Dear colon....I hate you

Has anyone been looking for a new recipe for death lately? Oh because I found you a good one. The following items will be all my diet consists of for the next ten days.....

1) Lemonade. Sounds refreshing right? Think again.

2) Maple Syrup. Can it get more delicious than this? Oh yes. It can. Keep reading.

3) Cayenne Pepper. Have you ever seasoned your lemonades with this little treat?

WHY AM I DOING THIS????? My aunt knows exactly whats up when it comes to all that natural raw health food crap, and she decided my colon needed a little cleansing....I mean why not, right? You only live once, might as well have a clean colon while you do it. However, if I had known how completely ILL I would feel while doing, or that my mom was making marinated grilled chicken for dinner last night, I would have to say that I would have thought twice. I might have said, "You know what? I think I like my colon filled with parasites thanks. But nice of you to ask," or perhaps, "Maybe next time. I'm pretty okay with unregular poo for now." I don't know. Call me selfish, but I happen to enjoy having chewable food from time to time. So all I can say at this point is, Colon you better love me for this. And look sparkling clean.

AND JUST A REMINDER TO ONE AND ALL THAT SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE PREMIERS THIS THURSDAY!!!!! TWO HOURS! DON'T MISS IT! ME AND MY COLON SURELY WON'T!

SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE!!!

OKAY HOLD UP FOLKS....first official SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE....DANCE....DANCE commercial!!! Am I PEEING MY PANTS about this? You better believe it. For those of you that aren't SYTYCD fans....get a life! For real. How can you not love this show?? Don't worry, I've already marked the 2009 premiere in my planner.... May 21st. Two hours of heaven? You better believe it. So I've decided to keep a blog review of this season- people always ask me what I thought of the nights episodes and who's going home like they think I know something with my dancing background...ha. Not really. But if my obsessive nature with this show can assist those with a lesser appreciation for Cat Deely's crooked nose...I'm happy to assist. Just to get you jazzed and ready to go, take a look at a few little things you might see this season.....

Something like this?? You bet.

And this? Sure why not.

Now if that doesn't sound like entertainment, go ahead and move back to the Ukraine.

CAMP ATTACH

So....this past week I had the AMAZING opportunity to volunteer at Camp Attach in Leesburg, Florida. Camp Attach is a week long training for parents who have children with various attachment disorders....Reactive Attachment Disorder, Opositional Defiant Disorder, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, etc. We teach the parents techiques to use in their home, do lots of bonding and trust building activities, and give the children opportunities to start the healing process. It was the most absolutely draining thing I've ever done, but also the most rewarding. We worked 16 hour days, helping families and hearts heal. The work that they do at those camps is nothing short of miraculous. I could talk about it for days.

Nancy Thomas is the director of the camp, and I was so blessed to be able to learn from her this week. Nancy is an internationally known Therapeutic parent, and is recognized for her ability to heal children who have killed. She is a top contributor to the Attachment community. We were able to attend a two day seminar entitled "When Love Is Not Enough," before the week at camp started. Also heading up the camp was Mr. James Dusmenil, the leading attachment therapist in the nation. Not only was I in awe of Mr. James and his abilities with disturbed children, we became very close over the week in the Florida, and I can't wait to pay him a visit. This post is sounding very official haha. Anyways, the week was AMAZING and I have been commissioned to attend another camp in, oh, three weeks! It will be at Nancy's ranch in Colorado, I hope I will be able to arrange my schedule so that I can go. If you have any questions about Nancy's camps and/or Reactive Attachment Disorder, I would be MORE than happy to answer them for you! We need to spread the awareness...... Love it.

A little explanation on this picture.... our main responsability as staff was "Starbucks"....whenever a child did something inapropriate or disrespectful, the parent would raise their hand and yell STARBUCKS....then we would run over, take the child to the starbucks room, give mom a hug, and she would give us a card with what the child did. In the starbucks room the child has to "strong sit", like in this picture, do jumping jacks, or jump on the tramp until they've cooled off, can tell us what they did, and come up with an idea for restitution to the parent (back massage, make the bed....). Then the starbucks crew takes the child back to mom where he tells them what he did and asks if he can give restitution. We had lots of meltdowns in the starbucks room....kids with RAD don't like it when they don't get their way. We had kids that weren't calm enough to leave for 15 hours. One night we had a newspaper fasion show, and right in the middle, little Skyla got starbucksed.....peacock costume and all.

Faux hawks and white teeth...

Soooo the news finally came- BYU likes me. I'm accepted. Does this bring me great joy? I'd say an equal 50/50 of joy. The rest is stress. Nerves. Aaaaannd BYU don't hate me....but I'm not sure yet if I'll love you. In fact, if I've ever told you that I'm so excited to be going to BYU, then you don't exist, because I've never said that. USU doesn't have the best feelings towards BYU....in fact, anyone from Logan that knows I'm going to Provo has called me a traitor an average of four times. Plus BYU made about 75% of my friends weird, so I'm a little bitter. Let me share with you a few things that I expect to find at Brigham Young University.......

1) Popped Collars







2) Hair that looks like this..... except blonder. And with more highlights....








3) Really white teeth






4) Lots of faux hawks, preferably not making that face.....







....and when i was searching for the above picture, I found this one. Let it be known that I would not mind if BYU faux hawkers looked like this.








5) And most importantly. Lots. and LOTS. of this


*If anyone knows them, I'll give you a prize.











Now I know this is competely stereotypical, but when that's all you have to go by....what else can I expect?? Can you blame me? I'm patiently waiting for Provo to prove me wrong. The ball's in their court. But this is where it stands now....at faux hawks and white teeth.

This post has potential to become pages long....but I'll try to keep it short. Mostly I just thought I would share with you some of my favorite China experiences. Photos will be included (notice I said "photos" instead of "pictures", because that's an extremely Chinese thing to say. You can even catch me using that phrase from time to time when I'm feeling especially Asian...)

Favorite experience #1......

Of course a favorite past time was strolling up and down the Great Wall of China. It was great, really it was. Actually, I didn't realize how -off- my visual image of it was before I saw it with my own eyes. Who knew that it actually traversed the mountains that it was built upon and included death hikes up Mt. Everest?? Go figure. Besides the 7,000 calories I lost making the trek, it was an experience I will NEVER forget.

Experience #2.....

I went to an Olympic event sized Jackie Chan concert. Did you know that Jackie is actually a teenage pop sensation in Asia? He's huge. Big. Famous.... if you squint your eyes towards the red hands on the stage, you'll see a tiny man in a cream sweater.....there he is. He looked especially classy in his matching beige scarf. Go Jackie. Go Jackie go.



Experience #3.....

I rafted down the Li River on a bamboo raft. Seriously folks....does it get more China than that? It was so incredible....and long. But did i care? No, i did not.






Experience #4.....


I would consider one of my favorite experiences to include all the absolutely disgusting food that I had the chance to sample. Where else would I have eaten duck webbing (to your left), or coagulated pigs blood (to your right)? If you are curious how you would go about eating duck webbing, you actually stretch the toes apart, and then nibble off the stretched webbing in between. I bet it tastes just how you imagine it would. And the list of disgusting food is pages long, don't even worry....these were just a few of the best.

Experience #5....

I went on the current Guinness Book Of World Records Roller Coaster for the longest vertical drop in the world. If you can find it, its the drop nearest to the left...and the best part is that they actually dangle you directly at the top, over the edge, for a full minute. I would be interested to know how many Asians have wet their pants at that very spot.



Experience #6....
We beach bummed in the tropical paradise of Sanya on Hainan Island for four days- this included eating mangos the size of your head from this fruit market every morning, parasailing over the clear turquoise waters, scuba diving China style (having them strap boulders to our waist, giving us a thumbs up, and then throwing us in the ocean), and witnessing many mature ages Russian men sporting speedos and beer bellies.....and hair.




Experience #7....


One of my FAVORITE times in China was the time spent in the Forbidden City in BeiJing. Being the history buff that I am, I knew ALL about its history, not to mention the history regarding Tianannmen Square and the Mao Mausoleum just across the road. It was INCREDIBLE to be in the middle of so much HISTORY. If you're interesting on learning more, I can definitely recommend some good books for you to read....do it!! Wow. It was awesome. It was even worth this 26 HOUR HARD SEAT TRAIN RIDE. Can anyone claim that they rode sitting up on a hard seat for 26 hours straight? If you have, I don't believe you. MISERABLE.


Experience #8....

I risked my life to climb hundreds of feet below Yanghuo village in the Guanxi Province, in flip flops and a plastic hat, just to swim in a mud pool. But wow it was worth it. China china china....something like this would NEVER be legal in the states. Infact, I'm positive that if I had happened to slip and fall into a thousand foot crevice (which we were crossing over holding on to ropes...) they wouldn't have thought twice about it. And then they probablly would have chased us out with knives. Sometims people just have the most fun in the sketchiest of locations.... and I happen to be one of those people.

Experience #9....
My FAVORITE place to spend time in GuZhen was at the morning market...if you woke up really early on Saturday mornings, you, along with all of GuZhen, could stroll around a city block filled with farmers and butchers and fisherman's stalls selling anything and everything. Cantonese food and more specifially the food of my province, GuangDong, is especially known for their love to eat "anything with four legs besides a table and anything that flys besides airplanes." Its true, they love to. See above for two of the dishes I samples. If you look really closely at this picture you can see intestines hanging from a hook on your right, and on your left, the skin of a pig head. Mmmm mmmmm. I really thought it was the coolest thing, and I think that we should have them in America.

Experience 10!
I hope you're not too shocked when I say that my favorite experience in China was teaching my kids.....because aparantly it's all I can talk about! I MISS THESE LITTLE BALLS OF TERROR!!!!!!







ALSO, IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN PLANET EARTH BY BBC......YOU NEED TO! THEY'RE REPLAYING IT ON THE DISCOVERY CHANNEL STARTING TONIGHT AT 8. Just thought I'd throw that out there while I have your attention....I've watched the whole thing cover to cover three times and I STILL love. And so will you, I promise.

CAUTION

This is a word of warning for all who come across this...

If by chance you are craving a baked potato today, may I suggest that you first sniff the meat that you put upon it?? I thought I was making a healthy choice by serving myself a baked potato with ham and cheese for lunch. Little did I know that I was poisoning myself with cancer ham. Immediately following this little treat, I went with my family to visit my grandma who is currently in a medical care center in the middle of nowhere which is only accessible via forty sharp turns. Also, my father was driving his truck. You get the idea. I hope.

All in all, I just hope that somewhere out there can learn from my experience. Next time you top your potato with ham, sniff it. It could be body poison.

zhong guo peng yous.....(chinese friends)

I'm really missing China today- reaaaaaally missing it. If you could imagine yourself spending everyday for four months with the same people and then never seeing them again? It hurts to think about. Fortunately, I have every intention of going back to see my family in China- hopefully very soon! You form a special bond with the people that you love and serve, and the people that love and serve you right back. Not to mention that you're in the middle of a foreign country where you happen to not know a word of their language....you love anyone who speaks English right away!

To the left is Catherine, one of our best Chinese friends!! She helped us everyday with ANYTHING that we needed- its amazing how helpless you are with even the most simple things in a country where you just don't know how things work. Things like going to the post office and buying bus tickets would have been impossible if it wasn't for her help. She is a sweetheart.

On the right is Apple, another best friend from China. She was the Chinese teacher for our ILP classroom and we quickly became friends- we both love to be crazy. Or at least she liked to watch me be crazy- Chinese people were never shy to let me know how crazy I was. Apple is only 20 years old and already has a full time teaching position- and by full time i mean 8-5, Monday through Friday. So much is expected of her and she is such an amazing teacher- all the kids love her. One of my favorite things from china is a heart necklace that Apple gave me as I was leaving- she has a matching one and said that "when we wear our hearts, it is like we are in the same place. Because our hearts are always together, in China and America." I love Apple!

And there's no way to understand how much I miss my kids. I mean really.....just look at this picture. We were with them for more hours in a day than their parents were- and then to never see them again? Heart breaking. This is a picture of "Teacher Jonah" being attacked by students Cindi, Lily, Kayla, Jodi, Yo-Yo, and Apple. And I think Hanah is the one smashing my nose. Some of these kids are growing up in really trying circumstances- they have a life of hard hard work ahead of them, but I know that they can do it. I only hope that they'll be able to look back and remember Teacher Jonah as someone who really loved them and believed in them.