I wake up to a phone call. It's 5:30 in the morning and it's my best friend D calling, wanting me to go and support him at his dance practice in half an hour. I drag myself out of bed, trudge into my bathroom and get ready, and then stumble out the door to his waiting car. I nearly slip doing so--the ground is icy. Lately, we've had a bad bout of freezing rain. The following is an example of what it was like at BYU the other day:
We get to BYU campus and participate in the dance practice for the school Luau. He's in the Hawaiian section and I will only be practicing with him up until I go on my mission. There are a lot of Hawaiians and Polynesians there. This is my second practice with them. Last week I really struggled with learning the dance. This week was easier, even when more was added to the dance.
Culture. Culture. Culture. As "white" as this town is, it's all about culture. There are so many opportunities here to learn about other cultures. They're legit opportunities too! For example, living Legends, a BYU dance group, does Native American, Polynesian, and Hispanic dancing and everyone in the group is part of the representative cultures. The dancers are required to have "Lamanite" blood in them. My best friend D used to dance with them. He used to do some Polynesian dancing and played the part of the chief--like the following video (except that this video happened years before he was in the group.
After dancing, D and I were hungry. We stopped by a Mexican restaurant in South Provo. Then we went home. He took a nap at his apartment and I fooled around on the computer at my apartment. I worked on downloading and uploading the pictures that we had "professionally" done the day before. People in the ward have since been calling them our engagement photos--no such thing! Just two best friends/practically siblings that wanted to get pictures done before departing for our separate ways in a month. Of course, I understand the joke--this is Provo--the marriage hot spot of the LDS community.
After I finished doing the technical stuff, I tagged along with D for the ward blitz--going off with the ward leadership people door-to-door meeting the new people, advertising ward events, and praying. D made sure to bring up my mission everywhere we went. Afterwards, D went and did his home teaching visits while I rested. We then went to Salt Lake City to recover his lost wallet that someone had found and had wanted to give back to him. There, we stopped by a Mongolian restaurant and had lunch. We also shot some video about icicles. Once we got home, I worked on the video editing of the videos. Then we went to the ward talent show and had Cafe Rio (Mexican food) at the event. Afterwords, I finished the last of the video editing--as seen here:
I woke up Sunday morning to D calling me to wake up. He knows I have a hard time waking up--especially on Sundays. I slept in an hour past his call and finally woke up at 10:30am. An hour later, our home teacher arrived to teach my roommate and I about humility. Then the home teacher and I did our weekly study in Preach My Gospel. He taught me how to teach the Atonement. Every week, he and I study Preach My Gospel as an effort towards my mission preparation. He is the ward missionary leader and a guy in the ward that I am cool with. He took me and another church member to church. It was fast Sunday. People raced for the pulpit and there were some very good testimonials given. Sunday school was good--very humorous but also spiritually uplifting. Relief Society was good too. Normally, I'm not that big of a fan on the whole sisterhood thing. I feel way more comfortable around guys than girls. I've even sat in on Priesthood a couple times before. However, for the first time it was a really good lesson. I mean, it was more heartfelt. Not from the manual and more from the heart--by inspiration. The subject? Girl talk! Yeah, that's not typically my thing but it was about all the "Goliaths" that we face in life and I call it "girl talk" because it was an emotional and very interactive lesson. After church, we all went to "break the fast". Normally, a committee prepares everything but many people had volunteered to help bring different types of chili dishes. It was very fun trying out the different versions of this traditional American food.
After the dinner, I went home and chilled, waiting for D to finish his home teaching. He ended up bringing one of his home teachees, my neighbor, over to my apartment so he could home teach her because the ward game night was happening over at her place. After the teaching, D and I drove over to his brother's place where we picked up his mom and went driving. I am learning how to drive and driving in this weather is insane. The roads are horrible--snow, slush, and salt everywhere. We tried to develop my winter driving skills. That was a frustrating experience, because before I had been driving in pretty decent weather; however, positive outcome was that I learned to parallel park. After driving for a little while, D and I stopped by his place to eat some leftover chili before going to my place to play our favorite card game--and, yes, the ward game night was still continuing next door. D left right before curfew (midnight) and here I am now.
I will wake up in a few hours, go with D's mom to do more driving and to go and test for my driver's license. I hope I get it but with these road conditions I'm terrified. She and I will then do the grocery shopping for the duo-ward Family Home Evening event going on that night where there will be a live animal or reptile show. We will also prepare the food and such.
Anyways, there's my tidbit about my life in Provo. It is a great place to live!
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