my week in videos

can we please talk about the new hobbit trailer? i watched this last night, right when it came out and almost died. "can you promise that i will come back?" "no. and if you do.....you will not be the same." seriously? if the hobbit trailer and the hunger games trailer ever met in a dark alley.....just....yeah. anyway, when i watched it, there were 309 views. then i watched it again when i woke up this morning and there were 3 million views. 

next up: did anyone see david archuleta's announcement at symphony hall? i didn't, but my mom told me about it and i almost cried. 

seriously, david is amazing. i went on a little rant about how i would marry him in a heartbeat and then finished with "but i probably won't." and my mom laughed for like, 5 minutes straight, because the "reality" is that i definitely won't. and then i asked her if she ever had a dream that she wanted so much she thought she could do anything? 

and then she understood.

every semester....

you know that big 7 page research paper that's due on thursday that i haven't started? (well, now you do.) 

nope. 

it's due tomorrow. 

gotta run to maverick.

i need a few monsters and rockstars to get me through the night. 

ok bye. 

the circle of life

here is a picture of me coming home from india three years ago.

 yup, i look like i've been on planes and trains for 48 hours. let's turn our attention away from my greasy hair and onto the sa-weet henna tattoo on my arm, mmmkay? 

anyway. see the boy on the far right? that's jacob. he also looks like he could use a shower and a haircut. yikes, to be 15 years old. ok, moving on.... 

fast forward three years. this is jacob coming home from india.

what the? i swear i just got home from india last month. it's been three years? not cool. you wanna know what is cool? jacob got to go to the village i worked in and see my girls :) that makes me SO happy! i miss them. i miss india. i'm so happy that my little brother got to go and have the same life-changing experience that ben and i had. i hope the three of us can go back someday! 

p.s. i got this text from jacob the day after he got back. "i went to the hospital and the doctor told me i have e-coli. so i threw him on the GROUND!" 

the calm before the storm (thoughts before finals week)

-two days ago, my personal health and wellness professor made us run a mile and a half outside at 9 AM. it was 1 degree outside. that's not even an exaggeration. i pretty much waddled around the track in my ski coat. yes, i ran in my ski coat! who even said you needed to be healthy to graduate in health science?

-today, the same professor came to class and told us that he actually wasn't going to give us a final and merry christmas. indeed.

-in a week and a half, i get to go home and partake of snuggling in a chair by the fire, hot chocolate, charlie brown christmas music, homemade fudge (i love neighbor christmas treats), watching movies in the den with lots of blankets, brown sugar carmalized bacon (anna? sarah? whitman's cabin, anyone?), clementines, twinkling christmas lights, and hanging out with my family for 4 months while i'm off track!

-anyone know of jobs in salt lake this winter? here's my resume: rachael ely--will work for jerusalem tuition. previous training includes running in 1 degree weather. and eating carmelized bacon.

-i'm going to san diego in a few weeks and i'm so excited! i've never been. what's the weather like this time of year? i've only been to california twice. both times i went to disneyland. yes, i know, i'm very cultured. as far as i know, splash mountain is everything california has to offer. can't wait!!!

-ok. i've procrastinated starting a big fat paper long enough. things are about to get crazy up in here. peace out.
  

the jerusalem story

let me tell you the story about me trying to get the heck to jerusalem.

i first heard about the byu jerusalem program in 9th grade when my friend told me stories of his sister who just got back from there. up until that point, it honestly never occurred to me that the jerusalem i read about in the scriptures was still a city. (ya. i'm retarded. shut it.) 

i thought about how cool it would be to go, but i didn't look into it until my first semester of college. i was so happy to find out that byu-idaho students could apply, too. but my happiness was crushed when i figured out it was $10,000. so i forgot about it and decided to go to china instead, which was a quarter of the cost. once, in china, we were talking about the places we want to go the most, and when i said jerusalem without even thinking, i realized how much i do want to go and that i could make it happen.

i got back from china and concluded that i probably should settle down and not take any more time off school. but i think it's pretty much a rite of passage for college students to have the travel bug, so i decided that this fall i would go to ukraine with sarah. long story short, it was going to be free (plus stipends) and i figured that i would be an idiot to pass up a free semester of travel with my best friend. i was really excited. but i started having bad anxiety about it. i just wasn't feeling good about it. so i cried and dropped out and thought of jerusalem. maybe i was supposed to go to jerusalem in the fall? i spent all winter working and working and working to save up money and then it came time to apply........and i didn't get in. and i cried. but the woman at byu told me to keep applying because it's all luck of the draw and since there is a high acceptance rate, my chances of getting rejected again were low.

so this summer, i applied to go this upcoming winter. perfect! i won't be in school anyway, so i wouldn't have to miss a semester! i was so anxious to hear back from them that for a week, i sat out on the sidewalk every day waiting for the mail to come. my mom was worried that i was getting my hopes up too high. the letter finally came and.......i didn't get in. so i cried. (this seems like a theme to my story.)

i wasn't sure if i could handle getting rejected a third time, but realized that i had to keep trying or else i for sure won't go to jerusalem! so i decided to apply for this summer. all semester long, i've been thinking of the deadline, november 28th. gotta get my application in by november 28th. last week, i went home for thanksgiving and started getting my application together. i checked again to make sure the deadline was the 28th and.......i had been wrong. it was the 18th. a week earlier. i had missed the deadline. so what did i do? i cried of course. i cried to my mom about how the universe does not want me to go to jerusalem. (i promise i don't cry a lot. i'm pretty sure most of my tears are jerusalem related.)

but my parents are superheroes and while i pitied myself and said there was nothing to be done and there was no use calling the jerusalem center, they called anyway and found out that since not very many people had applied and they didn't have enough people on the waiting list, they were going to keep accepting applications for the waiting list for another week. i faxed over my application yesterday and now i am on the waiting list. several people drop out every semester, so my chances are pretty good, but i'm not getting my hopes up.

right before i faxed in my application a few days ago, i went to devotional on campus and guess what the topic was? patience. the speaker (who is my old english professor) started off by telling a story of always wanting to go to jerusalem with byu. she saved up her money, applied, got accepted....and then the program was cancelled a few days before she left. she was devastated. but the program opened a year later and she reapplied. she got in and since the tuition was cheaper that semester, she had some money left over to go on another study abroad with the byu-idaho humanities program. the point was, she looked back on that experience and realized that her plan was different than what actually happened, but it turned out so much better for her. not that heavenly father particularly cares about where we travel, but when things don't go according to our plan, we need to have patience while his plan is being unfolded and be accepting of those changes in our lives.

i seriously just gawked at the big screen the whole time. i swear people always say that a talk was written for them, but you guys. this talk was written for me.

here's the thing. looking back, i'm glad i didn't go to ukraine or jerusalem this semester. i've had an awesome few months. i got to see ben for the first time in two years, i figured out my major, and i started dating a really darling boy :) all of which i would have otherwise missed out on.

so i'm not saying if i wait patiently, i'll get to go to jerusalem in the summer. maybe not getting accepted has been coincidence. or maybe it is part of his plan. i don't know. maybe i need to spend more energy on being patient and less energy crying. (ha. ha.) maybe i'll go and have a great life-changing experience. maybe i won't go and something better will happen. whatever happens, there's the jerusalem story. and i commend you for reading all of it.

the end (or not....i hope.) 

freudianism

do you know what i can't stand reading? those documents (they're usually theses) you have to read for class that are really wordy and stick the ending "-ism" on every word. please read this sentence and laugh with me:

"independent of the outcome of judicial processes (distributive justice) and the explanations that authorities provide for their decisions and the considerations they show to the recipients of decisions (interactional justice), the research of tyler demonstrates that the major factor in perceived legitimacy and willingness to abide by government regulations is how fair people perceive the decision making process to be (procedural justice)."

WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?! i would never even guess what the paper is about if the title wasn't staircase to terrorism. see? an "-ism" word. blegh.

but guess what?

ben comes home from his mission in one week.

so it doesn't even matter that i have to memorize words like "contextualized democracy", "egoistical deprivation" and "displacement of aggression."

MY TWIN IS COMING HOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (and i'm going to drive to salt lake to pick him up from the airport. you know what i call that? reuninionism of the twinhoodism.) 

yes, this happened

so yesterday, i was buying a salad at the crossroads and the cashier leaned into me and said "do you want to know something?" well, i did. she pointed to this redhead who was turned away from us. "you see him? he's half tongan." 

"what?" i said. 

she got really excited. "yeah! i asked him about it the other day and he told me!" 

the boy turned. sure enough, he looked like a tongan with pale skin and red hair. 

and that is all i have to say since i last wrote. 

the end. 

oh, and i love general conference weekend. who can object to partaking of the spirit in jammies and with good food in your belly? not me. 

most embarrassing moment of my life

do you guys read busy bee lauren? i'm sure you do. isn't she so freaking hilarious? she really has the best stories. anyway, i just read this post on her blog, and i have to say....i feel for lauren.  because her story reminded me of a similar experience i had. and mine for sure isn't as bad....but it was humiliating. 

so i got hooked up with this really sweet job at steiners....it's a rec center in salt lake. i knew someone who worked there and was able to get me a job working at the front desk. this is awesome for three reasons. 1) i have a bunch friends who go to steiners, so i could see them all the time. 2) there wasn't a whole lot of work involved, i just sat around answering phones and swiping cards and talking to friends. 3) i got a free gym pass. great, right? well, i went in to training once and then a few days later, came in for my first shift. my boss wasn't there, and i remember trying to find him so that i could talk to him about spring break in a month. my family was going to europe and was there any way i could find people to cover my shifts then? well, he wasn't there, so i left him a note and put it in his box. a couple days later, i walked in and there were already three people at the front desk, which is weird, because only three work at a time. so i had someone look up the schedule online and i was not scheduled for that day. or for the rest of the month. boss wasn't there again, so i called him to ask him what the deal was.

me: "hi, (insert name here). how are you? i have a question about the schedule. it shows that i'm not on today or for the rest of the month, but i remember we talked about me working--"
boss: "yeah. i left you a message on your home phone. i said to not come back ever again because you high school kids are so hard to schedule around. you think that everyone will just work around you and your vacation. that's why i don't like hiring high school kids."
me:....................................

and then i'm pretty sure i mumbled an apology and a THANK YOU and hung up. and then the three other college employees asked me what he said (and remember that this is my second shift).

"oh, um.....he fired me, but it's really no big deal. it's just a conflict with scheduling. it's fine. thanks for looking up the schedule for me."

and then one of the random employees asked me for a ride home. embarrassing? yes. i waited till i got home to cry. because it most definitely was NOT fine. and i was humiliated. i was too mortified to work out at steiners for a few months, but i slowly made my way back.  luckily, i don't think any of those employees work there anymore. boss doesn't have a clue who i am, but when i'm running on the treadmill and he walks past, i glare daggers into the back of his head, and it makes me feel a little better.

(and i won't say i gave back my employee gym pass right away, either. just sayin'.)

a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils

oh, hi. it's me, rachael. the owner of this blog. that i haven't been on in weeks. speaking of blog.....my mom gave me a groupon for my birthday to get one of those blog books online. so yesterday, i found the site, made myself the cutest little book, and had them ship it to rexburg, idaho.....but i put my salt lake zip code on there.

dummy!

what does the mailman even do when he get's something like that? where does he send it? my blog book is going to get sent to some random family who will be traumatized to read about my stories of scooping poo out of chinese toilets.

anyway, i really wish i had an amazing first week of school story to tell, but i don't. have i told you how much i love fall semester, though? because i do. it seriously makes me so happy. i am excited because...

a) i think i finally know what i'm going to major in. this is exciting for me because i have been lame and put off deciding how to go about starting my life. so. i am majoring in health science and minoring in international studies! all i know is that i love medicine and i love traveling and i love the non-profit field and i have always wanted to do something that combines those things. but i'm pretty sure i have a lot more schooling ahead of me. oh, and i love my classes. i'm taking a middle east class that i can't even stand i love so much. sometimes you just don't know what's going to matter to you.

b) the weather rocks my socks.

c) ben is coming home in SIX WEEKS!

oh, on saturday night, i went with some friends to watch the big game on a huge screen on campus. there were, like, 600 people there wearing their BYU garb and then there was me....decked out in red. and i got lots of hate comments. but i turned it around and smashed victory in their faces like a big banana cream pie. and then some guy on campus said to me today, "hey! you're that utah girl!" uh huh. 

away with the summer days

i would like to submit that summer nights make me happier than anything in the world. (ok. i take that back. even summer nights can't make me as happy as christmas.) and i'm not a huge fan of summer. the heat irritates me and i get bored without school fast.

but summer nights. 

they are a thing of legend in my mind. 

the heat makes me want to stay inside all day, but once the sun goes down, i run outside to do the nighttime dance with the moon. (sometimes we krump when we're feeling extra crazy.) 

i love the temperature. it feels perfect in shorts and a t-shirt. i love the stars. i love the overbearing noise of the crickets in august. i love the feel of concrete and grass under my bare feet. shoes are not allowed when doing the nighttime dance. (p.s. when i wrote that, i thought of the fat-lipped redhead lady on the delta airline video that says "smoking is NOT allowed." does anyone know who i'm talking about?) anyway, i really love when the sprinklers come on at night. i love running around the golf course. i love swinging at the park at night. i love it all. i love just taking walks. 

when i was in rexburg this summer, i would go on a bike ride almost every night and it was almost always the best part of my day! now that i am home, i haven't forgotten the dance. running, laying on my back and looking at the stars, playing my ukulele, watching the sun set at the park. 

but now it's september and it's kind of chilly tonight which reminds me i don't have many more summer nights! but then i remember how fall is my favorite season and how excited i am for that. crisp temperature, bright leaves, halloween, cute clothes, and school starting again! and then i'll probably be sad when the leaves fall off the trees, but then i'll remember how much i love thanksgiving and christmas and skiing and fires in the fireplace and snuggling and hot chocolate. and then winter will give way to cheerful spring and once may turns to june, the shoes go off and the nighttime dance starts all over again. 

happy birthday, indeed

as of thursday night at 8:23 (eight minutes after my brother, ben), i am 21! ben's been on a mission for almost two years now, so we couldn't celebrate it together, but we've had a crazy two decades together and many more crazy ones to come. so here's to you, ben! happy birthday!

anyway, do you wanna hear the most magical 21st birthday story ever? yesterday i woke up, got ready, and walked out the door to go to lunch with my mom and cousins. there was a little envelope in the mailbox (weird. the mail doesn't come that early.) i picked it up and it was addressed to

Miss R. Ely

The Bedroom off the Kitchen 

and then my address. i turned it around and there was a wax stamp with a hogwarts seal on it.  my mom asked what it was while we got in the car......i knew what it was. i have been waiting for this for ten years. i opened it and right there in my lap sat the most magical piece of mail i have ever received..... 

my hogwarts acceptance letter!!!!! along with a list of books and equipment for first year students and a train ticket from london to hogwarts departing from platform 9 3/4. 

i did the only logical thing and burst out in tears. don't laugh and tell me you wouldn't cry if you found out you were a witch. i've always known this about myself. 

please notice that i have been crying

so that basically made for the best birthday ever. but it gets better. after the usual good birthday stuff (lunch, pedicures, dinner, cake and ice cream), my mom announced that there was a package for me outside. i went out and saw that there was a cheap flimsy trunk with a bow wrapped around it sitting on my porch. i brought it inside, opened it up and saw what i was suspecting (only because i told my mom i wanted this a few months ago)...my own set of brand spanking new harry potter books. now i don't have to share with those stinky brothers. i'm not even going to read them right now. it just makes me happy to know that i have my own set.

jacob's mad, who can blame him?

it was a magical birthday. and it will be a good year. because who can't have a good 21st year knowing they're a witch? 

no one mourns the bad blogger

wow, i have been a baaaaaad blogger as of late. i remember that i was also a bad blogger last august. i don't know why. hmmm. anyway, i'm kind of in a lazy mood, so i will post a few europe pictures and then take my chicken pot pie to the den and probably watch twelve episodes of the office. 

(p.s. we realized when we got to london that our camera battery wasn't charged and we forgot to bring a charger...and then we realized half way through that we had an extra battery. dumb. so i don't have pictures for some of my favorite days!) 

first time seeing wicked......WHAT?!?!?! we loved it. highlight of the trip! we saw what i like to call the holy trinity of theater: war horse, which is a beautiful, moving play about horses in WWI, wicked (what more can i say?), and.....legally blonde.....ahem. 




ok. this guy is awesome. we went on this walk in the east end where you see all the important sites in the jack the ripper story. the guy who took us wrote a book called jack the ripper and travels all over to give seminars about him. did you know people did that kind of stuff for a living? and did you know that jack the ripper's real name wasn't jack and that he only killed prostitutes? the things you learn when you travel. 

paul mccartney's house. creepy? creepy.

that's-a wizard's chess!

beautiful holland.

sitting in a giant wooden clog in amsterdam. i guess i didn't need to caption that.

nothing screams tourist like a rick steves book.

anyway, it was a fun trip! i managed to get $150 stolen within six hours of being in london, but i have a highly developed ability to forget things when i want, so i chose to forget that the rest of the trip.

also, please read this. it's so true. did you know that i liked harry potter before it was cool? ha. ha. ok, not funny.

why am i so awkward?

can i anti-toot my own horn for a minute here? i am packing for europe right now and i have to tell you about my past traveling woes. 

my family went europe a few years ago for spring break and it was so fun!

however, i was still a squirrelly little icky teenager and didn't pack ANY cute clothes. and it was surprisingly really cold. and i didn't want to straighten my hair ever. so every picture of me is in an ugly marshmallow man coat and with frizzy hair. so we went to york in northern england and i got pretty sick that day. we stayed in a nun convent but my family stuck me in a little solitary quarantine room and went and had fun together.....i was mad. 

the next day, we went to ely cathedral.....we were excited because it bears our namesake and duh, perfect christmas card picture! please look at me in this picture. i was sick and mad at everyone as only a 17 year old girl can be mad at everyone. 

note the hair, the glasses, the coat, the sweats. it kills me. my mom still blames me for ruining the christmas card picture. (but to be honest, i think we all look bad!) 

every picture of me in europe looks something like this. 

why was i so awkward?! it makes me mad! 

so anyway, the moral of the story is don't look bad in europe. you will always regret it. i have learned from my mistake and i have to admit...my wardrobe is TEN times better this time around!
i must redeem myself! 

twin pop syndrome

it's when you break your twin pops in half against the coffee table corner and you have to eat the first one pretty fast so the second one doesn't melt, thus making the first one less enjoyable than the second one because you are more concentrated on not letting the second one melt than noticing how yummy the first one is. 


it's kind of confusing. but so is eating a twin pop. 

colter bay

....is a magical place. it's a little campsite an hour outside of jackson hole that my whole family goes to every july. i seriously have grown up going there and it's one of those family traditions that will most definitely keep going when i have kids! this summer (since i was actually in school), i had to hurry up with my finals and high-tail it out of rexburg. but colter bay did not disappoint as usual!

jackson lake

my champion grandpa who started the colter bay tradition more than 50 years ago

throwing the nerf around on the rafts 

it's hard being three

our whole group

trying to imitate boys will be girls

missing ben :(  

yellowstone falls

ely boy tradition

 next up is one of those dude ranches where we'll just ride horses and swim every day. I LOVE SUMMER!

neville 2.0

remember my neville longbottom stupor the other day?

well, i showed those pictures to a bajillion of my friends and they were like, "duh. that's neville longbottom."

and then i randomly stumbled on this today!

HA!

p.s. i've made up my mind.

hotbottom, indeed.

(i know, it's the age-old turn on. hottie pants wizards who behead giant snakes. yummy.)

"of course this is happening inside your head, but why should that mean it's not real?"

today is a stormy, gloomy day. i don't mean in the real world; it's freaking hot outside right now. i mean in my soul, also known as the parallel universe of harry potter land. i know, you would think my soul would be a multi-faceted, complex thing. it's not. harry potter land pretty much sums it up.

here's why i am sad: today is the day that harry potter ends. done. i felt like this when the 7th book ended (except for a lot worse) but there were always the movies to look forward to. i have always thought about how i would feel right after seeing the 7th movie. let me tell you how i feel: not good. this is the day that harry potter officially shifts from a present phenomenon to a past phenomenon. there are no more midnight book releases. and now there are no more midnight premieres. new books will come out and new movies will show at midnight. but not for harry.

so yeah, i'm feeling kinda crummy today. but you know the upside? the movie was fantastic. everything it should have been. straight from the book. tender. emotional. epic. and mrs. weasley's famous line wasn't even edited out. how secretly happy is everyone?

and i don't care if some people forget about harry fifteen years down the road (i call them fair-weathered muggles). i will always be loyal to harry. we started our journey together in 3rd grade, and now here were are in college. it's been a wild ride. but it's not the end. my brother and i always talk about how we are going to read the books to our kids from the time they are in the crib. i want their childhood to be as magical as mine.

p.s. last night i was a death eater. no, seriously. sometimes i say i'm a death eater when i'm just really cranky, but this time, i was only a death eater in the truest sense. my permanent ink dark mark didn't wear off today, so when some boy said he didn't really like the harry potter books, i had no choice but to conjure up the dark mark in the classroom.

where it all began

been there, done that

look who grew up

ok. my mind is blown. everything that i thought i knew about the world seems fake. please look at these pictures and tell me who this is. 

no? will this jog your memory? 

i know. neville longbottom. 

neville longbottom. 

i feel like someone stupefied me. 
(i can't decide what to think about new neville...but i think i like him!) 

back to pooh corner

I WANT TO CRY THIS MAKES ME SO HAPPY. 

watching this makes finals seem less icky.

isn't the power of pooh magical?

july 15th. 

can't wait!

the philosophy of peaches

life is a peach. and by that i mean life can sometimes be rude, but little happy things make up for little rudey things (and i don't mean rudy the movie, because that's a happy thing). like today was one of those days where the old man in the parking lot tells you to roll down your window and gets mad at you for parking somewhere you shouldn't and then makes you almost cry by yourself in the car. it was also one of those days where the crossroads worker is really short with you when you ask about closing hours and you just think that everyone should be a little nicer. but it also was one of those days when your favorite professor in the WHOLE WORLD remembers your name and says "see ya next time, rach" and you forget all about those grumpypants who are not very nice because your professor is very nice and didn't even realize he made your day with one teeny-tiny comment!

so basically, every day is just one big ebb and flow of the good and the bad. fortunately, the good always makes the bad ok, and i think that's pretty peachy.

london calling

this is where i will be in a month.

london, yo!

hurry up, ya dumb finals.

dear sarah

i love the 4th of july. isn't it the best? how can you not feel american when spending a whole day at parades, eating hot dogs, swimming, and watching fireworks? i had a much needed break from school in salt lake this weekend and it. was. amazing. i love rexburg. but sometimes i just need some salt lake lovin'.

anyway, i spent most of my weekend with sarah. in case you didn't know, sarah is my oldest friend. not old as in she's 35 and i'm 20. old as in, we've been besties since preschool. sarah remembers the first time we met. she thought that my family was black (only in my dreams...) i don't remember meeting her but that's only because my brain can only hold so many memories, and when it comes to sarah and rachael, there are a lot.

in kindergarten, sarah, ben, and i would go to her house behind the mortuary and eat macaroni and cheese with hot dogs and jump around the swing set pretending the ground was lava. we also turned my swing set into the poop machine, where different ladders and ropes were different parts of the digestive system and the finale was the slide pooping us out (don't judge.) later in elementary school, we spent many hours roaming around the gully and reading scary stories in her closet with a flashlight. we sometimes skied together, but mostly we just fell down the mountain together. in middle school, we wrote notes in class and fell in love with michael phelps. in high school, we laid in her bed and read scriptures or sat on my roof and talked about life and first kisses (they are synonymous subjects, you know.) we had some really unforgettable experiences together.

my favorite story to tell people about sarah is from when we were in mexico painting houses together. i was rolling ceilings and she was cutting edges. one day, everybody was done with one of the houses except for me. everyone was exhausted and taking a break to eat lunch while i was finishing. i was being so dumb and irritated because i had the biggest knot in my neck from rolling all day and i was hungry. sarah could tell i was in a bad mood and ran in to roll with me, even though she hadn't done it before. even though i was still cranky, she was understanding and stayed to help me roll while everyone was eating lunch together.

now sarah is at utah state and i'm at byu-idaho. we don't see each other every day. so it was really good to have a sarah/rachael weekend. we played at the park, went to the temple, jumped on the tramp, watched twilight zone with her family (obsessed!), sat on the roof almost every night with my family, and decided it was the ideal summer weekend.

i love you, sarah! thanks for this weekend and the past 15 years :) we better have a good future ahead of us together.

(this picture is so pitiful...and yet it captures the essence of us so well.)

freaky streak

today, i had one of those really freaky letter streaks when i was taking a test in the testing center. you know when you get four c's in a row and know that they can't all be right?! how rude would it be if your professor made them all the same letter just to scare you? i would probably cry.

just food for thought.

anniversary post

i came home from china a year ago today. i have been thinking of june 16th all week. actually, all month. my mom thinks it seems like it's been longer than a year. that depresses me. i swear it was last month. china keeps getting further away. i hate that.

so i'm going to write an anniversary ode to china today and if you're thinking "oh my gosh, rachael, not china again".....then read no further! i always swore i would not be one of those people, who talk about their travels abroad months after they got home and generally bug the heck out of everyone. but here we are. reading my one year anniversary post. (sorry...)

anyway.

i miss china. everyday. i think about it everyday. i didn't imagine i would ever miss it this much. i miss the smells and the sounds more than anything. i miss those pesky fireworks that woke me up at six every morning. i miss hearing only chinese. i miss my kids calling me "miss geisel!" i miss my kids. i miss bob and sam the most. sleeping on a concrete mattress. waking up to a sore throat every morning. the smell of smoke. the smell of stinky tofu. (i never thought i would miss these things! i hate stinky tofu!) i miss trying to be creative on weekend nights (parkour? hot asian stalking?) i miss my girls. gourmet donuts downtown. haggling. seeing who could say obscene english sayings the loudest in public. tucking my kids in bed. rotting teeth and dirty kisses. little hands and bear hugs. wearing gnome jammies to the cafeteria. sun salutations, yoga, and running every morning. getting embarrassingly creamed in ping pong by 9 year olds.

i miss traveling. i miss having no adult supervision. being a free spirit and not having a care in the world. as a result of my devil-may-care attitude, while i was in china i experienced what i'm pretty sure is the best day of my entire life. after some reflection (even a year after the fact), i still submit that the day i'm about to share with you was the best day i have ever experienced in my almost-21 years of living.

after kindra and i were released from ILP, we backpacked around china for a few weeks and loved. our. lives. we took a 25 hour train ride to guilin and explored the city for a few days. on our last day before we were leaving for our next destination, we woke up and had no idea what to do. we had seen all that we wanted to see in guilin and were in the lobby of the hostel about to get directions to some cheesy touristy cave ride. all of a sudden this young, bearded american backpacker reading a book in the corner said,

"if you're looking for something adventurous, i know where to go. but the last bus there leaves in 5 minutes."

he told us about these gorgeous villages a few hours away that you could hike around and in between. he'd gone the day before. it wasn't very touristy but kind of a hassle to get to. worth it in the end, he said.

he scribbled down some messy instructions, and we bolted down the street to the bus station to find aforementioned bus that left in 5 minutes. we couldn't quite read the name of the bus he'd written down, but there was one that looked kind of promising, so we took a chance and jumped on it. hopefully we'll get to where we're going!

after two hours or so, the bus stopped and the driver ushered us off. when the bus rolled away, we realized we were standing on the side of a road. in the middle on nowhere. not a thing to be seen in any direction. ok, that's not true. there was a run down building and a man standing by a car telling us that he could drive us where we needed to go. we ran into the building but couldn't communicate with the teenager sitting there. we walked outside, sat down, and started laughing--why? i don't know. we were lost in a foreign country. all of a sudden, a rickety bus appeared and an old woman's scraggly-haired head shot out the broken door that wouldn't close.

"dazhai?"

we looked at the instructions paper, which said dazhai village. we looked at the building, looked down the street into nothingness, looked at the man by the car, and got on the bus.

we drove up a canyon, through waterfalls, and across bridges till the road ended. the driver dropped us off and told us the bus would be back at five. we hiked for a while in silence, seeing no one and only hearing our breath and chorusing insects. we finally got to dazhai village and spent the day eating lunch in a tavern, playing with local kids, and hiking up the mountain to sit and look down upon dazhai and the hundreds of rice patties that surround it.

there were no cars, no televisions, no tourists, no noise. it was surreal. i felt disconnected from the world and mindful of my thoughts. it took us a while to climb the mountain because we would stop every few minutes, sit down, take in the scenery, and listen to the silence. kindra and i had an understanding of silence with each other and therefore hardly spoke the whole time we were there. we just companionably walked, hiked, sat, thought, and enjoyed the village. i remember thinking the whole time, god gave us beautiful places like this so we can be happy and enjoy them. and enjoy it i did. we meandered and took our time. we had no place to be. life is slow there. everyone takes their time. the women take their time washing their hair in the river. the men take their time picking rice.

we rode home in silence, but smiling the whole way. back in guilin, we walked to the park, stuck our bare feet in the lake, and put our arms around each other, glad to be in china together.

i was so happy that day. when i got home to the states, i realized that i had forgotten that i had things to worry about like school, work and boys!

i'm sad that it's been a year since i got home. but i will never forget the memories i made in china. it will continue to be one of those life-changing experiences that i am grateful for everyday.

thanks for the adventure, china! i'll never forget it.