Saturday, September 12, 2009

9-1-1 on 9/11

I'm proud of myself for coming up with that title :). You'll know why pretty quickly here.
Kay, the craziest thing ever happened yesterday.
My old young women's president asked me to babysit, and I didn't have anything better to do, so I said I would. Once I got there, all the kids wanted to do was play in the back yard and their Mom told me they'd probably just keep that up the entire time. Much to their dismay I ended up forcing them inside about half an hour later and I think I had a pretty good reason for it.
The house is on a street corner and you can see the intersection from the back yard. I was pushing the kids on the swings and out of the corner of my eye I saw something red flash by and I looked over just in time to see a red SUV speed past a stop sign, try to turn the corner and fail miserably at it, and flip completely over. I wasn't sure exactly what to do for a second because I didn't want to leave the kids alone, but within half a second I'd figured they could stand to be by themselves while I ran to get a phone, so that's what I did.
So I got to call 911 for the first time ever. For some reason it weirded me out that a guy answered the phone. Just 'cause in movies it's always a woman, but I told him what I'd seen and the address despite his gender.
Other than that I don't think I was much help. I explained to him that I couldn't leave the back yard, but that I could kind of see what was going on. He asked me a bunch of questions and I answered as best as I could. After a minute I noticed that there was another guy who was actually at the site who was on the phone and I figured he'd take care of the stuff that I couldn't do considering I had kids with me and I couldn't leave them alone or bring them to the site. So the 911 guy took my phone number and name and told me to make sure that everybody stayed away from the cars and that an ambulance should be there any second.
So once I was off the phone I took the kids (kicking screaming and crying) into the house and made them watch Harry and His Bucket Full of Dinosaurs (some kid show I don't particularly like) and they calmed down somewhat quickly.
Because of that I missed most of the cool stuff. I don't know what happened to the guy in the SUV, but his car barely had a scratch on it other than the front bumper, the windows and probably the roof. I didn't even see him at all. He must have either run away from the site (I wouldn't be surprised if he was drunk, he was driving pretty carelessly) or gotten taken away in an ambulance way faster than the other guy.
I felt pretty stupid after I looked out the window and saw that there was a second car involved. If you could still call it a car at that point. It was practically folded in half the dent was so big. The dent was on the driver's side and once I saw it I was pretty sure the guy was dead. I didn't see it at first because a bush was in the way... stupid bush. I saw him on the stretcher and he wasn't covered up, but he also wasn't moving and the paramedics didn't seem to be going as fast with him as I thought they could have. I don't know whether he's alive or not, but I'm not allowing myself to think the whole thing was cool unless he is.
I did get to see the people flip the SUV over though, which was pretty... not uncool. I'm still kind of freaked out by seeing a vehicle like that just turned upside-down and right-side up so easily.
I've always wondered how I would react to something like that. I can now proudly say that I'm a person who can keep my head. I think I was the only person who actually saw the car flip over, even if I didn't actually see most of it. That stupid was bush was the exact right size and in the exact right place to stop me from seeing the second car. I hope I didn't screw anything up by telling 911 guy there was only one car. But yeah, the several people who were there after it happened either froze and didn't know what to do, couldn't do anything or completely freaked out. The other guy that called 911 was seriously freaking out. He was yelling into the phone and I have to wonder if he was any more use than I was. I mean, I didn't really know what was going on and I completely misinformed the 911 people, but as least I kept a level voice. I think the reason for my calmness was that my adrenaline was pumping like crazy so I was ecstatic and capable of freaking out, but the solemness brought on by knowing that somebody could be hurt or dead counter-acted that. Plus having to brave for the kids probably helped. Although to be honest with you, I was kind of annoyed that they were there because they were screaming so I couldn't hear the 911 guy that well and they stopped me from leaving the yard. I kept on thinking he was asking me something when he had actually said something completely different. For example he asked me "Is anybody pinned inside the car?" and I answered "Is somebody killed? I don't know man I can't see the person in the car,".

I've been asked by several people if it looked like something out of a movie and I think I can safely say that it did. Dude, that car flipped over like it was a bumper car! The mental footage of that just keeps on repeating itself relentlessly in my head and I'm amazed by it every time.
To be honest with you, I'm not shaken up at all by seeing a car flip over, although it did freak me out a bit. I'm still kind of numb from knowing that I was the person who got the ambulance there and I misinformed them. I mean, what if they were only prepared to help one person because I said there was only one car and that guy died because of me? I dunno. I just need to know what happened. 'Cause I don't know if he actually died or not and not knowing is the worst.
Also, I'm kind of mad at that jerk wad (excuse my profanity) that ran the stop sign. I mean, who runs through a stop sign at 60 km/h (about 40 m/h I think)? I think he deserved to flip over like that. It looked terrifying, but I don't think he was hurt much. If he was wearing his seatbelt I wouldn't be surprised if he was completely uninjured.
So yeah, that was my adventure of the year. Last year's adventure was almost getting arrested. And in case you're wondering, I am a magnet for interesting stuff like this. For some reason things just always seem to happen to me. It's a curse and a blessing, but all-in-all I think I enjoy it.

So in other news, the whole bass clarinet thing is going okay-ishly. Plus I started taking piano lessons again. I taught myself to play, so I'm not very good with notes. I can play the piano pretty well, but my teacher is making me start pretty much from the beginning. It's kind of frustrating to play Old McDonald when I know I'm capable of playing hymns, but whatever.
If you don't play the piano you might not get that, but what I do is that I take half an hour figuring out the notes and from there I just memorize the hand movements. So I don't really know the notes, but I can play just fine. That's why I find it easier to play with my eyes closed... probably has something to do with the fact that I'm a kinaesthetic learner.

Also, I started seminary on Tuesday. Yeah, I don’t like my teacher. She teaches nursery and she dresses and acts like it. Her first lesson was basically just “Jesus Loves you” and then she made somebody a balloon animal to explain that we’re in charge of our own lives. It might not sound that bad, but you’d just have to hear the way she talks and the smile she’s constantly giving us. What annoys me though is that she seems to think there’s little difference between teaching seminary and teaching nursery. She uses metaphors to explain extremely simple concepts and she’s the kind of teacher that I constantly imagine a non-member coming in, hearing the lesson and automatically assuming that she’s brainwashing us with naïve stories and universally known stories.

Oh yeah, I got my name on the list for a trip to Europe. Our school is setting one up for the students taking modern languages. There are 36 spots. I don’t know how many are taken though, all I know is that I’m on the list.
I’m going with my friend who’s in French emersion. She speaks fluent French and she’ll be super handy when we’re in France.
The trip is over Easter Break (Spring Break), it’s 11 days long and we’re going to Germany, France and Spain.
So I’ll be the German speaker in Germany, she’ll be the translator and speaker in France and we’re pretty much screwed when we’re in Spain. Not to mention all I can do right now in German is say hello, goodbye, introduce myself and others, tell my age, ask other people for their names and ages and count to twenty. Oh yeah, and I can ask people where they’re from and tell them where I’m from. I can also put together some phrases if I have to and I can usually understand what somebody’s saying when they speak to me in fluent German.
In our school we have a lot of students in the French emersion program, so a lot of my friends speak to each other in French just to annoy all the Anglos (English speakers) that are around. So to annoy them, me and a guy from my German class always speak to each other in German.
The conversations usually go something like:
Tag
Morgen!
Wie Heisst du?
Ich heisse Johanna. Wie heisst du?
Ich heisse Jens
Eins, drei, achtzehn
Zwei, vierzehn, elf
Funfzehn
Wer ist das?
Ja, ja, dast ist Mackenzie (or the name of somebody nearby)
Nein! Nein! Bist du dumm? Das ist Julie!
Nein, ich bin nicht dumm! Das ist Mackenzie, Verzögerung!

It annoys them so much! Little to do they know all we said was something like:

G’day
G’Morning
What’s your name?
My name is Johanna (my name is Christi, this is just to confuse them) What’s you’re name?
My name is Jens (his name isn’t Jens. Which is pronounce yans, popular German name I guess)
One, three, eighteen
Two, fourteen, eleven
Fifteen
Who is that?
Yes yes, that is Mackenzie
No no! Are you stupid? That is Julie!
No, I am not stupid! That is Mackenzie retard!

We both find it very entertaining, so does our German teacher (mein Deutchleher :D).

And we had our second salsa lesson on Wednesday. Haha man, I'm really getting the hang of this. We learned how to switch partners and at one point we were going so fast that half the time I didn't know who I was dancing with and honestly I didn't care.

So yeah, there you go. That was my week... More or less.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

An Update on My Life.

So I started school on the 31st and my timetable is really weird. For my first semester I have nothing but Art, German, Foods and Math. My second semester has the rest of my cores and gym first thing every morning except for Tuesday.
My first German class frightened me. It's a 10/20/30 class, so even though I've never taken German before, I'm in the same class as people who can speak it almost fluently. So in the first class the teacher spoke almost everything in German and I was completely lost. And then he mistook me for somebody who could speak German (I don't think I look like a person who can speak German, but whatever) and he asked me a question. The only word I understood was Dutch (however you spell that) which means German. So I guessed that he was asking me if I spoke German and I said nein, which means no. All the 20/30s laughed, but it was the kind of laugh as if I'd just made a joke, I could only guess that I'd said what I thought I'd said. The teacher then said something else and looked at me expectantly and I just stared at him and after a moment I said "No, seriously, I can't speak German". Everybody laughed again and afterward I asked somebody what had happened, because at the time I wasn't too sure and I was worried that I'd said something stupid. Luckily, what I thought had happened had happened.

So this is totally random, but I think it's kinda funny. In my math text book somebody left their cell phone number on the inside of the cover and so I texted the number saying that I had the person's old notebook. I figured that they either wouldn't answer or it wasn't their number anymore, but they answered and it was them. So I had the weirdest conversation with some guy I don't know. I just know he's a year older than me and now goes to some private school. Except now I'm kind of regretting it. What if he gives my number to people, like hobos or telemarketers? Needless to say, that wouldn't be enjoyable.

Today was my first time playing the bass clarinet in a group. I did okay... The atmsophere kind of brought back my fluotist instincts so I kept on fingering flute notes by accident, but other than that I didn't bother the rest of the band too horribly... or at least that's what my firned on the other side of the room told me.

Another first today, was that we started our lessons for that centenial celebration dance performance thing I mentioned earlier. In case you don't remember, it's a gigantic performance that all the LDS youth are doing. Each stake has their own genre. At first ours was ballroom, then it was samba and now it's salsa. I'm glad it's salsa, little more exciting and less awkward. I actually did okay with the steps; I only messed up occasionally. What worries me however was the video of a dance simular to the one we're performing that we watched at the beginning of the lesson. The steps we learned were the easy part at the beginning where you only had one partner. Next week we'll be learning the swerving and switching partners part. That worries me a bit, but I think I'll survive. There were people who were doing way worse than me there so... unless I break something I'll be fine. Or actually... maybe breaking something would be a good idea.

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

EFY.

Okay, so I read the post I did on my previous EFY experience back in February and man, I have to say I didn't represent myself properly.
I was making myself look like some anti-social teenager who's afraid of human contact. Not true, and anybody who knows me would be surprised to read that. I'm the girl who randomly gives my friends hugs when they least expect it and who actually means it when I casually tell people that I love them.
I'm actually a very outgoing and reasonably friendly person, but by reading that you wouldn't be able to tell. I'll admit, usually when I first meet people I'm kind of quiet. I like to figure people and situations out before I "come out of my shell" but yeah, once I get over myself I'm a pretty lively person.
I was writing like that because I was (and still am) kind of sick of people assuming certain things. Just because my sister who looks and acts a whole lot like me got married when she was 18 doesn't mean that I will or that I appreciate everybody assuming that that's what's going to happen.
So that's why I act like I'm not too fond of the idea of getting married (I secretly am, don't tell anybody)
Also, I live hard by the rule that you should be the type of person you want to marry. I hate it when guys talk about how hot certain girls are, so I don't do anything of the sort with guys. Ask any of my friends; the words "he's hot" haven't escape my mouth for a long time. That's where the whole thing where I was acting almost like I wasn't interested in guys in the least came from.
Plus, I just don't like the idea of being some stereotypical Mormon girl with her eyes set on nothing but having a family and who bakes cookies in her spare time.

To be honest with you, I'm still the exact same person who wrote that post. Back then, I was trying to convince everybody that I was somebody who I've never been and never will be. I was sick of people assuming that I wanted to get married and that I was boy-crazy and that I was unconditionally friendly and what else, so I was just trying to put them in their place.
I've learned since then that I become a very unhappy person when I attempt this, so I've been acting more like myself. That is to say happy, friendly, crazy, bumps-into-chairs-and-says-sorry-thinking-they're-people Christi. I'm sure all my friends appreciate her return almost as much as I do.

So now that I've weirded you out with my emotional/personality change I'll tell you about EFY.

My roomy used to be my best friend, but she moved away to British Columbia over a year ago. Recently she moved back, but we haven't had much of a chance to re-unite, so we decided to be EFY roomies. It was so nice to see her again. To be honest with you, it's a miracle that we get along so well. I prefer to have a few, really good friends while she prefers to have as many friends as she can get. So although I'm not the type of person who's comfortable in a huge crowd of people I don't know, I found myself in that situation many times and somehow managing to enjoy it. Although we stayed friends, for the most part I spent my time with a smaller group than hers.
The first night I had trouble falling asleep because all the girls in our group had turned our evening devotional into a 'let's talk about how much our lives suck' fest. There was one girl whose best friend died, another whose boyfriend was in the hospital after a car accident who’s probably never going to walk again and another whose parents are going through a nasty divorce. All three of these girls were brought to tears by their troubles and of course... I was too. Everybody assumed that I had some tragic story to share because I was acting like I did. It seemed to them that there was some deep hurt which I wanted to talk about, but wasn't. I guess that was true enough, but it wasn't what they were thinking, far from it I think I can safely say.
I only shared why I was so upset with my roommate that night while we were lying in bed, supposedly trying to fall asleep..
I never get upset about anything. Even the things that I really should get upset about, I don't. The only reason I cried when my dog died was because my sister was beside herself with tears and it was practically torturing me to see her so upset. The only reason I cry at funerals is because not everybody has what I have. They don't believe in God and in Heaven and if they do they usually don't understand why He'd take away their loved one(s).
I wasn't crying because of something that happened to me, I wasn't even crying because of what happened to these girls. Although they were upset now, I knew they had testimonies and that they'd find solace in the scriptures or in prayer. I was crying and found it hard to sleep that night because I couldn't stop thinking about the people who struggle alone. When something bad happens to me I read some scriptures, pray and/or read my patriarchal blessing. All the people out there that don't have the Gospel also don't have the scriptures, communication with God and definitely don't have any written blessing to turn to.
My natural instinct when I see somebody in pain of any kind is to help them. What bothered me was that I couldn't help those people. I wanted to take away their pain, completely willing to suffer for it myself if I had to, but most of them wouldn't take a Book of Mormon if I offered it and I couldn't think of any way to just take away their pain.
When I said earlier that when I casually tell people that I love them I mean it, well I really do. I can't stand to watch helplessly as other people struggle. I need to help them, yet rarely ever can. My true happiness and sorrow can only be found in theirs. If that's not love -even on a small degree- I don't know what is.
So yeah, that love is what brought me to tears that night, it's what kept me awake for over an hour even though I was exhausted, it's what makes me compliment people so often and it's also what makes me critique people as bluntly as I do. To be honest with you, my worst fear is for the wrong person to realize how much I love them and to use it against me. This, on a deeper level is what made me act so anti-social before. Like I said though, I've learned that I'm happier being myself, even if it means I might get hurt from time to time.

Those who love are the happiest people alive, those who love, but hate to love are the saddest people alive and those who can just mind their own freaking business are probably the luckiest people alive. Since I can't just mind my own business, I have two choices: 1) hate the fact that I love everybody and let it torment my soul every night as I think about it or 2) I can embrace it and let it control me instead of the other way around and be happy while influencing others to feel happy as well.

So yeah, sorry. For some reason I felt I needed to write that. I can't imagine why, I don't think anybody even reads this blog, but I have faith that there's purpose in everything, so there you go.
Other than that, nothing in particular happened that’s worth mentioning at EFY. Well… I dunno, I guess that’s not completely true, but I think this post is long enough already, so I’m ending it… now.



Evening Devotional - In terms of EFY it's a short, small meeting with your group before you go to bed.

Saturday, August 8, 2009

Sorry, Sorry, Sorry, Sorry, Sorry, etc...

I've bee so busy over the summer so I haven't been able to write. My last post was about a month ago and it's about how I almost got arrested; probably not the best thing. Haha.

I took some bass clarinet lessons and I'm more or less where I want to be with that. I've been out of town and bringing the bass clarinet was completely out of the question, so I haven't practised in a while.

Also, a while ago I mentioned a short story I was writing. I finished that and it ended up being a novelette with 72 pages and 42.6 thousand words which is longer than The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe.
I let some friends read it and it brought most of them to tears and all they could tell me was that it was awesome and needed little to no improvement, which I know isn't true. That's what I hate about letting people my age read my work; all they can tell me is how awesome it is. If I want to be better I have to know what I did wrong and I know that this story is far from perfect.
So, I'm giving it to my writer buddy from church. He's a writer, just like me. He's got a novel in the works, but he doesn't have anything published. To be honest, I don't know how good he is (I've never read any of his work) but he seems to be at least a decent writer. I know from his daughter (who's a few years younger than me) that he's finished it and that he thinks it's good, but I haven't actually talked to him yet. Hopefully I'll get the chance tomorrow at church.

Other than that, I just got back from a ten day trip to the states with my sister and her family (husband and two young children. We spent most of our time in Salt Lake City with my sister's Father in Law and his wife. I got to go with my sister to a FAIR social and the second day of the FAIR Conference. I greatly enjoyed the Conference, more than I thought I would. I'll have to admit that the parts about physychs behind Cosomology and about half of the last lecture went over my head, but it was seriously quite awesome.
The trip was pretty fun, although I didn't get to see many of the Mormon sights. I met and shook hands with a lot of people who I'd only heard the names and reputations of and I met some new people. Plus it was nice to actually see the other members of FRG.

The last important thing I can think of is that I'm going to EFY on Monday (two days) and as is tradition, I'll write about this event after it takes place.

Saturday, June 13, 2009

Coolest thing of my LIFE!

Okay, so there's this game that some of the youth in our ward play. We call it fugative and it's basically like hide and seek outside in the dark. When we were done we're just waiting for this one guy who lives on the other side of town to get picked up by his Mom and this cop pulls up next to us. He looked at us all, then asked somebody on the other side of the radio to give him a description of some people and they describe me and one other guy with us perfectly and we're totally freaking out. So Then he asks us all for our names and numbers and adresses and everything else.
And I have to admit, we probably looked really suspicious 'cause we were all dressed in dark clothing because we wanted to be hard to see 'cause we're playing fugative. And because we're all scared of getting caught by the other team we're sneaking around in alleyways and whatelse.
So during this whole interogation everybody's looking over at me because without a doubt I was one of the people who was described because I was the only female there. So yeah, most of them were dead scared, but kept on looking at me like I'd be the one who was the most scared but I just thought it was the coolest thing ever.
So eventually he checks that we all have a way home (we made one up for me since I was planning on walking but I live pretty much across the city) and leaves us as soon as that guy's Mom picked him up.
But yeah, no, most intese ten minutes of my life 'cause he was acting like we'd actually done something, but we seriously hadn't.
So yeah, I thought it was so cool. I should have told him that I didn't have a ride, then maybe I could have gotten a ride in the police car. Sadly I only thought of that when it was too late.
We've all decided that we're gunna tell everybody that we all got tazered and spent the night in jail etc. Haha, so if somebody comes up to me and asks me if it's true that we got beaten and tazered and pepper sprayed I'm just gunna tell them it's true, you know, keep the chain going. It'd probably turn into something hugely out of purtion pretty quickly.

Saturday, May 30, 2009

Fortune Cookie.

So I just got a fortune cookie that said something like "No obstacle will manage to stop you from achieving your objectives this month,"
So in your face world, cause June is MY month.

FAIR: RG

So YFAIR is no longer YFAIR, but FAIR's Rising Generation. I don't have much to say on the change, only that I'm glad that it happened, I just figured you should know.

And I've been given the assignment of being a blogger for the FAIR: RG blog. I'll be posting on Tuesdays, unless something changes, and if (and most probably when) it does I'll tell you.
Here's the blog, hope you read it. I don't have any posts up yet, but I will soon.
http://youth.fairblog.org/