Post.

I've been trying not to get homesick, because I feel like once I do then I will be miserable. But I feel like I have been here for so long already but I know it hasn't even been a month.

The stupid WOU lady is mad at me for not using the DIVE technique in my blog each week for the school. WTF does that even mean? DIVE technique--describe, investigate, verify, and explain. Okay... But like what does that actually mean she wants me to do? And honestly her stupid blog is literally the last thing on my mind. I have to put a sticky note on my computer just to remember that I need to do it. And I really care 0.0000000% about it.

I really haven't been impressed with Western or CIS in this whole process. I feel like everything would have been a lot smoother if I had gone straight through IAU like everyone else did.

I'm jealous that everyone elses boyfriends and parents and stuff are coming to see them. And while I know it makes more sense for the money my parents would spend to go to me, I still wish sometimes that I would get to see them more. Cassidy is coming which I am really excited about but that isn't for three months. Its hard to not be able to be in contact all the time. I don't like not being able to be a text away because even though theoretically I am it matters if i have internet or whether it is 3am at home.
I miss how easy life is at home. Where I only have to answer for myself and I understand the culture and rules. It isn't the same here which i guess is why I came. And i'm having a good time I just wish that I would have more connection. I wish i was living on my own maybe where i could put things where i want and take a shower wen i want and not feel like I am an invader in someone elses home.

The Happiest Place on Earth

 I haven't posted in a while mostly because I have been really busy this summer. So far I have worked for OPAS doing lights again, got my brother married off, and went to Disneyland. I have been spending a lot of time with Thad when he isn't off at work in Chicago, Dallas, Seattle, etc. His last job before I leave is this weekend and then we will have a few weeks before I'm off. He goes to conferences for Intel and tells people to sign up for raffles or takes pictures or something. His job sort of changes each time but in general he goes to events like ComicCon or PAX or stuff like that. His last one was boring though because he had to sit around in a movie theater all weekend. But at least he gets paid!

 

YMCAA

My group of friends went to Disneyland last week. It was really nice that Megan had family down there that let us stay with them. They also had a pool! I invited Thad and was super glad that he was able to come. There are a lot of stories that I could put here but I will just hit some highlights:

• Riding Star Tours 4 times was really fun because Thad was so excited to go on it every time. The only downside was once everyone was screaming and we didn’t like that as much :-) Also Thad always wanted to be the Rebel Spy but he never was... :-(
• Thad bought us cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory! I had never had it before but it was deeeeeeelicious!
• Yolo is a county in California! 
  
• World of Color added a Brave section! And it was awesome! I also bought Glow with the Show Ears. They were really fun and I liked them. I wish the batteries hadn’t died for the second night but oh well!
  
• I'll let Thad's Facebook status tell this one: So today in a magical place, a magical thing happened. At the Blue Bayou, which is the restaurant inside of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, I had my first official date with Kacy. Like I'm talking one on one talking and nice sit down dinner type of date. Once we got in the restaurant the lady had given us the wrong menus. She gave us the lunch ones instead of the dinner. Which when we order made our waiter confused. In short after lots of apologizing, the chef delivered our food, and made it on the house. We also got these cool ice cubes that light up and change colors. All in all, best first date ever, best time at Disney Land, and best girlfriend. — feeling special. (It was pretty fun and awesome :-) A good memory to have!)
  
• Ice cream on Main Street was one of my favorite parts of the trip!!! I loved it!
• Fantasmic was a great show and a lot better than I remembered it being!
• Thad bought me a new tiara :-) Which I love and everyone called me Princess all day! And i had my pick and got the last one of the kind!
  
  
• Another Thad story... Well while eating dinner Tabasco sauce was shot in my eye. Fun fact of the day it hurts...a lot. After I stood up and manly took the pain Kacy preceded to push me down to make sure I was really hurt. 
•  Which I didn't realize he couldn't see the stairs so it really wasn't my fault!!! Chelsea shot it on accident and it was overall a funny event. I thought it was just soup and he was being dramatic, Eli thought he had swallowed my soda (he almost accidentally had 2 minutes ago), and everyone thought he was being dramatic until we realized what had happened and I proceeded to pour water in his eyes. But he is taller than me! So I had to put him on the stairs behind us so that I could pour the water down into his eye and have it actually go in. It was funny and wasn't hurt too bad but we went to First Aid on Main Street and they gave us eye cleaner stuff and then we called dad and he said to get Johnson and Johnson baby shampoo. So we did that and it worked great! No pain no gain right!?

  

  YMCAA

  
  

• I found a building with my NAME ON IT!!! Spelled correctly and everything!
  
• We loved having a day in between our Disney days to hang out by the pool! We had lots of fun diving off of the diving board (I learned how to do a flip!) and Megan's Aunt Francine even put bubbles in the Jacuzzi so there were suds everywhere!
  
• A guy with his family waiting in line turned around and did magic tricks for us! He made a hole go through Thad's hand!
  
• A lot of us Disneybounded which is where you wear casual clothes to make you look like Disney characters! Thad and I did Aladdin and Jasmine one day, Eli, Spencer, and I did the Aristocats another day, and I did Agnes from Despicable Me another day! Roz and Chelsea also did Mike and Sully from Monster Inc accompanied by Eli as Squishy from Monsters University, and Megan did mouse ears hair and a bow! Roz also did Snow white, Lion King, Ariel, and Buzz Light-year! It was fun and a lot of the cast members could tell who we were! I also did Aurora from Sleeping Beauty on the way down and Disneybounded while I was Disneybound. 
  
• The Aladdin show in California Adventure is great for resting tired feet and still being entertained! 
  

Overall it was a fun trip! I don't think I would want to drive it again and I think I may be Disneyed out until I have kids... At least at Disneyland. But it was a great trip! Now I have to ready for a much longer and farther away trip...

Urban Flipper

From the fete de lumieres!

L'Amour a Tous Les Droits

This is a song that we listened to the other day in french class. I liked the video and thought it was cute. The main line is "L'amour a tous les droits et nous tous les devoirs" it means "Love has all the rights and we have all the duties". I like that idea. :-) Yep!

Serez-vous ma copine?

Oui!

So Thad and I are a couple now. We had been talking about it for a while. It's been hard for me because of France and there were a couple ways that we could go about it. But I wanted us to be official. I've known him for a long time. We were in the same grade and we have always stayed friend even though he goes to Fox and I go to WOU. That picture is from Winterball my Sophomore year.But i am happy. We are decided to go on Pause while I go abroad at least until I figure out what my situation is like over there. But I am happy. I think he is too. He wanted to wait and ask me in person but we've known for a few days.

:-)

Also that's how he asked me. In french. He knows me so well!

Copy Cats

I just stumbled upon this and thought it was SUPER cute!

Outstanding Off Stage Contribution

The Outstanding Off Stage Contribution award is given to a technician who has demonstrated excellence and commitment to technical aspects throughout the season. When these awards were started seven years ago, they weren’t supposed to be a “life-time achievement award.” Each student’s work was to be individually considered for each year. This year is no exception. Excellence is this technician’s trademark. “Good enough” is not in their vocabulary. A powerhouse, a dynamo, a perfectionist, and a caring thespian: this technician always met challenges head-on and was always looking for ways to improve a show, even during the run of a show with sometimes somewhat comical results. I’ve said before that a show can still run even if no one shows up except for the stage manager. This person didn’t have to prove it, but I know that they could have done it. Having worked on every show since their freshman year, having accumulated more thespian points than any other technician at this school, and greatly raising the bar regarding what it means to be a techie, this could be a lifetime achievement award. Perhaps it has simply been delayed. The 2011 recipient for Outstanding Off Stage Contribution to the Theatre goes to Kacy Helwig.

Old but good :-)

A Funny Thing: Regret

It's hard for me to not regret decisions that I made in my past. I went to Linfield tonight with Chelsea to see Spring Awakening. And it was a really well done play. Worthy of the trip out there and really very beautifully done. And it's times like that where I look at my decision to leave and I see what I walked out on. I walked out on being the head person in another organization. I left being the lighting designer for the next 3 years of shows. And I know that I did. And when I look at that knowing how much I really do love doing it... I regret that. I regret that I didn't stick with it and become even better at it and more amazing. And i had a lot of good connections there that I could have utilized. And it is times like that where I wonder what direction in life I would be in.

And I don't regret it in like a "I wish I could go back and change it" way but in a that was a good direction that I could have gone but chose not to. And it makes me have regret because I don't know if in ten years I will look back and wish I had done things differently. But I think that just wasn't where I was supposed to be. And for that I am happy that I moved. I am happy with where God is taking me in my life and the opportunities that I have. But it just sort of puts me in an odd frame of mind to go back there and think about where I was at the time. Who I was. And it all just seems so strange to look at what I thought my life was then. And where I thought I was going. But it is all so different from what I pictured. And not in a bad way but just in a different way. So different.

For our french midterm today my professor did a listening activity about the jobs that she has done in her life. And I thought it was really interesting how she had so many jobs. And I haven't had that. But what was more interesting was her story of how being a teacher was the last thing that she ever wanted to do. But yet then she did and she loves it. It makes me wonder if I am going that route... The last thing I ever wanted to be was a foreign language teacher because of my mom being one. And now suddenly I am thinking it could be a good route... It just seems so crazy how all these decisions that I face have so many different influences on the direction of my life. It just seems surreal.

A scary thing happened to me today!

New Travel Blog!

Check it out!

http://kacygoesabroad.blogspot.com/

I am thinking that when I go abroad I will be putting this blog on hiatus to pursue all my travel blogging in one place? But I am not sure yet. But be sure to bookmark this one!

Analytic v.s. Synthetic System of Language

 

 

You do not want to know how many times I rewrote this and how long it took me to figure out what these meant. Spoiler Alert: more than 3 hours. So it is blog worthy. I think it was so hard because English isn't really very Synthetic so I had to look at weird other language examples and figure out how to do it. Also I kept mixing the concepts up and thinking that methods and like mini concepts within the systems were separate concepts from the systems and that sucked because then I rewrote to fit those concepts but then it was wrong and not what the question was asking and bleeeeeeeeh. Kacy + Linguistics = ???? Maybe I don't want to be an English major. Or maybe it is just this crappy book that doesn't even include a sound chart that has the English sounds with examples of them in it. We just are supposed to know those. Even though they are different sounds in other languages. Like French. Because that isn't confusing to me at all. WHAT. I still don't even know if that is right. 

Analytic v.s. Synthetic System of Language

If you are interested in languages it is important to know how to distinguish a language as having an “analytic” system or a “synthetic” system. In an “analytic” system of language meaning is more strongly based on the order of words rather than inflectional morphemes or affixes that are added. For example when we look at the sentence John threw the ball to Jane. We infer through the word order that John is agent that is performing the verb to throw and is performing it on the direct object the ball and performing the action to Jane who is the indirect object. In essence, we know who is doing what with what to who all based on the order of the words. With this system we cannot make the sentence ‘Jane threw the ball to John’ because the word order changes the meaning of the sentence.  This is vastly different than in a “synthetic” language system where you can change word order and have it mean the same thing.

A synthetic system uses inflections rather than word order in order to identify the part of speech in the sentence. This system use affixes to distinguish meanings and identify the part of speech for the words or morphemes in a sentence regardless of location. An example of this is in the Nepali language to say, “Chelseale Kacylai kitab diyo” or “Chelsea gave the book to Kacy”. The bolded letters show the affixes that allow you to identify that Chelsea is the subject who is doing the action while Kacy is the indirect object who is receiving the action from anywhere in the sentence. These affixes make it possible to say, “Kacylai Chelseale kitab diyo” and anyone from Nepal would still understand this sentence to mean the same thing as before even though the order of names has now changed. This ability to change location of the agent and indirect object would not be possible in an analytic language because these systems rely on word order which would make ‘Kacy’ the agent and ‘Chelsea’ the indirect object. That would mean that ‘Kacy gave the book to Chelsea’ instead of ‘Chelsea gave the book to Kacy’. English is more reliant on word order than inflections and therefore is more of an analytic system but it is still a mix of the two systems. While the English language places more meaning in the word order of sentences, there are circumstances where English does make use a synthetic language system’s use of inflections. An example of this is seen in how we express plurality by adding ‘-s’ or by expressing past tense with the inflectional ending ‘-ed’ added to the root of verbs. While the English language is considered primarily an analytical language it is indeed a mixed system language as it uses aspects of both to create understanding and meaning.

Weeding

Also recently I weeded the crap out of our front yard!

Classes and a Birthday Party

School has been a little hectic lately so I haven't had a lot of spare time to write. My classes are all going good. I am enjoying my linguistics class even though I don't necessarily understand it fully. I have been having trouble with phonetics which is when you spell words based on sounds and not based on actual spellings. Which has also been hard because we are doing a lot of that in french this term so the sounds and symbols for sounds aren't always the same in English and French. So that has been difficult. I am also taking french songs which has been fun but also a little weird because she has never taught this class before. I feel like some things go over my head or i don't feel as prepared for that class as I should be but then when I go I feel that I am more prepared than the other girls in the class. I am also taking Yoga! Which I have really been enjoying. Especially ball days on Fridays when we use the big exercise balls to do stuff. I think it is really fun. I'm taking it with Rosalyn and she doesn't always see eye to eye with me when it comes to the class. But I also work out between my french classes on Tuesday and Thursday. I feel like it is good for me. I think I need more exercise. Lately I have been having a little bit of chest pain if i go too long though. So hopefully it is nothing... I also work out on Fridays after Yoga with Chelsea. Her and I have gotten pretty close these past couple weeks. I think because we both have a similar personality when it comes to what we want to do. I feel like she also understand where I am coming from emotionally a little more than anyone else because we have a had some similar experiences. So it has been nice to have someone around who does a lot of the same things that I do.

My birthday was great this year!!! Much better than last year. I had pizza with my Salem family and also had a party with my friends. Everyone who came had to fit the theme of being from a different country. So everyone had to dress like their country. I thought it was fun. We had a wonderful DQ ice cream cake with dinosaurs on it provided by MegaWack. When we went to go get one there were no cakes in their freezer and I almost cried because I had been looking forward to it so much. Luckily their freezer had just broke so all their cakes were in the back. Phew! But we played DDR and Just Dance and it was a good time had by all. I invited my friend Victoria from high school who recently transferred to WOU so that was cool that she wanted to come and hang out. I am going to try and remember to start including her more! I was also happy that Bryces boyfriend Joe came even though Bryce couldn't. He's nice.

Today i have been feeling really tired and took a nap. I stayed up pretty late last night for my party. But I have been on homework overload for the past couple hours. My french teacher accidentally scheduled a lot of stuff to be due tomorrow. She even apologized. But it's okay. I don't find it very difficult, just time consuming... But i'll survive. It is only preparation for this coming Fall!

I met with dad last Friday to talk to Financial Aid about what is going on with funds for going abroad. They pretty much said we can give more money but throughout the whole year. So I will be getting extra money than usual in the Winter and Spring which I will just put back into my loans I assume. We'll also have a gap to cover between the cost of the program and how much i get for loans. I think. A lot of the meeting went over my head. But I should be getting an email at the end of this week or beginning of next that will be more informative of how much is going where and what it is all going to cost. My Fall term is going to cost more than a full year at WOU. But hey... Still cheaper than Linfield!!!! ;~)

Overall I am just happy that things seem to be going alright. I am keeping busy so that is good. Chelsea has been stressing about needing to find a job... And that make me wish that I could get a job this summer... But logistically I am not sure if I could with the wedding stuff, and OPAS, and having to go to San Fran for my visa, and getting ready to do everything. I don't really know... On one hand it would be really great to find a job that was flexible that would let me take all these random days off. And it would be great to have extra money for France for sure. But I just don't know if there is really much out there that I could do... Especially because who would want to hire me for such a short time. Because I leave in the first week of September... And can't really work until July. But then there is the wedding stuff... So... I don't know... :-/ I feel bad that I don;t have a job... But that a lot of people my age do. And a lot of people my age do full classes a job and have kids. I am glad that isn't me because I don't know how I would do it.

I guess i'll just keep trying to keep my eye out for something.

Spring Break

This post has been a long time coming. So my spring break has been going well and I guess is now drawing to a close. I had a really good time and got to see a lot of family. First i went home with Spencer and Megan to do life at home for a few days and watch the dogs while my parents went to Seattle on the train. Played good friend to Chelsea who was going through some drama with family. I also got to go back to my own church for service with Jared. It was good to see him since I hadn't for a few weeks. I also got to talk to the Hunters and catch up with them a little. They seemed pretty excited for me to be able to go abroad. I also celebrated Eli's Birthday with the Bramblewood Bunch plus some others. That was fun to be able to hang out.

And intermittedly I played a PS2 game with Spencer called Onimusha Dawn of Dreams which isn't actually two players but there is a way to hack the game and make it so we have been doing that. We wanted to start a game together because it is a fun way to spend time with each other and do something fun. I beat my Legends of Dragoon game.

 I have also started playing my Hamtaro Hamha heatbreak game. It is dumb and easy but I like it. The little hampster guys are cute.

My big spring break trip though was going to visit Robyn at Puget Sound. Bill and Kathi had invited me to go with them to see Robyn in an Improv Club on campus that was doing a sketch comedy show. Robyn directed 2 sketches and wrote 2 sketches and I think acted in 3 or 4. There were about 19 sketches that were all student made. I was a little nervous that they wouldn't be that good because of the student written part but I was pleasantly surprised. They were entertaining and made me laugh. Though there were a lot of jokes that were very generational so I could see why it worked at a college level but may not have worked for people not in my generation but they were very good!

I met Bill and Kathi at their place on Friday Morning after Elis Birthday party and we departed for Tacoma. We stopped to do a few errands in Salem and bought some treats from a bakery on our way out. They were very delicious! The drive there was a lot shorter than I thought it would have been. It didn't seem too bad to me but then again I wasn't the one driving. We got there Kathi walked me around the campus while we waited for Robyn to get done. It really is a nice campus. Lots of brick building and it was a really nice day such. Lot of activity going on and people outside playing frisbee and such. It kinda made me feel like I missed out on having a real on campus and good campus experience. But I think that I did have that at Linfield for a while. And though I did miss the mark a little bit, I don't think that on campus would have been something that I would have really liked long term. I like living off campus and that's fine with me. Then I met  one of Robyns housemates Shelby. She was nice and definitely a good friend for Robyn. They seem to get along well. Then we met up with Chris's ex-girlfriend Elizabeth so that was kinda cool to see her. Her girlfriend was at work at the zoo so she couldn't join us for dinner though. But we went to a nice restaurant down on the bay. We had to eat fast to be able to try and get the girls to their call time on time but it turned out there was an accident on the road ahead of us so they ended up being late anyways.

After we dropped them off we went to Bill and Kathi's hotel to check them in. Their hotel room didn't have a fridge. That's weird. Or an ice box but they had ice machines in the hallway. Weird. After the show I went with Robyn and her friends to their campus hangout pizza place lounge thing and we hung out there for a few hours until it closed. Then we went to her friends dorm lounge and watched some people play Minecraft. I was glad that I had my gameboy for that. It was pretty boring and since it was after 2am i was pretty tired. We finally walked about ten minutes to Robyns house where we sleepover-girl-talked and went to bed. We woke up the next morning and walked to a place for breakfast where we met back up with B&K. I made the dumb decision to not put on my socks all the way so on the walk there I got a blister. So I will be flip-flopping it for a few days. Breakfast was good bt i had to have coffee because I was really tired from 2 nights on the floor and not long to sleep. Then we went grocery shopping and took groceries back to Robyns house. Then we decided to drive around Tacoma a little more. We took the bridge and it was gorgeous and drove until we could see the mountains. We went all over and went to the bay again and I was nice to see a lot of different things.

The day before I had gone with B&K after their hotel check in and we drove to where the cargo place was where the ships brought in their cargo in the big metal crate containers. They had these HUGE cranes to lift them and it was cool to see them unload a ship. I learned they don't reuse the containers after they reach the US because they are too expensive to send back empty. So they melt them down and turn them into other stuff. I think that is really stupid. I mean some company spends a lot of money and energy making those things so that they can come here and spend a lot of money and energy melting them back down. WHAT A WASTE OF ENERGY AND MONEY! I think it is so stupid! I don't know how else they would do it but there has got to be another way!

The way home was pretty uneventful we looked at the scenery and i learned a lot about the buildings and the towns and such. Then we saw Mt. St. Helens from the back side and I hadn't remembered seeing it from the back where it blew. So that was cool and we decided to stop at the visitors museum that talked about the mountain and the eruption. It was pretty cool they had a movie of what happened and the history behind it and such. We wanted to go up further to a different museum but it is closed until mid-may. Sad. But it was pretty cool to learn more about it and to see it and such. Then we came home and had dinner with Grandpa in Salem. We went to Applebees and it was delicious. It was good to see him and wish him Happy Birthday in person. Now I have spent my last day ordering books and going to Office depot to get a folder box to keep all of my old papers in because the folder thing i was using before was way too small. So that puchase costed me but from the use I will get I think it is worth it. I want to at least save all of my work and handouts until after college in case I want to refer back to something. And it's only one box so far for 2 years so I think that's okay. I also cleaned my room.

Today was Easter so I went to Easter brunch with Megan and Spencer at the Starduster. It was good and then we came home. Rosalyn got back today and Chelsea later in the night. While Megan went to the boys house to get Easter eggs to hide Rosalyn and I colored some unboiled eggs with markers as fast as we could so that we could hide them before she got back. We "double bunny crossed" her she said because she wanted to be the bunny. But it was fun to watch her and do it since she didn't get to as a kid. Once she found them we were banished to our room until she could hide the cooked ones. I worked out the location of the bachelorette party during my banishment. Then the boys came over and we all looked for eggs. It was fun. I helped chelsea with her room a little bit and worked on mine some more later and now I have been writing this! I am pretty excited for next term. I feel like I have been on a break for too long since I had such an easy time last term after I had to drop my classes for my surgery. I feel like i've been on Sping break forever. Plus this term I will find out my classes for France and be able to get more done with that. SO i will be busy with 17 credits and planning my trip. I haven't found anyone to go to Paris with me so that is sad... I am not sure whether I should go alone a week early or go on a train ride one weekend. But then I don't have as much time there... :-/ I wish someone would go with me. But it is expensive to fly there and everyone is busy it seems like. But I will survive. :-) Hope you all had a good Easter!