Last semester was tough. But so far this semester seems tougher. The classes are very different from what I expected. For the most part, I enjoy them. I'm learning more about my major, which is good, because it gives me ideas for the type of work I want to do when I have a degree. It seems like tech writing is all over the place, though, so who knows what I will end up doing. Marketing might be interesting, if I can ever get the hang of CS5. My dream job would be a book editor, which I am sort of learning about in my classes (not as much as I hoped. I think that comes later), but the thing is, most of those jobs are in places like New York and California. I've kinda always thought I would stay closer to home. I would miss my family too much. It might be fun, for a while, but I just can't really see myself doing it long term. It's still a posibility, but so are lots of other things.
On a completely different note, I am really loving the new place I live in. I have five really great roommates. Kristi, Jo, Hayley, Lori and Kim. Kristi and Lori are the two I know the best so far.
Kristi is a fairly recent convert to the LDS church. She is from a little town in Upstate New York called North Bangor. Her family is Southern Baptist, and they weren't super thrilled that she joined the church. She met the missionaries in her area while working at an apartment building, and started talking to them with the intention of "saving" them. They seemed nice, and she liked that they knew the sciptures very well, so she thought she would meet with them to do Bible study. For the first little bit she had a hard time meeting up with them (they kept missing each other), and when she finally did get to meet with them, she almost ran the other direction because their beliefs were so different from hers. But she decided to give them a chance.
She really started to take them seriously when they came to a religious convention that she had invited them to. She thought they would blow her off, but there they were, in a place that she knew they were likely to be riddiculed and belittled. She decided to go to General Conference with them., to return the favor, in a way. At first she thought it was stupid. They were talking about things that Christians should already know about. But she felt good listening, and decided to think about some of the things that the missionaries had been talking with her about. She read her Bible (she didn't want to read the Book of Mormon at this point), and came across some of the things they had talked about (like having three seperate members of the God Head).
Her church was having problems at the time with people gossiping and bickering, and they held a meeting to discuss what could be done about the problems. Kristi thought the most obvious way to fix things was for people to just be kind to each other, love each other, and do nice things for other people just to be nice. But the answers people in the meeting were coming up with were getting new floors in the gym, new tile in the bathrooms, and other building modifications. She felt like something wasn't clicking, and went home that night and started reading in Moroni, where the missionaries had told her to read. She felt the Spirit very strongly and called the missionaries and left a message telling them she wanted to be baptized.
Her parents were really upset when she told them. Her dad tried to talk her out of it, telling her to think about what she was doing and what it would do to their family. She and the missionaries made plans for what she would do after her baptism, in case her parents kicked her out. They didn't kick her out, but they ignored her completely for four months while she still lived there. That was when she decided she needed to move, and had plans to come to BYU Idaho before one of the missionaries told her to call his mom, who lived in Smithfield. She drove out here and lived with his family for nine months, until he got home from his mission. Her mom threw out all of the belongings she left behind after she left, and things were still tense for a while, but they are now speaking to her again (it's been about a year and a half since she was baptized).
Recently she started to work on her mission papers. She has no idea how things are going to work out, but she felt like this was what she needed to be doing. I really admire her faith.
Lori grew up in Florida and moved with her family to Providence when she was seventeen. She is the middle child of seven. The second week I was here, Lori invited Kristi and me to go to dinner at her mom's house. It was a lot of fun. We played random card games, backwards charades, and random dice games for hours. And her mom made really delicious dinner.
Lori served a mission in Scotland, which is now combined with the mission Adam served in in Ireland, although when they were out they were still separate missions. She's been home for about three years, and is probably the closest to my age of all the roommates. We have very similar taste in books and movies. I have become the go-to movie girl, as I have the largest movie collection in the house, and Lori likes to come borrow them whenever she has a little free time.
Kim is from St George and is an Education major. She served a mission in Peru (I think. I may have to check on that one...). She is the secretary in out Relief Society. She has a boyfriend named Clint. I think it's funny when he comes over for dinner every Tuesday, and chats with all the girls who are home. Her dad died when she was twelve. She just turned twenty-three this past Thursday. I'm hoping I'll get to know more about her in the coming weeks.
Jo is from out of state (I haven't asked where yet) and is not a member. She is studying engineering, and is super busy. I've probably only seen her home about five times since I moved in. But she is really nice and easy to talk to. Hopefully I'll be seeing more of her too.
I've only seen Hayley three times, and don't know a lot about her yet. She also seems really nice and I'm looking forward to getting to know her better too.
Well, I feel like I'm starting to get into novel mode, so I better wrap this up. But I wanted to give an update, since the last thing I really wrote about was my friend Kalia's death (which still seems completely unreal).
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