Conference Weekend

Last year my Dad decided he was going to take a vacation to himself and visit me in Utah. It was so much fun. So much fun, in fact, that he came again this year and brought little brother with him.

I wrote last year about how awesome my Dad is, but I thought I would just mention it again. Because he is that great. He's my hero, one of my best friends, the best person I know, and one of the funniest people I've ever met. Of course, maybe I'm biased because we have exactly the same sense of humor. And I never get to see or talk to him, so this week is always wonderful. I picked him and my brother up from the airport on Friday and we went straight to the game, which by some miracle we won. (I think it's because my Dad is a good luck charm) We spent the rest of the weekend hanging out with extended family, watching Conference, and enjoying the beautiful weather. 

And now a word on my extended family: they are amazing. My dad always takes my cousins and I to a haunted house and we end up pushing and shoving each other into the walls and monsters. We have cousin sleepovers where we watch movies and eat way too many sweets and make fun of each other until it gets to the point where someone ends up mad. My family are some of my best friends. How I got so lucky, I'm not sure. 

Fall Semester

Fall semester is my favorite, for so many reasons. Those include the weather, football season, trips to Dan's cabin, everyone being back together after summer, picnics, haunted houses, birthdays, bonfires, and the craziness that ensues from being in Provo.

Here's an update on some of the happenings of the first month of fall semester:

Live

"I beg you…to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language.
Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer…" 

-Rainer Maria Rilke

There are so many questions right now. But I have to remember to just live. 

The Wind

I listen to the wind

To the wind of my soul

Where I'll end up well I think,

Only God really knows

I've sat upon the setting sun

Inferno

“The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space."

-Italo Calvina "Invisible Cities"

Here in my last year of my undergraduate degree, I'm realizing the little world I've built around me is full of people and things that are not inferno, even in the midst of being in one. I have no idea how I got so lucky. 

So, in my senior year things have started off with late nights, churro runs, and many a freakout about what to do with life. But at least I have great people around me that make me laugh each and every day and are willing to do ridiculous things with me on the daily. 

And we never know what will happen with these boys living so close

In search

"Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not." 

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Kingdom of Cambodia

The week before I came back to Utah I was able to visit Cambodia with my momma. I have wanted to go there forever, and my mom is the best ever and planned the whole thing for us. We took a tuk tuk around to all of the temples, ate at the same restaurant every night (so good), and got $5 massages every day. The people in Cambodia are so special. They amaze me in their determination, ambition, and happiness after years of being torn apart by the Khmer Rouge. We met so many people who have stepped on land mines and lost family, yet they haven't lost hope for a bright future. And the ruins there are some of the most beautiful I have ever seen. That country is truly magical.

Dear Mom,

You are the best. You plan amazing trips. You take me on those amazing trips. You are amazing and this trip was wonderful with you. 

With love,

me