World, with my busy Sundays and schoolwork and distractions throughout the rest of the week, I don't know if I'll ever be able to catch back up. Oh my freakin' gosh.
Man, I've still got stuff to talk about from all the way back to Sept. 8th (and I only know that because I backtracked to the past couple posts and matched up my list of stuff that's happened to dates), so it's almost exactly 2 months of stuff to cover, and who knows how that's going to go.
Today, at least, there's Stake Conference, so there's more time to write before (and, hopefully, after). There's also no ward choir practice (and I had been trying to go to stake choir practices, but it's looking like I'm not gonna make it early enough to actually perform today- I didn't yesterday), so that's in my favor today.
Okay, take your mind back to Sept. 8, a Friday, one of the first Fridays of the school year. What happens at colleges during the first few weeks of the year? That's right: a whole lotta opening socials. (That also means a lot of free dessert. I got spoiled.) I actually went to three different events that day, which was a little exhausting. There was Japan Club, which wasn't that bad (and I saw two Fiction Writing classmates this time- one I'm gonna nickname No-Ghost for reasons mentioned later, since we're actual friends now) but I haven't gone to anything for them since then; there was the Institute, whose social was huuuuuuge, and I ended up spending most of my time there hiding away in the corner of the building watching people play Mario Kart and talk to this one guy who turns out to be in my ward; there was the 80's dance, which is my favorite dance I've been to so far. My outfit pretty much got put together by my mom and sis, since I didn't really have anything with me that would work for such an event. I was given some black/white vertical-stripe leggings (which we already owned), my swimsuit shorts, a lime green top, and some brightly colored makeup. My mom gave me the options of turquoise eyeliner, blue eyeshadow, pink lipstick, and pink blush, and I just settled for the eyeliner and lipstick because that seemed like a decent enough compromise between me and the 80's. I also pulled my hair up into a high side ponytail, which I had to constantly adjust throughout the dance, so that was a little annoying, but at least I looked good.
A little over halfway into my time at the dance, I checked on my phone, and realized Weston had texted me that he was there. With a little more texting, we found each other and hung out together for a little longer before we couldn't take it anymore and left. He offered to buy some ice cream, and since it was super close and still open, I suggested the restaurant I live right by, the one I went to with Terra the week(?) before. We ended up staying there chatting for over an hour, and had to go because they were closing at midnight. It was really nice to talk while cooling down with yummy ice cream. (I feel like I should mention this, that while walking me home, he asked me out to go on a real date, and I declined. I told him about how I'd already decided that I was going to wait a while to date so I could focus on school and keeping my scholarship, and he understood. Unfortunately, we've never hung out after that day outside of class. And that class only met 3 or 4 times after, so...)
This is a little pointless to add, but I ended up binging a little on Dodie Clark again once I made it to my room instead of sleeping. I was already dead tired, but nope. I think I just tend to have the craving to go onto Youtube and such when I'd dead tired until I'm even more dead tired, and it's a little stupid, yet I do it anyway. Thanks, me.
The next day, I watched some From the New World (part of the time with Terra) since we were apparently going to discuss it in Anime Club. Just... don't.
That Sunday was super, super scary, because it was the first time I've given a lesson in church... ever. Like, I think I helped my sister once to give a lesson in YW? And I almost gave a short lesson in YW last year (which ended up canceled). Now, it was happening for real. So, this definitely falls under one of those things where I had to be super, exhaustingly brave.
I did a lot of praying and doing my best to prepare (and I went the "prepare too much" route my dad has always preferred), and it was such a relief when, the moment I was standing in front of the room, I didn't feel that scared anymore. I still faltered and done-goofed every once in a while, but in general it seemed the lesson went pretty smoothly, and there's still women from the ward that, when they talk to me, will mention that they liked my lesson. Like, what?? Did I seriously do that good that people are still bringing it up?? Or do they just not know what else to say to me??
There was a devotional after that, and then at ward prayer I was invited to go to a game night at someone's house, which has really fun! I played Racetrack (and just about pwned everyone else who played it, whoops) and Egyptian Rat (that's the name of that card game, right?), and also got to eat a yummy, warm cinnamon roll. (There was another game night a while later at someone else's house, but it wasn't quite as fun, unfortunately.)
Let's skip to the next Wednesday. There was a guy that spoke about the neuroscience of being happy. Two of the things that I appreciated were that he explained that the part of the brain that is signaled to be joyful was literally right next to the part that is signaled to be terrified, which is why those emotions tend to get really mixed up (like laughing and screaming on a roller-coaster), and that there was a formula in songwriting that makes songs so catchy and make us happy, that they stay mostly consistent and then occasionally surprise us with something that breaks the pattern (and, funny enough, he used the chorus of Taylor Swift's "Look What You Made Me Do" to demonstrate it). I also got to go get a smoothie and cookie with my roommates Terra and Ash at a place that's like Swig (pro-tip: don't eat the cookie and smoothie together).
The next day, I got to do a pretty cool project in Anime Club! We were bleaching T-shirts with anime designs! I figured I'd use one of my black shirts (which isn't a T-shirt, but it seemed to work well enough), and was told that it'd bleach to red or orange. I thought on that a little, and ended up deciding to do a fiery FMA design, and that turned into putting the "Flame Alchemist Rap" on it.
Starting from drawing the template onto wax paper, the whole thing took about four hours. It was, evidently, quite late by the time I left with finished shirt in hand (though one girl was there even longer because hers required more drawing). WORTH IT.
People who got it thought it was genius.
Unfortunately, the last time I've gone to Anime Club was the Thursday after this, in which I ended up seeing the first episode of Kill la Kill (which was way worse with fan-service than I'd been expected, so never again) and a wee bit of Spice & Wolf. After that, other things have kept taking priority over going to club. Hopefully, I'll be able to go again at least a couple more times this semester. ...Eventually. (Agh, it's crazy to think we have just about a month left of fall semester!!!)
The Saturday after, I'd ventured out of my house to go to a ward service activity... only to show up and find nobody at the designated house. When I gave up on seeing any other people, I started to make my way home- but first, I decided to stop by the little park that house was by. Turns out it's basically the elementary school's territory, playground and all, but grassier and parkier. I swung on the swings for a full half-hour, enjoying the nice weather and just feeling calm and peacefully alone. It was a welcome change to suddenly trying to be relatively social at a huge school.
I ended up working on QQ later that day, and... to be honest, I've only gone to work on it with Liz once or twice since then. Poor thing is probably really frustrated with me.
Something I ended up kinda doing on my own starting that day was write little "scripts" for Sanders Sides. I think it'd be really cool to finish one and send it to him and see if Thomas and his friends actually find something in there they like and use it in a video! I haven't finished one, though, but maybe that's still something I can work on while his series still exists (which, according to one of his Q&A videos, sounds like it'll last a long time!).
Though I don't have it in my diary notes, a couple days ago, I finally started finding how I could possibly be split into the different parts of me like Thomas. It took me this long because I always felt like I was too complicated to define like that (not to say Thomas isn't a complicated person, but I just couldn't see how I could be split up in a way similar to him). I watched a couple people who had made videos inspired by him, which maybe have helped a little, but ultimately I thought that two conflicting parts of me are the kid and the adult, and I realized that's where I could branch off. I know that an entire person can't be neatly fit into 4 personas (even Thomas and his friends hinted at more Sides appearing in the future), but I did my best because it seems like a good number to fit major parts of me into (and include smaller parts like hobbies within them, as well). Here's what I've got so far (which doesn't seem perfect, but it's getting there):
- Adult/Mestiza - reasoning, centered on knowledge and wisdom, thinks about future consequences, global perspective, passionate about Chicano/Latino issues, proofreader
- Kid/Creep - naive, easy to excite, switches between oblivious and observant, blunt, loves to scare and laugh, focuses on present, loves to dress up
- Love/Fangirl - love (for family, friends, hobbies, fandoms, etc.), nostalgic, what the heart wants, creative, reader and writer
- Insecurity/Tomboy - drummer, likes Spider-Man, loves food, worries (over failure, being judged, lacking independence and balance, etc.), wide-awake and tired at the same time
I don't know, that seems to compile a lot of different parts of me. And I wanted to exemplify how there's a lot of contrastive stuff going on and everything in my personality is connected in seemingly random ways. Most importantly, I didn't want to resort to making Insecurity similar to Thomas's Anxiety, that (s)he's seen like a "bad guy" for a while, and seem to be the only one that isn't happy for a while, if you get what I mean. I suppose trying to pair up Insecurity with my more boy-ish aspects still lands me a little closer to Anxiety than I'm comfortable with, but I think Insecurity's still got enough non-negative aspects to balance her out a little more and make her happy, too.
Kid/Creep is the one that I think is the least likely to change, because it feels right. I mean, I was a kid for a long time, and still end up acting like a kid, and I know my kid-ish traits pretty well, and I think they would be in the same persona as the part that likes Halloween and Tim Burton. I always loved Halloween (besides when I was a year old and apparently cried upon seeing my makeup-ed reflection), despite taking a long time to be able to handle more "scary" stuff, and I have, evidently, had a long tradition of dressing up for holidays, which has only grown, and have slowly been more creative with my wardrobe inside and outside of holidays because the kid inside me loves it. I don't know if any of this makes sense, but... yeah, it feels right.
Love/Fangirl seems pretty spot-on, too (though I just barely added that "nostalgic" part, which seems accurate- and, I mean, if Adult/Mestiza is thinking about the future and Kid/Creep about the present, then Love/Fangirl and Insecurity/Tomboy are probably often thinking about the past), but I think she needs a little more depth and contrast to fit in better with the others.
So... yeah. Hopefully, I can hone this idea, and think it worth it to figure this out instead of continue to be in that ambiguous cloud of "Who even am I?".
Back to the timeline- on Sunday, Terra said that she wanted to make tacos with me to celebrate Mexican Independence Day. (It'd actually been the day before- and, of course, I'd tried to wear red, green, and white to school and wear some of the patriotic jewelry Abuelita gave me and my sis a couple years ago. I invited my roommates to wear some to celebrate as well, but I'm pretty sure only Terra had taken up the offer.) I'm pretty proud of how they came out, even though it was nothing like typical street tacos. She put me in charge of the ground beef, which we ended up adding my salt, dried onion, and garlic salt to, and her steak seasoning, crushed red pepper flakes, and oregano. It actually ended up being a decent amount of seasoning, as it wasn't overpowering nor too little (which I was worried would happen, since I thought I wasn't putting in enough). Once done, we put the beef on some tortillas (which Terra had made, but they were made with her flatbread recipe, so thicker and doughier than typical tortillas- they certainly did their job, though) with lime juice and some baby spinach. Not exactly authentic, but it was delicious, and I was happy to know that I helped to make it.
For whatever reason, Terra kept wanting to make food, so just a little later, she started making soft pretzels and let us other roommates partake of them. She complained about how they came out, but we loved them. Unfortunately, we had to rush out the door the moment they were done because we were going to go to a devotional by President Russell M. Nelson!
Dude. DUDE. I'm pretty dang sure that that's the closest I've ever been to one of the general authorities since I was a toddler. I seriously teared up a little when he came in, because this felt pretty unreal and the Spirit around him was so strong. I was freaking out for quite a while. Eventually, though, I was good, and just focused on what he and his wife were speaking to us about.
Okay, I just gotta talk about this. One of the things Sister Nelson talked about was that her husband had felt prompted to learn Chinese even though he was super busy being a heart surgeon, and because he listened to that and started learning Chinese, when the time came, he was able to connect with Chinese doctors and improve the relationship between the countries and even operated on some very important people in China. I found that really, really cool. The thing, though, is that, since near the beginning of the semester when I started seriously considering doing a study abroad (which I told my adviser when I met with her, so hopefully next year we can start planning that a little more and I can go somewhere my junior year), I've been really thinking about the Middle East. I think part of it is because I ended up watching a couple things with my parents about those areas earlier in the year, and I felt a little more of the kinship with them because some of the things they did reminded me of Latinos. (My chem lab partner totally denied that there's anything similar between the two groups, but I'm not gonna listen to him.) And, I dunno, maybe interacting with a couple people from there last school year has something to do with it. Even the fact that I look pretty Middle-Eastern as is might have something to do with it! With looking up study abroad locations and talking to a couple Saudi students at an international event on campus, I'm just... feeling like that's not random. Like maybe I'm supposed to learn a little Arabic, go to one of the Middle Eastern countries, something like that. The thing with the first is that it'd be hard to learn Arabic while it's not my major focus of study, and I wouldn't be able to fit 2 years of Arabic into my schedule without lengthening my stay at the university (I'd prefer to keep this within the 4 years my scholarship covers, thank you very much), and it'd be hard to devote time outside of school to properly learn it. Even worse, most of those countries are pretty dangerous, and the safest one offered for study abroad was Jordan (and one of the Saudis had suggested going there, too)- but, as of yet, there isn't a program there that would fit my major. *facedesk* So, right now, I figured I could probably start with learning it during Winter and Summer Breaks, but... if I am really feeling like I'm supposed to learn Arabic, that doesn't seem like enough. What do I do?
With that giant paragraph out of the way, let's continue?
What Pres. Nelson talked about in the devotional was the truth about the Book of Mormon. Of course, what he said was important, and there were definitely things I wanted to remember, but what I was really thinking about was why he decided to devote the devotional to that topic. If you saw General Conference last month, you'd know that that was what he talked about there, too! Is that something a lot of people need to hear right now?
The weather was super nice starting from there, I say sarcastically. It was suddenly really cold and windy and rainy that whole week (which especially sucked on Monday, because I hadn't anticipated precipitation and had to walk all the way from the campus library to my apartment in the dark and freezing in the rain). The weird thing is that it righted itself again right after that week and pretty much stayed consistent until this week. Considering the time between that rainy Monday and this week, that was almost two whole months where everything was dry and pretty stagnant. Most days were 30-40 degrees (Fahrenheit) in the early morning and evening and 60-70 in the middle of the day. That's a whole lot more predictable (and warmer) than I expected things to be in this area, from what everyone was saying before I moved. Good things had to come to an end, though- last Friday, it started raining, and yesterday afternoon, it switched to snow. At least the weather had the decency to wait till after Halloween to make us freeze. (Trust me, it's not fun going trick-or-treating when there's snow outside.)
I had my very first biology exam that Tuesday, which I was terrified for. It was a lot of material for concepts I barely remembered or never really got covered all the way back in 9th grade. I was being such a good studier, though, and went to most of the SIs and everything, and got 37/40. Be proud of me. (I was also quite nervous about the second exam, and studied a pretty decent amount and got the same score. Last week, I had my third- I ended up with a lot on my plate for other classes and outside of school, though, so thank goodness it was inheritance and genetics, which I find much easier than the previous material, and didn't have to study as much. I got 39/40! And the professors have added extra points to everyone's scores to boost up the average, so my grade's really good in the class!)
Next day was the day that I think I actually became friends with No-Ghost. We'd gone to a lecture by a folktale scholar, suggested by our Fiction Writing teacher (though everyone ended up kinda disappointed that the topic wasn't exactly what was advertised, and he wasn't all that good at lecturing...) Afterwards, there were refreshments (I love the refreshments offered at campus events, oh my gosh), and No-Ghost and I ended up staying together chatting. We talked about writing and fandoms (and I had to bring up my bleached shirt, because c'mon) and stuff, and it was really nice. I ended up missing something else I'd planned to go to to keep talking with her for an hour, but I don't regret it.
Later that day, I was about to go to bed when my sis sent me a text about if I could help her polish up her school paper, so I did that with her for a while over text and Google Docs. It was nice to proofread and suggest some things to her and be able to know that I was actually helping my older sister! I'm really hoping she got a good grade on that, and remembers a couple of the suggestions I'd given for future assignments.
I think this is a good place to mention that I've been doing the occasional beta-ing lately (which I really shouldn't, considering I have plenty of schoolwork to worry about, but I can't help myself). One is BTK (pretty sure she was mentioned sometime last spring), who I did a little more proofreading for, and recently am gonna try to translate one of her stories from Spanish to English! I did the first draft of the first chapter, which she's given back comments on, and there's... six more chapters to go on that, I think. One of the newest girls added to the Hangouts chat with Scaehime and Liz also has a really long story that Liz and I are going to work at a little at a time to proofread. Lastly, I tried translating a formal school document from English to Spanish for the Translators Club a couple days ago (which I'm actually going to talk a little more about in a future post), and I think that went okay? I don't have a very formal Spanish vocabulary, to be honest, so I had to use Google Translate for some of the words (but, of course, did my best to make sure that the word made sense, since a lot of these words I recognized but couldn't remember on my own)...
That Friday, they did a pretty cool campus event called Human Library, where people (I think all of them alumni of this college) with pretty interesting backgrounds and experiences made themselves available to talk to students. They called choosing one of those people to talk "checking out a Human Book" and talking to them "reading". The Book I checked out was this woman who had traveled around the world on the college's behalf with her husband and kids to work on bettering the food and nutrition of other countries. She had some pretty cool stories, and awesome advice. One of the best things was that she helped me feel a little better about going on a study abroad.
I also ended up watching the live-action Beauty and the Beast yet again this year, this time with a couple of the other women in the Relief Society. It was supposed to be a movie night with quite a few women, I imagine, but barely anyone came, which was a little sad (and awkward). It was still fun, though (oh, and before the movie, one of the girls had put on The Happy Place, a Netflix show that I'd never seen but it was quite funny, and I hope to see more of it- actually, I'd mentioned it to my dad and sister, and now they've both watched all the way through and love it).
Saturday was the Women's Session of General Conference, which I watched with Ash in the living room. That was a fantastic session, so I'd seriously recommend watching it online if you haven't yet.
Next day was Fast Sunday, which I actually remembered to do (though I probably should've started it earlier...). It was also the day I was put into my new callings- member of the ward Activities Committee (basically, we're supposed to help out with activities and maybe suggest new ones every once in a while) and Relief Society chorister. I'm just grateful I'm not a teacher, because I don't think I can handle all that stress from a couple weeks prior happening again and again yet.
Okay, it's probably not smart to stop at talking about only two weeks when there's still six weeks to cover, but I don't think I can handle sitting in front of the laptop any longer. I'm just gonna end with a picture of the Bendaroo blood seal mentioned in the last post. Isn't it beautiful?
Bye!
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