A bad case of the mondays...

So its been a super interesting week. Its so great that God likes me enough to never let my life get boring. It is actually a huge blessing I think. Anyways I went to Grand Targhee this weekend which was amazing and thats what the pictures are of. The snow was perfect, everything actually was kind of perfect. And it was kind of nostalgic for me because that is the ski resort that my dad grew up skiing on. So today I got a taste of how naive and different some mormons are than me. Last monday this girl knocked on our door and I was the only one home and I happened to be burning incense in the kitchen ( bad idea I know but I missed the smell sooo much) anyways she wanted to borrow some games so I let her borrow some card games. Little did I know that she thought I was smoking. What?!? As you all hopefully know I don't smoke. Thats gross and I wouldnt do that to my poor lungs. Haha anyways Im kind of making a joke out of this but its kind of serious cause she turned me into the head resident who now has to turn me into the honor office. Righteous righteous!! I mean I expected to be in there sooner or later but I would at least like to be able to take credit for the reason Im there. Instead now I have been trying to convince everyone that I really dont smoke. The girl came over to talk to me about it.... talk about awkward. I cant handle those kind of situations. Even though I told her that I dont smoke she still was unsure cause she swears she saw me holding a cigarette. Oh bless her innocent soul. She probably doesnt even know what a cigarette looks like or smells like. Haha whatevs I would just like to remind the general universe that I really dont appreciate awkwardness and Im really horrible at handling those kind of situations. I pretty much avoided making eye contact with her and just listened until she would stop talking which took a while unfortunately. C'est le vie. It'll all work out Im sure. Wish me luck at the honor council place. On a different note I have made a new goal for my life... if I can lose 10lbs then I am getting my dreads back. World get ready!!!

Bad Day

K so pretty much today was a pretty sucky day. But aside from all that I just wanna comment on great humans are. Like that sounds weird but I generally have a pretty pessimistic view of mankind... which I think is valid given the amount of horrible things men have done. But recently I have gained an appreciation for just the small decent acts that people do. My room mate and I were playing our instruments the other day and all of a sudden there was a knock on our window. Not gonna lie I was expecting something about how we were playing too loud and to keep it down. Instead we found a note saying that the music we were playing rocked and so did our playing. It was a small thing but it kind of made my day. They have since commented on all of the music that we play in the apt and how they enjoy it. Then yesterday this girl came and knocked on our door in the middle of the day she came in and asked if my snowboard was the one outside the door. I said it was.... and then asked her if she was planning on stealing it. fortunately she was not but she said that she snowboards and shes been looking for people to go with. we exchanged numbers and we're gonna tear it up this weekend. i like her cause she seems like she could be from bellingham. :) anyways main point of this post ( yes it does have a point) is that even though a lot of bigger things can be going really shitty in life those small mostly irrelevent acts of just like human decency and kindness can really make up it. just having someone say I love you or Ive got your back can mean so much. Having room mates that will share a non alcoholic daquari in a coffee mug with you cause all the other cups are dirty while listening to "bottoms up" can make everything else seem trivial. Its amazing how life can suck the majority of the time but just that one time when it doesnt makes you forget about how effed everything is and somehow makes you willing to keep putting up with lifes shit because you know that another one of those moments will come along and everything will seem alright again. anyways i love you all and thanks for all the support always. you really dont know how much of a difference it makes.

my brain hurts

k so though its a bit early i think i have figured out what my favorite classes are.... philosophy and american foundations. this may change as the semester goes on but for now they are my favs. philosophy is great i love it... but it hurts my brain. its like i cant really grasp anything but i find it all so interesting at the same time. im cool with it. so far we've talked about socrates, plato ya know the basics.they're pretty legit dudes. i think the biggest thing that ive gotten from it so far is that justice is not subjective, it cant be. justice has to be objective and it is something that exists beyond the visible world. its real but nonphysical all at the same time. ok see thats one of those things that i agree with but i still cant quite grasp it. it gets even more interesting because in my american foundations class( pretty much a basic US history class) we're discussing right and wrong and agency and accountability and freedom. yeah i know its a lot. im discovering mostly that there is a great benefit in not being single minded. not that im flawless in this category but i think my moving to washington really helped me to become less single minded. im still working on it. but theres just soo many ways to look at things and to define things and although its not wrong to be concrete in things i think we always have to be open to molding these beliefs or at least accepting others beliefs also. i feel like sometimes as humans we use religion to excuse our single mindedness.... i mean we use religion to do a lot of things that its not particularly intended for. one kid mentioned that if you just follow the laws of the land.. no matter what they are that you'll be blessed... easy for him to say, hes a white male. if people never questioned the laws of the land nothing would ever change. the point of this life is to change and to question things. and even though we're this free nation lalalala there is still so much changing and molding that we can do. i think thats what is so great about the constitution, not that its always used correctly, but it is open to change. and i think we need to be open to change also. disclaimer it kind of sounds as if im quoting the obama campaign with all this change talk... im not. :) like i said i am still single minded in ways. anyways i could go on forever so i wont. quote of the week... "any exception to moral principle no matter how well reasoned or rationalized, poses a real danger to individuals, to the rule of law and to society." -Elder D. Todd Christofferson

my first of many college meals

so on tuesday scott and i went shopping. i bought laundry detergent for the first time ever. it was amazing... but not really. I got myself some sheets also which was kind of a necessity. anyways then we went back to my apartment... it sounds so legit to say my apartment, and we made dinner. PASTA!!! its so incredibly easy and delicious. scott and i were pretty proud of ourselves. two of my room mates are latino so they've been making these latino dishes that their moms made for them growing up. their amazing cooks and the foods great... unfortunately my stomach cant hold up to it yet. hopefully it will adjust soon. I have recently discovered that my room mates are not as innocent as I first thought. well two of them are from california so how sheltered can they really be? but we all watch rated R movies... ooooh. haha and drink tea and make dirty jokes. its great. Im feeling more at home everyday. I have kind of had an interesting discovery into my own perspectives on things. A lot of the focus here and in our classes is on this idea of Zion. Which always seemed kind of exciting to me. Like everyone gets along, we all believe the same things and its honky dory. But now that I'm in what a lot of people would consider a more zion like place... Im not such a fan. This could be because maybe my heart isn't in the right place yet. but really I just find it kind of obnoxious. Like I love non mormons... I find them usually much more enjoyable to be around than mormons.No offense to anyone. Its hard for me to stomach a lot of these kids because they seem so unreal. Like nobody in the real world thinks or talks like that. Life is so black and white to them. Life is not black and white. The gospel to me is not black and white. there is not always a right and wrong way to do things. actually there is rarely a right and wrong way to do things. i think it is assumed that because we are all LDS that we must believe the same things and im discovering more and more that this is definitely not true. and i think that is a good thing. for example my book of mormon teacher told us today that God is not our buddy.... well maybe for him God is not his buddy. But for me, I respect God a whole whole lot but He is my friend. Like I think thats the point. God to me is my Father, Creator, friend, teacher and somebody who I hope loves me more than anyone. To me that doesnt mean that I am disrespecting Him in any way but honestly I think we all view God a little differently and I think that is the way it is supposed to be. ok so thats my epically long tangent for the day. if any of you actually read that whole thing im sorry. haha.

my new home

so this is my apartment. Its pretty sweet not gonna lie. My room mates aren't too bad either. We have tons of food so I won't starve, not that that was ever particularly a concern. hmmm what else? i think thats about it.

Living amongst them

So I am now a college kid.... a mormon college kid. It is super weird. And scary all at the same time. My room mate is pretty chill. She is from outside Aurora, Colorado which is good cause Aurora is I guess pretty hard core ghetto. And similar to me, she had never planned on going to a church school either. But alas we are both here. Im all moved in and attempting to pimp out my side of the room. I had my first class today which of course began with a prayer. Lots of prayers heading up from this place. If I were God I'd probably mark most of them as spam.... thats probably one of the many reasons that I am not God. Anyways it should be an interesting experience. We'll see.  Btw please excuse my horrible grammar and punctuation. Maybe it'll improve as the semester goes on... but I doubt it.