southern summer sun

right now i want this place and this song.

i'm needing an arizona summer day.  no worries.  no decisions.  no sticky situations.  no shortcomings.  no doubts.  nothing more than figuring out how to get myself to this riverbank to catch myself a tan.

jazz

two wednesdays ago i made eye contact with paul milsap 4 times as he was warming up to lose to the golden state warriors.  play this to know exactly how i felt:

mz and i have a pre-game ritual where we head right through the doors of portal b and get ourselves as close to the court as is humanly possible to watch our players play.  and this time #24 sat up and took some notice.  as he was practicing his free-throws, something, or should i say someone, in the stands tickled his fancy because he looked up at it/her THREE MORE TIMES!  and whatever/whomever it was was located right were meg and i were sitting.  in my heart of hearts, i believe he was looking at me.  

obviously, this was my expression for the rest of the night:

meg and i have never liked the same boy, but we always seem to like boys that share similar qualities like remarkable height, dancing abilities, or un-readibility.  we've started to refer to this phenomenon as "squares" because the four of us (meg and me + our loves) make a square.  each pair of boys has their own square title, for example: square dance, madison square garden, the rubik's cube, k2-squared, etc, etc, etc.  we also have a jazz square: meg + cj (miles, of course) and me + paul (millsap, which goes without saying).  and although they lost the game, they won our hearts, which is certainly the more worthy conquest.  i'm sure they would agree.

raja bell and ronnie price were steaming up the bench in some seriously stylish suits and huge diamond studs that were most definitely real.  so, we made up a new square for them too: the red cross (square?).  well, the name's lame, but the boys aren't.

i guess what i'm really trying to say is, who is d-will anyway?  no one.  just some weird guy with some weird sideburns.  and we don't need him.  we'll be totally fine without him.  and without sloan.  and i don't blame d-will for sloan's resignation either.  the jazz is bigger than deron michael williams.  and we'll go on because we still have players like millsap.

parting shot:

this is how i've been feeling lately:

not so much about not marrying gaston.  luckily i don't know him.  more the bit about wanting adventure in the great-wide somewhere.

it was only a matter of time

before bieber fever infected my blog.  i will keep this ode short, possibly because my emotions on this particular subject run so high, and partially because i could never tell justin's story better than "Never Say Never".  and that is not a joke.

mz, af, and i joined millions of 12 year old girls on valentine's day and went and saw our one true love on the silver screen.  if i ever had doubts that j biebs was wonderful, his movie silenced them for me forever.

the kid's a gem.  i can hear you scoffing, possibly gagging, but watch this:

if i had a teenaged daughter, i'd force her to love this boy.  he's got good hair, marginal music, and great heart.  sure, there are an unnerving amount of, shall we say, butch-ier women out there uncannily resembling him, but that is really a commentary on their fashion choices and not his.  and in a world with some truly serious problems and music that is more than happy to herald them, it is soooooooo refreshing to hear about a boy who just wants to make it so there's One Less Lonely Girl.

all i know is i've had some hard times this year and justin was always there to soothe my troubled heart.

where, oh where

i need to go somewhere where there are trains prevailing.  that counts most of the 50 states right out.  this train-call comes to me ever year, right around this time.  it makes me feel restless for the "other", the "abroad", those things that can only be seen when you're in your twenties, strapped to backpack, wending your (probably unwashed) way through foreign lands.  every time i have felt this call it has hummed the same words to me, "to europe, to europe, to europe, to europe," as steadfast and chugging as a steam engine.  but this year, the engine's whistling a different tune.  and i think i know the reason.

i'm in love, i'm in love, and i don't care who knows it!  but not with a boy.  oh no.  with my job.  i have found the best secret that provo, utah has to offer.  the diversity that the whole town lacks seems to be hiding on the corner of university and university at the ELC.  and everyday, i get to be a part of it.  as a white, american girl, it is a very novel thing to be a minority anywhere in utah, but at the ELC i am.  it's wonderful.  each day i am confronted with 10, 12, 15, 20 different cultures that i have to teach to and find my own place within.  my students have witnessed things i have only ever heard about.  and the more i hear about these things and these places, the more i want to go.  and so, my train-call is torn.

i want to go to 3 distinct places:

1) EUROPE- it is so, so very hard to go wrong when visiting europe.

endless destinations

prime beachfront property

myths and legends

near death experiences

haute cuisine

fashion

trains, trains, trains

soccer...

 this is obviously just the smallest smattering of what europe has to offer.  and what a convincing smattering it is.  however, it is not enough to still my wandering heart...

2) for the bear grylls in me (and to see gretchen-gretch and justin-just) SKAGWAY, ALASKA- alaska does happen to be one of the few states where trains do still prevail, at least in some locales, skagway included.  

the hustle and bustle 

my worst nightmare

taking-your-life-into-your-own-hands hikes

idyllic, old-timey feelings

death-defying trains

my gretch

i haven't even touched on the journey it would take to get there and the music that that would surely include.  so, skagway certainly does have it's own allure.


and, finally, the most tempting, inviting, attractive, enchanting, seductive, appealing option of all, 3) SOUTH AMERICA- this is where working at the ELC comes in.  with a healthy dose of latin students, gaining some southern exposure has never been more apropos.

a million, billion flags

death-defying trains in the tropics

friendly people

CARNIVAL!

hardcore soccer

rock-solid men

extremely pointy mountains

waterfalls jon schmidt never dared to dream about

beaches from top to bottom and back again

in all seriousness, south america seems absolutely amazing and is nothing like anything i have ever seen or done before.

so, i have a rather tough decision to make.  which place do i visit?  which set of pictures do i personalize and make my own?  i am in my twenties.  i have a backpack to strap on.  and i am more than happy to wend my grimy way through the great unknown.  BUT WHICH GREAT UNKNOWN SHALL IT BE?!  i don't know.  but what i do know is that i have this song playing in my head an awful lot...

now, i'm not saying that that's a sign or anything, but i'm not saying it's not either.

ps- making a photo-montage interesting on a blogger blog is virtually impossible.  bad form, .blogspot.com.