Grateful.

Today I am overwhelmed by a feeling of gratitude and just overall contentment. Not even the blustery, nuclear fallout-ish weather can get me down. For one thing, the semester is over. I know I still have finals to take, but the main point is I have no papers to write, nothing to read, etc. And being an English major with no assigned reading is no small feat. Though it is strange to think that this is my last winter semester at BYU before I graduate. It's bittersweet. Mostly sweet, haha. But I will definitely miss all my professors and talking to genius people about fantastic ideas. Secondly, I am going to London. I don't know if you knew this since I never talk about it, but...haha, I'm kidding. It has really started to hit me that exactly two weeks from now, I'll have been in London for 5 1/2 hours. The sad news is, the program directors aren't allowing trips outside Great Britain for our free travel, but my little group decided that Dublin will suffice. Which leads me to another aspect of my thankfulness: having met people I can chill with in London. Not only that, but actually like and have fun with. It's amazing to me how nervous I was going into this alone, and now how everything worked out in the end. Namely, I am grateful for Carlos (who was also thinking of going winter semester like me originally, so we would have ended up friends either way), Makayla, who is hilarious and diabolically sarcastic, and Kristin, who is also funny and wants to get away from the larger group and not be a tourist. All in all, it's going to be a wild trip, I'll tell you that. And mom and dad, when you read this, by "wild" I mean "safe and organized with lots of rules."

And lastly, Cara and I are extremely blessed that our contracts for spring and summer have finally sold. I was so worried about having to pay money when we wouldn't even be living here, but it's all taken care of now. We even had someone call last night wanting to come see the apartment today, but we found out early this morning that the contracts were already sold. Thanks for being on top of it and telling us earlier, MVM! It really is a blessing though, and I'm happy to have one less thing to worry about.