m sad to leave BYU and stop learning in a university setting, but I also am ready to be done and doing other things that I want to do. After looking at my classes, my transcript and the requirements for Dental Hygiene schools, I’m thinking going to Dental Hygiene school is not going to be all that possible. There are far too many complications in trying to make this work. So, now I’m trying to think of other things I could do after graduation: find a job, do some internships, do personal training certification…. I don’t know, I’m just trying to keep my options open at this point.

I’ve been really proud of myself. I have been getting up early to work out in the mornings almost every day before school. It’s been really great. It gets me up and moving, I have more energy in the day, I feel better about myself. It’s really good. I just find that I’m in a better mood more often when I work out consistently, and I’m usually not as tired. I made it a goal to work out more, and this is working really well, getting up in the morning.