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.

Dave and Busters

Dave and Busters is like... the adult version of Chuck-E-Cheese. after getting stuck at a terrible arcade in the mall with Claudio and his good friend Gonzalo (photo below), I need I had to finally introduce Claudio to it's greatness. 

So, here's some photos of Claudio in the process of winning not one but 2 jackpots and obviously flaunting that in my face. Oh Claudio, you are such a competitor.

And of course, I lost. He has magical fingers, or so he thinks, and that is precisely why he is NEVER allowed to enter a casino. We're planning a trip to Las Vegas for when Gonzalo comes to visit us in Provo, and trust me. I'm going to be in charge of the money. 

The NEW plans for the furture

Remember those plans for the future I told you about a few weeks ago? Well, those has kind of been placed on the back-burner for now.

Claudio, my husband, got accepted into Brigham Young University! For the summer, at least. So instead of chilling in Hawaii for the summer as he takes more classes, we're headed out to The Beautiful and oh-so diverse Provo, Utah on April 15th!

As I've been attempting to find a full-time job, I've realized my International Cultural Studies major is almost pointless without a Masters degree (Which you will remember I plan on receiving!). If companies aren't requiring a bachelor's degree, they pay $9.00/hr. If they do, it is obviously in computer science or business. Why did I follow my interests and want a degree I liked, again? Don't ask me, because I obviously don't know. Nonetheless, I've applied to about 50 positions in and around Provo Utah, and hopefully I can find a job somewhere. Maybe I'm lacking humility, but I won't let myself go door to door selling pest control, alarms, or even working at a call center. You don't get any experience, and how miserable could that be? Maybe I'm just being prideful.

The main reason Claudio is transferring to BYU is because he loves economics. BYUH had an economics minor for some time, but recently decided to stop offering the classes needed for the minor. Nice move, guys. He is studying finance, but he really wants to study economics. So, here we come Provo!

When September comes, we're not sure where we'll be. We may be able to find a loop hole and have him stay for Fall semester, we may stay working, we may go to the University of Utah, or one of the graduate schools I love may let me in and we'll be able to go. For now, I think the only two that may postpone Claudio's school would be Southern Methodist University or University of Konstanz. Wish me luck, I'm supposed to hear about SMU before this Wednesday!

We're busy selling our things in Hawaii (yeah, you try shipping everything you own..) and slowly organizing, whilst we also prepare for the end of the semester. Although moving is hard, and Hawaii is "awesome" we won't miss: being stuck in the middle of nowhere, random monsoons, flooding, sunny days filled with homework, ridiculously expensive rent with $7.75/hr pay, or the general lack of focus that the Hawaiian lifestyle gives you. We will, however, miss our friends and the rare occasion we can go to the beach. We'll miss wearing flip flops every day, and that sunny weather.

Thanks for reading!

My research Conference...

A blog post I did for The David O. Mckay Center's blog

Aloha, guys! For my culminating project as an ICSMajor, I was able to do a Research Associateship with Professor Chad Fordand  was privileged to attend theUniversity of Wisconsin’s conference entitled, “Borders, Boundaries and Peace” onFebruary 28^th – March 1^st. I can tell you the chance thatI had to present and network at this conference was once in a lifetime.

The Conference washosted by the Wisconsin Institute for Peace and Conflict studies that spans allthe universities in Wisconsin. It was hosted in the University of Wisconsin –Milwaukee’s newly created school of public health, in one of the more run-downsections of Milwaukee. It was here that they completely refurbished a 200 yearold building and have received a Gold certificate from the internationallyrecognized green building program.  Itwas beautiful, and held many facets of public health and sustainability that Ihad not considered yet.

Many people presenting at the conference had deepconnections in the peacebuilding field. The CEO of the Alliance forPeacebuilding presented about how the nation is breaking down the barriers of peacebuildingand the growing field. We even had the US Program manager from the Institutefor Economics and Peace explaining their wonderful research in quantifying the peaceful effortsworldwide (you may be surprised to hear that the United States only ranksmedium in the Global Peace Index). Then the conference became veryinterdisciplinary. We had other Keynote Speakers from UWM’s center for WaterPolicy and UWM’s new dean of the School of Public Health. It was amazing to seehow so many different fields care deeply about the world wide efforts towardspeace building how great of a chance we have to get involved.

I was able to present during one of the Student parallelsessions. The sessions were divided into 8 categories, and my presentation fellunder the topic of Central and South American Hegemony. Knowing the conferencewas very interdisciplinary and many had never heard of some of the precepts Iwould be referring to, I kept the presentation simple and went right to “ChadFord’s Photorealistic Iceberg ^tm”. I explained the basis of theconflict I was covering; Chile and Bolivia’s fight for the sea, and then wentto the iceberg. The basic needs that I talked about and the need to get the twocountries to see each other as legitimate and important in the world economywere surprising for many and I hope I opened them up for new perspectives inpeacebuilding.

I enjoyed presenting and listening to everything that allthe speakers had to say. There were so many presentations I would have loved tolisten to, but didn’t have the chance. I came away with new perspectives and anew insight into peace building.

                At the conference, I was able tomeet Rob Ricigliano, Director of the institute of World Affairs at UWM. Ithappened to be that he was coming to do some mediation work in Hawaii and hadan open day to come present at BYU-Hawaii This Thursday, March 28, 2013. Hewill be presenting at 6 PM In the Mckay foyer. It is a great opportunity foryou not only to hear about his work in international mediation, books, andprofessional background, but also because The University of Wisconsin inMilwaukee has created a new Masters of Peace and Sustainability and will beopen for the first time beginning Fall 2014. I hope you’ll be able to make it!




Here's also a photo of Maria, the woman I had the chance to stay with while in Milwaukee:

Looking towards the future..

Kelsey FINALLY Graduates on April 13th, 2013! I'm very excited to be graduating and continuing on with our lives after our Bachelor's degrees. The question we keep getting is, 'what are you guys going to do??'. Well, I wish we knew for sure what we plan to do! 

The thing is, I graduate in April but Claudio doesn't graduate until December 2013. That sure makes it hard to plan! If you don't know a lot about our university, we live in a small town of 6,318 people, about 29 hundred of those are BYU-Hawaii students. In other words, the purest definition of college town. When I graduate, there's not a lot of full time jobs waiting in our small community of 1 grocery store, 1 gas station, a McDonalds, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut.

You may know that I am studying International Cultural Studies here at BYU-Hawaii. It's the perfect place, because over 45% of our small population are international students from about 75 different countries. I love it here! This has given me the desire to study a Masters of Arts in Conflict Resolution, using my different perspectives gained here studying.

Luckily, Claudio has learned to manipulate the system and has figured out how to study his final (fall) semester from September through December completely online. Why? Because all of my Masters programs that I have applied for begin in September or October. Until then, I have a possible solution for the summer working. So, here are our basic options in order of favorites of the future:


1. Konstanz, Germany

• Masters of International Administration and Conflict Management at the University of Konstanz, Starting October 1st
• My top choice by far, incredible university, location, cost, and ranks 14th in the world of Universities under 50 years old! It would be incredible. Plus, good connections with the UN.

2. Amsterdam, Netherlands

• Studying a Masters of Conflict Resolution and Governance at the University of Amsterdam, starts in September
• I like the program, but is a lot more expensive than the two German schools and I've heard Amsterdam is very much a "get crazy" city.. but it ranks higher than every single other school on this list!

3. Heidelberg, Germany

• Masters of Transcultural Studies at the University of Heidelberg
• The University itself is about 800 years old in a beautiful location and is an incredible school all around. Yet, it's in almost the exact field I did my bachelor's in. Maybe I would want to diversify a little more.

4. Dallas, Texas

• Masters of Arts in Dispute Resolution at Southern Methodist University
• It's a really great school in the United States, but I'd rather go abroad. Yet, it's in the top 100 US schools so it all depends on what I would choose

5. Portland, Oregon

• This is for the Masters of Science in Conflict Resolution at Portland State University
• Good school, I've heard the program is good and we love Portland!

Depending on where I go helps Claudio decide his future as well. It's possible he will just work full time while I study, or also that he enters a program that he wants to master in (economics, finance, or real estate) at the same university.

Wish us luck as we wait to hear!

We are married!

 Beautiful Temple

 Rings

The temple

 The Wedding Party

 Claudio's Parents

 Kelsey's Parents

 Groomsmen

 Bridesmaids

 Beautiful gift from our previous bishop

Uh... Claudio's goodbye kiss?

Thanks for looking!