Its Summer, People.

Today I opened the window, and I missed home. Something about the smell of the summer morning hit me, and that was it.

I miss summer. I miss sparklers, salads, shopping, dirt, swimming, movies, going to bed late and sleeping late, popsicles, air conditioning, family reunions, camping, slurpees.

More than that, I miss my mom. I miss shopping with her, talking with her, folding clothes with her, watching dumb movies with her, and driving around with her with my feet on the dashboard and head in the clouds.

I miss the rest of my family too. Talking, laughing, eating, singing silly songs, jumping around with the kids.

I miss my friends. My favorite people are home and bored and would SO go hike Y mountain with me or go to an outdoor concert or a drive-in movie...

The number one thing I'm learned since I've come to Europe is that you can DO lots of cool things, and SEE lots of cool things, but for the long term the most important thing is PEOPLE. Relationships are what makes life meaningful. I've also learned that my family is exceptionally awesome- love you guys. So, go appreciate the people around you who you love. :)

(Btw, I'm totally not complaining. I am having awesome experiences. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity that I'll be telling all those people I love about for the rest of my life.)

Can't think of a title...

The other night I was wandering around Marienplatz, because Institute (Religion Class) was cancelled, and I was in town anyway-I highly recommend wandering around Munich at dusk, by the way- and I met a French man named Roberto. Seriously, that was his name.

He asked me where Odeonsplatz was (which I totally got wrong, by the way), and then we just kept talking. He said he just likes to meet other people and learn about their ideas and culture, and so we walked (in a very brightly lit place where there were a lot of other people around-don't worry, mom) and talked.

What an interesting conversation. Some of his English was a little hard to understand, but I pretty much got it. I started out trying to shake him off, because he is a 30-something year old guy that I don't know, and that’s generally what you do, right? But he was persistent, and told me "you should talk to people, learn about their lives!" and so we talked.

Inevitably, religion came up. I don't drink coffee or alcohol, so yeah, inevitable. He asked "what is Salt Lake City famous for? What do people go see when they go there?" Yet again, religion= inevitable. Not that I mind. I have sat through COUNTLESS church lessons about missionary work, so here's my chance, right? You would think. Only problem is, all I can remember from those lessons, at least in the moment, is "missionary work is really important", and I get all flustered/awkward/freak out and successfully convince whoever I'm talking to that I am weird and my church is weird.

Well, I did my best, and he did his best to say “I just try to incorporate everything good thing about into my life so I’m more accepting.” Okay. Good enough. Best I could hope for I think.

I've had many other similar encounters this summer, but through them all I've learned a little something about myself. This whole experience I’ve had this summer has done exactly what I hoped it would. It has put me in a situation where I’ve had to become almost completely self sufficient in my everyday life, and subsequently made me more confident and capable. One of the places I’ve felt that need to be independent has been my testimony. I’m just happy to find that I can hold up under the pressure. There are subjects I need to study more, and I need to practice sharing so that I can feel more comfortable, but deep within, my testimony indeed lies strong. It’s a pretty cool thing to find out.

Excited!

1. Prague this weekend! Going to be amazing!!!

2. I got August 3-15 OFF!!! I'm going to Berlin to see/help out my awesome family friends, The Fawsons, who are moving to Berlin August 1st, plus hopefully going somewhere else AWESOME... Maybe Rome? Paris? London? Wahoo!!!

Happy Happy Happy!

Time to go pack!

Vienna Waits No More

I have a feeling I’m going to run out of adjectives for my experience with this amazing place pretty quickly. I had quite a few seriously breathtaking “I can’t believe I’m here” moments.

So much history, so many beautiful places and palaces.

It made me think about the way rich people live. Do they know how out of the norm they are? Personally I just think that eating breakfast in a different room than you eat dinner in is just wasteful, and looking at huge portraits of yourself all day would be a little weird, but I guess if that’s what you want… I don’t mind touring the grandeur 200 years later! I wonder what our great grandchildren be touring from our era?

The whole time I had Mozart stuck in my head. We saw his grave, we saw where he played for the Empress when he was six, and we saw the Mozart Requiem performed in St. Karlskirche. It was so cool to see it performed as Mozart would’ve intended. It may have been my favorite part of the trip.


Or maybe the totally awesome art museum! So much cool stuff from ancient Egypt and Rome, paintings by the masters… I could’ve stayed for hours.

Other memorable moments:
-Seeing from the train the German countryside, THE ALPS!!!, and the gorgeous little Alpine villages with their houses with shutters and spilling-over window boxes and their quaint, old town churches.
-Sharing a room in a hostel with a Hungarian guy in only a bright yellow speedo. Uh, creepy! I kept waking myself up in the night to make sure I was okay. I was.
-Getting soaking wet in the rain as we searched for food, and found it in a Pizza parlor with an extremely friendly waiter of questionable nationality (Italian? German? Eastern European? No idea.)
-Getting lost all the time (thank heavens for Laura. I would’ve been lost the whole time without her.)
-Forgetting it was my birthday. Haha. Oops.
-The Catacombs inside Stephansdom, especially the hole where they dumped plague victims. The image of that jaw bone on top of a pile of indiscriminant bones is burned into my head. So mad I didn’t get a picture.
-Walking around the city at night.

I guess Vienna was waiting for me.

Ode to Skype

(NOTE: I have no idea what an Ode entails. I could look it up, but instead I’ll just say what I want to say, and then space it weird.)

Skype.

I turn on my computer, and you pop up with your joyful alerts of my family members who are online. Specifically my mom, who is under my brother’s name, because she couldn’t figure out how to get her own. (Love you mom, its okay.)

I hit one button, and you’ve transported me thousands of miles to sit slightly awkwardly close, face to face, with my favorite people.

FOR FREE!

I thought I loved phones- slightly less than my old high-school principal who made out with the phone every time she came over the intercom, but slightly more than, say, your average 17 year old boy- but now that love has been completely overshadowed.

I love you skype, for letting me see my brothers grow, the neighbor kid's loose tooth, and my mom’s crazy (or not) hair in the morning.

I miss a little less, I share a little more and I get to watch myself make weird faces into the camera like a five year old.

Thank you Skype. Keep up the good work.

A Universal Language

I went to a ballet class last night. Hannah invited me, and we biked over. It was amazing. I love ballet. Just going, connecting my brain and my body, listening to the beautiful music, my muscles somewhat reluctantly remembering what they are supposed to do.

The great thing about ballet is that it is almost completely universal. Even though I don’t speak German or French, it doesn’t matter. The words are all the same, the combinations are all the same, even the corrections given by the teacher are the same. “Stand up straight, listen to the music, keep your knee up in passe.” It was all the same, and it was all beautiful.

I need dance, and I’m so grateful I could find it here.