To build a home

There have been a lot of changes for me moving to Princeton (you'd think that moving gets easier, and it some ways, it does, but in other ways, it's still hard each time). One of the biggest adjustments is that I have my own apartment. This is both great (my weird "burn-both-ends-of-the-candle" hours don't bother anyone, I can talk very loudly with my boyfriend while FaceTiming him, I know that the messes in the kitchen are my own), and weird (I don't have other people to talk to when I get home, it's very quiet, and my messes are my own). 

But one beautiful thing that has happened the past few weeks is how this apartment has come together, from having my mom drive out with me to help me furnish my apartment, to having Sam come up and help put furniture together, to finally getting a couch and a mattress, and then little odds and ends that I kept on forgetting (like buying bowls or a yoga mat). Or the fact that my living room and bedroom have no real lights. It's amazing the difference having a lamp makes. 

[Let there be light]

I would say the thing that really made my apartment feel more "me" was putting my pictures and photographs up. They are reminders of what I think is beautiful--paintings, poetry, and bits that speak to my soul and remind me of other homes. 

There's something very satisfying in making a space a home--even if it's through little things. But it's a space that is mine. A room of my own. And for right now, the mix and match of that life will do.  

Sketches of Princeton [first]

the first week of classes

is a whirl. 

at first i thought, 

"i've got this." 

and then 

the second day hit

with the force of a freight train. 

i don't got this. 

at least not right now. 

but i will. 

there's a lot of reading. 

so.much.reading.

thousands of pages of it. 

help?

there's also a lot of thinking. 

my brain feels overloaded. 

but then. 

there is in the very air here

beauty

and knowledge

and a wisdom 

that the world spins on 

and there is blue sky 

and that there are places for me to be 

and sit 

and breathe.

and that i will make this place a home. 

the other day

i saw a dad 

place his daughter in a shopping cart

(that's used to move things into 

the apartments here) 

and she squealed with joy. 

real things. 

beyond books. 

i like being reminded of reality. 

i find it in the curve of the river

and the stillness of the morning

and in how bugs buzz here

and birds chirp

and everything is a bit louder

and warmer

and muggier

than back home. 

those are real things, too. 

i think it's normal to feel overwhelmed here. 

overwhelmed by the amount to do 

but also overwhelmed by the sheer beauty and magnitude of this place

and of the people here. 

i don't just mean their brilliance and accolades 

(although that can be overwhelming, too)

but just that i've been overwhelmed by kindness

with hugs 

and greetings

and people offering to help me scan books upon books 

and deep discussions 

and invitations to dinner 

and lunch

and understandings that no one really knows 

what's going on. 

i haven't figured it out yet. 

but i will. 

i will. 

i will. 

Glimpses of Princeton

This place is beautiful. It truly, truly is.

This is real life. Even though sometimes it doesn't feel like it. But it is. I'm here.

That D.C. life

About a week ago (was it really a week ago? time is a strange thing), I went to D.C. I figured that I should probably post some pics of the trip because it was a pretty great trip overall. (And I also figure that I'll let the pictures do most of the talking on this one.)

First of all, the memorials at night are just so beautiful and so peaceful. Love love love love love.

[D.C. at sunset. Simply stunning.]

I got to see so many friends in D.C.! Like Beth and Jonathan. And Sam (obvi).

[Sam and I with Beth and Jonathan at the magical land of Shake Shack.] 

And sooo many museums. Which was fun. This is me chillin' with Louisa May Alcott at the National Portrait Gallery.

[Oh haiiii, Louisa.]

[And Rothko at the Phillips Collection! I totally had a moment while I was there. I love Rothko's work. I just do.]

[ROTHKO.]

[Library of Congress. Not exactly a museum, but there are lots of old books there, so I figure it counts in this category.]

We also saw a bunch of darling neighborhood libraries. Which are always fun.

[Sam posing with a library. As one does.]

We also strolled through Georgetown, which is a wonderfully-charming area of D.C. We also went to Georgetown's campus, and it was also beautiful . . . and kind of neat/weird to see my "sister life." The thing I could have chosen. It kind of felt like "It's a Wonderful Life" type of moment, and that truly is a gift. And even though D.C. is wonderful, I'm so glad I chose Oxford. 

[Lovely Georgetown.]

[Georgetown's campus.]

[GEORGETOWN CUPCAKE.]

We also made sure to swing by the Ukrainian Embassy. Because, you know. I love Ukraine.

[Sam: You know, if you touch the embassy, you're legally in the country.

Me: Well, I'll have to touch it then, won't I?]

Overall, great trip, great company, great conversation, great people. 10/10 would definitely recommend.

Uncertain Beginnings and Messy Middles

To make an end is to make a beginning . . . and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. --T.S. Eliot "Little Gidding"

The new year is a time for beginnings and endings. I think that's one reason I like the new year so much--it symbolizes fresh starts, closure, and it's a wonderfully-fascinating shared space for both beginnings and ends.

But as much as it is a time for the bookends of old and new, start and finish, beginning and end, it's also a time for middles (and I don't just mean our expanding ones after weeks of rich holiday treats).

We don't really like to talk about the middle of the story too much--it's certainly not as exciting as the beginning or as poignant or romantic as the end. We certainly don't like them when they are messy. That messy middle is hard. It can be a tangled mess of whys, what ifs, and what-in-the-world-is-going-on-right-nows. The middle is a time for growing pains, regrets, and questions. Sometimes, in the midst of the messy middle, it seems like we will never reach a happy ending--or even an unhappy one.

Is all of life a messy middle? Perhaps, in some ways, it is, as lives are made up of an infinite number of beginnings, middles, and ends.

Beginnings, middles, ends. Ends, beginnings, middles. After awhile, they all start to look the same.

It's not an easy idea for a girl who loves tidy endings. But when was life ever tidy?

Last summer, I took a trip across Eastern Europe with my friend Briana. It was a whirlwind adventure and--to be honest--some days we chewed off a bit more than we could manage. We had places to see and travel to almost every day of our trip, and with each destination, we made plans to see as much as we could.

When we got to Budapest, both Briana and I had things and people we wanted to see. One of the things I really wanted to see was the Shoes on the Danube Bank Memorial. It's an incredible moving memorial, dedicated to Budapest Jews and others who were killed during the fascist regime in Hungary during WWII. Those who were killed were ordered to take off their shoes, and then shot into the Danube River.

[Shoes on the Danube Bank Memorial]

I was determined to see it. But there were other things to do in Budapest, too, and I didn't know if we would find it. Also, although I loved our time in Budapest, it was also one of the most exhausting days of our trip. I was running on three hours of sleep after a very weird overnight train journey, we were hungry, we couldn't read the Hungarian signs, we were sweaty and disgusting, and we were sunburned (after living in England for ten months, we forgot that the sun actually can burn you). 

[This is a very accurate depiction of the state of affairs in Budapest. Smiling on the outside, screaming on the inside.]

So, in short, we were right-smack-dab in the middle of a very long Eastern European adventure, far from our final destination, far from home, and kinda wondering what madness had possessed us to come this far in the first place. 

We did eventually find the memorial towards the end of our day, and when we found the memorial, it was very poignant and very beautiful. But at the same time, there were a thousand other things on my mind. I had made it to the place where I wanted to be, but it wasn't the end of our journey. Not by a long shot. How would we get to the airport? Should we take the Metro or a taxi? Did we have enough Hungarian forints to pay for a decent meal or would we be surviving on chocolate? What if we didn't make our next flight? 

I sat by the Danube while Briana went off to the side to make a phone call to her family back home. 

While she talked, I thought about the memorial, about my practical worries for the trip (and some abstract ones about my life), about how far we had come, and how much farther we had to go. 

And as I watched the water lap the bank, I realized that perhaps I was focusing too much on the ending. Or what I thought needed to be the ending. 

Because sitting on the Danube's bank was an ending. It was an ending I had looked forward to all day, but I forgot about it when it turned into a middle instead of an end. I was cursing the middle, while forgetting that the middle is full of beginnings and endings which need acknowledgment and celebration. I thought of all the mini-endings of the day--getting food, washing my face, finally crossing that bridge from Pest to Buda. 

And now I was here, sitting on the bank of Danube, tired and sunburned, remembering those who had gone before, and preparing for the rest of the journey. 

It was a quiet realization, and in many ways, just for me. But it was necessary and helped me savor more moments on the trip. 

Some middles are messier than others. Travel worries are one thing. But when we or those we love are stuck in the throes of health problems, loneliness, or any number of never-ending stories, that middle can be particularly nasty and challenging. One reason the middle is so hard is because it's so uncertain. We don't know how the end will be . . . or if there will ever be an end. Not knowing is so hard.

What's also hard is when what we think is going to be a happy ending turns to be a very messy middle instead.

Some of my ancestors were Mormon pioneers. I grew up hearing stories about their trek across the Great American Plains. They were exiles, and they traveled towards the place they believed "God for [them] prepared, far away in the West."

It wasn't an easy journey. But it helped to have a dream in mind--in this case, what they believed would be their own Land of Canaan in the Rocky Mountains.

I imagine them crossing the windy hills of Nebraska and the barren plains of Wyoming, holding onto a hope that their Promised Land would be green and beautiful--a land flowing with milk and honey . . .

And then they got Utah.

Now, I know Utah is a beautiful state. It has this rugged, mountainous beauty, and out of all the skies I've seen in this world, I still think that Utah sunsets with the sun setting behind the Oquirrh Mountains are the most beautiful.

But this rugged beauty wasn't particuarly beautiful to farmers and settlers in the 1840s who had traveled over a thousand miles to a new home. They didn't want rock climbing adventures. They wanted to grow crops and actually drink the water of their new home. Instead, they found a desert with no ski resorts, no temples, and little water except a giant, undrinkable lake of salt.

In the words of one of my great-grandmothers (and I am not paraphrasing here):

"I left England for THIS?"

I left England for this? 

I think most--if not all--of us have said similar things about our expected happy endings that turn out to be very messy middles:

Is this REALLY all there is after graduation? 

Why did we ever move here? 

I felt right about taking this job/starting/ending this relationship/fill-in-the-blank. Why are things so hard then? 

I left England . . . for this?

What we thought would be our Promised Land suddenly isn't. We haven't found the ease and prosperity we hoped for.

But perhaps the end goal was never meant to be ease and prosperity.

Perhaps the end goal is to learn how to embrace that messy middle. To learn that we have to fight for our happiness. And that means getting dirty. It means making mistakes. It means loving others deeply.

Life isn't found on shiny pedestals.

Rather, it's found on the banks of the Danube River, sunburned and exhausted.

It's found in the brown, barren deserts of Utah.

It's found in raspberry patches with sticky faces and scratched-up hands.

It's found when we choose to live life deliberately.

Yes, life is full of messy middles, but it is those middles which make our stories rich, deep, and full . . . if we let them. When we wait for the middle to end, it never does end and we miss the beauty of connections, growth, and experiences that are so unique to the middle of the story.

If we let it, the messy middle teaches us to take the joy with gratitude and the sorrow without resentment.

And so, in the spirit of New Year's, I wish all of you happy endings and beautiful beginnings . . . but I also hope that you find meaning in the middle, no matter how messy it gets.

(And in the spirit of the finest of babushka blessings, I wish all of you health, wealth, success, beautiful families, and all the best you could ever ask for.)

Here's to 2017.

Five.

Five years ago exactly, on a Wednesday in late November--the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, in fact--my life changed forever.

I received a mission call to serve an LDS mission in Donetsk, Ukraine. I made the decision to serve after careful thought, consideration, and prayer. It was one of the hardest decisions I have ever made in my life. And serving that mission is still probably the hardest thing I've done in my life so far.

But it's also one of the most important. It set the trajectory for my future. That mission is holy to me, for it is one of those sacred spots of earth and time where I came to know Jesus.

I have written a lot about my mission on this blog and elsewhere. I guess it's true what they say. You can take the girl out of the mission, but you can't take the mission out of the girl.

But today, five years after receiving that call, I simply want to say that I am deeply humbled and deeply grateful.

Thanks be to God for knowing the faithscape of a nation and the landscape of the heart.

For knowing that I needed Ukraine. And that Ukraine--in some small way--needed me.

For allowing me to clumsily try to deliver His message of love to His children there.

For giving me more than I ever deserved.

For allowing me to love so much it hurt.

For showing me the beauty of the Russian language, the resiliance of the Ukrainian spirit, and the strength of Ukrainian women.

For giving me a bit of that resiliance and strength to carry home.

And thanks be to God that He is the healer of nations and of souls.

I haven't forgotten.

And I never will.

Welcome to Oxford

 [Inside of Corpus Christi College.]

Well, friends, I made it! I am now in the beautiful city of Oxford. My mom and I arrived here Monday afternoon, travelworn after a few uncomfortable hours on trains and taxis. But we were happy to arrive at our destination. 

[Obligatory selfie in the cloisters.]

My mom had to leave for the airport the next morning, so I did a lot of exploring myself. (And now I feel badly that my mom wasn't able to see all the things I have discovered . . . because there is so much more to Oxford than train stations and a long walk down High Street--even though that walk is lovely in its own right.) 

But exploring the nooks, crannies, and secrets of Oxford is one of my new favorite things to do. And I do a lot of it as I figure out the city and my place in it. 

For example. Remember how this is the first thing I see every morning? 

And how the Radcliffe Camera is just a seven-minute jog away from my flat? 

And how morning runs are the perfect time to get pictures of the Bridge of Sighs sans tourists? 

 And how the Church of St. Mary the Virgin is stunning in morning light? Yeah. I remember it, too.

Speaking of the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, I decided to play the tourist on Wednesday, which meant that I climbed to the top of the clock tower and took a bunch of pictures from the vantage point. Because that's what you do when you are a tourist. 

[I am not posting this picture because I absolutely love it. Because I don't. My hair is all sca-wampous (the different climate is doing weird things to my hair, but that's another story), and I just don't absolutely love the picture. I mean. It's fine. Really, it's fine. But I don't love it. But I'm posting it because of the story behind it. Just before a nice Filipino man took this picture for me, he asked me to be in a selfie with him. He was taking a selfie of himself and he motioned me to join him. And it was so funny because I didn't know where to look and I know that I looked like a dork. It was just really funny.] 

 [This. This is my home for the next nine months.]

[No, I am not engaged. It is not even the correct finger. But I am wearing a lucky lion ring. Because sometimes you just need a little bit of extra courage. Especially when you climb up a very tall tower. And when you are starting a masters program at Oxford. That too.]

[Selfie time!]

[Another selfie. Artsy? Annoying? Angled?] 

It's been a busy week getting myself situated--meeting people in my program, talking with my dissertation advisor and other mentors in my college, getting to know flat mates (one girl is from Sydney, Australia, and the other girl is from Nanjing, China--they are both lovely girls), making friends from around the world, finding free food at random events (okay, but really--this is important here because everything is so expensive), etc., etc. We had orientation today for graduate students and next week is "freshers' week." Fresher than what? No idea. But I am a fresher. 

In short, Oxford is beautiful. I'm lucky to study here for a time. I'm ready to embrace it with all my soul--with eyes and heart wide open.