Christmas card? Er sumpin...

It occurs to me that I guess I'm old enough to where I can start sending out that Christmas card that gives the run-down of my past year. So along with that idea, I'll try to give some of my shpiel, despite the fact that I missed Christmas by two months.

2008 saw some great times. I spent the first four months of the year at BYU, in my third-to-last semester. Many of my classmates were actually in the last semester, and we were all working on our senior projects, which were 5000 word translations. (That was a step up from the usually 200-ish word translations that we were accustomed to doing.) I actually really enjoyed my project, and I translated the first two chapters of a manual of Hispanic phonetics, written by a professor who teaches here at BYU. I chose that book because I had taken a few linguistics classes by that point, and had declared a minor in Linguistics. I had also recently declared a minor in Music, but that doesn't have much to do with the present story. So, I turned out enjoying my project quite a bit. That semester, I also spent a good amount of time preparing for my upcoming trip to Peru. I had two prep classes in swing beginning the second half of the semester, one being a more general cultural-awareness prep class and the other being a more specific class in which we studied public health topics in preparation for our internship.

For you see, the internship that I had secured the previous November and December was a public health internship. It was an internship program run through the Kennedy Center, BYU's Center for International Studies. And if I may insert my opinion, its a pretty great center, as evidenced by BYU's numerous study abroad programs, internship programs, and field study programs. As many know, the original plan was to go to Bolivia. And in fact, of our small group of 12, 8 did go to Bolivia. The other 4 of us, including our field supervisor Cam Nelson, chose to do our internships with Freedom from Hunger, a non-profit organization who sent us to Peru to work with some of their partners down there. And that was what took up my time from May 12 to August 13. Anyone interested in details can, of course, go back and read previous entries in this very blog. Which you probably know, since if you're reading this, you probably read those entries.

I came back in August, and immediately picked my job back up with Wells Fargo Bank, for whom I had worked from April 2007 to May 2008. I was very fortunate to get my job back there, and it was great to jump right back in and start working for a few weeks before school started. I also spent time finding a new place to live in Provo, and chose it along with Matt Manwaring a good friend and roommate.

When school started, things didn't work out with Wells Fargo and I ended up needing to find different employment, which I found within a month with BYU, working at the Global Service Desk, which provided technical support to the Church; to leaders, employees, members, and non-members. I worked that job from the beginning of October to the last day of the year, and it was an interesting and beneficial experience. I won't say it was my favorite job ever...but it was suitable and again, beneficial to me.

More importantly, I continued my studies in my penultimate semester at BYU, and enjoyed a Historical-Comparative Linguistics class, a Spanish Literature class, a Statistics class, an intro class to Communication Disorders, a Church History class especially, and also a new semester in Men's Chorus. Along with work, this semester turned out to be a pretty busy one. The Linguistics class and the Spanish class obviously were for my major (oh, and I also took a government Oral Proficiency Exam in Spanish and scored an Advanced High, next only to Superior. I was pleased, and also recognize places for improvement), while the statistics class and ComD class were in preparation for doing a Master's Degree in Speech Pathology. More about that in the next post, I think. My Church History class was fantastically interesting, and I felt my testimony in Joseph Smith and the Church grow immensely. I gained a much deeper appreciation of our heritage as a Church.

As for my social/dating life throughout the year, I dated a couple of girls at the beginning of the year during Winter semester, although not too seriously. I definitely thought about getting more serious, but just couldn't find it in myself to truly want that. When it came to Peru, it was close-quarters with the two girls on my team, but we were asked as part of the rules to not date - either with people in our group or with native people of the countries we went to, even members. It may seem like a controlling rule, but there was a lot of benefit to just focus on what we went to to, as well as not have to deal with any cultural issues that might've surfaced. And anyway, our team was so busy and traveled so much that we were pretty distracted with what we were doing. The last four months of my year saw a good amount of dating. I found myself interested in a lot of girls, and in a lot of circles where I could get to know new people. I think I did a good amount of dating. In fact, I found myself more interested in a girl than I have been in a long time. Unfortunately, it turned out that she had recently gotten out of a relationship that had been going for a long time. However, it was still a good experience, and it was refreshing to feel that way. I continued pursuing other interests, and getting to know lots of people.

The year ended with some good time spent with my family at Christmas and New Year's.

And the new year began, with enrollment in my last semester of undergraduate study at BYU! Actually, there was some debate going on in my head at the beginning of the semester whether I'd really graduate, or whether I might postpone, but by now I've decided to go ahead and graduate. I'll go into more detail in that in my next post. For now, I've started the last semester with two Linguistics classes, Phonology/Morphology and Syntax, an Acoustic Physics class, a Persuasive Writing class (my last general!), Men's Chorus, and another Church History class that I felt inspired to take after my excellent experience in my previous one. I opted not to work this semester because of my schedule, and because of the many things I want to accomplish as I prepare to graduate. I feel it was the correct decision, and so far my semester has been going very well.