Highlights

Well, I'm going to continue with the highlight reel of the last few weeks, starting on September 24th (since that's where the previous post ended) and going until hopefully today October 19th. Anyway, If you're curious what I've been up to for the month before this post make sure to check out the two posts before it since I also published those today... which I guess I could have waited... but I really wanted to get them out there and not have to worry about it.

Anyway, the first highlight from this time period is the afternoon of Saturday September 29th. I went on a mini-date with one of my friends to get some frozen yogurt, which tastes surprisingly like soft-serve ice cream... especially if you put some toppings on it like m&ms and chocolate chips. I had cake batter flavor... which was pretty darn delicious... and well worth the $3 or so that I paid to get some for the both of us. Anyway, I only consider it a mini date because  it lasted about an hour and pretty much consisted of walking to get the yogurt (and talking on the way), getting and eating the yogurt, and walking back home (and talking all the while about various things). I promised her I would take her on a real date soon enough... and the plan is for it to be tomorrow. I kinda hope she doesn't read this until then... but it doesn't really matter if she knows what I'm planning or not. It's an afternoon date - We're starting at like 12:30pm, and we're gonna go on a picnic type of thing with some hopefully tasty rolls (cinnamon and regular), pulled chicken (I would do pork but I don't have any...) to go on the rolls, baby carrots, and some Guarana Antartica to drink.

Then we're gonna go watch a movie at the dollar theater, Ice Age: Continental Drift to be precise (one of the few movies she hasn't seen that is currently in the dollar theater). After the movie, we're gonna go walk up to campus and see if the roof of the JFSB is open and if so go on it and chat for a bit. I'll of course have some cookies and cinnamon rolls still for us to snack on, and some bottles of water as well. We'll head back home after that since she has some activity to go to that evening. [There will soon enough be a post about how the date actually goes and what we actually end up doing... you'll see it soon enough :P ]

The next highlight I've had was pretty much an entire week long... It was midterms week! I ended up doing pretty well on all of my midterms (I at least didn't fail any of them...) and considering I had tests in 5/6 classes in one week... that's not too shabby. During the week I usually relieved my stress by baking... so I made about 4 batches of cookies that week for various reasons :P

Another Highlight was on October 7th, 2012... which was a very great day. My friend happened to have an extra ticket to the last session of conference and asked me to go... of course I said yes without a second thought. So I finished work the night before, and got about 4 hours of sleep in order to wake up early enough in order to be ready to go at 8:30am for the entire day. So I got ready, and we drove up to Salt Lake City incredibly early in the morning... there was like no traffic because it was Sunday and it was pretty early. Once we got up there we ended up watching the first session in the North Visitor's Center on Temple Square in a sweet auditorium. It was incredibly awesome to be in a room full of people all eagerly listening to the words of our church leaders, and it was a great session. After that session we headed back to the car to eat the lunch we had packed, and then headed up to the conference center. We got to our seats about an hour and fifteen minutes prior to the session starting, so I read some chapters in the New Testament and looked around the conference center. It is a sweet place! Everything is super beautiful and well crafted even down to the seats being incredibly comfortable and actually spaced enough apart to not be painful to sit in. Once the Prophet walked in everyone stood  at the same time, it was a sweet thing to be a part of. Then the actual session was incredibly spiritual and awesome. Overall, it was an experience that I'll definitely remember for quite a while.

My next highlight I'm gonna type about is my friend Mike opening his mission call. It was incredibly awesome to be there for someone to open it (it was the first one of my friends I was actually able to go to the opening of his call). So his family was about 15 minutes late, and the entire time there was an air of nervous energy throughout the room as everyone talked about random things. Once he actually opened the call, there was a great spirit of confirmation that it was indeed a call from the Lord. It was pretty awesome.

That's all the highlights up until now... If you want a more detailed listing of my dealings... well too bad :P Unless you're part of my family, then feel free to call me :D

'Til Next Time!
Jordan Nielson

Awesome church experiences, Incredible Date, and more!

Well, I'm still eons behind where I would like to be for today... considering it's already October 19th and I'm only up to about September 9th... So, In order to catch up I'm just going to go through my calender for the last month and a half and hit the highlights. I'm just gonna go in chronological order, not in order of highlightness - so don't think just because something is first or last it was better than something else... just when it happened! Also, I'm not going to post anymore insights from my D&C class... I figure I'll just post them on a separate page on this and throw a link up to it once I get it done (which shouldn't be hard since I already have all of them typed out... just want to put there here). Let us begin!

First on the list of highlights happened on September 12th, sometime in the afternoon. My good friend Lydia and I went on an adventure to Buy-Low (kinda like publix but less awesome) to acquire some limes to try making these smoothies that she found a recipe for. It turned out the smoothie was basically lime juice, vanilla ice cream, and ice, and for those who are huge fans of lime you could also put half a lime in the bottom of the cup. They were actually quite tasty, and that's all for that highlight.

Next on the ever-increasing list is stake conference, which happened that weekend (September 15th and 16th). It started out with the adult session at 2pm on Saturday, which was down at the UVU institute building, and was pretty awesome! The highlight from that was definitely my stake president calling his wife up to the podium to speak with him while they talked to us about marriage. It was kind of entertaining, because I had never seen a church speaker call someone from the audience to join them at the podium so it was certainly an experience. Of course, I also have some spiritually centered notes on what was said, but I don't really feel like posting those up here... If you want them email me? Anyway, later that night I of course had work (since it was a saturday) until midnight. I only bring that up because stake priesthood was at 7am on Sunday morning. Yes. 7AM. Like earlier than I usually wake up 7AM. So I got up at that insane time (5:30am) after going to bed shortly after midnight and it was TOTALLY WORTH IT! From the notes I have, the feelings I remember, and the fact that I was able to get to regional conference early enough to get a boss seat, it was way worth getting up that early. Later that day (not really... pretty much right after it) there was a regional conference for all of Utah Valley. It was totally incredible, as the concluding (kind of like a keynote) speaker was Elder Dallin H. Oaks (of the 12) who I got to be IN THE SAME ROOM AS. It totally blew my mind. I had never considered being within 200 feet of an apostle, let alone being able to hear him speak! So regional conference was totally awesome, there were a couple great speakers in addition to Elder Oaks, which made it even better! Topics that were spoken about included temples, family history, who   we are (children of God), integrity, optimism, founding ourselves upon Christ, missionary work (even in an area where the majority of people are members), marriage, being single in a regular ward, the direction finders (liahonas) we have, the basic principles of the gospel (article of faith #4), and even planning! Elder Oaks made a comment to the effect of "I cannot remember a conference where it was so inspired, varied, and important." My favorite part of the conference was definitely when Elder Oaks made an analogy relating being single in a conventional ward to a new member of a stargazing club. He pointed out that single members lack a spouse, much like new members of the club lack jackets - and so life is uncomfortable and awkward for the person who can't relate to the things being discussed and you end up a bit cold.

The next highlight, interesting enough, was later that day at the Wyview Office Desk Attendant Potluck we had. I was able to make dessert which ended up being a cake (which I foolishly didn't take a picture of) that had different sections of different kinds. It included plain vanilla, marble, funfetti, and funfetti marble. Anyway, my incredible co-workers made awesome stuff as well including Chicken Black Bean Salsa, Sitcky Rice, Some kind of fancy crockpot thing that you put on rice and tasted delicious, corn, orange salad, and some regular green salad. It was a super fun thing to be able to go to, and it ended up that not much cake was eaten because of the volume of other delicious food that was there to be had.

The next semi-highlight was forum on Tuesday. It wasn't a devotional, mainly because the topic wasn't spiritual at all, but it was still incredibly awesome and informative. The speaker was a judge on the circuit for D.C. and he discussed "The Hard Work of Understanding the Constitution" which I felt like I had a pretty good grasp on how difficult it was to really get what the constitution says. But, he made me realize it was even harder than my old Young Men's President (who was totally awesome) had beat into my skull.

The next highlight spanned a couple days, and was the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) Career Fair. A couple days before the fair I went to get my volunteer's vest, but they weren't available yet. So, I asked the person organizing it if I would be able to help her at all in preparation for it, and I ended up being allowed to move boxes of gifts for recruiters for her. This was a super awesome chance I got, and I only got it because I took the initiative (and I still believe I was prompted by the spirit to ask) I got the chance to volunteer a ton of hours for the career fair, including the 3.5 I spent moving boxes the day before the actual fair. The day of the fair I was able to volunteer for a grand total of about 7 hours spanning random time intervals (interspersed with classes) from 7am until about 4pm. It was super awesome to be able to see all those companies out there, and it really opened my eyes to how many options there were for people that excel in their major regardless of what it is.

Anyway, the next highlight came a little while later on the 21st of September. It was my first date of fall semester, and it was pretty awesome. The Tuesday before, I had asked one of my co-worker's roommates out as part of a challenge given to me by on the RAs. So, I baked her some cookies (sugar cookies to be precise) and walked over to her apartment and asked her. Anyway, then came Friday and I decided to bake a pizza for our date. I must admit... it was pretty tasty, and I actually took a picture of it! After we ate a bit, we walked up to the Planetarium on campus for the planetarium show. It was pretty sweet, and reminded me of how much I enjoy looking at the stars and trying to figure out how on earth they came up with those constellations. After the show, we walked back to my apartment and ate a delicious giant cookie/brownie thing (also have a picture of that). That was pretty much the end of the date... or at least it was for all y'all.

      

My next highlight, and final one for this post (which I just realized is actually kind of long...) was the Brigham City Temple Dedication Broadcast. It was super awesome to be a part of, and I can't wait until I actually find a way to get to a dedication in person (that's on my bucket list). So there were a few things that happened that were incredible to be a part of... but a tad sacred to just post on a blog for anyone to read that happens upon it.

'Til I finish the next post,
Jordan Nielson

Falling behind

So in my last post I got to Saturday September 1st, which means I'm still a good month and a half or so behind... so this might end up being a marathon post since I don't really have much else to do tonight that absolutely needs to be done.

Anyway, it's Sunday September 2nd, 2012, which was a very interesting day for a few reasons. To start off, it was Fast Sunday, which meant that I didn't want to eat anything in the morning, or for lunch, so it was good that a few interesting things happened that day. To start off my day I woke up super late... like 20 minutes after church starts late. Luckily, there's four wards in my church building, so I was able to make it to Sunday School and Priesthood for my ward, then attend another ward's sacrament meeting. Anyway, after I finished sitting through one and a half testimony meetings, and the Sunday School and Priesthood meetings, I went home and it was about 3pm before I finally was done with church meetings, largely due to the fact that I was ridiculously tired the night before. So I took a nap, went to ward prayer, and then headed to bed since I had work in the morning.

So it's now Monday morning, and it is a reasonably good Monday for two reasons. First, we don't have class since it's labor day. Then second, I was able to cover one of my co-worker's shifts that morning and got to experience opening the office for the first time. Sadly, after work the day headed downhill pretty fast. I took a nap, and really didn't do very much else of note that day, aside from homework, but it was still nice to not have class.

Then came Tuesday, which was a slightly more exciting day. For one, I actually had classes today which is almost always a good thing, especially since it was the second week of classes and therefore most of them were pretty set in who would be there. Since most classes were set, we got groups in my Chemical Engineering class, which was pretty awesome since my group is made up of 7 super awesome people who all live in Wyview. Later that day we got to get together, back at Wyview  in order to complete our group assignment that was to be due on Thursday. Anyway, because I have to do it for class anyway, I kinda like putting cool insights I had from D&C on here, if nothing else because I really like that class and find it incredibly interesting. So, for today (the 4th of September) my insight was regarding how our church is a church that believes and does miracles, every day, and that whenever I put off a chance to exercise my priesthood authority and power, that's basically me living below the potential I have to be the best I can be. So that's the D&C related thought for today, it is related to sections 2, 3, 7, and 10 so if you're curious read up on them :D

Moving on, Tuesday night wasn't too exciting - just went to work and entertained questions while working on homework - and as typical of nights I work went to bed sometime after midnight. Then came Wednesday, which was a reasonably good day. From what I can remember there was nothing exceedingly terrible that happened, and I got an excuse to make a cake. The excuse was that it was the birthday of one of the hall advisors, and it just so happened to be the one who was my hall advisor for summer term. So I made a super tasty chocolate chocolate chip cookie cake (picture below this paragraph). But, sadly for those of us trying to surprise her, she wasn't home until waaay late that night (like 11:30pm), so we just had to leave the stuff outside her door and didn't actually get to see her reaction to it :(

After Wednesday of course comes Thursday, which was a pretty routine day so far as I can recall. Nothing really extraordinary happened, but I did have d&c again and therefore have another insight to share. Anyway, after Thursday came Friday which wasn't too busy except for a chance to make some lasagna (which is like my favorite food). Of course I've also been having to work on an ever-increasing list of homework that needs to be done each day, as my classes finally get in a rhythm  with what work they expect to be done. So it is finally the weekend again, which is always wonderful as that usually means I can do pretty much whatever since I don't have homework due during this time. So I ended up skyping my wonderful aunt for a little while, working a bit, and going to church.

Sunday was an especially exciting day as it was the birthday of my boss at work so a few Resident Assistants and I decorated the office for her to see on Monday. I also got to go ward prayer, which was interesting as we filled out spotlight forms. Another cool thing that happened was I got a calling - from over the pulpit (kind of) - to be an assistant ward clerk. So I got to spend some time learning all that cool stuff, and got set apart which was a really awesome experience. So I'm not really going in order for this day, but there was also a super awesome CES devotional given by Elder Holland that day and I got to make some Chicken Parmigiana for some of my friends right before it. And... since I'm still over a month behind, I'm gonna throw this post up and then write a new one!

Til I finish the next post,
Jordan Nielson

Playing the "Catch-up" Game

Well... We're about 3 weeks into fall semester, and it seems like I'm already playing Catch-up... but only with the blog! It's hard work to keep up with all the busy work I get from six classes... much more difficult than the measly three I had summer term.

Anyway, Moving on with the story started last post (which you should go read if you hadn't, there's a chance you might have missed it). In my last post, I detailed my exciting experiences of meeting my new roommates and going to church for the first time in my fall ward in addition to my first day of fall classes. But! The real fun began the second day of classes, when I had 3 other classes I hadn't had the first day, and I also had chemistry again. So, on Tuesdays and Thursday I start my day at the wonderful time of 9am with a chance to study the Gospels in the New Testament. The first day of class was fairly routine, as my professor spent most of the class discussing the syllabus and his 200+ page packet of awesomeness. After New Testament I headed down the hall to chemistry where we spent most of class discussing some early atomic theories. Ya know, like Thompson's, Rutherford's, and a couple others? Meh. They're not that important since we have the nuclear model that we use now, but it's still cool to know where that came from though. After chemistry I wandered around for an hour hoping to run across someone I knew, which ended up not happening and I eventually made my way to my Intro to Chemical Engineering class that starts at noon. That class looks to be a ton of fun, as most of the busy work actually has some application and it looks like we're going to be put into groups for a few of the assignments. After Chemical Engineering I headed back to the Benson Building (which was where my morning classes were) for D&C (part 1) which happened to be my first class that actually had someone I knew already in it that I knew about. Anyway, my teacher for D&C - Professor Brooks - seems to be super awesome. About halfway through the first class meeting we got to the material - the Introduction to the Doctrine and Covenants - which I had actually never really read to thoroughly before and it struck me how specific it was. In class we also discussed a bit about the sheer volume of revelation that Joseph Smith had, including how section 76 (the one that includes the information about the kingdoms of glory - good stuff, you should read it) could have been at least 100 times longer that it is. Anyway, after D&C got out, I went home and chilled for a little while. I did some homework, but there wasn't too much due or assigned yet, so my day wasn't very exciting. I went to work from 8 until midnight as usual for a Tuesday, Thursday, or Saturday, and not much exciting happened there either.

Then it was Wednesday already, and it turned out that classes aren't as exciting the second day. Though a few notable things did happen... Foremost I came across some people I had met summer term in my chemistry class, which was super exciting because we have that class basically everyday so it's definitely a good thing to know a few people suffering through it with me. Another cool thing that happened is my math Professor, Dr. Barrus, informed me that he was perfectly fine if I turned in homework before it was due (which I figured he would be), and I proceeded to give him the homework up through the next week. It was definitely a good feeling to be rid of that monster, and not have to worry too much about it as I had a nice little cushion to work with as I progressed further on the homework. The last interesting thing that happened on Wednesday, though it was kind of a sad thing, was that I found out we have chemistry homework that's online. I didn't plan on it, so the $30 to access it was a little annoying, but I guess I should have seen it coming since I had been doing online physics homework for the past year, but I guess I thought chemistry was above such menial tasks... It's not.

The real excitement on Wednesday started sometime after classes finished, at the Ward Opening Social. It was held at this absolutely Gorgeous park down the road a little ways next to the Provo River. When I got there, we were in the process of playing some sort of ice-breaker, as usual, and it turned out to be the exceedingly drab one where you have to find someone who has done a certain thing or has a certain trait to fill each line on a list. It turned out that whomever made the list figured there would be at least one Canadian in our ward there... but there wasn't so the game ended up being a semi-bust. It was still a little fun, and I was one of the few people who had traveled more than 1000 miles to get to BYU (fun fact: My current address to my place back in Florida is about a 2300 mile drive depending on which route you take - SOOOO glad we flew). After the game they unleashed us on the food, which was super duper tasty. They fed us J-Dawgs, which for those of you who have never heard of them it's basically a large Hot Dog made of beef or polish meat (both of which are incredibly tasty) and covered in this super tasty sauce (called J-Dawg sauce... original right?) along with your choice of condiments on top. There's a slightly funny, and kind of awesome, story about who I ended up sitting with... it ended up being a couple people from my Home Evening group, but due to the incredibly large amount of people I had seen in the 2 days since, I did not recall them in the slightest. So, we sat there making pleasant conversation for about an hour before we realized it... crazy right? After the social I went home and worked on a bit of homework before heading to bed.

Insert comment from today (September 15th now...):
Holy cow... I just noticed how much text I wrote for a mere 48 hours... I might have to cut down on that if I'm ever going to make it through the 2 weeks I'm behind. Oh well, if I get tired then I'll stop, I'm running on about 5 hours of sleep right now, though I did take a nap for about an hour earlier today, so I guess I'll be heading to bed eventually.
Close Comment.

Then came Thursday, which was actually more exciting than Tuesday (hard to believe right?), or at least it was in my view. My day started out with an awesome discussion in New Testament about the different religious sects (of Judaism) around at the time of Christ, mostly the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and what their different views are. My professor, Brother Parker, made an interesting simile relating them to our day, with the Pharisees being more like the Protestants of today, due to their belief in the oral tradition more so than the authority, while the Sadducees are like Catholics due to their emphasis on authority. After that wonderful discussion I spent an hour vegging in chemistry while they discussed the wondrous topic of Stoichiometry (which doesn't seem to be a word in a usual English dictionary...) that I had drilled into my brain like none else in AP chem (Thanks Mr. Campbell!). So after chem I had to run to the shuttle and head back to Wyview for an awesome staff meeting, where I got to meet a co-worker I hadn't met yet since she works in the mornings when I have class. Anyway, so at staff meeting we had a quiz on the RA's, and I got all of them except one because I couldn't remember the RA for building 4's last name... otherwise I got all of them, which was more than almost everyone else that was there (I think my boss got them all... but she didn't tell us). After staff meeting I got a ride back to campus so I could make my noon chemical engineering class, which turned out to have someone that is also in my chemistry class, and that I happened to meet summer term. Anyway after ChemE I headed over to D&C which is quickly becoming one of my favorite classes. Today we got to talk about the six purposes of the Doctrine and Covenants which are:

1. Voice of warning
2. Message is clear that we have a responsibility to take that voice of warning to the world
3. Part of our responsibility is to prepare ourselves and the world for the second coming
4. Purpose of bearing witness that joseph smith was a prophet of god
5. Witness that the book of Mormon is true
6. Identify that the church of Jesus christ of latter-day saints is the only true and living church on the face of the earth

While discussing this Brother Brooks brought up a quote from President Hunter, which I really liked, from the January 1994 New Era. He said "As children of God we must seek to dispel fear from among people. A timid, fearing people cannot do their work well, and they cannot do God’s work at all. Latter-day Saints have a divinely assigned mission to fulfill which simply must not be dissipated in fear and anxiety." I find this to be an interesting quote, largely because of the truthfulness of it, but also because it gives us motivation to lessen the fear in ourselves and others in order to move God's work forward.

Fast forward a few hours to about 4pm when I got a text from my Bishop asking if I could meet with him at 6:20 that night. Of course I said yes, and so began the hours of anticipating what purpose the Bishop could need to see me for. I asked around a little bit and found that usually if things like that happen you get a calling fairly soon after that. So, I went into the interview not really knowing what to expect, and it turned out to basically be a worthiness interview which he appears to do with most everyone the first month or so of the ward (Fast forward 2.5 weeks and I get a calling to be an assistant ward clerk, funny story about that later though). So after the interview I left feeling a little perplexed about why I was called in since it didn't seem to be anything of urgent need, since I already have a limited-use temple recommend, and I didn't get a calling, so I chatted a little bit with one of my co-workers who seemed utterly convinced I would be an elder's quorum president, which I didn't end up becoming. Work that night was fairly routine, not many people came in so I got to get a bit of homework done, and I chatted with some RAs for a little while.

Insert Another comment from today:
It seems like I'm spewing a novel for this post.... if you were to copy this into a real word processor, it would already be 2-3 pages long and I've only covered .. so if you would like me to keep the posts shorter and more frequent (I'm thinking most days in fall semester might end up like Wednesday, with not much happening but usually at least one noteworthy thing) please vote in the poll at the bottom. So I'm gonna keep moving on this post... because I wanted to at least get through Saturday, and I'm just barely through Thursday.
Close Comment.

Then came Friday, my first day of ChemLab. It was certainly an interesting experience, and it was definitely an interesting day with it starting out in leadership at 8am (which is always interesting, if only because it's at 8am and nobody is quite awake yet). Anyway, the exciting part started after calc ended and I wandered over to the chemistry computer lab and found a mass of people there. It turns out that the virtual chem lab they were having us do for this week was having some serious issues, and people weren't able to access it or it wouldn't load on the computers for various reasons. So, for some people it took over three hours, while I was lucky and once I started it only took about an hour and a half. After I finished with that, I went home and to celebrate finishing the first week of fall semester had a Merlin Marathon (I mentioned more about the show in a previous post) and finished up what was left to watch on Netflix. Sadly though there's 4 seasons already done, and they're filming a 5th, but only the first 3 are on Netflix so it looks like I'll be waiting a while yet before I can keep watching.

After Friday of course came Saturday, which seems to have not been too noteworthy as there isn't anything on my calendar except for work. So I'm pretty sure what ended up happening is I woke sometime in the morning, realized I didn't have anything to do so I fiddled around on facebook a bit, then went back to sleep for a few hours. After I got up the second time I baked some cookies and ate some food, then it was time for a non-exciting day at work.

That finishes up that week, so I guess I'll end this forever long post.

'Til Next Time,
Jordan Nielson

Oh hey... It's fall already?

Preface: So... because I want to get at least something published tonight, and I could probably type on for another few paragraphs about the next few days I figure I'll make 3 different posts about the time since I last posted, the first being this one that covers from when my roommates moved in to Monday night ( a period of about 5 days).


Well... It's been about a month since I last posted on here, and there's been quite a bit happening, so I might have to cut this post into two parts depending on how I'm feeling and if I actually check the length before posting it. Anyway, it would seem that Fall is already upon us here at BYU and we've finished two weeks of classes already. But before that, I figure I should start way back when with my roommates already getting here at the beginning of the semester.

So, way back on like the 22nd of August, my first roommate moved in. I didn't know him before he got here, but he's pretty awesome. He plays guitar, likes to play some of the same computer games I do, and happens to be from Utah. He, like most freshman, actually went to New Student Orientation, although he liked it probably about as much as I would have if I had gone. Anyway, so the first couple days were kind of interesting, but we didn't yet have our other roommate here. So, a few days later when the roommate that I met summer term got back from home, the party really started. The one I met summer term also plays guitar, also likes some of the same computer games I do (albeit they like different ones), and is overall just a pretty cool guy. So, it looks like we're going to have a great semester cooped up here in north wyview.

Moving on... it ended up that we have 9am church, which is kind of a stretch for my roommates as they both like staying up rather late, and a bit challenging for me since I don't get home from work on Saturdays until a little bit after midnight. But it ended up that one of my roommates, who is from Utah, went to his home ward with his family, so it was just me and one other roommate. We ended up being a couple minutes late, which wasn't a big deal, and church was pretty good otherwise. Sadly (kind of) there were no good stories like the first Sunday of Summer, so we're just going to move on. After church, I went home and made some cookies, which were super tasty, and my roommates got their first taste of what it's like to live with me (at least since I got out here and started baking a bunch). Then that evening, some friends from home and I all got together and ate a super tasty dinner. It was in one of the girls' apartments in the new Heritage Halls buildings which was kind of nice, but it made me realize all the more how much I like being in Wyview. For example... I definitely prefer knowing most of my building fairly well instead of just knowing the 5 other people I room with. Another thing is I've gotten used to not having a dishwasher, so it isn't a very big issue that I don't have one. Anyway, so dinner was a blast and it was super awesome to see all those people from back home that I hadn't seen in 2 months (side note: it's the 13th of september and I haven't seen any of them since... sadness :( close side note). Moving on, that night we had our first ward prayer for these new wards, and ours is at 8pm in the 4 rooms that we usually use for Priesthood meeting on Sundays so it was exceedingly tight to get the entire ward in there for 20 minutes. That pretty much sums up my first Sunday in fall semester, so I guess it's time to talk about classes.

Monday morning came bright and early, especially since my classes on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays start at 8am. My first class is my Foundations of Global Leadership class, which I'm still not entirely sure what it is actually supposed to be about, I just kind of go with the flow on that one. It looks like it's going to be a blast though, as the first day we got to play a song as a class with Kazoos. After that I go to multi-variable calculus at 9am, which would probably be more interesting if I hadn't already taken most of the class material at Valencia during spring semester but I need to take it again since at Valencia we never got around to the fundamental vector integral theorems (like Green's and Stokes') so I kind of wish to learn about those. Finally comes chemistry (111 honors for those who care which one) at 10am. Chemistry looks like it should be a ton of fun, as the first day my professor found an excuse to use a flamethrower to blow up balloons filled with different gases which was pretty spectacular. After classes I took the shuttle home, and chilled out for a little bit. I did some math homework, and since I already know the material I went ahead and did all the homework that was due through Friday. Anyway, after I got tired of math I watched my favorite show on Netflix, which is called "The Adventures of Merlin" (if you want to find it on Netflix you can just search merlin). There's three seasons of it on Netflix, and during the break between semesters I discovered it and watched the first season and a couple episodes of the second one. So today I watched a couple episodes of that before it was time to head off to Home Evening - Entire ward style. As typical of BYU wards on the first monday that the ward exists, we have the entire ward gather together for a social thing on Monday evening called Home Evening where they assign apartments into home evening groups and generally have some sort of ice breaker for us to do while providing dinner for us. My home evening group ended up consisting of my apartment, another guys' apartment, and 2 girl apartments, for a total of six guys and seven girls. Sadly enough there will usually only be around 4 or 5 guys there as at least one of my two roommates are usually working monday nights when we have home evening.

Anyway,
'Til Next Time,
Jordan Nielson

Alas... Summer term is over

Well all good things must end right? It seems that summer term has already ended, sadly enough as I really enjoyed studying the Book of Mormon so super often, and meeting and hanging out with all those wonderful people I met. Anyway, I guess I could go over my final week of summer term, since it was exceedingly interesting.

To start with though, I kinda want to talk about my last Sunday in my summer ward, which was certainly an experience. To start off my Sunday, I ended up having to get to church almost an hour early for choir practice, since we were performing. The interesting thing was after choir practice finished, I was asked to give the opening prayer, and then shortly after that they were short on people to help pass the sacrament so I ended up Praying, passing, singing, and bearing testimony. It was a super great meeting, which by the way was a 2 hour fast/testimony meeting with a choir performance after the first hour finished. Overall, the testimony meeting was super awesome, and we had 31 people bear their testimonies, and the choir number went amazingly well. After that awesome meeting, we had a semi-awesome Elder's quorum meeting, which was mostly awesome because we got to recognize our super incredible Elder's Quorum President, and sadly release him (though he was probably glad to be released)! After church, I went home and made a ton of cookies (7 dozen to be reasonably exact) for Break the Fast, which was super fun and tasty. We had a mac-and-cheese potluck, where people were given a box of mac & cheese and told to spice it up however they wanted. We had some very interesting things, such as Mac & Cheese with sauteed vegetables in it, and Mac & Cheese pizza (or at least, that's what it ended up being called). After that, I went and chilled in my apartment for a little while, until my next party was getting ready to start. Which next party happened to be a ward choir party, which we decided to have that morning since it was fast Sunday and our director was not supposed to give us treats that morning. So, we had donuts and cookie cake (I made the cookie cake) which were pretty tasty, and got to socialize with some awesome people who had been in the choir with me. Anyway, after that it was time to go to my next party, a movie party with about 10 other people. I again brought cookies to this (as I was trying to get rid of most of the ones I had in my apartment), and we watch "The Singles Ward" which I really enjoyed, even though it had a few spots where we had to wait for the movie to buffer. It was pretty fun, and we had some entertaining conversation which if I've learned anything here means it stays there.

So after the movie it was pretty much time for bed, which leads me to Monday, aka the last day of summer classes! The last day of classes was pretty intense, largely due to all the information given about the upcoming finals, and also because at the end of the day I realized that I had read the entire Book of Mormon in little more than 6 weeks! Anyway, after classes I didn't do much, finished my last math homework, and such.

But! Tuesday was much, much, much more exciting. Tuesday morning I woke up at the bright and early time of 7:45am (which for a day I don't have school is pretty early), and realized I got up about 20 minutes later than I wanted in order to try out this muffin recipe I have. So, I decided to make the muffins anyway, and they were super tasty, especially once I realized that since I hadn't put anything inside them (I didn't really have anything...) so I decided to put some frosting on them, which made them even more tasty (as before they were just plain muffins... kinda like eating a plain crepe but not as tasty). Anyway, so I took those over to a breakfast party a friend was hosting in order to get rid of a ton of food (which was all really good), and socialized a bit with them before and after eating. After that I went home and packed, because sadly Thursday is (was) moving day and I wanted to move most of my stuff Tuesday so that I wouldn't have to worry about it on Wednesday. Anyway, also on Tuesday I went to a review for my math final, which I didn't find very helpful as we spent the vast majority of our time on 6/30 sections, which isn't much considering the final is (was) cumulative. After that, I went to visit a super awesome friend from home to get a 4x6 index card (I was allowed to use one on my math final, but I didn't wanna buy a whole pack for just one card) and I gave her some brownies while I was there. That night, with the help of a friend I moved the vast majority of my things to my new apartment, and then went to bed nice and early in preparation for my super-long Wednesday.

Wednesday was finals day, which meant that I had to take all 3 of my finals in one day, which I would definitely not advise ever again. But, it had to be done because I didn't have time on thursday (the testing center was only open until 2pm thursday) to take them, so I had to push through. I've since then found out my scores on my Book of Mormon finals, (95% on BoM 1 and 100% on BoM 2) giving me reasonably high A's in those classes, but I don't know what I got yet in math, but it looks fairly certain I won't end up with less than a C- in the class (aka I passed) but I more than likely got anywhere from a C to a B (C, C+, B-, or B) depending on how I did on my final, which I have absolutely no idea about. So, I ended up finishing my finals around 2pm, and it happened to be my friend from home's birthday, and I had made a Cookie Cake for her Tuesday night (there's a picture at the end of the paragraph), so I took her that around 5pm. After I finished talking with her, I went home and chilled out since I was pretty much totally drained after 5 hours of straight testing, and about an hour of walking (I walked to and from campus twice...). So  I chilled for a little while, then went and finished packing most of my stuff.

Then came Thursday, aka moving day. On Thursday I pretty much had one goal - to get moved into my new place and out of the old. I did this reasonably quickly due to help from my super awesome roommate (who is sadly not my roommate anymore :( since I moved) and also managed to go shopping for a bit of food and other supplies that I lacked. Aside from that, thursday was not very interesting. Friday was... curious as I worked about a total of 10 hours, and also did a reasonable amount of sleeping. Then came Saturday where i didn't do much of note aside from work (again). 

Finally came today, where I went to combined church with some other ward, since my old ward is currently disbanded, and my new ward doesn't exist yet. Overall it was fairly routine church, except I got to sit in the same spot for most of the 3 hour block since we ended up having to return to the chapel against the original intention for Elder's Quorum due to the large number of people there. Then, pretty much right when I got home from church my new RA (Who's pretty awesome) invited me to go with him to his old Apartment place and hang out, eat, and socialize with his friends over there. So, I went and they are all pretty spectacular people, and it turns out that a couple of them are even from the same general area I am! We were there for about 6 hours, we first ate lunch, which was some super tasty spaghetti with a couple different sauces, then we played catch phrase for a little while (I eventually figured out what was going on and ended up being reasonably good at it). Then we went over to another friend's apartment and watched some super awesome church movies (one of his friends has the D&C/Church History DVD collection), notably the John Tanner Story, Only a StoneCutter, and Joseph Smith: Prophet of the Restoration. After this we went to visit one of his old roommate's who was having a couple of his mission children over to eat Brazilian food, which was super tasty. We had some kind of chicken Stroganhoff thing which you put on top of rice (which was delicious), we also had some Guarana Antarctica soda (super awesome brazilian soda, tasted a little like cherry fanta but was sooo much better), and some incredibly awesome dessert thing. The dessert thing was a layered creation that had some kind of buttermilk cookies as the layers (and sides), some form of cream in between the layers,  and a layer of super tasty chocolate on top (with various other things in it, but those are the main ingredients). Overall, it was a really tasty and delicious afternoon, filled with meeting tons of new people (I think I met a good 20 people that I spent a few hours with). After I got home, I spent a while skyping with my family, and then once most of them went to bed just with my incredibly strong and courageous little brother, who I really feel for and hope he just keeps doing well. 

And now I've reached this point in time, so I guess I'm done. I'm gonna go ahead and forecast the general layout of my week which is basically working 3:30-Midnight on Monday, Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday, and otherwise I've got nothing at all planned (seriously. this is the emptiest my calendar has ever been). So I doubt there will be another post until probably around the day before fall semester starts in like 2 weeks (so don't worry... I'll still be alive, just not doing much worth mentioning). 

Anyway,

'Til Next Time,

Jordan L. Nielson

P.S. I got a new address... check out my location if you wanna send me stuff!

It's been awhile...

Well, it's been awhile since I last blogged on here, so I guess an update is in order. I'm still working a lot, and for those of you who missed it I'm working at the front desk here at Wyview Park. It's super awesome, as I get to see a ton of people and sometimes get a little bit to work on homework. So aside from working a ton (which is good and bad), I pretty much just go to class and bake. I hang out with friends occasionally, but more often than not I'm either baking, at class, or working. There have been a few noteworthy things since my last blog, so I'll expound on those, but otherwise it's been exceedingly routine and not too exciting.

Of note since my last blog is a few things (my last blog was like 2 weeks ago so I hope I did at least one thing of note...). According to my calendar, which I try to keep exceedingly updated, I'll go in chronological order since my last blog post on the 18th of things I find noteworthy.

Anyway, first on the list of noteworthy things is my catching up of movies I haven't seen yet. The first movie I saw was Mirror, Mirror (at the dollar theater for $1.25 -> a steal!). It was reasonably good, and compared to Snow White and The Huntsman, which I saw in the actual theater shortly after it came out, I liked this one a ton more. That may have been because I'm kind of a Kristen Stewart hater (I just don't think she can act very well)... but mainly it was because this one was a heck of a lot less dark and morbid than the Huntsman. Overall, I'd consider it a $1.25 well spent for 2 hours of entertainment. Moving on, I recently got a netflix account and have proceeded to watch like 10 movies on there in the last month to catch up on ones I hadn't seen yet that looked good and also to rewatch some movies I really like. So, I've watched Thor, Forever Strong, Transformers: Dark Side of The Moon, A Wrinkle In Time, and The Tale of Despereaux. I really liked Thor, and would definitely watch it again, largely because I have already seen the Avengers (and Snow white and the Huntsman), and rather enjoyed the fight scenes in Thor combined with the reasonable story line. Forever Strong is one of my all-time favorite movies, largely because I admire those people who can play rugby with any skill and not get injured too early in life, and I find the story line almost equal to that of "The Blindside" which is another incredible movie. Transformers 3 wasn't that great, but I liked it more than many other movies I've seen, except the storyline was pretty weak and I still don't understand why they had a different lead female. A Wrinkle in Time was... interesting? From what I remember of the book it followed it about as well as most movie-book remakes, but it was definitely a curious way to play it out. The Tale of Despereaux was probably my favorite movie of the last three (Transformers, wrinkle, and it), due to it actually having a nice story line with different interwoven main characters. It was actually quite intriguing to think of a kingdom built around something, and the effect that making that something illegal might have on such a place.

Moving on from my unusually large amount of movie watching... I had my first BYU cleaning check since I last blogged. It was certainly an experience, made more interesting by the fact it was done by my roommate's boss (since he's the RA who would usually do it...) since he can't do it himself (that may be a tad biased...). Anyway, it was actually exceedingly short in actually checking the apartment being clean, since his boss mainly did a lot of talking with us (she had been on vacation for like a week and a half prior), and catching up on what she missed. The most interesting thing about it though is what they care about being clean... like the bathtub walls and the window track. I dunno, but it seems to me like most people don't actually care that the walls of the bathtub have absolutely no grime or cleaning residue on them, nor do people look in the window tracks.

Aside from that, I've been doing a ton of baking making many different kinds of cookies, from Oatmeal Butterscotch to Chocolate Chocolate chip to Snicker-doodles, to Cookie Cake, and even so far as to make some devil's food cake cookie sandwiches (with icing in between 2 cookies). Along with tons of baking, I've been doing some studying... and I recently discovered the awesomeness of Skype! So I've been able to kind of see my family back home, and talk to them a bit, and I've gotten to talk quite a bit with my awesome little brother who is just totally awesome.

Anyways, I would write about today... but I think I'll use that in it's own post since this one is about as long as I like them already.

And So,
'Til Next Time,
Jordan L. Nielson

Summer Term... Is absolute madness.

Hello! So I actually had time today to sit down and write some posts, so I finished up my last post and decided to go ahead and write the next one up through today. But, I actually didn't finish it until a day after starting it anyway as I talked with my new roommate instead. It turns out that I actually rather like the Day by Day format, as it helps me keep track of what I've written and what I haven't, and I hope it's fairly simple to keep up with reading wise and that I don't jump around too much... Anyway, back to my super awesome second day working (Wednesday July 11th). After going through all my classes with no real stress, I went home and chilled out for a couple hours. Then, around 3pm I went into work and worked until Midnight with only a half hour break near the middle! It was super fun, and actually exceedingly productive as I learned a ton and got some homework done.

Then came thursday, which was a very interesting day indeed. I took my Book of Mormon 1 Midterm, and got an 86% on the multiple choice portion which was about 66% of the whole test, so it wasn't too bad. After I finished classes, I went home and made a batch of cookies, Oatmeal butterscotch if I recall correctly. Then once those finished I headed off to work for a few hours and learned even more than the past couple days since my boss was there and able to teach me herself. Anyway, at about 5:40 I left work for my first ever Intramural Frisbee game. It happened to be the last one of the regular season, but the past games I had been occupied or didn't yet know what ultimate even was. So, I was gearing up and ready to play with my roommate's team for the last game, and it turned out that about half the team was out of town so even with me playing we still only had 6 players, while the other team had 7 on the field and a sub. So I would recount the game, but it's a bit fuzzy and I don't want my roommate to get mad when I mess something up that's important. The important thing is that we somehow pulled through and won the game 11-9 (or 10... not sure). So after I went back home and showered I headed back to work until midnight, finishing out a super entertaining day (at least for me... if y'all had been at the game you would know what I'm talking about).

Finally it was at last Friday, meaning the weekend was in view, and what a weekend it looked to be. And so I went up to math class super stocked that it was finally the weekend and that once I finished my homework assignment, I would finally be able to go to work and chill out and do some crossword puzzles instead of working on math homework. Well, it turned out that my super nice professor decided that since we had an exam starting Monday there would be no homework turned in until Wednesday after the exam. Subsequently, after class I went straight home and got ready for work. I worked until about 9pm doing various things, then came home and took a nap (yes a nap...). After I napped for a couple hours, I spent some time hanging out with my roommate playing video games and such since I didn't have any homework that needed to be done. We actually ended up staying awake until about 4am, which for most isn't very unusual but was way weird for me since I usually go to sleep by midnight. So, because of this my Saturday didn't actually start until noon...

So around noon Saturday I woke up and ate some brunch which was good because I hadn't eaten anything substantial in many hours. shortly after that it came time to get ready for the ward activity up at Canyon Glen Park that was starting in about 2 hours. So after showering and getting ready for the day, I went up to the Wyview Multipurpose Building and consulted with my co-worker at the desk regarding checking out a volleyball, and possibly the volleyball net. It was decided that if I could get the net down and up without any issue I could take it to the park for the activity, which being the good Boy Scout I am turned out to be a trivial question. So, with the Wyview volleyball net and ball in tow, I went with my other committee members up to the park at the appointed time of 2pm. Well, it turned out that about half the committee didn't have a ride so we didn't actually start doing any set up until about 2:30... and then it decided to pour rain to try and cancel the activity. But, my church leaders being the optimistic people they are, decided that it would  be fun to play in the rain a while (which it totally was) and they had faith that afterward it would be a nice day (which it was a beautiful day once the rain stopped). So I ended up having a blast playing volleyball in the rain, and then some Big Ball Soccer on a recently aerated lawn that was super wet as it was still raining when we started. This resulted in plenty of sliding, slipping, wind, and muddy backs for just about everyone playing , and it was SOOO much fun!!  Anyway, after that it was time for dinner, but before that it was decided we should do one of the most dreadfully embarrassing things possible - sing happy birthday to those whose birthday it was that day (there was one) and we also threw in the person having a birthday the next day. So, after that ordeal it was finally time to eat and just about everyone was starving, which was a really good thing as there were only about 130 people there but we had food for about 240 people. So, after most of the ladies had gotten in line and were getting served their food I proceeded to get in line for Sloppy Joes, Baked Beans, Watermelon, carrots, and home-made root beer (basically one of my favorite meals... like ever.) which was all super tasty. But before I was able to sit down and begin enjoying my food, after I put my plate down my friends decided that since I hadn't yet made up my mind if I was going to the dance later or not that I was, and had even picked out someone for me to ask. So I went and asked her, and thankfully she said yes even though I was totally awkward while asking. After that super embarrassing sequence, I went and ate my super tasty food. Shortly after that I went and took down the volleyball net in preparation for our speaker to get there and talk to us a bit. It turned out he was actually a super awesome speaker like the bishopric had said, and I was super glad I had stayed to hear him. Anyway, after that I went home and got ready for the dance, which was a very interesting experience... that I don't particularly wish to relive in order to describe it to you. But, after the dance my group and I went back to the apartments and watched some hilarious videos in the "Kid History" saga, but after only getting to watch like 4 of them the guys had to leave as it was midnight and therefore visiting hours were over.

Then came Sunday, which was a pretty typical Sunday, at least by my standards. I went to church, then came home and cleaned a bit. After that it was pretty much time for choir, so I headed off to that and we worked some more on our pieces, which are "Come, Come Ye Saints" (singing this Sunday the 22) and "For The Beauty of The Earth" (performing on the 5th of August). Anyway after that I had to go back and make more cookies in anticipation of the upcoming building meeting. Which, sadly was not very exciting as it was mainly about cleaning checks which are this week for most people. Ours isn't actually until the 26th of this month, since I live with the RA and his boss has to check us. So anyway, after that we all went to what I think might be the shortest ward prayer ever... it lasted a grand total of 8 minutes, most of which was due to the talent taking up about 3 of them (which was someone playing a trombone, so it was sweet). After that exceptionally short ward prayer I socialized with some friends and chilled out for a little while. Then I went home and stumbled upon my roommate and his girlfriend watching "The Other Side of Heaven" which is one of my favorite church movies, so I pulled my chair over and watched with them.

That pretty much ended Sunday, as it was like 10:40 when that movie ended, so let's move onto Monday. This was certainly a good day, as I got to go to all my wonderful classes today and learn about such various things as Christ's ministry in the Americas, Zenos' Allegory of the Olive Tree (which somehow lead to a discussion over revealed knowledge and human knowledge), and Transformations using matrices which is super exciting. So, after all that wonderfulness I went to the library and studied for a while in preparation to take my math test which opened in the Testing center today. After studying with a pal of mine, I went and took the test, which took about an hour, and got 9/12 on the multiple choice half with a totally unknown score on the free response half of the test. Then it was time to go home and do laundry, which was way over-due, as my clothing drawers were literally empty except a pair of black dress socks and a long-sleeved shirt. Shortly after my laundry was done it was time to go to FHE, which turned out to be a werewolf game on steroids. We literally had almost 30 people playing one game of werewolf (like mafia... discussed a bit in my last post). So our first and only game we played took about an hour, which meant all of our FHE time. This for me was sad, as we could have easily split into 2 or almost 3 separate groups and played with faster games and more variation, which I find to be more entertaining. Anyway, another issue I had was on the 3rd night they decided to double the number of people killed... but I was the seer and still only got to know about 1 person each night, so when there's more than 20 people I couldn't do much. But, shortly after the first few people died, they realized they probably wouldn't get to play another game and they went and got out Apples to Apples, which even though I'm terrible at it I thoroughly enjoy it. After FHE, I went home expecting to just chill out for the rest of the night and do a bit of homework and play some games. Well, it turned out that was not at all what happened. What actually happened was I had to rush and clean my room up... because I had a new roommate! He walked in around 9:40pm, and he's super awesome. He's actually a lot like my other roommate, but I don't know if they've noticed yet, so I won't tell them. Anyway, after cleaning my room up and talking for a while we headed to sleep, which was odd since I wasn't able to use what is now his bed to climb up to mine anymore.

Tuesday was pretty routine, I went to class, then came home and chilled for bit before going to work for a few hours. The only noteworthy thing that happened Tuesday, aside from work being super awesome, was that after my Book of Mormon 2 class, I talked with my professor and found out that my argumentative email had worked and I got 4 points back on my exam. During work, there was actually a lot of things going on. There was a relief society activity, some RA interviews, lots of people using practice rooms, tons of shredding (which was actually a good way to pass the time... just turn on some music and have at it). After that I came home and played some games and did some homework until my roommates returned and we chatted for a bit. Finally it was Wednesday (Today) and I again went to classes. But, after classes I went and took my second Book of Mormon 2 "midterm" and got a 96 on it, which was what I should have gotten on the first one (and that's what my score is now according to gradebook). Anyway, after that I turned in some math homework and headed home on the Ryde. After my other roommates had gotten home we all piled into my new roommate's car and went up to Buy-Low which was super awesome as I finally have most of the stuff to make another lasagna! Anyway, that puts me pretty much at this current moment, and since I don't have any plans for tonight there probably won't be another entry talking about today.

So, 'Til Next Time,
- Jordan Nielson

P.S. If you want my address it's located at the bottom of this post. \/

A Crazy week...

Well, It's been a little over a week (yikes!) since my last post on here, but it's definitely been for a great reason! No... seriously, I've actually been having fun and enjoying myself! Seriously, baseball bowling, big ball soccer, church, family home evening, work, tennis, and even classes have been incredibly enjoyable this past week! So I guess I'll go back to my last entry, which ended (actually started...) with Independence day, which leaves me starting with last Thursday the 5th of July. So on Thursday I had my religion classes again, which after having a day off was super awesome, because my professors were basically as tired and excited as we were that it was the weekend (at least for those classes) and that we hadn't had class the day before that we actually got a lot done in those classes. So after those classes I did some math homework, which was more fun than usual as we're getting to the cool stuff of making coordinate systems from nothing and being able to work in whatever dimension we want (which is usually 3 dimensional space)! Then came Friday... (DAD stop reading here and skip to the next paragraph) where I did the thing i'll probably never do again this term... I skipped math class, like the total rebel I am. I ended up instead sleeping in until 9:30, then hung out with my roommate until noon, doing various super fun things. Then I made some super delicious M&M/Chocolate Chip cookies (recipe courtesy of my aunt) which were a total hit among my friends. After that I went and took a nap for a few hours.

After my nap, I went and hit the tennis ball for a while with a friend from the building next door who happens to be in my Family home evening group. We had a super fun time which involved climbing fences, hitting our neighbors, and just having a blast playing a bit of tennis. Then once I got back home my roommate, his girlfriend, her roommate, and my roommate's twin brother and I went and played baseball bowling. Now since I doubt many of you know what that is, basically you take some bottles, (we used glass, but I would probably recommend plastic ones) about 12-20 if using glass should be sufficient, a baseball, a camera, and a broom and dustpan (if using glass bottles to clean up should one break). Then you set them up just like bowling pins, establish a line to bowl from, and bowl! It's a blast, especially once the first bottle breaks and you clean it up, since you're always on edge expecting another one to (which by the way we only broke 1 bottle). After that we watched a musical (on dvd) called seven brides for seven brothers, an old western type musical which was pretty entertaining. Anyway, after that I went to sleep to begin a slightly less exciting Saturday.

Although the vast majority of Saturday wasn't too exciting or eventful, I did do something pretty sweet. For an upcoming ward activity one of my neighbors had gotten a few of those exercise balls (the big bouncy ones), and on Saturday night we went and played soccer with one of them until we got kicked off the field by the maintenance people who were locking it up. But, that was super fun while it lasted and was a pretty sweet appetizer for the ward activity coming up.

Sunday was as usual one of my busier days, this sunday more so than the past couple. On this Sunday (July 8th), I woke up early in the morning, like 7am which considering church isn't until noon is pretty early, and made Lasagna which is basically my like favorite food. So once I had finished with that, I went and got ready for church because it was about 11am, and the ward choir (which i'm in) was performing that day. So, by 11:30am I was up at church ready for choir practice to start before sacrament meeting, and lo and behold there were actually a reasonable amount of people there! So much so, that we finally had more girls than guys, when at most of the practices it's been the other way around. So we practiced (and sounded pretty awesome if I do say so myself), and went and sat in the congregation waiting anxiously to perform our number which was an arrangement of "O My Father" (hymn 292 for those LDS people who want to know what it says). So after our performance church was pretty standard so I'mm going to skip to right after church when I went home and at some of my super tasty lasagna. Then at 4pm I went back to church for choir practice in order to prepare for our performance coming up on the 22 where we're singing an arrangement of "Come, Come, Ye Saints" in honor of Pioneer Day which is supposedly a pretty big holiday around here. Later that evening, we had a super fun building meeting where my awesome roommate had arranged for a few girls to come in and answer our questions about dating. It ended up that we just barely had enough time for the questions to be answered, and overall it was a pretty big success, which meant my cookie stash had been destroyed again. After that we went over to ward prayer, which was fairly quick and painless, much to my dismay as I had heard it was supposed to be a chance to socialize but it usually is not.

Then Monday came around which meant it was time for class... again. I think my most exciting class on this day was Book of Mormon 1, as we were preparing for our upcoming midterm as fast and efficiently as possible, trying to get through all the Isaiah parts of second Nephi that would be on the test. After classes I had a meeting with my peer mentor, who's pretty cool and helpful. Then, later that night at family home evening we actually had both our "parents" there, and it turned out our dad is pretty cool even though he'd missed the first couple evenings. He brought a pretty sweet game over for us to play called "Werewolves" which is kinda like Mafia, but he had special cards made specifically for it that included tons of special roles not played with in Mafia that spiced up the game. One set of cards we played with, which he promised would be super fast, was that everyone turned out to be a werewolf and so we all won on the first night. It was a great way to end the night!

Then comes Tuesday slowly dragging along, as classes are unusually boring this day due to Isaiah in Book of Mormon 1 and Helaman in Book of Mormon 2 not being as exciting as they could be. But, after I got home from classes I found an email from the person at the front desk saying that I could start working there THIS week. I had already applied and been interviewed earlier in the summer, but hadn't actually found out when I was starting. So, after I finished the laundry list of things I needed to do before I could start working, which included watching a FERPA video and going back up to campus and filling out some forms, I was able to go in for a few hours that night. It turns out it's a lot more entertaining than I had originally planned, and I'm even able to do some homework if there's nobody there needing help and I've finished my tasks for the shift. So, the first day was of course a huge learning curve with finding out everything I was supposed to know and trying to remember as much of it as I could. So the super awesome thing was I was basically told to come in whenever I could for this week until I picked up some shifts because during the summer there's no limit on how many hours I am able to work each week.


And so, my excuse for this post taking so long to finish is that I was working a ton this past week... like 26 hours, plus classes and homework leaving little to no time for blogging :P

Anyway, Till next time,
- Jordan Nielson

Independence Day... is a week long?!?

Hello there! I just discovered that there are people who celebrate American Independence for the entire week... shooting off fireworks every single night of that week. Isn't that wonderful? Yeah well anyway, This week has so far been a total blast! I'm gonna start with yesterday (Independence Day (July 4th)) and work back from there, because these past few days have just been super incredible!

So yesterday was ridiculously fun, starting from the hour I awoke to the hour I went to sleep, which was actually a respectable time unlike many people, regardless of the fact there were still classes today. So to start off my day we had a building game of ultimate, which was awesome! I learned that it's super fun to play ultimate... and my favorite part is definitely defense (as it seems with most sports I play...). I just find some sort of enjoyment in knocking down the other team's pass and making it difficult for them to advance, though I may be just strange... who knows? So after spending over an hour playing Ultimate I went home and proceeded to relax and chill... ya know catch up on that Book of Mormon reading I've been slacking on, since now in Book of Mormon 1 we're in the heat of the Isaiah portion of second Nephi. Anyway, after that at around 4:30 I went to a super sweet barbecue party where we had a 3v3 soccer game (which actually ended up a 4v4 later) going while they food was being grilled. The food was absolutely delicious, which I found impressive since most of the cooking was done by freshman. Then after we had all eaten we went and played volleyball in the sand pit for a couple hours, which was totally fun. Sadly the pit was only large enough for the teams to be 6 people each, so we ended up rotating teams often and only playing to 11. After Volleyball we had to do, as one person pointed out, our adult responsibility of cleaning up after ourselves, which involved cleaning up the food and moving all the tables and chairs back to their respective apartments, one of which was on the 3rd story (great idea right?). After all that the group dispersed, some going up to the Y to watch the upcoming fireworks that occur due to stadium of fire and just general jubilee throughout the valley, but I chose to stay behind and ended up showering then going to play some basketball for a couple hours, watching whatever fireworks I could see from the stadium across the street, which were super intense.  Then, unlike a great deal of college kids on a day they don't have school, I went to sleep at the incredible time of 11:30pm, since ya know... I had classes today starting at 9 (which I still barely got up for... it was tough).

Moving backwards to Tuesday, a day filled with not much going on, though I did get some stuff accomplished. I went on my first bike ride in at least a year, to a fabulous place for college kids to shop: Big Lots. I got me some super awesome flashlights for a few bucks, and some batteries for about a tenth the price they would have cost at the creamery. Aside from that though, I don't recall doing much on Tuesday... just the typical homework and basketball.

Then there was Monday, where all my classes were super awesome as it was the start of a week with a holiday in the middle. Then later that day I had my first ever experience in the BYU testing center. Which for those of you who don't know is this building next to the Joseph Smith Building, where basically half the second level is a huge room with a ton of desks for students to take their tests at. There is no time limit on tests there (so far as I'm aware), and it's basically open around 8 hours each day, so if you wanted or were able you could potentially take up to 8 hours on a test, though I'm not sure how that's even possible. My first test of the day I decided would be my Book of Mormon 2 test on the second half of Alma, chapters 30 through 63. I ended up getting a 92% on the test, which means I missed 4 questions, 3 of which I think I know what they were (accursed True/false) but the other I have no idea which it was. Then after taking a break for a little while to eat a sandwich (peanut butter and honey for those who wish to know) and refresh myself a bit on the material I went to take my ELA test, which didn't have as promising of an outcome. I got a 32/48 on the multiple choice portion, but one of the questions I had an issue with so I'm going to discuss that with the professor tomorrow. Anyway, what was really killer was the short answer part. It took a good hour and fifteen minutes to do a mere 5 problems, none of which were very easy. In addition to the already difficult part of that was that one of the proofs we had to do involved a concept briefly covered in class that's actually from like the last chapter of the book which we are nowhere near studying yet, and as such I totally forgot about. So in total it looks like I missed 16 points on the multiple choice, and 8 points I know I missed on the problem solving, putting me at a 76%, so I rather hope there's a curve of some sort, even a few points would be nice. Luckily though there's still 2 more tests and the final in this term, though I guess not so lucky since there's only a month left in the term, Yikes! After finishing those crazy tests I headed home to get some reading and homework done before FHE, which was super fun. We had a surprise party for one of our family members, who I think is the most hilarious person in our family, she's super awesome. Anyway, we had some tasty cake, and we played apples to apples which was a total riot with some of the things my family put down for green cards such as "pure"... yeah it got a tad strange!

I guess I can't fail to mention what happened at building meeting this past Sunday either though, as that was pretty important stuff that I need to get done before Saturday (oh no!). So at building meeting my wonderful RA roommate announced that he had a challenge for all of us in attendance, to go on at least one date by Saturday... which I didn't take too kindly, as I didn't exactly come out here to go on dates (at least not seriously) since I'm leaving for 2 years after winter semester. But, aside from that it was just a short little building meeting.

And so That's my week so far, not as exciting as some, but definitely exciting for me.

'Til Next Time,
- Jordan L. Nielson

The Lazy Week

So this past week has been pretty exciting, well not really, but still it's been fun! Monday morning rolled around, so I had classes again starting with Book of Mormon 1. In BoM1 we actually got into the text, and were off to a running (not literally, but we did go through exceedingly quickly) start and we've pretty much finished 1st Nephi (we're actually supposed to finish it tomorrow) at this point. Then came Elementary Linear Algebra, and we also dashed through the last chapter and a half of material so that the test that opens tomorrow in the testing center would be on things we covered, at least briefly. After that I had Book of Mormon 2, in which we have steadily dropped behind the schedule the teacher gave us, we're now about a day and a half behind. So theoretically we're supposed to be about halfway through Helaman by now, but we haven't actually finished talking about the last couple chapters of Alma yet, even though the test on the second half of Alma opens tomorrow. That was pretty much my classes for the week... rush through things in order to get ready for our first tests that start this week. Wonderful right? Well now we can talk about the exciting part, what I did after classes throughout the week! Well... it was exciting for me. I don't actually care too much how exciting you find it though, because I don't think you have much influence on what I do.

So, after classes Monday I went home and started on some homework, the homework due Friday... since ya know I had already finished the stuff due Wednesday for math, so I figured I would just keep working. Well it also turns out that since we're behind in Book of Mormon 2, and I still like to read it daily, I'm just getting ahead in that class as well. So basically, this past week was a week where I worked just enough to stay ahead, and other than that was pretty lazy (hence the title of the post). I did things such as nap, bake cookies, watch movies on netflix, and watch sports.

This past week I made 3 batches of cookies... one Peanut Butter, one Chocolate Chocolate Chip (like the cookie was chocolate and it had chocolate chips in it), and a batch of Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip. Of the 3, my favorite were the Chocolate Chocolate Chip, which were basically a chocoholic's dream cookie. It would put up a picture of one... but I forgot to take one and there's no more left :(
But, I do have a picture of what the peanut butter chocolate chip ones kinda looked like, so check it out:

Anyway, aside from baking cookies I had a blast watching sports and movies on this big TV that my roommate's old roommate from the Dominican Republic left here while he went back to the DR to do stuff. I watched Nadal lose (very tragic by the way), Federer avoid an upset the next night, and Roddick sadly losing. I also watched Thor (the movie), The Princess Bride (best movie ever.), and Back to the Future.



Moving on, today was fast Sunday, which means since church doesn't start until noon, I basically slept in until 10 in order to avoid feeling too hungry before my first ever Break-The-Fast (which I had never been to one before). So this morning rushed by, then during church we had a mere 15 people have time to bear their testimonies, including the bishopric member who started. Considering there was a good 35+ minutes allocated for testimonies, I would try and find someone to blame it on for taking way, way, way too long. So, since the bishop had everyone say their name when they started, I actually am going to put the blame on a visitor who shared their testimony, because he was up there for literally a good 8 minutes.  Seriously. 8 minutes? He made it sound like he was giving a talk... and he was a visitor. Oh well, so after church I had a wonderfully short committee meeting planning our Canyon Bash in a couple weeks, where we basically just touched base to make sure everyone knew what their assignments were. Then I went and had a super awesome time at ward choir practice, which is good considering we're singing in Sacrament meeting next week. Then after that I help set up chairs and tables for our ward's Break the fast, which consisted of ward prayer, where someone shared a short story they wrote and we ya know... prayed as a ward, and some super tasty food, my favorites being the lasagna and the rainbow cookies someone brought since it was a potluck, which by the way I'm going to learn how to make some rainbow cookies... they were tasty.

And now I'm gonna close, even though tonight isn't over as we still have building meeting (ward prayer was combined with break the fast) and go call my dad, since I haven't talked to him in like a week (I'm such a bad son...).

Anyway, 'Til next time,
- Jordan L. Nielson

The First 10 Days: Part 2

Note: This a continuation of the post here: First 10 Days Part 1



Day 5/6: June 19/20, 2012
The second day of classes was actually much easier than the first as I only had my BoM classes, and therefore didn't have to be bored in ELA for 2 hours. But in those classes we actually talked about the text in the second one, while in the first we began a series of days talking about the coming forth of the Book of Mormon. After classes, and during my 2 hour break, I ended up reading and doing my ELA homework, and picking up my bike from the BYU bike share program available for Wyview residents. Though it turned out that I couldn't actually ride the bike until I got a helmet, and the cheapest helmet you can get on-campus is $40, more than I wished to spend on one. So, I ordered one from Walmart.com and waited for it to arrive. It actually just arrived today, June 27th, so I can finally use my bike to go places! Anyway, Tuesday wasn't a very exciting day, and Wednesday was much the same as Tuesday, with some non-exciting Linear algebra added. But, whenever I get bored I'm able to walk outside and shoot some hoops, as the basketball court is literally right outside my apartment. Meanwhile, on Wednesday night the Bishopric was roving around, making sure all the people were where they were told they would be, and asking them questions about their previous experiences in church, I'm assuming for possible callings. One exciting/important thing did happen on Wednesday though, as my roommate had his team's (which he is the captain of) first Intramural Ultimate game. So, I went with him and learned a bit about the game, and actually got to practice a little with them as their opponents didn't show up.

Day 7, June 21st was much more exciting than the previous two days, largely because I was finally able to get out and play some tennis after classes. But before that, during my religion classes on Thursday, we ended up getting caught up in the material, and in BoM1 ended up a day behind, so the schedule was shifted back. Meanwhile in BoM2 we ended the week about a day and a half behind, but she insisted that we keep up with the syllabus and not with where we are in class. After classes, I went and played tennis with another guy in my building, and he totally crushed me. It turns out that I need to practice more often so that I can actually return his 90-120mph serves. But that was a great experience to have, even though he was definitely holding back some. It turned out that the closest tennis courts where non-students don't have to pay are about a 30 minute walk away, over past Heritage Halls on the other side of campus, so it was nice to get to know a little more about him and how he ended up helping take care of a handicapped person. Anyway, after tennis I went home and took a nap on the couch, which by the way is exceedingly comfortable, and then ended up reading and doing homework. Such is the life of summer term though, as classes meet twice as often (or for twice as long) as during a usual semester, and therefore have twice as much homework. That evening,

Moving on to Friday, Day 8, June 22nd. Friday is definitely my easy day, as I only have ELA, and that doesn't start until 10am. So, after class on Friday I went and made some snicker-doodles, which were added to the cookie bucket that my roommate and I keep since I like to bake when I get bored. Some night during the week we watched Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, which is by far my favorite episode (I'm fairly certain it was on Friday... but it might have been Thursday). Anyway, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday all kind of blurred together, though a few distinct events did happen. One such was on Saturday I was able to make some crepes, which were super tasty, especially when topped with a mixture of nutella and frosting. Saturday evening I made a pot of chili, which tasted super tasty, especially considering I didn't actually have chili seasoning and had to improvise (for those who care I used a mixture of chili powder and taco seasoning). I had a super awesome girl come over who also happens to be on the afore-mentioned planning committee for the combined ward activity, and we planned our part of the activity. Saturday was also the day we got our home teaching assignments, which is super awesome as it gives me an excuse to dress up on a day other than sunday, as those have proven to be super packed without much time for home teaching unless it's before church, which I failed to mention before starts at noon.

Anyway, Sunday came, and unlike the first Sunday I actually slept in a bit and didn't get up at the awful hour of 5 hours before church, but a mere 3. So, I was able to chill out and take my time getting ready, eat some tasty breakfast, and read my scriptures. During sacrament meeting the Bishop and his wife spoke, along with one of the girls I am assigned to home teach with my companion. Then, during the second hour I went to Mission Prep class, which was taught by my roommate who did a phenomenal job, working from Preach My Gospel chapter 7 about the Spirit. Then in the 3rd hour we had almost the same lesson taught by the Elder's Quorum president, though with a slightly different focus. Directly after church ended, I headed home, ate a bowl of leftover chili super fast, then headed up to the planning meeting. The planning meeting was an interesting experience, because we had just found out that on the same day this activity is planned for there is an event for all of BYU housing, and so we had to shift around our plans in order to accommodate that new conflict. We ended up nixing the part that I had worked on the previous day, and I was assigned a new part in the condensed schedule, and so have to plan that before this upcoming meeting the next Sunday. right after that I headed to choir, and was only about 10 minutes late this time! We again worked on our first song which we're singing the second week of July, O My Father, and started learning a new song for Pioneer Day (which is like a legitimate holiday out here, I even get class off). After choir I went back home and worked on some homework, until building meeting at 7. At bro meeting, we discussed Fire Safety, and how we aren't allowed to shoot fireworks on campus (in preparation for Independence Day coming up), and the bros devoured the snickerdoodles I had made earlier that week. After bro meeting, we had ward prayer, and one of the girls (who also happens to be in my BoM1 class) sang "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing" which is definitely one of my favorite songs. After ward prayer, I ended up going back home and working on my ELA assignments, and ended up getting an assignment ahead.

And Thus ended my first full week of college living, and it was a total blast!

Anyway, I probably won't be doing this Day-by-day thing every entry, as the days already seem to start running together and I've only been here 2 weeks.

Til next time,
-- Jordan L. Nielson

The First 10 Days part 1...

Note: This is the first 4 days, as the post got a tad long for my liking and I wanted to get something up. The other 6 days will be posted once I finish typing them out.
Welcome Reader, to the inaugural post of my blog that details the good, and occasionally the bad, of what happens to me while I'm out here on my own at Brigham Young University. This blog is mainly intended for my family and therefore will be written with them in mind, but if you got here then I must consider you part of my family in some way! So to start off I'm going to let you in on my take on my first 10 days here at BYU with a day by day recollection of events, but be warned some days are not nearly as fascinating as others. First though, I'm going to explain the title I picked for this blog, because it may confuse some. Due to my choices in high school including Advanced Placement (AP) and Dual/Concurrent Enrollment I graduated high school with 72 credits. This number (since the total amount of credits transferred over to BYU) places me as a junior. But, due to the fact that this is my first term/year at BYU, and I haven't progressed at all in my major specific line I am considered a freshman by my major and those who have been at BYU for multiple semesters.

So I guess I'll start with day 1: June 15th, 2012.
I started the day at my second cousin's house, and once everyone was ready we headed down south and hiked up to Timpanogos Cave and all had a super awesome time doing it. After that, we stopped at Subway on the way to my great aunt Erma's house to pick up the things my daddy bought me while he was still here. After we had loaded up the car with all my junk, my cousins brought me up to Wyview Park, where I am currently living and helped me get it all into my apartment. Later that night I finally met my roommate, who happens to be the Resident Assistant (RA) for this building. It turns out, he's super awesome and I don't think I could have asked for a better roommate for my first term here. It also happened that the other person who was supposed to be my roommate (in the same room), was hired as an RA in Helaman Halls and therefore I still have the "shared" room all to myself.

And then there was day 2, June 16th, 2012:
I actually didn't do very much exciting today, though I did make a batch of super-awesome vanilla cookies. I also got to know my roommate a little better, and met a few people that it turns out I see fairly often. Other than that, I just kinda chilled and got settled in my room.

Day 3, June 17th, 2012 was actually much more exciting as it was my first day at church in my new singles ward, and I must say it was absolutely awesome. The first hour I was able to help pass the sacrament, which made it feel more like home, and then we had some incredible speakers. One of them was one of the daughters of a member of the bishopric, and the other two were really inspiring. During the second hour, the entire ward went up to introduce themselves stating their name, where they are from, how many terms/semesters they've been at BYU, and mission status. Both to my roommate's and my surprise, there were a number of girls who stated that they came here planning to get married, not go on a mission. The second hour ran a little over, so during the abbreviated third hour our Elder's quorum president and one of his counselors taught about the importance of home teaching, especially for all these people who no longer have a father they can call upon for blessings whenever they need. Shortly after church ended, I attended a meeting of a volunteer committee to help plan a combined activity among the wards of Wyview that is happening in mid-July. Directly after that ended, I headed over to ward choir practice, although all those in the meeting were about half an hour late to it. That was probably the second most exciting thing about church that day. After choir practice my roommate tried to make some cookies from a mix, and they ended up sticking to the pan and not rising at all. So, for building meeting which started a couple hours after choir practice, we ended up eating the cookies I had made the day before, along with some of the chunks of cookie made that day. Building meeting was a very interesting experience, as a good majority of the building residents actually showed up, and we all crammed into our apartment. We discussed various things ranging from stud/dud stories to setting up a temple trip as a building. Right after building meeting it was time for ward prayer, where a kid with the same major as me played a nice rendition of a tune from the Lord of the Rings on the saxophone. After ward prayer, I headed back to my apartment and got ready to start classes in the morning. 

And then arrived the dreaded day 4, June 18th, 2012, a.k.a. the first day of classes. I had all three of my summer term classes today, Book of Mormon 1 (hereafter abbreviated as BoM1) at 9am, Elementary linear algebra (ELA hereafter) at 10am, and Book of Mormon 2 (BoM2) at noon. BoM1 was an interesting experience, as it was my first class at BYU. I was kind of thrown off, but very excited, when the professor announced we would be singing at least 1 verse of a hymn every class period, as we did that day. We then proceeded to talk about the syllabus, and didn't actually end up talking much at all about the Book of Mormon. Then came ELA, where the professor basically handed us the syllabus and dived straight into the material after pointing out a few key things such as the homework schedule. After spending two dreadful hours talking about matrices and very basic things about them, it was time for BoM2. In BoM2 much like BoM1 we discussed the syllabus and basically the exact same thing we did in BoM1, about how the Book of Mormon is the keystone of our religion. After classes, I took the Ryde Shuttle back home and had a job interview about a possible position at the front desk of the housing office. I passed and will be starting sometime in the middle of July, after that I went home and did some homework and some reading to get caught up on what the professors had assigned to be done by Monday, though most hadn't told the class about them. At 6:30pm, Home evening started, and it was a combined ward event. We had some tasty taco salad in a buffet-style line, and then proceeded to play some get to know you games. Afterward, we had Banana splits (or just plain ice cream if you so desired), and I went back to finish up my readings that needed to be done for class in the morning.

Part 2 coming as soon as I finish typing it...

-- Jordan L. Nielson

Edit: You can now find Part 2 here: First 10 Days part 2