whoa

it's 1:30 in the morning and my room is an absolute disaster, as am i. tomorrow i'm leaving provo and all i want to do is watch gilmore girls.

never ever again

never ever again will i rent from keystone realty in provo utah. this is obviously partly because i'm now graduated. (did you know that? well, i'm graduated.) but also because i think that the landlord is cheating me and being a jerk. he made me cry today. i cried to my landlord. i'm so pathetic. but i'm angry and he won't let me get out of my contract and a lawyer will be contacted and i cried to my dad and i need to pack and i don't want to.

never ever again will i walk across campus as a student. although today i wasn't a student i walked across campus for the last time for a while. i didn't realize one week ago wednesday that when i walked up to take my religion test in the jsb that that those would be my last steps on campus as a byu student. i should have taken a last walk for nostalgic purposes. i didn't though. but i did do that last walk today and it made me just a little sad. maybe that's why i cried to the landlord, i was already feeling emotional.

never ever again will i feel the same satisfaction of pulling into visitor parking on campus and being able to answer truthfully this time to the, "are you a byu student?" question. there was just a silent thrill when i answered "no". and i didn't fib a little like when i used to park in visitors parking for my 4:00 class at the art museum and i'd get there at 3:57 and parking was still illegal to students until 4 but i figured since i was only pretending to not be a student for three minutes it wouldn't matter because at 4 i could park there anyway. but this time i could completely answer no. "no i am not a student sir because i graduated last week! can you believe that? one week ago i was actually a byu student, but after last friday i wasn't anymore? sorry, am i talking too much? oh, yeah, i'll take the sticker. bye!" and no i didn't really say those last things, but those are the exact thoughts going on in my mind as i answered my "no" with a smug smile.

never ever again will i be able to just run over to cafe rio for a lunchtime salad. it will be a much bigger affair the next time i do it. it will be a destination stop not just a quick pop in. although that could change if i ever settle in utah, but i'm not counting on it, and i'm not hoping for it.

never ever again will i be able to go to the provo temple to surprise my missionary sister cami. but it was worth it and i just wish i had ended my day with the temple instead of starting it and ending with stupid landlords.

never ever again will i be posting from provo utah, as a semi student that is. (well, i suppose i can't really say that because who knows what will happen to me in the future, but as far as things are going now i am planning on only coming back to provo for visits to friends and family. i guess there could be some postings happening then, so maybe not never ever again.)

April 27th

is an important day for you to remember because it's exactly two months until my birthday. Consider this fair warning that my birthday is in exactly two months from today. June 27th. I expect you to help me celebrate. Oh, you won't be in the same house, city, state, region as me? Well, you are more than welcome to send me a Facebook message, or email. Yay! Don't forget, two months!

Well, today was my first OFFICIAL day as a college grad. I

1. slept in
2. took Emma to the airport for England
3. hit up Target
4. cleaned my room while watching Gilmore Girls
5. made a book

Sounds like a highly successful day to me!

And don't forget it's two months to June 27th!

graduated

i didn't have a thing to do today except sleep, and that's what i did. but of course i figured out other ways to waste time. like toning up my math skills that i haven't used since high school. i figured out this little puzzle:

(and yes, there really is an answer)

alum

More pictures and an actual post to come later!

2 days!

I have two days left (not counting today). The finals I have left to do don't even count. How great is that? Fabulous.

I'll be working on a lot of books for the next week and a half. If you want me to make you one and are willing to pay, I will make you one. Just leave me a comment with your favorite color. My only stipulation is that I have full artistic control. (Don't worry, it will be beautiful.)

Missionaries!

I said I was going to give updates of “my missionaries” I forgot until today. I need to do something to keep my mind off my ensuing bad grade in Calligraphy. I’m going to get a B in Calligraphy I know it. How ridiculous is that? Very I think. And now I only have one more real final and a few bookbinding projects to do! Hooray! And I have four days to do it! Double hooray! Usually I’m doing this the night before! I suppose I should feel grateful then that my hardest finals were yesterday and today. They weren’t even that hard because it wasn’t like I was trying to salvage a grade or bring up a B+ to an A- by doing well. I’ll just do my thing and be happy with my B+ or B or B-. It’s not like I’m trying to get into Medical School or something. Nope, they will still give me a diploma even if I get a B in Impressionism and the Arts or in Southern Baroque Art or in Calligraphy for that matter (I just thought my countless hours in front of the TV practicing my letters would at least get me an A- no matter how bad my letter slope is). Ok! Back to the missionaries!

JESS has been transferred to Kuala Lumpur which is the capital of Malaysia. But she had a really dramatic experience in Miri last week. Here it is:

The biggest news of the week is concerning our most recent convert, Langu. We went to her house on Saturday night because we're starting to teach her 10 year old daughter who is so cute and loves church. it was a random stop in, because another appointment fell through. Well, we walk up to her ghetto house, her creepy husband is sitting by the door smoking and drinking and we ask if Langu is home and we look back, and she's sitting in the back room by candlelight just crying. So we go in and find out that they had a big fight about him drinking and she hates it that he's always drinking. So then both of us tried to have a go at him, try to get him to realize that his wife is good and beautiful and all this stuff. She said he threatened to kill her and all this stuff. He was just drunk though and everything we said he didn't care about it, and I was SO MAD at him, I had to hold myself back from just like yelling his head off. Eventually we just had to leave though even though we didn't want to, so we said a prayer with her and she ended up smiling when we left.

We found out Langu's husband had hit her after we left the night before, and we knew she didn't want to go home. So we told the RS president, then talked the branch president and tried to figure out what to do. Basically, we ended up taking her home to pack up all of her stuff and get her last kid. Elder Dean drove us over there with her. We walked into the kampung, her husband came out and started making ridiculous comments to us, and then their neighbor, this totally independent Iban woman came out and started yelling at him to get away from us. So he slunk back inside to drink more. Then Langu just packed up all her stuff, Sister Clark stood guarding the door so he couldn't get in. Once he found out that his wife was walking out on him, he came out and started asking her for all of her money, and Langu went ballistic. She started hitting the door and yelling at him in Iban, like, "I don't have any money! You have it all!" I asked her neighbor what goes on, and she said every single night they fight, he hits her, sometimes doesn’t let her eat, throws the kids around, spends all the money on alcohol and cigarettes, etc. I just couldn't even believe it. Here we didn’t' even know, because she won't ever talk, but all we knew was that she liked church, and kept coming and liked us and had the biggest smile when we came over. So before we knew it, every single woman in the kampung was sticking their heads through the windows and doors yelling at him to get away, telling us that the "orang putihs" (white people) where coming to take her away from her evil husband. It was the craziest thing. So we left with her 3 kids, her stuff in probably only like 4 little bags, and got into the Deans car and drove her away.”

CAMI has now been in the MTC for a month. Here’s what she has to say,

“It has been 3 weeks, and I still can hardly say anything in Finnish. ha ha. Ridiculous language. There’s a new sister from Finland who just came in last night and she's going to Croatia, and she looked at all the charts in our room and was like "I don't know how to read those, and I have no idea what they mean." English just doesn't translate to Finnish very well, but it's fun when we get the sentences completely right, which hardly ever happens. We watched "the testaments" in Finnish on Friday with English subtitles, and it sounds really cool. Like there's a lot of "l's" and "k's" and rolled "r's" and they say they're vowel sounds kind of in the back of the throat. It’s just cool. I’m excited to be able to really speak it. Right now it's fun to try and pronounce everything correctly. Oh, by the way, all of the eastern Europe country missionaries like hate the Spanish-speaking missionaries because they always walk by us and are like "holla, hermanas" and then they start trying to say sentences in Spanish that end up being like "voy a cafeteria" and we're like "hm, wonder what that means." ridiculous. Basically we're all like if I went Spanish-speaking, I would only have to be in the MTC for like a week it's so easy. And the mama Finns get offended when they're called "hermanas." (I remember feeling the exact same way. But people are needed to serve everywhere, and thanks to the Tower of Babel we have lots of languages to learn. Some easier than others.)