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.