and the new miss provo is...

this evening i went to the miss provo scholarship pageant. luckily the crowning of miss provo wasn't as dramatic as the picture shown. actually it was quite anticlimacti. anyway, with notebook in hand, i intended to reimerse myself in the pageant light in preparation for the national american miss (namiss) national pageant in november. i brought my friend todd along with me and he was a good sport considering he thinks pageants are pointless and merely show off beauty without actually seeking out the truly talented. it makes perfect sense; those girls who are absolutely amazing go unnoticed because they would never dream to participate in a pageant.

but i digress, the point of my writing is to alert those few readers and just put it into words for myself pageantry in general. i'm really looking forward to november. i think i have what it takes to go far and that excites me. a few friends have told me that i don't need to do the pageant and the only reason i'm doing it is for the attention. this is kinda sorta part of it, but not completely. i have learned valuable speaking skills from doing namiss pageants that i couldn't have gotten elsewhere. the miss provo pageant seemed like it was more about one's composure and presence on stage rather than allowing the girls to tell the judges who they were. i am also glad namiss doesn't have an onstage question. yikes! i much prefer a personal introduction.

another difference i encountered as a member of the audience, the professionality of the pageant itself was not up to the standards i am used to dealing with, which could possibly just mean i have high standards. obnixious family members made it sound, and look, as if we were at a football game, not a beauty pageant. enthusiasm is fantastic but not at the expense of surrounding audience members, please.

all in all, it was a good experience. it reminded me that real girls do these pageants, so i should relax a bit. but i still have a lot of preparations to make. i got some notes to practice and sketches for potential dresses, although i'll probably just wear the ones i have. i have a lot of work to do once i get home: publicity as runner-up to miss california, aka miss sacramento as long as none of the other runners-up are from there, but mostly raising money for entry to nationals, a whopping $800 entry fee plus other competions.

oh dear, looks like i have my work cut out for me.

help!

i don't get stressed very easily. well, i can say that now because i'm not stressed, but usually, i'm a pretty calm person. but even that is a little stretch of the truth. i enjoy being active and outgoing, social and busy, but when assignments pile up at school or i have a huge event to organize, i don't stress. ok, well, there's an exception to every rule. i guess i'm a "this too shall pass" kind of person.

last week, i had a huge paper due: an 18-20 page policy recommendation paper about nuclear power plants in scotland. i was worried about it, yes. and i honestly didn't have time to work on it. but even when i did, i made sure to find something else more important to do. i made flash cards for french class and probably gained about five pounds from eating so much. i just got really overwhelmed. i had no idea where to start, not enough time to do thorough research, and there were so many tangents i could have, and probably did, go off on. it was not that bad once i got started, and i could have gotten a lot more done if i had an extra few days or a week. but not too bad.

this post is not going the direction i intended at all...

my intention was to point out my innate ability to stay calm in a storm.

french class

i really probably should update this more even though i know no one will read it. (except you katherine :) ) there is so much i want to talk about and have been thinking about. aka a certain boy, relativity of truth, the gospel, more about that certain boy, etc. i'm taking french right now and it's really hard. i mean, not REALLY hard but just difficult to understand and formulate sentences with vocabulary i don't know yet. tyler has been really good at helping me study but he's gone until next tuesday! and i have a composition due on monday and a midterm on wednesday and thursday! i don't have time for him to be gone. but it'll hopefully turn out all right. i have to make lots of flash cards so i can learn the vocab :\ i have to work on a lot of hw this weekend; mainly papers for my internship that are due on tuesday. yikes! hopefully my teacher gets back to me soon about that extension...

A'bientot!

since when did the sun come out?

i don't like going outside. i mean, i like it once i'm out there but it's the getting out there that's the trouble. i don't know how i got this way. even when i was living in scotland where there are a million museums to see and parks to walk through and pictures to take, i sat in my room on many a saturday. probably because i would feel guilty going out and enjoying myself when i have tons of homework and packing and laundry and cleaning to do at home. a good day for me is going outside and doing absolutely, with my whole heart, nothing. oh dear, it looks like my homework is calling :\

i'll try to make room for some sit-on-the-porch-reading-a-book time. wish me luck!

i love to dance

basically, dancing makes me happy. if i'm having a bad day or even a good one, i like to dance my feelings out. music drives my emotions and vice versa. when i hear a really good song, it makes me happy, so i want to dance it. today was a good dancing day because i was really balanced so if i was on a proper floor, i could probably do piorettes or fuettes for ages. i don't dance because i want to. i dance because i have to.

well i'm off to go salsa dancing at el barrio's. ta!

i think therefore i am

on our way home from a movie, we were talking about music and how different songs evoke certain memories and smells make you think of certain things. so that got me thinking (and this probably won't make sense at all unless you live inside my head so just try to keep up)

essentially the conclusion i came to was that these smells and sounds prove our human-ness through memories. sounds and smells are intangible. sounds could arguably be tangible because you can feel the force of sound waves but you can't hold a sound and is therefore intangible as far as i'm concerned. anyway, these intangibles are just floating around in the atmosphere and when they are picked up by our ears and noses, they affect us all differently. like a person might like a certain song because it has a good beat but then another person sitting right next to the first may like the song because it reminds them of warm summer afternoons and jumping on trampolines. like the smell of some sort of chili or something makes me feel sick because at my friend's house, i ate something that had this certain smell and it made me sick. but then i start thinking about my friend and all the times we spent together at her house and growing up together and all our sleep overs and long talks. to someone else it may just be chili but to me, it is my childhood.

and then it reminds me that we're all individuals with different lives and stories and backgrounds. how we're all connected and crossed paths for a reason. everyone has their circle of friends who love them for various reasons and when those circles collide we become one. when people die, their stories, their thoughts, their feelings die with them. they are more than just a number; they are human.

I love scotland!

So basically, i never want to leave scotland. i've been here only a week but it feels like 6 weeks have gone by. i love my internship and the hills and the buildings and oh....it's just all so breathtaking. here are just some of the pictures i've taken so far:





















i believe i have found my true love <3