Sunday, December 20, 2009

Thanksgiving and Turks and Caicos

I'm a little behind so I'm going to try to catch up. For Thanksgiving my family went to San Diego! I LOVE California and would live there if I could. The weather was amazing and it was good to hang out with my family! I don't have many pictures but here are a few and I'll try to find more when I go home for Christmas.
This is Birch and Camille's newest member of the family, Haley. She is the cutest baby girl I've ever seen!
Here is Trevor and Haley

I got a new nanny job where I travel with the kids. Last week we went to Turks and Caicos. I didn't know where that was but it is the southern islands of the Bahamas! It is a very beautiful place! I got to go scuba diving in the ocean for the first time! It was so amazing! I saw sharks, a turtle, an eel, a lobster and a ton of beautiful fish! It was so cool! I can't wait to go again! Here are some pictures there!




This was an amazing place but believe me, it was more work then play. I wouldn't mind going back someday with my husband!

Sunday, November 1, 2009

October Fun!

October has been a fun month! It's the best month because it's not only Halloween but it's my birthday month! Not that I am super excited about being a year older but I am learning to embrace being 25 and single. I have a great life! This month I've carved pumpkins, gone to haunted houses, parties, a trip to cali and I got scuba dive certified!

This is the pumpkin the Josh and I carved on the Halloween date that Lindy and I planned.



Here is the group, Lindy has all the good pictures so I'll try to put more up soon.





For Halloween we decided to be the pussycat dolls. It was so great! We had a party the weekend before Halloween and these are the pictures from that.



I got my costume in cali and the lady who worked there helped me pick it out and then cut the back of my shirt for me. I thought it looked so cool!



Me, Jamie and Lindy



All 5 of us



Birthday Cake!


Jamie, me, Amber (my other roommate), Lindy


These are the pictures from actual Halloween, we had to get 2 new girls and if you look closely one of us isn't a girl... so funny!





Mine and Lindy's California trip!



We went to the Angels Yankees game 3 where the Angels won! So much fun, but I've never been hit on more in my life.




Venice Beach... random camper.

Huntington Beach, I love this place!




We went surfing!


Josh and I got scuba certified! So fun! I can't wait to go in the ocean!

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Living in Utah again...

I am back in Utah and living in Sandy. I really wanted to get out of Provo so I got up the courage and moved 40 minutes away! I figured, at least I'm out of happy valley right? So far it's been great! I have the best roommate I could ask for right now! Her name is Lindy and we have so much in common. One of my friends found this place for me and told us we are the same person with different colored hair, it didn't take long for us to realize he wasn't kidding. So it's been a really good change. I miss Alexis (who is now married and living in Georgia) and Ashley (she lives in Holiday so I still see her every once in a while!) but this was the change I needed coming back. I'm still looking for a job, the economy is not helping that situation. It really is so hard to find anything, so I am a college grad working as a waitress. I thought life was supposed to get better after graduating and that I would be making more money. Not so! I have decided that college is over rated and a waiste of money.... just kidding. Someday I'm sure I'll be glad that I graduated. I have no clue what is in my future at this point. Hopefully get a job or find a nursing school somewhere to get into.

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

I have been back from El Salvador for a while now but I need to catch up on what we did. Here is a little overview of all the projects. More pictures will come soon.

El Salvador Projects:

Habitat for Humanity-
We did Habitat once a week, on Fridays. Habitat’s purpose is to provide quality housing for low-income families, which is especially important in a place like El Salvador where floods and mudslides are often deadly due to the poor construction of most Salvadorean houses.
LDS English-
We taught English classes at the LDS Employment Resource Center on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings. I taught the advanced class which had between 10 and 15 students. Our purpose in this project was to provide a skill that has tremendous economic power, namely English, to individuals who would not otherwise be able to attain it. We worked with the local LDS church to establish the classes as a permanent opportunity for the local people. One of the ways the class became more stable was to have the advanced class to take over the teaching of the lower level classes.


CIPI-
CIPI is a government refuge for abandoned or abused children ages 0-18. They have around 70 children in their care. Most are girls and most stay for a few months until they can be placed with other family members or transferred to a more long-term institution to meet their specific needs. They have three major populations: Preschool-aged kids (mix of boys and girls), pre-adolescent and adolescent girls (8-18), and special needs kids (with mental and physical disabilities). We completed a multi-week education course for the adolescent girl population that focused on developing the girls’ social and educational skills. I started a project with the girls call CIPI Sports. I saw that the girls don’t ever get outside to exercise. I met with them once a week and did some kind of exercise to get their body moving and their hearts pumping. The girls loved the activity with soccer being their favorite sports. We also painted the pre-school so that the kids had a better environment to play and learn in.

FUDEM-
FUDEM is a non-profit organization famous in El Salvador for offering eye care to the masses. They do inexpensive or free eye exams and surgeries and provide glasses at a discounted price. With their mobile eye clinic they go out to the most underprivileged areas of El Salvador and do eye exams, often treating hundreds of people in a single day. We assisted them with the “Ventanitas de Luz” program, which takes eye care professionals into local schools to do eye exams and to help identify correctable problems. We helped take flyers around to children at various schools so that they know who we are and we would share information about FUDEM’s offerings with their parents We also helped the eye doctors do visual acuity testing at various schools or community centers.
Balsamo-
Balsamo is a non-profit organization specializing in microfinance and community development that has been working in El Salvador for 20 years. This year we focused on three main projects: the BEST game, square-meter gardening, and environmental protection. We worked with communities in El Tular and San Lucas, both of which are located in the department (county) of Sonsonate. We ran modules of the BEST game with local business owners, helped schools and families set up sustainable gardens, and did skits about health and the environment with the children in the communities.

Hospital Zacamil-
This is a hospital that traditionally serves some of the poorer populations of San Salvador. They loved our help; we would assist the nurses with patient care and other basic functions. I put together patient education materials which we left with the head nurse and she gave it to the patients. We also put together a folder with games for the patients so they would have something to do during the day.


Hogar Providencia-
Hogar Providencia is a home for boys that have been orphaned or are coming from troubled backgrounds. There were 25 boys in the home and we taught them a variety of skills in workshops. We taught them: basic English, study skills, spirituality, literacy, health and hygiene, and values.



Bus Health-
I wanted to develop an easy way to teach a lot of people about health. With all the people riding the local buses I came up with the idea to deliver information to this readily available captive audience. We would go on the busses and give a few minute presentation about a certain topic and then hand out flyers to reinforce the principles we taught.

Friday, July 17, 2009

Guatemala

Last week I went to Guatemala! It was so much fun I LOVED it! It was so beautiful and there were so many amazing things to see! We took a bus into Guatemala City and went by the temple which was really cool. We didn't go in but I wish we could have, that would have been a really awesome experience. After that we went to Antigua! Antigua is such a cool city that has a lot of history. It was so cool to see the cathedrals and of course go shopping because they have all the handmade crafts there. The food there was also wonderful! I hadn't had food that good since I left the States! On Sunday night four of us took an overnight bus to Tikal! I am so happy that we did this because it was so amazing to see the ruins and temples that are thousands of years old! It was also really cool to think that this could have been one of the places talked about in the Book of Mormon! Here are some pictures!

Here is all of us at the temple. The order is Cole, Allen, me, Tawnee, Crystal and Taylor:
We are at dinner at the best place ever! The food was sooo good!


This is in the market after a few hours of shopping.

The Cathedral

This is one of the Cathedrals we went in (this one is more like a ruin)

In the monastery right next to the Cathedral





Here are all the temples we saw in Tikal







This is the town we stopped in and to get to and from Tikal, Flores



Guatemala was an amaizing trip and I would love to go back and experience more of the culture and country!