20 at 20

So, yesterday was my birthday. I turned the big 2-0 this year... Kinda scary, I know. I could write some profound post about growing up and no longer being a teenager and blah blah, but I'm not. Rather, I'll tell you about this tradition I have.

Every year, I write a list of things I want to do that year. Specifically, the number of things equal to the age I am turning that year. So last year, after my birthday dinner, I went in my room and dug up my list of 19 things to do at 19. I did a fair amount of them, including

-kiss a stranger on top of the Eiffel Tower

-decide on a career I want to pursue for the rest of my life

-go skydiving

-go on a roadtrip (every year, I know, I know)

-travel the world

-take a picture like Princess Di's in front of the Taj

...and a few others. So this year, I decided to share with those of you who still read this old blog my list for 20. I could explain, but it would take to long, so just know most of them have a pretty solid reason behind them.

Twenty things at 20:

1. Do a backflip on a trampoline

2. Learn to ice skate

3. New York trip wif friendsss

4. Have more money than at 20

5. Have a real job. 50 hours a week.

6. Live somewhere other than Utah/Arizona

7. Go to the temple EVERY MONTH

8. Run five miles

9. Vote!

10. Sneak into a club

11. Shower under a waterfall (with herbal essences)

12. Read Jesus, The Christ

13. Bungee Jump

14. Learn Spanish better

15. Find a worthy cause and volunteer at least 20 hours

16. Get a pet

17. Interview with the big 3 for internships. All of them.

18. Get scuba certified

19. Camping trip

20. Again – don’t grow up and get scared of doing new things

Jury Duty.

This week has been quite exciting. For starters, I'm back in ARIZONAAAA! That's always a plus. Great to be home in the 70 degree weather. Also, I love being productive. And I've been KINDA productive lately.

...This post could be about a lot of things. For one, it could be about irony and symmetry. It could be about being excited, for snowboarding season (NEXT WEEK!), Christmas, and March 7th. It could be about spending the night in a police station (coming soon). However, I think I'll dedicate this post to...

(drumroll, please)

JURY DUTY!

Yeah. Jury Duty. Remember how I had that in August? Well, I do. And I never got to blog about it.

See, it was just so boring, I had to document it. Via picture taking on my iPhone. Well, they don't really like it when you take pictures in a city building/court room... So I had to be sneaky about it.

Also, the whole time I was snapping pictures, there was a wonderful 50 year old Mexican man staring over my shoulder. I hope I entertained him as much as I did myself.

When I got there, they made us stand in a line... For a while...

They then gave us some paper work to fill out...

I took a seat in the back so as to spy on people. Naturally.

...Then a lovely judge-man came in to give a very theatrical speech on doing our civic duty and such...

They lined us all up... And marched us into the courtroom.

(This was where I had to be really sneaky) They presented the case to us (reckless driving), then we stood up and told them a bit about us to see if we'd get picked. ...Slightly dramatic.

They then marched us back into the first room:

More Waiting. And then, judge-man came back to announce they had settled and the guy took a plea bargain.

The end of jury duty.

A solid waste of 3 hours of my life, just like you wasted 3 minutes reading this. Congrats.

Haha jk. But that's jury duty for you.

End of Summer

Hiii Friends.

So I have been terrible at blogging lately. Terrible! Possibly because I am very rarely on the computer anymore. I have the greatest phone on earth (iPhone, duh) and therefore just spend any time that was formerly spent on the computer on my pinterest/twitter apps. Seriously, its wonderful.

Today I am blogging because I have this white board above my bed on which I write my To-Do list. And blogging has been on it literally since I moved back up to Utah. AKA, September? Its fine, whats two months? Anyway. One, lets just share a little bit about the end of my summer.

I hadn't even been home for a week when Natalie (left) convinced me to go to California with her and Marky Mark. It took a while (all of about two minutes) but she convinced me. Haha. The trip was an absolute blast!

Balboa Island!

...On our way to Hollywood

Until, about 5 seconds after taking this picture in Hollywood, I realized my phone was gone. Yup. My phone got stolen in Hollywood. Remember (above mentioned) how I LOVE my phone? It was rough. I borrowed Nat's iPhone and logged into the FindMyiPhone app, and lo and behold, there was my phone, driving down the 405 about half an hour away. That was depressing. But as a whole, the trip was a success.

The rest of summer was more or less just chilling with people who I LOVE. Like these lovely ladies

And adventures to cool places, like Fossil Springs

With all of our frenzz.

At first we were really excited...

Until we realized that the hike was death. And all ran out of water. That kinda blew. A lot.

Tacy and I.

Overall, that was fun.

And lots of fun lake trips. (by lots, I mean one. Two days before heading back to BYU.)

Overall, Summer in AZ was a blast, albeit disjointed a little. Peacing for a month in the middle of summer was weird, but so worth it.

The Last Supper, before everyone left at the end of summer.

Stay tuned for more blog posts... Like Jury Duty in AZ. I was bored out of my mind, so I decided to photo-document my experience. Only you're not supposed to take pictures at Jury Duty. It was pretty fun. I hope you all enjoy that one.

(P.S., it snowed in Provo today. Happy Winter everyone! Daylight savings is over and the slopes open three weeks from yesterday. Party hard.)

Indiaaaa.

Final Post from Study Abroad... Indiaaa!

So we got into the Delhi airport at about 2:30 AM. Hence why there will be no pictures, we were all dead. Like walking zombies. Its fine. We got onto our tour bus and met our tour guide, Raaj... More about him later. Went to the hotel, and had to have our bags x-rayed by security before they let us in (this was a few days after the attacks in Mumbai). By the time we crawled into bed, it was about 5AM. We had to leave for church at 8... That was no fun. But church was amazing. The people there were so humble & amazing. They were so happy to have us there, it was awesome. Then Raaj took us to some cool places:

Like the first Islamic Structure in India...

A structure similar to the Arc De Triumph in Paris to celebrate victory in a war...

And we made some friends with the locals. Karly and David in the back were taking a picture of a group of us, and we got swarmmmmeedddd by these guys wanting to take our picture. I love the creepy guy in blue.

The branch president invited us over that night for a youth fireside... and it was awesome. Afterwards we stayed for a while talking to the members from India. Possibly my favorite country to go to church in the entire trip. The people were all so kind and open. Here's our fireside with the branch:

... Next day! We got up super early and had a 5 hour bus ride to Agra... Which was possibly my favorite day from the trip. We got to go to the Taj Mahal, which I knew I would love, but I didn't realize how much I would love it. It was amazing. And I got the picture like the one I said I wanted forever ago in my blog post here.

Can I just say how difficult it was to get this picture? You can't see because Emily is an excellent photographer, but this bench had about a billion people around it, and when we walked up they all tried to take pictures with us (because we were American?) It took like ten minutes and literal shoving to get this pic, but totally worth it.

Then we went to the Red Fort, which had a pretty tight view of the Taj...

Me sitting on the throne there:

The next day, we drove to Jaipur... Another loooong bus ride, but worth it. That night we went to an Indian fair, complete with camel rides, dancing gypsies, henna tattoos & palm readers:

awesome head massages from weird Indian men:

And, last but not least, the most amazingggg Indian food dinner...

The last day there, the last day on the trip, was soooo sweet.

First we rode elephants: (Bucket list item, check)

We rode them up to a palace on a hill, to this gorgeous view:

Just chillin on top of the world...

And then, our group decided to have a dance party up there.

It was all in all, the most amazing experience of my life. We left, went back to a hotel to clean up, had dinner, then headed to the airport. The end was so bittersweet, but we had a 15 hour plane ride to say bye. I'll always remember these amazing kids - I've been able to see a lot of them on campus, so that's been cool. The trip as a whole is still unreal, like a dream. Did that really happen? Oh yeah, I spent my summer in New York, France, Switzerland, Italy, China and India. And it was amazing.

China

I just wanna get these done and get back to normal posts.

So China.

Our flight landed around 2PM, we went back to the hotel (which was freaking nice!) and showered and stuff. Then our tour guide took us to an acrobatics show... It was INSANE. Don't believe me? Here are some pics from it:

In case the picture is unclear, they are holding themselves upside down with only their mouths. Ouch?

Afterwards with one of the performers.

The show ended, and we headed back to the hotel, then wandered around looking for a restaurant. Our first dinner in China was sooo good. In all honesty, I have no idea what I ate, but it was delicious. And cheap! A nice, sit down dinner costed about $6 a person. I might have had a little trouble with the chopsticks... So without saying anything, the waitress came over, bowed, and placed this in front of me on the table:

A fork on a plate.

Yes, I am that obviously American. I am very okay with it.

The next day we had our business meeting with Deloitte. Kinda a big deal, its fine.

Our group in business professional at Deloitte.

After that, we went to Tienanmen Square. Where we got ATTACKED.

...By asians. Wanting pictures.

In all honesty, there was a line of people who wanted pictures with Tim, Alyse and I (Probably because we're all tall and white) and they would take a picture and then move and the next people would jump in. It was like we were famous.

After that we went to the Silk Market - What we did every night in China.

Everything was way cheap there, so we bought a tonnnn of stuff. Like green laser pens that point up to a mile away (so tight)

And fake beats headphones! $6 for the in-ear ones. Way tight.

We got sick of haggling, so we stopped for dinner downstairs... Surprise surprise, we get there and there's no prices on the menu. I just gave up and paid the second price I got from them ($3) because I was so sick of arguing! It was delicious though. Sweet and Sour chicken in China = AMAZING

There were 5 of us, so we bribed the taxi driver (about $1.50 each... I can't even explain how cheap stuff is there) to let us squish in the back on the way home.

The next day was more of the same. Business visit, followed by the Forbidden City - which should have been cool, but it was wayyy too hot and humid to enjoy it at all. These faces pretty much sum up my experience there -

I swear that's probably not a bad word coming out of my mouth. It was reeeallly hot that day.

Our racist picture... We're all Asian, can you tell?

With our tour guide.

This was the last day, at the summer palace. Obviously the story behind it is secret (hence the shh)

But that is China, in a nutshell.

Venice, Italy

Typing this up real fast, while listening to some Mae. I don't really want to take the time to blog this right now, but I'm so far behind. So this was Venice, Italy:

Venice was a dream. So much so, it deserves its own post. Plus the Italy one was getting really long.

We took a ferry there, and everyone was way excited. The canals ran all through the city, it was unreal. Right when we got there, Jilli, Michael and I took this picture:

Well, we were at the back of the group as it was, and this picture made us kinda late. So Jilli sprinted ahead, but Michael and I were not paying attention... As a result, we got lost from everyone else.

...All....Day.

But Michael and I had so much fun by ourselves! We did the typical Venice-y things.

Bought Venecian masks,

saw St. Mark's Basilica,

and rode a gondola.

I'm pretty sure everyone thought we were dating because it was just us two... It's fine.

Venice was so beautiful, it was unreal.Riding the gondola through the streets was a dream - literally. I can now cross that off my bucket list. It was definitely everything I thought it would be.

At first when we got separated, I was kind of disappointed I wouldn't get to be with everyone, but it was a nice break from the norm. And we definitely had fun.

All in all, it was the perfect day - but, also very touristy, and expensive. Which is fine, it was more than worth it, but not somewhere I could spend more than a day or two at a time. Italy was a dream because that's what the Italians want it to be - they keep it so perfect, so charming for the tourists, but living there is something I could probably never do. Thanks, Italy! Chao!