Schooling

So I have been to all but two classes by now. One because it's only on Thursdays and one because I just added it.

This semester I am taking:

Eng 218 - Creative Writing
Eng 370R - Women Writers on Writing
Rel 211 - New Testament
HFED 140 - Intro to Architecture and Interior Design
POLSC 110 - American Government

I dropped my French class today because I am just not ready for 201 so I am planning on auditing 102 so that I can keep practising and reviewing and then take 201 in the fall when I feel more comfortable in the class. So because I dropped it I had to scramble to find a 3 credit class because I have to have 15 credits for fast grad. Thus, I added American government. Shane said I'm going to have a lot of fun in that class, but I am going to have to study a lot because the tests are hard.

I love my New Testament class! I have Bro. Hammond again and I feel like I've come full circle because he was my first religion teacher when I got here last summer semester. He is such an amazing teacher.

My interior design class is going to be interesting and I am looking forward to it a lot. I know I'm going to learn so much.

I'm excited about my Creative Writing class as well. Today in class we all had to write a line of poetry on a piece of paper and we handed them to Bro. Stewart and he picked 16 and the class constructed a poem from them. I like it a lot. Plus the activity was a lot of fun. Here's the poem. I bolded my line.

Stone-cold Love

There’s a million ways for me to say this

Sands of time are wasteland only in my mind
In a world of allusion, I long to be
In the wily minds of men
The places where we hide

The blonde-headed duck dressed elegantly in plaid
Tickling curls under his lips
“Curses!” she cries as he drives out of sight

Jumping off the bottom stair, I fell among the clouds
Eyes, unpenetrated by darkness, light the way in a vast expanse
The snow gently powdered the flowers
Pastel shades of pink and yellow color the sky
Yesterday will come tomorrow after sunlight fades
Of this I am certain: I will not be mistaking love for anything else

My pet rock died today

Twinsies

So I got to talk to Miri today for almost an hour. I really miss her being here all the time. It's going to be quite an adjustment getting used to it I think. I'm definitely not as sad about it as I thought I would be. Before the end of winter semester every time I thought about Miri leaving I wanted to cry and when we said goodbye I almost got weepy, but I contained myself because I was on a bus. Now that I'm back at school though I just miss her, but I know that we're both doing what we need to be doing. I am so excited for her to go on a mission and I know she's going to be the best missionary ever!




My new roommates are really nice. I think I most click with Cassie (her home life was a lot like mine) and Orchid (she's a convert too!) My room roommate is named Hannah and it's her second semester and she's turning 19 soon. That makes me feel really old.

I've only been to one class so far, most of mine are on Tuesdays and Thursdays so once I've been to all of them I'll post about them.

Dallas

So currently I am sitting at gate C37 in the Dallas airport. It's dark and dreary outside, but I like the rain so it's not all the bothersome.

I was supposed to catch a flight from Dallas to Denver and then on to Salt Lake. However, the plane was delayed an hour, which meant I would miss my connection in Denver. Apparently though, all flights in Denver are being cancelled because of snow. So I talked to the ticket counter lady and she said there was a non-stop flight from Dallas to Salt Lake leaving at 12:35 and arriving at 2:25 so she put me on it. That means I'm still able to make the shuttle to Rexburg, which leaves at 3.

Allow me a moment to complain about flaky people. I had a ride back from Salt Lake and even a place to stay Friday night because they wanted to leave Saturday. All of these plans fell through however when they changed their mind leaving me to find not only a way home for myself, but for another firend who had been guaranteed a ride as well. It proceeded to get worse from there trying to find a ride home. I suppose it's okay now because I have a ticket for the worst ride in the world, the shuttle, and I was able to find my friend a ride, but still people suck.

My mom (Martha) has all the pictures from this week so I don't have any to post, but we did go out to The Cheesecake Factory last night and had a blast. I even bought my mom a drink. It was a lot of fun. We just ordered cheesecake and drinks. I got some sort of virgin mango thingy and mom got the georgia peach. As for cheesecake mom got the new blueberry one and I got the lemon raspberry creme. They were both amazing.

Anyway I need to go because we should be board soon.

Sunday Dinner

So in our apartment one of us always cooks Sunday dinner for everyone. Usually we make it a big thing and invite some of our FHE brothers and Shane. This past Sunday was no different except that it was my turn to cook the meal. It was my first time being in charge of the whole thing because last time Kristen did most of the work and I just made the key lime pie. I really wanted to do French dishes so I looked up recipes online. Since I live in Rexburg that automatically got rid of 3/4 of the recipes because of exotic ingredients. I ended up making french onion soup.

This isn't the soup I made, but it looked almost exactly like this. I know! I'm surprised too!

Miriam made french bread so everything was made fresh and from scratch. I think that always makes everything better.

For dessert we had flan. Or at least that's what the website said it was the full title of the dish is Traditional Medieval French Custard Tarte, or in French, Tarte Médiévale.

Mine looked like this too! I was really freaking out though when I pulled it out of the oven because I thought I had burnt and ruined it. Apparently I hadn't and it's supposed to look like that.

It was a really good Sunday and I even got to take a nap on the floor while the others watched The Emperor's New Groove. Then we had a deep, meaningful discussion on marriage because somehow we always end up talking about that. Hmm, I wonder why.

Anyway, here are the recipes for Sunday's luncheon/dinner thing.

French Onion Soup
- 1 tbsp butter
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 4 large onions (about 1 1/2 pounds), thinly sliced*
- 2-4 garlic cloves, finely chopped
- 1 tsp sugar
- 1/2 tsp dried thyme
- 2 tbsp flour
- 1/2 cup dry white wine**
- 8 cups chicken or beef broth
- 2 tbsp brandy (optional)
- 6-8 thick slices French bread, toasted
- 1 garlic clove
- 12 ounces of Swiss cheese, grated

*I bought four we used like one and a half. The onions I got were HUGE thought.
**I found this great website that lists non-alcoholic substituions whenever a recipe calls for alcohol. In this case 1/2 c of white wine equals a 1/2 c of chicken broth and 1 tbsp lemon juice.

In a large heavy saucepan or flameproof casserole, heat the butter and oil over medium-high heat. Add the onions and cook for 10-12 minutes until they are softened and beginning to brown. Add the garlic, sugar and thyme and continue cooking over medium hear for 30-35 minutes until the onions are well browned, stirring frequently.
Sprinkle over the flour and stir until well blended. Stir in the white wine and broth and bring to a boil. Skim off any foam that rises to the surface, then reduce the heat and simmer gently for 45 minutes. Stir in the brandy, if using.
Preheat the broiler. Rub each slice of toasted French bread with the garlic clove. Place six or eight ovenproof bowls on a baking sheet and fill about three-quarters full with the onion soup.
Float a piece of toast in each bowl. Top with grated cheese dividing it evenly, and broil about 6 inches from the heat for about 3-4 minutes until the cheese begins to melt and bubble.

Tarte Médiévale
- 4 cups Milk
- 4 Eggs
- 2/3 cup Granulated Sugar
- 1/4 cup Cornstarch (optional)
- Pinch of Nutmeg
- 1 - 2 tsp. Cinnamon
- Butter and flour for Pie dish
- 1 Pie or Tarte Crust

Preheat oven to 450°F
1. Combine milk and sugar in a pot and gently bring to a boil. Remove from heat and let cool.
2. Mix cornstarch with 3/4 cup of water and then stir into warm milk. Put milk back on a low heat, and stirring constantly bring to a boil and then remove from heat.
3. Beat the eggs well, and then gently stir into the milk until homogenous.
4. Butter and flour pie dish. Roll out pie crust and place in dish. Pour in milk mixture and bake for 30 minutes. Let cool off before serving.

Crust Recipe
- 1 1/3 cup Flour
- 2 Eggs
- 4 oz. Butter (chilled!)
- 1 tbsp. Granulated Sugar
- Pinch of Salt

1. Mix salt, sugar, and flour.
2. Cut chilled butter into small pieces and mix into flour with finger tips. Stop working batter once it looks like "sand".
3. Make a well and pour in eggs. Incorporate into flour using your fingers and a spatula.
4. Once homogenous, form a ball, place on a floured surface and knead for 10 seconds. Reshape into a ball, roll out with a rolling pin, and refrigerate for 30 minutes before rolling out.*

* So since this direction is almost cryptic we chilled it in the shape of a ball and then rolled it out.

The Air She Breathes

This is going to be a long one. Just a warning.

So Brother Harrell, he's a creative writing teacher here at BYU-I, suggested some things to do to help get ideas for stories when writing on a deadline or when things seem to have just come to a hault. One of these suggestions was to write a story to a set of pictures. Well I took a whole bunch of pictures in San Diego with a story in mind. I got all the pictures I could ever want and still I could not write it. Everytime I sat down to do it another story inspired by one of the pictures popped into my head. So I wrote it.

This is one of the millions of pictures taken at Carlsbad Beach. I know it's blurry, but that's Shane.


The only reason she knows she's still alive is because of the steady rise and fall of her chest beneath her hand. It's too quiet, too still, too calm. She thinks about where she might be; how far a scream might carry, if there's even anyone to hear it. She closes her eyes and it looks the same as if they were open. She tries to remember what happened.

“Dang it!” She hits the steering wheel with the palm of her hand, too angry to even wince at the stinging red welt it leaves behind. Smoke billows out from underneath the hood of the car and she feels like she is driving through fog. Kayla decides it's probably time to pull the car over. Once in the emergency pull off lane she turns the car off and takes a moment to lay her forehead on the steering wheel. “This is not happening.” Letting go of a deep sigh she opens the car door and steps out. She doesn't bother looking for any cars that might be barreling down the highway, she already knows there aren't any. Struggling to open the hood of the car, she's finally able to prop it up. If it was possible even more smoke puffed up once released from the constraints of the hood. She takes a step back, waving her hand in front of her face and coughing. Reaching into her pocket she pulls out her cell phone hoping there is the tiniest bit of service in this waste land. She dials a number from memory and waits for her brother to answer.

“Hello, Kayla.” He says and his slow, southern drawl makes it sound like yellow. It makes her long for her home in Alabama instead of being stuck somewhere between Arizona and California.

“Hey, so there's smoke.”

“Smoke.” He repeats and she can almost see his bright smile and one raised, dark brown eyebrow.

“As in my car is smoking and no longer running.” she expounds.

“Where are you?” Kayla looks around at the vast expanse of desert and sighs.

“Earth.” Her brother lets out a bark of laughter.

“Okay, well you're going to have to wait for the engine to cool down before you can do anything. So just chill out in your car for a little bit. No opening the hood, no pouring water anywhere yet. Just sit tight.”

“No opening the hood?” Kayla questions, biting her lip.

“You already did.”

“Well there was smoke and any logical person would figure it shouldn't be all trapped inside where it's obviously freaking hot so I opened the hood Adam.”

“Okay, calm down. You opened the hood. Did you burn yourself?'

“No.”

“Good. Now get back in the car and don't touch anything.” There's a brief pause. “I love you.”

“Yeah, yeah. I love you too.” Kayla goes back to the driver's side of the car and slides back in. She closes the door and proceeds to roll down all of the windows. “It's so hot Adam. How long am I going to have to wait?” She leans back into the seat and closes her eyes. She can already feel the sweltering heat suffocating her. She wonders how anyone can breathe in this heat. It's not even humid, it's just hot.

“Well if you had kept an eye on the temperature gauge like I told you to then I'm sure you wouldn't be in this mess.”

“I was keeping an eye on it. I watched it go all the way up to the red zone.” Kayla tells him truthfully.

“What are you, four? Red means bad. Red means turn off the air conditioning and roll down the windows. Red means pull over. Red means call your brother and ask what to do.” Adam scolds.

“Hey, don't you give me a lecture. It's not my fault I'm the one having to drive all the way to California. You're the one that's supposed to be doing this. I was just doing my kid brother a favor so don't go all 'holier than thou' on me Adam. I'm stuck in the middle of nowhere all by myself and the last thing I need is for my little brother to lecture me.”

“Kayla,” Adam says and sighs, “Kayla calm down. I'm sorry. Here I'm going to give you something to do to try and help with cooling down the engine. Just go get one of the gallon jugs out of the trunk and go to the hood of the car.” Without saying a word to Adam, Kayla does what he asked her to do. When she's standing at the hood of the car, gallon jug of water in hand, she tells him.

“Okay now what?” she asks trying to keep as much sarcasm from her voice as possible.

“You're going to check the coolant reservoir tank. It looks like a plastic milk jug with a hose going to the radiator.” Kayla looks under the hood for something resembling what Adam is talking about. When she finds it she smiles. Not as hard as she thought it was going to be.

“Found it.” she says happily.

“Good. Now carefully unscrew the cap and then pour in the water until it's full. Be careful.” Kayla unscrews the cap and sets it down on the edge of the car. Balancing the jug of water between her leg and the car she unscrews the cap and places it next to the coolant reservoir tank cap. A little hesitantly at first she begins to pour the water into the tank. The first splash of water in the tank lets her know that it was empty.

“Adam,” she says, “it's not good if it was empty, huh?”

“No, not really.” he says laughing. “It'll be okay. We'll just take care of this and you'll be back on the road in no time.” He assures her.

“Okay good.” She fills the tank and then sets the jug down on the dirt and gravel that makes up the emergency pull off lane. “Alright I did that, now what?”

“Go and try turning on the car. Maybe that will have fixed it.” Adam says, but he doesn't sound all that convinced. Kayla gets back into the car and turns the key in the ignition.

“Nothing.” she tells him.

“Then you're just going to have to wait for the engine to cool down some more. Wait about thirty minutes and then see if the engine is still hot. Don't touch it or anything. Just grab a rag and get it wet. Use that to see if the engine is hot. Call me when you've done that. Okay?”

“You're hanging up?” Kayla asks and she's pretty proud of herself for keeping the panic she's feeling out of her voice.

“I'm at work. I can't stay on the phone with you for an hour. You'll be fine. Like you said no one else is out there so it's not like anything is going to happen.”

“Funny Adam.”

“Yeah, I try to be. Anyway I've gotta go.”

“Alright. Love you.” Kayla tells him a little begrudgingly.

“Love you too.” Adam says before hanging up. Kayla sighs and puts the cell phone in the cup holder next to her. Laying her head back against the head rest she closes her eyes. She thinks she'll take a little bit of a nap and the engine will have cooled off by the time she wakes up.

She doesn't know how long she's been asleep. At first she figured the sound of a motor was part of a dream, but when she opens her eyes, squinting against the brightness of the desert sun, she sees a motorcycle. When the motorcycle flies on past she grumbles under her breath about missing southern hospitality. She figures now would be as good a time as any to see if the engine has cooled off. She's getting out of the car when she hears the motorcycle again. They turned around, she thinks happily. Kayla walks back to the trunk to grab a rag and the other jug of water. She stops and waits as the man climbs off his bike and takes off his helmet.

“Car trouble?” he asks, smiling.

“My engine just overheated. Nothing too serious.” She answers and returns the smile.

“Well here let me help you.” He offers putting his helmet down on the seat of his bike. He walks over and takes the water jug and rag from her before heading toward the front of the car. Kayla follows. “What are you doing all the way out here?” he asks, having taken note of her Alabama plates.

“I'm doing a favor for my little brother. He used to live in San Diego.” She thinks about giving him a call to let him know someone stopped to help her. She reaches into her pocket only to remember she left the phone in the car. She decides not to worry about it. She'll call him when she's back on the road.

“How long have you had the engine off?” he asks.

“Um,” she says thinking about it, “probably a little over a half an hour now. I filled the reservoir tank, but the car still wouldn't start so I've just been waiting for the engine to cool down.” He looks impressed with her knowledge and she smiles. He goes to work fiddling with things and then pouring water in. She stands just off to the side watching. “I'm Kayla by the way.” she informs him.

“Thomas.” he replies looking at her over his shoulder.

“Do you live around here?” she asks looking around as if expecting to suddenly see some form of life. “Wherever here is.” she adds. He laughs and nods his head.

“You're just about twenty miles from Peach Springs. It's true though. Not too many people live around here.”

“Well thank you for coming back to help me. I really appreciate it.”

“It's no problem.” he says finishing up. “There, I think you should be fine now. Your brother's awfully lucky to have you around.”

“I guess. He's not half bad himself.” she picks up the two discarded jugs while he's screwing all the caps back on everything.

“You look hot,” he tells her and her eyes widen for a brief moment before he finishes his sentence, “I've got some water if you want some.”

“Oh, yeah sure. That'd be great.” She rolls her eyes at herself and bites back a laugh when she thinks about recounting all of this to her brother when she's back on the road. She follows him back around the car and tosses the jugs in the near empty trunk before shutting it. He already has a water bottle in hand, cap off, when she turns around. She accepts the drink and takes a sip. “Thanks.”

“No problem.” she leans against the trunk of the car and the hot metal almost burns right through the seat of her jeans, but she doesn't move. There's a bit of an awkward silence and Kayla takes a few more sips of water.

“Where are you headed?” she finally asks to break the silence.

“Just out for a drive.” Kayla nods and it feels strange, her head is heavy. She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. She figures it's just the heat getting to her or she's just more tired than she originally thought. She has been driving for quite some time.

“Are you feeling alright?” she hears him ask. His voice sounds far away. She opens her eyes and it's a more difficult task than it should be. Kayla knows something is wrong.

“I'm fine.” The sentence makes sense in her head, but she doesn't think it quite made it past her lips. She drops the water bottle and leans against the car for more support. “Thanks for your help. I think I'll just lay down in my car.” Her words are slurring together and it takes all her concentration to walk toward the driver's side door.

“Would you like some help?” She's scared now and wishing she had never left her phone in the car. She can't form words so she tries shaking her head. It makes the dizziness worse. She reaches for the handle of the car door and loses her balance in the process of opening it. From the ground she can see her phone laying in the car. She struggles to scoot back toward the door in order to use it for support. Hearing the crunch of dirt and gravel she turns to see him walking toward her, his white shirt being blown in the hot desert breeze. Her vision blurs and she loses the battle of keeping her heavy eyes open.

Kayla opens her eyes and gasps, the memory flooding back in bits and pieces. She moves her hand from off her stomach and places it beside her where she feels some sort of wood wall. She puts it a few inches above her face and feels the same wood wall. Heart racing, she tries not to panic. Hearing movement outside of the box she's in she closes her eyes and tries to still her breathing. She feels the entire box move to one side and then light and fresh air pour in. She tries not to take big gulping breaths and she keeps her eyes shut. She feels hands on her side and she's being shoved further into the box. There's a thud beside her and she feels the warmth of another body.

Rock Climbing and IHOP

So last night Sojin, Kristen, Miriam, and I went rock climbing. We usually go on Thursday nights because it's only $5, but last Thursday it was so busy that told us we could come back on another day and still only pay $5. Since I'm sick with some sort of cold or whatever I let Sojin use my $5 thing and I watched and took pictures.

Sojin is super quick going up the wall and she looked like a monkey.


Miriam going up the wall like a spider.


Kristen very intent on not letting Sojin fall.


After rock climbing we went to IHOP for free pancakes. They were more like mini pancakes though. We convinced Shane to go, but he said only on the condition that we made him do his homework. We did. He even finished it. :)


Miriam and Shane doing homework while we wait for a table.


Kristen, Miriam, Shane, and Derek (Shane's roomie).


Tiffany (Marissa's sister), Marissa, and me.

No-Bake Cookies

This recipe is from a book we got here at school called Family Favorites: Recipes from BYU-Idaho Students and Faculty.

- 2 c sugar
- 1/2 c margarine
- 3 T cocoa
- 1/2 c milk
- 1/2 c peanut butter
- 1 t vanilla
- 3 c quick oats

Mix sugar, margarine, cocoa, and milk. Cook until it comes to a boil, stirring it to keep the milk from scalding.


Remove from heat. Add peanut butter, vanilla, and quick oats. Spoon onto wax paper.