chaaaaaanges...

i'm flying to the provo mtc.

TOMORROW!

so i have to get packed
climb spencer's butte one last time
watch glee
get ice cream at prince puckler's
eat the most delicious salmon dinner eeeeever.
get set apart
say goodbye to mother, father, rachel, and ellie
say hello and then goodbye to jess and cami and grandma and grandpa
and try to find a couple of friends who are still in the mtc...
oh yeah and packed. that's worth saying twice.
and i'm blogging about it?

and had another senior photo shoot with rachel today...yeeeeah.

ps as soon as my visa comes i'm out of the provo mtc and on my way to the preston one.

love all of you so much! i'll see you in 18 months!

after weeks of saying goodbyes

i'm getting closer to saying my last goodbye for a while

except for i emailed my travel person at church headquarters and she said my visa hasn't been issued yet. sooooo...awesome. starting to wonder what's going to happen to me.

there are a few possibilities:

a. i'll get my visa magically on wednesday and go to the preston mtc on thursday as planned.

b. i'll be sent to the provo mtc for a week or maybe all three weeks.
i. they'll call tomorrow and tell me i have a flight on wednesday instead of thursday. awesome.

c. they'll make me wait another week in which case i will go to salt lake for conference with my family.

d. as a loyal friend promised me, i'll be reassigned to boise. gooooooooood.

in the meantime i am shopping for suitcases and my mother is letting down the hem of skirts and rachel and i are planning how we can fit all of our favorite cafes into the meals of my last couple of days. my dad and i are going golfing today, ellie and i are going for one of our last runs together, it is finally sunny outside so i'll probably lay out by the pool while i read preach my gospel. and every night is squeeze-as-many-movies-as-possible-before-they-are-forbidden night. so far it has been: bright star (about john keats. veeery good.), robin hood, coco before chanel (i keep thinking about this one. SO GOOD. actress from amelie...so enough said), and casablanca. i'mma miss all this.

my favorites of rachel's senior picture shoot yesterday:

my fave:

one more thing, my mother has offered to post my weekly emails, or at least parts of them on my blog. maybe even pictures...is that of interest to anyone?

pretty farewell party. pasties, tea, roses, pretty linens and macarons.

thanks family for a fun weekend! yaaaay.

airport: the means of uniting them

eh... or us? i don't know.

first thing's first. apparently from the evidence below, i'm the only one who thinks i'm funny. no surprises there. thanks for the courtesy laughs, family.

2nd, my mother looks like her sister vicki when she wears these glasses:

aaannnd, kind of important, my sister cami came home from an 18th month mission in finland. we came prepared to make cami's entry as triumphal as elder kessler's (if you haven't seen saturday's warrior, curse thee) by making a banner she could run through!

please note jess' face. and if you already have, note it again.

happy happy reunions:

please notice here that every person is smiling while they watch cami hugging rachel. which is so awesome! but even MORE awesome is that no one in my family or the friends that came to greet cami on thursday know who that short, dark-haired woman is. second to the right. but she's just as excited. Boom!

one more thing: cami kept staring at jess, rachel and me because we were being just a LITTLE bit loud and giggly because we were so excited. apparently finnish people don't act anywhere close to as loud as we did unless they are drunk. sometimes i love that about the u.s.. and usually it's always.

i only wish lauren could have been here. but we can only look forward to reunions next weekend. dee dee dee!!!

also! thanks hemsleys and lymans for the pics!

goodbye beautiful clothes,

hello frumpy sister missionary.

You're welcome, jess and rach for good clothes.

also, found this when i googled "sister missionary lds"

hahahahahahahaha

i'm so excited.

on sunday i remembered:

this place in paris:

which sells these:

has a location here:

in london.

best. news. of my life.

eight days after the day i really thought it would come...

i was very surprised when i opened my call on thursday night because i was called back here:

to the england london mission! i still can hardly believe it.

here is the uk:

 

according to this breakdown of the island, england london mission is mostly east anglia, and then the southeast part of the southeast region, plus london. i just read some things about it and apparently it's mostly rural (surprise), is flat, and is essentially a huge bog! yay. my middle school was built over a bog.

this is kind of the only region that i have not really been to at all--the east anglia part, so that's cool.

 

honestly, i was pretty surprised that i was called to go somewhere that's been kind of the focus of my studies for my college life. i was expecting anything that would be
random, that i had no connection with, like most people who open their mission calls. but, this is so good too.

so. back to western europe for the fall?

freaking out.

the sisters as missionaries!
jess in malaysia; cami in finland; lauren in poland

i didn't understand how nerve-racking it is to wait for a mission call until it was me. my spring term has suddenly been surprisingly low-key, and as a result, i have nothing to keep me distracted from thinking about my call day and night. on monday night i sat on my couch with my guitar because i seriously couldn't figure out what to do with myself and i was freaking out.

solution: yesterday i rode my little bike to the glass store, bought some glass, rode myself to the stained glass building and drew out a new pattern and cut up most of my pieces while i listened to harry potter or talked to my mom or rachel. for seven hours.

i need complete focus or i will go crazy.