Missing you

Dear Jerusalem,

I'm missing you today.
I miss the walk into the old city past the burning trash and little kids yelling, "Hello! How are you? What's your name?"
I miss being squished through the crowd when walking through Damascus gate and holding my camelbak or bag in front of myself because I'm paranoid I'll get pick pocketed.

I miss walking past the gummies that are so disgusting and so tasty at the same time.

I miss walking past the men sucking on their hookas and playing backgammon.
I miss free cold drinks at Shaaban's and the never ending possibilities of t-shirt decals.

I miss the Armenian nuns walking by on their way to church or the Muslim mothers in beautiful headscarves hold their children as they walk down the crowded streets.

I miss the little boys wearing kipahs and whispy earcurls as they walk down towards the Western Wall
I miss the hundreds of shop owners yelling, "Good price for Mormons!" as we walk down the street.
I miss the crowded colorful and sparkly bags and wall hangings adorning the Old City.

I miss the vendors who raise their prices as soon as they know I'm interested in something.
I miss the smell of falafel.

I miss the dome.

I miss being within a stone throw's distance of the Garden of Gethsemane and contemplating the mysteries of life in our special side garden.

I miss the view from the Sacrament Meeting room.
I miss the endless supply of friendly conversation.
I miss dinners on the balcony looking at the Dome.
I miss the bean bags in the Student Lounge.
I miss my friends.

I miss it all.

Thinking of you daily,
Lauren

P.S. Here are some more pictures that I've neglected to post previously.

In the Jewish Open Air Market

Standing where Jesus might have walked.

Mt of Olives

Touching the traditional Golgotha rock.

Good deeds and weirdos

As I walked towards the doors to leave the JFSB I saw a girl in front of me with her green pleated skirt tucked into her underwear, and I could see both of her upper thighs. So I started walking fast, weaving in and out of people to catch up to her and save her from embarrassment. Then a group of guys stepped onto the stairs between us. I hoped they were looking down, because if they glanced up at all they would have gotten a heck of a view of her backside. I squeezed my way between them and ran up the stairs after the girl to catch her before she got to the top and was lost in the crowd. As I finally got to her, I told her her skirt was caught in her underwear as I tried to fix it for her. She was obviously very grateful and I felt like a hero for saving her from a very awkward walk across campus.

I also decided yesterday to start documenting the weird, unconventional and/or funny things I see on BYU campus daily. I already mentioned the spandex guys and unfortunately I don't have a picture of it, but as I walked back to The Dev yesterday afternoon I spotted a boy wearing a kilt. A kilt! Who wears a kilt? So I asked if I could get a picture:

This is Ethan.

Stay tuned for more great things to be documented!

And if you're wondering, yes he was wearing underwear.

Talents

We had a rather successful flag football game on Tuesday. I don’t want to brag, but Cami told me I was the MVP. And thanks to that MVP status I have discovered a hidden talent. I am an excellent flag grabber. I can grab those football flags like the best of them. If your pants/underwear gets in my way, you might just loose them too but I’ll come out with the flag in hand. After years of searching for my talents and wishing that I had more outward talents like playing the piano or singing like my sisters, I finally have something that can show my awesomeness. I nail the flag every time.

On another note, I’m loosing my Polish. I used Skype today for the first time with my friend Ewa from Bydgoszcz. I was butchering that Polish. (And if Ewa leaves a comment and says I wasn’t bad, she’s LYING.) I sounded terrible. I sounded awful. It was more frustrating than anything because I couldn’t remember words and then when I forgot the word in Polish for some reason it was popping into my head in German! German! The language I took only to get my upper division language courses GE. The language I only stuck with because I thought Vienna looked like a really cool city and I wanted to do a study abroad.

So what did I learn today? I smothered my talent. I guess I understand the Parable of the Talents just a little better now. At least God is merciful and gave me a new talent. And yes, it may be small and insignificant, but I’m a dang good flag puller and if I wasn’t, we might have lost the game.

Original?

I like to think I'm original. I'm pretty sure I'm not. And as evidenced by this little diddy, I'm not!

HowManyOfMe.com

There are 17 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

• There are 215,185 people in the U.S. with the first name Lauren.
• Statistically the 301st most popular first name.
• 97.16 percent of people with the first name Lauren are female.

215,185! That's a lot of Laurens! And there are four in my ward again this year.

• There are 24,418 people in the U.S. with the last name Richey.
• Statistically the 1454th most popular last name.

I'm glad Richey (spelled this way of course) is not so popular. And I'm pretty sure I'm related to all 24,418 of them.

And I know that there is at least one other Lauren Richey at BYU and my dad's cousin has a daughter named Lauren Richey, but she was a baby when I was 16 or so.

But still, I'm just not as original as I thought. True I shop at the GAP, Target, Banana Republic, and the Loft and get my groceries at the same place everyone else does, and true, I attend BYU, the LDS school of choice, but I still thought I was semi-original. Maybe I need to take note from Meryl Streep in the Devil Wears Prada and realize that everything I have was chosen for me by those who "know" better. The fact that I am buying headbands for my hair is because some designer thought it was time they come back into style and then the costume designer for shows like Gossip Girl decided to make it a main feature in show character Blair Waldorf's wardrobe, then it filtered down to the mainstream population to be bought in cheap stores like Claire's and Target, and then I bought it. I'm so unoriginal! How many of the 17 Lauren Richey's are now sporting headbands too? Dang. Well, I'll now be working on my originality and attempting to reconcile with the fact that there are only 17 other Mes and at least my name isn't something like Mary Smith in which there would be over 40,000 others.

New shoes

New shoes make everything great. Here's the pair I picked up this weekend:

Spandex and neon, not always a bad combo

I saw, or rather experienced the best thing today. I was at work this afternoon attempting to do my job and gchat at the same time when I got a phone call from Peter telling me I needed to come see the freak show in the walkway between the WILK and the library. When I lamented being at work, he elaborated giving me details about two guys in full body spandex who were about to do something but he wasn't sure what it was going to be yet. Then music was turned on and they started to dance. I told my boss I was going to be right back and ran out the door, through the MARB and up to the WILK where I saw one very skinny guy wearing a lime green spandex suit that extended up over his face. The suit was a little baggy (which I was grateful for) and pooled around his knees. He sort of danced goofily while handing out flyers. The other guy was wearing orange. Bright, florescent, neon orange. The suit also covered his face. This guy although not heavily overweight was looking a little more pudgy in his spandex (obviously, because there's not much give in those suits) and the suit was tighter around his butt revealing dark speedo-like underwear. He also danced around passing out flyers. I just about died when I saw them and needless to say I've been giggling about the event all afternoon.

Oh Provo

Provo is the most unique place in there world. I have a love-hate relationship with it. I love being here because I like school (despite the fact that I complain about homework and classes, I really do like school). And I love being here because all my friends (generally speaking) are here and so are my sisters. And there’s nothing really for me in Eugene. I could make new friends I suppose, and someday (most likely next spring) I will move away somewhere and I’ll be forced to make new friends, but this weekend made me realize how much I love and hate Provo.

Liz came to town, which, given her “rock-star status” we all got together. Erin came down from Salt Lake, Cath and Lindsay came over and we just vegged in Liz’s room at the Marriot. I love this. I love just being with people who I don’t feel the need to be on good behavior with or who I don’t feel the need to impress or make a good impression on. Saturday was wonderful as I woke up exhausted but happy knowing I was sleeping in the Marriot with Erin, Liz and Cath. I felt like I had taken a well deserved mini vacation. Sunday however left me slightly depressed when I was forced back into reality and realized that Liz is in New York, Erin is in Salt Lake and Amy who wasn’t at our little party is in DC. And then I had to come to the reality that I don’t see Cath and Lindsay very often because we have other things going on, and Steph is married. So now I realize how lonely Provo is without strong friendship bonds. As much as I love running into people on campus and idling away my afternoon chatting, I feel like there are rare times in Provo when I am able to make good and sincere connections with people and feel satisfied about those.

I love Provo because it’s fun and there is always something to do, but I hate Provo because it is such a shallow, “fun”, self indulging atmosphere and I haven’t been able to develop as many friendships that move beyond those as I wish. So I’ll just have to be better at keeping in touch with those far away and maybe try harder to develop those new friendships.

Motivation

I'm having a hard time getting motivated for school. Any ideas?

I didn't finish about Jerusalem!

Ok I've greatly neglected writing about the rest of my trip! Here are some of my favorite pictures from the last couple weeks.

Me and Mandi at Masada.


My roommate Loral and me standing in the Mediterranean Sea at Cesarea Maritima.


Caryn, Tricia and me after seeing after what seemed like a million Tels, we got excited about something living.


Me and Erica at the land of Dan.


Mandi and me in Dan. If you look closely you can see the sweat dripping down my forehead.


On the Sea of Galilee with Spencer, Peter and Mandi.


At Peter's Primacy with Pope Johny P the 2nd. This is my excited face.


Me with my St. Peter's fish.


Tatoos in Galilee. We were really hard core.

Ok, maybe I will do a little bit on my time in Galilee before doing another post about what my last week in Jerusalem was like. Galilee was wonderful. The worst part was that it was incredibly humid and I was a constant sweaty mess. The best part was being where Jesus had been. Unfortunately I'm not very good at taking pictures and I'm especially not good at taking pictures of things that may be spiritual or really personal. For example, when I was at Auschwitz in Poland, I didn't feel right about taking pictures there becasue of the importance and possible sacredness of the site. So because of that, I don't have very many pictures of actual sites or less dorky pictures. But I did really like Galilee. I was surprised that I didn't feel more spiritual throughout the time I was there. I expected to have intense spiritual experiences as I went to the different sites that the Savior had been and had performed miracles. I didn't have them. Instead I felt hot and irritated. I sweated more than I ever had in my life and instead of being able to focus on the miracle of the Savior's life, I was busy wiping sweat off my brow and underside of my glasses. I was a disgusting wet mess. I was annoyed that I couldn't enjoy the sites as I wished and that when I did have the chance to sit and listen to lecture prepared by my teacher, the heat made me tired and sleepy and it was hard to stay awake.

In retrospect however I am thankful for the time I spent in Galilee. I have come to a greater appreciation and realization of the life of Jesus. He taught and preached in that heat and tried to change the thought, philosophy and traditions of the time. I never could have done that. Heat takes everything out of me. I can barely concentrate when I'm too hot. I remember a particularly hot day on my mission walking around with my companion with no desire to talk to anyone because we were so hot and miserable. I am thankful for what Jesus did. I am thankful for his constant action so that we can have what we have now. And I am grateful to have just a little better understanding of what he went though to give us what we have and know now. And thats the best thing I got out of Galilee.

Irritable

Today was a great day-- until something set me off and now (in the words of Caryn), I'm very irritable. Because I was annoyed I attempted to stop thinking about what had happened and that made me think about it and dwell on it and replay it in my head over and over. I went to class soon after. That didn't help. The class was American Gothic and we were not only discussing what makes something Gothic, but we were talking about different aspects of the Gothic. We discussed how trying to oppress thoughts, ideas, and emotions, etc make it harder to stop thinking about whatever is being oppressed. Our teacher gave the example of a study done about 10 or 15 years ago where people were given clickers and were told that for the next two minutes they were to think about anything but a white bear. If they thought of the white bear they were to click the clicker. When the two minutes began there was a constant clicking because all anyone could think of was the white bear. I felt that way in class. If I had had a clicker in my hand I would have been clicking the entire time. I think I've sufficiently mulled everything over in my head and am feeling much less stressed and irritable.

On a much much lighter note I'm contemplating on whether or not to buy an iTunes "Season Pass" to Gossip Girl season 2. It will probably cost less than buying all the episodes separately and would make things fun and simple if I ever miss an episode. The problem would be if I decide I should really abandon my Gossip Girl guilty pleasure. I can't decide if I enjoy it because of the juicy gossiping part or because they're clothes are so fabulous. Either way I'll probably keep watching and cave and buy the "Season Pass" when I miss the first episode of the year.