I remember at 23

23 November 2011, 1:09 pm by Giggles
Categories: Education, Family, Life, Remembers

I remember at 23 having a few weeks where I was basically homeless. The contract for my apartment that summer ran out before I had to be in Mexico to student teach. Leaving me homeless. So I decided to take advantage of the situation.

First I took Elena to a BYU football game. Somehow she had been my roommate for over two years and I hadn’t gotten her to a football game yet. When she told work that her roommate was making her go to a football game they rightly guessed I’m from Texas.

After the game that weekend I took a Greyhound bus from Provo to Vernal and spent several days with Grandpa Giles. I’m really glad I did that. Then it was another Greyhound back to Salt Lake and a flight to El Paso to stay with some friends for a few days before going to Mexico.

When I left Mexico I did some more homeless wanderings. I spent a few more days in El Paso. While there I spoke in the ward I attended in high school, I went to visit some high school teachers, and I attended a session at the Ciudad Juárez temple. Then I flew to Houston for about a week.

My brother had come back from Brasil and I hadn’t seen him in almost two years, so it was great to spend some time with him. He found a friend whose floor I could sleep on (hi Montreal Zen!), that was memorable meeting her, and set me up with a trip to Johnson Space Center for a day. Which was very much awesome for me. We went to some museums and saw the cow statues too. We thought about getting me set up to perform with the MOB that weekend for their football game but decided against it. We went to a hockey game and randomly ran into my neighbors from my apartment at BYU at the game and then after the game lost the car (we knew where it was, we didn’t know where we were).

When I finally got to my parents’ we drove back to Texas, Waco this time, for Thanksgiving as a family.

It was a lot of suitcase living the first half of my 23rd year, but it was a lot of fun too.

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I remember at 22

22 November 2011, 4:26 pm by Giggles
Categories: Education, Gospel, Remembers

I remember at 22 worrying if I remembered enough English to do a phone interview for student teaching. I wanted to do my student teaching in Colonia Juárez because it was three (four) hours from home (except by then my parents had moved to Kentucky). I had to submit the essays and applications before I came home from my mission. That was the only email I sent my entire mission. Then they wanted to do an interview with me, and it needed to happen before I came home from Brasil.

We found a family that had a telephone (not everyone did) that I could use and set up the interview for the morning of one of our preparation days. That morning before the phone call my companion sang Primary songs in English with me all morning because it had been pretty much a year since I had had any real conversations in English and I was nervous.

I remember pacing the home we were at while I was on the phone. The family was out running errands so as not to disturb me. The interviewer said I had a very cute accent and they could tell I’d really been learning the language on my mission. They must have liked more than my accent because five months after returning to the United States I was teaching in Mexico. Talk about messing with me linguistically.

I was actually pretty proud of the accent I developed on my mission. There are those (hi Dad!) that say that Portuguese sounds like drunk Spanish. It’s all in how you slur your words. Another family in that same area liked to have the missionaries sing the hymn “The Lord is my Light” in Portuguese because it was one where an American accent would really come out. I was a little proud that they were disappointed I didn’t have an accent for them to make fun of when I sang it. I haven’t liked that song since though.

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I remember at 21

21 November 2011, 6:24 pm by Giggles
Categories: Family, Gospel, Remembers

I remember at 21 having my first Thanksgiving outside of the United States. I haven’t had Thanksgiving with my parents at their house since my senior year of high school. I’ve been with my parents three times since then for Thanksgiving, just never at their house. Thanksgiving when I was 21 was spent at the Missionary Training Center in São Paulo, Brasil. They actually took us to get our visa passes that day and it was a bit of a cognitive disconnect for me to think of government offices being open on Thanksgiving.

After we got back from our morning trip to the visa offices we came back for lunch. The people who worked in the cafeteria treated us to one of the best Thanksgiving lunches I’ve ever had. It was a spread unlike any I’ve had before. The fact that Brasil has more fruits than anywhere I’ve ever seen really helped. Fresh fruits. Fruit desserts. Meats. Potatoes. And of course beans and rice. It was so bright and colorful. And delicious. They even had little cornucopias that they put with each of our trays as we went through the line. The thoughtfulness was real touching.

My brother and I were in the Missionary Training Center together preparing for our separate missions in Brasil at the time. It was fun to watch the reactions on people’s faces when they put together that we were related (we definitely look related). Those are good memories with him for me.

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I remember at 20

20 November 2011, 7:36 am by Giggles
Categories: Gospel, Health, Remembers, Work

I remember the summer I turned 20 was spent in a lot of pain. I remember lying flat on the floor in tears trying to take as small of breaths as I could because any movement of my back muscles caused intense pain. I remember standing through all three hours of church because sitting was not possible because of how badly my back hurt.

That summer I had one of the more fun jobs I’ve ever had. I worked grounds at BYU, specifically in the horticultural garden. I weeded a LOT of day lilies. You’d think I wouldn’t like them any more but I think I grew to really appreciate them while I was weeding them. Each flower only lasts one day before wilting and another one opens. I learned so much about plants. I still walk around naming them wherever I go. The four of us that worked there were each given a small place to plant a garden. I grew corn and squash and tomatoes. It was a wonderful job. I’ve never had a job where I felt such peace while I was at work.

However one Wednesday I was using a four gallon back-pack weed sprayer for my four hour shift while I sprayed all the pathways. I would ride my bike to and from work and when I got home I could tell something was not right because my right arm/shoulder didn’t feel right to carry my bike up the stairs to my apartment. I had to carry it up with my left. It didn’t get better Thursday or Friday either and by Sunday my back was really starting to hurt. I went to the doctor on Monday (and that was a speed record for me at the time between injury and doctor).

Over the course of several doctor visits during the summer it was basically determined that I had sprained my shoulder and several large muscles in my back. I had been a belly sleeper up to that point, but had to switch to my side, with a pillow between my knees. I knelt at my desk for a lot of my classes the start of the semester that Fall (sitting is very bad for your back and is the most painful position when your back is injured). I kept active though, stopping and staying still means the blood doesn’t circulate as well to help heal the injury.

That injury made me question several things in my future. Particularly that shortly after the injury I’d turned 20 and received the inspiration that I needed to serve a mission the following year. When I’d be flat on my back or kneeling in class I’d wonder how that would ever be possible. However pretty much one year to the day of the injury I received my mission call. And while I’ve had issues with my back and shoulder since, they were fine for my mission (my feet, on the other hand were an entirely different story).

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I remember at 19

19 November 2011, 7:13 pm by Giggles
Categories: Exercise, Family, Remembers

I remember the day after I turned 19 I ran my first marathon. I remember spending the first few miles just being in awe that I was even starting a marathon, that I was there. My dad gave me a running hat for my birthday the day before and we both got to the starting line wearing our running hats, Texas running shorts, and New Balance Shoes. I saw Dad at the out-and-back part of the race and then he came back to cheer me on the last few blocks before I finished. Finishing a marathon was a rush. It was a high.

Two days later we were walking through the mountains near my cousins’ home and I fell off a small cliff. Five years later I had to have a cyst removed from my wrist that was a result of that fall.

At 19 I was also able to know if the mail had come or not every day with one simple test when I was at college. We got mail every day.

My first few years of college my mom sent me mail every single day. Generally a post card, and almost all of them ones she made. If there was a postcard from my mom in the mail box then the mail had come that day. If there wasn’t then the mail had not come. I have several small boxes of the postcards still. I’d start the school year with some photos and small things on my walls in my dorm. And by the end of the year they’d be practically covered with postcards. It was a lot of fun.

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I remember at 18

18 November 2011, 12:36 pm by Giggles
Categories: Gospel, Remembers

I remember at 18 attending General Conference live for the first time. Our ward at BYU went to Salt Lake to perform baptisms in the Salt Lake Temple the Friday before April Conference and myself and two of my roommates stayed the night and went to Conference the next morning.

After leaving the temple Friday we went to the Church History Museum and explored that for a couple of hours and then we went to my “Grandma” Iris’s house (she’s not my grandma by blood or law, but she helped my parents get together, so that’s plenty important). She made us some yummy trail mix type stuff to munch on and we watched old movies before falling asleep.

Saturday morning we bundled up and went and stood in line outside the gates of Temple Square with everyone else hoping to get in. And it was a snow storm. Huge snow storm. Couldn’t see across the street because of all the snow falling and filling the air. There’s a reason they say you have to wait at least until after both Conference and Easter to expect good weather on a consistent basis.

But we got in. We were among the very last people they let into the Tabernacle for the Saturday morning session. There was a pillar right in front of us and my feet were freezing because they were wet from the snow. But it was still wonderful to actually be sitting there.

After the session the snow had stopped falling and the sun had come out and it was a beautiful day. We got a ride back to campus and watched the rest of Conference trying to get warm again in our apartment. We did a bit of baking so we’d have an excuse to turn the oven on and add its heat to the apartment.

Two years later my mom and I attended Conference at the Assembly Hall and she and I went to Conference at the Conference Center once as well. The first date Brett and I went on included two sessions of General Conference at the Conference Center too.

But the first time I attended General Conference live was when I was 18.

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I remember at 17

17 November 2011, 11:11 am by Giggles
Categories: Education, Family, Life, Relationships, Work

I remember at 17 making some choices that would affect the rest of my life. I didn’t realize how big one of those choices was.

In order to graduate from high school with honors in Texas at that time you had to take a computer class. It didn’t matter which one, you just had to take one. The business ones required typing as a pre-requisite and that just seemed silly to me because then I’d have to take two classes instead of just one and I already knew how to type. But there was a class called “computer science” that required algebra as a pre-requisite and I’d already taken that. So I took computer science my senior year of high school without any idea what it was.

And then I ended up being real good at it and going to competitions and lettering in computer science (yes, I am a geek).

And then I took a class in it when I got to college.

And then I noticed that if I took five more classes in it they’d give me a computer science teaching minor. So I minored in computer science.

And then I taught computers at an elementary school for 6 years where I meet some dear friends (hi server host!) who were parents of some of my students and got into theater with them and stretched my talents in that direction. And I set goals as a result of an assembly at the school, one of which was to learn to belly dance. And I learned to belly dance with some other friends who decided to help Cupid out a bit.

And then I met someone, through the computer, who majored in computer science.

And then we started communicating in binary and hex, related to the ASCII codes I’d practically memorized in high school writing a battleship program (which he pulled off my 3.5 inch floppies for me today and I got to play it again!).

And then we put binary on our wedding announcements and got married.

And I skipped a lot of steps, but my life probably would’ve been different if I’d taken business computing rather than computer science when I was 17 in high school.

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