Year in Review 2011

I know it’s not quite the end of the year yet, but since I’m about to disappear for 18 months I think I deserve some leeway. I just loved doing my year in review so much last year that I wanted to do it again! Plus so many fun and important things happened this year there was no way I could skip this.

JANUARY

Locations: Provo

Included: January was a long time ago so I have to admit that I don’t remember exactly what I did with myself. But, I know that I was at school having fun doing things like going to basketball games and Sam’s swim meets. I also made a wonderful repeat trip to the Sundance Film Festival with Rebecca.

FEBRUARY

Locations: Provo

Included: What I’m gathering from my photos is that to survive school and the winter my roommates and I decorated our apartment with lots of fun Valentines stuff (most of which we never took down). And I made a lasagna.

MARCH

Locations: Provo, Orderville

Included: March is always an automatic win because it contains my birthday. However, this time there was a sad note when I had to say goodbye to my grandmother, but it at least came with a nice side effect in that I got to see my family and stop by Zion’s National Park for the first time.

APRIL

Locations: Provo, Houston

Included: So much happened this month it’s crazy! First and foremost, I graduated from BYU. And there were a lot of fun parties and such that went along with it. A couple of days after graduation Amber and I flew down to Houston for my roommate Sam’s wedding to Erick! It was so beautiful.

MAY

Locations: Honolulu, Portland, Washington D.C.

Included: My family and I were able to make it back to Hawaii! It was the just what I needed right after finishing school. I got to relax at home for a little bit, and then moved back to Washington, D.C. for another internship. This time I interned for my Senator, Ron Wyden, and it was an fabulous experience. Annie even came to visit me for Memorial Day.

JUNE

Locations: Washington D.C., New York City

Included: I continued my internship, and Amber came and visited me! We spent some time in the district before meeting up with Annie in New York City for a weekend of adventure.

JULY

Locations: Washington D.C.

Included: July in D.C. is always just a magical thing for obvious reasons. Plus, Annie came down and visited me again for the 4th of July weekend. Some other friends came a stopped by too!

AUGUST

Locations: Washington D.C.

Included: My internship ended in the middle of August, and then I got to have a fantastic time doing things like sleep in and survive Hurricanes. Kaitlin came up from Richmond to visit me too, so we got to play in the district together and check out the new MLK Memorial.

SEPTEMBER

Locations: Washington D.C., Philadelphia, Honesdale

Included: I decided to stick around the D.C. area while I figured out a more long-term plan for my life. I think I visited every single museum in the district. Best of all I was able to take a road trip up to Honesdale, PA to visit Annie at her place for once!

OCTOBER

Locations: Washington D.C., Portland

Included: I played around in D.C. a little bit more and hung out with some lovely friends before moving back home to Portland to put in my mission papers. I got called to Sapporo, Japan!

NOVEMBER

Locations: Portland

Included: I got to enjoy being home in the fall for the first time since high school, and because they are awesome friends both Melissa and Annie came to visit me. Amber even came home for an extra long Thanksgiving break.

DECEMBER

Locations: Portland

Included: Leaving for my mission to Japan! Well, in a few days. But it will be in this month.

I love you all and hope you’ll continue to stalk my blog while I’m on my adventures in Japan! It’s crazy that I report to the MTC this Wednesday, but I think I am ready to be busy again and am really excited to serve. This next year and a half will definitely hold a lot of changes, and I hope you stick around for the ride!

If you’re in the market for a new hobby, might I suggest writing letters to me? Amber will be keeping my address updated in the sidebar, and I would love to get anything from you, even if it’s just a doodle on a sticky note! I’m not picky.

Miss you already! But don’t worry; I’ll be back before you know it.

*song = Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing performed by Sufjan Stevens

City Safari

-----------------------------------Rewind!-------------------------------------

-------------Old draft from September I’m finally publishing-------------------

Today I went into the district and I saw:

An orangutan

A playful tiger that wanted to be my friend… or maybe to have me as a snack

Stripy zebras

Sneaky cheetahs

And playful lion cubs!! So adorable!!! I could watch them all day. They made me want to watch The Lion King so so so bad.

I’m sure you’ve figured out by now that I went to the National Zoo. It’s a zoo that’s free! It’s like magic. I’ve been there twice in the past two weeks, and I’m fairly certain I should have gone more. (update: I totally did go more)

I topped it off with some pumpkin fro*zen*yo. What a perfect fall day!

*Christmas song of the day = Slow Club’s Christmas TV

The Lost Blog Posts

So, these next few entries aren’t going to be of the freshest variety of posts. For some reason I was under the false impression that when I got home I would have nothing to do other than sit around and blog about D.C. and eat pomegranates (those things are time consuming!). Of course, I didn’t take into account the fact that I would be putting in my mission papers in record time (start to finish = one week for all interviews and doctor appointments).

Moral of the story: some old gems will be coming on here in the next few days as part of my attempt to start tying up all of my loose ends before I disappear. Today I give you the examining of the Washington Monument after the earthquake. I was walking along the Mall when I saw this. Awesome, right?

Watching the guys all the way up there was super entertaining. They were so high!

Apparently I wasn’t the only one who thought so.

It’s closed, so the park rangers were showing people pictures of the cracks and chunk of the Monument that fell off!

I miss walking around there all of the time and people watching (there are some really interesting people to watch…). Now I have to get my does of D.C. from watching Covert Affairs. It’s not the same.

*Holiday song of the day = The Goo Goo Dolls’ Better Days (I can never decide if it’s actually a Christmas song, but it’s on an old NBC Holiday CD I own, so I’m going with yes?)

Farewell for Now, D.C.

It seems crazy that it’s only been one week since I was frolicking around in D.C. But I spent my last weekend there having an amazing time enjoying all D.C. has to offer with Kaitlin, Caitlin & Alex. Thanks guys for being awesome!

Here’s some of what it looked like:

On one of my last days Caitlin & I played in Georgetown, including discovering a delicious fish n' chips place on the waterfront. It was lovely.

\

And Kaitlin came and visited again from Richmond! It was wonderful. We made the rounds to all of the classic D.C. sites and the National Zoo to see the adorable lion cubs, even though it was FREEZING! Apparently it was the coldest it’s ever been in the area during this time of year. But it was so worth the cold.

And this was our last trip to the heavenly Baked & Wired. I’m already suffering from severe OMG Bar withdrawals…

*song = Little Bribes by Death Cab for Cutie

Remembering Ten Years Ago

It’s unreal that it’s been so long. It still seems unreal that it ever happened in the first place. I think that might actually be the best word to sum it all up – unreal. I remember my mom saying that the morning of Sept. 11 either she or Amber had been flipping through the channels on the TV before I woke up and had passed over the footage of the twin towers because they thought it was a movie. It just wasn’t something that could even be considered real. But it was real.

I think everyone has a story, and when you start thinking about that day you just naturally feel a need to share the way you experienced it. Because even though not everyone was there, it still had an impact on everyone. 

My first sign that something was different was when I came down the stairs to go to school. I was 12 years old, and I was getting ready to go to Five Oaks Middle School. It was actually going to be an exciting day for me – before school I was finally getting my first pair of contacts. But when I woke up and went down to breakfast the news was on, which was unusual for my house in the morning, and the most terrible footage was playing. It was unreal. The day still went on, but it seemed somehow tainted. It was a beautiful September day, and the sky was the most perfect shade of blue. But the fact that everything looked so perfect when everything was so wrong seemed somehow cruel. The beautiful potential of that fall day had been shattered, marred by a much more horrific reality. I still went and got my contacts. I watched the news in the waiting room at the Kaiser optometrist. I watched the news at school, on a TV set up on a rolling cart in the library. I watched the news when I got home. Partially because I’ve always been a news addict, but I think we were all glued to the news. Because if this could happen, what would happen next? What would the next days, weeks and months hold?

And things changed, but they stayed the same. What did Sept. 11 really mean? I went to a Smithsonian exhibit this week where at the end they asked visitors to write down how Sept. 11 changed their lives. I think that’s something we’re still trying to figure out. Maybe we don’t think about it explicitly every day anymore, but the consequences and implications of what happened are still playing out.

The picture above is one I took last year of a 31-foot piece of the broadcast antenna from the North Tower, as on display at the Newseum. Below are some pictures I took this week at the American History Museum. They had an intimate showing of some artifacts from the day, and since most of you aren’t here to see it I thought I would share the experience with you as best I could.





Pieces of Flight 93 recovered from the field in Pennsylvania





A crushed door from one of the first fire trucks to arrive



A clock that stopped when the Pentagon was hit



A piece of one of the planes that hit the Twin Towers

Also, here’s a link to President Monson’s guest blog for the Washington Post on 9/11 and spirituality. I think today is a fitting day for some reflection.

*song = Yellowcard’s Believe, which was written in honor of the firefighters and police officers who lost their lives trying to rescue people in the towers.