question

Do Asian computers have a backspace button that points the other direction?

Remember and be happy

when things get stressful...

"For I know the plans I have for you," says the Lord. "Plans to prosper you and not to harm you. Plans to give you a hope and a future. "

Spring Break in Salt Lake City

For more pictures click on: ALBUM

WATCH THIS

Yeah Mom!

Good Job on your ACLS test! I'm proud of you!

shabby apple

I did a shoot Saturday for Shabby Apple...click APPLE to see the outfits that we wore. I was in the "Sabrina" dress, Nina and Jamie wore the antiquated dress, and 4 other girls wore the "24k" dress. :o) We were there from 8 til about 4, so me and the other girls were cuttin' up and being silly the whole day, it was so much fun.

Whoa, Look out!!!

My brother gave me the coolest book about what to eat and not eat at restaurants...its amazing. Here are some things I already learned:

• An 8oz Margarta has 500 calories and 32 carbs but a Bloddy Mary only has 130 calories, plus Vitamin C, A and Lycopine.
• Just one Chipotle Chicken burrito has 1,107 calories, 44 g Fat, 113 carbs, and 2,656 g of Sodium!!! Holy Moley!!!
• At P.F. Changs, the Pork Lo Mein Entre for one person has...1,820 calories, 127 g Fat, and 95 carbs. Thats as many carbs from 5 servings of pasta!
• (good news) At Chick-fil-A, none of their sandwiches on their menu have more than 400 calories. Plus, all their Chicken is 100% breast meat, not pressed, processed, or partial meat. Thanks Chick-fil-A...too bad there are only 2 stores in all of Utah!
• At Jamba Juice, sure you get all those servings of Vitamin C and fresh fruit, but in the 30 oz. Aloha Pineapple Blend, your drinking 650 Calories!
• At Sonic, get a regular Sonic Burger with Mustard. It has HALF the calories of a Chicken Club toaster. Also, try getting a Grilled Chicken Sandwich with NO mayo...try adding Marinara Sauce and then you get more flavor, you cut out 60 calories and 9 g Fat and you even added Lycopene to the sandwich.
  
• Getting whipped cream on your Starbucks drink adds 70 calories! Just say no! A Venti White Hot Chocolate has 640 calories and 28g Fat!!!! And you dont even get caffiene!

I love this book, Joey, and I think I'm never drinking Coke again. Oh, and here are some other books I'm CRAZY about right now... find them on Google!

Cradle to Grave runway show

makes me feel at home...

When I get homesick, I watch Paula Deen:

smells when i was little...

Dad: ...like blue vinyl seats heated in the sun, sweat and lawnmower dust, sunscreen and baseball-glove leather, shaving cream and Dow's chemicals and car oil. But on Sundays he smelled like coffee breath, cologne and ironing starch.
Mom: ...like clorox and the sweet perfume that came in the little bottle with the dove on top, and like alcohol swabs and hairspray, black pepper, and basil. Like lotion and laundry detergent and plastic on her stethescope that pokes into you when she hugs you.

Sneaky!

Art worth of 91 million dollars was stolen from a museum in Zurich on Sunday, according to police.

According to Bernd Quellenberg, a spokesman for the Kunsthaus, an important art museum in Zurich, the paintings by Paul Cezanne, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet and Vincent van Gogh were stolen by armed robbers from an art foundation's gallery in Zurich, Switzerland.

According to Police in Zurich, the paintings were valued at 100 million Swiss frances (91 million dollars).

The art gallery from which the works of art were stolen is maintained by the Emil-Georg Byhrle private art foundation and the director of the Kunsthaus works for the council of the foundation.

The foundation was created by a Zurich industrialist and it contains mainly Impresionist works. The website of the museum says: "French Impressionism and Post-Impressionism constitute the core of the collection," AFP reports.

Police called the theft a ''spectacular art robbery.''

The heist comes just days after two other paintings were stolen from a cultural centre in eastern Switzerland. The works were two paintings in oil by Pablo Picasso and were worth 4.5 million dollars.

The 1962 "Tete de Cheval" ("Horse's Head") and the 1944 "Verre et Pichet" ("Glass and Pitcher"), were stolen on February 6 and were on loan from the Sprengel Museum in Hannover, Germany.

here i am...and i LOVE getting to do this!

Beach Days:

Beach Days:
Running across the sand. The searing powder stretches out before me. Surely I am bleeding by now. I must reach the cool waves and quench this pain.
"Stop!" She yells. "Sunscreen!"
How can I stop? I can't go back, I'll lose my feet! I see the sea and feel this baking pain. From one foot to the other each sizzling in the sand. I imagine turning back on bloody nubs, my feet left behind like that broken bottle or that dead crab.
"Sunscreen!" She calls again.
I think I will die. The cool waves lapping, children laughing, my feet burning.
She's threatening now.
I know I'll lose my snow cone later. oh, how she tortures!

Owa! Its in my eyes! The stinging cream runny on my sweaty forehead. She slathers the coconut-y goo in my ears and down my neck. I love the smell of it. It smells like her and swimming lessons and picnics. It smells like heat and childhood.
"Aaand done."
Those magic words, the shot from the gate. Across the fiery, gravely beast and into the salty sea. Splashing, jumping, falling, waves knocking be to and fro. The cool water stings in every cut and shrivels my lips.
In the car going home I am a salty prune with sand in every crevice. Sitting on a towel, the radio humming me to sleep. She carries me and her voice is just a mummer.
Just another long summer day.

Ah, Love.

Love feels like every dream I've had, or every childhood ambition could easily happen. It makes me feel like I will be a famous supermodel, and own a Tea Shop and a health food store, and teach yoga and ESL, and be a dancer on Broadway and a missionary in Africa while Marco goes to the Olympics and is an International business man, and a Pro Skateboarder, and we both are Ambassadors to foreign countries on the weekends! Because Love makes everything seem possible. But at the same time, Love also feels like, "well, even if all those things don't happen, thats okay too cause we can just stay home and watch a movie and play board games!" Thats the best part! If it all happens, or if none of it happens, I'll still be just as happy as ever, because we will still be together and still have love.
Of all the places I can dream of going, the best of anyplace I can imagine is right where I am, as long we are together.
It isn't foolishness, or maybe it is, but its happiness and glee. Its memories, and secret treasures and sunsets and swim meets. Its tears in an Airport. A silly fight over Chinese food. A box of notes and ticket stubs. Its a train trip to Lucerne, Lausanne, and a car ride to Louisiana. Its the smell of Chlorine and the smell of espresso. Its Marco -heart- Rachel. Its Love. Ah, Love.

2008!!

Ferraro Christmas 2007

Switzerland 2007

Fall is my Favorite

Halloween Party

Super Duper Love

Homecoming Game 2007

My first Utah football game! Utah vs. Utah State. We won! It was freezing!!! Raining and freezing. We left when the rain turned into SNOW!!!! hehehe September 29 and i'm already cold...its gonna be a long winter.







http://utah.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2018242&l=e1f1e&id=82200687

Licklider, where do you get a name like that? Germany, well...Austria.

Utah people/ West Coast people

Utah people are plain,
Utah people are white.
Utah people are vain,
Utah people bite!

Really! Folks here look like they either just came from Eddie Bauer, or just came down off the mountain from a long hike/ski. They wear "earth tones" and gripe if you don't have an "open mind for the environment." (Organic Ketchup and Organic bath towells??? Seriously. How does that even work???)
They squinch their noses when you say "ya'll" and they actually have the nerve to correct your grammar in conversation!!!!! "Its WELL" in place of GOOD." Gramatically correct???..pu-lease!!!! GIMME A BREAK!!!
"How ya doing?," asked Elder Puke.
"I've been doin' well. Very well thank you." Responded Mormon Matthew.
OH and, Utah people like all their children to be named Dave Smith, Jake Smith, and Dan Jones.
Utah people don't bargain shop. In fact there is no middle class in Utah. Its either wealthy or poor. If your in the middle, well, i'm sorry. No one understands you.
I even actually heard someone say, as a way to describe having a bad day, "*disgusted gasp* You look like you just flew in economy class." WHAT?!?!?! I only fly economy class and what? I? HUH???
Utah people call egg-drop soup AND hot-n-sour soup "egg flower soup". HOW am I supposed to tell the difference!?!?!?!?!?!
Utah people didn't know that Texas was a country! Utah people think they have diversity. (Right, b/c you have one kid in your class who looks different than you, somehow means "diverse"????)
Utah people throw Fundraiser Banquets to raise money to stop world hunger. THAT DOESN'T EVEN MAKE SENSE!!!!!!
Utah people think women should know how to bake, should all have long shiny hair, and smile all the time.
Utah people need to get a clue about the real world. Utah people need to leave utah to see what life in like in the rest of the planet, and "going on a 2 year mission" doesn't count!!!!!
Utah people are driving me crazy.
The term "utah people" may be equally substituted with "west coast people" and the previous stereotypes may still evenly be applied. However, in the event that the person is NOT a native utah'n/west coaster, or if the person is of cultural decent, i.e. italian, greek, latino, black, asian, pacific islander, etc. then said stereotypes no longer apply. Unless of course the person has conformed to the new utah/west coast ways for example, sweet corn bread, "pop and/or soda," dockers pants, family-size-average-color-four-door vehicle, non-smoker, dog named Buddy, US flag on the front porch, Sunday evening stroll, etc. In that case all stereotypes DO still apply and in fact, they probably don't even realize they have become such dorks.

Belly Button Pictures...mi pobre umbelicu!

Before and After surgery. (Its not bruised anymore) I'm so sad my cute little belly button isn't the same anymore. sniff sniff I'm never having surgery again! It hurts, you can't walk, it hurts and then they wont let you do anything for 6 weeks!!! Even when you feel fine...nooooo. PFT. Never again!

when i was at home in August...

Marco in Thailand!!!

Marco is in Bangkok, Thailand!!!
You can read about it and get updates about his and other competition results at: http://www.bangkok2007.com/en/main/index2.php
Or read all about it from Marco's perspective at: www.makkeboome.wordpress.com

Friends

When I come home, no matter how far, far away I've been, or what adventures I've been having, I come home and it feels like, well, home. Sometimes even like I had never been gone. Our jokes, our conversation, its more like I had left the room and I've just come back moments later. Sure, we all have our new outside lives and our new college friends, but we always have each other. We come home and there we are, sitting by the pool, laughing, cutting up, talking about mosquitoes. We have new piercings, new boyfriends and girlfriends, and new stories, but somehow we reconnect like little puzzle pieces. And even though each of our puzzle pieces have found a way to "fit" in other places as well, (and have even come to love the new fit just as much as the old fit) we each know that we don't have to try very hard to fit back here--at home.
I've been home for only a few days and already I feel it. Familiar smiles, the same silly laughs, a hug that could just as easily have come from a brother. But each time I leave I wonder how much longer we can keep fitting together this way? When we all move away for good, can we still come back to this place? When our rooms at home become a guest bedroom, and we bring our own children to visit? Its a sad thought, I know, but I just have a strange fear that someday it will end. Or maybe it wont. Will it?
When I ask others, none seem hopeful. But I am. Because very few have a connection like we do. Very few have been buddies since kindergarten, even our parents are friends. We've been on retreats, church camps, bus trips, ball games. We've cried together, we've snuck out together, we know the names and histories without an explanation. I hope we can find a way to come back, because we aren't just friends we are family. An extended BCS family.

Harry Potter Day at the city library!

It was a great day! There were so many Harry Potter nerds! My friends and I were Harry, Luna and Tonks. But there were other people as Snape, Narcissa Malfoy, Victor Krum, Hagrid, and even Mad Eye Moody. The picture of us with the five little girls is so funny... The little girls were Bellatrix Lastrange, 2 house elves WITh floppy ears, Professor Trelawny, and even Moaning Mertle with a toilet seat around her neck!!! The library cafe was selling butter beer, and every floor in the library was a different common room, Griffindor, Ravenclaw, etc. To get into the building you had to "walk through" platform 9 3/4 and the ATM machine had a cover over it that made it look like an ATM for Gringots Bank. It was a GREAT GREAT day, like being a little kid all day long!!!!

the last few days...

I finished the final chapter of the final book in the Harry Potter series, with tears in my eyes and a lump in my throat. Well done, J.K. Rowling, well done.

I will always remember when the H.P. books gained popularity and were soon after banned from BCS (our school). Of course, it made them even more mysterious to us all... Katy, Nick, Nicole, Ben W(who lost the book on tape that he borrowed from Mrs. Collins), Danny, Ryan, Josh Cole, all of our AP english class (except the anti-potter's like Adam Biesman and Greg Johnson.) And with the support of Mrs. Collins, we read on. Secretly we read, as to avoid detention for having the book in Mrs. Casas' geography class or the stern looks from Mrs. Beatty in Chemistry when slipping the book safley away into our backpacks.

We found foreshadowing, we discussed (in our free time) Rowling's writting Style, we contrasted Harry Potter with Lord of the Rings, We found chiaroscuro, good vs evil, aliteration...what nerds we were and still are. Hours on the bus to ACSI and TAPPs trips talking about Harry, what will happen next, is Snape good or evil? It's funny, when this book came out, even though we are all far away from one another, I've already gotten 2 am text messages and phone calls, "did you read page whatever?! Have you gotten to this part or that?!" ...and I've even heard that Mrs. Collins read the whole thing before she even got home from the book store...twice! hahah

The Rachels in Utah!

We had so much fun! Rachel finally got to meet Marco, and Todd hahaha...(sorry inside joke) Anyway, we laughed, we cried, we watched 2 full seasons of Friends, and I even got a (fake) tattoo! Its been a while since we got to hang out together. I do love Salt Lake City, but I can't wait to go home in August!
Marco left today for Switzerland/Thailand...sniff sniff.... I'm happy, sweaty, and counting down the days (til i go home and til marco comes back)

A person's a person no matter how small...

I try to remind myself that, "People are just people and every person is a person."
I am learning very quickly that you cannot expect much from people. We are all just human, after all. We lie, we cheat, we are selfish and fake, we want our way. I always knew it to be true, but until recently I had never been so surrounded by this fact - staring it in the face, living in the same house with it, feeling it pressing in on me.
But I suppose this is a lesson I had to learn eventually. And what is worse, is that it is something I must deal with in my own actions. Doing what is right and not what is easy. And is it okay to tell a lie if it will protect someone else or keep them from getting hurt? When you say nothing, is it the same as lying? Lovers cheating, friends quitting on friendship, apathy, loneliness, pain. Oh how my heart hurts for us all. We finally make it out of the wilderness, but then we get selfish. We finally see what is right and good but we are too impatient and lazy to work for that blessing. Oh, we people, we need a redeemer.
But "every person is a person." I know it is dangerous and I know it is naive but isn't it what we would want for ourselves? To be trusted from the beginning until proven to be untrustworthy? To be loved until proven to be unlovable? We are human. We each have had a mother who loved us. We all have felt a tear on our cheek. Wanted water to drink in the heat.
Who are we to say "no" to that homeless man who wants some spare change? Who are we to say she is a bitch because of her mistakes? Who are we to be free when there is war far away?
"While we were yet sinners Christ died for us," right? So why don't we live this way. As you have been forgiven, go and forgive. Freely you have received, freely give.
I can't imagine this world without love. The Beatles sang it, Shakespeare wrote it, Mother Theresa gave it.
When will we begin to live our lives the way we should and not the way we want?

lately

I moved up here to Utah and have been living in a house with 4 girls from the swim team (Shanon, Ania, Jen T. and Jen F) and one boy from the basketball team, Sayer. One of the girls Ania is the girlfriend of the basketball player and she is also an international student from Poland. Well, she's been gone all summer and just came back a about a week ago only to find out that Sayer has confessed to cheating on her SINCE she left in May. And with who? GASP?! Shanon our other roomate!!! So there has been DRAMA DRAMA going down in my house!!! Everyone is fighting, Ania and Shanon are sworn enemies now and of course Sayer has moved out. Well it gets worse. The four girls signed the lease in April saying they wouldn't have more than four people living in our house, so since they broke the rules of the lease, the lease is now being terminated. So the question is where do we go to live? Who takes the kitty? Etc etc... Well, there is a possibility that I get to stay in the house. So cross your fingers. Meanwhile, my house is filled with tension and argument ALL day long. Everyone is in a bad mood. And the 4 girls are constantly fighting over one thing or another. It's like living in the lions den. SO until we know everything for sure, who goes where, how much is this or that...all i know is, Shanon didn't just screw Sayer, she screwed us all!!!!!

But I can make it, I just have to hold out til morning when the battle ends.

just seems fitting (dont cry mom)

Who's never left home, who's never struck out
To find a dream and a life of their own
A place in the clouds, a foundation of stone

Many precede and many will follow
A young girl's dream no longer hollow
It takes the shape of a place out west
But what it holds for her, she hasn't yet guessed

She traveled this road as a child
Wide eyed and grinning, she never tired
But now she won't be coming back with the rest
If these are life's lessons, she'll take this test

As her folks drive away, her dad yells, "Check the oil!"
Mom stares out the window and says, "I'm leaving my girl"
She said, "It didn't seem like that long ago"
When she stood there and let her own folks go.

a quick stop in Park City, Utah