Trilingual

Yesterday I looked up the masters program in Linguistics at BYU, and guess what the requirements are:

LING 330, the GRE, and 2 foreign languages, one at a 200 level, and one at 300.

I was like that's it?? Then mom reminded me that the 2 foreign languages requirement is kind of a big deal...and I got really excited, because I realized by the time I get back from my mission, I will be trilingual!! Aaaaah. I'm already at a 300 level for French, and after living in the Czech Republic for a year and a half, I will be at a 200 level in Czech (at least hopefully. I'm going to work for it). So. I'm petitioning to add a Linguistics minor, in addition to French. (Just last year I was wondering why I decided to minor in French, like that was ever going to help me get a job, but now it just might get me into grad school!). So that will give me a year to study for the GRE, try to get my thesis published, apply for grad schools and wrap up life as an undergrad. Pretty crazy. I can't believe it, but at the same time, I just want to have a job. It would be so nice to go to work and then not have to bring any of it home with me!! But that's all a couple years away, I'm sure I'll be ready by that point. Plus Linguistics is the only thing I've been excited about doing, so that's the plan for now.

Also, there are only 4 1/2 weeks left in the semester. Which is freaking me out. I have so much to do!!  The rough draft of my thesis is due on Monday. It's bittersweet. I'm so excited to go home and spend time with my family before I leave in January, but at the same time I'm having so much fun here. I absolutely love my ward and I have some pretty great friends--it will be sad to leave them because it will never be the same again. Most will probably be married by the time I get back, which is becoming more and more normal to me, strangely enough.  College is a strange transition, and I know it has to end at some point, and I want it to end. But it's still weird.

This semester has seriously been awesome though. One of the best I've ever had at BYU, honestly. It might even be THE best. I've had so much fun, I'm almost done with my major, I'm writing my senior thesis, and I'm going on a mission! So many things that make me happy. Life is good, and Thanksgiving is in 3 weeks. Also, Les Mis and the Hobbit come out next month. Get excited.

Fall, Life, and Czech

I can't believe it's already October, time flies by so fast! School is in full swing of course. And I do love autumn weather. Time to pull out my scarves and hats and boots. I think fall might be my favorite season, although it's in pretty close competition with summer. Here's what I've been up to:

• I filled out all my visa forms for the Czech Republic and sent them on their way, so glad that's done!
• Some things I've learned about Czech:
• they are very reserved until you prove yourself trustworthy, then they treat you like one of the family.
• you have to take your shoes off before entering a home
• Prague is beautiful
• My pronunciation is awful. But that's fine, I'm sure I'll get better.
• ahoj (said like ahoy) is goodbye and hello. It's going to remind of me of pirates every time. 
• also I have a French accent whenever I speak another language. So that's going to be fun. 
• oh and I really want a trenchcoat to take with me. Just saying. 
• and I'm kind of stressing out about selling my contract for winter, since I'm leaving. So hopefully that all works out. 
• I'm pretty sure I think about how I'm going to the Czech Republic every single day, wondering what my life going to be like at this time next year. It's really hard to picture. 
• Got an A on my French midterm. I was super excited about this because I studied foreeever and my grade went up A LOT. 
• I'm in a dinner group this semester which was a brilliant idea. I get a free home-cooked meal 4 days a week and only have to cook every 3 weeks. It's great. I'm cooking on Tuesday and I think I might make pumpkin apple stew. It's sooo good. 
• Speaking of pumpkin, I love anything pumpkin in the fall. Pumpkin bread, pumpkin shakes, pumpkin muffins, pumpkin carving...so excited. 
• I have a pretty solid group of friends, which is really fun. Oh and did I mention most of them are guys? love it.
• School's pretty hard. But I've started my thesis, so that's coming along. Progress. That's what I have to keep telling myself. Any progress is good. 
• I'm TAing again this semester, for the 4th time. But I like it--I have almost all freshmen who've never had to write a college paper before. So that's fun, and it's pretty awesome to give examples from my own fieldwork when we talk about how to do anthropology, it makes me feel so legit. 
• I also got to go to the Brigham City Temple Open House which was amazing--so beautiful and peaceful. They even had peach blossoms on the floor tiles, the detail was so pretty. We stopped at Peach City and got shakes on the way home--seriously the best shake I've ever had. And my grandparents grew up there so it was pretty cool to see it again. Also I'm so excited to go to the Portland Temple at Thanksgiving! 
• It's General Conference weekend. Which is awesome, and one of favorite weekends of the year. I'm always so uplifted and come away with more hope and a better perspective on life. If you are curious about what Mormons believe, you can watch it on lds.org for free! 

• Also, the Church just changed the age of missionaries to 18 for boys and 19 for girls, which means my sister could be serving at the same time as me now! Pretty crazy, and exciting. 
•  I can't believe I leave in January! At this rate the time is going to go by soooo quickly. 4 months! aaaaaaahh

So basically life is a little crazy, and little stressful, but that's pretty normal. But there are always the days when you laugh so hard your cheeks hurt to make it all worth it :)

Mission Call!

Well, as most of you probably know, I opened my mission call yesterday! I was surprised it came so quickly, it only took a week. I was going crazy wanting to check the mail at 3 (that's when it comes) but I had to work until 5. Still, by the time I got home I had talked myself out of being excited--I figured it would be next week. So imagine my surprise when I saw this white envelope sitting there. Luckily I only had to wait an hour and a half to open it, which wasn't bad at all. I felt really peaceful and good about it, so it wasn't really torture to wait.

I've been called to serve in the Czech/Slovak Mission, speaking Czech! I actually had a lot of people guess Eastern Europe, and I was feeling Europe too, but still, I wasn't expecting the Czech Republic. (It was pretty funny because my friend Daniel served there, and his parents were actually on Skype with mine when I opened it) I've started reading up on the history of the country, I didn't think I knew anything, but I remembered the Defenestration of Prague, the Thirty Year's War, the Prague Spring and that they were a Soviet bloc country, and that Prague is supposed to be really beautiful, so that wasn't bad. I'm so excited!!

Yesterday was kind of a roller coaster of emotions, and it still hasn't sunk in yet that I'm actually going. I'm starting to get a little bit terrified, but I'm sure that's normal, after all I'm going to be living in a country I know pretty much nothing about, speaking a language I've never heard, for the next year and a half of my life. That would intimidate anyone. But still, mostly what I feel is excitement and a little bit of disbelief that this actually is my life. I started this blog off with my adventures in Paris on study abroad, and I've been blessed to have some amazing adventures since--this is just the latest!

A girl in my ward came up to me on Sunday and said that I always seemed to be off on some adventure, and asked what my latest one was haha. It's kind of funny because I've never really seen myself as the adventurous type, but I'm starting to realize that maybe I'm a lot more brave than I think I am. Every year of college I've done something so far out of my comfort zone that it was almost ridiculous, yet managed to survive, learn a lot of things about myself, and even enjoy it. So I guess this is just the next stage of that pattern! I think if I hadn't gone to Paris and Guernsey I would not be brave enough to go to the Czech Republic, but having done that and proved to myself that I could, this isn't quite the leap that it could have been. After all I've adjusted to living in 2 different countries for 2 months each already. I'm sure as a missionary it will be way different, and much harder in many ways, but in small ways I feel like I've been prepared. Plus I'm just so excited to be immersed in the gospel every single day, without worrying about anything else. My faith is what brings me the most joy in life, and I'm really excited to be able to share that with the people that I will be serving!

Senior

Well I'm officially a senior at BYU. Weird. This is my 7th semester (not counting study abroad or my field study) so I think it's safe to say I have the whole college thing down! My Anthro lab this semester that I'm teaching is full of freshmen, and I definitely feel a lot older than them (they look so little!). One boy came up to me after class and said...um I was just wondering, what's the SWKT? So I explained it was the tallest building on campus, and that I was sure he could find it on the map...etc. haha, oh lost little freshmen... It should be good though, freshmen usually care about their grades, so they might actually participate and do the readings this semester. Oh, the joys of being a TA, haha. But as much as I fake-complain about it I really do like my job! I miss all my fellow TA's who have graduated though, we have so many new ones.

As for my classes, I am taking my last ever French class, Literary Analysis (340) . I'm actually pretty excited about it, my French isn't as rusty as I thought, and my professor seems pretty cool. Plus we get to read Voltaire and Molière! I'm also taking data analysis and thesis of course, and it's kind of weird that those are my only Anthro classes. What else....oh marriage prep. Before you laugh, it's actually an awesome class. Dance 380, which is going to be a challenge, but really fun...and an Honors class. So not bad. The most work will be my thesis, but I planned accordingly, so I'm not really worried about it. Surprisingly enough I'm excited to finally start writing it.

In other news, my mission papers are officially in!! I should get my call either this week or next, and I can't wait. I really want to know where I'm going to be for the next year and a half of my life. Any guesses?

Other things... my ward is awesome, I love it. I've made so many new friends in the first week and I can already tell this semester is going to be so fun. My new roommates are cool, they love to travel too, so we are going to put up a map and mark everywhere we've been, plus take a trip to Ikea once we all get our paychecks on Friday haha. Oh and my freshman ward is having a reunion this next weekend, so it will be good to see everybody after 2 years!

Life is good.

Friends

Today I got to go to one of my freshman friend's mission homecomings. He's engaged and they're adorable and it was awesome seeing everybody. (Don't worry they've been dating for years). I'm super excited to see everyone else in the Fall, even though we'll probably only see each other once, other than running into each other on campus. We are planning a reunion party, so that's happening for sure. But I'm still super excited about it--I can't really explain why, only that's it's just great to see old friends. It's fun to see how much they've changed and how much I've changed yet we're still the same people, just a little more grown up. 2 years somehow manages to be a ridiculously long time, and at the same time go by really fast. Time is weird sometimes. I feel so different from my freshman year self, but I'm the same person. I can't imagine what's it's like to look back at yourself 20 years later.

Time is going by super slowly right now for me, since I'm currently the only one living in my apartment and waiting to move upstairs on Wednesday. I'm also waiting to go to Montana in a week, waiting for school to start, waiting for most of my friends to get back in town and going crazy waiting to turn in my mission papers because they are completely finished (except uploading a picture of myself) but I still have to wait like 2 weeks to submit them. Gah. I'm feeling very impatient about it, I really really want to know where I'm going so I have something in my head to picture where I'll be for the next year and a half. Plus it will make it official, which means I can't panic and back out of it. But I'm determined that won't happen because I'm really excited about going. But since I've done everything but submit them time has slowed down considerably. Oh well. Hopefully finishing up my research and buying books and things this week will distract me!

On the bright side, I've halfway packed up my apartment, had an awesome 3 hour conversation with my sis last night (one of those oops-it's-1-in-the-morning-and-I-didn't-notice conversations), I'm running a lot which I'm actually enjoying, my research is almost finished, and it's still summer, which means I'm not working or swamped with homework yet, and I have time to read for fun. Oh and I have internet when I thought I wasn't going to for a week, which was a really great surprise. So I'm trying to enjoy all the extra time I have instead of being bored, because I know as soon as school starts I'll be crazy busy. Ah well, c'est la vie.

Happiness

Today I went to the French market that comes to Guernsey on Bank Holidays and fell in love with France all over again. I ordered in French and it was so natural, and it made me sooo happy. Plus I found rhubarb jam and chestnut butter--the two things I absolutely LOVED in France. I ate them everyday for breakfast. I kept thinking I would be able to find them here, but I guess it's a French thing. Anyway...I found them. And I'm going to ban myself from opening them until I get home haha. It was funny, walking through the market took me back to France a year ago. Even the yellow and green bags they give you your purchases in were the exact same ones they had in the market outside our apartment. The only thing that would have made it better is if they had fresh bread--I really miss that too. Oh it was wonderful. And it made me miss France so much it hurt. I'm not exaggerating--that's actually how it felt, a little painful. I don't know what it is about France but I absolutely love it. England just isn't the same for me. Maybe because of the happy memories I have there, but also I think it's just France itself. The language, the culture...I just love it. So I decided I really want to take a day trip to St Malo. The ferry ride is only an hour and I am soooo close to France. It probably won't be until the second to last week of June. But I'll be happy even if I just go into a boulangerie or walk around. I don't even have to do anything touristy, it will still be worth it. But I might go to Jersey instead...we'll see.

The other reason I'm really happy today..... (drum roll please)


I've decided to go on a mission!!!


It's true. I've been stressing out over the decision for a while now, and have been praying about it. I realized that I felt good about it, so I thought, ok I really think I'm supposed to go. I'm going to do it. And then I woke up the next morning super cheerful and happy and I felt SO much better. I have been so worried about what to do with my life next year, and now that I know what to do I'm not worried and stressed anymore. It's the best feeling ever. And I am so excited to serve the people of wherever I will go. Strangely I'm not really too worried about that. I know that I'll go where I'm supposed to, and that's that. (Although I must admit, I would be thrilled to get called to France). But we'll see where I end up--I'll start my papers when I get back in July. I don't want to wait, but alas, I have to. Aaaaah I'm so excited! Honestly these last two days I've been happier than I have in a really long time. It's great. My research is going well, I've figured out what to do with my life... Life is good.