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.

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.