Utah NAME

Today I had the opportunity to participate in the Utah NAME conference, which was held a Utah Valley University and I had a good experience there. The theme of the conference was Narratives of Bravery and Hope: Making my Home in Utah. A lot of immigrants here shared their stories and their dreams for the future. I was really impressed by them and their desires to do good in the world and their desire to make a difference. UVU also has some really great programs in place to improve the opportunities for Latino/a students. they have Latinos in Action and Latino Educators of Tomorrow programs that I think are so important. I also was impressed by the comments made about the university president, Matt Holland, and how much he cares about the students.

Part of what I did was share a project I have been working on. It was to write up a booklet that contains a lot of the activities that we used in our Multicultural Education class that Ramona Cutri and I co-taught. In it, I included the activity objective, how it ties into the Standards for Effective Pedagogy, the materials for the activity, how to set up and conduct the activity, how to debrief it, and then some ideas for using the same activity with different topics. I felt like it went well and I'm glad I was able to participate in it. We had my project posted online. Scroll down a little bit once you get to the screen and read the section on Lesson Plan Adaptation Activities. Then click the Download ... materials here. I decided today I would like to convert into a wiki page where many people can edit it and add their own activities. I think that would foster some additional collaboration that would enhance the project more. Overall, I was pleased with how it came out. I will play with the possibility of converting it into its own website.

It was interesting to me to participate in the conference because it made me think about my own identity as a scholar and how is used to be so much more involved than I currently am now, as I am an instructional designer and spend more of my day thinking about design and how to make whatever we are creating easier, rather than people issues.

I also thought about how much more needs to be done to work with kids who are not the mainstream. I think that is one reason I am excited to get more done on my dissertation.

Then I listened to the second half of the afternoon session of General Conference and I ran almost 15 miles today... I'm glad tomorrow is a rest day.

Valentine's Day

I had an awesome Valentine's Day. Mckenzie came over to play while Lori and Jordan went on a date. We played with my penny jar and dumped my coins out on the floor and then picked them up and then dumped them out again. Mckenzie told me stories and we made valentines with stickers and pictures on them. The big event of the evening was to make the dessert for when Lori and Jordan came back. Lori had sent over a chocolate cheesecake, so Mckenzie and I made it.

Here is Mckenzie mixing up the crust. She had a great time pressing it in the pan. Especially when she noticed some of it stuck to her fingers and she got to lick them off. Then she pushed some more down and licked some more off. :)

Here we are mixing the crust again.

And here Kenzie is getting ready.

I really wanted to take a picture of her after we mixed everything and she finished licking all the bowls. I could tell that Lori has cooked with her a lot because she knows how to mix and stir and how to scoop things that have spilt. She also knows well how to lick the bowl. :)

So we made a yummy chocolate treat and it was a lot of fun. When Lori and Jordan came back, we had a nice time eating the treat we made.

Saint George Half Marathon

Yesterday I did something I had never done before. I ran a half marathon. That is 13.1 miles of running. And it was AWESOME!

I did it with some friends from work and my roommate. We did the Dirty Dash earlier and now we did the Saint George Half. It really did feel good and I had a great experience doing it.

Tonya and I went down to Saint George with our friend Jeff from work and his wife, Julie. We talked and laughed the whole way down to Saint George.

Tonya and I stayed at one of our favorite hotel chains, Knight's Inn. We stayed at one in Denver, but this one was a lot more well kept up. It was nice for us (and not too expensive)!

We woke up early yesterday morning and ate some yummy breakfast. I had some oatmeal and a banana. Then our room was a little bit cool, so we got back into our beds and too a little nap until Jeff and Julie came.

So here is our before-race photo. Dad, I don't know if you can see it or not, but I am wearing my Crooked Pole Tipi Works viser. I think it was lucky!

Our orange shirts say CTL. Every year the CTL buys t-shirts for everyone at work and this year we asked if we could get some tech-shirts for running rather than the regular cotton t-shirts. We had to pay a little extra, but they are fun to wear. I like the color too!

The course was interesting because part of it went through the city and then it went out along the river and the freeway in St. George. We looped around a couple of times. I guess I must have been deep in thought throughout the whole race because I was listening to a book on my iPod. I listened to the first three chapters of the book two times and all I know about the book is there was a picture of a boat on a wall and it looked like the waves were really moving and some boy's cousins were coming to visit and he liked to torment them. (Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C. S. Lewis. I'm sure it is a really good book!) Other than that, I was listening for the voice in my iPod that says "one mile completed...You are at the halfway point. Only 6.5 miles to go...one mile to go...400 meters to go...congratulations you have completed a half marathon. Time: 2:23. Distance 13.1 miles. Rate: 11.02 minutes per mile. Thank you Lori, Jordan, and Mckenzie for the running chip. It works great! And those were my stats. I felt fine about those, especially because I ran last weekend the same amount of time, but only ran about 11 miles. I felt good about it!

Here is the post-race picture. Kj and Jessica, I loved the water bottle belt. It is really handy to carry water and the phone and snacks and whatever else you can fit in it. It is great!

We don't look too much different from our pre-race picture. It was exciting! Tonya and Jeff finished about 30 minutes before I did, so they came back and met me where I had about 1/2 mile left.

I am really glad I did it. While we were there, we signed up to do the Utah Valley full Marathon in June, so we will be spending the next few months training and increasing our distance so we can run a full 26.2 miles. It really will be awesome!Who would have thought?

Afterwards, we went back to the hotel and took the best shower ever! It felt so good! We went and ate at Cafe Rio and then went to the outlet mall and found some nice shirts for $2.99. Then we drove home. Today I feel great! I have been so hungry though! I have eaten a lot of meals and snacks!

Bubble Wrap

Do you love bubble wrap? I opened a package the other day that had a nice bubble wrap around it. So I have the bubble wrap on my desk next to my keyboard and every few minutes I have the urge to pop a couple. It relieves a lot of stress. I suggest everyone should have some. It makes you feel so much better after you pop some. The big bubbles are sometimes even better, but I feel that I get more pleasure out of the small ones.

Last Day in Hawaii

It was a sad (not too sad though) day! We had our last Hawaii adventures today. We wanted to do a lot of things so we would be able to sleep on the plane home, so we started early. We drove to the south east side of the island and climbed up Koko Head Crater. Koko Head is a volcanic crater that was formed a long time ago. It has a railway track that goes up the outside of it that is no longer used by rail, so people have started climbing up it. It has 1,048 steps up. The first part of the trail is not too steep. Then it crosses over a bridge that doesn't have any dirt under it (but there is a little trail off to the side where I went up). The second half of it is really steep. By the time you get up, you are pretty tired. At the top, you can look off over the interior of the crater and then down into the ocean. It was an amazing view! It was a really fun hike to do. At first I was tired, but then I started enjoying it a lot. Coming down was slower than going up, but we made it just fine.

Then we decided to go over to Diamond Head crater and hike it again. I like Diamond Head because it has a well-groomed path and there is a handrail all up the trail. At the top, you can look off and see all of Honolulu and Waikiki beach. The ocean really is amazing!

The next thing we had on our agenda was to go swimming, but before we did, we decided to go to Chinatown to drink a bubble tea smoothie. I really like the bubble tea, but I prefer it without the bubbles. Today I got a mango pineapple one. It was so yummy and very refreshing after our two hikes. Then we drove back to the north side of the island, but before we went to the beach, we stopped at Ross to see if we could find some good deals. We had heard they had some cute sweaters that were inexpensive. I found a really cute brown skirt like my black one and I brown sweater. I am kind of excited about them.

By the time we finished and drove back up toward La'ie, the wind was blowing, so we hated to get in the water because it is cold getting out and the beach wasn't that warm really. So we walked along the beach and watched the waves come crashing in. I really am amazed and intrigued by the ocean. It was fun! Then we met Tonya's friend Nichole at our favorite dinner place - Surfin' Taco and ate one last dinner. MMMMM-good! We went back to our place and showered and stuffed everything into the luggage and hoped everything would fit okay. Then we left to come to the airport.

We are now sitting in the airport waiting for our flight home to a very cold, snowy Utah...Hmmmm, Maybe there is a job for me here in Hawaii...Someday!

Top of Waikiki and Chinatown

Yesterday we worked in the morning. We went to eat lunch with Mike Griffiths that we used to work with in Provo at the CTL and had a good visit with him about what he is doing and the direction he sees his job going here at BYU-Hawaii. After we finished, we picked up Tonya's friend Nichole who is doing an internship here and we went down to Waikiki. Unfortunately it was windy and the waves were pretty strong, and a little bit rainy and cool, so we didn't do much. We were trying to decide where to eat, and happened to be walking by Top of Waikiki. So Top of Waikiki is a revolving restaurant. It takes about one hour for you to go all the way around. It is a more expensive restaurant than I thought, but the food was really good. We all just got little dishes and ate a little bit, but it was still about $20 each for all of our meals...I ate crab cake and thought it was really good though. Then we tasted everyone else's stuff and it was all really good. So that was a fun and unique experience for us. Then it rained on us as we walked back to our car. It was a fun day.

Today we worked in the morning. Then we went to eat lunch at a fish restaurant in North Shore with Paul from the Testing Center that we have been working with. I ate some ahi tuna and salad and rice. It was so good! It tasted really, really good.

Then we left from there and wanted to go down to Waimano falls, but the trail was really steep and I didn't really want to do it that much. We turned around and went to Chinatown. We had talked about going there a few different times, but we never made it. So we went and wandered around the different shops was a lot of fun. It made me a little bit nostalgic for China. One of the things we bought there was a boba (bubble tea). This is a smoothie with fruit and then it has large tapioca balls in it. We used to drink them all the time when I was in China. Except I prefer to not get the tapioca balls in mine. Anyway, it was refreshing and fruity and something new to try. I liked it a lot.

We went by Costco to buy some gifts to take back with us and then went to Kaneohe on the way home to try a Korean restaurant that we heard was really good. It was not as good as we thought it might be. I have had much better Korean food. Oh well. Sometimes you try something and it's great, and sometimes you try, but it isn't very good. It was a fun day!

PCC and Temple

Today was a rainy day in La'ie and all over the island it looked like. We worked all morning on our projects, trying to make some progress on them. Then about 1:00 we left and went back to PCC. If you have a ticket, you can go back for the next three days after. There were a couple of shows that we didn't get to see. So first we went to the Hawaii one where they taught about the hula. I didn't know that the hula is more about the hands than shaking your hips (like Tahiti). Then it was time for the canoe pageant where they have dancers come out on a canoe and dance through the river running through the PCC. The other day we were sitting on the very end so we didn't see any of the dances, but today we sat smack dab in the middle and we saw it all. It was a lot of fun. The students are so talented! Then we went to Fiji and they did some chanting and dancing for us. We were going to get "tattoos," but we were going to go to the temple right after, so I didn't think I would have time to get it washed off. After we walked around some more, we went to some of the shops and then we left.

We came back to our place and changed back into our skirts, ate some salad, and then Tonya and I went to the temple. It was so neat. It is really beautiful! I enjoyed it a lot and it was neat to be there. The rooms still smell new. It really is a beautiful temple. I am so glad we got to go! It was a great day!