To my Roommates.

I will miss you dearly. Thanks for the wonderful year. Even if you do not read my blog I thought I would write a tribute to both of you. Thanks for doing the dishes, and having roommate thought and prayer, and for putting up with everything. You both are amazing and I will miss you.

Randoms

• Well, since I cannot upload pictures at all...I will have to put up links to them...SO Geoff ran in a marathon...and we had a blast being a part of that. It was fun to see my best friend get so close to his goal. He is amazing.
  
• I received extra credit for participating in the Nihon Masturi, or the Japan Festival. I was the MC for the speech festival which was fun and painful at the same time and then Warnick sensei asked me to take pictures.
  
• Then I did some random things...like "hiking", and hiking, and rock climbing and everything else...Everything else
  

A new appreciation for body building

My friend Derrick participated in a body building competition last weekend. Here are some pictures from that. I still do not understand people's desire to do this, but I learned a lot about what they have to go through to do this and I can now respect them more for it.

An eternal animal?

The turritopsis nutricula

is the only animal in the world that can potentially live forever. "Since it is capable of cycling from a mature adult stage to an immature polyp stage and back again, there may be no natural limit to its life span," the article quotes. Pretty interesting if I do say so myself! Researchers are now studying to determine how exactly the species does this, perhaps hoping to find a way for humans to do the same.
"Because they are able to bypass death, the number of individuals is spiking. They're now found in oceans around the globe rather than just in their native Caribbean waters. "We are looking at a worldwide silent invasion," says Dr. Maria Miglietta of the Smithsonian Tropical Marine Institute. "

Teach for America

My friend TRavis just got accepted to Teach for America's program. I went to the acceptance dinner/social they had and decided that I needed to research this idea.

Teach for America

It sounded like most of the people that were accepted had business or family and marriage degrees from BYU. Interestingly, they applied because they 1. either couldn't get a job with a philosophy or marriage and family degree, or 2. they decided that they did not really even like business or their major. What a bummer. Anyway, maybe it is something to consider for next summer.

A Future Educator

As a future educator, especially a Physical educator, we often talk about the problems of obesity in America. It is said now that this is the first generation that will not outlive their parents. Why? you may ask...it is because of the crummy eating patterns that are shown in America. Most kids eat school lunches here in Utah, because they are on welfare and cannot afford it. Utah County has a giant population of Hispanic children and most of those on welfare are hispanic. I read this article on Yahoo.com and was interested to see what this teacher was doing. Poor thing, I never really ate school food and now am glad that I was fortunate enough to have a financially stable family that could provide a sack lunch for me.

"Fed Up with School Lunch"

Another teacher from Japan also has a link that I enjoyed. He talks about the way that lunch is done with his students. Interesting to read both of these.

http://www.mrfergusonsclassroom.com/

Julie B. Beck

Today Sister Beck came to our Stake down here in Provo and talked to all the Sisters. It was a great time together and we were all uplifted. She just formatted it in a question answer way. There were some great moments and I loved what she said. The thing that I loved most was that she told us no matter what we have learned here at school, if we leave college life without learning to hear, perceive, and act upon spiritual promptings, we will really have learned nothing. What a lesson on the important things in life. She was wonderful and I got to give her a hug. :)