Hello from Belgium!

Well the day has finally arrived and I am in Belgium!! After a six and a half hour plane ride, I arrived in Brussels International Airport at 740am and have just settled down in my lovely three story loft apartment. So European :) I love it here already in the quiet city that is just oozing with history. I'm exhausted since I didn't sleep on the plane (too excited!) but have to keep going strong and make it through the day! We have a great brunch planned for us before orientation and then have the rest of the day to explore the city. I think a little run is in order to get my bearings and enjoy all that Leuven has to offer! I'm going to try and update this a lot more often and keep track of what is sure to be an amazing stay in Europe! It's going to be amazing-I've never been on a trip for this long! I'm such a grown up :) Au revoir!

Real Life Fairytale

Was anyone else as fascinated by the Royal Wedding as I was? I haven't been able to stop thinking about it for days! My mom has always been in to the celebrity gossip scene and I enjoy hearing about who's dating who and staying in the loop, but never like this. I will be the first to admit I'm obsessed. But I'm totally ok with it because they are just so adorable. Any human with a heart has to let out a sigh and a smile when they see a real-life prince and princess get into a horse-drawn carriage and happily wave as they head back to the palace.

Unlike a lot of people though, I woke up at 5am to watch the wedding live.Now in 20 years when the world looks back on the wedding and reminisces about this time in history I will be able to tell my kids that I experienced every second of it LIVE! Kind of a cool little tid bit of history that I was apart of. I wanted to experience it with the world: ohh when Kate exited the hotel and desperately try to see who made the dress, ahhh when William saw her for the first time at the alter, and giddily await the first kiss. And let me tell you it was worth it. Maybe it was early morning grogginess or overwatery tear ducts, but I literally sat on the couch with one hand over my heart, the other wiping away occasional tears, and my head slightly tilted with a blissful smile on my face. I really am my mother's daughter.

My favorite part of the whole thing was that the two just looked so darn in love! William couldn't stop putting that goofy smile on his face whenever he would look and Kate and she was positively glowing. She was one of the prettiest brides I have ever seen and represented a princess in every sense of the word. It was magical! So, it's safe to say that I truly am a royal nerd (I stayed up to watch the royal wedding special later that night and proceeded to watch highlights all the next day) but I'm alright with it. Those British folk are just awesome- the royals, harry potter, david beckham, love actually...doesn't get much better than that. Cheerio!

What is that strange ticking noise?

In my wonderful English class (wonderful and English class are words I never thought I would use together, but I'm a-changing from my old self), Books We Read Too Early, we are reading my favorite book of all time, Harry Potter! I had to write a little response towards the book, and I had so much fun with it I decided to share it with all of you. Enjoy!

There are not many places you can go in the world where the name Harry Potter is not recognized. The boy wizard has literally captivated the entire world with his epic life and magical world that he calls home. But why? What makes Harry so different than Alice? Than Tom Sawyer? Than even Frodo? While some may say it was sheer luck, I think it was a combination of masterful writing, the foundation of old classics, and a mass media age, that allowed Harry Potter to become the most successful book series of all time.

As a HUGE Harry Potter fan, I have always been a diehard supporter of J.K. Rowling and think she is one wise lady. To come up with a world as elaborate and wonderfully cohesive as she did, you must be intelligent, borderline genius, and possibly a little crazy. What separates J.K. (I use her first name because Rowling is much too serious for a person I grew up with) from other creative geniuses though is that the woman can write. She was seamlessly able to write to an audience that contains elementary-aged schoolchildren, college students, and retired grandmothers, while captivating the imaginations of them all. She completely takes away the hindrance of written words and allows readers to step into a story that is so unrealistically real. And while trying to keep up with a plotline that involves horcruxes, hippogriffs, and Puking Pastilles, J.K. seamlessly intertwines it all together with few, if any, loopholes and nuances that the most esteemed readers applaud. J.K. may be a critically acclaimed children’s author, but her writing is no child’s play.

While she is surely a literary genius, J.K. did get some help from earlier writers. Perhaps the most closely related story and series is J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, which preceded Potter by 4o years. Like the vast world of Middle Earth, the magical world of Harry Potter is indeed apart from reality (although I still secretly like to think that I am just a poor Muggle blinded to the very real wizarding world), but vast enough for it to seem real. The magical world Harry lives in involves humans that have the same bodily needs and frailties that we do, characters that feel the same emotions and deal with the same problems, and even the same broader issues of racism, bureaucracy, and corruption. Although J.K. adds wonderful creatures and enhanced abilities to the characters, readers can very much relate to the characters in the novel and buy into this fictional world. By creating a world that is more exciting and colorful than reality but still rooted in fundamental reality like Tolkien did, J.K. captured readers’ attentions and paved the way to success.

What J.K. has that Tolkien did not however, is the vast, mind blazingly fast, and global tool of the Internet. This is what separated J.K.’s series from the other amazing books that came before. While the others had excellent writing and wonderful fictional worlds, they did not have the ability to reach across the globe almost instantly with translated copies of their book for anyone who wanted to read. Not only that, they did not have the social networking available through the Internet. In the 1950s, Lord of the Ring junkies would have to call each other up to sit down and discuss the book. In today’s world, a fan can connect online instantly with fans from all over the world to discuss hidden meanings, learn new information, and share their passion for the story. There are entire fan sites, Facebook groups, blogs, and chat rooms dedicated exclusively to Harry Potter. Just now I even found a Harry Potter Wiki that helped me spell ‘puking pastille’ and contained everything you would ever want to know about the Harry Potter world.

By connecting readers and helping them to truly immerse themselves entirely in a wonderful written story, J.K. was able to find greater success than ever before seen. With the multibillion dollar movies, recent opening of a theme park, and a generation of Potter-maniacs that will surely read the series to their children, it does not look like Harry Potter is going away any time soon. The world really is bewitched by the wonderful world of Harry Potter.

No regrets, just love

I think when your body is overwhelmed with too many emotions all at once, they start to void each other; they cancel themselves out. Then you get to a place where you just don't know what to think or how to describe this emotion, because you kind of feel nothing. That's where I am right now. I still haven't come to accept that what just happened actually just happened, and this might be my main problem, but it just doesn't feel, REAL. I just went on the rockiest roller coaster of my life that involved nerves, excitement, anticipation, joy, panic, anxiety, disbelief, and then, just to end with a bang, a sucker punch of sadness. With all these feelings in my heart, my mind just couldn't take them all in, so right now I kind of just am. 

One thing you can feel in a time like this though is love. That's one feeling that can trump the rest and squeeze through when you need it most. It wasn't supposed to happen like that. It wasn't supposed to end this way. We weren't supposed to face this surprise ending. But it did and we are. And you know what, as much as it may hurt/sting/disgust/torment, I'm happy I did it. I love my life and these girls I get to share it with. No matter what the outcome of this game or season, this group of girls was special and I consider this year a HUGE success. Why? Because I came to love 15 other girls more than I ever imagined and had the best year of my life. This was a special group that knew how to have an amazing time and they will always have a special place in my heart.

So maybe it didn't end the way we planned, but it may have brought us even closer together; crying, hugging, and loving have a way of doing that. This was a special year, and one that I will never forget. 

Take me to that old familiar place
Take me to memories we won’t erase
Take me to all that we had
Good and the bad

I’ll never forget you
I’ll never let you go
I’ll never forget you
I’ll always remember, I hope you know

rambling in the good times

”Each person has inside a basic decency and goodness. If he listens to it and acts on it, he is giving a great deal of what it is the world needs most. It is not complicated but it takes courage. It takes courage for a person to listen to his own goodness and act on it.”


If you follow one rule in life, it should be to seek after goodness. Whatever shape or form it takes on, grab on to it and do your best to hold on to it. It is not naive or foolish to try and fill your mind with clean thoughts and your heart with pure feelings. By doing so you are not denying the fact that evil exists or being ignorant to it, you are simply choosing to avoid it and not let it into your body where it can spread and grow. We should daily strive to make the world a better place by spreading goodness. Spread whatever happiness or hope you have to others and try to brighten their day. You'd be surprised what a smile can do or a simple "How are you?" can do.

There is no truth in the expression "too good to be true." It is just an excuse for people to settle for something less than the best. Why, if there is something better out there, would you want to accept something bad on the sole premise that that other thing is just too good? Doesn't make much sense does it? Yet we all fall into that trap throughout our lives, and it is important we recognize it and always seek after the best. Seek after the things that uplift, the things that bring hope, the things that bring happiness, and the things that are good. Don't let things that degrade you or others enter in because you just don't deserve it! You and everyone else on this earth is meant for greatness and deserves nothing less.

Why I Believe

I've wanted to do this post for a long time because my faith and church are so close to me, and a blog about me just wouldn't be complete unless I talked about them. There are a lot of people who aren't familiar with my church or want to know why the heck I would choose to follow such a path, so hopefully this will clear some things up about the church as well as why I am a believer. Here we go.

I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, aka the Mormons. If you have continued to read after that statement and not turned away grumbling about those crazy people from Utah, I thank you for your open-mindedness and willingness to give me a shot. Whenever the topic of religion comes up a lot of people feel uncomfortable and shy away from the conversation, which I can totally understand. BUT the beauty of a blog is you can read this in the privacy of your own brain and ponder what I have to say in peace.

So what exactly do we believe? We believe in God, our Heavenly Father, and in His son Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost. We believe that they are three distinct individuals that make up the godhead and that God and Jesus Christ have bodies just like we do! They are not just spirits.

We believe that Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ know each of us - our talents, our hopes, our fears, our shortcomings, our hardships, our great worth - and loves us more than we can imagine. They want what is best for us and for us all to return to them in the next life. We can do this by living as they would want us to and doing our best to follow their teachings each and every day.

As humans, God knew we could not be perfect and would make mistakes and go against His will at times. That is why He sent Christ to the earth 2,000 years ago to live a perfect life, take upon Himself and experience all of our sins and hardships, die for us, and then be resurrected. Through this Atonement and Resurrection, we are all given a life after our time here on earth, something I am so grateful for.

We believe that after Christ and his twelve apostles (chief witnesses) died, their Priesthood authority (power and authority given from God to act in His name) died with them. As a result, although people created many churches of their own accord, the true church of Christ left the earth for many years.

We believe that in 1820, Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ appeared to a boy named Joseph Smith in response to his heart-felt and sincere prayer asking to know which church he should join. God and Jesus Christ told Joseph he should join none of the churches because they were "incomplete" and made according to man's wishes and not God's. Then, through Joseph Smith, God and Jesus Christ restored the full Gospel that was established during Christ's time. That true gospel is our church today.

We believe after His resurrection and death, Christ appeared to the people in the Americas, and their histories and witnesses of Christ are contained in the Book of Mormon. We believe in the Bible and the Book of Mormon, both acting as testimonies of Jesus Christ and his divine mission on the earth.

For some reason, a lot of people hold misconceptions about the church, and it is usually those who don't know any Mormons or are afraid to ask questions. I used to be one of those people. I joined the church just six months ago after about two years of studying and investigating, and I tried my hardest to not believe. But once I started asking questions to legitimately learn and actually started to read the Book of Mormon, everything didn't seem so strange and I started to see why members of the church are so dedicated.

Since I've become a member of the church it's like I'm looking at life through a windowpane of positivity. What used to be a setback or hardship, is now just a trial of my faith that will refine me a little bit and leave me better than I started. What used to be unanswered questions of where I came from, why I'm here, and where I'm going, are now answered in the most beautiful ways. What used to be passiveness is now faith!

I love being a member of the church! I love knowing that Someone is always there watching over me (no matter where I am or what I am doing) and that I can reach Him anytime through prayer. I love having a living prophet (an inspired man just like Moses, Noah, Peter, or Paul, who is the mouthpiece for God on the earth) who leads the church and helps guide us through life. I love knowing of my great worth as a daughter of God and strive everyday to live up to that title and have respect for my body. And most importantly I love being happy because I know these things are true!

Just because I am a member of the church does not mean I think I am any different or better than you. I am by no means perfect and don't think I am even close! I am still a normal person who goes through good and bad times and makes countless mistakes. Thankfully though, my church gives me hope, faith, and comfort in life, and helps me find peace and happiness where I couldn't on my own. That is why I believe.

If you have made it this far, thank you! I love sharing about my church and hope this cleared up any major questions that you had and got rid of some false rumors you may have picked up. I'd love to answer any questions or talk about the church at any time, and the church also has an awesome website (which you can access here) that will explain everything in better detail. Hopefully you enjoyed this post and, at the very least, learned what Mormons like me believe.

Kid, you'll move mountains

Have you ever had that moment where something just seems so perfect and so right that you wonder why you weren't so certain about this before? Well, I had that moment a few days ago and it was amazing! I am constantly thinking about what I want to do with my life and what I need to do to get there (when I say constantly I'm not using the word just for the sake of the word, but literally mean ALL THE TIME at an unhealthy level), and have gone from being a doctor, to going into the business school to study finance, realized I hated finance, went into marketing, realized I'm not really a marketing person, thought about becoming a doctor again, realized I don't like labs and diseases and such, then just counted my loses and stayed in the business because that is the most rational thing to do and heaven forbid I be anything but rational.

Then I decided to do the most rational thing I could do: put aside what everyone else is telling me to do; not think about money, titles, or prestige; and just look inside myself and pray. For some reason I always forget to do these most important of things even though they never fail. I got down to pray and ask that I just might have some direction in my life and know what would make me the happiest and what that great Being who created me wanted for me because who better to ask? During this time I thought I would be directed towards being a doctor or some sort of business person like I always thought, but I couldn't stop thinking about TEACHING. Random right? Granted I did daydream a bit about being a teacher and possibly a basketball coach and living the good life, but that was shot down by the snooty thoughts in my head as well as my mother. But man this time the thought took me over! I couldn't sleep that night thinking about teaching my own class, surrounding myself in an academic setting that I have always loved, and having a direct impact on my students and molding young minds (even if only one student per class is actually paying attention/awake). And of course who can forget the frequent breaks and getting off work around 3 pm! Sounds pretty good to me.

Ever since that night, the idea of being a teacher has really stuck with me and just seems so right. Sort of like that "Aha!" moment when you just wonder how you didn't think of it before because of course you want to be a teacher! (or whatever yours happens to be) What works out wonderfully for me is that Lehigh has a very cool 5 year education program where you graduate with a bachelor's degree in whatever subject you choose, AND a master's degree in education AND a teaching credential. So, I can continue my education in the business school and graduate with a business degree that will greatly help me get a job if needed (for money reasons or whatever comes up), while also setting me up perfectly to be a teacher! Pretty good deal huh?

So for now, that is what I am pursuing in my life. Keep in mind my mind changes just about every day, but this idea just feels a little different. Plus it has stuck for a few days which can only mean good things. I love that we learn through this crazy refining process (no matter how agonizing it can be) because each new idea we strike down or new direction we head in, we learn something new about ourselves and what we are supposed to do in life. As long as we keep an open mind and an open heart, we will find where we are supposed to be. I'd like to end with a little verse from Dr. Seuss which is so fitting for this stage of my life and when thinking about the future. Children's books sometimes have the most insightful messages...

"Congratulations!
Today is your day.
You’re off to Great Places!
You’re off and away!

You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself any direction you choose.
You’re on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the guy who’ll decide where to go....

You’ll get mixed up, of course, as you already know. You’ll get mixed up with many strange birds as you go. So be sure when you step. Step with care and great tact and remember that Life’s a Great Balancing Act. Just never forget to be dexterous and deft. And never mix up your right foot with your left.

And will you succeed?
Yes! You will, indeed!
(98 and ¾ percent guaranteed.)

Kid, you’ll move mountains!
So…be your name Buxbaum or Bixby or Bray or Mordecai Ale Van Allen O’Shea, you’re off to Great Places!
Today is your day!
Your mountain is waiting.
So…get on your way!"