Swimming in Deep Ponds

I've been deeply pondering a lot these last couple of months. Something about being as far away from your comfort zone as you can possibly get, does that to you. One thing that occurred to me is how much I've changed over the last several months. Well actually the last 8 months, but particularly the last 2 1/2 months. I've learned so much about myself. I've realized I had no idea who I was. As I've had to face my fears and insecurities I've discovered my weaknesses. Some I've been able to overcome, some I'm still working on, and many are still lurking in the path ahead. But I have no doubt that in due time I will conquer them as well. I have gained so much strength from my hardships. Mostly battles with myself. Battles between who I am and who I want to be.

I've heard many people say, "That's just who I am". Shoot, I guarantee that I've said that a time or two. But I don't believe that's true. It may be who you are at that moment, but it doesn't have to stay that way. Who you are naturally and who you can be if you really try are more than likely completely different people. You can always change. You can be better. You can be the best you possible. You just have to decide to do it. The "that's just who I am" in you is allowing yourself to be defined by your weaknesses. We all have them. But we can all overcome them. Stop justifying your imperfections. Stop giving them power over who you are. If you have a weakness, especially one you don't like, I challenge you to do something about it. Make a change. Be better than you thought you could be. I did. And by doing so I discovered how much potential I have.

I am a good person. I like good things. I love surrounding myself with good people. Ones who inspire, uplift, edify, and encourage. I have a lot of those in my life. I call them my eagles. (If you want to know why, let me know, perhaps it'll be the topic of an upcoming blog post). To all of my eagles, thank you from the depths of my heart. I am who I am today because of you.

To anyone who feels like there is something they want to change. Perhaps I could share a tip or two. Take it for what its worth. Start with faith. If you don't stand for anything you'll fall for everything. Decide what you believe and believe it. Live what you believe. In every aspect of your life live what you believe. When you're with friends, when you're at work, when you're home alone...live what you believe. Hopefully whatever you believe is good and that good can spread to those in your life. If so, maybe, just maybe we can make the world a better place.

The theme of my 2011:
While I was busy doing things I never thought I could do, I found out who I am.

Sometimes We Have To Walk In The Rain

Let me tell you some things I've learned recently...

1) American shoes do not like Europe.

My poor shoes were not made for being my primary mode of transportation. I'm proud of them, they've held up really well considering the circumstances, but their kryptonite is rain. Last weekend I wore my black flats on my border run. I was trying to pack light and was planning on going to church so I chose them for their versatility. Both comfy and dressy casual. Little did I know it was going to be raining all weekend. As soon as they got wet they lost it, they're all sorts of distorted and discolored now. I chose them to go back to Kiev this last weekend as well, for the same reasons. And what happened? You guessed it. Rain. Torrential downpours all weekend long. Come to think of it...maybe my shoes are cursed with an evil voodoo rain curse. I should invest in some galoshes. Maybe then it'll stop raining. I'm starting to know how Noah felt...

2) Sometimes scenes from movies happen in real life.

One thing I've realized as I've grown up is that what they show in movies and what happens in real life aren't always the same. But sometimes they are. This morning I had to get up at the crack of dawn (okay not really because the crack of dawn here is 3:30 a.m.) to head back out to Kanev for work. I had my big backpacking backpack, my purse (filled with bricks of course), and my laptop (carefully wrapped in plastic bags so as to not get wet). So my hands were already full and then add an umbrella. Getting the picture? The rain is pouring down, the wind is blowing with a vengeance, and the combination is lethal. I'm sloshing through the rivers that seem to be everywhere. Trying to balance everything plus hold my umbrella. I'm still getting soaked (even my hair that was directly under the umbrella) The wind is blowing so hard I have to lean into it in order to even move. And my umbrella flips inside out. I correct it. 5 seconds later, it flips again. This was my morning. Soaked to the bone with a 3 hour bus ride in my future.

I was upset. As I was wallowing in misery, I said a little prayer. "please let the winds and rain stop so that I can get to where I need to go." This was not a good start to my week! I realized that I don't want to start my week off with a bad attitude. My prayer changed. "please help me to not have a bad attitude even though it feels like the universe is out to get me." As soon as I said that, I realized what I must look like, just like a dreary scene from a movie. The one where you think to yourself..."that's a bit extreme...it's never that bad in real life". But it really was that bad. It was then that instead of being grumpy, and grumbling under my breath, I laughed. So I'm glad that Heavenly Father let me walk in the rain. He could've stopped it if he really wanted to. He could've made it easier. But I wouldn't have learned to laugh at myself and my misfortune. Or how its my choice what my attitude is going to be and how I react to situations in life. I don't have to settle because "that's just who I am", I can change, I can be better. And I am, every time I learn a lesson and then change my habits accordingly.


Lesson: You can choose to do things cheerfully, even when you hate sludging through the pouring rain.

"Therefore, dearly beloved..., let us cheerfully do all things that lie in our power; and then may we stand still, with the utmost assurance, to see the salvation of God, and for his arm to be revealed." Doctrine and Covenants 123:17

Its a Giddy Day

AHHH!!! I'm having an amazing day! I love it!

Reasons why I'm giddy today:

My scale says I've lost weight though I haven't been running at all this week and have eaten chocolate pretty much every day!

I'm in Kyiv Ukraine!

I get to see my Uncle Bohdan and Aunt Rosemary today...in Ukraine!!!

I have AMAZING friends!

I had a gloriously restful 8 1/2 hours of sleep last night!

Inspiring music

Great leads for great jobs

Time to clean my apartment and go grocery shopping.

Waking up early enough to get everything done :)

There may be a million other reasons why I'm giddy today as well. All in all its a perfect day :D

The Little Things In Life

You know...its the little things in life that make it so darn great!
For example,
I was having a completely terrible day today. I "woke up on the wrong side of the bed". Things seemed to go from bad to worse as the day continued, but I kept pressing on.
This evening I went and helped the activities committee make laurels for the upcoming greek themed disco we will be having at the YSA conference in Crimea next weekend. There things started looking up. I love my Ukrainian friends! A special thanks to Lena, Katya, Nata, Vika, Ira, Yulia, Dima, and Vitalik for a great time. And for dinner.

The little things that made my day:
-Incredible music!
-The McDonald's manager helping me with my Russian. <3
-Ice in my coke
-Oreo McFlurry(just arrived in Ukraine last week and happens to be my favorite!)
-Barbecue sauce with my french fries
(Yes McDonalds made me very happy tonight)
-Walking home after a rainstorm(it smelled amazing!)
-Being gawked at by a group of Ukrainians for speaking English.
-Hearing English from a group of picnickers this morning on my run.
-Birds singing all day.
-Buying 18 eggs for 80 cents USD
-Watching a huge pack of wild dogs crossing busy streets together.
-The trolleybus arriving the exact same time I did to the bus stop :D
-Getting to talk to my sister and realizing that she misses me as much as I've always missed her!

It's the little things in life!!!

A Happy Morning!

This morning I went running in the park by my kvartira. A couple things made me smile from ear to ear.

#1 The birds singing and sun shining
#2 The elderly man who walked passed me humming to himself :D
#3 The adorable stray puppy who ran along side me for a few minutes
#4 The little girl who was fussing at her babushka, who I smiled at and the girl started giggling, her babushka was so confused. It was great!
#5 Its FRIDAY! And its Easter weekend. And we don't have work on Monday!

Speaking of Easter...
Below in bold is a quote a friend shared with me this week that I've been thinking about a lot in preparation for the Easter holiday along with some background to help it make sense. Its an amazing talk and if you have time, I highly recommend reading it this Easter weekend.

"I think of how dark that Friday was when Christ was lifted up on the cross. On that terrible Friday the earth shook and grew dark. Frightful storms lashed at the earth.

Those evil men who sought His life rejoiced. Now that Jesus was no more, surely those who followed Him would disperse. On that day those men stood triumphant.

On that day the veil of the temple was rent in twain.

Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of Jesus, were both overcome with grief and despair. The superb man they had loved and honored hung lifeless upon the cross.

On that Friday the Apostles were devastated. Jesus, their Savior—the man who had walked on water and raised the dead—was Himself at the mercy of wicked men. They watched helplessly as He was overcome by His enemies.

On that Friday the Savior of mankind was humiliated and bruised, abused and reviled. It was a Friday filled with devastating, consuming sorrow that gnawed at the souls of those who loved and honored the Son of God.

I think that of all the days since the beginning of this world’s history, that Friday was the darkest.

But the doom of that day did not endure.

The despair did not linger because on Sunday, the resurrected Lord burst the bonds of death. He ascended from the grave and appeared gloriously triumphant as the Savior of all mankind.

And in an instant the eyes that had been filled with ever-flowing tears dried. The lips that had whispered prayers of distress and grief now filled the air with wondrous praise, for Jesus the Christ, the Son of the living God, stood before them as the firstfruits of the Resurrection, the proof that death is merely the beginning of a new and wondrous existence.

"Each of us will have our own Fridays—those days when the universe itself seems shattered and the shards of our world lie littered about us in pieces. We all will experience those broken times when it seems we can never be put together again. We will all have our Fridays.

But I testify to you in the name of the One who conquered death—Sunday will come. In the darkness of our sorrow, Sunday will come.

No matter our desperation, no matter our grief, Sunday will come. In this life or the next, Sunday will come."

Joseph B Wirthlin. October 2006 General Conference "Sunday Will Come"



I have so much to be grateful for. Most of all the atonement of Jesus Christ. I've had a lot of "Friday" moments this week. But Sundays are amazing and are always just around the corner. Its been an amazing week.
I hope everyone has an incredible Easter weekend!

Setting My Course

Wow! Where has the last month gone?! I can't believe its already almost April!

This last week we had vacation. I went with a smaller group to Krakow Poland for about a week. We stormed castles, ate gelato, tamed fire breathing dragons and flying rats, bartered with local merchants, and survived Auschwitz-Birkenau. It was a pretty intense week!

The main reason we chose Krakow was because we wanted to see the Auschwitz concentration camp. This trip was one of the most eye opening and life changing experiences of my life. Going to camp and learning so much about it. The things people went through. The process of how things worked there. It overwhelmed me. I didn't cry while at the camp like I thought I would, although I was close a couple of times. These are the reasons I came close:

1-Auschwitz was a work camp. There you would be worked to death, literally. If you weren't strong enough to work you were killed immediately. If you weren't able to work you were killed. If you worked too slowly you were hung by your wrist in a way that would dislocate your shoulders, rendering you unable to work, therefore you would be killed.
I have days, more often then I'd like to admit, where I have a hard time getting going. I usually get stuff done, but for whatever reason I never seem to accomplish what I need to accomplish, and the things I do get done happen at a painful slow pace. And usually not with any semblance of good attitude.
Do you ever have days when you just want to stay home? Relax, take it easy, recuperate? And on said days have you still had to go to work, or go to school, or do your best to get everything done that you need to get done that day? Those are the days I'm talking about. I still am productive but my heart isn't in it.
I can't imagine anyone in those camps being able to put their hearts into the work they were doing. My natural reaction to that would be dragging my feet as I did it. The consequence being that I would be hung, shoulders dislocated, and killed. I probably wouldn't have lasted very long there unless I was able to overcome my natural reaction to being "tired". And that is a very sobering thought. So I've been thinking a lot about what I need to do to change the way I think when I'm feeling that way. I believe that whatever it was that helped those prisoners to find the strength to carry on amidst their trials and afflictions, whatever characteristic they possessed that helped them to persevere, whatever it is it exists in me as well. Its like finding out you've had a dormant superpower your entire life and now you need to figure out how to use it correctly. That is how I felt when I thought of the victims of Auschwitz-Birkenau. And that is one of the many life changing things I learned there.

2-At Auschwitz-Birkenau there were several gas chambers. As part of the selection process and registration they would have those they couldn't put to work or experiment on sent to the "showers" to disinfect from diseases. 2,000 people would be required to strip down and squeeze into a room together. Then gas would be dropped in through vents in the roof and within 20 minutes everyone would be dead.(About 10,000 people a day were killed this way.) The 2 main gas chambers are still there, in piles of rubble left by the soldiers who destroyed them just before liberation to try to cover any evidence. Standing at the top of the steps got to me. Hundreds of thousands of people...women, children, the sick, the elderly and handicapped...who had no idea was about to happen to them, descended those stairs believing they were about to see a brighter future.
With everything I've learned recently its made me take a step back to evaluate myself. What do I believe? What am I capable of? How would I have reacted? What would I have done? Who am I? And would I be strong enough to stand up for that regardless of the consequences?

I am grateful that I didn't have to live through that, and now more than ever I have an inexpressible respect for anyone who lived through the holocaust and WWII. And to my Omi and Opi, who lived in Germany during WWII, who have shown me the strength and perseverance that is in me. Because of their examples I know what I am capable of. And that is a self liberation that brings an entirely new level of hope and promise!

See what I mean? LIFE CHANGING!

Discovering New Talents

Yesterday I was given the opportunity to try something new. Give someone a haircut.
I've helped cut hair here and there, trimmed my own bangs, helped buzz a brother's head, etc. But never a real haircut. Here's what happened...

One of the teachers in my group REALLY wanted to get her hair cut. Her host mom had told her she would make an appointment, but forgot. Frustrated the teacher took things into her own hands. She went out on the city and bought herself a handy dandy pair of hair cutting scissors. I told her I had a little experience, very little experience cutting hair, but that I could try.

This is Christina and her long hair before I got to it.



She wanted to be able to donate it and it needed to be at least 10 inches long, so we ponied it up and chopped. The longest strands ended up being about 11 1/2 inches long.



I think it turned out pretty well.



Who knew I had some hair cutting skills. Add that to the list of talents I've discovered. Maybe I can fine tune that skill and perhaps someday I could have a career in cosmetology. That would go nicely with my massage therapy training. I could have an uber salon. It's a thought.