Watercolors and Wishes

My life since AMIGOS has felt like a dream. I keep expecting to wake up back in Costa Rica. As I've been applying to colleges, I've had many chances to reflect on my experiences thanks to college application essays. The following essay I wrote as part of my application to the Westminster Honors College. The prompt was: Discuss the most interesting conversation you have had in the last year. What made it so interesting? Let me know what you think. On July 16th at around 7pm I wandered out of my small room in search of food and companionship. I had just finished writing a letter home to my mother in Salt Lake City about my experiences that week in Costa Rica. The sky was beginning to darken through the window, and the house was strangely quiet for that time of day. Usually my host father would have arrived home. My host mother, Mirna, would be cooking dinner and the smell would permeate the house and flood through the cracks in my bedroom door. My host brother would be wat

Hello Internet. It's been awhile.  I think it has been almost a year since I started this blog...let me check...WOAH it's been almost two years! That is a long time. A lot of things have happened in the last two years... I decided I'm not cut out to be a glassblower. I dyed my hair blue, and then brown, and then I grew it out, and then I chopped it all off, and then I dyed it red, and then I grew it out again, and then I dyed it purple, and now it's brown again. I got bangs today, so that's new. I guess this shows how indecisive I am. I survived both Sophomore and Junior year (which is really surprising because my brother started taking chemistry and they let him have access to things he should never have access to). I successful explored the world. Well, part of the world. Okay, a tiny fraction of the world. The point is, I'm on my way to seeing all of it. I applied to college. I even picked a favorite college. You will never guess. Not ever. Especia

So, I wrote an essay about my experience last summer with Amigos for my English class as practice for College Apps in the fall (scary thought!), and it turned out better than expected so I thought I would share it with you all. Here goes nothing... It is a warm, humid morning. Strangely, the sky is devoid of the large Cumulus mediocris clouds that have plagued the small valley for the last week. The sun is just rising over the green mountains, casting a warm glow on the small cement buildings around the town center. The sun reflects off the tin roofs of the houses where families are beginning to stir. A few early-risers stroll past the small park to catch the earliest bus into the closest city. A slight breeze causes the metal swings to creak and the leaves in the trees to ruffle. The smell of fried plantains and chickens waft across the blue sky, past the gleaming white walls of the Catholic c hurch building, past the Pepto-Bismol pink walls of the mayor’s office, and into the

I apologize in advance for the serious nature of this update. Feel free to stop reading if you just can't handle the feels. Are you ready  for this? Have you ever been in the middle of nowhere, so you lay down in the middle of a field, and you just watch the world moving around?  It's like you are the only still point in the universe.  You are constant and unchanging,  while everything is shifting around you. That's what I feel like right now. Maybe it's just the new year. I'll have to remember to write 2014 on all my papers instead of 2013. Maybe it's my haircut that I secretly hate, or the sad realisation that I was supposed to start applying for scholarships years ago,  or that my baby brother is learning to drive. But maybe it's the other way around.  Maybe the rest of the world is static,  and I'm the only one moving. Maybe everything and everyone else is exactly the same,  and I'm the one that's different. Maybe I've changed so

Pie is a beautiful thing. Throughout the generations, my family has refined the art of pie making. Yes, it is an art form. It's also delicious! Twice a year my family gathers for a pie extravaganza (Okay, we actually gather for General Conference, and the pie just happens to be there) and everyone makes pies. This last extravaganza had more than 16 pies. There were so many people in my grandma's house that you could barely move! Every year we have to make more pie because every year there are more and more people! There is so much pie that we eat leftovers for weeks. The pie is so amazing that we all take pictures and post them on Instagram. There is so much pie, that it takes more than a week of cooking just to make all of them. Recently, my grandma's aquatic aerobics class (which is a fancy name for pool yoga) had a party and my grandma was asked to bring pie. She went a little overboard. She made 8 pies. There was so much leftover that she had an after party a

I figured that I should probably tell you all about AMIGOS now, because it is pretty much consuming my entire life. If you already know about AMIGOS (probably because I never shut up about it) feel free to stop reading if you want. I wont be offended. Okay, maybe I will be offended, just a little bit. Anyway, Amigos de las Americas (or AMIGOS for short) is this amazingly fabulous international nonprofit organization that sends college and high school aged students to rural communities in South America for 6-8 weeks, where they facilitate community development, live with a host family, and hopefully become completely fluent in Spanish (Haha... it's a joke. I'm the worst gringa I know!)). Once upon a time in 7th grade, there were two lovely people who came into my Spanish class to talk about AMIGOS, and at first I was only interested because at least the spanish teacher had turned of Destinos while they gave their presentation. By the end of their presentation I was hooked.