I like life busy

Alright, I am back now. Sorry I kind of skipped a week there, but life has gotten really hectic already for only being the beginning of the semester. This semester is going to be a heck of a lot different from last semester, in almost every way imaginable. But it is still going to be awesome, at least as far as I can tell. The classes I have this time are are Biology 100, Geology 101, University Chorale, Symphony Orchestra, History 201 (World Civilizations through 1500), Book of Mormon 122 (the second half), and Social Recreational Leadership (which is a leadership class where we just learn how to lead large groups, lead games, and host fantastic parties - sounds like the perfect class, huh? and guess what it is!). My work schedule is now that I only work on Friday nights and every other Sunday, but for only doing that I still find myself crazy busy all the time. I guess I should give the laydown of how every night of the week goes. Monday night is FHE which so far I have been planning because our mother has been absent as of late. We never see her and she never tries to plan anything - so I made myself kind of substitue father because no one else was going to ever plan anything. Which makes life interesting. This week I planned a movie night for the sake of the fact that I was trying to plan an activity only a few hours in advance. It worked out great though and we watched the old Swiss Family Robinson and talked and got to get comfortable with each other again. Tuesday night is my rec class night and it goes from 4 - 6:30. From the moment we get there the class is go, go, go! We start out with some kind of preopener or ice breaker activity and then move onto playing group games and then watch a powerpoint about what activity we will learn next how to plan (the main point of each being keeping it fun and safe for everyone - which means we have discovered the evil of having elimination games). For homework all we have to do is write up the rules to our favorite game or write up the construction behind a a massive three part relay or some other such fun thing. The class itself is divided into four groups which means that each group for the semester is responsible for planning a preopener, the huge relay, two mega parties (with at least 20 other people in attendance), and for the final - lead a party for everyone in the class that can only last 30 minutes long. Individually we have to plan our favorite game, two individual parties (where I only am the host unlike the group parties), and all sorts of other things like some service here and there and just making sure we get enough leadership time in over the semester through various activities. Sherrie, Aaron, and Jared are all in the class with me which means that its pretty much a blast and everyone else there is there for the sole purpose of having fun. After class, the four of us usually hit up Legends Grille for dinner and then get back to life as regular around 8. Wednesday night is now officially temple night, and I go with Courtney around 5ish to do some baptisms. The fact that I now actually have time set aside to go visit the temple makes me really, really happy. I need to balance out school with a lot of more of the spiritual side of life this semester. Which means I also try to do 2 batches of indexing for my calling a week - which should hopefully work out. Thursday night is going to be the night still where I go visit my aunt and uncle. That is definitely needed to control my sanity levels as I rush from class to class and event to event throughout the week and that will be my one period of slowdown to sit back and get some studying in and eat somewhat healthily and see some family. Friday night I have work from 4:30 - 7:30 which is awesome again. I can't even begin to describe how much I enjoy having a job and working. For some reason, work just makes me happy. Its really intense and physically exhausting usually, but it makes me really happy to be doing it. Friday night we also hit up the planetarium this week where the presentation was on the creation stories of all the different people all over the world. I found it fascinating....but I was one of the select few who did. Not many others enjoyed it that much at all. I guess that just goes to show what a nerd I am by the fact that I love learning so much. Learning new things is one of the most exciting things about college for me and it happens for almsot every class and every hour of my college experience. Saturday should start being my one huge playday of the week starting this week - where I can plan big fun things for my group of friends to do and then we go out and do them - whatever that may be. However for the past two Saturdays I have been detained by my music classes. We had to play for a conductor's seminar last Saturday in orchestra and I was there all morning. Yesterday was a chorale retreat where we spent six hours working on singing skills and learning the correct posture, mouth position, and almost everything else that has to be done by your body to sing the best way possible. I finally figured out what head voice is and I will agree that it sounds much better than chest voice in singing. The surprising thing is that I have actually learned how to sing though. I can actually sing and sing fairly decently - not amazing mind you - but decent enough. And they are sticking it to us hard this semester to learn some pretty hard pieces from Aaron Copland and Eric Whitecare. Things I heard my amazing choir friends sing throughout high school and now that I just barely started singning I have to catch up on. And catch up fast. But choir is making me happy too. I have always wanted to do it and never had the time to take to learn. High school was always too busy doing orchestra, MUN, and all the APs. Last semester was intense working a lot, getting GEs done and out of the way, and figuring out how college actually works. I can finally squeeze it in now this semester and it is amazing. After the choir retreat, Kahi called and invited me over to play some Rockband and I agreed to it. The game is still my favorite video game I have every played and I am able to play at a least a medium level for each of the components and a hard or expert level for the bass or guitar. A lot of people ended up calling me or texting me and heading over there too - there was Aaron, Courtney, Rachelle, April, Whitney, Kelly Ann, Kelsey, Kahi, and me by the end of it. And we rocked hard. By the end of the night, my ankle hurt from trying to figure out how to use the foot pedal on the drum set and my voice was shot from singing all day for choir and then singing at night for Rockband. But I think everyone had a blast. Which is saying something because when we got back from break - the semester started out with so much ridiculous drama where people didn't like people anymore. It just showed me how much the group dynamics can change by the abscene of two people - namely Joe and Samuel. With Samuel gone, old tensions rose up and people started hating other people again and I think last night it finally resolved itself. People finally learned how to get along with each other again and I can tell you it is going to make life so much better this semester. The other thing about it is that the group keeps growing kind of exponentially - this semester so far Sir William, Regan, Stephen, Tayler, Kahi's new roommates, Brad, and few others have been added to the mix with the result being that usually our apartment has people in it. And it ranges from a few to being stuffed. Its great fun, but the problem is that study time is getting more and more compressed and I have to study in my room now, the kitchen is just too distracting. The other problem is that therer is no way I can keep up with the cleaning, Im just too busy to spend an hour or two every day doing the dishes, mopping and sweeping, vacuuming, and toilet scrubbing. I try to at least get the dished done, but no one else ever does anything. Ever. They just go about their lives and make the place look like a pigsty and it is really kind of starting to get on my nerves. I am only one person, and everyone else should be able to pick up the slack too. Greg has Fridays and Saturdays completely off but all he ever does in snowboard and sleep. Aaron will spend his time watching movies or playing video games. And Jared is always on the phone for work or sleeping. Brad is simply never home that much at all which means that he doesn't really contribute to the messy problem so you can't really expect him to clean it up. There has to be a way to get everyone else to work though. I just have no idea what that is yet. They could care less how dirty everything is and that really bothers me. A lot. Im also the only one that ever does any cooking and they devour it like ravenous wolves no matter if it is Neiman Marcus cookies or banana bread. But Ill figure it out somehow. There has to be a way to get it to work. Well, with all the stuff I have written down, hopefully you got the sense of how full my life is. And Im going to try to make it fuller by working out in the mornings with Courtney, Amanda, Sherrie, and Tayler with basketball, racquetball, and running. I also have gotten more sleep this semester than I think at any other point in my life. And I intend to keep it that way as long as I possibly can because I feel fantastic. There are no more headaches for one and that feeling is one of the greatest in the world for me, no joke. I think that pretty much covers what I wanted to get written down today, so Ill write again next week!

Thought of the week: "Learning is a kind of natural food for the mind" - Cicero. This quote goes well with what I have been feeling for the first two weeks of the semester thus far.

Song of the week: "Love Lockdown" - Kanye West. The song has a really great beat and the message is great for a premissionary at least by stating that we must keep our love locked down until we find the one who we are really meant for.

Picture of the week: So I have been a slacker and have as yet not really gotten out my camera at all this semester...but I am going to change that this week and I will be posting the picture of the week for sure next week.