2013 in Review

I’ve been entirely terrible at blogging since I’ve returned to the states (note the lack of a single post in December. Oops!), but there have been so many major developments this year that I felt it would be shameful if I missed my annual review.

So, without further adieu, here’s a snapshot of my 2013!

JANUARY

Locations: Asahikawa, Japan

Included: I got transferred to the coldest area for sister missionaries in Japan just in time for the winter! Battling the snow every day was sometimes crazy, but it was also beautiful. Asahikawa also is home to a sweet zoo where they have a penguin walk, so I got to make some new animal friends. I may have gone on three p-days.

FEBRUARY

Locations: Asahikawa, Japan

Included: February continued to be super cold, but it took a turn for the awesome when we got to go to the world-famous yuki matsuri (a.k.a. snow festival) in Sapporo and the winter festival in Asahikawa. The sculptures were the size of buildings!

MARCH

Locations: Asahikawa, Japan

Included: The snow… was still a main feature of this month. I celebrated my 24th birthday and continued having fun serving the wonderful people in Japan.

APRIL

Locations: Asahikawa, Japan

Included: April was the first month the age change for girl missionaries hit our mission, so all of a sudden our numbers tripled! I also got my first non-Japanese companion, Sister Lundstrom from Ohio, and we had way too much fun together.

MAY

Locations: Asahikawa & Sapporo, Japan

Included: In May I was transferred to Sapporo to be a sister training leader, which meant my companion and I got to visit all of the areas in our mission to split up and train with the sister missionaries. It was so much fun to get team up with everyone, and a dream come true to see all of the different areas! We usually went to two locations in a week, so we were living out of our suitcases and hardly ever were in our own apartment.

JUNE

Locations: Sapporo, Japan; Portland, Ore.

Included: This was my last month of the mission and it was fast and crazy and fun as we continued to travel around Hokkaido every week. It was actually perfect because I got to see all of the people I had come to love in all of my areas one more time before I headed back to the states. Leaving was sad, but being reunited with my family after a year and a half was wonderful. I also enjoyed the whole being able to sleep in again thing too.

JULY

Locations: Portland, Ore.; Provo, Utah

Included: This was a whirlwind month of adjusting to being home, reuniting with friends, landing a job at KSL.com and then finding an apartment in Salt Lake City. It was crazy how fast things moved, but it all worked out so perfectly I know it was definitely what I was supposed to do.

AUGUST

Locations: Salt Lake City, Utah

Included: Moving to Salt Lake and getting settled at work was the biggest part of this month. It was a fun adventure! We also had a mini mission reunion when my last companion came into town from Japan, so I didn’t have to miss my mission friends for too long.

SEPTEMBER

Locations: Salt Lake City, Utah

Included: September was a pretty chill month. I continued to have fun exploring the area and Amber even came down from Provo a few times to eat something delicious.

OCTOBER

Locations: Salt Lake City, Utah

Included: I kept working and living and enjoyed the fall colors.

NOVEMBER

Locations: Salt Lake City, Utah; All over California

Included: The best part of this month was hands down tagging along with Amber and her friend for a Thanksgiving road trip to California. We hit up an extra-magical Disneyland on Thanksgiving, enjoyed warm beaches and visited the animals at the San Diego Zoo (in case anyone was wondering, I think I’ve been to three zoos this year for a total of six times). It was kind of hard to come back to cold Utah… as you may have guessed, I’ve had more than my fill of chilly weather this past year.

DECEMBER

Locations: Salt Lake City, Utah; Portland, Ore.

Included: The Christmas season featured fun parties in Salt Lake and then wonderful reunions back home in Portland! I got a fabulous week off from work to come home. I wasn’t here for Christmas last year, so that just made it even more special. It was a perfect end to a big year.

And that was 2013! I hope you all had a fantastic year as well, and that 2014 will be even more amazing.

*Song of the day = London, by She & Him. My next destination, perhaps?

A Confession in Print

There are some days where I really, really, really miss working at a newspaper.

This is one of those days.

Actually, this past week has been full of those days. I guess it should be expected that I would have withdrawals. I majored in journalism for a reason, after all. And I spent almost everyday of two and a half years of my college education in The Daily Universe newsroom working with awesome newspaper people, who are some of my favorite people in the world btw.

I just miss it. So much. Journalism, I will return to you soon! Just give me, oh, let’s say 18 months.

(The photo above is of the DU’s staff the last semester I worked there)

*Song = All My Loving by the Beatles, Across the Universe style.

Viva Journalism

I went from having never been to Las Vegas to going there twice in one year. This time was a lot different though, because I went for the National Convention of the Society of Professional Journalists instead of just to hang out. We drove down in a van and it was pretty sweet. I love any excuse to get out of town.

I heard from:

• Paul Overberg, database director for USA Today
• David Haddix, training director for IRE
• Victor Hernandez, director of domestic newsgathering CNN
• Mike Toppo, senior director of news operations & production CNN.com
• Rich Barbieri, deputy managing director of CNN Money
• Roy Harris, author and former Wall Street Journal reporter
• Alexandra Berzon, reporter for the The Wall Street Journal
• Mark Maremont, senior editor for the Wall Street Journal
• Rob Curley, Las Vegas Sun media guy
• And many other really cool people

Learned:

• A lot of things. About Journalism.

The group at the Review-Journal (stolen from Cerissa):

We went there and met with the managing editor, which was really interesting. And they gave us free pizza, which is always a plus.

And some more fun in pictures:

I wish I was in the real Paris… but this will have to do.

The convention was in Planet Hollywood. We spent a LOT of time waiting in this spot for the van haha.

Note the new skirt I’m in love with that I bought at Anthropologie (!) very much on sale in Caesar's Palace.

Newseum

Exactly one month ago today I went to the Newseum, so I figured this is a good time to post the pictures I took there. Out of all the museums I went to this was definitely my favorite. But I might be a little biased since I am a journalism major….

Here are some highlights, starting with the view from the top. It just happened to be the Capitol Pride festival the day I went up, so Pennsylvania was filled with people.

Right next to the patio they have the front pages of all of the newspapers. The Oregonian has some encouraging news for those who just graduated… not.

Now on to the best stuff. One of the most compelling and moving exhibits was for 9/11. They had a video of interviews with reporters who were there when it happened, and the front pages of newspapers from the next day from all over the world. There was even the tv tower from one of the Twin Towers. I could have stayed there forever. It really brought back the emotion from that day.

And they also have the largest portion of the Berlin Wall outside of Berlin, complete with an original watchtower you can walk in. They really did an amazing job of combining news coverage with artifacts to tell the stories of what happened in history. I highly recommend it! Go to D.C. now.

Watergate

So I finally finished my goal of reading All the Presidents Men just before leaving D.C. (I got back to Portland late last night). We tried to read it for SPJ at BYU this past semester, but somehow never really got around to it. Since I had already bought it to read I brought it to D.C. and I carried it around in my bag all summer, reading it on lunch breaks and on the Metro. Reading it in D.C. was fabulous, because sometimes the action would be happening right where I was, like at Lafayette Park next to the White House where we lunched every day. When I finished since we lived five minutes from the Watergate hotel we walked over for a little photo shoot…

P.S. brace yourself for a million catch up blog posts.

Finally

Last semester for my photojournalism class we had to do an audio slideshow, so I did mine on the Provo Farmer’s Market because I am naturally attracted to such things. The one here has nothing on the one in Portland, but it’s still fun. Anyways, since the school didn’t have the right plug-in to turn the slideshow into a file I could use it was stuck in the computer lab until last night. For the longest time the only way I could show it to anyone was to drag them into the Brimhall building, but now it has been liberated from the third computer on the right and is here on my blog for all to see. I know you’re excited.

And thanks again to the lovely Katie Andrus, who let me interview her for this. It was in October so she probably forgot it ever happened. But she’s cool so you should check out her blog.

Here’s the video. It’s only a minute thirty, so you totally have time to watch it.

Or there's a better one on vimeo. It just doesn't want to cooperate and fit on my blog.

http://vimeo.com/9159898

Love Her

To give you some more incentive to check out UPP I’m posting a link to the story I wrote. It’s right here. All you have to do is click on it.

http://www.utahpeoplespost.com/news/byu/the-ups-and-downs-of-life-as-a-byu-athlete

It’s on my roommate Sam. She’s really cool and on the BYU swim team. I met her freshman year and we’ve lived together ever since, minus London. So you should like her too.

Here’s a picture of us.

My (Imaginary) Spare Time

I’ve started working on a new project on the side that goes by the name of the Utah People’s Post, or UPP (think cute Pixar movie) for short. It’s a cool start-up company founded by a BYU alum and Harvard Law grad that aims to provide hyper-local news coverage of Provo.

It’s a lot of fun for me because we’re doing a lot of things that we talk about in my classes as being a possibility for the future of journalism. Not that I think print papers and newspaper institutions as they are will go completely extinct (please no, not ever), but things will definitely evolve so it’s been great to get some experience with the development of a new media site from the development on. It’s also a lot of fun because with this mini internship I can do any kind of project I want. I can write an article on any subject or make an audio slideshow or whatever else. You name it and it’s most likely fair game.

So the moral of the story is that you should check it out. We just barely launched the site two days ago, so it’s still hot off the cyber presses. Go to utahpeoplespost.com to check it out!

Go Santa Go!

In honor of how fast Santa will have to travel from rooftop to rooftop tonight, here are some pictures from the Santa run that was on Center Street in Provo a couple of weeks ago.

Happy Holidays, and don't forget to put out cookies tonight!

My Magazine

I finished my final project for my publication design class and I'm pretty excited about it. We had to create 6 pages of our own magazine from scratch. We started with a blank page and had to come up with our own concepts and find all of the art and everything, so it took a lot of time but I'm really happy with the result, and I hope you like it too. You can even click them to make them bigger if you want.

A fun note, the pictures on page five (of the girls in dresses) were taken by my friend Olivia from high school. She goes to NYU now and has her own company called Olivia Renee Photography. You should check out her Web site or her blog because she is cool.