Is it bad to wear sweats to a Dynamics of Fashion class?

Some things on my mind as of late...

a. cold water is the best thing in the world.

b. Does barbecue sauce have mustard and brown sugar in it? At the same time? I made barbecue pork the other day (for about 16 people... and didn't get any of it), and the bbq sauce was made of mustard, brown sugar, ketchup, apple cider vinegar, and other strange things.

c. my dynamics of fashion class is an AWESOME time for me to blog.

d. alcohol is to non-mormons as _______ is to mormons? Lemonade.

e. i want a tortoise. or a canary. but probably both.

f. high schoolers are so weird. to all the high schoolers out there: cut your hair, pull your pants up, and stop poking holes in random parts of your bodies. and shower... please.

g. florence and the machine actually is pretty good.

h. unfortunately, absence does make the heart grow fonder...

i. hair bows are gay.

j. skinny jeans... are not as bad as i thought they were. especially purple corduroys.

k. 1/2 of the names of all the roommates i've ever had start with the letter k. kool.

l. john 14:18

m. who am i? what do i want?

n. i've watched 6 movies in the past 3 days.

o. "in my world, everyone's a pony. and they all eat rainbows, and poop butterflies!"

p. chocolate doesn't actually make everything better.

q. 2 nephi 8:3

r. we're talking about chastity belts in our class right now. awkward.

s. we watched this documentary in the fashion class called "killing us softly" about women's advertising. pretty eye opening.

t. the semi-annual poster-sale in the byu bookstore is so sneaky... always tempted to buy that stuff.

u. "suffering ceases to be suffering once it finds meaning. such as the meaning of a sacrifice" -viktor frankl.

v. reading books is good for you.

w. someone was whistling "come thou fount" on campus today. made me smile.

x. mirrors are so symbolic.

y. mosiah 7:33

z. "I have pulled my handcart when I was so weak and weary from illness and lack of food that I could hardly put one foot ahead of the other. I have looked ahead and seen a patch of sand or a hill slope and i have said: "I can go only that far and there I must give up. For I cannot pull the load through it..." I have gone on to that sand and when I reached it, the cart began pushing me. I have looked back many times to see who was pushing my cart, but my eyes saw no one. I knew then that the angels of God were there."

So this one time...

So this one time... I posted on my blog. It was 5 months ago. Holy GUACAMOLE. 5 months ago I got back from Uganda! How the heck did that happen? And how the heck have I not blogged since being back, when I was SO good at blogging while I was out there, haha? No idea. Anyway...

Just back in the good ol' US, going to school, working... Life is good. This semester I'm taking a teaching exploration class where I get to go into middle school and high school classrooms to observe and teach. The past 2 weeks I've been at Mountain Ridge Junior High in Highland. Cute school, I loved being back in middle school. I don't know how this happened, and people laugh at me when I say so, but I really think I loved middle school better than high school. Middle school was so carefree. Yeah, I was an awkward, gangly, braces-wearing, bespectacled pre-teen tomboy, but I had such good friends and such good times. Life was a little more innocent then. I got unceremoniously thrown into high school after a hard move, and although I made great friends and had some awesome times, there was just a feeling of pressure, and judgement that remained with me those 4 years. So I've been thinking... what do I want to teach? My senior year of high school, I interned at Eastside Catholic School (home of "bring-your-pet-to-school-day-to-be-blessed-with-the-priest's-holy-water"), and worked specifically with a 6th grade math class. I loved it! The kids were still innocent and teachable, and didn't have the know-it-all attitude that I think high school kids have. I think I want to teach middle school. Call me crazy. McKamy Knights forever!

Here's the bulletin board we made for our 7th grade CTE class:

48 hours...

I thought I'd just put up a couple pictures of the 'mzungu house'.... just so you know what i've been living in the past 6 weeks. and mind you, this is a REALLY nice house for lugazi. i havent ever seen a nicer house, except for the politicians'.

This issssss... the boys room. Have to go through here to get to our lovely bathroom...

These are our 'couches'. Made out of bunkbeds. And these lovely people are Kirk, Kevin, and Haley. Obviously they've all just woken up.

This is the girls' room. 3 triple bunkbeds. When I got here, every bunk was used. Now, there are only 4 used. I'm on the top bunk of the one in the back of the room.

This is Eve. Being gangster.

And then this was at the Awards ceremony after the Happy Child International Training.

And this is my last picture with Francis :( Had to say goodbye to him tonight and it was hard!

Last few days

Monday and Tuesday I was in charge of setting up a training conference for all of the Happy Child International Volunteers. We got a couple of guest speakers, and a bunch of us from the help team spoke. We covered counseling, children's rights, report writing, child development, and a bunch of other stuff. I taught for about an hour and a half on child development. It was so cool! This is like my future profession, so I actually got to teach it in a real setting! It reminded me of how much I love development. The rest of it was... a little different than i had planned it to be. Not all the speakers decided to speak on what they were supposed to... and the police officer ended up making us pay her. (talk about government corruption).

Today we went out into Eastern Uganda to do some jigger outreach. Basically... jiggers are little fleas that burrow into people's skin. Out in Eastern Uganda, people are poor enough to only own one pair of ripped clothing, and no shoes, so a lot of people have jiggers in their feet. We didn't take this picture, but this is basically what they look like:

Basically what they did (we went to help them... but they didnt let us, which was a bummer) was to take a knife, scrape off all the outside skin off the feet, and then pull off the skin down to the raw flesh on the areas of the jiggers, and then spread on some medicine mixed in with vaseline. The jiggers are killed, and they eventually will come out as the new layers of skin grow in. kinda nasty, but really interesting stuff.

Tomorrow, two of our friends, Martin & Camera are getting married! We all got invited, and all the girls got dresses made for the occasion. They all look kinda weird, but it'll be fun!

5 more days :(

Playin with the kids at happy child

Me and Francis (The founder of happy child international) at church

Holding little Jessica... but mostly I call her "feisty" because... shes like 2 years old and beats up all the other kids haha.

Evidence of the mouse intruder

At Qaddafi's mosque in Kampala. We were required to rent muslim clothing in order for us to be allowed in.

Twins at the orphanage in Kampala

The boy who asked me the hard question

Haley, me and Kellie on a taxi to Kampala

Holding our next door neighbor little maggie. This is right before she peed on me.

Hardest Question

A couple weeks ago at Happy Child, there were some kids that showed up all in matching blue dresses. We found out, after meeting the man that they were with, that they were orphans whose parents had died of AIDS. The man was Pastor Christopher, and he houses and feeds about 40 orphans in Kampala. Every sunday, they travel to a different church to sing for the congregation, to raise funds for living expenses. And they just happened to be at the church where we hold Happy Child. Anyway, he invited us to go and visit the orphanage and just talk to the kids. All of our projects are winding down, and we've had a little freetime, so all the girls decided to go up to Kampala and visit them. I've only been to one other orphanage in Uganda, but all I have to say is that kids in orphanages are probably some of the most heart-melting children you will ever meet. They love any sort of human contact, they run up to you, hold your hand, hug you, want you to pick them up and hold them. Its rather heart-wrenching.

We got to the orphanage, and met with Pastor Christopher in the house. He proceeded to tell us his story. How during the bush war, his parents dug their own graves and were killed in front of him and his brother. They became street children for 4 years, and one day upon visiting a church, were adopted by a man who had no wife or children. They both went to school, and he became a teacher and a pastor, and his brother became a journalist. He had made a promise to God, while he was a street child, that if he could get an education, he would serve children all his life. He opened up his orphanage, where he, his wife, his children, and 40 other orphans live in one compound. If I could pick only one of HELP International's local contacts, who represented the most devoted to community development, it would be Pastor Christopher. He really loves these kids. And he gives them his all. Its not like he goes and lives in a nice house while taking care of the orphanage... He LIVES at the orphanage with the kids. It's pretty incredible. And the kids are amazing. They love each other, and get along with each other... They have clearly been raised well. The kids came in and each stood up and said their name, their age, and what they wanted to be when they grew up (it sounded very recited and practiced haha). Then they sang a few songs for us... And we talked to them about self-confidence, and doing your best, and being kind to others. Then I thought it might be cool if we let them ask us questions. They loved that... Most questions were 'how old are you' or 'what are you studying' 'what games do you like' or 'can we be friends?' there were a couple weird ones... like 'do any of you have a child?' whoops. haha. But there was one boy who stood in the back. He was really quiet, and looked a little older than the other kids. Mostly he just kind of looked sad. He raised his hand, I gestured to him, and then he looked at me, his eyes still sad, and said, "Do you have your parents?"

Of all the hard things that I've had to do in Uganda this summer, answering that question was the most difficult. I honestly didn't know what to say. I'm not sure how long my pause was, as we just looked at each other, but it felt like hours. Eventually I cautiously said, "yes." He nodded and just bent his head, looking down at his feet. I then proceeded to un-tactfully bawl my eyes out. I felt guilty. I know that I didn't need to- it wasn't my fault that his parents were dead. And I don't know why he asked the question. All I really know is that I understand so much less than I think I do. Being here the last 6 weeks has taught me absolutely nothing in the grand sphere of all existing knowledge, yet it has taught me everything, compared to what I knew before. I feel like sometimes I'm just wandering aimlessly in the world with no purpose or passion, but coming here makes me want to fight for something, and I know what I want to fight for. I won't ever forget the way he looked at me when he asked me that question.

Of Mice and Men

Here's a 'tail' for you.

Preface: Last night, I had a headache, so I went to bed around 11pm. The other girls in the room were still up to stuff, so the light was on. Our country director, Ari was sitting in the bottom bunk, on her laptop, and suddenly starts screaming. A mouse had climbed up from the floor, onto her bed, and up her arm. Squeak? Obviously I woke up... and probably around 10 minutes later, Ari was opening her backpack and there was another scream. The mouse crawled out of her backpack, and ran under Haley's bed, where somehow I had left some of my cookies, which got thrown away immediately. I tucked in my mosquito net extra tight, with the new knowledge that mice could climb up beds...

Today: I was just getting ready to go wash my underwear (We have people that come to wash our clothes, but they won't wash our underwear; we have to do that ourselves), and pulled out a cliff bar out of my food suitcase. When I got outside I was about to open it, when I realized that there was a large uneven rip in the side, and a chunk of the bar was missing. So I went back into my room, looked in the suitcase, and realized the bag that was holding all the cliff bars had a big hole too, which looked like someone had been biting at it. Then I found granola bars, fruit roll-ups, and other such bars all with rips and bites and missing chunks. Crap. (Literally, because thats what i found next- poop). Poop on the duct tape, poop on my cracker box... Lots of tiny little poopies. I searched the whole suitcase, and luckily the mouse had left the scene of the crime, because I think I might have had a heart attack. I had to throw away a lot of my food... So hopefully I dont get some mouse disease.

You know what happens when you give a mouse a cookie. He wants your fruit rollups, and your granola bars, and your cliff bars, and your crackers and your-...