december-december. hace un ano ya.

at exactly this time last year, i was boarding a plane in the airport in asunción, paraguay, about to leave mi país y mis queridos paraguayos. mi gente. 

i didn't cry until after we took off and i could no longer see the houses or the streets or the crazy drivers. as soon as i realized i couldn't see paraguay anymore and that i was zooming away from the country i loved so much, i started crying. like, a lot. 

about a day later, i finally made it back to the united states. i remember walking into an airport for a layover, not knowing what hit me. the united states was so fancy! and people all around me were speaking english! i wasn't getting snaked or stared at for being a "yankee". 

anyway, i got home. i literally could not contain myself when i got off the plane and walked down that little hallway in the salt lake airport to get to baggage claim where all families are waiting. my autonomic nervous system decided that i was going to cry and as soon as i saw my family, i lost it. against my will, i cried again. 

the point is that one year goes by incredibly fast. it's been a YEAR since i've been in paraguay and i don't think i've ever missed it so much. december is the best time there. it's hot, but not so hot that you want to kill yourself yet. the ensalada de fruta is all over the place, the chipa is extra good. cute little strands of lights are placed on the outside of wood shacks. everyone's outside ready to exchange an "ADIOS" with you. they're all handing out their not-so-tasty fruitcake. what can i say?, it's magical.

how is it even possible that time can go by that quickly? how is it possible that i'll be graduating in one more semester? how is it already time for me to be right in the middle of nursing school applications? time is weird and the more i come to realize how much i love my life right now, the faster it seems to go.

here's to one year of being back!

i'm a big kid now.

reasons i know i'm growing up. (or something like that...)

1. i have officially registered for my last semester of classes. get a load of my classes - injury and violence prevention, disaster response and emergency prep, occupational health and safety, women's health issues, and international health. it's gonna be an amaaaaazing last semester.

2. my graduation application is officially accepted. i'm graduating in april!

3. i am in the process of applying to post-grad nursing programs. well, to one at least (university of utah). my back-up list is giving me a hard time and i'm not quite done deciding what other schools to apply to even though i've been researching schools for a few YEARS now. geeeeeez.

4. i'm a morning person. kind of. i know this makes me officially a grown up because i used to always think that the day i actually liked getting up and getting ready and leaving to be at work and/or class every single day before 8 am was the day that i was old. i guess that day has come...

5. i no longer enjoy listening to screamo-type music. that actually makes me very happy. 

6. i like listening to the news. NPR is an almost daily staple. i feel like that makes me old and i know my 19 year old self probably would have thrown up on my 23 year old self. 

well, anyway. 

it's good to grow up. but just because i'm getting a little older and maybe a tiny bit wiser doesn't mean i've got things figured out. haaaa... if anyone does, let me know. 

steaks-giving

remember how i ate thanksgiving at sizzler? yup, i did. it was truly an american thanksgiving. or something like that. 

one of the reasons that my grandma wanted to go to sizzler for thanksgiving is because she reportedly eats turkey all year long and she just wanted a nice steak for thanksgiving. so we went to sizzler and all got steaks. (did i mention she had coupons to sizzler? truly truly american)

so for my thanksgiving, i ate steak. remember when i was a vegetarian for a long time? my vegetarian self was rolling around in the grave when i ate this bad boy.

it turns out that after all that fuss about the coupons and wanting steak and going to sizzler, my grandma didn't even like it. go figure. although their soft serve vanilla ice cream was a big hit with all of us.

so that was that. but we did have an actual "traditional" thanksgiving at my house on friday. complete with yams with the marshmallows on top and the green jello with grated cheese and stuffing. that's what my plate consisted of. it was good and i loved it and worth one meal of sizzler food.

goodbye, world.

i'm committing social suicide. by necessity. 

i'm not even taking hard classes this semester, and yet i'm still struggling to keep up with everything! i think it's mainly because i'm without a doubt the world's slowest paper writer ever. everything has to be perfect and word-vomit is never allowed, because i think that would end up being dangerous. so the result is me spending hours on one page. seriously, it took me 2 straight hours of hard work to write three quarters of a page today. yikes. and when all of your classes require research papers, that makes time an issue.

i will be emerging from my homework cocoon as soon as i've officially finished the following projects:

1. chronic disease advocacy research report on alzheimer's disease

2. chemistry lab practical exam (aka potions class - mix chemicals and see what happens. except this time i have to figure out what mystery chemical is in my potions flask)

3. technical communication oral presentation on obesity treatments

4. infectious disease research paper on transmittable skin infections (weirdest topic ever)

5. a 5 page new testament paper on galatians

6.  my research paper on obesity, inefficiency of traditional dieting, treatment policy, etc... (aka my baby - i've been working hard on this all semester!!)

7. bio 100 challenge exam (yeah, due to weird circumstances and nursing applications, i have to have bio 100 posted on my transcript by the end of this semester. surprise to me! i have until dec 6 to finish studying all 38 chapters and take the challenge exam. thankfully i've learned most everything of the stuff already, i just have to mega-review everything)

so i guess i'll be peacing out for a little while. i'll come up to breathe every once in a while, hopefully to eat, definitely to sleep. 

sizzler say what????

any of you that know me know that thanksgiving is my second favorite holiday EVER. i love it so much that one year i legitimately dressed up like a pilgrim. i think the rest of my family was in pajamas...

my thanksgiving two years ago consisted of me being sick (in true missionary style - you're either sick or miserably hot or cold), working all day as a new missionary, and finally, victoriously ending the day with a single thanksgiving jamon y queso empanada in the summer heat in the desert of paraguay. my companion and i walked home during the sunset eating those empanaditas, thankful for the sheer beauty of the paraguayan sky, which looked like this...

or maybe it was this day...

and then last year, thanksgiving brought a freak rainstorm that caught us and our lunch appointment by surprise. we ran for shelter inside of our friends' little stick hut of a house. we busily stuffed the holes in their roofs with clothes and newspaper so that water didn't pour in and turn the floor into mud (because it was a dirt floor). my companion and i had to literally kick the chickens out because they kept running inside, and hey, that's just not sanitary to have a chicken on the bed next to you. (i say that jokingly, because to the house with holes in the roof and walls and water flooding in, chicken infestation was probably the least of their worries.) and yet, we sat there eating on their multipurpose bed/front room(only room)-couch talking about what we were grateful for. we even made turkey hands and wrote the things we were most grateful for.

my comp and i even spent the next day, which was a weekly planning session, eating one of those rotisserie chickens from a little street vendor that i swore to myself i would never eat, but did. 

needless to say, i have been looking forward to this thanksgiving for two years now. i've been looking forward for the tradition of the holiday. because heaven only knows that my last two have been far from traditional. 

my intentions in writing this blog post were to say how my thanksgiving had been ruined this year. my family's going to logan to be with my old (or should i say aged? is that nicer?) grandma who invited us. a few days ago, however, she decided it was too much work to make the thanksgiving meal and to clean it up, so she wants to go to sizzler instead. 

yeah, you heard right.

this place...

i may or may not have completely and totally freaked out. i said things like, this is my first thanksgiving back in the united states in two years and you expect me to go to sizzler??! i wouldn't even go to sizzler on a regular day, let alone for my second favorite holiday ever. WHAAAT IN THE WORLD IS MY GRANDMA THINKING?!!

it turns out, i'm pretty opinionated.

but as i was writing about my thanksgiving experiences i had in the past, i couldn't help but think, wow... you can really have thanksgiving anywhere. 

if i can have thanksgiving walking down a hot, dusty road or inside of a falling apart shack with rain gushing through holes, then gosh dang it, i can have thanksgiving at sizzler!

so yes, this thanksgiving, while most normal families are sitting down to beautiful tables with turkey and stuffing and that awesome green jello with cheese on top and the sweet potatoes covered in marshmallows (yum!), my parents, my two brothers, my grandma and i will be heading out to go to sizzler. 

my dad says they have a good salad bar. i guess we'll see. maybe if i'm really lucky, they'll have a thanksgiving empanada for me.

sshheeeesssh. come on now.

one of my bosses at work is this old, grey-haired, big-bellied, really-hard-to-have-a-conversation-with man. if i had to categorize him with one of the seven dwarfs, he'd probably be grumpy. my favorite thing to do at work is to be sickly sweet to him and see how he reacts. is that wrong?? 

anyway, that's not the purpose of this post, but he's the one that started it.

in the front lobby of where i work, we always have a stack of byu's weekly student newspaper. this week's has a picture of obama on the front saying 'four more years'. 

my boss insists on turning it upside down so that you can't see the front half of the paper. and for the past few days i keep turning it right side up because that's how it's supposed to be.

so today he came out and paced around staring at the newspapers and finally said, "who keeps turning this right side up?"

"that was me! is there anything wrong?" 

(imagine me saying that in the sickliest sweetest voice ever)

"well, he's not my president, so i don't want to see his face."

that's where i literally had to stop myself from saying anything because i potentially could've been a buttface.

but really?? can you believe there are people like that? and i know for a fact that my boss is not the only one. my facebook feed post-10pm on tuesday was full of people saying how life was over, how they are moving, how practically the world is going to end.

let's not forget that our 12th article of faith states:

we believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates in obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law.

yeah, so maybe the republicans didn't have a win this week. maybe we didn't get what we want. but can we honestly believe that life as we know it will change? chances are things will be exactly the same. at least  for awhile. obamacare doesn't take full effect until 2014. in the meantime, 27 states have already filed a lawsuit to completely repeal it.

i may not share democratic values, but i at least feel like i can see where they're trying to come from.

the church of jesus christ of latter day saints came out with the following statement:

We congratulate President Obama on winning a second term as President of the United States.

After a long campaign, this is now a time for Americans to come together. It is a long tradition among Latter-day Saints to pray for our nati

onal leaders in our personal prayers and in our congregations. We invite Americans everywhere, whatever their political persuasion, to pray for the President, for his administration and the new Congress as they lead us through difficult and turbulent times. May our national leaders reflect the best in wisdom and judgment as they fulfill the great trust afforded to them by the American people.

We also commend Governor Romney for engaging at the highest level of our democratic process, which, by its nature, demands so much of those who offer themselves for public service. We wish him and his family every success in their future endeavors.

i think in the end, that's all we can really do. pray. as long as we're doing what we need to do, god's not gonna let us fail. 

gotta love PY

i was at the dermatologist's office this morning. he started off this conversation:

      "where are you from again?"

      "i grew up in montana."

       *silence* "hmm... well then what in the world did you do there that gave you so much sun damage?"

       "oh. well, that was for sure from serving a mission in paraguay. the sun is extra hot there."

this is where he started going off on a rant about the church missionary system and how they don't encourage missionaries to use sunscreen and about how he needs to personally do something about it. he continues by saying...

      "well, your neck's sun damage looks like mine. the only difference is that i'm 71 and so i have about 50 years on you and i spent every summer of those extra 50 years in the alaskan outdoors."

why thank you doctor, for telling me that my neck looks like a 70 year old's! it's not my fault that i served a mission in the hottest place ever, where i swear the sun was closer to the earth than normal. also, why did i ever think it was cool to tan in high school? curse you, peer pressure!

think twice about not wearing sunscreen, my friends. since i've been home, it is my best friend. even if it's not hot outside. you don't want your old man dermatologist telling you that you're all sun damaged and shriveled. (okay, he didn't say shriveled...) but still!

feliz cumple, daddio!

Fifty-six years ago, on October 30, 1956, one of the most important people to me was born. 

[He-ro]: 

1. a man of distinguished courage or ability, admired for his brave deeds and noble qualities

2. a person who, in the opinion of others, has heroic qualities 

3. my dad

In every way, my dad is my hero.

i know you think that your dad might be the best, but i'm sorry. mine is!

he's the kind of dad that will drive next to you for your entire ten mile run because he wants to make sure you have water and that you make it home alright.

he's the kind of pep-talker that will convince you that you're the smartest person on campus even after having bombed a test. 

he's the kind of goof that wears a band-aid tie to his son's college graduation, just because (see the last picture).

he's the kind of nerd that loves watching the history channel, nat-geo, and shark week.

he's the kind of friend that will call just to ask how you did on a test and then to tell you what he learned on the o'reilly factor that day.

he's the kind of rebel that will steal fruit off of all of the fruit trees that he sees while vacationing in spain.

he's the kind of hard worker that will always tell you, "persistence, persistence, persistence".

he's the kind of party animal that will fall asleep during the avengers, be ready for bed by 10 pm, and mow the lawn for fun.

he's the kind of hero that works hard to be the best at what he does and has a lot of experience loving people unconditionally. i wish i could say the same about myself.

daddio, 

you are turning one year older today. last year was a big year for you. you welcomed me back to the united states after 18 months away, you moved back to your native idaho, started work at a new hospital, headed up a new stroke center. you welcomed new grandbabies and said goodbye to your last baby and became an empty-nester. you worked hard to get where you are and you've never stopped encouraging me to be who i can become. i love you! here's to one more year, and the years after that, and the eternities after that.

happy birthday, daddio.

con amor,

tu hijita KALBANDO

whooooops...

remember how i haven't posted in like 50 kabillion years?? yeah, that was not intentional. what can i say? life is busy! but i'm back with a motivational monday post.

so, a not well known fact about me is that i love NPR. seriously, national public radio is the best ever. one of my favorite weekly programs is the 'wait wait don't tell me' news quiz. one of the quizzes from a few weeks ago talked about an actual study performed in japan about workers and internet cat videos.

yeah, you read right. cat videos.

the study showed a positive correlation between watching cat videos and work-place productivity.

my first question why in the world would someone watch cat videos, was quickly followed by why in the world would somebody run a study about cat videos.

but enough with the questions. here's to greater workplace productivity and a happy monday! enjoy!

if that's not motivational, then i don't know what is...

the one that's black and blue

hoooooooooooooly cow, have i got a story for you. and even better, i have a picture to supplement my brain ramblings.

so as some of you might know, i'm training for a marathon (see here). it should be epic. as such, i was running the other night. it's about 10 pm and i'm almost done with my little five mile run. i'm running on canyon road in provo, heading home. at night, canyon road is pretty quiet. there's no cars or other people, except for this one rogue car that comes speeeeeeding down the road.

i'm assuming the people in the car thought it would be funny to throw something at the two runners just trying to get their run in. so they (those punks, whoever they were) roll down their window and throw a paper mcdonald's cup at us (i'm running with a friend, if that wasn't clear). they threw a CUP FULL OF WATER AT US!!!

i, being the one closer to the street, took the bullet and got hit by the cup on the back of my leg. okay, so you're probably thinking to yourself, wow... you got hit by a paper cup. how tragic. (that's dripping in sarcasm, btw)

but hey, don't forget that the car was going way fast and a cup full of water thrown out of a car at high speeds hits you LIKE A FREAKING BRICK.

all i remember thinking right after it hit me was:

1. wow, that hurt.
2. wow, that's going to bruise.
3. who in the world does that?
4. HOW OLD ARE THESE PEOPLE???!
5. seriously?

anyway, before i go to bed that night, it's definitely got a good lump the shape of the bottom of a cup and a tiny hint of a blue bruise showing up. the next morning... we'll just say it got exponentially worse overnight. one day later, it's still getting worse. 

so i bet you're dying now to see what happens to your leg when it gets hit by a flying fast-food paper object at high speeds. 

it might be the worst bruise i've ever had. and the picture doesn't quite do it justice. it's bad.

this is the medial side of my left leg. if you couldn't tell.

so once again i ask, who in the world does that? seriously??!!

the one where i'm astounded

so today i was studying outside of the wilk before i had to go to my open anatomy lab. i had my study book open to something that looked like this:

a girl passes by and stops to rearrange her backpack, looks down at my page, and asks me,

 "oh, are you studying art history?"

..........i think i might have stared at her for a second before i consciously took control of my brain and said,

"no. this is human anatomy. this is a body." 

oooooh, the things that you hear on-campus at byu. astounding.

the one about sperm

first of all, let me start out with a *big huge disclaimer*: sometimes when i completely immersed in a class, i morph into the world's biggest nerd. i think the things i'm learning are so cool. like so cool that i just have to tell everyone about them and blog about them. and then i tuck away my little factoids for later nerd opportunities.

okay, now that my disclaimer is out there, i learned the coolest thing in anatomy today! 

it's about how RARE and UNIQUE each of us really are!

it all starts when mommy and daddy are trying to have a little baby.

daddy lets loose 100,000,000 - 200,000,000 little spermies at a time. now, in order for you to get made, said spermie has to find mommy's big old egg (literally, the eggs are as old as the female is. we are born with them!). let's outline all of the ways this miraculous fertilization process gets difficult.

• upon contact, half of the little swimmers DIE. just because it's so dang acidic and they can't handle it. talk about sperm genocide - about 100,000,000 deaths in the first few moments of their little adventure.
• next obstacle: getting past the vagina. unfortunately, the vagina has these microscopic ridge-y things called rugae that make it so that the little sperms get LOST. seriously though, to a tiny little sperm, those rugae are probably like mount everest. i'd get lost, too.
• sperm's other problem: they try to fertilize whatever the heck they come in contact with. yeah. so, it turns out that a lot of sperm will be misguided and run into mommy's white blood cells (you know, the ones trying to kill "foreign cells"). they try to fertilize the WBCs, only to fail miserably. poor little guys.
• yet another physical obstacle! the end of uterine tube (where actual fertilization takes place) has all these finger-like extensions called fimbriae. think like the fringe end of a rug, except tiny. a large amount of our sperm friends get STUCK in the fimbriae. whoops.
• okay, so now we're left with the chosen ones. they braved the elements, proving themselves worthy to approach the egg. only problem - there's only ONE egg. and only ONE sperm can get there first. so even if one sperm gets there .000001 seconds earlier, all subsequent sperms WILL DIE. it's like magic.

so just think about it: if another sperm beat the lucky sperm that made you who you are by even .00001 seconds, you would be a completely different person!!

isn't that sooooo cool?!!? 

oh man, this class might bring out the nerd in me.

also, please enjoy this overly cheesy cartoon i found. :)

the one where i didn't get an A

well folks, spring term is officially over. i have now officially experienced BYU's attempts at squishing a 14-week class into 8-weeks. it was hard and it was a lot of work. i may or may not have studied for 15 hours straight in attempt to cram all of that information into my little tiny brain nugget of mine.

was that effective? no, not especially.

i knew that i needed at least an 88.5% on the final to get an a- in the class. there's nothing worse than a b+ as a final grade. it's like the b+ just sits there and taunts you and tells you just how close you were to a status, but no, you failed. 

anyway, point of the story is that i did NOT get an 88.5. in fact, i got a little bit lower than that. it was not my finest hour in the testing center. i mean, not terrible, but definitely not wonderful. will i be getting an a or a- in the class? nope. but you know what, for once in my life, i am okay with that. because what i got out of this class was so much more than a stupid grade on a stupid college transcript that i won't even remember in 5 years. heck, i won't care about them in 2 years.

nutrient metabolism. 

this is what byu's academic catalog says the class is:

     
        chemical structures of nutrients, their food sources, requirements, digestion, absorption, transport, metabolism, functions, storage and excretion; metabolic consequences of nutrient deficiencies, interactions, imbalances, and toxicities.

this is one of the most amazing classes i've ever taken at byu. (#1 being, hands down, human physiology from dr. rhees.) i know this might sound silly, but this class kind of changed my life a little. 

not only did i learn every single detail about vitamins, digestion, metabolism and the likes, but my perspective on nutrition has completely changed. the foods that you eat, the foods that you don't eat, really do matter. 

some really cool random things that i learned this semester:

• salad dressing and salad - what is the healthier choice: regular dressing or low-fat/non-fat dressing? people eat salads to be "healthy". salads are generally a great source of the fat-soluble vitamins: A, D, E, and K. BUT because they are fat-soluble vitamins, it means that unless you eat fat with the meal, you don't absorb any of the nutrients. so does that mean that a salad without any fat is pointless? YES. it does. eat good fats with your salads, otherwise you're just munching on calorie-less greens.
• increasing your calcium can decrease fat stores. yeah, buddy! it's kind of counter-intuitive, because increased intracellular calcium actually promotes storage of adipocytes. vitamin d is needed to sort of shuttle the calcium into the cell so it can start fatty synthesis. but it turns out that increased dietary calcium decreases blood vitamin d. so more calcium = less vitamin d = less calcium uptake by cells = less adipose synthesis = less body fat = increased weight loss! (*note... this is not a scientifically proven way to lose weight, just a few fat cells*)

i was just going to also describe joseph goldberger's "filth" parties in detail, but then decided that describing how a man willingly injected himself with blood from pellagrous patients and swallowed nose droppings from the sickies who had pellagra was a little gross. yeah... but kudos to the man who was willing to die for science, though. (he did not get pellagra though, thus proving, to himself at least, that pellagra was not infectious) (**also kudos to you if you know what i'm talking about!)

anyway, all nastiness aside, nutrient metabolism has been one of my favorite classes ever. the fact that i didn't get an a+ in the class will not matter in 5 years. it probably won't even matter in 2 years. all i will remember is how amazing the class was and how it completely changed how i eat. and that my friends, is worth more than an a any day.

the one where you get musically culture-ified

eric whitacre.

if you already know who i'm talking about, then you basically know what i'm going to talk about.

sheer genius.

he's a choral composer and his pieces are incredible! talk about dissonance. talk about craziness! you can't even hear everything that's going on with all of the 50 kajillion parts singing at the same time.

now, i don't pretend to know anything about choral music, but thankfully i was exposed to several of his pieces in my cute little high school choir.

i randomly heard one of his songs at work today, so it reminded me of this whole genre of music that, let's be honest, i don't listen to very often (but should, because it's great).

so i decided you all should be exposed to some of eric whitacre's pieces.

the first one - sleep - my high school choir did this. there are parts in this song where literally 14 different notes are being sung. is it even possible for our brains to process all 14 of those notes at the same time? i don't know - listen for yourself. eric whitacre did this giant, global-wide, virtual choir. so you'll see people singing from all over the world and he matched them all up and made it into one choir. if you don't get chills at 3:40ish - 4:06, then you need to take a step back and listen more carefully.

another eric whitacre song we did is water night. the lyrics are infinitely weirder, but the dissonances might be even cooler. now think about it - try singing a note when someone next to you is singing a note like a half step down from you! also, not to mention that i sang first soprano, and to this day i still don't know how i ever sang that high.

on another nostalgic, choral sidenote, my choir also sang this song. by the amazing spiritual arranger moses hogan. here it's sung by the motab! (gotta love 'em) remember how i said i was first soprano?? check out 1:44. the really high part. yeah, that was the part that i sang. (it was the C above the C above middle C. eeeeek.) i don't know how i ever did that. haaaa! the quality's not that great, but it's short!

now, one last culture-ification. this was another high school classic. if you have never A) heard this song or B) watched the video, you are seriously missing out. it's hilarious. also, kind of creepy. i assumed everyone knew this song, until recently when i met people that had no idea what it was. enjoy! oh, and don't get too creeped out by the weird purple shag thing. you gotta make it to the end when they end up victorious and defeat the giant space-squid. yeah, it's epic.

well, there you have it for today. it's been real, it's been fun. who knows what i'll blog about next!

the one where i talk about pots

this is not a dating blog.

and yet somehow, i am writing another post about dating. i suppose it is an occupational hazard of being a student in provo, utah, that a mini-portion of our lives revolve around dating. it is the vision and priority of a large majority of byu students to find someone they can call an eternal companion. deny it all you want, but that's what we're most of us are looking for.

in the meantime while the 'game' proceeds, there are massive amounts of casualties - broken hearts, unfulfilled expectations, reorganization of one's priorities. even common sense and rationality are completely thrown out the window.

so as a group of friends and i were talking about some of the battle wounds and strategic tactics of dating, naturally we started discussing dating analogies. these bad boys are so perfect in their explanations, it's hard not to share with everyone.

now, have you ever asked yourself one of these questions?

how do all the weirdies get married off so quickly?!?
what do i have to do to get a boy's attention?
why don't boys get the hint?


well my friends, i might just have an analogy for you.

THE POT AND LID ANALOGY


so just imagine that you and i are pots. nice round, cooking pots. and it is our lifelong goal to find our corresponding, matching, perfect lid. the hard thing about being a round pot is that there are like five kajillion circle lids floating around the kitchen. so you have to search through them all, try it out, see how it fits, one at a time, until finally the perfect circle lid is found.

the weirdies on the other hand, let's say that they're not the typical round pot. they're all star-shaped and crazy-like. and it turns out there's only one other star-shaped lid in the kitchen. so hello, how hard is it to find? it's not.

now, am i trying to insinuate that because i haven't quickly found my lid, that i'm as normal as a round pot? no. who knows what shape we really are. but also, i'm not saying that the weirdie that's still single doesn't exist. but for the most part, the analogy sticks. go with it.




THE FISH AND FISHERMAN ANALOGY


fish and fisherman. fisherman tries his hardest to get the fish to take a bite. he'll bait his hook with the perfect little doo-dads and what-nots. now, you're probably thinking that the fish is the girl and the fisherman is the guy trying to lure in said girl.

FALSE.

the fisherman = the girl. fish = the boy.

why? because the girl has to conveniently place the hook right in front of the boy's (aka fish's) face otherwise he'll never take the jump and bite. guys must be just as self-conscious about asking girls out because they just don't do it like they used to. unless we drop the hint so blatantly, it's like they just don't get it.

so like i said, girls gotta bait their hook and get it all ready otherwise boys won't even know that there's a hook for biting a mile around.




alright, alright. that's enough analogy-goodness for one day. come back later for more!

the one where we hiked

so you know that awkward moment when you realize your mom (who you love dearly) has just told one of your friends (who happens to be a new guy friend) a really embarrassing story about you??

i'm sure i'm not the first one it's happened to, but it was pretty awesome either way.

so this last saturday, my dear mother was in town and she had never climbed the Y. we decided it was time to change that, so early on saturday my mother and i and two other friends drive up to the Y parking lot, ready to hike the 12 or so steep switchbacks.

we get up to the top. it's awesome, mainly due to the fact that you know you did it, more than the fact that the view is awesome, because honestly, it's the exact same view from the parking lot. nothing too exciting.

anyway, we're on the way down and from previous experience i know that walking down is especially painful on my knees, just because of the steepness and what not. controlled-running down is my preferred method of de-scaling the mountain. and because i know my mom, i knew she'd be 100% totally okay with my running down with one of my friends that came with me. i'll call this friend friend a. but friend b (a fairly new guy friend), being the incredibly nice guy he is (more of my thoughts on that will come -- turns out, there's such a thing as being too nice), decides to stay with my mom and walk down the mountain with her.

so we parted; friend a with me and friend b with mi madre. which i should have known wasn't the best idea.

later that day when i was with my mom going grocery shopping, i remembered that she had a good 20 minutes with this boy. i was curious as to what she talked about with him. she told me that they talked about his schooling. how he's planning on going medical school and so my mom naturally talked about how it was when my dad went through medical school. she even mentioned the fact that my dad got to deliver lots of babies during his residency rotations, which led to how he got to deliver me. and how i was the last baby he delivered.

cute, right?!?

yeah.

and then she mentioned about how when i was born, my dad thought i had some sort of congenital malformation, like a brain abnormality or cleft palate or something along those special lines.


eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeew;ejkf;jkw;lejak;lwwfejkw;aj!!!!!!


haahaa, i laughed out loud, whether out of embarrassment or shock or just because the situation is so darn comedic, i'm not sure, but i definitely laughed.

just one of those funny things that happens. and it's totally fine, totally funny, but hopefully it totally never happens again.


oh and by the way, it turns out that i'm completely fine - no brain abnormality, no cleft palate, nothing. maybe i'm a little bit special, but that makes me awesome, right?!

the one where i advise against rash decisions

why is it that in provo there is always an over-abundance of dating mishap stories?? 


seriously, none of us are immune! i've got loads of them - the time i passed out on a first date, the time a giant 32-inch pizza fell on me (might i add that it those first two were on the same date), the time no plans were made and we walked around a mall for two hours, and the ever-so-awkward "hey my sister and her husband are coming with us too". 


so like i said, we've all got them. 


well, i think i've discovered a new category of dating mishap - where it all goes horribly wrong before the date even begins.


and this is where i begin to advise against overanalyzing and make rash decisions.  


to make my advice painfully clear (and to show exactly what NOT to do), i will relay the following anecdote:


once upon a time, boy (boy from my mission) asks me out over facebook. well in advance. like a good two and a half weeks in advance of the actual proposed night. i was not super thrilled about it, so said i wasn't sure if i would be in town that weekend (because i honestly didn't know!) and told him i'd get back to him as soon as possible.  during this period of time it just so happens that my laptop dies. like completely dies a death - both externally and internally (RIP old lappy). so the only time i was on the internet was at work, and it turns out i actually was doing work and completely forgot to write the boy back. 


not because i was trying to avoid him, or reject him, or be rude at all. in fact, i was planning on saying yes. but i kept putting it off because i had other work things i had to do. 


so a week passes by like this and the boy writes again and asks what kind of decision i have arrived at. i'm still in the same sans-computer situation and it's a few days before i get to be able to write him again. but before i even get the chance to do that, what happens??!? welp, let me tell you...


boy posts a link to my facebook wall. it's to his very own blog! he writes me and says, "read the second entry". i'm excited, but maybe a little apprehensive. what could this awkward boy be blogging about?


well ladies and gentlemen, to sum up his blog post in one word, the title of the blog post is rejection. 


yeeeeaaaaaah.


it's basically a little ditty about how you shouldn't ignore people and that lies hurt and honesty is the best policy. and how going "cold shoulder is like target practice and a cruel trick". (his words, not mine.) 


although he has the right to blog and vent his particular feelings in any which way he chooses, his chosen method to, dare i say, retaliate, was not quite appropriate. especially the whole posting it to my facebook wall where anybody in the world could see it. to me that was saying hey, you suck. and this is why. read away! 


y bueno...


so what do we learn from this?

1. do not, under any circumstance, ask somebody out via facebook - if absolutely necessary, you can ask for a number over fb, and then proceed to call, but man, even that is pushing it.
2. do not jump to conclusions. easy to say, hard to do, right? but really, you never know what's going on with somebody else or what situation they're dealing with, so don't automatically assume the worst. 
3. do not lash out with your first reaction. my first reaction was to write him back and give him a large piece of my mind. i can be very straight forward and sometimes my non-sugar-coated honesty is like a ninja death star. it stings un poco. but, who would that help? nobody. so i didn't respond until the next day when i could reasonably write back and explain my situation, apologize for not replying sooner, and respectfully decline his date invite (yup, that's what i did). but this goes both ways, he probably should not have lashed out with a hate-blog in the first place. or at least should not have publicly posted it to my wall.
4. do not hold grudges. i am happy to say that i tried my very best to not leave things all awkward-like with him. i invited him to a paraguayan party i'm having next week and he is very excited to be coming.

lessons learned? yes.
another good story to add to my list? haha, oh yeah. 

the one where i talk logisitics

summertime.

is there anything else that makes you quite as happy? i mean, peanut butter and pedicures rate up there pretty high, but think about it - summertime means green grass, long runs on the provo river trail, flip-flops and shorts. it means the farmer's market is open. school's out (well, for some). it means swimming and being outside and vacations and lightning bugs (well, not in provo) and camping and hanging out with friends every night.

since this is the first summer i will be spending entirely in provo, i decided to up its epicness by creating a provo summer BUCKET LIST!!!

are you ready for this?? (*insert 90s jock jam music here*)

• run 412 miles
• learn how to play the guitar
• learn how to longboard
• go on vacation with my family
• volunteer
• warped tour
• go camping
• train for grand teton relay (aug) in preparation for the las vegas ragnar (nov)
• start a blog

okay, well that's all for now. if there's any other fun things that i should do, someone please tell me so that summer 2012 is the most best ever.

the one where i just started

this is it!

i made a blog!

if i would have told myself 3 years ago that i would have a blog, i'd think i were crazy. (sometimes i probably am)

but it turns out that ever since i got back from my mission, i've noticed how opinionated i am. and as a part of my bucket list (don't worry, i'll get there soon) i have decided to share my opinionated-ness to a broader, more public audience.

so here you go, meet me!

i'm kallie.

i'm a public health major at byu.

that's my mom and i at byu

my major emphasis is environmental health, which i think is really important.

i served an 18-month, lds mission to paraguay, south america.

typical day - walking down a dusty road eating something

i like running, it's fun!

slc half marathon

i like eating as little processed, unhealthy food as possible. (except when it comes to cheetos, my one downfall)

NOOOO

YESSSS

i'm a semi-vegetarian. i think that technically makes me a flexitarian.

i try to be environmentally conscious; let's save the world, yah?

i'm not talking about crazy extremes here, just doing a little part

i have one year left until a i graduate from byu. then i plan on attending post-grad nursing school to get an accelerated bachelor's degree in nursing. where? um, i still don't know that, but i have a few options. and options are good! i'm going to school all over the summer, but i've also made a bucket list for the summer, which will be disclosed on an upcoming blog post. 

until then, i'm going to let my brain have a little rest before i have to hunker down and study some more. 

this is where we part. but stay tuned for a fun journey.

chaucito!