keepin the fans updated

aahh another semester over and done with. i suppose i can now officially claim to be a junior in college. so that's weird.
anyway...here are some high(and low)lights of the end of the semester:

• highlight: getting the heck out of provo for a night with free dinner in salt lake. one of spencer's mission companions was getting married and had a pre-reception dinner. originally spencer was going to take his old flame shaneiqua, but lucky for me she bailed last minute. something about a freak acrylic-nail accident. good times were had.(and of course we had to take some pictures in the area. and then spencer waxed barbaric.)

• highlight: classes ENDING!
• lowlight: finals...shoot me in the face. always stressful, always resulting in sleep deprivation. and for part of one of my french finals i had to write a pretty decent size research paper (in french). i swear a year of my life was taken with every page i had to write.
  
• highlight: finishing finals...one of the best feelings in the world-definitely a relief
• saying adios to the roommates. goodbyes are always kind of lame. the foxy ladies of apartment 326
• (holli, the now-married melissa, moi, megan, katie, ellen)
• highlight: roadtrip to arizonaaaaaaaaa with spencer! i know what you're thinking- 12 hours in a car is never good. but it was quite an adventure and i enjoyed every minute. even though coming down through utah we missed the cross-over turns in three different places. then when we tried to cross over to the 89 at hurricane, we found out that we would have to pay $25 just to drive through zion's park...those nazis...so we had to turn around and find another route which ended up being a plus because we got to visit the polygamists in colorado city. always a pleasure to see them. the rest of the drive went quite smoothly, with the exception of a dead dog in the road. and spencer yelling, "SKIN WALKERS COME GET US!" out the window as we drove through the navajo reservation. i was just waiting for something to mysteriously fly out of the desert and slash our tires and kill us all.
• lowlight: gaining 17 pounds on the roadtrip from all the junk consumed. peanut m&ms, doritos, gummy worms, cookies, dr. pepper, and gatorade. i had a serious food baby going on.
• highlight: being home :)
• lowlight: more goodbyes :(
• highlight: ohh...i don't know, maybe that i'm going to paris on MONDAY?!
  

hate doesn't even begin to cover it...

you know how some people are really passionate about things in life? like some people are all about the environment, you know, the whole anti-global warming thing. some people are anti-abortion, other people are anti-tobacco, etc. well today, i discovered my passion in life. i am anti-BYU bookstore. i hate the BYU bookstore with the fiery passion of a thousand suns. with every fiber of my being. more than anything that i could possibly imagine on this entire planet. more than any words could possibly express. i hate the BYU bookstore.

first of all, they sell books that are ridiculously overpriced. they consciously condone the taking advantage of poor college students. and you know, they probably laugh about it when they go home at night and report back to satan.

so after they rob you blind at the beginning of the semester, then they take your dignity by forcing you to to crawl back to them on sell-back days. they give you a false hope by putting up posters promising rewards, so you wait in lines longer than the great wall of china with the tantalizing thought that you just might get back a percentage of what you paid for those little tools of the adversary they call textbooks. once you get to the end of the line and finally make it to a register, you can just see the looks of joy in their eyes when they pick through your pile book by book, rejecting each one ("no sorry, we're not buying back THIS one this semester...") until they get down to the very last (and thinnest) paperback book and say with glee, "we'll give you $9 for this one." gee THANKS bookstore, nine dollars is REALLY going to help me out with college expenses. it was TOTALLY worth waiting in this epic line to get nine lousy dollars back for a book that originally cost $30! out of 8 textbooks that i lugged to the bookstore (each one worth $25 or more), they deigned to buy back two.

but this is really the cherry on top. the icing on the cake. i have this ginormous humanities book entitled "culture and values." approximately 700 pages and the weight of a small african child, this glossy color-photo textbook cost upwards of $90. when i first purchased it from the bookstore, it was just that: a textbook. no CD included, no supplementary text, nothing. just a no-frills textbook. imagine my excitement when i finished up my humanities final and realized that i could finally get rid of the accompanying literature! i thought i was shoo-in for at least $30, so when i get up to the register, my jaw hit the floor when the saleswoman said, "i'm sorry, we can't buy this one back without the CD."
excuse me?
me: "but there wasn't a CD with it when i bought it... from this bookstore."
saleswoman (possibly employed by satan): "i know, but we can't buy it back without the cd."
me: "but you SOLD it to me WITHOUT the cd."
saleswoman: "sorry."

and then i experienced my first rage black-out. i may or may not have killed three people, threw various fruit items, and/or set a section of the bookstore on fire. after leaving the bookstore, i called my friend caroline who's in the same class with the same book and proceeded to rant about this pervasive evil, and she told me about how she sold back her textbook just fine yesterday without any cd or any problems. that's when my second rage black-out happened.

i will be going back to the bookstore (aka HELL) and i will politely request to speak to management. i have a bone to pick with them.

asleep at the wheel

Jude

parent's weekend

this past weekend i went to fetch the parents from the airport for a fun-filled parent's weekend extravaganza! they came bearing conference tickets and an overall desire to feed me. it was really good to have them up here, since i haven't seen hide nor hair of my family since christmas!

we spent the day friday eating, geo-caching (a new obsession of my dad's), and more eating. seriously. we ate a lot. on saturday we got up early to go to breakfast at kneader's, where they have french toast as big as your head. it was all good except for the fact that i accidentally stole another customer's order. that was embarrassing.

anyway...we watched the morning session of conference in the joseph smith building, and then mom and i watched the afternoon session in the conference center. we had freaking amazing seats- main floor! then on sunday we had basically the same routine (minus kneader's and my apparent fascination with theft) but in the afternoon me, mom, and dad had tickets. conference was so good. i always walk away wanting to be so much better. kind of like that efy effect, where you come home and don't take your little wristband off for like a month.

all in all, it was a fabulous weekend. i love my parentos.

me and the mom (she made me crouch down so i wouldn't be a head taller than her...ha!)

my happies

so i've been slacking in my blog updates- i apologize. anyhoo, i don't have too much time, but there are some fabulous things that i have to report. so here are my happies:

• i applied a few weeks ago for a scholarship from the French Department for my study abroad and....I GOT IT! :)
• earlier this week i thought it was going to have to take a test and write two papers all in one night (which would have sucked), but it turns out one of my papers got pushed back, and the other one was supposed to be written on a conference talk so i just tweaked my sacrament meeting talk from a while back and voila: insta-paper!
• the weather has been absolutely lovely lately (with the exception of maybe today and yesterday that have been a little chilly)
• i got everything worked out with my love whitney for our weekend in paris after my study abroad is over. hooray for amy and whitney eurolove 2008!
• and finally, I BOUGHT MY TICKETS FOR PARIS TODAAAAAAY! AND, i got an amazing deal on them. yay!

and unfortunately, two deaths to report in the Amy Hansen family:

• Sylvia Trevors Cunningham went downhill this week. First it was mold all over her pumpkin bottom, and then mushy spots started to appear on her head, and finally, she peed on the kitchen table. She's currently residing in a plastic trashbag in my kitchen because I just can't bring myself to throw her away yet. Maybe when she starts to smell...
• my precious iPod has officially kicked the bucket. We've been through a lot together, but after numerous attempts to revive the little guy, I know that it's a done deal. I'll have to figure out some way to cope and live a life without portable music. Sad sad day.
  

my medically induced spring break

so yesterday morning at about 7 am, i was blissfully sleeping in my warm cozy bed when suddenly, my body realized that it had totally forgotten to give me a birthday present. since it was four days late and all, it decided to really go all out and get me....KIDNEY STONES! gee THANKS body! it's what i've always wanted. oh wait, except you already gave them to me once. don't you know how tacky it is to give the same gift twice? come on body. get with it.

anyway, after writhing on the floor in agony for about a half hour, i crawled into my roommate ellen's room to ask her if she could drive me to the health center to which she most graciously obliged. gotta love that ellen. the drill was about the same, pee in a cup, get an abdominal x-ray, a nice shot in my almost-backside, and then magical prescriptions. the only thing about the magical drugs is that they either put me into a delirious coma, or make me throw up all over the place. not that i'm complaining...i'd rather have comas and vomit than ridiculous pain ANY day.

some silver linings in this situation:

• i don't have to go back to class until tuuuuuuesday! and since i'm basically functional (other than the coma and stomach pyrotechnics), i can still make an effort to keep up with my assignments so i don't have an aneurysm when i go back to school.
• since i vary between not eating, and then throwing up anything i DO try to eat, i could possibly come out of this ordeal with 5 or so less pounds! (that's kind of a stretch of a silver lining, but come on i'm trying here)

• ok this is the best one: the love of my life megan patterson (bless her little heart) created a sort of "happy kidney stones" care package for me. it includes: flowers, a 2 liter of dr. pepper, 3 huge bottles of blue powerade (gotta stay hydrated), rocky road ice cream, a giant fashion magazine, aaaaand...a barbie coloring book with crayons. i dare you to try and say that's not the greatest thing ever.

the end of an era...

march 15th marked the end of my teenage years...ah the dawn of a new day! and what a glorious day it was. me and the buds made plans to go to salt lake for the night, get some chow, and dance our little hinies...hineys? off at a club.
so we got all pretty and headed for the big city. the only hitch in the plan was...SNOW. snow snow stupid stupid snow. despite mother nature's gift from hell however, the evening was a success. we stuffed our faces at olive garden, got sang to in Italian by a group of waiters deathly afraid of having their picture taken, and then headed to the club.while i was slightly afraid of getting molested by people at the club (walking in was definitely a "toto, i don't think we're in the wilkinson center anymore..." moment), we managed to make it out of there with our dignity and virtue! hands down, the best part of the night was when they played "piece of me" by britney spears. don't mock- it's awesome.
on sunday, the birthday celebrations continued with CAKE! good times were had by all. we even had a gypsy fortune teller. apparently i'm going to marry dave mansfield and have 3 children and get verrrrrrry fat.

"tell me gypsy..."

so shout out to my girls megan and holli who helped make my birthday weekend awesome. and also to my parents for the birthday package of joy that arrived in the mail. ♥