Count Your Blessings

Starting last January, I started keeping a journal with a list of things I am thankful for each day. I thought I'd share some from the last few days. So much has happened since I've been back at school and sometimes it's hard to remember all of the good things that I have in my life and the amazing people. Reading over these journal entries makes me happy :)

May 11th: 

Today I am thankful for mail. Especailly mail that comes from Germany. In big boxes! Chocolate, random toys, candy, food, perfume, clothes...everything! I love packages from home. Oh, and I just love my mother who sends these amazing things!

May 12th:

Today I am thankful for friends. I'm especially thankful for those friends who can tell when you're upset about something as you're trying your best to be "fine". 

May 13th:

Today is Mother's Day but it's also my mother's birthday. I love her so much! I don't think she will ever fully realize how much I love and appreciate her. I wish she were closer! On that note, I'm also thankful for my phone and skype! I'd die without them!

May 14th:

I'm thankful for this lovely weather. It's been super nice lately. Today, my roommate and I were able to eat outside in the park...without our food blowing away! That's pretty amazing for Rexburg. 

May 15th:

Jimmy Johns. It's my new addiction. I'm thankful for the fact that it can be ordered online and delivered to my apartment in 10 minutes or less. Oh, and the delivery guys are definitely the best.

May 16th:

My roommate is the best. I love her to death. I love our "meaningful conversations" that we have as soon as the lights go out at night. The lights have to be off. Otherwise it doesn't count.

May 21st:

I'm super thankful for the opportunity I had to go on the Nauvoo Student Tour. It has definitely been one of the best experiences I have had. I learned so much and met some amazing people. I loved every minute! With exception to the stops at McDonalds. Once was enough.

The Week of Mishaps.

My week of mishaps started last Sunday. It went like this:

Sunday: The One with the Super Glue

My friend, Jana, and I were sharing stories Sunday night. I had my computer out and I looked at the bottom and noticed that a part was coming off. I decided that super glue would be the best way to fix it. Due to previous mishaps with super glue I'm not allowed to have it. I asked Jana what was on the bed behind her so she would turn around and I could easily grab the super glue without her noticing. Mission accomplished. So as she's finishing up her story, I'm trying to squeeze super glue onto the broken part of my laptop cover. Nothing was coming out of the top. I didn't see any scissors anywhere so I tried biting the blocked part of the super glue bottle off. Yeah, not my finest idea. As I was trying to bite the top off, I squeezed a good amount of super glue into my mouth. There was super glue all over my teeth, under my tongue and on my lips. My face probably expressed my fear because Jana says, "Emily! What's wrong?!" Once she sees the super glue in my hand, she knows. And freaks out. I cried. Not gonna lie. It's all okay now though. Just so everybody is aware, hot water will remove super glue from your mouth.

Monday: No More Toothbrush

While getting ready Monday morning, I placed my flat iron on my toothbrush by mistake. I was waitng for it to heat up and walked away. I came back to a horrid smell. The smell of burning plastic. I lifted up my straightner and coming off of it were strings of melted plastic. I melted the top of my toothbrush. Yay.

Tuesday: The Pizzas

This is one that I was able to keep from my roommates. On Tuesday, my friend, Clarice, and I decided that we wanted to have pizza for dinner with some other people. She left me in charge of ordering the pizzas. Shouldn't be difficult, right? Wrong. The amazing thing I find about America is that you can order pizza online. I love ordering things online. Anyway, so I'm ordering the pizzas and I accidentally hit that I'm paying with cash. Yeahh. Cash I don't have. So there I go walking to campus to get out money. Then I go to break one of the twenties. With the amount of walking I did to get the money for the pizzas, I could have just gone and picked them up too. Oh, and turns out that there is a money machine right around the corner from my apartment. Good to know.

Wednesday: Ein Großes Fehler

Wednesday was my "productive" day. Until 10:30. At 10:30 I decided to take my online exam for german. I had to sign my name for the first question. After doing this, I hit submit. A message comes up saying, "You have not answered one or more questions. Continue?" I say yes. Turns out I should have said "no" because I just sent in a blank final. So to fix this problem, I go to e-mail my teacher. In the subject line I put "ein groer fehler" ...and sent it. Why? Because the symbol for 'ß' is made by hitting the option +s button. That is also the combination that sends an e-mail. So I send in a blank final and a blank e-mail all in one night. Yay.

Thursday: Helloo, Tree

Nothing bad really happened on Thursday. Just dumb little things such as running into tree branches that have snow on them (I got wet), dropping an eggshell in the cake batter (I got it out), and apparently when you're told to turn the heat way down, that doesn't mean to 54. I thought 17 people in one apartment would be enough heat for the night. It was until 2am. 

Friday: My Bad

This was the day that I got all my stuff to my storage unit. I went with Jana's mother and brother to do this. We had to get some of Jana's sister's stuff out and put mine in. Her mother asked if I knew where the office was so they could get a storage unit. I told them that there was a building on the corner of the block where the office was. Nope. It was vacant. Then I realize that I'm holding the business card for the place. It has the phone number on it so they call up and ask if they can get a storage unit and such. Then I hear them ask for the address on the place and I look at the card in my hand again and see that the address is written on it. Yeah. I know. I'm a great person to have around the day after an emergency :)

Saturday: The Day of Travel

I woke up at 4am to get ready. Why I thought it would take me 2 hours to get ready, I have no idea. At 5:30am I decide to go wake up Jana. Not only did I wake up Jana, I woke up her mother. Sorrrrry. And I made sure Jana stayed awake until I left.

"Everyone needs an annoying little sister and everyone needs a bossy big sister." -Jana. 

I knew going into the airport that my bag was probably over 50lbs. And it was but I'm pretty sure my lost, innocent face gets me out of anything cause the guy just smiled and said, "ohwell." Ohhhyeahh. Then I bought headphones because I lost my old ones. I spent from 2:14pm  - 2:55pm opening them. Scissors just don't exist in the travelling world because you can take over the country with them. So I used my thumb nail. And it hurt. But totally worth it. On the plane to Frankfurt, a fight broke out. Most people would be alarmed but I just kinda watched. I was just hoping that we didn't have to land like the flight attendant said we would because I just wanted to get the trip over with. After living with 5 other girls, you learn that little arguments burn out fast. When we landed in Frankfurt, I went looking for the baggage claim. And somehow missed it. That's right. I'm pretty sure I'm the only one that can manage to skip baggage claim. It's okay though because I eventually realized that I didn't have my bag and went back to find it. All is well!

No Fun No More.

The end of the semester is coming up waaay too fast. As always, I have procrastinated in every way possible. It's what I'm good at...unfortunately. Like right now for instance. I have a paper to write, a book to read & write a report on, a few worksheets and a presentation to prepare. All for next week. It's crunch time, folks! But I'm going to Utah tomorrow anyways. Fun just sounds more appealing than homework :)

Be Thankful.

For the month of November, one of the roommates decided we should put up a poster and write something we are thankful for each day. I loved this idea! I was given the job of making the title of the poster. If you know me at all, you know this took a while. The title had to be even, neat and pretty. "It's going to be a looong night," my roommate said as I started working on it. She had no idea.

The final result!

Ice Ice Baby.

My roommate came home the other night with her brother. They decided that they wanted to try this pizza place down the street called "Five Buck Pizza". After much debate over how much it would actually cost (yeah.. I know), her brother was ready to go order it. He didn't want to go alone and my roommate did not want to go with him. I don't blame her. It was freeeezing outside. From that last sentence, you can probably tell that I was the one who ended up walking there with him.

Once we get to the bottom of the stairwell leading down from my apartment, I find a problem. The streets are covered in black ice. My roommate's brother starts going on about how he's happy I came with him blah, blah, blah but all I'm thinking is, "Holy mother, this is ice.". I told him that I don't mind going with him on these short trips as long as he catches me when I slip on ice.

One thing you should know is that I'm pretty close to this family and have known them for a while, which explains his response to what I said. He says, "bahahaha, this is ringing some bells in my head from last winter."

Here's what happened last winter. I went ice skating. For the first time and oh boy was it an experience. I just stood on the ice and fell. I didn't even have to move my feet. I held onto my friends so tightly. But that didn't help. I still fell every five minutes or so (no exaggeration). For my last few rounds around the ice skating rink, I linked arms with my roommate's brother to keep from falling. I'm pretty sure he couldn't believe how unstable I was on the ice but, hey, whaddaya gonna do? Anyways, he kept me from falling though there were a few close calls and lots of screaming (from me). I was scared. Then a song came on the radio that I reallllly liked and decided to sing to. I was more into my song than the skating because I somehow ended up on a path that was sure to end in a collision with a lady in front of me. My roommate's brother, trying to save me from that embarrassment, pulled me to the side, which resulted in the worst fall of them all. My roommate yelled, "Way to go!" from across the rink. It was greeeeat. But hey, good memory, right?

I remember coming home that night and my father saying, "Let's see your knees." I pulled up my pant legs to show him the red and purple bruises. It stayed that way through Christmas. It was a painful few weeks. I truly despise ice. Ice is dumb.

Oh, Snow.

Winter has officially made its way to Idaho. I best get used to the slipping and sliding. I can't remember ever having as much trouble as I am now walking on the snow. I have a hard enough time trying to stay upright without the ice and slush. It has snowed for the last two saturdays. Doesn't sound like much of a problem since there's no classes on Saturdays, right? Wrong. I have a test in my DNA class every weekend until Thanksgiving break. The first saturday I was dumb and waited for the snow to stop before going out. The snow was all packed down and slippery the whole way to campus. The next saturday, thinking that I learned my lesson from the past saturday, I left the apartment as soon as possible....which meant mid-blizzard. Needless to say, I was covered in snow from head to toe after that test. Pictures were taken. It was lovely. I'm told that I need to get used to this crazy weather because it's only going to get worse from this point on. Yay.

Walking home in a blizzard. Good times :/

Clay Pigeons...Whaaa?

The Beginning

I want to start out by saying that I hate loud noises. All loud noises. Especially guns. So, when I was invited to go shooting with my friend and two guys, I wasn't exactly thrilled.

The guys came to pick my roommate & I up and then we were off to the Middle-of-Nowhere, Idaho. We get out of the car and the first thing I ask for is earplugs. I pushed those earplugs so far in my ears, it hurt. I had all of these 4th of July flashbacks going through my head. The 4th of July parade was not one of my favorite events as a child due to the guns being fired. Ugh. Well, here I am in a potato field with 3 different kinds of guns and clay pigeons. By the way, clay pigeons are not actually shaped like birds. They are orange discs. Who knew?

My roommate was the first to shoot. "PULL!" she says and there's me freaking out. I then realized that earplugs do actually work. That's when I got brave and decided to try out this shooting thing. Even though I didn't shoot any clay pigeons, I felt accomplished.

Later that night, I drove us all to Wingers. Yup, I drove. It may have been dark out and I may not have had my glasses on and my roommate may have had to tell me when the car's brake lights came on in front of me BUT we survived. My roommate was so nice and remained calm by saying, "Okay, you're going to want to slow down to be able to make a complete stop at the stop sign." The guys in the back had little faith and freaked out by saying, "STOP THE CAR!" Chill guys. I got this.

The End

A Taste of Home :)

My roommate turned quarter of a century old on the 23rd. I found this super exciting because her mother sent her a Prima pizza as a birthday gift. My mom teases me with these pizzas. She asks me if I want one then says, "hahah, just kidding." Well. Who's laughing now?

It came on Wednesday. I was happy just to see the pizza box at first. It said Cornwall, New York on it! We baked it on Thursday & the smell coming from the oven was amaaaazing. We couldn't wait to eat it! The first bite was a little home-sickening but then it was just heaven. A bit of New York came to Idaho. Dreams do come true.