Dates & the MTC

I love summer time. People are a lot more social here. I've gone to a lot of game nights and movie nights. I've hosted a few of them. My roommate Ashley works for the school newspaper and so doesn't get off work until about 10 and Shelece has gone home for the summer. This has forced me to reach out and meet new people. I'm also in a dinner group, which is great because it's not people I would have normally associated with on a regular basis.

I went on a few dates recently. Two with my home teacher, Darin. The first date was a dinner and game date. We were in a group of about 8 people. Each of us were given an assignment for the dinner (main dish, side dish, salad & drink, and dessert). The kicker was, that it had to be under $5. We then went to Smith's and had 30 minutes to get our stuff without letting the other couples see what we were getting. We then went back the guy's apartment and made dinner. After that we played a murder mystery game. On the second date, we went canoeing. Darin and I were by far the slowest. Fortunately, Darin is the least competitive of his roommates and we had a pretty good time.

My other date was with Will. Will trained my roommate's missionary. He and I got home about the same time. What happened was that the week before, Ashley tried to put together a big group to go to the hot springs. Well, it turned out being Ashley, John (her missionary), Will, and me. Will and I walked a lot faster than John and Ashley, so we spent the entire hike just talking to each other. I had a lot of fun. We had talked about the planetarium on campus and how it did shows every weekend. The Tuesday after we went to the hot springs, Will called me up and asked me to go to the planetarium with him. So we went and the show was an hour long, so we were done by 8. We went and got ice cream and sub-zero. I have to admit, I prefer the creamery or coldstone, but the idea is cool.

I had a two other psuedo-dates. Another time when I went to the hot springs, I met these two guys, Scott and Stephen. I heard Scott talking and I heard he had an accent. I asked him where he was from and said he was from Melbourne, Australia. He and I were talking and I asked him if there was any food that he missed from Australia. He said that he could go for a tim tam. To make a long story short, he got my number and I ended up dropping tim tams off to his house. The day before I dropped off the tim tams, he asked if I played tennis. I told him that I had played three times. I drove over to his house and we rode on bikes to the tennis courts. Well, he caught on pretty quickly that I really didn't know how to play tennis at all. We played until I hit all six balls out of the court. I was so embarrassed. I told him before I wasn't very good and he said it was all right because he just mucks around. He didn't tell me in advance that he played for a season in high school. The tennis game ended up turning into a tennis lesson. We haven't really done anything since. I've texted him a few times and he responded a week later, apologizing that he hasn't been responding because things have been busy. He's now back in Australia to get his visa.

The other pseudo-date was with Stephen. We were at a party a few weeks after I met and everyone else was going to see movies. I didn't want to spend any money, so opted out. Stephen was in the same position, so we went for a drive. It was nice to be able to chat and get to know him in a very low key setting.

So, I went in for my teacher evaluation at the MTC last month. While I was on my mission, I thought it would be great to go and teach there after I was done. But when I came home early, things changed. I thought I'd never be hired because I had been medically released. My friend, Michelle (the one from NZ), told me I should at least try. So, I decided that if someone was going to determine that I wasn't good enough to teach at the MTC it was going to have to be someone else. I shouldn't be the one holding myself back from opportunities. I filled out the application and I freaked out a little when it said that it was going to ask for a recommendation from my mission president. For the initial interview was a teacher evaluation, which meant I was going to have to teach a 10-minute lesson from Preach My Gospel. I actually canceled my teacher evaluation twice. I was so concerned about being perfect. I finally just decided that I was going to see it as if I was preparing to teach Sunday School and it was an opportunity to teach. I thought it was going to be a group of us doing the teacher evaluation together and that we would take turns teaching. Well, it turns out that it was just me in the room with two teachers and I had to present my lesson to them. Now, I've taught classes from as little as 5 girls in temple prep to 110 people in gospel doctrine. I don't like teaching just two people (especially when I prepare for a larger group). It turns out one of them was kiwi (from New Zealand), more specifically from Auckland. It didn't go as smooth as I would have liked, but it's done. I felt like the only part that went well was when I started to really teach by the spirit and not so worried about my lesson plan. I think that helped when I re-did a 2 minute part of my lesson. About an hour and a half, I got this e-mail from the MTC saying, "This email is to inform you that you are ranked somewhere in the mid-range of all qualified applicants. This means that you could be hired, but there are a significant number of applicants likely to be hired before you." Well, I'm happy with that. I wouldn't have been able to accept a job at the MTC anyway because of my intense summer term schedule. The fact that I was even considered a qualified applicant made me satisfied. I'm glad that I did it. I'm glad that I conquered my fear.