Saturday, March 31, 2012

Wanna Know What's Awesome?

.

General Conference, that's what!

President Eyring's talk basically blew me out of the water.

Elder Holland, as always, radiates spiritual swag.

Seeing people I know in the missionary choir...like Mister David Archuleta <3 <3 <3 I realized that the fact that he is leaving now is perfect, because I have temple insurance, so I definitely won't be married before he gets back, and when he gets back he'll be an RM, so I'll be totally okay with dating him, I'll be old enough to get married, and we can date for a few months so I'll know he's the right guy, by then the Provo Provo Temple will be finished (yes, I refuse to call it the Provo City Center Temple) and then we can be sealed for time and all eternity! All I have to do is sit outside the MTC day in and day out until I see him so I can charm him into giving me his mailing address and then I can dear elder him for two years and I'm already turning into a crazy marriage deprived BYU lady! F;HDA;FHAIFJ!!!

Just kidding...I'm not. If there is one thing I want more than anything from my BYU experience, it is to make sure that I remain sane.

Can't wait for tomorrow's sessions!

Love,
Kaela

Thursday, March 29, 2012

To Be A Scapegoat...

.

Last year, I blogged about my Basketball/Volleyball Co-ed class. Now that semester is almost over, I'm realizing that there was a much better class I should have blogged about this year:

My English 2010 class. To go straight from high school to this class every Tuesday and Thursday is like walking into a different universe, where every rule that applied in high school is the complete opposite here. You think I'm kidding...but I'm not.

Take, for example, today.

I went to class, but nobody was in the classroom...because it was pitch black in there. The combined brain power of several college students was not enough to figure out how to turn on the lights. So my professor, Dr. Pepper, walked up, and asked us why we were all meditating outside. Then he tried to figure out how to turn on the lights. Eventually, the man with the Ph.D realized that the light switches were at the very front of the classroom

So we all came in and sat down, and it was awkwardly silent. So somebody suggested that he turn on some music. He pulled up YouTube and decided to play Boyfriend by Justin Bieber. Then he played Friday by Rebecca Black. Finally, he showed us the death metal version of Friday. It was...beautiful.

Before I go on, I should explain something. In 2010 we have to write a research paper for our final project, basically the equivalent of our final exam. I chose to write mine on pornography, or to be more specific, regulating the access to pornography. It is complicated and takes a long time to explain...

so everybody just says, "Kaela is writing about pornography." And everyone thinks it is SO funny. I've even had a couple boys offer to write my paper for me. And the question I get asked most often?

"Hey Kaela! How is your...*wink* research coming?"

Once, I was doing research during class, when Pepper walked up behind me and exclaimed, "Oh my gosh! Kaela's looking at pornography!!" You can imagine the looks I got after that one. (I wasn't, by the way. I have been blessed in doing my research that I have never come across anything obscene/explicit in any way. Academic Search Premier and lds.org are both the two least likely places you will ever find pornography, and also the two places where you'll find the most information.)

However, as of today, I have become the official class scapegoat, thanks to my lovely topic.

It all started when my professor showed us a sample introductory paragraph about sexting...to which my whole class started to give him crap, because we like to bully him mercilessly. His response? Pointing straight at me and yelling, "She's the one writing a paper about porn!!" Everyone thought that was hilarious. It happened again when he accidentally made a dirty joke, and when people started to give him crap all he had to do was point at me and say, again, "She's the one writing a paper about porn!"

Luckily, in that moment the class stood up for me. But the idea quickly caught on. Whenever Pepper said something the class didn't like, even if it had nothing to do with dirty jokes or our papers, all he would have to do was point at me. Even some of the people in my class started doing it. "At least I'm not writing a paper about porn!" is now the new excuse for anything.

I'm not mad about it at all. I think it's funny. And I did get back at my teacher when we started discussing how to incorporate visual aids into our papers. I promised him that I would provide some great pictures. Easily the most inappropriate thing I have ever said to a teacher, but everyone, including him, thought it was hilarious. Actually, he seemed kind of worried. Truth be told, I have absolutely no idea what visual aid I'm going to incorporate into my paper...

Of all the classes I have ever had, I'll miss my English class the most. Even though my class thinks I'm a crazy, racist porn addict, and use me as a scapegoat...I still have fun in that class, basically every time.

College is fantastic.

Love,
Kaela

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Things I'm Going To Miss About High School: Part 3

.

THEY DON'T HAVE BAGELS IN COLLEGE.

Okay, that's a lie. I bought a bagel in the library today and it was delicious. Their cinnamon bagels are to die for, even though I'm pretty sure anybody who was watching me eat it probably thought I was some sort of animal disguised as a human.

Maybe it's just a Timpview thing...

Today in Statistics, we were talking about the AP test. I was tempted to say "You should bring us bagels!" but I felt like I would give her a break today. I'm sure I have made that suggestion before. I know others have, and the reaction of the class has always been something to the effect of "YEAH! YEAH MRS. SWEETWOOD YOU SHOULD BRING US BAGELS!"

I mean, Van Orden has brought us bagels before, I always hear about other teachers bringing bagels...nbd right?

In my college classes, I try very hard to make sure nobody knows I'm still in high school. I have a reputation to keep up. Not really. Basically, everybody in my English 2010 class already thinks I'm racist, and after today, they probably all think I'm completely psycho.

We were talking about the last day of class, which is coming up pretty soon, actually. And my hilarious teacher, Dr. Pepper, said something to the effect of, "I really want you all to come on the last day! Not just because there is a 40 point assignment...but maybe I'll bring you something!"

Me (thinking): I should tell him to bring bagels. Everyone likes bagels. Saying something like this is socially acceptable, and encouraged, in my high school classes. Theoretically, it should be alright to say that here.

So I said, "You should bring us bagels!"

What happened next could never have been predicted.

Every single person in the class looked at me, completely confused. Until one girl said, "Bagels? Where the heck did that come from?"

I retorted with a quick, "Sorry about that, I just didn't have breakfast today!" (Note: at this point, it's about 1:30 in the afternoon.) but everybody laughed, so my lie (and it was a lie, I had a bagel for breakfast. So it was like a double lie.) worked.

But in my mind, I was thinking, "what the heck? I thought people loved bagels!" I'm not suggesting that all college students are bagel haters, but seriously, of all the things that are different between high school and college, the bagel incident shocked me about as much as the whole "professors who swear like truckers" and "it's okay to get on Facebook during class."

As if to make matters worse (this really has nothing to do with bagels), Pepper gave us a little assignment to work on during class, but me and my friend had no idea how to do it. So we spend the time speculating on how old we thought our professor was. The second the class discussion started, Pepper called on me to read out my answers...and I burst out laughing. It was this uncontrollable laugh attack for absolutely no reason. I am 100% sure my class thought I was on crack. It took all of the willpower I had contained in me to stop laughing. I don't know why I was laughing. But, it was really embarrassing.

Anyways, college is still fantastic. There are just little quirky thing's I'll miss about high school...but maybe it's the quirky things about Timpview. The more I talk to other people about their high schools, I realize how strangely unique Timpview is. Name one other school that has held a walk-out. Yep, that's what I thought.

Well, life is good! haha.

Love,
Kaela

Saturday, March 24, 2012

Color Fest!

.

In my life, I've always been the one to suggest doing crazy things, and usually people just say "Kaela, you're funny" and don't realize that I'm actually being completely serious.

Today, I got 4 people to go along with my crazy idea.

Me, Chase, Nicole, Whitney and Tim went to the Hari Krishna color festival. It was very, very wild. It is the closest I will ever come to being a hippy, getting high, and going to a rave. But, I had a TON of fun.

And now my hair is green! Not really. But the blonde streak I have in my hair is tinted green. And my face is tinted purple. It looks like I either have a strange disease, or get frequently punched in the face. So...yeah.

But, it was totally worth it! It took us forever to get there; we took the back roads up to Spanish Fork to avoid the congested freeway, and then took a shuttle to the temple. The awesome thing about the color fest is that everybody is just happy and excited and random people come up and hug you, and people throw chalk at you, and you throw chalk at random people, and it's socially acceptable!

There was even a really nice guy as we were walking in, who looked at me and then said "Close your eyes!" and then chucked chalk into my face. And then there was another guy, after we got in, who looked at me and just chucked chalk into my face with no warning. And getting chalk in your eye is no fun.

The sad thing is, we missed the throwing. There was one at 3, but we thought the next one was at 4. So we were just standing there, and then we heard "THREE, TWO, ONE!" and everyone threw chalk and we totally missed it. And then we thought there might be one at 4, but the guy announced the next one was at 5, so we left, and then at 4 there was a random throwing. So that was kind of lame.

But, between 3 and 4, some crazy awesome things happened. For example, I went crowd surfing...twice. Crowd surfing is one of those things that I always wanted to do, but never figured would actually happen. So when it was happening, it was kind of one of those "I can't believe I'm doing this!" moments. Which, thanks to my rather boring life, I don't have many of those moments. So I went crowd surfing and it was really fun.

The second time I crowd surfed was actually kind of scary. I got back to Chase, Whitney, Nicole and Tim, and then some random guy next to them was all "wanna crowd surf!?" and I was like "no thanks, I just went." and then he picked me up and threw me into the crowd. So I got passed around again, except this time, I got dropped...a lot. And then every time I got dropped people would just pick me back up and pass me around some more. But I know I kicked a lot of people in the face, accidentally. And there was definitely a moment where I was like, "I am scared, where are my friends, getting dropped is kind of painful, where am I?" And there was a point when I got dropped where I accidentally did a flip and basically landed on my head.

Anyways, crowd surfing was pretty fun. Minus all the getting dropped and getting lost and kicking people in the face. I feel like that screwed my chances of ever getting one of those really big callings in the church...like a mission president's wife, or general young women's presidency or something. As I was watching their talks tonight, I thought, "I wonder if Ann M. Dibb or Elaine S. Dalton have ever crowd surfed? Proooobably not." You never know though. Imagine me in 50 years speaking in General Conference: "My dear youth of the church...when I was your age...I crowd surfed at this crazy thing for a different religion called the color festival! I was also obsessed with this song called "Strange Clouds" by B.o.B and Lil Wayne, and Bottoms Up was my ringtone. I certainly loved rap. I also learned how to break dance!" (that one hasn't come true yet...but hopefully it will.)

Yeah. That is one scenario I never see happening.

As long as we're talking about religion, I think it's pretty safe to say that Hari Krishna is a religion...I've even heard that it is a cult, but yeah. It was interesting, because while we were there several weird analogies about religion popped into my head. For example, we were walking past the temple, and there were a bunch of people in the temple and on the balconies, all colorful and enjoying themselves and what-not. And for some reason, I couldn't shake the impression that the whole scenario reminded me strongly of the great and spacious building from Lehi's Tree of Life vision. Crazy stuff, huh? I'm not saying the color fest is evil. I definitely had a lot of fun. It was just an interesting thought I had.

Anyways, color fest was awesome. I would totally go again, except this time I would probably bring something to protect my face. And I would not miss the throwing. The question is, would I crowd surf again?

Heh. ;)

Love,
Kaela

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Politik

.

I have made a decision. I believe it is a rational decision, so if I ever decide otherwise...somebody slap me.

I have decided to never get involved in politics. Ever.

The most I will ever involve myself in politics is voting in the general election, and rooting for the president I think is most attractive/most Mormon.

BECAUSE

Politics are dumb. And I think they make people a lot angrier than they should.

My parents forced me to go to the Republican caucus last Thursday. This is what reinforced my decision to avoid politics as if my life depended on it. I know it's good to be involved in one's community, but of all the things I don't care about...which is a lot of things...politics are scraping nasty on the bottom of the list.

This is probably the most honest thing I've said all day: I would rather give birth to triplets than become what many people call "politically active."

Anyways, because I'm still young and immature, this is what I occupied myself with during the caucus: picture drawing, level creepy.

This is Numbi. I created him my sophomore year. When I am making worlds, there will be a creature that looks like this.



This is Barack Obama. Shirtless and surfing, but he's wearing dress pants so he is still classy.

This is Mitt Romney. He, too, is shirtless, but still wearing dress pants to remain classy.
For what it's worth, I drew all of those on the back of my voter registration form. Good times.

Aaaand here are some more political pictures I found (but did not draw).





Have a great day!

Love,
Kaela

Sunday, March 18, 2012

Sunday Post #7

.

This might be one of those things I think is funny...and nobody else does.

You know how Joseph Smith found the plates, and he was all, "Oh, there is a section of this that is bound, so it looks like nobody's gonna be able to read that for a while." and how the Book of Mormon is actually an abridged account of all the gazillions of records Mormon had lying around?

All of that...makes stuff like this pretty funny.



That's right! iTunes is selling the unabridged version of the Book of Mormon. And it's only 22 bucks! You know, it's stuff like this that makes me wonder...is there actually an abridged, abridged version of the Book of Mormon floating around out there? That's like my bad idea to make a Sparknotes of the Book of Mormon...which I'm still tempted to do. There is a Sparknotes for the Bible. But it doesn't go past Proverbs, meaning it doesn't cover Isaiah...making it the most useless Sparknotes in the history of mankind.

Really though, if you abridged the Book of Mormon, what would you take out? Every part of it is important, yes, even the Isaiah chapters. I learned that in seminary. Which brings me to what I really wanted to talk about...

The rocky road my seminary experience has been since last year is slowly coming to an end. That is a bold faced lie. There will come a day, namely, the last week of April, where I will realize that I still don't qualify for graduation, and I will go crazy trying to get all of my makeup done on time. After that, and quite frankly, after I graduate, that rocky road will come to an end.

As for right now, it's smoothing out. I only have 9 more days to makeup...or 10, something like that, and General Conference is going to count for 6 of those. That's right, I'm going to watch the Priesthood session and use the General YW broadcast, as well as the other 4 sessions. It's happening. I need this!

Another thing I did was transfer out of early morning and into Bro. Dykstra's class during the day so that instead of missing 2 days every week, it's only every other week. Best decision I ever made. I'll keep doing early morning until I'm all caught up, and then I never have to wake up early again!!!

So I went to his class on Thursday. I was not supposed to be there...I was supposed to be at work. And it's kind of a conundrum, because I know I was supposed to be in his seminary class that day, because of what I learned, because of what I'm going to tell you in a second. But I'm also not supposed to ditch out on work, under any circumstances. But a series of events happened that caused me to ditch work and go to seminary. And in a normal situation I would have had this gross feeling of "Y U DITCH WORK!?" but instead I was having this feeling of "Good for you, going to seminary!"

Essentially...I wasn't scheduled to work, but I told my boss that I would come in to work anyways. 5 minutes before I was about to leave for work, she sent out the schedule for next week, I thought it was for this week, and I saw that somebody else was on the schedule for the shift I was about to work. So I drove up to seminary. The second I got to the school, my boss texted me and asked if I could still come in to work. I thought about leaving, but then something inside my head said, "No, Kaela, you are going to seminary today!!" So I went to seminary, and I still have a job. Somehow, I broke the cardinal rule of the life of Kaela, "don't miss work, ever" and it was one of the best decisions I've ever made.

Seminary was amazing. I learned something that blew my mind. It basically exploded my mind, then reformed it, then exploded it again.

And this is what I learned:

Everything in the world is a symbol of Christ. Everything. Take, for example, the seasons.

In the summer, everything is alive. As it gets into fall, things start to die, and what is the dominant color? Red. Then in the winter, everything is dead, and there is a white blanket of snow. Then when the snow melts, and it turns into spring, everything is resurrected.

I think Brother Dykstra did a better job of explaining it, but you get the idea. It's totally the story of Christ's death and the resurrection. Is your mind blown yet?

There is also rain. Rain falls from the sky, or the heavens. And the only way for the rain to return to the heavens is through...the sun. Sun, Son. Yeah.

That like, completely blew my mind. And I'm so glad that I learned that. It's just crazy to me everything that lined up perfectly that day so that I could hear about that little fact.

Yep, the gospel is pretty cool!

Have a great day!

Love,
Kaela

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Life

.
Nothing ever seems to work out this time of the year.

Sunday, March 11, 2012

Sunday Post #6

.

Okay. So I've been slacking on these. I've been slacking on blogging, period. Life is busy...and it's about to get super duper crazy. More on that...later.

For as much as I haven't blogged about church related things in the past few weeks, I've actually learned a lot.

Of all the things I learned, I'm going to share two of them.

First: I've noticed a recurring theme in the gospel -- helping others. A lot of the things we do are so other people can be helped. Temple work, missions, regular ol' service projects...yeah. There's tons of it.

I think I've always had a desire to help other people, even though I've had my rather selfish moments. Recently (and by recently, I actually mean almost a year ago) my brain suddenly switched onto "you can make a difference!" mode, and suddenly my desire to help other people went into super-steroid mode and...that is how my life has gone the past 10 months.

The largest part of my "helping" people is something to the effect of, "I think that person would be happier if they had the gospel in his/her life. What can I do to help make that happen?"

I can't say any of my efforts have been successful...because there's no way of really knowing until, you know, I'm dead. Or so I've been told. I'll admit, I get pretty discouraged when I see my friends making rather sucky choices, but I still love them no matter what.

Through this strange desire I have to improve the lives of others, I realized just how important temple work is. Every time you go to the temple, you are helping just a few more people towards accepting the gospel and the gift of eternal life. Once I gained the perspective that we don't go to the temple because "we're supposed to," but "I'm changing the lives of a few people today, and hopefully helping them gain eternal salvation," it made going to the temple, for me, about a bazillion times better. Perspective and having the right mentality. It's a pretty powerful thing.

Lesson #1: If service seems hard/boring, try to look at it from a different perspective or approach it with a different mentality. It'll probably help.

The second thing I learned this week: Sometimes you learn mind blowing things, and sometimes you find them in the scriptures.

I was reading 3 Nephi 5 this week, and I came across just about the coolest verse of all time. I like to analyze things, so this is my analysis of verse 12.

"And behold, I am called Mormon, being called after the land of Mormon, the land in which Alma did establish the church among the people, yea, the first church which was established among them after their transgression."

My mind was blown straight out of the water with that verse. It's so symbolic. Check it out: I always figured it was called the "Book of Mormon" because Mormon was the one who abridged it. I'm sure that's still the reason, but knowing where Mormon's name comes from puts the name of the book into a whole different perspective. "The first church which was established among them after their transgression." sounds an awful lot like "the restoration of the gospel after years of apostasy." So the book that began the restoration of the gospel is named after a guy who was named after...a restoration of the gospel, so to speak.

There is a chance that either I'm entirely wrong, or this is completely common knowledge, and I'm just totally out of the loop, but I'm serious...my mind was blown. This is so extremely cool to me.

Lesson #2: The scriptures can blow your mind with their coolness. Also, I like to use the phrase "mind blown" as much as possible...obviously.

The third thing I learned this week: Ha! I lied. There is actually one more thing I want to talk about. Luckily, I don't have to say much. Just watch this!


It's a super cute video, huh?

Lesson #3: Don't judge others...period.

Love you all! Have a great day!

Love,
Kaela

Saturday, March 3, 2012

Things I'm Going To Miss About High School: Part 2

.

Backstage Jazz Night.

Backstage Jazz Night has been one of the highlights of every single year I've been at Timpview, minus my freshman year. I still vividly remember every single time I've gone, and I always have SO much fun!!

On a related note, let me just say that one thing about Timpview's culture I will forever miss is Sexy Sax Man. Only at Timpview can someone start playing that song and immediately everybody starts cheering and there's this unity throughout the students as we praise whoever is playing. I just think it's awesome.

But, I will always have such fond memories of Backstage Jazz Night. It inspired me to have a love for jazz, and honestly? I think it would be way cool to have my wedding reception like a backstage jazz night themed...thing.

Definitely, definitely, some of my best memories from high school.

Love,
Kaela