And finally, graveyards

Without further ado:

The first set of pictures is from my mission in Uruguay. I was fascinated with the whole process of burial in Uruguay. This is from what I understand about Uruguayan burial traditions: After the funeral ceremony, a person is laid to rest in a cemetery, or more likely, an above-the-ground niche. After a few years, the body is cremated and the remains are place in an urn. It sounds a little weird compared to our culture's traditions to, in essence, dig up a body after a couple of years and cremate the remains, but in such a small country as Uruguay, it makes sense.

First, here is the tomb of Jose Artigas in Montevideo, who is like the "George Washington" of Uruguay, according to one of my companions.

These statues of Artigas are ALL OVER THE PLACE in Uruguay. There's pretty much one in every city (maybe an exaggeration, but not by much).

Under the statue is the tomb, where lies:

the remains of General Jose Artigas himself, guarded carefully

This is a Jewish cemetery in La Paz, near Montevideo, Uruguay. Unfortunately, it was always padlocked, so I was never able to go inside and look around.

Instead, we just took pictures through the bars.

This is the cemetery in Pan de Azucar. I love this statue; she's so beautiful.

This is an example of the "above-the-ground niche" where people are buried for the first few years of being... dead. I suppose more wealthy people's graves or tombs looked more like this:

These seem to be more permanent than the above-the-ground spots, so maybe if you have enough money, you can afford a permanent residence in a tomb.

There are rows and rows of urns in the cemetery. It's fascinating to walk around and see all the different urns.

And now, we will travel to a different continent to visit some graveyards in the UK:

This is Oxford. My dream is to study there one day! This little graveyard is right inside of Christ's Church college, which is the area where we spent most of our time at Oxford. Christ's Church is the old stomping ground of Charles Dodgson (more commonly known as Lewis Carroll, author of the Alice books).

This, my friends (you can't read it unless you zoom very closely) is the tombstone of Thomas Riddell in Edinburgh, Scotland. This awesome little graveyard is right by the Elephant House, which is a little cafe where JK Rowling supposedly started writing Harry Potter on a napkin. She is said to have walked through this graveyard getting ideas for names in her books. Looking through the graveyard, we not only found this grave, but also Mooney, Black, and McGonagall. Pretty neat!

This, if you notice, is not a graveyard. This is Winchester Cathedral, where Jane Austen herself was laid to rest.

There you go.

Glastonbury Abbey is the fabled burial site of Arthur and Guinevere (for awesome pictures of Glastonbury, see this blog)

This little graveyard in Bemerton, which was George Herbert's rectory.

Bemerton, again.

Stoke Poges, the graveyard that inspired Thomas Grey's poem "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard."

Stoke Poges, again.

This is the Bronte Parsonage in Haworth. Amaaaaaazing! I loved their little parsonage, and as I have mentioned before, I can definitely understand where Charlotte and Emily Bronte were coming from writing their creepy Gothic novels. Loved Haworth, love the moors, love them.

Love, love, love.

Quite good, quite good

Some days are poetry days. Lyric days.

...These are my knees
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,
Nevertheless, I am the same, identical women.
The first time it happened
I was ten.
It was an accident.
The second time I meant
To last it out
and not come back at all.
I rocked shut
As a seashell.
They had to call
and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.
Dying is an art,
like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well...

Sylvia Plath, from Lady Lazarus

I love Sylvia Plath. I mean, really, "dying is an art; I do it exceptionally well": is there any way that you can really not recognize the genius? I read The Bell Jar, her autobiographical novel, and then followed it up with her biography. Her life was sad, not necessarily because of anything physical or tangible, but because of depression. Sometimes the turmoil of the mind is worse than any outer influence. Her life was tragic, but she left a legacy of fascinating poetry.

Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes! how curious you are to me!

On the ferry-boats, the hundreds and hundreds that cross, returning home, are more curious to me than you suppose.

And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence, are more to me, and more to my meditations, than you might suppose.

Walt Whitman, from Crossing Brooklyn Ferry

Of course, poetry from a man that looks like a scraggly Santa Clause is always fun.

Sometimes I ask to sneak a closer look

Skip to the final chapter chapter of the book

And then maybe steer us clear from some of the pain it took

To get us where we are this far

But the question drowns in its futility

And even I have got to laugh at me

No one gets to miss the storm of what will be

Just holding on for the ride

The wood is tired and the wood is old

We'll make it fine if the weather holds

But if the weather holds we'll have missed the point

That's where I need to go.

Emily Saliers of the Indigo Girls, from The Wood Song

Of course it's better with music. But I'm always impressed with the Indigo Girls' lyrics; go Emily Saliers and Amy Ray!

Anyway, I'll spare you from poetry I've written; I have only written a few poems, and they are all pretty bad. I definitely have room for improvement on that! But that's what the Creative Writing MFA is all about--I really can't wait to start! I'm excited and scared and anxious, especially to be teaching a class. That's definitely an intimidating venture, but I think I'll love it once I get past the nerves. Less than two months to go!

bug-bitten and wind-blown

This week, I had my first-ever experience as a girls' camp leader. To be specific, I was the girls' camp cook.

And let me tell you (if I do say so myself), the food was pretty darn good. Let me give you a few examples:

• Banana boats: basically, to make banana boats, you take a banana (still in the peel) and slice it from top to bottom so you can open it up inside the peel. Then, you stuff the banana full of chocolate chips, marshmallows, toffee bits (with are excellent), coconut, etc., and when you are satisfied that nothing else could possibly fit, you close it up as possible, wrap it in tin foil, and place it directly on hot coals. Then after a few minutes, the chocolate and marshmallow get melted and gooey and delicious. It's basically amazing.



• Chicken teriyaki: another tin foil creation. We precooked the chicken so it would take less time, but you could definitely cook the chicken inside the foil. You take the chicken pieces with bell peppers, onions and teriyaki sauce, wrap it all up in foil, cook on coals, and serve over rice. I was apprehensive about it because I'd never tried cooking it before, but it was a big success.

Who says you can't have fabulous food at girls' camp?


There were also a few things I learned while I was at camp:

• No matter how big and fancy a tent, it is still subject to the weather. One of our tents was destroyed in the wind (unfortunatly, it belonged to one of the camp leaders and not to the church). The tent poles literally snapped in half. It was pretty intense; we were happy that it wasn't while anyone was inside.



• Gnats are really really REALLY annoying. Everyone probably agrees with me, but try to amplify a normal annoyance of gnats by six, and you would understand how our camp felt at the swarms of gnats we had to deal with. For some reason, I was immune to mosquitos, but my poor sister Hailey and her friend Maren were absolutely chewed to bits by both mosquitos and gnats. Hailey has been trying everything under the sun to get rid of the unceasing itchiness, from banana peels to hand sanitizer. Pobrecita.



• I can fit 44 of the small straight pretzels in my mouth in two minutes. We were playing a game with different types of challenges, from tying ties (which is hard for girls), to eating things like sardines and pretzels. I tried chewing at first, but after the first minute I was just shoving them into all the empty spaces. Right when the two minutes were up (I won!), I ran straight to the garbage can to spit them out; I don't think I'll be able to look at another pretzel for a long time. Oh, the things we do for the sake of competition.

Because we were camping by a reservoir, we took advantage of access to canoes, paddle boats, and my personal favorite, 2 or 3 person sailboats. After getting the hang of it, I pretty much rocked my sailboat.

I enjoyed being at girls' camp as a leader more than I expected to. Despite being plagued by gnats and wind, it was still a great experience.

A few noteworthy things

I've had some internet/blogging issues lately (lame), so I haven't posted in a couple weeks. I spent time creating a lovely post featuring cemeteries I've been to, but thanks to blogger, I lost the whole post. So, I was bitter against blogger and didn't try again for a week. THEN, we had a little power outage which for some reason knocked out our internet; we got the internet going on the house computers, but my laptop is still not recognizing the network. Fabulous.


Normally, it wouldn't be a problem, and I'd just post on another computer, but I really wanted to post some pictures.


I am resigned. As soon as I get the internet working on my laptop, I will post pictures of:

*graveyards. yep, you're excited.


*my midweek trip to Zion National Park. I went with my sisters Mindy and Hailey, and we decided to run up and hike Angels Landing (Hailey had never hiked all the way up before). It's a tough hike, but the view is worth every ounce of sweat. I'm excited to post pictures. As a side note, the chipmunks and squirrels at the very top are CRAZY. Apparently people ignore the "don't feed the wildlife" signs, because obviously they depend on humans for trail mix and granola bars, and they definitely let you know that they're hungry. Another side note: on the way back, we stopped at Cafe Soleil for lunch (excelente) and a little chocolate factory for dessert (I wish I could remember the name: it was sensational). If you're visiting Zions, there are a ton of eclectic cafes in Springdale; I have only tried a couple, but would love to try them all.


*my nephew's baptism. Well, not the actual baptism, of course, but we pictures of him with his cute tie. It was great! I hadn't been to a baptism since my mission (two years ago!), so I pretty much cried through half of it. I had to play my violin for a musical number before the confirmation, and that was scary, because I hadn't picked up my violin in several months. Good thing I had my Hailey to cover up my scary out-of-tuneness, because she plays the piano like a pro. Along with a few other things, I have a goal to pick up my violin and play more this summer before I start grad school and have no time.


Anyway, check back for pictures. I promise to post them!


Oh, and one more thing: The city of Ivins is repaving all the roads and putting curb and gutter in, and I am so annoyed with whoever they hired to do the job. They tore up our road about a month ago, and so far the only progress we've seen is a curb. No sidewalks, and no pavement. Just a dirt road that is going to be the death of my car.


Besides, I like Ivins better without sidewalks. Don't ask me why.

Jane Eyre, and why I spent 2 hours at Barnes and Noble

This past weekend my sister Hailey and I really wanted to see Pirates 4. We were going to go Thursday for the midnight showing, but I was sick on Wednesday and by the time I decided I was feeling well enough to go, it was already sold out. So we decided to go on Saturday, because Friday there was a girls' camp 4th/5th year hike and overnighter that we were both going on.(I'm a camp leader--camp cook, yo!) Anyway, so Saturday was the night. But when we got there (we even arrived early) it was sold out. Boo. However, I remember that I hadn't seen the new Jane Eyre movie, so we got tickets for that. We got the tickets at about 7 45, and the show wasn't starting for another 2 hours, so we had two options:

1. go home (20 minutes away), or

2. go to Barnes and Noble (just around the corner)

We decided to play around at Barnes and Noble. First, we sat down in the middle of the "bargain books" aisle and started looking at all sorts of random books, like Warrior Women in History and The 50 Greatest Lies in History (which Hailey promptly put back on the shelf after we read that they thought the Founding Fathers were power-hungry and not motivated by moral conviction. Not a good thing to say to Hailey.) We looked at their JRR Tolkien books, including a beautifully illustrated copy of The Hobbit. We then found an optical illusion book, and sat down on a couch and entertained ourselves with it for awhile. Luckily, there's a mini Starbucks inside Barnes and Noble, so we got Starbucks smoothies (which are, by the way, way better than I expected).

And that about did it. We headed back to the movie theater and got ready to see the newest movie version of my favorite book. Here's the verdict:

I loved it. Granted, I'm generally not hard to please, but I am picky with my Jane Eyre movies, because they never seem to get the character of Mr Rochester right. I thought the casting in this movie was brilliant, even though it was hard to fully develop Jane and Mr Rochester's relationship in such a short amount of time. They did have good chemistry though. I loved the fact that this version really played into the creepy elements of the novel, because it reality it is a gothic novel, so I was glad to see the gothic elements more emphasized.

I love everything about Jane Eyre in general, so it was just exciting to see more of it. When I went to the Bronte parsonage in England, it was one of my favorite days in the world. You can really understand why Charlotte and Emily wrote gothic novels; for heaven's sake, they lived next to a graveyard! And not just a regular graveyard, either. A creepy, mossy, overgrown graveyard (well, it has been almost 200 years since they lived, but I imagine the graveyard was still creepy). Old graveyards are pretty much one of my favorite things. I should post pictures from some of my favorite graveyards (would right now, but I'm at work, so maybe tomorrow. r later today.)

Anyway, I think that's all.

the convection oven

I adore Amy Krouse Rosenthal's idea of creative nonfiction in encyclopedia format. It makes me want to document my entire life in encyclopedia format. Really, though, wouldn't that be a delightful way to journal? Every day I could write a new entry for my encyclopedia, although I don't know if I would ever try to publish it, because Rosenthal has that covered already. Does the world want two Encyclopedias of an Ordinary Life? I guess I could get to work and have an exciting life, and mine could be called Encyclopedia of an Exciting Life. For right now though, my life is not necessarily exciting to anyone but myself. So, anyway, if I decided to write encyclopedia-journals, today's entry would look something like this:

CONVECTION OVEN/MICROWAVE

Today my dad suprised my mom by having a convection oven/microwave delivered to our house. He did this because several weeks ago, I was using the microwave and noticed strange sounds and smells emitting from the appliance. When I opened it to remove whatever I was warming up, and found that the food was still cold. Strange. The microwave before that one had to be replaced shortly after, as a teenager, I decided to see what would happen if I microwaved a cd (by the way, it was very "cool"--I only put it in for 3 or 4 seconds, and it sparked inside the microwave and had a crackled design when I took it out). My family tried to blame the loss of the microwave on me, but I maintained that the microwave was old and broken anyway, so whatever I did was a mere drop in the bucket. So, considering these accusations, it was interesting to me that I was the one to discover our current microwave's brokenness. Our new contraption is both a convection oven and a microwave which is, let's face it, pretty genius. I can't wait to use it.

Bahahaha

I'm reading this book right now, and it is seriously cracking me up. Allow me to share with you a few of my favorite entries so far:

"BROKER

It is weird and unsettling that a person who is hired to handle your money, make wise decisions about it, and, ostensibly, keep you from losing it is called a broker.

BROTHER

My brother, who grew up with three sisters, was I won't say how many years old when he finally realized that he did not have to wrap the towel around his chest when he came out of the shower.

...

CALLING SOMEONE'S NAME

You're calling someone's name, trying to get their attention. Perhaps you're in a crowd. Or they are across the street. Or they went to get popcorn and Raisinets and are now looking for you in the packed movie theater. You cup your hands around your mouth and repeatedly call their name, waving your name--Here I am--but they don't hear or see you. No matter who they are--a lawyer, a surgeon, a Latin scholar--they look like an idiot searching for you, craning their head like that, and you question your intelligence."

Oh, and here's the foreword:

"I was not abused, abandoned, or locked up as a child. My parents were not alcoholics, nor were they ever divorced or dead. We did not live in poverty, or in misery, or in an exotic country. I am not a misunderstood genius, a former child celebrity, or the child of a celebrity. I am not a drug addict, sex addict, food addict, or recovered anything. If I indeed had a past life, I have no recollection of who I was.

I have no survived against all odds.

I have not lived to tell.

I have not witnessed the extraordinary.

This is my story."

So creative, so entertaining. And I'm only on letter C.

Love it. Although I kind of wish someone had edited out the profanity in the first couple of pages. Oh, contemporary literature.

something i love

rocks:

southern Utah is a fascinating geological playground; meaning, we have mountains characteristic of the rest of Utah (grey rock, covered in greenish plants) blended with more desert-like mountains (red rock, speckled with sagebrush). There is also a smattering of gnarled, sharp lava rocks from an ancient lava flow and fossils indicating that parts of this area were at one point under the sea. There are fault lines, colorful layers of sandstone, and blue clay that destroys houses. One of the reasons I am particularly attached to this area might be the geology of it. I know there are geological wonders in other areas, and I would love to live in other places, but this place is special to me for other reasons than the fact that it is my home. For example, I would love to visit places with active volcanoes, because I'm weirdly attracted to them. Here there are only ancient lava flows, but nothing (currently) active. And I've slept through the only sizeable earthquake we've had here in a couple decades. Not that I wish the devastation of natural disasters on areas that I live, but aside from the risk of death and distruction, it would be exciting to experience. Anyway.

I took a geology class a few years ago (six, maybe?) when I was attending Dixie State College, and it was one of my favorite classes. Someday, I will get a degree in geology (and history, and music, and other things).

But with a degree in creative writing, I'll just write about them, and save the degree for another life.

And in that life, I can devote myself to studying rocks. And it will be fun.

just because I wanted to

Please allow me to share with you one of the most beautiful sentences I have read in awhile:

"...time seemed to have shaken off its quotidian moorings to reveal something of of its true scale and unnerving nature."
{from the essay "Table Manners" in Chris Arthur's Words of the Grey Wind}

When I read that unbelievably beautiful sentence, I had to read it again, then stop, sigh, and thank heaven for people like Chris Arthur who blow me away with the way they have mastered the English language. Praises.

things I need:

*to refrain from online shopping while working at the Tuacahn Box office. Really, though, the moment there's a bit of down time I'm all over eBay and Amazon. I just bid on a Cath Kidston purse (it's beautiful, and I need a new purse. I swear.) I did bring a book (two, actually) so thankfully I have the option of staying offline and reading. Reading will be my protection against overspending this summer :)

*to get more sleep. I was over an hour late to work at my dad's office this morning because I slept in, and unfortunately the excuse that I have a headache and allergies doesn't always fly. (Sorry Dad!)

*to tell all of you that I got GOOD NEWS this week about the fall. I got approved to teach a freshman-level writing class at BYU while I am grad schooling. Yes, starting this fall, I will be an instructor at Brigham Young University. Heaven help my students!

*to have a vacation. I don't know if I can wait until the Seattle trip at the end of July.

*to blog more.

*to see Little Mermaid at Tuacahn. I love working in the box office (perfect summer job) because I get FREE TICKETS! They are also doing Grease this summer, which isn't my absolute favorite musical, but I will most likely see it anyway. Can't wait for June!

*to write. I haven't writted a lot lately, so I definitely need to change that. I think there should be a time for experiencing and a time for writing, although there is never a bad time to write. I think I've been in the experiencing phase for awhile, with all sorts of unexpected, sometimes unwanted, events that take some time to process. But lately I've been getting all sorts of ideas, and I need to start recording them. Like yesterday, I flopped down on my bed and, staring at my stretched out, sleeping cat, I thought what it would be like to be a cat. That would be an interesting avenue to explore. Or why the movie Ben Hurr is my favorite movie to watch on Easter. Or what it is about chocolate that makes it irresistable (besides the caffeine, people. I'm not looking for the obvious.) Or my obsession with dying my hair (I haven't dyed my hair for awhile, but believe me, it's tempting.) Anyway, lots to think about.

And that's all for now!