Plans and Changes

It's really one in the morning while I'm writing this, and as we all know, 1 am is the worst writing you'll ever create. So, If you remember back to this post and this post, you'll notice that if you follow, we're supposed to be in Utah right now.

But here's the thing. Claudio does not like BYU. BYU is a great school, don't get me wrong, but the environment is totally different. At BYU, your classmates are your competition which is a stark contast to BYUH where your classmates help you more. I wouldn't know, I wasn't studying there, but Claudio sure did not like it at all!

Meanwhile, over late spring and early summer, I was accepted to 3 graduate programs. This was so exciting for me! As soon as I was accepted to the University of Amsterdam, I was amazed and tried my hardest to get there. But then, after a few weeks of planning, I decided that it was right for me. Meanwhile Claudio was figuring out what he wanted to do.

More or less, we moved back to Hawaii at the end of August. We weren't (okay, I wasn't) happy about it, but it was really was was best for us. I love being here, we were just really worried about employment.

I might as well stop writing blog posts about what the future holds, because it never works out. We've been blessed in so many ways, but that doesn't mean it was our plan to be where we are today.

It's now been about 3 months here in Hawaii. I was offered a job as a full-time female housing coordinator which I absolutely love. I supervise one hale (house in hawaiian, basically dormitory) with 4 residential advisors who are part-time workers and students, and then another 200 female students which we serve. I absolutely love being a "hale mom" as we're called. I get to serve so many girls, counsel them, get to know them, hear their successes and failures, plan activities, etc. It's a blast and I love every minute of it. I'm not sure the reasoning behind it, but the housing administration office has now pulled me in to their office to work in HR half of the time. I started on that this week, and I enjoy it so far. As you'll read onto later, I've considered the HR field and so this will be perfect experience for me.

Claudio is studying and working part time and will finish in April.

Upon graduation, I guess that means we'll need to make a plan of where to go and what to do.......... crap. We have too many options. We both want to go to graduate school, and there's some really great programs ... but do we want to now? Or do we want to wait a few years to have the work experience and then attend? Gosh, we are in a current state of confusion.

Nine Mile Canyon

.... is one of the coolest places I've been! Here's a bunch of Pictures from our trip:

An Art Project

Humanities 442 Art project log

February 24th, 2013

My first step of my project was to learn to crochet. I planned to make a rug, washcloth or hot pad, and I wanted to learn a hands on skill in order to do this. My friend Constanza is an excellent crocheter, so she lent me yarn and a needle, and too me step by step through the process. After you learn to main step, you now basically just keep going around and around the circle. My issue was that I was making it very tight, which made it curl, so I kept needing to double up to make each stitch wider and make it flat. You'll see my ripples! 

February 27th, 2013

I sat down to do some more crocheting. The basic stitch didn't take extremely long, so I just sat and listened to some music while I made my stitches. I got to a point when it was pretty large, and felt like I did a good job practicing. I called Constanza so we could plan the next step. 

March 12th

Connie and I decided that it would be best for me to keep with the circle stitch (I obviously should know what the real names are by now). My plan was to make a rug of sort, but while I cute and sewed strands of tshirts together, it looked like I couldn't have enough for that. This step took me forever, since I'm not very good at sewing by hand. I only used 2 of my husbands old tshirts, but it made nice, large "yarn" in order to create a pot holder .

March 29th

I tried to coordinate with Connie because I had forgotten how to begin the circle, but we didn't ever coordinate well enough. I took things into my own hands, practice the use of Google, and found how to begin the circle again. Using this "yarn" is actually harder, because its much larger and gets stuck on itself easily. The overlays between strips which I had sewn needed to be tucked in, but I liked the look of it. 

April 6rd

I decided to finish the remainder during general conference. It didn't actually take as long as I had imagined, but I loved how it looked in the end. Never having learned to crochet before, I was very proud at myself for this new skill I can use in order to create. Unlike many in the class, I am not very artistically talented, so this was a nice way in which I felt I was able to create something out of nothing. It actually made me feel more concentrated during conference, as well! 

The Finished Product

Finished product looked great. I'm sure TVA is glad I am not ruining their counters with hot pots anymore. My husband was so proud and thought it was very cool, and I felt accomplished as well.