Beautiful Melissa

No Autographs Please

2011-10-15T16:02:00.000-07:00

Me and my roommate Karen are huge Demi Lovato fans, especially the song "Here We Go Again". We made a music video to honor Demi and her hair flips. It is probably one of the best videos on YouTube. Mine and Karen's hidden talent for singing, dancing and hair flips has surprised many people. We are really famous for this music video so I will be surprised if anyone hasn't seen it but I still included it in this post. Don't worry, I won't let being famous go to my head but it does come at a cost. We are debating between which record label to sign on. Everywhere Karen and I go, people are always asking for pictures and autographs and don't even get me started with the paparazzi. And I wouldn't be surprised if we won an award at the next Video Music Awards. (Amber and Jenny are our stage names, I'm Amber)

Paris (Part 1)

2011-08-30T09:53:00.001-07:00

I went to Paris last week and there was so much to do. So I will use two posts.

Here I am in front of Notre Dame. It is so beautiful on the inside. There were these huge elaborate stained glass windows and there was such incredible paintings inside.

This is at the top of the Eiffel Tower and it was so scary. It felt like the elevator was going up forever. This boy in front of me got scared because I was so scared.

Obviously, I am the Eiffel Tower in this pic. I went all the way to the top and it was so scary. It felt like the elevator was going up forever. This boy in front of me got scared because I was so scared.

Versailles: Just the house alone is 17 acres. And the total property is 37,000 acres. It was so incredible to see paintings or sculptures that I had studied in my Humanities class but was sure that I would never see in real life.

Garden of Versailles. So pretty. I brought my book, found a quite part of the gardens and layed in the sun (since the sun has been so rare this summer) reading for a little bit.

Paris (Part 2)

2011-08-30T09:32:00.000-07:00

In front of the Louvre. I was there for 4 hours and I barely saw half of it.

I am a muse...

The famous Mona Lisa, which is rather quite small.

I look so classy in my beret. Now that I have one I think I will read poetry while snapping my fingers in a coffee shop with other people as classy as me.

From this church you could see the whole city of Paris. I think it's funny because there was a sign that said "to respect the sacredness of the church please no pictures" but then they had those coin machines that Disneyland has where it smashes a coin into a cool shape. So as I was walking through it sounded like I was walking by slot machines.

1-meter pizza

2011-08-17T14:22:00.001-07:00

Yesterday my friends and I ate a 1-meter pizza...ummm. It was so delicious. The waitress gave us plates and silverware while we were waiting for our pizza, but I think that was just to use up time because they were taking forever to make the pizza. When the pizza came we were all so ravenous that we just grabbed pizzas with our hands. The waitress barely had time to get out of the way. It was a really good pizza.

Afterwards we went to the park that was next to the restaurant. It wasn't technically a big kid playground but big kids were playing on it so it was a big kids playground last night. This is me and my cousin on this bridge thing that moved so much. We spent like 20 min just playing on that bridge.

This swing thing was amazing. it was a seat that was hanging from a line and you sit on it and slind down the line. Finally my friends dragged me away from it. I think I could have played on it all night long.

Beer, trains and the temple

2011-08-13T11:52:00.000-07:00

Ok so there was a beer festival the other day and what better place to wear a dirndl? And I wanted to get a cup but it was 3.50 euros to buy a cup or you can get a drink and a cup for 4 euros and who can pass up a deal like that. Although the look the lady gave me when I asked for just a coke was hilarious. Also, I was one of four people at the festival wearing a dirndl (the other 3 were waitresses). The wonderful thing about that is I am in Berlin and people really don't care if you act crazy here. There are such weird people in Berlin that I fit right in

You can't really see what this picture is but I am sitting on the front of a train. Me and some friends went to the museum of technology last week. We realized when we got there that it was a kids museum so we found our inner kid and had a blast.

Finally we got to play with this machine, after this 5 yr old was hogging it for so long. So this is what mine and Frankenstein's kids would look like. I know...we would have really attractive kids.

When I first unpacked in June, I noticed that I had accidentally packed 2 boy family names. Luckily my ward had a temple trip today so I went to the Freiberg Temple and it is beautiful. It is surprisingly small. But it was a nice day and Freiberg is a beautiful city. Here is a pic of me with the nearly finished temple names and the temple in the background.

Every princess needs a castle

2011-07-31T05:12:00.000-07:00

Last week I went to Munich Zurich and Heidelberg and while I was there I decided to look at some real estate (in case I decide to live here permanently). And I am torn between a few places.

Zurich: The first one is a very nice looking castle but it is a little small for my taste. If I lived there, I don't know if there would be enough space for all my servants.

Munich: This one is my second choice because it is the most beautiful and has a wonderful view. It also overlooks a huge man-made waterfall. However, it needs some interior design work done and not all of the rooms are finished.

Heidelberg: This next place is pretty and has a nice location near a river but it is a little bit of a fixer-upper.

Munich: And this last one is my number one choice. It is the largest of the castles and has a beautiful backyard (I don't know if it could be considered a backyard because it is like 50 acres). But the thing that puts this in first place is the fact that the prince lives there. Considering I'm a princess, we are a perfect match.

And lastly what German experience would be complete without a dirndl? I got this one while I was in Munich and I love it. It is pink, I can't breathe when I wear it and I look fantastic in it...basically it is perfect.

Address

2011-07-27T12:10:00.001-07:00

I will be here for another 2 months so if anyone wants to send me mail, here is my address:

Melissa Thompson
C/O Thaben
Crellestr. 26
Deutschland 10827 Berlin

The Beach!

2011-07-10T13:51:00.000-07:00

I went to the Baltic Sea this weekend and it was incredible. It was pretty warm (mid-80’s) and I got a much needed tan. The town we went to was a rather small town about 3 hours away from Berlin. When we got off the bus, they told us that we would have a few hours to look at the sights of the town (aka. a church and a lighthouse) and then we could have a little time to go to the beach. Seeing the church and the lighthouse took about 30 minutes so we spent the next 7 hours on the beach. It was a perfect day. Below is a picture of me on the lighthouse. It was pretty cool because I had never actually been in a lighthouse. Surprisingly I was not afraid of how high this lighthouse was either.

And the beach was beautiful. The sand was white and the water was clear. Clearly I am overjoyed with being on the beach again.

Fun, Fun, Fun

2011-07-10T13:39:00.000-07:00

There is so much to do here that I can’t mention everything but I will briefly mention a few other things I did.

Went on a hike

Went to the Deutsches Historiches Museum

Saw the largest dinosaur fossil in the world

Walked along the Berlin wall

Made banana jelly

Working in the Lab

2011-07-02T12:12:00.002-07:00

In this post I talk about blood so for those of you who get grossed out by the sight of blood I have included the pictures at the end so you don't actually have to look at it.

In case anyone is confused about why I am in Berlin, let me explain. I am here on an internship with Humboldt University and I will be working with a PhD student on how different chromosomes affect fat content in the body. However, it is not currently ready so I have been working with another group of students on how pro-biotics (live microorganisms that may be beneficial) affect the immune system. They took pigs and gave each group a different type of pro-biotic and there was a control group. Then they collected tissue samples of things like the spleen, lymph nodes, etc. After the samples were collected is where my work came in. Some undergrad students in Berlin and I were working to isolate the lymphocytes, which will give us information on how the pro-biotics are affecting the immune system.

The first picture is me in the lab. The next two pictures are before and after the liquid was centrifuged to separate liquids of different densities. Once the densities were separated, we needed to remove the liquid in between the first and second layers of fluid (picture 4). After that we kept on centrifuging the liquid and re-suspending the liquid in a neutral solution until the lymphocytes were isolated.

Just a few notes, observations and FYIs

2011-06-28T15:24:00.000-07:00

1. This is random but it's kind of cool, even though it's difficult to see in this picture. When people would spray paint the windows, it would peel off so now people scratch the windows to do graffiti on them. I'm sure it's not just in Germany where people do that but I wanted to applaud them for their creativity.

2. If you say hello to random people on the street they will think you are crazy, with the exception of old women. Not because they are rude but because people don't do that here.

3. Chocolate is amazing here and I can have as much of it as I want for the next few months...mmmm

4. Also, Germans love JFK. When he was president, he went to Berlin and said "Ich bin ein Berliner" (translation for all you non-Deutsch speakers: "I am a Berliner"). Below is a pic of me in one of those face cut-outs of JFK. Since I have been here, I have heard that story so many times. I have been walking around Berlin saying that to all the random people I strike up a conversation with and I have yet to reach the fame that JFK did. I want to do something, not illegal, that people in Berlin remember me by. Any ideas?

5. I am amazing at directions. Berlin is a huge city but since I have been here I have yet to get lost. It's even more impressive because I don't take special care to know exactly where I am going. Today I wasn't sure which which direction train to take but the train was there so I randomly guessed and I ended up where I was planning to go. Maybe that's a lesson for life. Wander around in life with no clear goal and maybe by chance you will end up where you want to go. That was really deep. If anyone quotes me on that I expect my name to be included. Maybe that's how I will become famous.

6. The German language is really difficult to learn. But there are a lot of words that are almost the same just different pronunciations.

7. The Christopher Street festival is a gay pride parade...not a parade to honor Christopher Columbus. It was a lot of fun and every float had really good music and everyone was dancing. I take any excuse to be able to dance in public without people thinking I'm crazy. Two things I didn't really like was all the cigarette smoke (I'm pretty sure every other person smoked) and the fact that clothing was optional. There were drag queens all over the parade I loved it but I was a little bitter that they were walking so well in the highest stilettos I had ever seen. This was my favorite drag queen. He was dressed up as a flight attendant and he did their safety demonstration. It was hilarious.

8. Traveling by bus/train is really cheap within Europe, therefore I will go to quite a few countries while I am here.

9. An adapter (used for recharging things) is different than a transformer (used for things like a straightener) and you can blow out the socket if you use an adapter when you should use a transformer. Needless to say I will not have straight hair for the next few months. Good thing it is the fashion in Berlin to let your hair go crazy. Also be very careful when you are walking down stairs because most of them are very steep. On Sunday I was walking down the stairs in my heels and I tripped and fell down the stairs. Luckily I only got a few scratches and bruises but the girl in front of me turned around and said, "Don't be embarrassed, my brother fell down those and broke his arm." So really I blame the stairs.

10. Lastly, moving to a new country where you don't speak the language and don't know anyone is extremely scary but it is such an amazing experience. Berlin is wonderful. I love wandering around the city looking at monuments and statues and stuff because they are everywhere.

2011-06-23T09:14:00.000-07:00

I love the food here. All the food tastes delicious here (I'm sure there will be some food they don't like but I haven't found it yet). And the sweets, they are divine. I had a pastry this morning from the corner store and it was so delicious. I can't even describe how good they are. Whenever I want, I can just walk to the corner store and have an authentic german chocolate or pastry for so cheap. This is me eating something that I can't pronounce because it is like 20 letters long and I can't speak German, but trust me, it's really good.

There are rivers all over Berlin. I knew that there was one main one but there are a lot. And there are bridges everywhere. Whenever I am walking over a bridge, there are always big tourist boats floating on the river and I have really been resisting the urge to be like a spy and jump onto the boat from the bridge like they do in movies. I feel like that might not be the best idea for many different reasons.

So this is the fountain of Neptune, he's the statue in the middle of the fountain (you can't really see him too well, I realized that when you ask a stranger to take a picture for you, even if you are standing in front of very famous monument...you should specify that you want the monument in the picture). Note: the next picture. I asked this man to take my picture standing next to the fountain but he insisted I climb onto this statue's lap, luckily I didn't fall while climbing on it. There are fountains everywhere, and not just plains fountains but they have elaborate sculptures and memorials from the war. Also the buildings are incredible. They are so old and there is so much history here.

So this is what I was talking about by getting the monument in the picture. In the background is the monument to the Berlin Wall. This picture is for Lutie. That's right, I am killing Darth Vader in Berlin.

For Michelle, Mollie and Karalee. I met Edward on my flight delay! Ok not really but he looks just like Edward, except for the fact that he's German. I think he was kind of annoyed when I asked to take a pic w/ him (his friend told me that people ask if he is Edward all the time).

I spent all of today wandering around the city and I love Berlin so much. I fit right in with the people, besides the fact that I don't speak the language and am a lot more friendly to strangers than most Berliners are. Berlin is an incredible place and I think there are parties every night.

I'm in Berlin

2011-06-20T05:28:00.001-07:00

I made it to Berlin. I'm so excited to be in the city but there are lots of things I need to do. I'll post more later :)

My plane broke down

2011-06-18T23:30:00.000-07:00

SO about an hour into my flight to Berlin, the captain told us that there was a problem with the air pressure of the cabin so the plane had to turn back to JFK (New York City). But the pilot said that our plane was overweight and he couldn't land until he burned off some fuel so we flew in circles over JFK for another 2 hours. After we landed safely, the Delta personnel said that we needed to rebook a flight so everyone did a mad-dash for the Delta customer service counters. Luckily, I called the help desk number instead of waiting in line so I got my flight rebooked rather quickly. However, once my flight was rebooked I still had to wait for meal and hotel vouchers for the night so me and all the people on the airplane just sat around for a few hours until we got everything we needed. Now (10 hours later) I am in the hotel and about to go to sleep. On the bright side, I am in New York so I can see the city tomorrow and the airplane gave us meal vouchers for 3 meals :) Hopefully my plane tomorrow won't be broken down.

New haircut and Germany

2011-06-08T20:27:00.000-07:00

Let me just start off by saying that I am going to Berlin, Germany in less than 10 days. Let me repeat NEXT SUNDAY I WILL BE IN GERMANY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am so excited (if you couldn't tell by the all caps and exclamation marks).

So this first pic is for my mom. She isn't what you would call tech savy and she wanted me to post this pic. Here I am in my Easter outfit (I'm basically the next Gisele Bundchen).

Also I got a hair cut, as you can see it is a big change from the previous pic. Kara, my cousin, cut it and she did an amazing job. I don't think I have ever gotten so many compliments from a haircut before. I love my shorter hair. It is so easy to style in the morning and it is nice to have less hair in the summertime when its hot.

Lastly, me and my roommates have been running lately and it feels wonderful. I love the feeling of the wind rushing past me and the soreness of my muscles (and believe me there has been plenty of that). I did cross country in high school but I really haven't run since then. I like running just for fun rather than in a race. It is so nice when you aren't running against a clock. There isn't any girl that I am trying to beat. I just run at whatever pace I want. If I want to speed up I do and if I want to slow down I do. I just like how I can be so stressed out in the day and when I go running, my stresses go away. My mind just clears and all I think about is putting one foot in front of the other. I realized these past few weeks how much I like running. I don't like racing but I like running, not because I want to beat someone but because I want to feel good and be healthy.

Graduation!!!

2011-04-24T19:50:00.000-07:00

I walked in my graduation ceremony at BYU last week so I am a free woman. Well mostly, I have to take one more term but it will be short so in 2 months I will be a free woman. Anyways, that's just a minor technicality, my parents came up to Utah to see me graduate and it was really nice to have them here.

This is me and Michelle at my graduation. Michelle has been my friend for a few years now and she is amazing. She has been such a good support for me through college. Even though I embarrass her half the time, she still goes along with all my crazy ideas. Also when I am stressed out and acting like a lunatic she puts up with me. Basically, I am really grateful for all the help she has given me.

These are a few of my favorite teachers, and often they served as counselors to me when I would freak out about not knowing what to do with the rest of my life.

Getting my diploma...

So for Easter today, me and my friends wore these classy hats. They looked pretty awesome. After church, we had a little photo shoot. This one is me and my friend Natasha.

And this is me with my hat (in the dress Jen sewed for me).

Also I will be spending 3 months of the summer in Berlin, Germany. I have an internship helping a PhD student on her research. I'm really excited for it.

Zombies

2011-03-27T15:14:00.001-07:00

Today at Break the Fast some boy asked me if there was a zombie apocalypse and I was the last human alive, which zombie in the ward would I kill first? I said I would just let someone bite me so that I could be a happy zombie with the rest of the world when Karen, my roommate, said zombies don't spread through bites. We tried to look it up on Wikipedia but there wasn't information on how zombies spread their disease/condition. So I'm asking everyone, how do zombies spread their disease/condition?

Also Karen found this one blog that is hilarious, I think this person is a little too into zombies and his argument is flawless, Here is an excerpt from it:

Many professionals believe that zombies live here on the surface of the Earth just like we do, but that they are invisible. However, this theory is clearly flawed. If zombies are the undead and they are invisible, then they would just be ghosts. Everybody knows there is no such thing as ghosts.

Here is the link if you want to read the rest of it:
http://www.angelfire.com/fang/zombie/

Arizona

2011-03-20T17:59:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I went to Arizona for a friend's wedding and Arizona is so beautiful. It was a warm 80 degrees and sunny. I am in love with Arizona, but maybe it is because Utah is like 40 degrees. I saw my cousin, Russell, and his wife, Jodee, while I was there and they are pretty much the nicest people. I rarely get to see them because they live so far away. But they took time out of their Saturday to spend time with me. They have twin boys and they are adorable. At first the boys were unsure about me but they got less shy and I think by the end of my visit they even liked me.

Also it was cool how there were cacti (I like that word) everywhere. Even at the Mesa temple there were cacti. Here is a pic of me and Michelle in front of I think the biggest cactus I have ever seen.

Now for the part that everyone has been waiting for...an update on my plants! Prepare yourselves because this picture below is so full of lush green leaves that you can barely see anything else in the pic. That's right, despite the huge clouds that have been blocking the sun lately, my herbs are growing like wildflowers. Ok, they aren't huge plants and honestly I don't know if my herbs will ever be big enough to actually cook something with but I am proud that they are growing. When the weather gets warmer I think I might branch out, maybe try my hand at avocadoes (that was for you Steph haha).

My Plants Are Growing!

2011-03-06T13:19:00.000-08:00

This whole week I was very nervous that my plants wouldn't grow but yesterday morning I woke up and found that my plants had sprouted. When I showed my roommate, Karen, the sprouts, she said "Wow, I didn't think they would grow." She has such little faith in my plant growing skills. Anyways since my herbs have been growing like crazy...well my basil and thyme are growing. I don't know whats happening with my sage, I have yet to see any sprouts. The basil is growing the best, it has 6 sprouts. Here is a picture of the basil, sage and thyme.

Also, today on the drive to church this random guy's car broke down so I asked him if he needed help pushing it. It was kind of funny because he steered the car and I pushed it down the street, in my heels and skirt. I felt a little bit ridiculous, but Karen thinks I'm like a hero now.

LA and Herbs

2011-02-26T13:17:00.000-08:00

Last weekend was a three day weekend thanks to los presidentes so Me and some friends went to LA. It was so much fun and even though the weather was cold for so-cal, it was still like 40 degrees warmer than Utah. I went to Trevor's birthday party (my nephew) and I hung out with my family. It was a good visit but I didn't get any pictures because I learned once I got there that my camera battery was completely dead.

On another note, I realized that since I am about to graduate I should probably find more hobbies. Currently all my free time is spent doing homework, going to class or going to work. Right now I do family history but not as much as I would like to seeing as I don't have much time. Anyways I am trying to expand my horizons so I thought I might as well try gardening. Yes it is true that Utah in the winter time is not prime conditions for gardening but it could work. I decided to start off with herbs because I got them free from my mom. Herbs aren't as difficult to grow as avocados (shout-out to Steph) so it's a good starting point. I just planted it today so hopefully in a few weeks I will see something starting to grow. And when they have have grown I will make something delicious with them. Here is my Thyme, Sage and Basil.

Graduation!!!!!!!!!!!!

2011-02-16T21:18:00.000-08:00

I will graduate in approximately 4 months. Yay yay yay! Right now I am looking for jobs so that I will have one waiting for me after I graduate. But still I am almost done with school...so exciting. I have been going to school for 17 years (yes, I do realize some people in my family have had more schooling than that but I'm tired of school right now). Even though I still have a few months left in school, I will use this post to make a list of things I have learned in college:
1. To budget my money so that I can always pay for rent and food.
2. How to make dinners on a limited number of ingredients.
3. One low test score isn't going to ruin the rest of your life
4. If you walk slowly and like a penguin (shout out to my roommate Karen), you won't slip on ice.
5. If you study you will get good grades most of the time.
6. Forever stamps are not for mailing letters internationally.
7. Many things my older siblings told me when I was younger were tricks.
8. Sometimes I can feel lonely even though I am surrounded by people.
9. Some friends have ulterior motives (good thing I get to choose my friends).
10. Some friends are the most amazing people in the world and exactly what you need.
11. Boys and girls can't be friends.
12. Boys can be as dramatic as girls (often even more so).
13. I love working out.
14. Humanities for 2 hours straight is probably the most boring thing there is.
15. It is ok to say no to a second date.
16. Mistakes suck but sometimes they are awesome.
17. Living with strangers isn't difficult if they are clean and you are patient.
18. I can make my own decisions (still working on that one).
19. I am too trusting sometimes.
20. I am a very capable and charming person.

The coldest winter ever!

2011-02-03T17:55:00.000-08:00

Not much has happened this month so I will update you guys on my life. That title might be a little dramatic but Utah has been ridiculously cold (sorry Adele, I know it has been colder where you are). Yesterday it was 5 degrees and -7 with wind chill. One good thing is that when the weather is this cold it doesn't really snow. On another note, I am proud to say that this has been my least clumsy winter in Utah. I think I am getting more used to the icy ground because I have only fell on my face once this whole winter! To some this may not seem impressive but last winter I fell at least once a week.
Also, I got a new job...I am a research assistant! I am analyzing some school district data I got in Uganda. I love doing data analysis. It is a little bit frustrating at times but I enjoy the problem solving and logical thinking. I am trying to figure out why some schools have higher scores than other schools in Uganda. So hopefully that will all work out.
Also, here is a picture from a basketball game. We won of course, like almost every other game. The girl next to me is Michelle.

Green and Rainy Christmas

2011-01-13T14:37:00.000-08:00

Christmas in LA this year was wonderful, other than the rain but I can't complain too much because in Utah there was a blizzard.

It was so good to see Kiki. She is growing up so beautifully.

The were so many presents Christmas Day, the living room as a mess but it was great.

Falina got lobster for Lutie's birthday dinner. The kids loved playing with them.

Lobster dinner. I loved so many people being here.

We played Nerf wars to celebrate Nick and Lutie getting older and it was a lot of fun.

For Jen

2010-12-16T19:44:00.000-08:00

Playing Kinect

New York

2010-12-12T13:18:00.001-08:00

I know this is a few weeks late but I went to Rochester, New York over Thanksgiving to visit my sister. It was so good to see her because I haven't seen her in about a year.

This picture of Peter and Eli was just cute. Eli came to wake me up while wearing this pilgrim hat and Peter was representing BYU (5 seconds after this picture was taken, Peter threw the hat on the floor).

This was on Hill Cumorah. It was freezing there. Utah is colder and dryer than Rochester. Rochester is more humid so the cold went straight through my layers. Jen was awesome. She was freezing and she still walked me around to all the different sites in Palmyra.

This is the Palmyra Temple. It is so beautiful. You can't see in this picture but the stained glass is of the Sacred Grove and is awesome.

This is all of us (besides me, taking the picture) on thanksgiving day.

Also a few days ago when me and my roomates were at the grocery store, we saw these cute bottles of Martinelli's for $1 each so we each got them and partied it up like it's 1999.

Fall Fun

2010-10-31T15:13:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I went to my first corn maze fair. Just a warning to all those who have never gone to a corn maze before, don't wear nice clothes. I went with a friend, Michelle, to a corn maze and I realized that I was over dressed for it. I wore these super cute flats and a nice coat (you can kind of see in the picture below but not as much). Anyways, at a corn maze there is lots of sawdust and dirt so by the end of the night I smelled like dirt and had woodchips stuck in my flats. But it was really fun. Here is a picture of Michelle and me at the end of the maze. We beat the other team.

The fair was lots of fun.

For Halloween I was Lady Gaga. I went to a stake party with my roommate, Karen, and a friend dressed up as my back-up dancers. haha I also realized that for the past 3 years I have been a diva for Halloween.

I just remembered that I never blogged about conference but it was way fun and Albert came up for it. He spent the weekend in Utah and we stayed at our aunt's house near Salt Lake. Albert comes up for almost every Conference and I love his visits so much. I am always really excited for like the whole month before he comes. This is a picture of us in the Conference Center before the second session.

What is our world coming to...

2010-09-14T15:55:00.000-07:00

I don't know what people are thinking when they speak.

Michelle, a friend, and I went to Arby's last night. We went through the drive through and after the man told us how much it cost we did some quick math and realized it wasn't right. When I asked him how come it cost so much he replied, "Because you guys eat too much." Really? That attitude was unnecessary and he had charged us twice for a few things so the total was wrong. Then after we got our shakes (which were supposed to be chocolate) we tasted them and they were gross. They didn't taste like chocolate at all. They tasted like vanilla shakes. The man said that's what chocolate tastes like. I know the difference between vanilla and chocolate.

Then today, I introduced myself to this girl sitting next to me in class, she asked me, "What year are you in...you look old." Again, was that necessary?

Moral of the story...don't eat at Arby's and don't be friendly to people in class. haha

I'm alive

2010-08-26T07:45:00.000-07:00

Does this animal look terrifying...I think so

(ok it's not the one that wanted to eat me last night but I'm sure it's similar)

Yesterday I went hiking up at squaw peak with 5 people and it was dark by the time we were on our way back. Somehow I got separated from the group for a few minutes and when I had just been rejoined with the group, we heard a cougar growl from about 10 ft away from us. Immediately we shined our flashlights at the cougar and froze in our places. No one really knew what to do so we just decided to walk away slowly. Then we heard another growl and decided to get weapons. 2 boys had huge knives and 2 people grabbed rocks (I don't know how effective the rocks would have been but its all we had). I didn't have a weapon because I was shining flashlights at the cougar (I think I got gypped though). Another 20 minutes later we were at the car. Scariest moment of my life.

Cuties

2010-08-17T09:25:00.000-07:00

So I have been back from Uganda for a few weeks now and I am a slacker. While I was here I spent a lot of time with my niece Ali and my nephews Trevor and Phillippi so here are a few pics of us.

This was at the San Diego Zoo...she makes a very cute caterpillar.

We were having a sleepery party (she was a little confused about the name haha)

I spent a week with Trevor and Phillippi. This was outside of a pool in Bakersfield.

And finally, I made a quilt this summer out of fabrics I bought in Africa. Tell me what you think.

Taxi Day

2010-07-14T00:11:00.000-07:00

Last week I had a very exciting/scary/annoying day. To start off let me give some background info. The taxi’s in Uganda look like VW Buses and can hold 14 people (sometimes they hold more, one time I was in a taxi with 25 people…yes I did feel like a sardine). To get a taxi I just stand on the side of the road and hope that a taxi comes by going to the place that I need to go, which could take a long time. Or I could go to the taxi park, get a taxi and wait for it to fill up. Waiting for a taxi to fill up when it is empty could also take a long time, case in point, last week.
So my day started off waiting in the taxi park, with my friend Brellis, for about 45 minutes for the taxi to fill up. Finally it did and we were on the road to Jinja (about an hour away from Mukono). About 30 minutes into our drive, the taxi started to make a funny noise and it barely made it up the hill we were going up. On the downhill we were cruising and I thought it would keep going but once we hit another uphill the car stopped completely. Someone told me that the car ran out of gas and that is when people started yelling in Uganda and a fight broke out when a passenger wanted to exit the car. Once there was a break in the yelling and fighting, Brellis and I jumped out of the taxi quickly. I tried to ask what was going on but everyone spoke Luganda and my Luganda is very limited. Now there were about 17 people walking down the road (for all I knew they were walking the rest of the way to Jinja, probably a 30 min drive from here) but thank goodness they hailed another taxi and I just followed.
On our way back from Jinja is when it got interesting. We hopped in another taxi and to our dismay it was empty again. When we tried to get out after about 10 min, the driver shut the door and held it closed. At this point we were just annoyed so we kept telling him he needs to let us out. After being trapped in this taxi for about 45 min we finally started to get really upset because he wasn’t letting us out and he wasn’t driving back to Jinja. So the two of us started to yell at the driver, use a tiny bit of force and make enough of a ruckus that finally he started driving to Mukono. Honestly, though I was starting to get worried that the driver was going to keep us there for a few hours. He probably would have if we didn’t take action haha. It was an adventure last week.
Also there were a few bombs that exploded in Kampala, Uganda by Somali terrorists but it wasn’t in my city and I am doing ok.

Doing Laundry

2010-07-02T07:17:00.000-07:00

I only have 2 weeks left in Uganda and guess what that means? No more hand washing laundry. I love the person who invented the washing machine. It might be one of the greatest inventions. To do laundry here I have to set aside at least 4 hours of my day (and that doesn’t included checking on the clothes throughout the day and putting them away) and I have to start in the morning so that my clothes have all day to dry. First, I have to fill up three huge buckets of water and carry them to the back of the house (maybe 20 ft). Then I have to scrub at my clothes, with two different detergents, for the next few hours to get any dirt and smells out. I have to change the water every half hour because it gets dirty quickly. I have calluses on my hands from all of the scrubbing. Then comes the easy part; rinsing and hanging the clothes. If it rains that day then it stinks because I have to bring my clothes inside to dry. I’m glad I didn’t bring more clothes. Ok, I can’t complain too much because there are a few good things about laundry. First, it gets your clothes extremely clean. Second, there are no machine costs just the cost of detergent so it is approximately 10 cents to do 20 loads of laundry (it’s sweet considering the fact that in America I pay $2 for one load). I just did my last load of laundry in Africa. It’s bittersweet really.

Reaching Over 1000 People

2010-06-26T04:21:00.000-07:00

This week was extremely busy for me so this post might be a little long. On Tuesday and Wednesday we had an eye camp for the elderly. At the eye camp we gave out about 150 pairs of glasses and medicine and the doctors performed 30 surgeries on people with cataracts. We screened over 300 people. It was awesome to help so many people. My specific job was to give patients the medicine on their prescriptions and give them their glasses. They were so excited, even this one lady started crying when she put on her glasses. I even got to see a cataract surgery, which was probably one of the coolest things I have seen. This is a picture of me checking in the people who had surgeries on the first day.

Then on Thursday we had a football tournament in a rural area about 2 hours away from where we are staying. The tournament included 6 primary schools and 2 secondary schools came just to play a game against each other. In between each tournament game we had trainings for things like Leadership, HIV/AIDS prevention and saving for the future. It was so fun how much the kids like football, every time a goal was even blocked they went wild. When someone made a goal they went crazy. Everyone would run onto the field and do flips and cheer for like 5 minutes at least. Also our HELP team played a game against a local woman’s group at the end and it ended in a tie. Afterwards, we gave each of the schools at the tournament a football because they cannot afford them but they love football.
Lastly, on Friday we had a dental camp at a primary school. We screened almost a 1000 children and extracted about 900 teeth. The children would get checked on by a dentist assistant for any obvious cavities and then sent to a room to wait to be numbed and then be numbed on the other side of a slab of wood separating the numbing room and the waiting room. After they were numbed they would be sent to another building to get their teeth extracted. I was in the room with the children waiting to be numbed and it was horrible because the children being numbed would scream at the top of their lungs because the needle hurt. So it was my job to distract the children by entertaining them. It was probably the hardest thing I have done here though. It basically broke my heart hearing the children screaming. I think I did a good job of entertaining the children by singing and dancing. Even some of the children that didn’t have cavities were trying to sneak in the room, they did not realize what those children were waiting for.

The Nile!

2010-06-17T23:31:00.001-07:00

The festival went fantastic; the students loved the interactive lessons. We are going to have one this week too. On Saturday I went to Jinja, It is the city where the Nile starts. Mostly we went for souvenir shopping but there were also a few sites. We were supposed to go to a monkey reserve but time would not allow for that. The taxi ride on the way there was the most ridiculous taxi I have ridden so far. By the way, a taxi in Uganda isn’t like the ones in America. They look kind of like a Volkswagen bus but they are Toyotas. One time when I took a taxi they fit 21 people and a chicken in it. So anyways the taxi on the way to Jinja stalled halfway there. After like 10 min the driver finally got the taxi started again and we continued to Jinja going slower than I could have walked for about 20 min. Finally there was a downhill so the taxi just cruised down it and from then we were cruising at a normal speed, except at every uphill the taxi jerked like crazy. Once we got to Jinja we decided to see the source of the Nile, which was pretty anticlimactic but it was still fun cuz technically we went into Tanzania while on Lake Victoria.

This is a picture of me at a bonfire that one of the primary schools had for us.

Festival for kids and running

2010-06-09T05:49:00.000-07:00

We are starting a new project this week. Every Friday until the end of the summer we will have an after-school activity for elementary schools to teach them through fun activities. It's called the Do-It-Yourself Festival (We had another name picked out but this is what the District Education officer wanted it to be called.). So we set up 6 booths (aka we stand with posters on the ground) in a school field and each booth has a subject like nutrition, environmental safety, life-skills, etc. The kids have a half an hour at each booth and then rotate around for 3 hours so that they see every booth and have time to play games and learn about each subject. We have our first festival on Friday and we hope it goes well. I will let you know how it turns out.

Also it is a national Holiday today Heores' Day so all the schools were out on holiday but since the schools are mostly boarding schools all the students were at the high school. So we went to visit one high school that we are working with because they had a track meet. And somehow we got roped into running a 400 meter race. I won but that's besides the point. It was so funny. As we were walking to start the race the announcers were like "It's the race of the century". They were so excited to see us Americans racing in their track meet.

Nile

2010-06-01T04:43:00.001-07:00

Just chilling on the Nile. Our guide, Tabani is in the back.

This is an action shot of my raft.This actually is not the time we flipped. I am wearing the blue helmet,you can see it through the splashes.

On Saturday I rafted the Nile. Let me say that again...I RAFTED THE NILE. It was so awesome/crazy/scary. I loved it. We rafted 30 km so it took most of the day. It was so sweet because the part of the Nile we rafted had class 5 rapids. And many of you know that I am not what one would call a "daredevil" actually I am probably the biggest chicken ever so this was big. I was really scared at first but we had an amazing guide and there were kayaks all over to pick up people who flip so I was never in any real danger. Our guide's name is Tabani and he was awesome. He has been rafting longer than I have been alive so he is very experienced. There was one time that we got stuck on a rock at the top of about an 8 ft waterfall and he jumped onto the rock pushed us off the rock and then jumped back into the raft while we were going down the waterfall. There was a strom in the middle of the trip which made the rapids worse about 2 hours and I was cold for the first time since I have been here for but then it went back to being sunny. Our raft also did flip once but I think that Tabani flipped us on purpose. It was awesome, we were going down some huge rapids and we flipped so we rode down the rest of that rapid on our backs in our life jackets and then the safety kayaks picked us up. And the food was so good. We got fed breakfast and snacks on the raft, which included the best pineapple I have ever tasted, and a barbecue afterwards for dinner.

After- School programs

2010-05-28T05:20:00.001-07:00

Schools started this week and since most of the work I’m doing is in schools, I have been very busy. One school we are working at is called Crane’s School. At Crane’s School some of the students board for the term and some just go there during the day and go home after classes end. About 100 of the 300 students that attend Crane’s School are orphans. We are helping the students who are weaker in certain subjects like Math or English and we are doing a few after-school programs. We went on Wednesday and Thursday this week. On Thursday when we got there we were informed that one of the teachers was ill so they asked me and a girl on my team to teach a math to a 5th grade class. The subject was the metric system and conversion of different units in the metric system. I think I would have been confident about teaching anything but the metric system. Considering that I have rarely ever used the metric system, I think the class went very well. The headmaster even had me assign homework. Then after school we split up the students into different groups (music, dance, sports and reading). I was leading the dance group and the students loved it, they kept sneaking out of other groups to join mine. The kids were so great, it was so much fun.

Pictures!

2010-05-23T23:24:00.001-07:00

So this post is to make up for my lack of pictures. These are some pictures from my first two weeks in Uganda:

Carrying Adobe for miles, ok it was just like ½ a mile but still it wasn’t easy (the sack kept slipping).

Mixing Adobe with our feet

Eating grasshoppers...yum haha

Carrying water up a hill on my head (like a Ugandan)

On Saturday, we went to a football match, Uganda vs. Kenya, at the Mandella Stadium. It was so exciting. It was the African Football Championships and Uganda won, 1-0! We sat in the VIP section because it was pretty cheap and sitting next to us was the FIFA President, the Ugandan Minister of Defense and a bunch of other dignitaries. We're cool.

Write me

2010-05-17T01:25:00.000-07:00

This is the road I walk on everyday to go home.
Here is my address in case anyone wants to write me a letter:
Melissa Thompson
The church of Jesus Christ
of Latter-day Saints
Mukono Ward
PO box 390 Mukono, Uganda

Story of the day: So I was walking home one day and this woman stopped me and told me about how her sister died of AIDs a month ago and her sister has a very young daughter. Then this lady asked me if I would take the daughter (as in bring the daughter back to America with me and keep her). Of course I said that I couldn't but I was shocked. This complete stranger was offering me her niece. So yeah that was kind of surprising but I guess you experience something new everyday here.

Sore Muscles

2010-05-13T01:03:00.000-07:00

This is our team and some Ugandans

Sorry for the lack of pictures but it's kind of hard to put pictures on these internet cafe computers but I will try next time.So on monday we helped build a clinic and plant a maize field in a village for children whose parents died of Aids. We didn't finish it but we got quite a bit done. I helped mix the cement, which was made of rock, cement and dirt. It was difficult mixing the rocks and the Ugandan men thought it was hilarious that I was doing male work. I'm also starting to pick up a few phrases of Luganda so they gave me a Ugandan name. Now they call me Nabatanzi Lugave.
There are lots of new things here. Specifically the food, which is so good. They make the most delicious beans and there is something called rolex, which is the Ugandan version of a breakfast burrito mmmm. Another new thing is bucket showers which I actually love. We have a shower in our house but the water drips out out the shower head (at best) so I take bucket showers out in this little structure behind our house. I love them because they are so nice on a hot day, basically everyday is around 80 degrees and it's my only choice so I gotta like them.
Yesterday I also helped build an adobe stove. It was sweet mixing the adobe by stomping in it. And one thing that was part of the mixture was water so we carried water from THE NILE to the orphanage we were working at. And lastly I ate fried grasshoppers. They were suprisingly good. They tasted like popcorn. I even ate a few. So that's all for now.

I'm in Uganda!!!

2010-05-08T05:30:00.000-07:00

Olio tia! So I arrived safely in Uganda and wow...I love Uganda. It is amazing and beautiful. It is like no place I have ever seen. It is hard to take everything in at once. It amazed me how even when we were driving in the wealthy areas, conditions were not very good. Now I am in Mukono, the city that I will be staying in for the next four months. There are so many cars on the road and the drivers are so scary, they drive as if they can never crash. The roads also aren't very good but thats what I expected. There are also things called botabotas that are like little motorcycle-scooter type things and I feel like the other cars will smash me when I'm riding on it. I love it and my first Ugandan food was this chicken stuff. We ate lunch at a fancy restaurant but it was still cheaper than practically any american restaurant. ok well my time is almost up so I will check back with you in a lil bit.

Stopover in London

2010-05-07T03:03:00.001-07:00

I love London...everything about it. I love how everyone talks and the phrases they use and the buildings. I'm not a big fan of British Airways though. Last night my 4 hour layover turned into a day and a half layover.
About half hour before my flight, we boarded the plane like usual and sat at the gate for about a half an hour because they had lost some luggage. Then we sat on the runway for about two hours. When the pilot informed us that there was some minor technical error. We sat on the runway for about another hour when the pilot said that our minor technical error was that the second engine wasn't working. He said it was possible to fly to Uganda but he didn't wanna "risk it." I very much respect the decision (and am kinda of confused why he even debated the other choice). He informed us that we could fly out on another airplane and they just had to switch all the bags and food over so we could take off shortly. We waited another hour for them to switch everything over. We then boarded buses on which we waited for about another half hour for them to tell us that they cannot fly out to Uganda because one of the runways were closed. About a minute later the pilot came on the PA and said, "there is a second shorter runway in Uganda and we are doing calculations to figure out if it is long enough to land on." Now I wanna know what their margin of error on these calculations are, like, if it's rainy are we just going to slide right off like a slip and slide. It didn't matter because a few minutes later the pilot said that that runway is closed as well. Now our flight was rescheduled for tonight more than a day later. In total we waited till 3 in the morning and like 5 of those hours were on the runway. On the brightside the airline gave us hotels and meal vouchers and I get to see london. Well that's all for now. I will update you next week when I'm actually in Uganda.

BYU-Luau

2010-03-28T13:38:00.000-07:00

Since January I have been practicing for a luau that I performed in on Tuesday and Wednesday. BYU puts on the luau every year to raise money for scholarships. The luau has dances from the polynesian islands and I did the Tahiti section. It was so much fun and it was such a good workout. I was sore after every practice. Here is a picture of me before the show, in my costume.

Here is a good action shot. This was during the performance. Sorry it's so blurry, I was just moving too fast lol

I'm going to Uganda

2010-02-16T17:18:00.000-08:00

So I just found out that I have been accepted to a program that goes to Uganda to do volunteer work. I will be leaving at the beginning of May and coming back right before school starts, at the end of August (so basically I will be gone all summer). I will be going to Mukono, Uganda (which is a tiny village). While in Uganda, I will be doing many different projects. A few include teaching classes to elementary age students and construction projects. I am so excited but it's kinda scary flying to Africa, considering I have never left the country. So yeah, I will be spending the summer in Africa :)

Flsahback

2010-01-31T19:05:00.000-08:00

I went to my first 80's party on Friday. I didn't have any 80's clothes so my roomate dressed me up. I was told that I looked like that girl from napoleon Dynamite. It was pretty fun. In this picture I look 80's fabulous with my huge jewelry and leggings. I'm actually not sure if this is what they wore back then but it was fun.
Yesterday I woke up early, around 8:30ish (and yes Jen that's early), to do my laundry because I had a lot of stuff to get done. So I separated my clothes and went down to the laundry room in my apartment complex, loaded up and started all the washers. As I walked into my apartment, I realized that I had been holding the laundry detergent the whole time but had never actually used it. Luckily, I had run back down quick enough that the washer doors weren't locked yet so I was able to just pour the detergent directly on my clothes. That was almost a waste of $4, I blame it on being tired.

I'm fixed!

2010-01-24T14:46:00.000-08:00

As some of you know, I have been having shoulder problems with my right shoulder. Before last week my shoulder was always sore and I wasn't able to lift my arm higher than my shoulder. So I went to the doctor and I guess I had a lot of inflammation in my shoulder (specifically my bursa). This actually was a pretty easy fix because he injected cortizone into my shoulder and now I am healed. Here is a picture highlighting how I have full movement in my shoulder.

Last night I went to a BYU volleyball game, we lost :( but it was still a lot of fun. During one of the timeouts the announcer asked if anyone knew the single ladies dance so I went down to the court and did the dance. It was actually really embarrassing to do it in front of a bunch of people. I would have gotten it on video but my camera batteries died so I couldn't but here is a picture of me and a bunch of friends at the game.

Christmas!

2010-01-03T20:16:00.000-08:00

Ok so it has been a while since I last blogged so this is kind of a long post. I went to Bellflower for christmas and It was so great to see my family. I realized how much I missed my nieces and nephews and how much they have grown up in just a few months.

Here we are playing cards, like we always do when a lot of Thompson's get together. I'm not playing this game but I was the champion of all the games I played.

Adele wanted me to teach her some hair styles so here is one that she successfully did on her own. She looks so pretty.

This is my niece, Ali. She is just precious and she loves me the most hehe. You can't see in this picture but she had just finished putting on chapstick so she had clown lips.

Nick, Jason and Sam are seeing who can knock each other over with their feet while doing a handstand. Nick's method was to get as far away from Jason and Sam and let them knock each other down. It worked, Jason and Sam lost everytime.

Here I am arm restling with my nephews Phillipi and Trevor. It is hilarious arm wrestling with little kids because their arms are so short that my arm is almost touching the ground completely.

Here are some presents from Christmas. I got 2 more wii remotes. Now I can play 4 player on my wii. I also got some earrings, a Kohl's giftcard and a laptop!

This is the family on Christmas morning, ready to open up some presents :)

Here is a picture of Phillipi, Me, and Kat. This was the best picture we had because Phillipi kept looking away.

New Year's eve was so much fun. Me, Jason, Sam and a friend went to a dance and it was awesome. I loved the music the DJ played and there were a lot of people there. They were giving out glowsticks so here we are after all the partying. We were tired and kind of sweaty but we had fun.

Halloween

2009-11-01T08:43:00.000-08:00

So this morning I was getting ready for church and I was confused why most of my roommates were still sleeping. I knew it was Halloween last night and we all did stuff until late so I thought maybe they would just roll out of bed and go to church. So finally time for church came so I woke up one of my roommates, which is when I realized that church starts at 11am not 10am. I don't know how I was so confused. But now I have time to blog.

Halloween was so much fun. Last week I had a ward party so me and some friends were the spice girls. Can you guess which one I was?

Of course the spice girls had to take a picture with the Harry Potter Group

Then on the night of Halloween I was a boy scout...haha. I thought it was clever. And my friend Michelle was a pizza.

I was a pro at bobbing for apples. We actually got out a stop watch. 5 seconds flat, beat that.

And at the Halloween party I was at some friends wanted me to go trick or treating and I thought they were ridiculous but some how I got ropped into it. And surprisingly I got a lot of candy. No one even said we were too old.

I'm 20!

2009-09-30T21:17:00.000-07:00

So Friday was my birthday as most of you know...Thanks for all the calls. I had an amazing day. The week leading up to my birthday I was not excited to get older, but Friday was like the best day of the year for me. There wasn't a single thing that went wrong. And my roommates decorated our apartment and the door at like 4am with signs, streamers and candy. So I guess it's not so bad being in your 20's. I took lots of pictures so that you guys can see how fun it was. So during the day I just relaxed a nd ate candy and hung out with friends and then in the evening I had a wedding reception to go to. This reception was in an awesome greenhouse packed with plants so of course me and my friend, Michelle, took pictures in the plants as if we were in a jungle. We were setting a bad example for the little kids, though, because they kept trying to hide there too.

Where am I?

Ok so later that night I had a dance party to celebrate the beginning of my twenties. It was so much fun. I cannot think of a better way to spend my birthday than dancing. Michelle made me my birthday cakes. They were chocolate with cream cheese frosting and those white flowers are marshmallows. This cake was delicious and it's adorable. (I also got a cheesecake from my aunt that was delicious.)

I got my hair cut and dyed on thursday, courtesy of my cousin Amanda. How does it look? At my party I wore a tiara and held a sceptor because I'm a princess. :)

I wanted to put this picture up because it's a cute picture of my brother, Jason, and me. I would also like to say that Jason has been such a nice brother here. I love that he lives just down the hall and we get along so well.

Here are a few people from the party. So much fun.

And of course what party would be complete without being thrown in the pool. That water was freezing and my jeans stuck to my skin like glue but boys will be boys. Overall, I had an amazing birthday because so many people really went out of their way to make it that way, so thanks to everyone.

LA Trip

2009-08-31T22:54:00.000-07:00

So I finally got a battery for my camera. So here are the pictures from my LA Trip. This post is kinda long because there was so much fun stuff I did in LA.

I went to the beach with my family quite a bit while I was down there. This picture is of me with my niece Madeline, my nephew Ty, and Casey. In case you cant tell, Ty is hanging onto my leg for his life because a few minutes before this picture was taken, a wave crashed on us.

And we (Steph and Jen planned it) threw Adele a surprise My Little Pony Birthday Party. So I made her take a picture with the Birthday Tiara on. She looks like a Princess.

And of course we had fun with the pinata. There were like 15 people who hit it so I can't post all the pictures but here are a few. Steph went at it with a samurai sword.
We didn't have a bat and having little kids use the sword seemed kind of dangerous so we used the stick of a broom. Here is Elias hitting the pinata.
And here is Phillipi hitting the pinata and of course his clothes are as stylish as always.
Ali is putting her whole body into it.
And when the adults started hitting the pinata, we realized that it wasn't the best idea to use such a long stick. You can see in this picture that the stick is swinging very fast in the direction of Jen's prego belly. Thanks to my spider-like reflexes the stick didn't hit her belly but after that we tried to hold the stick in the middle.
ANd here is my gorgeous family, well most of them.

Back in Provo

2009-08-18T13:00:00.000-07:00

So I am back from LA. I would post pictures of my trip but my camera is currently broken because a wave crashed on it. I haven't gotten around to fixing it yet, but I will post pictures as soon a I can.

Coming back to Utah means that summer is about to end and I am not ready for winter to come. The end of summer means two things. 1st off, school is about to start and 2nd, snow will come and freeze everything including my ears and nose. I am not looking forward to either of these because I am loving having my entire day free from homework cares and I love the warmth that summer brings. But school has to start sometime. I am just glad that I only have 2 more years left and I am done.

One more thing, My brother Jason has come to Utah too because he is also going to BYU. So I am pretty excited that he is here to party with me. And it's just nice to have more family living near me.

Bowling Queen

2009-07-18T19:33:00.000-07:00

My new nickname is The Bowling Queen as of last Friday. I forgot to post this because last weekend was so packed with fun stuff. So my aunt Ramona is in Utah visiting and my cousin Lisa left me (I will get back to that in a minute). So we had a fun weekend, there is already a post about the Nickelcade, but on Friday we went to the bowling alley. I used my connections and got us lanes without having to wait (I work there so it wasn't very difficult). I am definitely not a fantastic bowler so I average about 110, which isn't horrible but it's not great.

I noticed when we arrived at the alley that, my cousin, Amanda's, husband Dennis had his own bowling ball so I assumed that he would get in the 200's. So we started bowling and at about the 5th frame I missed a spare, but Amanda comes up to me and tells me that at least I'm beating Dennis. This definitely pushed one of his buttons so naturally my only goal for the game was to beat Dennis. The final score was: 140-Melissa, 112-Dennis. And people say dreams don't come true...lol. It was so much fun spending time with my family.

Ok so my cousin, Lisa, left me. She graduated and got a job in Nor Cal so she thinks she needs to do ridiculous things like move on with her life and start a family. She should know that the universe revolves around me. But seriously, I am very proud of her she is so smart and she completed her accounting master's at BYU (which is definitely not easy). She is also such a good friend. I always talked to her about guy stuff so now that she's gone I'm gonna have to text her all my guy stories, which definitely isnt as good as telling them in person. I will really miss seeing her every week but I know that she is gonna love Nor Cal.

One more thing, I changed my major to actuarial sciences. I just loved stats when I took it so i guess I am taking a new career path. Figuring out what you want to do for the rest of your life is so difficult but hopefully I will stick with this one...lol

The Nickelcade

2009-07-14T21:10:00.000-07:00

My cousins have been in town, so we decided to party O-town style . Well, as everyone knows, the most fun thing to do on a Saturday Night in Orem, UT is Disco Skating, but apparently you have to be at least 16 (lame). As my most fun cousin, Kat, isn't 16, we decide to blow off Classic Skating and rock it out at the Nickelcade.

Although my coolest and most favorite cousin Lisa blew me out of the water on DDR, I still had a blast. We used almost all our tickets to buy tons of those fruity tootsie rolls--I had forgotten how fantastic those are. They are addicting! When I left the Nickelcade, I had a huge handful. By the time I got to the house, I had nothing but wrappers and I had no idea why. We were all a little sugar buzzed. Here we are on our post-Frooties high:

If YOU ever find yourself in O-Town on a Saturday night and you love living out your gambling compulsions, DDRing like a fool, racing cars, and using tickets to buy legalized drug candies and slap bracelets, the NICKELCADE is the place to be.

Hiking the Y

2009-07-14T09:49:00.000-07:00

So in case you guys don't know...i am a mom...lol...my calling in the ward is FHE-mom and this week we went on a hike. On the side of the mountain next to BYU is a huge Y and there is a hike up to it so we did it. I have never done the hike so I thought that it would just be like a leisurely stroll but unfortunately it wasn't. It is not a very long hike but it has so many switchbacks and it is pretty steep, so I was dying by the time i finished (I'm sure my family is all gonna thin that I'm being a whimp) It was still a pretty fun hike and it was definitely a good workout. I gotta get in shape to hike Mt Timpanogos (it is a 10-mile hike and I have heard that it is pretty hard) at the end of the summer.

Here are some pics. The first one is of my whole FHE group before the hike. It took some convincing but I got everyone to make a Y out of their arms.

This is at the bottom of the Y. The edge behind us was pretty steep but anyone that knows me well should be proud of how fearlessly I stood near the edge, probably because I knew that I had no brothers around to pretend to push me off...lol

This is the top of the Y. All that white stuff are the rocks that make up the Y. This picture doesn't show how steep the Y is but it took me forever to get up because I was afraid of tumbling down it. I just thought this would be a cool picture. This is at the top of the hike. It was so much fun. I love hiking (except for the 20 mesquito bites that I got). Having mountains like 20 minutes away is one of the few things that I love about provo.

In other news...I will go to LA in just one week. I can't wait to see my nieces and nephews. I miss them so much. I think I will be able to see all of them while I'm down there. I haven't seen my sister Jen's kids in over a year. They have gotten so old since I last saw them but I hope they still remember me. Just seven more days and then I will see my favorite little people in the world. I am also excited to see the rest of my family.

Personal Waterfall

2009-06-30T10:15:00.000-07:00

So about 2 weeks ago when me and my roomie, J'neen, were cleaning our kitchen at 1am I heard a noise coming from our kitchen closet so I opened up the door and, to my surprise, I found our own personal waterfall coming out of the ceiling. Water was also pouring down from my bathroom ceiling too. So I called management while J'neen went upstairs and told the girls to turn off their water. The apartment manager finally came and turned off the water to the girls apartment that lives above us. The manager then informed us that it was toilet water that flooded our apartment. And I guess there was mold in the ceilings because blacks specks in the water that was covering our kitchen and bathroom floors. But finally, at 2:30am, we finished mopping up most of the water in the kitchen and my bathroom...lol. However, right next to the bathroom tile is carpet so our hallway carpet got soaked and stinky. So we ran the AC all night, opened up all of our windows and turned on our celing fans and somehow our apartment still smelled moldy in the morning...lol. We also found out that it flooded our apartment so bad that the apartment below us also got flooded. We were lucky, though, because we only had to clean up a bunch of water but the water must have hit the breaker box for the apartment below us because their power went out. But management sent cleaning guys to my apartment to clean my moldy carpet and everything was fixed before the end of the next day so it wasn't too bad. Below is a picture of the buckets and pots we put to catch the water and the nasty rag that we ended up just throwing away...lol. You can't tell in this picture but the buckets and pots all got filled up.

So here is a picture of my roomie, J'neen, and I. While our friend was trying on wedding dresses we got bored and decided to wear some veils...lol. I am such a dork but it works out because J'neen is a dork too :) It is nice to have a good roomie after I have had so many stressful ones...lol.

So I am pretty excited that school is finally over and summer has started. The weather is beautiful, I go swimming alot and my tan is pretty sweet, what more could I as for...lol. And I will find out if I was accepted into the accounting program by July 30th. I am getting more nervous as the date approaches.

Catching up on the month

2009-06-15T17:16:00.001-07:00

Ok so somehow I have forgotten to put a hilarious video of my mom up. Ok so me and my sis, Lynette, were cracking each other's backs. My mom came running in from the other room and asked us to crack her back too. However, it was a missunderstanding because she meant that she wanted a massage. So lets just say she was surprised...lol

Ok and here is a picture of when I was at home in April (I know its kind of old). I was babysitting my nephew Phillipi and he wanted lunch but he wouldn't eat the sandwich I made him or crackers or even a quesadilla. So I offered him some honeycomb cereal which he then dipped in ranch (the ranch was on the plate from the quesadilla) and happily ate. He ate a full plate of honeycomb dipped in ranch. I thought it might be good so I tried it, but it was as disgusting as it sounds.

Ok so Memorial Day was a blast. I went to My aunt, Ozi, house for breakfast. It was the first real breakfast I have had in a long time. We had pancakes, sausage, english muffins and watermelon. It was delicious. We also played games in the yard witht he younger kids. Here is a picture of me and my uncle, Steve.
And me and my cousin, Lisa.I just thought this picture was funny because my cousins (who are all in their 30's) told the little kids they should go play soccer but next thing you know it was the two older brothers playing against each other, not really letting the kids play...lol.

This outfit was inspired by my sis, Adele. She had a prom-like skirt and wore it with flats and a T-shirt and it looked good. I had also had a skirt like that and wasn't sure how to wear it, so I copied her look. Thanks Adele.Ok so there are 3 days left and then I will be completely done with school for the summer (finals and everything). One thing that goes along with the end of school is papers and projects. Here is my final project for humanities. I took this painting (first pic) and recreated it into a modern sculpture (second pic). I would just like to say that, in my opinion, modern art is not art, but what do you think?

Accounting Application Status

2009-05-19T12:50:00.000-07:00

Ok so i have been waitlisted. So i guess the accounting program has a waitlist and im not exactly sure what it is. But now I have to wait until July to find out if I will be accepted or not. So i have another two months of being anxious.

So I've still been busy with school. The summer terms go by fast and I am almost done with the term. Then I will get a break for two months before school starts up again. But I love the summer time. On thurs I went to a bonfire and that was fun until I got tacckled by some guy.

Here's what happened. I was talking to my friend Jason when, all of the sudden, I find myself on the floor in pain. This guy, who I didn't really know, tackled me to the ground as a joke. I think I might have hurt a muscle in my neck when my head snapped forward. My check was swollen and I was in bed for the next few days because my back/neck hurt. But I am feeling a lot better now. I don't know what would make a guy, who I barely know, think it was ok to tackle me when I didn't even expect it. Some people these days are ridiculous. Ok well thats all for now.

End of the semster

2009-04-30T10:55:00.000-07:00

Ok so for one of my classes I created a webpage about me and here's the link (its pretty sweet so you might want to check it out and some of the pictures have links to other websites :D) http://webpub.byu.net/babymis/

I also got my grades for last semester so that means two things. First, I am officially a junior. Second, I submitted my application to the accounting program yesterday. I will know if I was accepted in 30-60 days. I will post it on here if I'm accepted or rejected. So please no one ask me about it for at least a month because it will probably make me more nervous. So that's basically it for now :)

Conference Weekend

2009-04-06T23:37:00.000-07:00

Ok so two weekends ago, I went to a thing called Festival of Colors. A lot of students here go to the festival of Colors and basically everyone throws colored chalk at each other. It probably sounds like a weird thing to do but it was fun. However it was one of those things that was fun to do but I would never do again...lol. It was a fun social thing but chalk went up my nose and in my eyes and it felt like chalk went in my lungs. My friends all agreed that I got the most chalk on me. It kind of looks like I have a disease :) Oh and now my shirt (which was black) is now pink, yellow and a little bit green.

So this weekend Casey and Lynette came to visit me (the fact that conference was here may have encouraged them to come too). So we stayed at my aunt Vernita's house and I had so much fun. I haven't seen them for like a year and it's been even longer for lynette. Of course I took on the roll of entertaining my cousin Julia's kids. They are so adorable. Below is a picture of them riding the horsey :) The older boy, Sterling, kept telling me that it was his turn to be the horsey, but I don't think he realized how big I was. I was able to get Casey, Lynette and me tickets to the last session of conference so we got all dressed up and took the train from Vernita's house to Salt Lake. It was the first time that I have ever been on a train so it was pretty exciting for me. The conference center is so huge. Casey said it looked like The Great and Spacious Building so after the session Casey insisted that we go to the top level. He stood at the edge of the balcony pretending to mock the people going into Temple Square. Get it? Yeah he thought he was pretty funny...haha. And last of all here is a picture of Vernita, Faith, Lynette and me. Now you can see where i get my beauty from ;)

New Hair...Once Again

2009-03-20T18:12:00.000-07:00

Ok I was bored so I decided to dye my hair once again. I went back to Black and I like it. Here's a picture, what do you think.So I'm pretty sure that I couldn't be anymore clumsy. I would actually say that I make being clumsy an art. On Wednesday I hurt my knee. Here's what happened...I was running up the stairs of my apartment complex and I tripped and landed on my knee. It got so swollen and the next day it was bruised also. You can see in the picture where it's swollen (the picture actually doesn't show how swollen it is). It's swollen in a line because I landed right on the edge of the stair with the soft part of my knee and our stairs are metal on the edge. Lucky me. As of right now my knee only hurts slightly. And it's not as bruised, probably because I iced it so much.
By request of my mom, I am putting up the video of my Polar Bear Swim. It's actually kind of pathetic how slow I am swimming (although 30 degree water is a good excuse). As you can see, I started before everyone and half of them still swam faster than me...lol

The Hortin's

2009-03-08T20:13:00.000-07:00

So every Sunday I go to my Aunt Ozi's house for dinner. This is a picture of me and Ozi. Let me first rave for a few minutes about what a good cook she is. I'm pretty sure that she hasn't made the same thing in the same month (we basically have something new every week) and her cooking is just amazing. Today we had chicken with some delicious sauce on it, twice baked potatoes, salad, asparagus and rolls. Anyone who knows me, knows that am not a vegetable person, but Ozi has converted me. I even ate 6 pieces of asparagus, I never thought that vegetables could taste good...lol. Next, let me say how delicious her rolls are. She makes rolls from scratch and they are so soft and yummy. Everytime I come home, my roomates are like, "did you bring some rolls back." I love having a good meal at least once in the week because as a college student, Ramen Noodles are a staple. Another thing that I love is being around family. It's so nice getting to know my cousins and their children. I have such a great family and I am so lucky that they are close by.

Here's a pic of Tanner (Han's son), Lisa (she picks me up and takes me to Ozi's house), and me.

Polar Bear Swim

2009-03-01T22:55:00.000-08:00

Ok so I didn't do the smartest thing on Wednesday. For some reason I thought it would be fun to jump into 20 degree water. So every February my apartment complex and other apartment complexes in Provo (I'm sure they have activities like this in other places too) do something called the Polar Bear swim. It is where people jump into ice cold water and swim a lap. Genius Idea...I know. So I decide to follow the crowd. I was assuming that the water wouldn't be as cold because the weather had been "warming up" to the 40's lately (which is still freezing cold). So I go and sign up and when I jumped into that water it didn't feel terrible, probably because my body was in shock...lol. After about 2 seconds, though, it felt like death. It was the worst thing I have ever done. I could barely breathe the rest of the night and I was sick for like the next 2 days. And what was the reason for me doing this. Did i get my next month's utilities paid for or even a dinner. Nope. I got a T-shirt. I did all of this for a T-shirt that was too big on me cuz they ran out of smalls. At least now I can say that "I took the plunge."

To those of you who tie your shoes together

2009-02-22T15:29:00.000-08:00

This weekend I was at work when I decided that I have a new biggest pet peeve. I work at a bowling alley called Fatcats. I like working there because I get a meal for free whenever I work and it's a pretty chill job, but I can't stand one thing. I don't like when people tie the bowling shoes together before they give them back to us. It would be fine if just one person did it and I didn't have a lot of shoes to put away but that is never the case. On Saturdays when Fatcats is always super busy, there are always a whole counter of shoes to put away and half of the pairs are always tied together (and last Saturday when I worked, I had to stay after my shift to put away shoes even though I had somewhere to go). I have to untie the shoes before I am able to put them away because they cannot fit correctly in the shoe slots while tied together. So having shoes tied together always doubles the time it takes to put away shoes. which means that the line of people waiting to be helped gets super long. If the line is super long that usually makes customers upset, and I don't like being yelled at by customers. In conclusion, please don't tie your shoes together. I would rather you don't tie your shoes at all than for you to tie your shoes together.

Valentines' Day

2009-02-15T09:08:00.000-08:00

Ok so this week wasn't too interesting but i had fun on Valentines' Day. A bunch of guys planned a scavenger hunt for me and my roommates and even though my team lost, we still had lots of fun. One of the things on the list was "stuff your face with candy," so of course I volunteered to do that one. Here is a picture of me with a mouth full of Swedish Fish (I fit the whole bag in my mouth, and even though the bag doesn't look too big in the picture, there were a lot of Swedish Fish)

I would just like to inform everyone that I have fallen in love. During the scavenger hunt, we saw a lady walking this beauty. It is a Great Pyrenees. It is the most beautiful Dog I have ever seen. She shed all over me, but that's ok. I looked up the Great Pyrenees and they are "calm and courageous" and good with children, but it needs lots of space to run around so I guess I can't get it right now. But look how happy it is with me.

One more thing. when I came home from work yesterday i had a bunch of Valentines on my table. You're never too old to get candy and cards that say stuff like, "You light up my heart" or "BFFs"...ok so that's all for now.

2009-02-08T10:08:00.000-08:00

I know that I painted my apartment a while ago but I finally have a video of it...the video is pretty short but you can finally see what a pro at painting I am. And I don't know if you can see the edges but we came across a problem with edging...it was too hard to get the edges straight because the wall has dips and bumps in it and we aren't painters.

Ok so this week was pretty busy/stressful for me because I had my first big accounting test so I studied a lot. I was pretty convinced that I would fail but I got an A (only because the curve was set so low...lol). I haven't started on my accounting application but I probably should. My roommate (she isn't the one who shares a room with me...she is in the room next to me) is the girl sitting on the couch in the video...she is very sick, with like an ear infection and some virus or whatever.

This week I went to the Draper Temple Open House with the Relief Society in my ward. Draper is a city in the Salt Lake Valley and that temple is the 12th temple in Utah. It is so beautiful. The chandeliers looked like they were rainbow-colored and the cookies they served after were so delicious.

One last thing. The weather here has been so nice. It has been in the 40s. On Thursday I even went to school in just a sweater (instead of my huge jacket). I would like to think that it marks the end of winter here but that would just be wishful thinking...lol. Ok well thats all for now.

Christmas pictures and more

2009-01-18T08:56:00.000-08:00

Ok i finally got my computer back so I can post pictures now...these pictures are from christmas break, there are a lot of them and they are pretty random.

This is a picture of my Albert with my moms coat on, he actually asked her if he can keep it. Thankfully she said no.
Here is me with my tiara on cuz im a princess (doing my monkey face)...i wore that tiara basically the whole time I was home.
One thing that I really miss at school is waffles. At my mom's house, she has this belgian waffle maker that makes the best waffles. But I don't have a waffle maker so the only time I get waffles is when I go to my mom's house. So on christmas morning I made waffles for everyone and they were delicious...not that anyone can mess up making waffles...lol
Now it was time to open presents...

Nick wore a turban...

Albert popped 5 collars...

and I got a ferrari...
Now ill talk about this week...as opposed to the weather by Jen, our weather has been beautiful. it hasn't snowed for like 2 weeks and the temperature even got up to 40 this weekend. Now this weather may not sound warm but it's better than the 12 degrees when I first came, and it's definitely better than last year when it snowed practically everyday. So I am enjoying this while it lasts.

So about 2 years ago, when I was going to Hawaii, I got a coconut ring...I basically wore it everyday, but then on Wednesday at work, my hand got smashed between two bowling balls and my ring snapped. My hand was only bruised but now my ring is in four different pieces. Sad day.
Here's a picture of my ring in pieces.
So yesterday me and my room mates spent the whole day painting...our living room went from being aquamarine (it was pretty hideous and loud) to a forest green and gray....it looks pretty good now. Ok that's all for now.

Christmas and More

2009-01-11T09:26:00.000-08:00

Much to my dismay I am up at 10am on a sunday. I usually sleep until at least 11 or 12 on sunday but family members (who have forgotten what it was like to be single and childless) decided to call me. Anyways I thought it was a good time to post a blog considering its been a few weeks since the last one. Oh and I can't put up pictures yet because I dont have my computer back from hp yet.

Christmas was so much fun, mainly because my niece Alicia was there. I played with her basically the whole time that she was at my parents house. I loved it when she would say, "no mommy, not you, I want Misa." hehe. That made me feel so loved.

Although Alicia eventually loved me, she started off disliking me...a lot...lol. When my mom and I picked Steph, Nick, Ali, and Kat (the Pulhams) up from the trainstation, Ali screamed at the top of her lungs to make sure that I didn't sit next to her. Also the first few mornings I had to re-win her over, but by the end of the week, I'm pretty sure Ali thought I was her best friend. I was so sad to leave her, but I have to get an education.

Ok so I have been in school for a week now and im pretty sure that this semester will be a kind of hard. I'm not maxing out my credits but the classes I'm taking are kind of difficult. Hopefully I will do well though so that I can make it into the accounting program. I will apply in April and should know if I made it by June so if you ask me before June if I was accepted, then I probably don't know yet. Ok so thats all for now.

One more thing. No one voted on my last poll so I just died my hair dark brown.

2008-12-19T09:46:00.000-08:00

Hello again everyone. It has been a while since I last made a post but there is a reason. My computer has been broken for a few weeks. Here's what happened...

(Just to give a background info, when my laptop is closed, it is supposed to be off.) So one day I come into my apartment and my laptop is on and thinking (even though it was closed). When I opened it up, the computer screen was squished to the bottom half of the page and there were black lines going across the page. So i turned off my laptop and when I turned it back on it took about an hour to start up. Since then It has had about a 50/50 chance of actually starting up when I turn it on, and if it does turn on then it will randomly turn off or freeze frequently. So I have not been able to use it. Steph thinks it is the video card but if anyone else has any ideas I am willing to hear them.

Ok so back to me...lol. The semester just ended and I think that I did pretty well on finals. I will know my grades in about a week. Hopefully I did well. I apply for the accounting program after this semester and hopefully my grades this semster will give me a good chance of making it into the program. I'm so excited to be home because I have been able to play with my neice ali all day. Yesterday we played, read books and went to the park. It was so fun. The last time I saw her, she couldn't even talk and now she talks so much. I love christmas and can't wait. It's in 6 days...yay.

My First Blog

2008-11-13T20:29:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone. Even though I don't have kids or a bird, I have a blog so that everyone can be updated on my life. Ok so to start off, I just took a midterm and two finals on Tuesday. I was afraid that I would fail all of them but surprisingly I got A's on all of them (accounting 93%, self defense 100% and Business communications 95%). That made the rest of my day great.

I embarrassed myself yesterday. Everyone that knows me knows how graceful I am...lol. So i was running up stairs to class because I was late (like always), when I must have missed a step. Next thing I knew, I ran into a wall against the stairs and fell down. Luckily, I was near the top of the stairs so I didn't roll down them, unluckily, the stairs were marble. I was laying on the top of the stairs in pain when this guy was walking towards me. I assumed that he would help me up but instead he goes out of his way to walk around me. So much for chivalry...lol.

Oh and I died my hair a reddish brown about a month ago. Here is a picture but most of the red has faded.