New home, again!!

I can't believe it's already Thursday, again. I feel like the weeks are flying by so fast I can't even think...which is alright with me, I have to say I won't mind if the next two years go by fast. ;) I moved into my new place on Monday, and I absolutely LOVE it. My two-minute walk to school is probably my favorite part...I love walking, but walking for a total of an hour and twenty minutes every single day was a little too much for me when I lived at Raintree. I also love my roommates, and I get my own room!! I ended up with the smallest one, but it's still a pretty decent size, it's not huge but it's definitely not too cramped or anything. All the rooms are pretty big, and we have brand new couches in our living room. I haven't taken any pictures of my room yet, but I'm waiting for Andy to come tonight and bring me a hammer and some nails to finish decorating and get my curtains up. Then I'll post pictures of that too!! The people here seem cool too, and I'm already met my bishopric and they're very friendly and seem like a lot of fun. I met a bunch of people my first night here and went over to one of their apartments to watch a movie, so I think it's a pretty good start to my summer. :)

Utah Flooding

North Dakota may have been almost totally underwater for the past few weeks, but I'm having my own small problems with flooding here in Utah. In the underpass, where I walk to get to school every day, somehow the storm drain got backed up and left a few inches of water in the way. A few inches sounds like it wouldn't be a big deal, but it's sort of a pain. At first I just ran through it as fast as I could, but when that made my shoes and socks wet, not to mention my pants and sometimes my shirt, I decided there must be a better way. I decided even though it took quite a bit out of me, I hoisted my huge bag up and jumped up onto the cement wall next to the walkway and walked over next to it. This wouldn't be a big deal, but it's been a week and the water hasn't moved an inch. I'm getting a little bit tired of jumping up and down walls that are just about as tall as I am. You might ask why I don't just walk all the way across up on the wall so I don't have to jump, but I would probably end up with a concussion, with the cement supports that go across at about 3 feet from the top of the wall. I am only hoping that it will go down soon. I don't know though, it's supposed to rain this next weekend, so it'll probably just get worse.

I'm moving out tomorrow!! I'm kind of excited, but at the same time I'm really sort of sad. I've really liked this apartment complex a lot and I've met so many awesome people. Now that I finally feel like I have friends, I have to go make new ones again. Oh well, I'm sure it won't be too hard, and at least I'll be in my new ward for a lot longer than I was in this one (3 months). I think I need to make a goal to meet more people though, and really try harder to get to know them better. It took me the whole 3 months here to really start feeling like I had some friends, and it still wasn't quite what I wanted. But then I realized I never really tried very hard till a couple of weeks ago. So that's one of my goals for my new ward and apartment. Another goal is to actually do my visiting teaching. It should be so easy with my companions and teachees living within 50 feet of my apartment (just like the rest of my ward :P), but it's not. It's so hard to get schedules worked out and getting stubborn college students here to cooperate when they think visiting teaching is for old, lonely ladies. Yeah, life is rough, I gotta say...

So I got my nails done again, only they're all the same this time! I've never had fake nails before, and definitely not ones that look like these, but I am starting to kind of like them. I always thought that this style looked really weird, the colored french manicure, but it's actually kind of fun for summer and everything. I guess. The only reason I did it in the first place was because I was in a nail class at school the other day and I was supposed to do my nails. Another girl did something similar to mine and I decided maybe it didn't look too stupid and I should try it since it was free. So there ya go...now I just have to not get so addicted to them that I leave them on for 7 years, like one of the girls in my class. She doesn't have real nails anymore actually, her fingers literally grew into her fake nails and she can't take them off, she just does them every month or so. Gross, huh? I think so.

For Dad!!

We do math in beauty school. :)

We did cornrows in school yesterday, and it really hurts to have it done. It also makes me feel like I should either be black or going to girls' camp. It's much more fun to take it out and go hot tubbing!!! My roommate said it would make her week if I went out to the hot tub with my hair this way, so I did. It was pretty funny. :) Everyone stared at me, and then apparently they made fun of me behind my back. It was a good night. Luckily I'm moving in a week and will hopefully never see any of them again! Not that I would really care that much anyway, I would have done it even if I wasn't moving. It was a good time.

Are you KIDDING me??

Waking up in mid-April in Utah, where it's supposed to be WARM, and looking out the door seeing THIS does not make my day:

Ya gotta love it. Oh well, I guess it will get warm again soon. I hope.

The story of my chopped off hair

I told myself and everyone else that I was definitely not going to cut my hair. I was going to stay strong in beauty school and have long hair the whole time. Then one morning I was washing it and thinking how annoying it was. I was blowing it dry and thinking about how long it takes. Then I was straightening it and hating how long it was taking to do my hair. I went to school and thought it was looking pretty scraggly on the ends anyway, and that I should cut it. I convinced myself I would love to cut it. Then I decided it only looked scraggly because it was raining out, and I re-straightened it a little bit and it was much better. I thought about how much product I was using to protect it from all that straightening and how much it costs, so I decided to cut it. And then Cass walked into the room with her beautiful, long blond hair. And I thought, "Nah, I like my hair. I don't want to cut it." And then a few days later, I had just barely passed my floor test and my hair was in a nasty ponytail, not done that day because I was too lazy, it was frizzy and not cooperating (yes, beauty school students have bad hair days too, don't worry). Finally I thought about it once more and after completely convincing myself I didn't want to cut it, I changed my mind and got it cut that night. I LOVE it. Don't get my wrong, I liked my hair a lot and I'm glad that I had it so long, but it was definitely time to chop it off. So here I am!!! With about 10 inches less hair! :)

Celebrate!!!

My roommate just got engaged - she is one of the three out of the six that was engaged, but she wasn't actually engaged till Monday, he just hadn't quite proposed. But she is officially engaged now and her diamond is HUGE. There is a kind of contest here all the time, who has the bigger diamond...it's kind of funny in a way, but sad too. Personally, I really wouldn't want a big honking rock on my finger. Some people look good with the bling, but I really don't think I could pull it off. The morning after she got engaged we (some of the roommates - Ariel, Liz, Ashley and me) went to The Happy Sumo for lunch to celebrate. Or maybe more just to have an excuse to go out to eat, I don't know. I felt slightly guilty for spending too much money on food, but I usually feel guilty about spending any amount of money anyway, so it didn't really make a difference. I made almost as much in tips today cutting hair as I spent on lunch that day, so it's all good!

More Adventures in Salt Lake

My friend Chad and I decided it would be fun to go around to all the temples close by here (which is some 7 or so within an hour or two) and do baptisms for the dead. Since he's endowed and neither of us have family names, he baptizes me. So far we've gone to Provo (of course), Mt. Timpanogos, Draper, and Salt Lake City. Yesterday we went to both Draper and Salt Lake City. It's interesting how every temple does the same thing, yet they all have their little differences in how they run things. Bismarck is definitely the odd one out, because it's so small. It was kind of cool going to the Salt Lake temple, because to get into the baptistery you have to find this little doorway that's kind of hidden and press a doorbell-like thing. It kind of makes me wonder how many non-members try to get in and how annoying that would be.

I love going to Salt Lake City. There are so many strange people there, I'm definitely not used to big cities. I love the train we take from our parking lot to Temple Square...I don't know what I love about trains so much, but that's half the fun of going to Salt Lake City for me. After we did baptisms there last night we went out to eat at an amazing place called Tucanos. It's a Brazilian grill, and you start off with a salad bar, then go get some potatoes and rolls, and waiters come around every two minutes or so with little pieces of different meat and give it to you. I love the barbecue chicken and garlic sirloin...but the chicken hearts aren't my favorite. They're not bad but they have a funny flavor. One of our waiters laughed at me because I was eating more than Chad. The way I look at it is even if I stuff myself way too much, I really need to make it worth his money. If he's going to spend some 30 dollars on just my food, I better eat 30 dollars worth. Anyway, the food there is so amazing that if I didn't eat every bite that I possibly could, I think I would regret it. After we ate, we went back to temple square, walked around a bit and took pictures.

For anyone that may be wondering, Chad is madly in love with me, and I think he's alright, but there is nothing between us. He's probably one of the nicest, most spiritual people I've ever met - Nick is still ahead of him in both of those areas - but he weirds me out sometimes (not often, but every now and then I can't help but stare and think "Did you really just say that?") and I just don't think anything would ever work between us, and he knows that. I do things with him because it's fun, he makes me laugh, and he buys me food. He kind of drives me crazy sometimes because he makes it a little bit obvious sometimes that he would marry me on the spot if he could, but I can put up with that for a couple more weeks till he leaves for California...if he keeps buying me food. ;)

I PASSED!!

Today I had 3 tests to take. One was the practical floor test, another was the written final to get out on the floor, and one was the weekly chapter test. It took all 8 hours at school to finish, it was absolutely crazy. Even though the tests aren't hard, I was terrified because I feel like the teacher I have right now is...lacking in ability to teach. I'm so glad that we're done and out of her class!!! She always puts things on tests that we never go over, and whenever we take tests (about 3 tests a week usually) she's really noisy with her little student friends that are already out of her class. She never shuts the door to our classroom during tests, even when it's really loud outside. It's so disrespectful and rude to us as students, I am so sick of it. But as I said before, I passed all of them and I am officially a student hairdresser ready to go show the world how awesome I am!!!

Working Hard at School

This is me at school...jamming out to my music before a test. It's hard work there, I tell you. Sometimes I don't know what to do with myself it's so much work. :P Tomorrow I have two written tests to take, plus my 7-hour practical floor test, and we haven't really reviewed for anything at all. I sure hope I'm ready. I think if I do fail anything it's going to be the written test, which I can just retake on Tuesday if I have to, so it wouldn't be a big deal anyway. But if I pass, I will finally be able to actually be on the floor and have clients!! I must say I'm pretty sick of just working on my manikin. She is getting boring and her hair is starting to be in kind of bad shape, probably because I'm slightly careless with it and I don't really care much if I scorch her hair or rip it out. Or burn her face or scalp. (Note: I will not treat real people the same way, no worries. Unless their name is Annabell, in which case I may accidentally think they're my manikin and we would have problems.) Our guest artist today was a nail technician, and guess who the model was? Yup, you guessed it. My friend Anika. No...just messing, it was me. The thing with being a nail model is that usually they do really weird things on your nails, and they never do all ten fingers. So I went to the temple tonight with one bright purple glittery nail, one green, purple swirly glittery nail, and two french-manicured nails, the last three being witch-like long. Ugh. Luckily, they were nice at the temple and said my nails were fine, which is good because the only thing that can take them off is filing (no acetone for this kind...) and I think I would have used about 56 emery boards if I'd tried to do it that way.

Salt Lake City Adventures

I had the opportunity to go to General Conference live for 3 of the 4 sessions this weekend. I went with some friends on Saturday and we listened to conference in the tabernacle for the first session, then after that we decided to go beg for tickets and see if anyone had any extras. To my surprise, within about 30 seconds of holding up a sign that said "tickets" we had all we needed, and the same thing happened for both sessions today. It was pretty sweet, I must say. I didn't know so many people ran around temple square with extra conference tickets. The protesters sort of made me laugh...they come up with the weirdest things to yell at us. One guy was screaming about how we shouldn't try to be like Joe Smith and take rabbits out of hats, because it's of the devil, and another guy was saying something about it being wrong to dress up as the Pillsbury Dough Boy. ???? For real, where do they even come UP with things like that? At least the people telling us to read the Bible made more sense, even though it might have been good for them to do some research and learn that we do read the Bible. It was pretty cool though, because a lot of time, while the people were yelling at us, members would line up along the sidewalks and sing hymns. It's interesting to me, I wonder if those people read the Bible. If they do, they must have missed the verse that says "By their fruits ye shall know them", unless, of course, they think screaming at people that they're going to hell is good fruit...

Anyway, conference was very good, as it always is. When I was younger, I used to wish that I could hear Joseph Smith speak, because he was such an amazing prophet and such, but I realize now that President Hinckley was and President Monson is every bit the man that Joseph Smith was. I'm so thankful that we have him to guide us and help us. It was amazing every time he walked into the room for conference, the entire room of 50,000 people instantly got silent and stood on their feet till he sat down. I love seeing the respect and reverence the church has for the prophet. I have never, ever in my life seen so many people get quiet so quickly. I'm not sure if there is anything that makes me love the church more than General Conference does. There's something about seeing and hearing the prophet speak that is really powerful, I can't really describe it. All I can say is that I know it's true, without a doubt in my mind.

So I don't think that I was allowed to take pictures...but I did anyway because I turned my flash off and that's the main reason they don't want people taking pictures anyway. I don't think President Monson would like to be blinded while trying to give a talk. Just a guess.

It was pretty funny on the drive home, because at almost any point between Salt Lake City and Provo, I could look out the window and see at least 3 chapels and a temple. At one point, I could see 8 chapels and 2 temples. Crazy, huh? I thought so. That's not exactly something you see in Minnesota very often. :P

Anybody want a haircut?

Or a fro?

Anyone? Anyone??