A week of bad news:

Well this week has been great but riddled with bad news throughout it as well. First: i got my letter back about my ticket (background: i got a speeding ticket the weekend i was celebrating my birthday, yup clear back in October, and i wrote a letter to see if i could get any good graces and have the ticket lowered or even not have to pay it at all) well none of the above happened they just informed me that i have 90 days to pay the full amount of $162. That's money that a poor college student doesn't have. Second: this is my last semester to get a GPA and i was trying to keep my 3.5 that i currently had... well i checked my grades today and i now have a 3.489 with no hopes of raising it even though i have a semester + worth of work i have to finish. Yippy. Third: i was supposed to find out today if i got a $1000 scholarship... but haven't heard anything about it yet. :( The silver lining: No news it better than bad news so i will keep hoping for now. (key word: for now).

Now that i have vented:

Tis the season to remember what life is really all about and about the birth of our Savior and all he does for us. I am also so very grateful that I get to spend time this Christmas with my family in Texas. Yup now that it has almost been a year and a half i get to see my sisters Collette and Joy and i get to see my parents as well. Also i am surrounded by the laughter of my little man, Jayden, get to meet baby Asher, as well as enjoy my brother and sister-in-laws company!

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!

Truck Truck LIVES!!!

Yep she is all fixed and running great again. I am so happy to have my wheels back!

A frog in the classroom

You see a lot of wild animals all around in Hawaii. I have seen roosters and chickens in the hale (dorm) courtyards, in the halls of the university, and yes... walking across the roads as well. Also we get lovely geckos that randomly show up on your windshield while you are driving down the middle of the road. Like this little guy... (true story that has happened like 3 times now!)

Well today while i was at my high school a frog decided to join the random wild animal in the wrong place festivities. But he did not join on his own accord. Of course a kid in the class who was coming back from the restroom herded the frog into the classroom to make a scene and proceeded to tell the teacher in his most innocent voice that "a frog came in the classroom". So the teacher came over as well as another boy who was going to do something with his slipper (flip flop) to the frog. Knowing that he herded it in there i did not want to give the boy the satisfaction of making a huge scene. So to create this less dramatic scene i walked over and pick up the frog to take it outside. no big deal right. WRONG! This got a big "EEWWW" from the students while i repeatedly said "its just a frog!" After the class was adamant that i went and washed my hands. This entire episode essentially resulted in me doing the complete opposite of my goal and I made a scene. And so I give my congratulations to the freshman kid who got exactly what he wanted from the frogs visit. Some apparently much needed attention and distraction from his education. Next time though....i will not be fooled again!

Fool me once... shame on you. Fool me twice...shame on me!

going back to high school

Well i guess that i have done something wrong because i am now back in a freshman high school class twice a week. Ok so Im not a student but i am starting my O&P and student teaching. Yup i am starting my O&P and now am working with a freshman class. Thankfully i have yet to be hit on but the key word is YET... i am sure i will share these precious gems of stories.

Yesterdays great comment:

Girl: are you a new TA?

Me: no, i am a student teacher

Girl: oh so that means your in college?

Me: yeah

Girl: you look young for a college student

Me: Thanks?!?!?

Lessons and observations so far:

1. Age: it will be interesting and the goal is to not let anyone figure out my age

2. Its going to be a long semester but it should be fun!

Here is to going back to high school...

Lesson Learned

REGULARLY CHECK AND CHANGE YOUR OIL!

yep this is one of those hard on your pockets lessons in life. Since i bought my truck i have not checked or changed the oil. BIG mistake. so on Monday a friend was using my car to take his boat out. On the way home it sputtered like it was out of gas and DIED! not only did it die, but it died 200 yards from my house in a place where i could see it while sitting on my love seat. it was taunting me and laughing in my face. This happened on Monday and it sat on the side of the road until Wednesday morning. The reason it sat there... because i magically thought that if it stayed there it would start and i could drive it home. did that happen.. nope :( so i had to have two of my guy friends run the car home. and by run i mean push and run at the same time because we were pushing it down the Hwy. (its only a 35mph hwy). but we got enough speed to go over a curb so that i could park the car in our parking lot of broken cars. (Out of the 6 cars in our drive way only 2 are currently running. ( Cameron would be in heaven here)). So now i am trying to figure out the most cost effective way to fix her; I'm crossing my fingers that she is fixable and not going to break my little non-existent bank. So until further notice i am using a friends car until Sunday and who knows how I'm going to get to my student teaching, that i bought the car for, on Tuesday... stressing much... YEP! but i am trying to be optimistic and there is always the bus... oh joy! lessons in life teach us so much. Now i pledge to ALWAYS change my oil regularly!

Warts:

I have had some warts on one of my ankles and today i had the joy of getting them frozen off. Yeah i was terrified. I knew sort of what to expect but that did not make my anxiety about it any better. What i learned form this experience: getting them frozen off hurts and they don't just fall off right after they have to scab over and then fall off a couple days later so my hopes of having sexy, wart free legs again was a bust and now i am required to have more patience. Also what i have learned from today's wart extravaganza is that you never realize how much you use or touch a certain part of your body until there is pain or discomfort there. Since i have gotten this done mere hours ago i have already hit one of them and made it bleed and have bumped them many other times as well. NO FUN!
Why am i telling you this? It was a traumatic experience that i was freaking out about but had to suck it up and face it. That's life for ya.

It's Back!

MY CAMERA!!!!!
yep thats right the camera is back which means there there will no longer be anymore photo-less posts! yippy! so to kick off this camera extravaganza here is my photo scavenger hunt triple date.

The Story/Plan:

Cami, Kelly and I (aka me and my roommates) decided to all ask some guy friends out on a fun date. so we planned the date and decided to do a scavenger hunt from Laie to Kaneohe (its about a 40 min drive). Each of us and our dates would be in separate cars and we would have a list to take pictures of. A special shout out goes to Kylie and Ariel for making the scavenger hunt for us. since we are so competitive we had them make it so we wouldnt know what was on the list and try and plan things out. hahah yeah we are that competitive. so we picked up our dates at 5:30 and had to be at Bostons pizza by 7:00 (cell phone time, so our times were synchronized).

My Date:

Chris Ivie from Boston.

The List:

Putting Flowers on a Grave

The Word Aloha

A double whammy: An interesting car (for those who don't know: that's my roommates incredibly beat up and run down truck) and the male date in a skirt.

Another Double Whammy: A random Asian giving the peace sign and some Mormon missionaries.

Jumping and Doing a 360 at a red light
Walking through a Drive Through


A Sunset (it was cloudy so we had to make due).
A homeless man (the guy in the hat in the back)

With mustaches


The female date with a button up shirt and tie on

A Porta-Potty


A pyramid... we had to be creative so the mannequin is our third person!

someone with longer hair that you or your dates: her hair is in a ponytail so it is longer than mine.
A stranger with Facial Hair: the guy in the background has some

By a road sign. and yes this is an actual and real Stop Sign... just blue


COWS!
A door knob

A tourist in Hawaiian Apparel (this one didn't count :( )

one of us being a street performer asking for money. I was doing the little teapot song.

Giving a worker at Hot Dog on a Stick a high-5

The man picking out a wedding ring. hahahha


Things we missed on the list:
A pregnant woman
Holding a live baby
and a smashed toad.

The Results:

We lost by one to Cami and her date Matt. :( Kelly and her date, Christian, took last place gracefully because they were the least competitive of the group....

Dinner:

we went and had pizza at a place called boston's pizza which was really good and just shared our stories and pictures while laughing and trying to eat pizza. Yeah we didnt quite think this part thorugh very well because im sure we were not impressing our dates with pizza faces, full mouths and laughing. But oh well.

The Afterwards:

we decided to run to Jamba Juice for desert where we found a group of people outside in the courtyard area having a bible study lesson thing... so being the ambitious and daring person i am i dared the other people in my group, since 4 out of the 6 of us were returned missionaries, to go up and talk to them about the gospel. So we went outside and the boys went up and started talking to them and they invited us to sit in with them and listen..... the listening part was a little blurred because we wanted to teach them too so we started offering other biblical scriptures and putting in our two cents. Everything was fine until someone (not my date) decided to give a Book of Mormon scripture and that didn't go over too well. after that it was a lot more listening. But it was another introduction the the church so maybe we were helping them in the future.

OVERALL:

It was a great date and we had a blast and are now going to plan more of these roommate dates more often.

Chillin like a Villin

CAT IS HERE! yup my bestie from cali is visiting! wahoo one fun filled week of sun, sand, and shenanigans.

Well this is all after a fun filled week that i spent in Washington visiting my brother and family and playing with a friend :). I LOVE WASHINGTON! i had never really been there besides for soccer and we were in and out in a matter of days. It is so cool. Saw a bunch of different wildlife: a Bald eagle, mountain sheep, black tail deer, golden finch, just to name a few. However Mount. Rainier is still a mystery mountain to me. We took the Chanook pass not once but TWICE to see a great view of this mountain and it failed. Never saw it!! Guess i will have to go back... I think im ok with that! I also went kayaking, mountain biking, and shot some GUNS!!

yup i was packin! hahaha yeah finally shot something bigger than a bee-bee gun and im not that bad of a shot if i do say so myself. Hit my very first pigeon like the very first one thrown for me! yea-ya! i was hit and miss after that but went three for three at the end!! WHOOT WHOOT! yup had a blast going to Seattle and eating at a bunch of different places.

Had a blast with the brother and family. LOVED playing with baby Karys and chatting it up with Kassy. I froze on the fourth of July waiting for the fireworks. Mind you it was probably only like 65 degrees outside. (i dont really know the temperature but it was really cold!!!). Yeah i loved Washington! and now i get to have a blast with Cat Cat!

Good news: sent the camera in to get it fixed... well hopefully it will get fixed if the warranty is still good and they like me. so then i can post pictures. eventually this will once again be more than just words.... eventually.

I am Alive!!!

So since the computer break down i have not posted due to the lack of a personal computer and i didnt want to sit on my roommates to post. But.... My computer is BACK! thats right! so I was blessed yesterday finding a garage sale that had a monitor for sale so i now have my ten dollar monitor and accomplish all of my computer necessities!!

So updates.....

I bought my first car... well truck! yup i now am the proud owner of Jude: the gold '93 ford ranger!

This is Jude!

Next: I got a new job! thats right i quit my old job and got a new one as a tutor in the reading and writing center. This is totally a blessing! i am so excited to learn how to tutor and understand all this fun grammar and be able to continue using all of this through my career as a English Teacher.

Finally i had some visitors come and we got to play all week. My brother Dallin and wifey Cindy and her parents came to my island and we had loads of fun! but unfortunately my camera broke so i don't have any pictures from our adventures. I am so grateful that they came out and that they have been happily married for 5 years!

I will be posting more pictures later of some of the fun things we did before my camera died!

Broken :(

So the computer is broken. Yup sad day especially when it was during the middle of finals and i still had like 5 more papers to write. Not fun. Luckily though it is just my backlight that is going out so if i get a monitor then i can still use my computer! wheww. So thats why there are no posts lately cause i don't like using my sweet roommates computers all the time. So once i figure out the situation there will be some back posts, and more frequent posts as well.

PS. Good thing my favorite computer technician, and lovely wifey, are coming out to visit!

Our life is a PARTY when there is no school!

4 Day weekend fun in pictures and videos.

I Like To Ride My Bicycle, I Like To Ride My Bike

Today was the dedication of the bike path that has been built between Kahuku and Laie, and it was a PARTY. If you have had any experience with Hawaiians this is what they know how to P-A-R-T-Y!!! Well we walk up and of course we are not only greeted by the delicious smells of BBQ but see 4 pigs roasting on a spit. Yup. it was a great greeting.

And then we all got to go and watch and listen to the program and culturally uplifting event. My hopes of going to this is the enticings of a winning a free bike. But we left when they started eating because there was a huge line and were not present for the drawing for the 15 bikes they had to give away because we had a ward BBQ to get to. It was great to see the integration of culture into the simple dedication of a mile and a half bike path.

enjoy the little taste of the culture in the video of the Keiki ("children" in Hawaiian) and the others involved in the ceremony.

Walking in the Moonlight!

For the record sized moon we decided to do something adventurous so we went on a hike. Our original plan: to hike by moonlight. However, the tree canopy and clouds thought differently. so luckily 3 out of the 12 people that went had flashlights (well it was like 2 flashlights and a bike light that worked like a candle). Add limited lighting to mounds of muck and mud with a rewarding waterfall at the end and you have out adventure.

It was so much fun even though i was throughly creeped out the entire time. Thankfully i was able to cling on to my roommate, Whit-nasty. She was one of the lucky ones who got to use a flashlight since she is pretty much legally BLIND in the dark. We are proud to say though that out of the 7 girls that went were were the only two who did not slip and fall on our butts. OH YEAH!!! But Whit-nasty did happen to step into mud that was ankle deep and run smack into a tree (like i said legally blind). Well since it was dark we ended up wandering around and got lost quite a bit....yea I know.. a little worrisome but still we got to the waterfall ( and home too). Of course i couldn't do all the work and walking without a reward so i got over my anxiety and went swimming in a big deep dark freezing pond in the moon light and jumped off the lower portion right next to the falls. Amazing. i am so happy that i actually went swimming and jumped or else i would have been pissed at myself.

So for this whole trip including a 45 min drive there a mile and a half hike a little time at the falls the hike back and the 45 min drive home, it took us a grand total of 5 &1/2 hours!!! now in perspective thats us getting lost and hiking for 4 HOURS, thats over a hour to walk ONE mile. oops oh well! hahah

Me after being frozen and swimming in the pond.
Most of our group riding up in Vicky. Yeah i know i look like a retard, but this is the only picture that i am actually in with our whole group. at least it is a struggle for everyone :)

A hitch-hikers guide to Hawaii (look for the big blue van!)

First meet vicky:

a 1983 blue Volkswagen Vanagon that my neighbor bought and named Vicky. She is a PARTY on wheels! She only had a long bench in the very back and two front seats when he bought her. But because of our large family, aka the compound, we needed more seating. So to fix this solution, on a middle of the week midnight walmart run we found a corner piece to a large sectional on the side of the road and picked it up, graffiti and all. to fix this nasty solution we put a tye-dyed cover on both the couch and the back seat, with aloha print seat covers for the front. We sure did make her into the perfect hippie crusin' Hawaiian ride that we love to take on adventures!

So now that you have met Vicky you can hear about the adventure that occurred last Saturday. Pretty much everyone in the compound decided to ride the bus to Kailua for the afternoon but didn't leave until around 1 in the afternoon. NOT a good idea in my mind so i stayed home to catch some rays at good ol Hukilau beach. But Vicky had other ideas. Me and one of my other roommates (Vicky's "mother" or better known as the owners girlfriend :) decided to stay and that we would go get acai bowls from our favorite old local joint since it reopened recently. Our original plan was to hitch-hike there but having some girlfriend privileges my neighbor offered Vicky for our assistance and told us to "take other people with us and get to know them" well we both failed and fulfilled this request. We left Laie, with only the two of us in the car... and soon filled her with 6 other passengers along the road. Yup we picked up 6 hitch-hikers on the way to our sweet treats. (ok mother before you freak out, i knew 2 of the girls and they were all BYUH students too) once we filled our craving for our missing friend the acai bowl, we decided to "take pictures, and cool shots" since it was just the two of us...we FAILED miserably. Whit took a total of 2 pictures and i took barely any while driving. So we decided to just go home... but we wernt done picking up friends. YUP we picked up more hitch-hikers . our first treasure was a French man on Holiday that came to surf. It was interesting to chat it up a little with him and to hear his rockin accent. While he was still in the car we stopped and picked up 5 more BYUH students bringing our grand total to 12 accidental passengers. :) what a great weekend!!

A little clip of our ride :) yeah we are that cool.

P.S. those were not my shades they came with Vicky and i had the urge to wear them for the video.

A few great pictures that were successes of Waimea showing the great weather and time we had

For Free

A little catchup...

I found my camera so there will be pictures included :) wheeew

Recently i have found my new favorite thing is to go on to craigslist and see what i can get for free. This all started from me finding a tv and entertainment center for free and now i am hooked. I have to look on craigslist at least 4-5 times a day or more: aka every time i get online :) but i have found some cool things but cant get them unfortunately cause my roommates car is broken but we will start picking more things up once we get it fixed.

Also new to my life is a new roommate. My old roommate Alexis left us so she was replaced this month by ALEX. She is an off track student from BYUI who is out here to have fun and live it up with us. It has been fun getting to know her and to and a new flavor into our house :)

We also had one of Cami's old companions come and visit for 11 days and so we have had a blast showing her around th island and taking her to our favorite places.

School is going we are currently in the middle of Midterms and trying to remember why we are going to school and that there is a light at the end of the tunnel of all this work. It is crazy to think that i will be graduating from College in a little more than 1 year!!! thats right ONE YEAR!!!! wahooooo. Anyone who wants to save up some pesos and come visit lovely Hawaii next spring is welcome and we will have one great big party.

Here is the picture of the free TV and Entertainment center :)

Another Fun Saturday

Well sorry no pictures but my camera is MIA right now which is tragic, but today was fun! first I need to say that our house is blessed. We all got so many blessings these past couple days: first i found out that my appeal to get my scholarship that was revoked got approved so i get my scholarship!!! and My roommate finally got hey check that she has been waiting for ever for. And not only that she bought her car finally so she has a cute little truck and then my neighbor bought the coolest old Volkswagen van! and its blue. We are all so blessed. So we all decided to go to Waimea, laid out on the beach and then went to Stortos (our favorite sandwich shop in Haleiwa). Then we hit up Matsumotos (The famous Shaved Ice place!) and then came home. What a great weekend! i will try to post photos soon!

Update

Sorry no Pictures this post but i will work on that.

Well everyone is back! YEA!!! and by everyone i mean new and old people. I got 3 new house-mates Becky, Whitney (aka Whitnasty) and Cami (she kinda actually already lived here but didnt pay rent, she was just always over :)) but they are back and of course now that we are all here and that school has started the problems have started as well.

First problem: OUR FRIDGE/FREEZER BROKE!!!!! oh nooooo!!! its been crazy trying to figure out where to fit our food in other peoples fridges and stuff but hopefully we manage through this one.

Problem number two is more of a time issue: I have to read 22 NOVELS in 14 weeks ahhhh. Now many of you know that i love to read. BUT when i am told what and when i have to read i struggle so bad at reading the books. So im just gonna have to kick myself in the but and Do it!

well thats about all i can think of right now so.... See ya!