(Rebecca) Black Friday

Black Friday is not a big deal in this house. As my mother says, "There's nothing I want bad enough to get up that early for." Yep. Me neither. I slept in. It was lovely. Except I'm still super tired. And I fell asleep last night during our movie, went to bed as soon as it was over, and slept in. I don't know if I'm getting too much sleep or the last three months are catching up with me...haha. I went to the temple and had some trouble staying awake then too. I've been doing homework since then. I'd love a nap. Maybe I'll take a quick one? I do have a testimony of power naps... Hmm...Maybe I went Black Friday shopping in my dreams and that's why I'm so tired. I don't know. Hope y'all have had a nice day, however you chose to spend your time!

Happy Thanksgiving, La la la

This video is of a Hallmark e-card I found some years ago that I loved and shared with a bunch of people. Then my freshman roommates were lucky enough to see me perform it in person. Yeah, what a treat! It's kind of become a Thanksgiving tradition. I thought of it this morning and then one of my friends texted me a line from the song too, so I just had to find it and fortunately, Youtube delivered! Enjoy! And if you're really lucky and I see you often enough, you might be able to get me to sing it for you.

Feliz Día de Acción de Gracias!

Today is the day! Happy Thanksgiving! My thankful for today is a biggie. It's my family! I sure love them. I'm thankful to be with them. I'm thankful that my mom has already made several pies and other dishes for dinner tonight. I'm thankful that she is such a great example of service and love. I'm thankful for my daddy too. He is such a great man. My parents have taught me so much. I'm so blessed. I wrote about my siblings the other day but I'm still grateful for them! Love them muchly. I'm also thankful for having both sets of grandparents near this holiday, so I can see all of them. I also have an uncle here. What fun! I'm grateful for Thanksgiving, a time to remember how great our lives are, how many blessings we have, a time to celebrate with our loved ones. Happy Thanksgiving, y'all!

Thanksgiving at home

I'm grateful that I live close enough to home and that transportation is good enough so that I can go home for Thanksgiving. Yay for being with the family! Now we're starting the Christmas movie marathon that comes with Thanksgiving at our house. We're starting with Christmas With the Kranks, we'll definitely watch The Christmas Story tomorrow (tradition! tradition!) and maybe Polar Express, Elf, White Christmas...so many possibilities. Fortunately, I get to come home in a couple weeks and watch them all some more! I love me some Christmas movies! :D Yay! Life is great!

El dia del pavo

Today was the last day of class this week. That's always a happy thing. Just four hours of work tomorrow and then I'm headed home. Yay! Today was pretty great. My teachers planned on not many students in class and the first one brought pizza for those of us who came, and the second brought cookies and milk. Nice I didn't have to buy a lunch today. :) I'm grateful that Thanksgiving break is here!

Home Evening is GREAT

Today I'm grateful for my home evening group. They're so great. Actually, I kind of have two groups. My old group and my new group. My old group was delightful too. Basically I'm very blessed. Since I'll be meeting with my new/current group shortly, I'll tell you a bit about them. They're very awesome. They make me smile. We have bedtime story with some of them most nights. That's always fun. We had dinner together last week and I shared pumpkin cake last night too. That's how awesome they are. They deserve pumpkin cake. Pumpkin cake is amazing, by the way. With cream cheese frosting. Yeah, you should be jealous. Both of my cake and my group. :)

Just us kids

I've kinda been saving writing about my family for last, but since yesterday I spent quite a bit of time with my siblings, I figure today'd be as good as any day to talk about them. Yesterday Hannah came with me to a Vocal Point concert, then we went to the grocery, then we met up with Jord and members of his posse for dinner at Cafe Rio. That was super fun. Awesome possum. I like having my sister down here with me. I don't get to see her all the time, but usually once a week anyway. She comes and visits me at work sometimes. And when she has a Jamba at those times, she lets me have a sip. What a good sister. Brother dearest is still in the land northward, but that's okay. He came down and this time I got to see him. And best yet, I'll get to be with my whole family for Thanksgiving. I'm quite excited for that. I have a great brother and sister and I'm very grateful for them.

Sadie Hawkins

I've probably mentioned this a few times...but I LOVE my ward. They are so great. Seriously. The best. My favorite. Whenever I'm with them, I'm ridiculously happy. Last night we had a Sadie Hawkins Decade Dance. It was so awesome. We dressed up in different decades. 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, I think we had some from the 20s/30s too. It was so fun. The 50s were quite popular, which is what Luke (my awesome date) and I dressed up as. We kind of moved through the decades with the music and that was fun, except the further we got, the less I knew. Haha. I listened to oldies more than popular music in the 90s. It's all good though. It was so much fun. We also had hamburgers, fries, and malts. It was so good. The malts were huge and I couldn't finish mine. Too much for me!

It was really fun to dance with Luke, and my favorite was going outside and dancing in the SNOW. That's right folks, it started snowing during the dance and it didn't stop! We got a couple inches at least while we were there. It was awesome. I love snow. Except for traveling in it. But it was way fun last night. A bunch of us had a snowball fight and everything. Yeah. My ward really is awesome.

While I'm pretty sure nobody had more fun than I did with Luke, I loved looking around and watching everybody dance and smile and laugh. It made me so happy to see that. I was thrilled to see those who came alone being included too. Seriously, I just loved looking around at all these people that I love so much and seeing them so happy and having a good time. I'm so grateful for those who planned this awesome activity. Their hard work really paid off.

P.S. I'm also grateful for my mom, who made my poodle skirt many years ago. I got so many compliments. Thanks, Mom!

Friends at Work

So, today at work I decided I should write about work. Actually, not so much about work, but the people I work with. Because my work itself isn't all that exciting. It's fine for me, but I'm pretty sure you don't need to hear all about it. But the folks I work with, now they're worth reading about. I think I'll stick with writing about the other students. Just know that the full-timers are cool too.

Emily is awesome. She trained me and did an awesome job. She's been working there for a good long while and knows how to do everything. She's also an incredibly talented artist. For birthdays and other special events, she designs cards that we all sign. They are awesome. I think when I start my own Hallmark company, I'll hire her first. Sadly, since we have the same job, she works afternoons and I work mornings, so I never see her. But she's fabulous.

Skyler is great. He loves Disney and football. It seems every time I quote a Disney movie to him for some reason, he thinks I've done some serious Facebook stalking so I know exactly how that applies to his life...no, I just kinda like Disney too... Every morning I scan and index the daily reports and a couple of them I give to him to do something or other with, and he just LOVES that. Yep. Those reports are his most favorite thing ever. He just begs for me to give them to him. Hehe. He works afternoons mostly, so I don't see him a lot, but some Fridays I get the pleasure of giving him those reports in person. And sometimes he gets the pleasure of throwing them back at me when he finishes.

Then there's Tracie. She works on the other side the tree. The tree is there mainly to keep us from talking to the people on the other side of the tree. Not that it really stops us. Tracie is so fun and friendly. I love her. We often talk about dating and all the problems and drama that come with that. Fun times.

And then there's David. David is...David. We have an interesting relationship. For example, today he said, "You look like you're on something." And yesterday he asked, "Have you looked in the mirror today?" Ah yes, always such a gem. I'd probably be really offended if it weren't so funny. You really can't take David seriously. Ever. We give each other a hard time. He eats a mini loaf of bread and a donut pretty much everyday. Sometimes he shares. So we can be friends, kind of.

So those are the people I associate with the most at work. And I'm grateful for them. Even David. Sometimes.

Sleep is good.

I'm grateful for power naps. They're powerful. Even twenty minutes of uncomfortable sleep in a chair can do a lot of good. :)

quince de noviembre

I'm really grateful that November is half over. That's a really good thing. Next week is Thanksgiving, then just a tiny bit more school till Christmas. Almost done. Yay for the ides of November. :D

(Okay, so technically the "ides" of November is Nov. 13. But who really knows that?)

Thoughts on the Holocaust

The last few days, I've been thinking about the Holocaust. It started because I'm in a class on Judaism and that was what the chapter was on, but it's actually come up more than once since then outside of class. Today was the lecture on it. It's really horrific to see what happened, and unbelievable that some people claim it never happened. Since my class is on Judaism and the Gospel, my teacher posed a few questions for us:

*What long-term lessons can we learn from the Holocaust?

*Would you have been one of the non-Jewish people

who risked their lives to save a Jewish family?

*What help does the Gospel of Jesus Christ offer for

people who struggle with such horrific experiences?

I have a few thoughts regarding these questions:

I hope I would have had the courage to do what was right in that situation. But how easy is it to say, "Well, it's not my business, I couldn't do very much, and I have my own problems to deal with, my own family and friends to care for," and turn a blind eye? It's kind of a scary thought. So many people just didn't want to take the risk. And so many people were blinded by an evil dictator, following him just because he told them to.

Yesterday in Sunday School, the teacher had us stand in a circle, then follow her example, clapping, tapping our knees with our hands, tapping our neighbor's knees...then she asked, "Why did you do that? Why did you do everything I told you to?" She pointed out we really have to be aware of who we are following and why. Are we following Christ? Or are we following the adversary? Who am I following?

In the reading for class today, it talked about the problem the Holocaust poses: how could God allow this to happen? The Jews had always been persecuted, but this was far more than anything before. Why wouldn't a loving God intervene? Without the context of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, that question is really hard. It can be hard enough with it! We're blessed with a knowledge of the Plan of Salvation. There's a line in Preach My Gospel that says everything unfair in life will be made right by the atonement of Jesus Christ. The Holocaust was definitely not fair. But it will be made right. We can't even comprehend it, but somehow, our Savior makes everything right. That is such a blessing.

So in keeping with my posts this month, I'm so grateful for the Atonement of Jesus Christ. I'm grateful that through it we can be made whole, physically, emotionally, spiritually. There is no greater blessing.

Relief Society

I'm so grateful for Relief Society. I love it. Today we had a great activity and I'm so grateful for all those who were involved and for those who came. It was amazing. I just love the women of my ward so much! The men are amazing too. Basically I just love my ward. :)

11.11.11

Today was a good day. First of all, I love BYU and its nerdiness. The Bookstore made an announcement at 11:11 today. It was pretty awesome. I thought it was funny that they acknowledged it.

But not only is the day aesthetically pleasing, but it's Veteran's Day. So today I'm grateful for those who have fought for our country. :) And it made me really happy to come home today and hear the BYU marching band playing patriotic music. I love it! God bless America!

La computadora

I'm grateful for my computer. What a convenience it is to have! I can do my homework, blog, email, check up on my friends and family, entertain myself, and more! I especially love that I can do pretty much all my homework on it and don't have to go to campus. That's always nice. :D

You've got a friend in me

I am soooo grateful for good friends. I have been seriously blessed in that regard. Nobody has friends as good as mine, pretty sure. I can give a few general categories: early friends, high school friends, SHA friends, other pre-mission BYU friends, mission friends, and post-mission friends. Haha. I am still friends with some of my early friends. I don't see them often, but we still keep in touch (gotta love technology!). I had an amazing group of friends in high school. We had so much fun together, and we really built each other up. SHA was where I worked at BYU for so long before my mission. Loved it so much and I met so many amazing people. We sure had a lot of fun. Most of my other friends were through my wards. My mission friends are fantabulous. Especially my sisters. They are my favorite. Seeing them always makes my day. Post-mission friends were kind of hard to come by for a while. But then I moved into my awesome ward this summer and now I have the most amazingest friends ever. And living in a social apartment complex is the best. I love that I can walk outside and talk to a good number of people, even when it's freezing. (By the way, it's best to wear shoes outside even if you think you'll only be out for about 30 seconds. Because 30 seconds might turn into 15 minutes when you run into friends.) My life and my friends are fabulous.

Life is a Highway

I'm grateful for...Vocal Point. Haha. But really. They're awesome and doing a great job on The Sing-off. And their music makes me happy.

Dos cosas

I didn't have a minute to write yesterday. Well, I could have stayed up later, but that didn't seem wise. So I'll write two things I'm grateful for today, really quickly because I have a lot more stuff to do. I'm grateful for my new roomies. They are a lot of fun. I'll probably write more about them later. I'm also grateful for Apt. 4 who helped me move in the last of my stuff yesterday. They were oh so helpful and very willing. So they get brownie points, which will translate to chocolate chip cookies at some point. Yay!

Baptism!

Yesterday afternoon I got to go to a baptism of a young man in my ward. I don't know him very well, but it was awesome to be able to go. I haven't been to a baptism in a long time. I'm grateful for that opportunity and for knowing that the priesthood power of God is on earth today, and we can participate in the ordinances needed for salvation. What a blessing.

Also last night I was driving to my friend's house in Pleasant Grove, and I hadn't driven there before, and when I'd been a passenger, we took the interstate, and I didn't, so it was all new. I got to a certain point and I hadn't seen the road I needed yet, but I figured it had to be close. The road curved, and as we came around the curve, the car in front of me signalled to turn left onto a road I probably wouldn't have noticed. I thought, "Hey, maybe that's it, I'll turn here." Sure enough, it was the road I needed. How cool is that? I love it when I feel guided. I attribute it to the Spirit. I'm very grateful for it!

Fabulous Friday

I had such a tender mercy today. My minor is TESOL, but I've been questioning whether I really like it and can do it and do it for a long time...and those questions are still valid, but today helped. In my teaching methods in TESOL class, we had to teach just for 10 minutes, but to actual students from the ELC. I was assigned to teach today, but I had a really hard time deciding what to teach. I figured if I could come up with that, teaching wouldn't be too bad. I finally decided maybe talking about prefixes would be good, but I really didn't know how well it would work. How much do they know about prefixes? Is this level appropriate? I know their level, but what the heck does that even mean? Last night I prepared and felt okay, but still really unsure. This morning I felt so much anxiety. It was a hard morning. Finally it was time. There were three of us teaching our little group that day (the class was divided into 4 sections and we taught at different white boards). I was the last to go, so I had to sit through theirs...I was kind of worried, because the students weren't talking a whole lot, but in some ways they didn't have a chance, plus they also were shy to begin with I think. So I finally got to teach and it went fairly well, but I still wasn't really sure if I was being clear or if it was helpful. They knew what a prefix was, but I'm pretty sure they didn't know what most of them meant. One of them took notes. They talked a lot more, because I asked them to brainstorm words that began with whatever prefix we were talking about. I was really impressed with some of the words they came up with.

After, I told one of the other teachers she did well and she commented to me that the students seemed to really enjoy mine, that it actually meant something to them, as they kept thinking of new words and such. I realized she was right. They got kind of excited as they asked me questions and clarified points. So I felt pretty good.

As I walked down the hall after class, my "class" caught up to me and asked me if I wanted to teach. I said that was the plan eventually. She asked again though, and then I realized she wanted me to teach her. I figured maybe she'd like a tutor or study buddy type thing, but then she was asking what I wanted to teach them. I ended up telling her that I don't know much about teaching yet, and I don't know what to teach yet, but I would be able to meet with her and the others sometime if that would help them. She told me that she thought I'd be a good teacher.

Anyway, that was a really long way of saying I must have done alright. I think it was helpful to choose something that wasn't too easy, so it was new to them. Pushed them a little. But the point of all this is that I was really grateful to get some good feedback. I'm not quite as terrified by the concept of actually teaching English as I was before. And this post is way longer than I intended and I'm not actually expressing everything how I would like, but I think I'll end anyway. Happy Friday!

Special Collections

Today I am thankful for the cool opportunities we have at BYU. There's some pretty awesome stuff here. I haven't even tapped in to half of it. Today for a class we met in Special Collections in the library. We got to see some really old Bibles and other religious documents, as well as a first edition Book of Mormon. It was neat. And I'm grateful that we don't have to copy down scripture word for word, page by page, to get a complete record. Even though it looks really cool.

Also, in case you were wondering, Special Collections has the original score for Gone With the Wind. I'm not quite sure why you would need the original score, but that's legit. Also, we have a lot of Jimmy Stewart's papers and stuff and his personal copies of his films. Why? Because somebody here asked for them. Nobody else thought of it I guess? Or maybe he just really loved filming Mr. Krueger's Christmas and figured BYU was tight with Motab. I don't know, but that's pretty cool.

Christmas isn't Christmas without Mr. Krueger. I make people watch it every year. :)

Well looky here, two days in a row

Today I'm grateful for a lot of things. Here’s a sample:
1. Automatic staplers...my job is really not fun at all without one, what a delightful device (hope our new one comes soon)
2. The ELC (English Language Center): I got to go observe a class at the ELC today and it was so much fun. They were so welcoming. Super excited to have a visitor I guess. :) Favorite parts: Michèle, from France, an older man with white hair and a beautiful French accent; watching all the students interact; and most of all, a question when I introduced myself: "Do you like Asian guys?" (I skipped that one.)
3. Scarves and sweaters
4. Institute! I went to institute tonight and it was amazing! We were in 3 Nephi 11 and I learned so much tonight. Such the best.

We Thank Thee O God for a Prophet

So I've seen some people do the whole post about something you're grateful for each day this month thing...that may or may not happen here. I make no promises with my crazy life. But I'll at least start off today. :)

Today President Thomas S. Monson came to BYU and spoke at our devotional. He focused on being a righteous example and developing our testimonies. We have to obtain light in order to share it. What a blessing it is to be here and have the opportunity to listen to a prophet of God speak to us. For that I am indeed grateful.