Blessed are the easily amused...

I have finished my first week of the semester (14-ish left!).  Now that I've been to each of my classes at least once, except the one I missed on Tuesday evening (oops!), I kind of have a feeling for what this semester will be like.  And I'm excited for it.  As a general forecast, I'm going to predict an increase in socializing and exercise, with a chance of a lot of early mornings.

Honors Book of Mormon - I'm thinking I'll really learn a lot in this class. It's a much larger and interactive class than my BofM class last semester (not that it's too surprising, since that one was at 7am, and now it's at 9am).  Prof. Williams told us to be sure and bring our Books of Mormon to class.  I had to struggle with an internal giggle about "BookS of Mormon."  The good - I'll be learning more about the Book of Mormon and we get to sing a hymn to start the class.  The bad - I don't have any friends in that class. Yet. 

 

French 201 - It looks easier than last semester's 102.  Maybe because we're just going into depth on things I have already learned twice.  The good - really nice girls in my class; the bad - no boys at all in my class.  Except the 24 year old RM teaching us.  

Introduction to Soil Science - Kind of boring, because the professor lectures without much class interaction, but I find the subject not too bad, so that helps.  The good - a lot of people from my Living with Plants class plus new people like Jessica, and Zach. The bad - I'm going to be falling asleep a lot in this class.  I can tell.

Intro to Soils Lab - The professor and TA are really funny and helpful.  It will be fun.  The good - I'll probably do the labs with a girl who was in my Living with Plants class.  I hadn't really talked to her until the Lab on Wednesdy, but I can tell she'll be fun.  The bad - the professor told us to expect to be there the full three hours every week.

Accounting 200 - The one class I'm not looking forward to.  The good - I don't have to go to this 8am class very often, and Heidi from work is in the class with me.  The bad - the professor, even in his media presentations, talks forever about a lot of trivial stuff.  

Residential Landscape Design - I'm worried i'm not artistic or creative enough for this class.  Also, I missed the first day of class, and I have an assignment due this week.  Stupid TA didn't show up to help me. :(  The good - this class will help determine whether or not I actually want to do design.  The bad - it's on the very farthest side of campus, down the big hill. 

And work.  But since I'm transfering crews tomorrow, I'll wait to talk about that.

Snow, snow, snow!

My opening days at BYU in 2009 have been covered with a snowy white blanket.  As much as I have thus far enjoyed my classes this semester (it looks like it will be pretty fun), I would say that the snow is much more memorable.   It started snowing pretty heavily Monday afternoon, at which point I was happily not called into work, because I hadn't yet contacted my new foreman, Max.  By Monday evening, I figured I really probably ought to help my crew and get some work hours in.  I learned via text messages that our crew (the pruning crew) was meeting at 2 am Tuesday morning!  yikes!  So I went to bed right away.  

    Despite the earliness, I enjoyed the first four hours of snow removal.  We work on the stairs, so I got a very good leg and arm workout.  I was in a very interesting mood, laughing at everything.  Sometimes I would just think of something random, and start laughing.  Like Cinnamon Toast Crunch.  One of my favorites was when Sam Braden asked Dave, "Can you turn the rear heater from "hot as Hell" to "burning sun"?" It was hilarious.  I also enjoyed knocking snow off the branches overhead onto my friend Heidi.  Heidi told me that of the last 20 hours, she's been shovelling snow for 11 of them!  It's crazy here!  

  I'm planning on taking a nap before my 4 o'clock class, and to go to bed early so I can repeat this funness tomorrow morning.  Yay. 

Merry Christmas!

What a Christmas it has been so far!  It's been very fun to share it with future sibling-in-laws.  Lindsay already knows quite a bit how crazy we are, but I think Cameron might have been a bit surprised.  Or maybe not. He is engaged to Lisa, after all.  for Christmas Eve, we had our Bethlehem dinner, watched the family Chrismas movies (still as hilarious as ever! I can't believe I agreed to my part!), and got our Chrismas Eve matching pajama shirts, courtesy of Lisa!

They were all greatly appreciated and enjoyed.  The kids also watched Muppet Christmas Carol while falling asleep.

On Christmas, we had to wait for Andrew and Lindsay to get done with Christmas at the Bagley's and come over to our house.  It means that we got to sleep in.  Alyna had the honor and adventure of breaking through the paper….

only to find that the door had been partly closed.

Everyone had fun opening presents and watching others open presents.  I’m very much excited about my new scriptures!  And Andrew got me a big box of Goldfish crackers I’m pretty happy about.  Mindy even joined us via Skype! 

And, to finish off the holiday cheeriness, I’ll post the great videos of Alyna and Lisa “boxing.”  Enjoy!

Finals are conquered!

It's true.  I actually defeated all of my finals in one day - Monday.  All three - first French, then Physical Science, and then Living with Plants (which is my Plant Biology class, for those of you who don't know.)  I did progressively better on each test. This is good, except the fact that French was my first test.  I did a terrible job of trying to write my final essays for my Anthropology class, which resulted in my leaving time on Tuesday to be pushed back from noon, to three, to five, until I finally left at about 6:30, after getting my tire fixed at Big-O.  I owe my wonderful roommates my life, because they did my cleaning for me this month.  I will do the whole apartment next month as penitence!  Now I am home for the holidays!  Actually, I'm still at Grandma and Grandpa Briscoe's, because it'd just be too weird sleeping at the frat house.  

  Oh dear. My last two posts have been so boring.  But my internet is being silly and won't upload pictures.  Excitment will be posted later!

Final Crunch

With finals looming over me, kind of like large, mythical but scary monsters, I have come to a decision.  I will probably not update my blog again until I have vanquished these beasts.  Luckily, I have only three, and only one which I find particularly terrifying.  My goal is to be done by Tuesday afternoon.  Since the dreaded French dragon is scheduled for Monday morning, and the not-so-terrible other tests are in the testing center, I think this is actually a feasible plan.  After I finish testing, I plan to hibernate in my room for several days, reading, watching movies, and sleeping.  It will be beautiful.  

Relative worth of wasting time

Before I get to talk about my weekend of wasted time, I must talk about Thursday.  Thursday was my day of dancing almost nonstop.  I went to French, physical science lab, and then to Social Dance.  We tested the waltz on thursday, after having spent one full day and couple of partial days on it.  I ended dancing with both Jason, and testing with Tim.  Apparently I'm a good dancer!  That was fun.  After class, our instructor Travis gave polka lessons to four couples who were going to be in the competition THAT night!  It took about an hour, and I discovered that the polka is even more fun than I thought!  And an excellent workout, too.  From polka lessons, I ran and took a test at the testing center, and then went to work. I was so tired and stressed out, and a little bit hyper from dancing polka, so I left early.  I watched Mindy make my cookies (Thanks so much Mindy! You're the Best!), and got ready for the Dance Lab and polka competition.  I couldn't find a good polka costume, so I ended up stuffing like, four or five possible costumes into my bag.  Dan had been planning to borrow some lederhosen from a friend, but somehow I couldn't find a European folk-type costume.  Strange.  I ended up wearing my blue polka-dot dress with the red belt. It kind of worked.  Surprisingly, Dan and I made it to the semifinals in the competition.  Considering that we'd learned it that day, and didn't do any of the moves but the basic with any accuracy, I was pretty surprised.  It was fun!  And I saw cousin Mailee, a first since i've moved down here!

On Friday, I came home from school and studying, and Mindy and Kayla were both gone for the weekend.  Though I'd had the best intentions of spending much time doing homework and studying all Friday night and Saturday morning, that's not what happened.  At all.  I watched 'Guys and Dolls' for the first time ever, even though I've had it for at least a couple of months (I don't know how that happened).  I really like it!  Then I had to watch 'Gigi' to see if it was as weird as I had remembered.  It was.  Then I watched my favorite parts from 'State Fair,' all of 'Catch Me If You Can,' and all of 'The Inheritance.'  I had a sleep over with myself in the living room, and I didn't get to sleep until like, 4am.  I woke up around 10am-ish, and promptly put 'Seven Brides for Seven Brothers' in the DVD player.  At least during this movie I did all the dishes, straightened our apartment, and made a Happy Birthday poster for Kayla.  But then I watched 'Cat Ballou.'  My friend Jerin from next door came to talk to me, so she stayed and watched some of it.  I did get out of the apartment for a little while to go to an Enrichment activity, singing songs at a retirement community.  I talked about musicals pretty much the whole time with Jerin, my vt companion, Clarice, and another girl in our ward, Jamie.  Yay for musicals!  After the activity, Clarice and Jerin came over and we watched 'West Side Story.'   That night (which happened like, half an hour after finishing West side Story), Brad came over and we watched 'Scarlet Pimpernel.'  Brad is Mindy's friend from a bunch of classes, who, as I learned last week, is also in my Book of Mormon class.  who knew?!  Oh yeah - Mindy came home somewhere in the middle of West Side Story, and Brady came over in the middle of Scarlet Pimpernel.  I am an extremely talkative movie watcher. it was fun, for me at least. i don't know about poor Brady, who was watching it for the first time.   So, even though not every movie I watched this weekend was a musical, I was definitely on a musical high!  Such a good place to be!

Time is a limiting resource

I've really been meaning to update my blog, since I haven't done that in about a week, but there never seems to be enough time.  Especially now, with the last two weeks of school and finals coming up, I really shouldn't be on the internet at all right now.  I should be doing homework and studying.  But for the sake of those who want to know what's going on in my life, I am procrastinating what really should be done.  

  

 Thanksgiving break was AWESOME!  It was so much fun seeing my long lost family (or at least my long distance family).  I don't know that I really caught up on much sleep or homework, but then realistically, I never expected to.  As for the rest of the trip that i have not yet written about, I can only remember two things worth talking about.  On friday night, Alyna and I taught Mom and Dad how to play Settlers of Catan while watching Scarlet Pimpernel.

 Alyna had a ridiculously good luck streak.  

On Saturday we went to this sweet music store (in some city I don't know the name of).  Of course, Alyna and I had much fun with the camera.

I flew home on Sunday, Nov 30.  I flew from Dusseldorf to Paris.  What an insane airport Charles De-Gaulle Paris airport is!  I had no idea what was going on and where to go, even though I could read the signs.  But everything worked out and I found my way around eventually.  The Paris-Salt Lake flight was 11h25m long!  Forever!  I watched Journey to the Center of the Earth, Mamma Mia!, an office episode, studied for my class, read some Book of Mormon, slept for a couple of hours, and I have no idea what else.  I really liked Mamma Mia! and i've had ABBA songs stuck in my head ever since.  

  

Now I have to try to make use of the limited time that I have and get some homework done. Yikes.