Curveballs, overseas, and bankruptcy

Life throws us curveballs. I'm sure everybody knows that pretty well by now, if you're old enough to find this blog on the web. Well, life threw a major curveball at me the last, what, 8 months? Maybe more. Either way, after my last blog I kept living in the Foreign Language Student Residence (FLSR) in the Portuguese house, increasing my fluency in Portuguese, and loving every minute of it. Things looked like they were going pretty well at the beginning of the Fall semester - I was in my senior year of vocal performance, working at a secondary role in Die Fledermaus at BYU, and getting along further in my premed classes with organic chemistry and physics. And I was understanding it all and dealing with it all pretty well. Cool, huh? :) Well, it didn't last too long. The last 2 weeks of the opera, when we were putting the shows, I put in a total of 63 hours into the extra rehearsals and performances. And this was during midterms. Ouch. So, I ended up not really understanding anything in my physics and chemistry classes after that. I recovered by the start of the next semester, Winter, only to land myself in the hospital from Feb 24 - Feb 27 with a partially obstructed intestine. Of course, as Murphy would have guessed and undoubtedly enjoyed, they had no idea what it was for about 48 hours, after the which they informed me that I would have to undergo yet another surgery to unclog me, and after 24 hours of apprehension and nail-biting they let me know that the obstruction went through me and I was a-ok and could leave the next day. Oh, and that I would be about $2,500 in debt after my insurance took over. Joy!

Now, don't think my troubles were over. Haha, oh no.

On the 28th (the day after I got home from the hospital) I woke up to a phone call informing me that my grandma, to whom I was very close, had passed away suddenly in her sleep at her home. Ouch. From March 2 - 5 I was in Illinois preparing for and being part of her funeral. It was particularly difficult for me because it was the first time in my life that a close family member or friend had passed away, and as suddenly/unexpectedly as she had. Now for the interesting part - during these 5 days that I was not present in classes, I missed 3 midterms, almost a dozen homework assignments, and pages of notes. I never did recover educationally speaking from that week, resulting in the lowest semester GPA of my college career (I did pass everything) and a significantly lower college GPA. Now I'm trying to dig myself out of the sinkhole that's appeared under me. The prospects look good, though. :)

Now, after the semester was over I had the opportunity to go to South Africa with BYU Singers for 3 weeks, singing in 21 concerts/firesides and enjoying, no, being amazed, at the people down there. It was absolutely incredible, and I would totally recommend going to my photo album here and checking out the pictures. I only had my 264 MB xD card, so I only fit 337 pictures on it. Only. It was an experience of a lifetime.









Now, I'm living in a different apartment complex, Spyglas, and am paying a lot more than before, in the FLSR, and have subsequently discovered the joys of coming to a week from the end of the month with absolutely no money. I guess it was a good lesson to learn this early in life, though I'm positive it's not going to be the only time I don't have more than $5 to my name. However, hopefully it won't happen after I get an actual job and make a decent income. Hmm... knock on wood. I actually just got word (in a letter at that, not even a phone call) that a job I was hoping to get speaking Spanish and Portuguese at a very respectable business here in Provo was taken now, or rather, they had found somebody else that would better qualify for the job. Oh well. Roll with the punches I guess. Hopefully things pan out this month. We'll see. :^D