Aventures à Provo: January 2013

Monday, January 28, 2013

1st MTC letter

Mon, Jan 28, 2013 Well I'm here, and it feels like a month since I left for sure! so much has happened i don't even know how to start! My companion is sestra hicken, she's from brigham city, and an el ed major at utah state, she's awesome. Reminds me of kendra a little bit, but we get along great. the only thing is that we are both indecisive so it's forcing me to make decisions haha. I'm the senior companion right now, we switch in 4 weeks. We have 4 sisters and 4 elders in my czech class, and then there are 2 slovak sisters and 1 slovak elder in my district. They are all awesome, the district leader is Starsi Payne, and he is such an example to me. Starsi Howell is crazy good with czech, he gets pronunciation really well. The first day we had class all in czech, which was ridiculous, but i have learned so much already. We have taught our "investigator"Petra twice already, and we are teaching her tonight again, all in czech. The first time was super stressful cause we didn't realize we should plan the lesson in english first, so we didn't have the spirit and just felt awful. Oh and our teacher had forgotten to tell us he wouldn't be there, and had given us the wrong room number, so none of us knew what to do. but after we had all taught,Daniel (I guess I should call him Brother Bodily) came into our classroom and gave us all some awesome advice, that was a little embarrassing cause he asked me how i was doing and i just started crying haha. But don't worry, it got a lot better. I've seen him a lot actually, he's sub-ing in our class on Tuesday too. My whole class loves when he comes in cause he always has the best advice of how to not stress out about it, they were all like, wow he is an awesome teacher. Anyways, the days feel like 2 in one, it's kind of ridiculous. On Saturday me and sestra hicken were convinced it was almost time to go to bed and then we looked at our watches and it was 2 pm. Oops. That's what happens when you are up at 6:30 and using every ounce of time to be productive! The spirit is so strong here, i absolutely love it, but it means that emotions are really strong, good and bad. We watched elder holland's mtc devotional from thanksgiving last night, and that was it, i was crying again, but it was happy of course. Ok funny day to day things: some girl burnt popcorn on the 2nd floor last night, so the fire alarm went off and everybody was half in pajamas, half in dresses in the snow haha. I felt bad for the girls that were in the shower! Oh also, on Saturday we were all so exhausted that we started to play hangman to review czech words in the classroom, it was like 7:30 but it felt like 2 am. Anyways, if you guessed the word you had to use it in a sentence. So the word was book, and my brain was so tired I said I am book of mormon true, instead of i know the book of mormon is true. hahaha we laughed about that one for a while. it's been a bit of an adjustment getting used to all the rules, like you can't bring bags into some of the buildings, and stuff like that, I guess my rebellious side is coming out finally haha. But life is good. oh yeah and our district is getting followed by some research guy at the mtc so he's been sitting in on some of our stuff and asking us how we feel about getting thrown straight into czech. that was kind of hard cause he wanted us to be critical, but we were all trying to be positive, and that made us notice stuff we didn't like. But we haven't seen him since friday, so maybe he's only going to do it once a week or so. Ok i'm out of time so i have to go, i'll add to your letters if i think of anything else. love you! send dear
elders, i get them after lunch and dinner! love you!! Sestra Cooper

Saturday, January 5, 2013

2013

2013.

It still sounds so futuristic to me. This year will definitely be an adventure, but when is the new year not? 2012 was quite eventful since all this happened:

2 foreign countries (Guatemala and Guernsey)
14 plane rides
Senior Thesis
French minor
5 states (Arizona, Utah, Idaho, Oregon, Montana)
2 BYU semesters and 1 term
2nd Spring of 4 in a row to be spent in Europe
Mission Call
the best BYU semester in 4 years

I've been rather lax on blogging lately, and I haven't taken too many pictures this semester, cause it was crazy. But here are some recent ones. First of all, I freaked out a little bit when I saw this:

18 days!!??? aaaaaah. Last time I looked at this it was at 30. That is really. really. soon. I'm very excited and very nervous and it goes back and forth. But lately I'm getting excited again, I'm ready to go. After all, I have been waiting since SEPTEMBER to leave. 5 months. I've known I was going to go to the Czech Republic for almost half a year. How crazy is that?? And I've been waiting to leave on a mission since I decided to go in May. I definitely needed that time to get ready but it's really strange that the wait is almost over. I now have all my clothes and I'm almost done with my list of things to get, so that's a little surreal.

It's also strange that all of my friends are heading back to BYU today and I'm not. I'm a little sad about it, but it's surprising that it doesn't bother me more I guess. I'm so ready for my mission that I don't regret not going back to school. Yes, it's sad that I won't see my friends for a year and a half, but I will see them when I get back, and a year goes by pretty quickly when you are busy. This Christmas vacation has been really nice. It's been good to hang out with my family, and to be in a house again. We went up to Willamette Pass last week and snowboarded--the powder was perfect so that was really fun. And we went rockclimbing the other day, I got to see some of my friends from high school, and there was Christmas of course. So all in all it's been great. I can't help feeling like it's the calm before the storm though--having nothing pressing to do is refreshing and I'm not going to have a moment like that for a loooong time. So for now I'm just trying to enjoy it :)