Recovery

Well today was finally the day I felt more like myself! The past week and a half has been hell and I am not exaggerating. After my surgery on Thursday it has been absolute misery and pain. Missing a week of work, not eating for a week, taking percocet every 3 hours is a recipe for disaster and that is exactly what it was. Things are finally looking up! Now we will just wait and see what caused this 7mm kidney stone! What a monster it was!


As for an update on my life: Still looking for an apartment and I am soooo sick of it! I have probably looked at 30+ places and it is so stressful, time consuming and draining. I hope that a place I am looking at in the Avenues on Tuesday will be the one! I am living with a friend from Utah State, Amy, and I am really excited about it. I can't wait to be in a singles ward and start meeting new people and doing things around Salt Lake. Park City is definitely the worst place for young LDS girls! I am just ready to decorate my own place, throw theme parties (so excited to throw a Halloween party) and just live on my own again. I have moved out several times, but this time it is as a graduated student which has been pretty weird! I will keep you posted on what happens with the living situation! Just pray that I will find a place this week! I keep praying and praying and things have felt perfect and soo good with some of the places and then things fall through and I am so sad and bummed out. So prayers are needed thanks!


XOXO, A

Trauma, Trauma, Trauma

Traumatic is a good way to describe the past 2 days! Here is a little bit of explanation! I go into work Tuesday morning perfectly content and pain free! I repeat pain free. Then the pain starts to come in my abdomen/back area around 11:30, no big deal just thought I had been sitting at my desk for too long so I got up and walked around. That didn't really help so I sat back down and it gradually got a little worse. So another brilliant idea came to me around 1:00, I'll go to lunch and lay down on the grass maybe that will help? No it got WORSE! and I am mean the worse pain I have experienced in my lower right side of my abdomen. I called my mom laughing/crying, not being able to breathe. She looked up symptoms for your appendix and all of mine hit right on the dot, but she didn't know and told me to call my sister, Lisa. And that was it, Lisa confirmed that I needed to go to the doctor right away even if it wasn't my appendix. So back to work I went barely being able to think, sweaty/clamy and embarrassed. They must think I have serious issues over the past few weeks... Everything just seems to be happening, but anyways on to my story. At 3:00 I was at Dr. Berman's office and the ER by 4:30 getting cat scans and morphine! Oh morphine how I love you. After about 45 minutes of drinking some stuff to light up my organs I was under the cat scan machine getting checked out. Dr. Kemp (he was a very good looking doctor) came in, showed us the scans and said "it isn't your appendix, see... but when we move this around (the picture on the computer) BAMMM! Kidney stone!" And it was a really really big kidney stone, you could see it plain as day. It is 6.5-7mm which is really big. Usually they deem 6mm stones passable, but mine is too big to pass. So after lots of pain killers, pee strainers, hospitals and the urologists I am going in for surgery today at 1:30 to get blasted by the "stone blaster" joy! Send me good thoughts, it has been a crazy two days.

Shoes, Shoes, Shoes, Shoes

Ok so I have a thing for shoes and for clothes and for everything fashion oriented! Seeing I have this little bit of a problem, my closet has become an overly stuffed, exploding place and I just couldn't take it anymore! Three hours and three garbage sacks later, I had cleaned out my closet, my desk and under my bed. It sure felt liberating, but is it bad that it also made me feel like now I can go out and buy more clothes? More like I need to and I should go out and buy more clothes cause now I just don't have anything! Pathetic! I did learn that I have quite the collection of high heels: black ones, blue ones, yellow ones, red ones, green ones, tan/nude ones and gold ones! Hmm what do I need, I know grey ones!

I have so many high heels that when I lined them up and tried to take a picture they didn't all fit! Jezz!

    

Happy Sunday!

Happy Sunday Everyone!

ps. I got bangs! What do you think?

Oh Weather Divine!

I just have to tell you all how much I love this time of year and the weather that comes a long with it. This past week has been absolutely divine and I love it! August and September are some of my favorite months, it's starting to feel like fall and people are excited about school starting (not for me!) and everyone seems to be out and about doing things! Oh it just makes me smile! I also love that the weather isn't quite so hot and up in Park City you starting needing a hoodie or light jacket at night... I do love my hoodies! It signifies the start of football and soccer season, what more could I ask for! Basically I have been in heaven the last week enjoying all that this time of year has to offer! 

Friends

Can I just say I love these girls, love them!

I miss spending everyday with Liz and Laur.... Waking each other up, more like them jumping on me while I am napping, snowboarding, Costco runs, pranking, Grey's Anatomy, corning, strapping our snowboards to our feet in the living room and of course studying and doing school! Life is taking us in all different places, but no matter what they will always be my best friends, my sisters, really though!

I miss having classes with Natalie, walking around the avenues and trying new hip cafes! Things are different, but the same and I just love them!

Santa Cruz, Bolivia 2010

I know this post has been greatly anticipated by my abundant readers (Lauren)! Well I finally arrived home from Santa Cruz, Bolivia a little over a week ago. And it is a miracle I actually made it home. I will start with that.... So our last day in Santa Cruz was spent cuddled up, trying to stay warm in one hotel room until about 10:30 at night. Finally leaving to the airport, crammed in a van yet again with all our bags finally on our way home to a sunny, warm and dry place. Wrong! When checking in at the front desk of American Airlines we were all informed that our flight was delayed 3 hours! This meant instead of leaving at 1:30 a.m. we would be leaving at 3:30 a.m. and we would be miss our connecting flight in Miami to Dallas. That is only the beginning! Laughing and trying to stay up beat we finally boarded the plane at 3:30 and didn't take off until 5 am!!! At this point each and everyone of us had already taken our sleeping pills and were dreaming of America. Now Miami.... Luckily our flight Miami to Dallas we had some time to spare to get through customs and make our way to yet another terminal. Boarding, boarding, boarding.... yes we boarded the plane on time! Oh wait let's just sit on the runway for another hour and a half and make all 15 students and some adults miss their plane in Dallas to Salt Lake! Yep that is exactly what happened. Another hour wait on the runway and yet another connecting flight missed that's 2 and one more to go? So running to the next terminal in Dallas even though we all knew we missed our plane we got new tickets and would finally arrive in Salt Lake City at 11:45 pm instead of the 2 pm that was planned from the start. All in all I would never, ever recommend flying American unless you have, which in our case we did. Again I repeat do not fly American Airlines if you don't have to! We did finally make it home safely! I was sure glad and ready to be home and I was not the only one.

Ok so enough about the airport adventures I will dive into my trip and post the pictures that are extremely cool! 

For those of you who don't already know, this was suppose to be a service trip, a trip to honor and remember 6 Park City High School kids that were killed in a short 8 month period. One being my best friend, another a good friend and another a friend and long parkite acquaintance. Only 6 or 7 of us actually were representing those that we love and lost to early. There were 27 of us total, 8 adults and the rest were high school kids mostly juniors and seniors. I was not looking forward to being with high schoolers for 13 days even before the trip started, but I gained a lot of friendships and I hope that I can keep in touch with these kids, they were great for the most part! It definitely wasn't the experience I was expecting, but I gained a lot from my trip and I don't regret going one bit.

The first three days of our trip were spent in Amboro National Park aka the Jungle! We hiked to three different waterfalls, played mafia, got bug bites, and ticks (I will spare you the details), heard jaguars, jumped of cliffs and stayed in cabanas at a place I can only describe as just like The Swiss Family Robinson, awesome! This was a good time and the jungle was absolutely beautiful and green! 

Our Home for 3 Days

My Little Cabana ~ equipped with 5 bunks, a suite below and bathroom with shower and flushing toilet!

It was a long trip to the actual jungle... all crammed in the bus! 

We even got to get out and walk because of a political protest, luckily we were American and they let us walk through otherwise it could have been bad

More protest!

Buena Vista! My favorite town, we stopped here to transfer from our bus to the "jeeps" to 4 wheel up to our camp. 2 hours of 4 wheeling in an old land cruiser = sore butt!

Our ride... Can you see me?! We forged over rivers and I was like a little kid, happy as could be, it was radical!

The next pictures are of our hikes in the jungle to all the different waterfalls

There I go! First girl to make the jump!

The whole group making our way to our second waterfall, it was a grueling hike and it was raining!

This was my favorite waterfall... The last day, day of ticks!

It is like Lost!

The Cool Kids- Yes I was definitely the leader. The epitome of cool.

Cya Jungle!

The rest of the trip was spent in a nice 5 star hotel (yes I know) in Santa Cruz Bolivia. The school we were working on or suppose to to be working on was about a 30 minute bus ride from our hotel in a nice village. I was surprised by how nice the village was... I guess I was expecting woods huts, which we did see driving back from the jungle. The whole time we were in Santa Cruz it rained, non-stop and I guess until we came they were in a drought. To add to that it was the coldest it had been in 29 years! It was freezing! I cannot even describe how cold I was and I hate being cold! I could not feel my hands or my feet whenever we went out. The other thing is no one in Bolivia actually has heat... So you would go from the cold hotel room, to the cold car, to the cold restaurant or wherever, you could not escape it! The only times I was actually "warm" was when I was in the shower and right when you turned it off you were cold again. None of us were prepared for the sudden dip in temperature which made it worse. It was pretty funny you would see all of us with just hoodies (everyone wore the same one all week haha) and some jeans, but mostly shorts or capri pants and then all the locals would be in puff jackets, boots, scarves everything. It was miserable. The cold and rain also stopped us from making any progress on the school. We only were able to work to full days... moving wet heavy dirt, planting trees that I am sure will be replanted and painting walls and repainting walls because of the rain. They are no longer painted sadly. The next pictures are all of Santa Cruz, the school, Bolivia and also some from a Gala event we went to one night for the non-profit we were with Ascend. But enough words there is lots to tell about this trip, but in a nutshell it was an experience I wasn't expecting. It opened up a lot of my old wounds that have developed over two years and it was really hard. Life hasn't been easy and I hope that things will start looking up. Bolivia was a trip I won't forget!

Our hotel/compound

Santa Cruz

Santa Cruz

All around Santa Cruz

Next is the school, where we worked

Our painted walls, that got ruined from the rain

The boys and their machets to find hay for the roof, which we could not find

The rest of the pictures are from the Gala Event

There was a plaque dedicated to the 6 students who died that will be on the school. The man in the middle is the Mayor and he had us for lunch, pretty cool.

Alex, Blake and I 

I will post more pictures when I load them all! Sorry this post was so long, but now people (Lauren) can't get mad at me! Do enjoy!

I thought this picture was hilarious so I had to add it... we were all so hungry one night and we finally got pizza, there were 4 o5 of these things and we all devoured them!

On that note, it is good to be home!

xoxo, a