So, being back in Utah allowed for some fun little visits with a random smattering of friends.
Of course Emily and Allen count, and I was able to spend a lot of time with them including visiting their respective families who live around the corner from them. The thing that I found funny was that they literally lived within a quarter of a mile from both of their parents’ houses and they always drove in their car to visit them. I’ve become such a New Yorker willing to walk everywhere ☺ We had a fun time playing “the bean game” on several occasions, and they always offered me food for lunches and they cooked me dinner all the time. They even let me borrow the car a few times to do some things or visit friends ☺ They’ve been great hosts!
I also got to visit with my friend Deborah Ann. We first took a fun little walk by Provo's little creek. I remember that the last time I came it was dried up in many places because there was a drought. In the past few weeks before coming to Provo it had rained nearly every day, so the creek looked like a river. Here are a few shots of the waterfall
We met another day and I cooked us some lasagna. None of you except for Deborah Ann will be able to fully understand what I am about to say, and I'm certainly not one to toot my own horn, but it was literally THE BEST lasagna I have eaten in my life. I ate many a delicious lasagna cooked by short, pudgy pasta mammas IN Italy, but I kid you not when I say it was amazing. Imagine, if you will, that you're emaciated and stranded in a desert with nothing but sun, sky and sand in sight! You're parched because you are so thirsty and dry. Your skin is scorched and tender to the touch. You know if you don't get something to drink soon you will die, when suddenly there in front of you is the most amazing little oasis in the desert. You're certain it is a mirage, but you approach it anyway because you know you have nothing to lose. When you arrive at the flowing water, you instantly take a sip of the most refreshing and life-saving water you have ever sipped in your life. That is what it was like eating this lasagna. No exaggeration!
I went to Steve (my older brother) and Alicia's (his wife) and had dinner with my nieces (I have 3: Hannah, Ruby, and Katy). The best part of the night was being their jungle gym after dessert. They climbed all over me. Check out the awesome pictures we took together.
If you’ll notice their mouths are a little dirty. That’s because we were eating otter pops. I think my siblings and I used to have 10 a day when I was younger. We used to keep them in our extra freezer out in the garage and we’d sneak one after another. I saw history repeat itself as my 3 nieces and I went back not for just a second otter pop, but a third. Apparently, my youngest niece, Katy is also a movies star. She did a fairly large role in a film short that was shown at the Sundance film festival this past year, so we watched that as well. I’m very excited that they’ll be moving back to Alabama (where the rest of my family lives now), so I’ll be able to hang out with them again over Christmas holidays.
So, as for class, I’ve been having a really great time. We meet every day in the morning and again in the afternoon for our pedagogy and culture classes, and then 3 times a week for 45 minutes of our lunch break for our French conversation class. The pedagogy and culture class are two separate classes, though they’ve been treated as one and the same because we’re here to learn how to integrate teaching culture along with the language. So, here’s the plan. We’re going to take pictures and collect random cultural artifacts while we’re in France in order to show the cultural differences and similarities among the Americans and the French. Our final project will include several different lesson plans including the pictures and/or artifacts that we’ve taken and collected for those particular lessons. For example, I plan to take lots of pictures of clothing stores and how they function in order to create my own clothing store in the classroom so that I can teach students how to buy clothes. I will also take several pictures of random people in France and what they are wearing so as to show them to students using the pictures to teach clothing vocabulary, and so on.
So, now that you’re completely bored by the reasons I’m actually going to France, I am totally excited about it. In fact, I’ll be taking all kinds of random pictures in NYC to use for comparing and contrasting the different countries. I’ll even be spending several days in Italy to collect artifacts and take pictures there as well! ☺
My favorite part about being in Provo though was being able to see all the beautiful landscape that exists there. I was able to go hiking in several places and just enjoy nature. In NYC, Central Park gives me a nature fix, but nothing like Provo did. It was pretty awesome...check out the pics
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