The Joy of Reading

As many of you know, when school begins typically there is no time for hobbies. Well, for the first time in a VERY long time I am able to go to school without having to have a job. The extra money would be nice, but I soon realized my efforts will likely be double that of my classmates because I do not have the kind of background that they have. I'm positive I do spend a lot more time with homework than others, but I am finding I can still do other fun things as well.

I recently was able to buy the Chronicles of Narnia e-books for really cheap as well as the audiobooks with them. I had just finished reading all of the Leven Thumps books, and Sorcery & Cecilia, and was in need of some new ones. Since I travel on the bus at least a couple of times a week I usually get some great time to read, but having audiobooks has brought it to a whole new level. It is now really easy to just listen to an audiobook on my 15 minute walk to and from school. It's been wonderful! I am already on the 3rd Narnia book - The Horse and His Boy. Additionally, because of the kindle app - Matt also has access to all the books and audiobooks so we can essentially be listening to them together. It's still not the same as reading and imagining the book, but I like that I have the option to do either.

This last week I spent most of my time working on my statistics assignment that is due tomorrow. It has been very frustrating. The program R that we use for the different tests is very difficult to learn. I often got stuck on  coding something and couldn't move forward until I got my question answered from the teacher. After spending hours and hours on it, visiting the teacher twice and taking up her entire consultation time, I think I figured it all out. I'm glad I learned all that I did and I was able to help my friends in the class with what I had learned so they wouldn't have to spend the amount of time I spent. I'm really sick of statistics for now and class yesterday was SOOO boring, but the good news is that we don't have any class or homework for next week because Monday is a holiday.

Last week we had a biology seminar on trees which was way more technical than I could handle, but it was still interesting. If you want to see the simplified version you can read my blog. I was only too happy to finish that blog and be done with that topic because I am just not very good at technical plant stuff. It was also a pretty good week because I had done some homework in advance so I had a little bit more free time than normal.

I was able to buy a few clothing items I needed last week and was frustrated when I couldn't find any long shorts! I've been avoiding wearing yoga pants and the like to school because those seem to be too casual to school. It's uncommon to see people in workout clothes or really casual clothing at Uni, so I was trying to find another pair of shorts. It seems I had just missed the window since now mostly winter clothes and long sleeves are in fashion. Another fashion statement I converted too was flats. I'm not a big fan of flats, but I have had some flip flops break and my pair of alpargatas (similar to Tom's) fall apart since being here. Also, on my walk to church on Sundays I decided it might be worth having flats for the walk and then switching to heals.

This Sunday I got to use my new flats for the first time. I accidentally got off on the wrong bus stop so I had a few more blocks to walk and I was grateful to have been wearing flats. As I got closer to the church however, the flats were starting to dig into the backs of my ankles and I had nice pieces of skin that had been rubbed off. Luckily wearing heals didn't rub against it much and I didn't need to walk often. I gave the lesson in Relief Society on The Atonement by Boyd K. Packer that day too. We had just talked about the atonement two weeks earlier so it was a really hard lesson to prepare for as I tried to think of what I could do and say to make it different. I focused more on the suffering of the Savior to pay the price on our sin, and how we have to choose to be the repentant sinner to make his suffering worthwhile. To be the repentant sinner I focused on how we had to understand all that Jesus Christ did for us to find the intense love that leads us to repent. In the end I got a lot of compliments, but I didn't cover half of what I wanted to because I only got about 30 minutes. I've included the video I was hoping to share below. I was glad church was over in the end because my poor ankles were not too happy with me and I had to walk on my toes home to not rub my ankles any worse. So far my experience with flats has not been that great.

Yesterday was the start of what will be a great week I think. I went to Brock and Kaytlin's for FHE and this time we had Gideon and Clarissa, and Dave Cruz as well. Dave gave a great lesson which is definitely worth sharing. He asked "If you could write a letter to your 15 year old self, what would you say?" There are so many thing I can think of to answer that. Most of all, I would want to let my teenage self know that the Lord loves me, has a plan for me, and that everything is going to be all right. I've been through a lot of difficult ups and downs, but the most comforting thing you can hear is that it all happens for a reason and that it's all going to work out in the end (at least the way the Lord intends it to work out). Afterwords we played telephone pictionary which worked out very well and I was laughing so hard it hurt at times. I'm really glad Dave was able to give me a ride because I wouldn't have been able to stay that long if I hadn't had a ride home. Overall it was a good day and since I don't have any classes after Wednesday for a whole week, I am pretty happy! Happy Easter in advance!