Conclusion

The one thing that I talk about a few time in my blog is my family and home.  This is the only real pattern that is in my blog.  Throughout the semster I have been excited to go home a see my family.  Christmas break was such a short time to be home and I have really missed my family. My blog has mainly been about my thoughts towards different things I have done or seen throughout the semester.  For the longest time I didn't know either what to blog about or I would forget.  I didn't learn to check my Facebook until I came to college so blogging was a whole new step. It has been fun to figuring out the whole blogging thing. I would have to write myself little notes to remember to write on my blog. I would like to keep up my blog because it is fun going back to see what I write and it is a good way to write down what I am thinking. I want to create a new blog that I talk about agriculture and specifically aimed towards the beef industry. I have been a Beef Ambassdaor for California and when I went to nationals they really hit hard the use of social media.  They told us that we all need to start blogging and getting the real story of agriculture to everyone.  I never really started doing any of that because I wasn't big on social media. I had a Facebook but I checked it maybe once a month and even then I was only on it for 5 minutes.  Overall, I enjoyed learning to blog and plan on continuing to blog on a regular basis.

P.S. I posted comments on BYU Cougars and True Blue Fan.

Favorite Place

Coming to Provo has opened my eyes to so many new and wonderful things.  Coming from a small town we didn't have much of anything.  One of my new favorite places to go is the Cocoa Bean.  They have hot chocolate drinks and the best thing of all, cupcakes.  They have a schedule of the different types of cupcakes and they days they make them.  It is the cutest place that you have ever seen.  They have all sorts of delicious cupcakes with great names.  One of my favorites is called "party in your mouth."  I just love all of them.  If you are ever in the mood for a delicious cupcake then this is the place to go.

Easter Traditions

So this being my first Easter away from home I found myself really missing all of our Easter traditions.  We always go to my grandma and grandpa's house for Easter.  We start out the afternoon with an Easter egg hunt.  When we do our egg hunt we each have a specific color egg that we are allowed to find.  Each kid has a dozen eggs that they have to find.  I usually always chose a pink color because that is my favorite color.  Many years there are one or two plastic eggs that someone can't find.  Occasionall someone will find an old egg from the previous year that we never found.  The boundries for the egg hunt are always the same.  It is always in the barnyard and a few of the buildings next to it.  I love the Easter egg hunt.

The other Easter tradition my family has is called a string hunt.  All the string starts in the garage then some unrolls a ball of string laying it all over the yard.  They put the string around trees, undercars, and even across the street.  Before we begin the string hunt there are strings going everywhere.  Each person has a string that someone else pit out for them.  You then have to roll up all of your string and at the end of the string is a prize.  That is one of my favorite Easter traditions that my family has.  Part of the reason I like it so much is because no one else does it.  It is a tradition that I plan on passing down to my kids.

Easter back home last year

Butt Slaps

So going to the men's BYU volleyball games has become one of my new favorite things to do.  I enjoy watching the players not only while they are actually playing but how they interact. One of the things they do that always makes me laugh is the butt slap and every now and then the butt grab. I know that is many sposts the butt slap is common.  I still find it strange and funny mainly because I never played a sport where a butt slap was a part of the game.  I also find that it is nore common in men's sports than it is in women's sports.  So both my roommate and I came to the conclusion that the most common way guys show approval is through a butt slap.  A guy on there team makes a good play they slap there butt, when they like a girl they slap her butt (even though thats not really appropriate). I guess butt slapping is just a guys way of giving approval no matter who it is.

Soccer

Since I have come to school I really miss playing soccer.  I really wanted to play on an intramural soccer team but the problem was I didn't know anyone.  I made some attemptes but the people I asked I didn't really know so it was kind of awkward.  I learned to love soccer as a kid.  Is started playing when I was 5 years old.  I played every single year all the way through high school.  I was actually captain of my team both my junior and senior year.  I loved playing soccer.  I would do anything to play soccer.  My junior year I would travel up to Medford, Oregon to play on team.  It was an hour drive each way to practice.  I would have to drive uo there atleast 3 to 4 time per a week.  I have really missed playing soccer.  I have made a goal that next year when I come back to BYU in the fall that I am GOING to find people to be on team with.  I am a naturally shy person and I am going to try and oversome those tendencies.  I want to play so I have descided that I need to be more forward and ask people to make a team with me or ask to join a team even if it feels a little uncomfortable.

BYU Men's Fashion

So coming to BYU from a rural town was a quite a shock.  One of the biggest shock was how guys dress at BYU.  Where I went to high school most guys wore Wranglers and Carharts.  Guys did not dress "fashionably."  One thing that I do not understand are manpris.  They capris for guys.  That is just one of the strangest things that guys wear that I do not understand, but it might be because I am a Wrangler and Carhart kid of girl. I don't mean to offend anyone if they wear them or like guys who wear them.  I personally just find them very femine for guys.

Crazy Weather

So Utah has some of the craziest weather.  Where I am from there is strange weather sometimes but nothing quite like the weahter was on Wednesday.  When I woke up and looked out my window everything was white and big flakes were falling.  I was not supecting that at all.  I had checked the weather the night before and I was expecting maybe a little rain but was completly shocked to find it snowing.  Then as the day went on it stopped snowing and the sun came out.  By the time I was walking back from my chemistry class all the snow was gone from campus.  You could not even tell that it had snowed earlier that day.  It was even kind of warm for having snowed earlier.  Then Thursday was such a beautiful day.  It was some of the most drastic weather changes I have ever seen.

***So I if I said the wrong date that it actually snowed it is because all my days have blended togther being the last full week of school.

Candy

Recently my grandma's horse named Candy died.  She was the entire family's favorite horse.  All the grandkids learned to ride on Candy.  She was the most gentle horse anyone could ask for.  My Aunt Cindy was the one who originally bought Candy.  She got Candy when she was in college.  Cindy was the one who actually trained Candy.  Candy was around 37 years old when she died which is really old for a horse. She will be missed by the whole family especially me.

My sister Nicole moving cows on Candy when she was young

Candy in the pasture by my grandma's house

Men's Volleyball

So I have been going to watch the BYU Men's Volleyball games.  I started going because I heard they were good and it is always fun to watch your school play a sport when they are actually good at it.  When I first went to watch them I was so amazed at how graceful they looked when they played.  I saw how hard the other team would hit the ball over the net yet some how the BYU team was able to so gently bump and set the ball for a perfect spike.  There movement was so fluid and natural looking that it really impressed me.  Now one of my favorite sports to watch is vollyeball because I am just so amazed at how controlled they are with the volleyball.

Elder Russell M. Nelson - Sunday Morning

Elder Nelson uses a variety of tools to pull people in and make them believe what he is saying.  One way he creates pathos is by starting of with a joke.  He pulls us in with the joke so we are now engaged and listening to what he has to say.  He also uses a joke in the middle of his talk to create pathos.  The point of his joke in the middle is about the Big Bang Theory.  He then uses logos to prove that the Big Band Theory doesn't make sense.  He also builds his ethos by quoting several scripture passages from both the Bible and the Book of Mormon.  That builds ethos for him with both members and non-members.  Elder Nelson builds ethos when he talks about the human body being a miracle.  He has intensely studied the human body and he uses his experience to tell everyone how amazing the body truely is.  What stood out to me the most was his repetion.  He repeated four times in his talk, "thanks be to God."  That is a very strong statement and he was able to clearly let everyone know that all thanks should be to God.

Final Draft of Personal Narrative

Friends and Food?

It was a hot summer day in Northern California.  My family had only been living on the ranch for about a year now.  We moved to the ranch from the San Francisco Bay Area when I was 11 years old.  I really enjoyed the country life.  It always took forever to get anywhere but I was starting to get used to it.  Besides, I loved having so many animals.  Since we moved to Little Shasta we had been able to get many more pets.  It helped that we went from a house with what would be a good size back yard in the Bay Area to 160 acres of land.  We had horses, dogs, chickens and goats.  The goats were so much fun.  We originally got only two goats.  They were African Pygmy goats so they were about the size of a medium dog.  Their names were Spike and Pepper.  Pepper was a little fat when we got her but it was no big deal.  We didn’t think anything of her being on the fat side until she kept getting fatter and fatter.  It was then that we realized she was pregnant.  Before she had her babies she was about as wide as she was tall.  When we came out one day to our amazement Pepper was not pregnant with one baby, but with two babies.  They were so cute.  We named them Ricky and Lucy.  They were so adorable to watch.  We got to see first-hand how good of balance goats really had.  Ricky and Lucy would jump on everything.  One of their favorite places to jump was on Pepper’s back and stand on her for a minute before jumping off. Their other favorite thing to jump on was this old dog house my dad made that was in their pen. They would jump on and off of it all the time.

They were a lot of fun to have around but at the same time they were quite a nuisance.  We had to blockade the goats from off both our front and back porch.  They loved to sleep on the porch at night.  The problem was the next morning they left hundreds of little piles of evidence that they had slept there.  The worst one was Spike. We called her Spike because she was the only one with horns.  Spike was not the worst not because she left a trail on the porch, but because she was so unfriendly. She was always getting her head stuck in the fence, and then she couldn’t get it back out.  Unlike the other goats, you could not walk up to Spike.  The only one Spike really liked was our dog Lucky. They had the strangest relationship too. Lucky would chase spike around the yard and play with him like he was a dog almost, except Lucky didn’t like other dogs.  We even caught Spike sharing Lucky’s dog bed with him in the garage. But as soon as we would walk into the garage Spike would quickly run out. It was then that my dad decided that four goats were too much.  He decided to give the goat to a neighbor named Elias.  Elias is a nice short, round man of Hispanic ethnicity.  He had been asking if he could have one of the goats for a while when my dad finally told him yes. He lived about 5 miles up the road in an old Victorian styled house. When my dad gave the goat to Elias he knew exactly what he wanted with the goat, a barbeque.  I heard my dad mention to my little brother that Elias was having a barbeque and that Spike was on the menu.

I was standing out in the garden with my mom when Elias pulled up in his little yellow Toyota pick-up truck. We greeted him and asked what was going on.

            “Hey what is that you have there?” my mom said.

            “It’s something Brian wanted to try” said Elias.

            “Really?” asked my mom.

My mom then proceeded to have a short conversation with him in Spanish.  I could not understand a word they were saying but I was smart at putting two-and-two together.  I knew that a barbeque of my former pet goat Spike was being hosted by Elias and now he had some strange dish that my mom didn’t want me to know what it was.  It was settled that he had brought over what was left of Spike.  That was my little pet goat only a month earlier and I wanted nothing to do with what was in that Tupperware dish he brought over.

*** A Few Years Later***

It was in the fall time because we had got back the meat from the animals that my dad’s business bought at the fair, as well as the meat from our back-up pig.  We had several pigs that we raised that year for the fair. When raising a pig it is important to have a back-up pig in case something happens to your pig. My first year raising a pig, it ended up dying on the first day of fair.  Despite my tragic loss I decided to raise a pig one more year.  I wanted the experience of actually showing and selling a pig at fair and I just loved their personalities.

The pigs were super cute and fun to raise. They were like giant oversized puppy dogs. They would run out whenever they heard the sound of the hose.  They loved being squirted down and drinking from the hose.  They also loved when you scratched their back and belly; it would make them lie down and roll over like a dog.  When you were inside the pen with them they would follow you around.  They were always looking for your attention.  Pigs were very personable and were like a pet when you raised them.  They also were a bit of work to take of them.  I had to check them every morning and night to make sure they had food and water.  When the heat of the summer came it became even more crucial to check the pig’s water.  We would often bring a container full of ice cubes to try and keep their water cool because pigs will not drink their water if it is too hot.  We even installed misters in our barn to keep them cool. After selling my pig I missed going outside and checking on her.  The first couple weeks after fair I felt a void in my routine, because I often looked forward to going outside and spending time with my pig.

It was morning time and my mom was cooking up some bacon. 

“Yummm… is that bacon?” I said.

“Yes it is” my mom said.

“Oh look it’s the thick bacon.  Is this from the fair?” I asked.

 “Yes it is Miriam” she said.

 “Is this our back up pig from the fair?”

“No, we traded with another family so we would not have to eat our own pig.”

“Really? Why would we do that? I wanted to try out our pig.  They looked like they would be tasty.”

Advisement Center

The other day I went into the Advisement center to make an appointment.  To my suprise I was able to make an appointment for the next day.  It was super easy and took only a couple minutes.  When I went in to speak with the guy about classes he was super helpful.  He asked what I was thinking about doing and helped lead me down a good route. He gave me a couple different papers to look at as well.  Usually that kind of stuff sucks so you glance at it then throw it away.  All the papers he gave me were super helpful and easy to use.  It was an overall good experience going in and I would recomend going in if you have any questions.

Mirror Mirror

The other day I went and watched the movie Mirror Mirror.  I found it quite funny.  It was a little different take on the classic Snow White.  Julia Roberts played the villian.  She was a very likeable villian because of her sense of humor.  Also the girl Lily Collins who played Snow White seriously needed to pluck her eyebrows.  Overall, I would defintely recomend seeing it.

Wedding

The other weekend I just went to my friend Amy's wedding.  She was the first one of my friends to get married.  We were childhood friends.  I used to go to her house all the time to play.  Before going to her wedding I reflected upon the many memories we had together.  We used to play Barbies and dress up for hours.  Barbies was our favorite.  We would turn her entire room into a Barbie playland.  As I saw her in her wedding dress it was all so sureal to me.  I didn't feel old enough to have friends getting married.  Let alone my best friend from childhood.  I was so weirded out that I have friends getting married.  I don't even feel old enough to be in college.

Home

So the closer it gets to the time that I get to go home, the more I think of home.  I keep relating food I eat to people and memories I have back home.  Everytime I eat ice cream I think of my best friend Emily.  We used to get ice cream almost everyday after cross country practice.  Another example is I ate sushi and yogurt for lunch.  It is a weird combination, I know.  My dad and I would sometimes go to the only place in town that actually sold sushi which was a grocery store.  So we would get sushi and I love yougurt so I would always convince him to buy me yogurt as well.  Little things I would see or do have continually been reminding me of home and how excited I am to go home.