All the Bitter Sweet Lemons

I tried to go on the master cleanse this week. It calls for drinking a special lemon aid and lots of water for a week. I made it a day. Ya, it was intense. In my own defense I did it six months ago and made it ten days. So I felt that I’ve done my duty to the master cleanse and we can part as friends with no hard feelings. The problem is that when we broke up, it left a terrible mess in my apartment in the form of 200 lemons. What do you do with 200 lemons? What do you do with one lemon? I’ll tell you what, you invite as many people in your singles ward that are willing and host an Iron Chef showdown. It was a blast! We split up in teams by apartment and had an unveiling of the secret ingredient. Each team had exactly one hour to make an appetizer, main course and desert. I chose to use the lemon as a curdling agent and make buttermilk biscuits. They were pretty good. Me and my roommates made a baked lemon noddle dish and lemon syrup for crapes. Can you believe we still didn’t win?  In a surprising turn of events a boy apartment swept the competition with muffins, chicken, and lemon bars. I guess you can’t compete with the classics.

This week marks the end of my adventure here at Alta. One whole year of living the life here in Provo. I am going to miss a lot of it, my roommates, living so close to campus, the social life, etc. I am not going to miss paying rent I can’t really afford, living so close to the BYU stadium, the social life, etc. It has been a bitter sweet day reflecting on all that I have loved and learned about life this past year. I will miss it. On the other hand I’m excited to spend the summer with family and the adventures that await. Another bitter sweet occurrence of the day was attending my last presidency meeting for relief society. I learned a lot with this calling; however I would be more than happy to go back to being a vising teacher district leader or something.

One more week and I am done with this semester. I have exactly one year left! Yes! (Dancing in the street may commence)!!!  It has not been too bad actually I’m just very overdue for a break. The last few weeks have been the only really bad time this semester and most of that was due to a world conference my department was hosting. It was really neat to meet some deaf celebrities and deaf people from all over the world. My favorite was the German man who kept slipping between German sign and ASL. I understood about 10% of what he said. There were ASL students from all levels volunteering and helping with things around the conference. It was a great confidence boost to realize how far I have come in studying this language in two years. I feel so blessed to be doing something so cool with my life. I LOVE DEAF STUDIES. Without a doubt ASL is the lemonade of my life. The trial that continues to test and try me but taste so sweet when I get a glimpse of the end. 

As so many endings are leading to new beginnings I have learned that when life gives you lemons you can make lemonade and it will taste pretty sweet, but I cant drink lemon aid for four more months so I will live it up to the best of my ability and have an iron chef adventure instead. cheers to all your crazy cook offs!