Let your Heart, Sweetheart, Be Your Compass

I'm not doing so good at the getting back into the writing blogs thing. Time has gone by so fast! Where has it gone? I was crazy and decided to take 17.5 credits my first semester back in school... not sure where I got that crazy notion from... probably the same place where I got the notion to take the classes I've been avoiding all together this semester. Anyway, I know when I start thinking of good topics to write about, its time to update the blog. My life has pretty much been school, more school, and even more school. This weekend I took a mental vacation and have pretty much done nothing academic the last two days. Almost nothing. It has been nice actually and I am getting to the point now that I am itching to be productive again. Which will be needed this week for my Physics and MMBio tests!
Last semester was great and went by so quickly. I'm glad that I got to live with Kerissa before she got married... and that we weren't living under a bridge. I actually really like our apartment and the ward we're in. Its a good level of social and I am making myself actually go out and do things and talk to people. (My family and friends I'm sure are very proud!) The new semester brought three new roommates and a lot of new ward members as well. It has been interesting having freshman as roommates. It makes me feel super old and out of date with the times. Kinda funny.
For all the things I thought about for blogs, I don't really know what to write. I'm not that exciting. So I guess I'll do a quick update of a few of the exciting things.... 
I found out in January that I was accepted to study at Cambridge this summer! Something that I have literally been dreaming of since freshman year at BYU. I still have a hard time sometimes comprehending that I will actually be spending the summer in England! Now, after talking to the professor who oversees applications and such to Cambridge, I'm also going to go to Oxford! May as well while I'm over there, right?! So I will be in England June-August now. Finally a stamp in my passport!!
I also passed up my dad in the number of temples I've visited! The current list is: Washington DC, Palmyra, Billings, Idaho Falls, Rexburg, Provo, Sacramento, Manhattan, Nauvoo, Atlanta, Cardston Alberta, Draper, Salt Lake, Mount Timpanogos, and Oquirrh Mountain. Pretty Exciting.
I read Ender's Game and saw the movie. I successfully read a book during the semester! It helped that it was really good and I was waiting to see the movie until I finished it. I actually didn't like the movie that much. I know they don't have time to include everything that is in the book, but you should change everything that you do include. This is why I probably shouldn't read the books movies are based off of...
I also dyed my hair black again. I gave into the temptation. I don't know why Kerissa always has a box of black on hand. I always end up using it. I decided to take advantage before my hair got too long for just one box. Cheapness still always wins out.
And I found out:

I was confused and then I read the description. Its pretty accurate.

Well its late and I have organic chemistry first thing in the morning but, I got a blog written. Yay!

Georgia on my Mind

It’s been almost three months since I returned from my mission in Atlanta, Georgia. I can’t believe how fast time has gone! The mission flew by so quickly! I served in 5 ½ wonderful areas; Ensign, Lithia Springs, Cedartown, Cassville, Lost Mountain, and Barnesville. And I have no idea where to even start telling about my mission. So much information and experiences in one little blog post... is that possible? I guess I'll try.

The MTC was packed with information. It was crazy and tiring, but absolutely wonderful! Most of our group went to Atlanta so we were able to still see each other which was good. My first area was Ensign and I was there for 7 1/2 months. I loved it! I was blessed to meet so many wonderful people and got to know most the ward personally. It was so hard to leave there. I cried quite a bit! I also served in Cedartown for 6 weeks, Cassville for 6 months, Lost Mountain for 12 weeks, and Thomaston finished up my mission the last 6 weeks. I loved them all and they were all unique in their own ways. So many wonderful people down south. Oh and Lithia Springs is the half, as I covered there and Ensign at the same time for 5 weeks (Sister Thornton would be upset if I didn't mention it!) And then my companions. All different, (and there were 13 of them!!) and taught me something while serving with them and many will be continuing friends. (I feel like this is very broad now... )

 I met so many amazing people and had wonderful experiences. I was never a huge ‘people person’ but I grew to love those in Georgia and see the wonderful people that they are. It was amazing to see a person’s eyes light up, and their lives change as they came to understand they are a child of God. That is always true no matter what a person looks like. And so many are searching for that truth.

I had never planned on serving a mission, really it was the lowest thing on the totem pole, but obviously Heavenly Father knew better and let me know accordingly. Now, I can’t imagine my life without serving a mission! (Kind of cliché, I know).  All of the experiences I had, lessons I learned, testimony I better developed, and friendships I formed; I would not be the same person without all of that. I may have been closer to graduation, but even that isn’t worth giving up what I gained on my mission.

 

I went 2.7 seconds on a bull named Fu Man Chu.

A few years ago, Kris and I were talking about a rumor we heard that soda is better in Mexico. This led to many plans of road trips to Mexico just to drink a Pepsi. Years later the Todds went on a cruise and Kris brought back a Mexican coke. After a few more months, we were in the same state as each other, and the coke, and finally drank it. It was a "check off the bucket list" and sort of simultaneously started my "bucket list". (BUT I am creeped out by Jack Nicholson and refuse to watch The Bucket List or call my list a bucket list.)
My 'Life's to Do' list has formed and grown since the Mexican coke in 2009, but I have not had many more checks. Haven't been to Australia or read Les Miserables or had a willow tree in my backyard. But this summer another was checked! Seeing Wicked! I have been wanting to see Wicked since my sophomore year of High School when we sang a medley of songs from the musical in choir. I have been listening to the music since then and trying to figure out the story line. When Kris was going to be in NYC and I was going to visit her, I knew Wicked needed to be involved. It was AMAZING! There were multiple important points in the plot you do not get from just the CD. It was so much fun and we had a lot of fun before it started taking pictures and singing the songs!

 Drinking Mexican Coke June 2009

Wicked May 2011

 

I added 'wear stilettos in New York City' so that was another check.

One thing I never planned on doing in my life was to serve a mission. It may not have been on my list but that is where I'm headed now. So there is now a whole 18 months for Heather to out blog me! (Although I don't think that counts as her winning). I think its good for me to get out and do things I haven't done before whether I have to add them to my Life's To Dos as incentive or almost literally am pushed to by Heavenly Father. So I'll be back in 18months. I'll end this with my address and a video from the night seeing Wicked (Kris is the singer of our friendship... I'm the one that knows the actual lyrics of songs).

 MTC Address (Nov 16- Dec7ish)
Sister Nicole Kathryn Swanson
MTC Mailbox #352
GA-ATL 1213
2005N 900E
Provo, UT 84604-1793

General Atlanta Address/ Packages
Sister Nicole Kathryn Swanson
Georgia Atlanta Mission
112 Governors Square Ste A
Fayetteville, GA 30215-4085

Pictures of you, Pictures of me

Well I think that my goal of writing more than Heather isn't quite a lost cause but that's thanks to her. It has been so long since I wrote a blog that I don't think I'm really fulfilling that goal...
A lot has happened this summer that I don't even know where to begin. I love pictures though and I'm thinking this will just be a picture blog recap of the summer.

I spent time with family and getting to know Kyra and Clayton.

I went to NYC and visited Kristin. Walked through Central Park, went to the Met, ate at great restaurants, played in the Harry Potter exhibit, bought street food, went to the Manhattan temple, and most importantly went to Wicked!

(She said this picture could never be on facebook... this isn't facebook.)

I worked at PPLMontana

Kaden and I worked really hard....

I helped pick out a wedding dress for my best friend and then watched her get married.

I visited friends

And more friends

And I found the adapter card so I can upload pictures from my phone and now have classics like these on my computer.

It's My Life

Life is interesting. Mine isn't too exciting but then again maybe it is to some.
I am now gallbladder-less and enjoying drinking milk. The first gallon that I bought since being back I finished in a week all by myself. Well, technically six days. I missed it and it tasted so good! I'm conserving my current one a little more so I hopefully wont have to buy a gallon every week.
The semester isn't looking too bad right now and hopefully it stays that way. Thursdays and Fridays I only have two classes so they are my study days. Real exciting. But yesterday I was able to witness a girl in the library that was knitting and then a minute later I looked over and she was leaning sideways asleep. or fainted. Its very difficult to tell in the library! Recently along with studying, I have been working on my applications to three different internships. One in Missouri, another in Indiana, and the last in Tennessee. So hopefully this summer will be spend somewhere cool, for free, earning money, and see if I really want to do research for the rest of my life. If not, I guess I will move on to plan B... when I decide what that is.
Weekends are pretty exciting in our apartment though. Kerissa can stay up later than 9pm and... we watch wedding videos on the blog Iris and Light (this happened tonight and last sunday). Oh sometimes we sing Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer and then have a heated discussion about what the last echo is supposed to be. Pretty fun stuff. But great roommate bonding time! I do get out every once in a while too. Don't worry mom! ...and Josh... and Andelynn!
Last week I found out I have a whole in my chest. I was showing Kerissa my gallbladder battle wounds for whatever reason and she asked, "Do you have an innie?" I of course thought she was talking about my bellybutton, but no she meant my chest. I guess it is abnormal to have a little hole thing in the middle towards the bottom of your sternum. huh. I seriously thought everyone had that. Although, that probably explains why I claimed I had an extra set of ribs all my life, as the hole does make them stick out awkwardly. See mom, something wasn't right! I was just blaming my ribs instead of my sternum. It is called Pectus Excavatum. I've lived with it this long so obviously I'm not going to die, its just interesting.
So that is pretty much it. I'm realizing I'm more abnormal than I thought, I live in the library when not home or in classes, I watch cute videos and listen to music waiting for a boy to come sit on my bed while I'm doing homework(Josh for some reason said this wouldn't happen), and trying to decide between writing my papers how I want or how my puffed-up professor writes (she is perfect and all should write as exactly as she does).

Not much but hey, it's my life and I'm enjoying it!

I've Been Everywhere

Anatomy is a great class. The lab may be killing my grade... but I still find it all so interesting! I learn so much at every lecture and I am always able to somehow share it with my roommates which is fun. My professor though, I am so amazed by her. She is awesome and seems to have done everything and I think that she is still fairly young. Last week she started a story with "While I was backpacking across Thailand..." and then went on to tell us how she was alone in the middle of the wilderness of Thailand and what she saw in the village she stopped at that related to the lecture. Her graduate thesis work at least partly consisted of walking around Seattle asking the homeless people their history and testing them for HIV and then going back to check on them every now and then, being the first to find some of them after they died. She spends the night outside at least two or three nights a week, ALL year round. Then today, she told us why she decided to go with anatomy. She had started her freshman year as an Elem Ed major but she took anatomy for fun. That summer she decided that she wanted to go to Alaska. She didn't have any money to do this, so she hitchhiked from Utah to Alaska, around Alaska, and back! On the way there, she was in the middle of the Yukon for a long time as no one was driving by. Finally a truck stopped but was full of people but they said she could squeeze in the back by a tarp if she wanted. She rode in the back of the truck for hours so at some point she decided to look under the tarp. It was a freshly shot deer. So as she had just taken anatomy, she stuck her hand under the tarp and started to feel it thinking of all the anatomy terms. When she got to the lungs they 'were like a security blanket'. She loves the feel of fresh lungs (they feel like clouds) and that is why she is not teaching second grade right now.
She just amazes me with all that she was done and seen, everywhere she's been, and all that she knows.

California! Here we come!

A couple of my roommate's and I decided to take a trip to California. Elise goes to school at UVU and had fall break and she decided that she wanted to go to California. Kerissa is from California so she went so that she could go home and I went cause... I wanted a break! I think I have been on about two real vacations since I was three and I have never been on an extended friend road trip. So, road trip to California!
We left Wednesday morning and drove about ten hours to Loomis where Kerissa is from. We had a delicious dinner with her family and then planned out our next day adventures. We got up the next morning to Kerissa feeling worse (as she was already a little sick when we left Utah) so Elise and I caught the Amtrack train and journeyed to San Fransisco while she stayed home. We used the bus system to get around which was really handy and not that expensive. Plus our day bus pass worked on the trolleys so we got to experience that too! We walked across the Golden Gate Bridge and back and then went to Golden Gate Park to eat lunch which it turned out to not be a real park in our sense of the word. At least the part we were in, it was more woodsy than manicured lawn. We found a patch of weeds and ate our packed lunch and then headed to the Palace of Fine Arts... which was under construction so we couldn't get right underneath it. After that, we headed over to Pier 39 and walked around a bit before going to China town. We wandered around Chinatown, experiencing some of San Fransisco's hills and went in a shop where Elise and I both bought skirts that were on sell and then I bought a china bowl for 99 cents (which I broke right before we left Loomis) and Elise bought a beautiful wind chime (which is still whole and hanging in our living room). We ate in Chinatown which was delicious and caught a trolley back to the pier. We wondered around the shops in the pier until it was time to catch the bus to take us to the train.
Friday, Kerissa was feeling better and we went to the Sacramento Temple with her dad and did some baptisms. Afterward, her dad drove us to Sacramento and he took us to the capitol building. It was so beautiful! I discovered I kind of have a thing for architecture. We then went to Old Town which was really cool. I would love to live in a town that looked like it is the set of an old western! But if building's look like that today they are usually for tourists. We ate lunch at Jo's Crab Shack and then went on the search for a vintage store. We found a really cool one and Elise got some great clothes!
We headed back to Loomis, visiting Kerissa's one set of grandparents on the way. That night was just relaxing. I fell asleep while Elise took family pictures for the Poulsons and then we had dinner and later a fire with s'mores. Saturday, we got the official tour of Loomis and also stopped at Lake Tahoe on the way back to Provo. It was so beautiful at Lake Tahoe! But shhh. Don't tell anyone because we don't want everyone to know. We discovered that Lake Tahoe is what Elise's heart looks like. The three of us are thinking of buying a house in the future that our families can go and stay in... when we have families that is. Elsie went crazy taking pictures and got some really great ones! She is such a great photographer!
We made it safely back to Provo, only forgetting Elise's and my leftovers from Chinatown and now all three of us being sick. Even though I now cannot breathe through my nose as I'm so congested, it was a great trip!! I'm so glad that I went!
Now back to school...