False Alarm

A couple of weeks ago my roommates and I were making/eating dinner when the fire alarm in our apartment started going off. We thought it was just the one in our kitchen, but it was abnormally loud. Finally, we realized the fire alarm for the whole apartment building was going off. The lights were flashing in the stairwell. So, we ran outside to see what was up. Luckily, there was no fire; someone had pulled the alarm on the outside fire alarm. (Halloween Prank?) People from our building gathered on the lawn and we got acqainted with some neighbors we'd never met before. Finally, the fire department came and turned it off. Meanwhile, we snooped around their truck and got pictures!

Premiere: Thrill! Insane!

Premiere: Thrill! Insane! - Review of a horror movie? No, that's me! Well, my name anyway, all scrambled! (Stephanie Erin Merrill) See if you can figure out these anagrams:

a. Robert Merrill
b. Tami Buckley Merrill
c. Jared Kraig Merrill
d. Jacob Merrill
e. Benjamin Merrill
f. Alex Robert Merrill
g. Sam Merrill


1. Nimble, manlier Jr.
2. Grrr! Dreamlike jail!
3. Luckily able trimmer.
4. Mix tree barrel roll.
5. Smaller rim.
6. Rib major cell.
7. I’m a barrel roll rent.



http://www.anagramgenius.com/
(1e, 2c, 3b, 4f, 5g, 6d, 7a)

Cool, eh?

Birthday!

We decided to use the cake decorations as face decorations, secured by fudge frosting.


Blowing out my nonexistent birthday candles (we had candles, but not matches. . . )



Thanks to all of you who were so kind to me on my birthday!
Here are my roommates, who prepared a little dinner and made me a very chocolatey birthday cake.

The (second) most wonderful time of the year

Some friends we met at the Sandy Institute invited my roommates and me to drive the Alpine loop (the road behind Timpanogos) today to see the fall leaves. It was beautiful!

Shellie, Jake, Nate, Emma

Mhmm. . . ?

My first "leftovers" casserole.

I had a roommate back in Rexburg who would make casseroles out of random things - and they would turn out delicious. So I decided to give it a try: some leftover rice, some leftover garlicky-potato soup stuff, some chicken. Plus some onions and cheese, because those make everything better right? We'll see. . .

General Conference

Well, the church is true! Wasn't General Conference amazing?


My roommates and I were able to attend conference in the tabernacle Saturday afternoon, and in the Conference Center yesterday afternoon. (Left to right: me, Emma, Shellie; yes, my eyes are closed - that's to be expected, right?) We got in the standby line at about 1:30 and got into the building at about five to 2 - and got great seats on the floor. Afterwards I got to go see Dad, who was manning the projector in the Joseph Smith Building theater.





Swarming with Mormons! It was so neat to be here with fellow church members from all over the world and feel like a part of everything.

Are You Smarter Than a Fifth-Grader?

Am I smarter than a fifth-grader? Hopefully, since I'm the teacher here! But as I listen to Mrs. Cope teach, and prepare my own lessons to teach, I'm definitely getting a good refresher of some things I haven't thought about for awhile. And it's true - some of the stuff I didn't even know in the first place, like this:

• Ceiling tiles are ugly for a reason! The holes and/or bumps are to help absorb sound and make rooms (like offices and schools, where they're commonly found) more quiet.
• a predicate is just a fancy way of saying "verb," (or the part of the sentence describing what the subject is doing.) I seriously never knew what a predicate was.
• "He" and "she" are subject pronouns, while "him" and "her" are object pronouns. Every sentence has a subject (except for imperative sentences, where the subject is implied) and a verb. That is why technically you should answer the phone with "This is she," or point out an individual "Is that he?" Sounds weird, but it’s correct.
• Hertz = cycles per second. Sound frequency is measured in hertz. Humans can hear from 20 to 20,000 hertz, some animals can hear higher frequencies. Ultrasounds are those beyond the range of human perception, and because of the reflection properties of sound, we can use them to penetrate mediums and create an accurate picture of something we can't see with our eyes; same idea with sonar.

Are you smarter than a 5th grader? Take the challenge online at http://www.fox.com/areyousmarter/features/

A fifth-grade artist's rendition of me. : )

My Other Home

This is the school - my home from 8:30 - 4:30, Monday through Friday. I love the physical layout of the school. Each classroom has a full wall of exterior windows, as well as windows on top of the interior walls, facing the hall. It makes the school very open and light. Our classroom is down at the very end of the hall (on the far right).

My class is great - 12 fifth-graders and 13 sixth-graders. This past week I've been doing math and literature with the fifth grade, and will keep picking up subjects each week. My cooperating teacher is still trying to figure out how to run a split class herself, so things have been a bit crazy, but are settling into a routine. She is so supportive, and I am grateful that this is the class and the teacher that I was put with.

My New Home

My new apartment: after living in Rexburg student housing, I feel like I'm really living it up. We have air conditioning (brr!), our own, non-coin-operated washer and dryer, two bathrooms, new furniture and . . . a dishwasher. After washing my dishes by hand for a couple of days, my roommate kindly pointed out to me that we had one. It never even registered to me that it was there; I wasn't expecting it! : )

Buckleys represent!

I ran into Jason on campus on Monday; he was in Rexburg for the day, so I invited him over for dinner. He brought a couple of friends and we had a little barbeque/picnic out on the lawn with my roommates and a few friends. I have the coolest cousins! It's been fun being here at college at the same time as Jason and being roommates with Katie. This was our last time being all together up here at BYU-I, so I had to take a picture. : )

Mis estudiantes. . . y amigos

I have had the best job ever this summer! (Working as a tutor in the Reading Center / English Transitional Center in the library). A couple of my students were American, and we worked on things like textbook comprehension and notetaking. Most of my students, however, were international students, and we spent our time in conversation or working on grammar,spelling, vocabulary, or pronunciation. It was an interesting experience in many ways. For one, because I have heard and spoken English all my life, I've never really had to examine its rules and nuances in structure and pronunciation - so it was a learning experience for me to learn these things in order to teach them. It was also interesting to associate with people from different cultures, something that I've never really had the opportunity to do before. They were all eager to learn and I loved working with ALL of them. They became dear friends. I am going to miss this!
Here are some of my students:

This is In-Yang Hwang, one of my Korean students. He was a riot. Sometimes we would go through his biology or chemistry homework together, but most often we would "practice English" and just talk or discuss articles in the newspaper. He is very outgoing and quite the philosopher - full of ideas.


Here is Dulamsuren (Duka) Vanchin. She is from Mongolia. Her major is accounting, so the homework she brought in to work on wasn't exactly my forte! Together, we would read and try to make sense of the accounting-terminology-convuluted case studies. I love this girl!!



Ousdhane Chadic, from Haiti. Her native language was Creole - how cool is that? She - like all of my international students -worked really hard. She had a beautiful smile and I loved to meet with her.



This is Derrick Nam (from Korea). I'm gonna miss this kid! We spent most of our time learning and practicing new vocabulary and discussing slang (some of which he picked up from his roommates. . . a little iffy. . . ) He was a lot of fun.




This is Yeoun Hee Lee, from Korea - the one who invited me over for a Korean dinner and later taught me to make mandu. She and her husband are so kind. She is expecting a baby in September and she says she'll keep me updated. : )

Holy Flaming Water Heater!

Sunday morning, 3:30 AM: my roommates and I awoke to the smell of smoke and the sound of beeping firealarms. Angelyn and I ran downstairs to see the glowing outline of our water closet's door - the water heater was on fire. Luckily she was awake enough to fill up a bowl of water and put it out; I don't think a full coherent thought had yet crossed my mind. We called the fire department and awoke our managers, who came to check it out, and then we crashed at our neighbors for the night to get away from the smoke. We were incredibly blessed that our alarms were working and we caught it when we did. We were definitely being watched over.

Needless to say, our apartment smelled like a great big campfire for a few days. . .

Something about the Great Outdoors

For the Fourth of July, Angelyn and I decided we didn't want to join the massess in Idaho Falls to watch the fireworks, and headed up to Island Park instead. We took all her stuff up to her grandma's cabin, and then headed out to watch the fireworks over the lake with some friends. Unfortunately, we got a bit lost in the dark and missed the show, but made it in time to roast marshmallows and try some boiled crawdads caught from the lake.

In the morning, we took some ancient bikes from the cabin and went for a ride. Then we headed over to Big Springs and fed the fish all of our old bread from the freezer. It was so refreshing to just be up in the woods away from everything. A short little trip - but just what we needed.

My last dance. . . .

Wow! Is that really me, the tallest girl in the picture? First time in my life that's ever happened. Thanks, Kari, for the shoes!(and the dress)


This is Ammon. I met him when our FHE groups played a game of soccer against each other. He is an amazing soccer player and a really awesome guy. He's also 18. . . but we had a lot of fun.

Korean food!!!

Yeoun Hee is one of the students I tutor at the reading center and has become my friend over the semester. A few weeks ago, she invited me to dinner with her and her husband, and made an amazing meal of Korean food - barbecue beef, Korean pancake (like a pancake/omelette with seafood in it), sticky rice, mandu, and more. So good! I asked her to teach me how to make mandu, which we did this past weekend. Mandu is basically a mixture of vegetables and pork fried in wonton shells. Mmm!!
When I first arrived, her husband was eating dinner, and they fed me again - this time including dried squid, sticky rice, and - Uncle Jed, you will be proud of me - kimchi (below). I was suprised at it's taste - not too bad!



Several of my students at the reading center are Korean, and I love working with them. I can see why returned missionaries come home all excited about the culture that they served in and with a deep love of the people there. I feel like my students teach me just as much, if not more, than I teach them.

Liz's Surprise Party

Jared, Katie, Corey, Liz, Meagan, Bonny, Ben


Tim, Steph, Liz, Lena


Joe, Angus, and the food!


Heather, Liz, Erin, Sandy, Nicole, Claire
Several other people came, and we didn't catch them on camera : (

FHE Family

Here's a picture of our awesome FHE group. L - R: Jared, Katie, Dustin, Brandon, Liz, Angelyn, Bonny, Stephanie, Corey. (Not pictured: Tim & Mandy). : )

Snowcones

I have been converted to snowcones. : ) My previous experience with snowcones had been sucking juice out of a drippy paper cone full of small ice chunks, but the ones I've tried from Snoasis up here are delicious. For a quarter, you can get ice cream on the bottom. Mmmm. . . My favorite so far is Godzilla: Lime and Blue Raspberry, with ice cream of course.
Here's part of my ultimate frisbee team, eating snowcones in TacoBell after our first game. L-R: Liz, Meagan, Bonny, Katie, Corey, Mandy.




Katie and Bonny yesterday eating their second set of snowcones in a day. . .

Yo Hablo Español . . . At least I thought I did!

The first draft of an assignment for my Spanish grammar class. . .after having been reviewed and commented on by four RM classmates, my Spanish tutor, my roommate Angelyn and myself. Everyone had different suggestions for me. I had to laugh after seeing how colorful it was.

The view from here. . .

This is the view from my front porch. Eveything is turning green. So pretty! Across the street is the Hinckley Building, where most of my Major classes have been. Up the hill to the south is the temple. Because our apartment faces west, the sun keeps our apartment filled with light during the afternoon, and we get to see some incredible sunsets!