An honorary witch's dream...

Well.  I've found it.  The missing meaning in my life.  Once upon a few weeks ago I went to THE WIZARDING WORLD OF HARRY POTTER!!!  I know.  You want every.  last.  detail.  How was it, you may ask?  Well... it was...


THE WIZARDING WORLD OF HARRY POTTER!

Which basically means that I loved each and every last moment.  It is the HAPPIEST most MAGICAL place I've ever been.  Somehow I seriously felt at home there!  Let's not get into any thoughts of how strange that comment actually is.

If you are not a Harry Potter fan, you are dismissed.  For good.  Because there is going to be a whole lot of HP talk coming riiiiiiiight up!

First off, Orlando is amazing.  And 90+ degrees.  Thank you earth's tilt.  I owe you my happiness.  (I will admit that I have no idea if that actually has to do with the tilt.  Just sounded like the thing to say.)  Especially because it snowed all that week in Utah!  Heh.  Loved that a little.  :)

I went to Orlando with my besties, (  :)  I love teaching middle school)  Sue and Julena.  I love that I still get a Spring Break to play with!  Why did we choose Orlando?  See above.  Because yes, indeed, HP World is, in fact, the reason we chose that lovely city.  How old are we?  I see no relevance to that question.

*Moving on.*

We landed in Orlando in the late eveningtime hours, and after a couple weird complications (like, first- in order to remember that our rental car was parked in space U20, we compared it to the well known and loved band U2, then got confused because there was no space labeled U2 and searched for a while before we figured it out.  And second- no car was parked in U20 once we found it) we got our renal car and cruised on down the road.  We checked into our hotel at about 12:30 AM.

Day 1- Manatee Park.  We went to a natural park where you could see wild manatees swim in from the ocean.  See this cute little guy?:

Well, he is NOT from the manatee park.  Turns out they only come in the winter.  Great.  Glad we made that drive.  :)  We did see an old home/river boat stop that had been originally built on an old indian garbage dump, though.  Ok.  Why not?  We also met Fred.  This is Fred:

Cute little baby.  :)  I guess he hangs around the park a lot, so the park rangers named him.  After the manatee park we walked around the Orlando temple grounds.  Pretty place.

Day 2- THE WIZARDING WORLD OF HARRY POTTER! (and everything else at the Islands of Adventure theme park.)

Honestly- i LOVED this place!  I don't know what it was that just made you feel so at home and so much like you belonged, but it did!  Hogsmeade felt just like I thought it should.  They kept all of the shops and restaurants and everything very small to keep the feel of the place right.  Consequently, you actually had to wait in line to even get into that section of the park!  Very popular place... very popular place.

They only had a few different rides there, which really was perfect.  One was a really fun roller coaster with dueling dragons at the Triwizard Tournament.  Another you had to tame a Hippogriff before you could ride safely.  Sue was amazing with that hippogriff.  She bowed to him with the best of 'em.  The best one, though, was the ride through Hogwarts.  The line actually took you through the castle- which was amazing!  The ride then took you through more of the castle, took you flying through the Quiddich field, through the Haunted Forest (which was of course full of spiders and dementors and such), and more.  It was PERFECT!  So fun!  We rode that one several times.  We went through the single rider line so the wait time was cut way down, and I even got to walk around back behind the scenes a bit because of the single rider line.

And, yes, the pictures did move and talk.  :)

Besides Hogwarts, I think my favorite place in Hogsmeade was The Hog's Head!

 

The only place to eat in The Wizarding World of Harry Potter was The Three Broomsticks, or you could get drinks at The Hog's Head.  They were such fantastic places!  The Three Broomsticks had Butterbeer and Cornish Pasties and Pumpkin Juice and Fish and Chips and Shepherd's Pie... things you don't normally see in theme park restaurants!  We, of course, had to try the Pumpkin Juice and the Pumpkin Fizz as well as the Draft Butterbeer and Frozen Butterbeer.  (Frozen was MUCH better- so dang good!)

 The Hog's Head was made to be a dirty old bar, just like in the books.  It was so much fun!  It was a real bar that had different kinds of beer as well as Butterbeer and Pumpkin Juice.  (No, you didn't have to be 21 to go in.  It wasn't that real of a bar.)

Notice the hog's head on the right.

We also got to go inside Olivander's, Honeydukes, and Zonko's.  We saw the Hogwarts Express and met some great witches and wizards.

Best.  Place.  Ever.

Oh, and the rest of the theme park wasn't too bad, either... at least what we saw.  :)


Day 3- Universal Studios.  I had never been to Universal, so it was fun to see it.  Not the most exciting place I'd ever been, but we had a good time.

Day 4- Beach.  Oh yeah.  After two days of theme parks it was way nice to relax at the beach for a while.  The water was even pretty warm.  Something in the water stung me (I admit... it may have been a branch... I couldn't tell) but it didn't bleed too much.  :)

We went to the Kennedy Space Center on the way there... but it was way expensive to go in, so we just took a couple of pictures and split.  :)


Day 5- Typhoon Lagoon Water Park.  Way fun water park!  I'm telling you... I could sit in a lazy river aaaaaalllllll day.  And we kind of did.  :)  They also had some good tube rides, which are my favorite.

That night we (with the help of one of Julena's friends who is currently working for Disney in Orlando) kind of snuck to the top of an exclusive-type hotel to see the Disney World fireworks show.  It really is an amazing show.  It's really beautiful... it was also fun to see it where we were because we still got all of the music that went along with it (they play it on the top of the hotel) and were able to see all of it.  I kind of mangled my foot on the way up, though.  I stubbed my toe on a curb (we were kind of running late so we were running through the parking lot to get there before it started) and since I was wearing flip flops, it kind of just took the whole tip of my toe off.  No, really.  Luckily, nurse Sue was there to assist.  :)  No amputation was necessary.  Just had to deal with a flip flop full of blood for a while!  Sorry if that is gross to you- but it was pretty funny.

Day 6- HP

Back to HP world to experience that magic one last time.  We spent a good amount of time there that day, as well.  I'm not kidding- you could just hang out there all day and be happy!  And we did.  And we were.  :)

So there you have it.  Our magical trip to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter... and a few other things.  :)

Just look at Hogsmeade in this picture:  Isn't that the best thing you've ever seen?!  And let me just assure you... it looks even better in real life.

Don't you worry- someday I will be back...

Daylight Confusion

Okay.

Does everyone in this country get EXACTLY the same amount of sleep every night? Me- I don't get any sort of consistent amount of sleep. Okay, so lets imagine for a moment here. Let's imagine that I'm in the minority, and that most people get anywhere between 8 and 8.1 hours of sleep a night. Enter the villain: Daylight Savings Time. (Duh, duh duuuuuuuuh.) Suddenly the whole country gets anywhere between 7 and 7.1 hours of sleep that night. Mass chaos. Suddenly the comments are heard around the world:

"I'm so mad about losing an hour of sleep!"

"I'm so tired... I haven't been able to shake this daylight savings thing."

"Wow... this week has been so hard. I never really caught up on my sleep after Daylight Savings."

Okay, okay. I don't understand. Do people out there really notice a difference when they lose an hour of sleep for one night? On average I'd say I get anywhere between 4 - 6.5 hours of sleep a night. Say on Daylight night I happen to get 4 because of the change... it's still not so different for me.

It's one hour. One. Yes- last weekend I was a little disappointed when I looked at my clock and suddenly it was 3:28 instead of the expected 2:28. That was a sad moment. However. I think that moment was about my only moment of noticing the change. Granted- I'm daaaaaaang tired at the moment but I think my 3 hrs of sleep/night for the past 2 weeks has more to do with it than Daylight. Maybe. Probably. Maybe.

The only change I notice is the darkness in the morning vs light in the evening. Oh, and my clock being an hour off for 3 months following the change. That's it, though. Am I the only one who doesn't get it? Perhaps I am. I'm willing to accept that. (Not really. But I'd sound stuck up if I didn't pretend.)

Does Daylight Savings throw your day(s) off??

I'm beginning to wonder.

The other day I went to the store to get myself some ice cream. They didn't have what I was looking for, so I grabbed one I hadn't heard of before. It was Ben and Jerry's Maple Blondie. Maple ice cream with blondie chunks and a swirl of maple carmel. It's amazing! I didn't notice until half way through the carton, however, the little notice on top of the carton, informing me that it is a "limited edition" flavor. *Sigh.* After seeing those words I started thinking and I realized... that what the heck! the world is soooo not on my side as far as junk foods go! Let me just give you a little history.

The reason I bought Maple Blondie is because my favorite ice cream is often omitted from among the selection. It's also a Ben and Jerry's flavor- Cinnamon Buns. Cinnamon ice cream, bits of cinnamon bun dough and a swirl of carmel streusel. Now, I don't know what streusel is, but I'm sure I like it. It's heaven, I tell you. The problem? I rarely

see it at the stores! Ben and Jerry's website leads me to believe that it is still being made, so there is still hope, ladies and gentlemen.

For me, egg nog is probably the only reason to put up with winter. Except it has to be CREAM O' WEBER'S egg nog. No other egg nog can even compare! What in the world has happened to Cream O' Weber?! They used to be everywhere! Now one of the only places I can find it is at 7-11 stores. Don't get me wrong, I have no problem going to 7-11 for my egg nog, but man- if it keeps getting harder and harder to find, that means it COULD just go completely out someday. I don't think I could handle that kind of rejection.

Let's talk about candy. Want to know my ABSOLUTE FAVORITE candy? White Chocolate Twix Bars. If you haven't had them, oh... I'm sad for you. Well... actually it's probably best that way because THEY ARE GONE. Not made anymore. It seems that they are still sold in Europe but they won't ship them here! I miss them. My second favorite candy?

Take 5 PEANUT BUTTER bars. They had a hard peanut butter coating instead of chocolate. Status: discontinued. My next favorite? Licorice Pastels. You can usually only find these in the scoopy candy bins or in the off-brand bagsof candy, but... I haven't seen them in forever. I'm starting to get nervous. And do not get to thinking that they can be replaced with Good & Plentys or any other black licorice candy because those just won't do.

Favorite chip dip? Dill pickle chip dip. Where can you buy it? No idea. Seems to

have disappeared.

Favorite soda? Mountain Dew Distortion. Judge me if you will. No worries, though. Discontinued.

So you see what I'm saying? I'm beginning to get a little annoyed with all of the best stuff disappearing. (And, yes- yes I do realize that the reason these things all disappear is because I'm the ONLY one who seems to like them. THAT, however... is beside the point.)

I'm off to go get some of my 2nd favorite ice cream out of the freezer. Haagen Dazs's Dulce De Leche. I have to worry, though. i DID admit out loud to people that I like this flavor.

Time will tell.

Perhaps the universe is trying to tell me I need to eat healthier foods...

Like sand through the hourglass... so are the days of our lives.

(First I thought that title was kind of funny. Then I wondered why I even know that it's from Days of Our Lives. I have no answer.)

One of my friends did a "decade in review" kind of a post, and it got me thinking. A lot. And after thinking a lot I decided that I might do one, as well. Now, I'm not normally the oh-it's-January,-time-to-make-goals-and-analyze-the-last-year kind of a person. I admire those people, but can't consider myself among them. My attention span is too short. This is very unusual for me, but I'm going to give it a go, anyway!

(I know, I know. Some of you are rolling your eyes, wishing that everyone would just agree that the decade resets on even years like 2010 instead of 2011. Others may be scratching their heads due to the fact that it is now February and no matter what year you think the new decade begins, the DAY and MONTH is generally accepted as being January 1st. I will address these concerns. #1- I say the decade resets whenever I most need it to reset in order to best convenience me. #2- See number one.)

How can a decade be so freaking long, and so freaking short all at the same time?! 2001 - 2011. Well... to wrap it all up in a nice little bow (preferably one with thick stripes and curled edges) I just got the invite to my 10 year high school reunion. Yup. Ten years out of high school.

Going year by year would bore us all, since I've had some fairly dry spells as far as "interest" goes, but I just want to reminisce a bit. Sorry I don't have any relevant pictures. I'd have to scan the older ones, and like that is going to happen!

Obviously, graduating from high school took me to the next phase of my life- college. Good ol' USU times.

First off, lets talk about the roommies. In talking to friends, I've discovered that I've had an extensive amount of roommates. I always sort of thought that everyone had this many, but it doesn't seem to be true. I like my roommate list being fairly lengthy. Leaves me with plenty of stories. :) I can't tell you how many I have had. Not because it is some giant secret, but because I can't remember them all! Sorry to any who may be reading... of course I remember YOU. I've had almost 60 roommates. I actually tried to make a list of them all because I wanted to get a real number, but it just wasn't doable. Some I can remember faces, some I can just remember that there was a body in the room upstairs. MANY of them, however, are friends that I hope to keep forever. My roommates have ranged from sane and normal to... anything BUT. I have some hilarious roommate stories. I mean... come on. SIXTY. Think they've all been nice and sane? Heh. Hardly. (Any roommates who may be reading- of course I'm not talking about YOU.)

Choosing a major was dang hard for me and that decision added a bit of time to the college career. No, it didn't take me the full 10 years to get my degree. Come on. It only took me most of them. :D I suppose that is what I get for switching between so dang many majors. And then switching back and forth and BACK and FORTH between a couple. The good (and surprising) fact, however, is that I finally made it.

I also got my first "real" job. Yeah... still fighting with that one. Honestly, this job is such a huge blessing. It's the best job I could ask for at this point in my life. Except... I really have no desire to talk about it right now cause it's all I ever talk about. Geesh. The important fact is that despite my constant string of complaints... I do know how lucky I am to be where I am. I've learned invaluable things in this last year and a half. Both about my career and about myself.

Another thing I've accomplished is having watched a great amount of television. I'm so proud. Moving on.

I've really had some amazing opportunities since high school. I want to list a few, due to the fact that I want to start documenting these events in detail, but need to start by simply writing them down.

My friend, Sue, and I moved to Hawaii for one summer just because we wanted to. I went back and forth between Utah and Thailand for the three years my family was there and ended up staying for quite a while. I spent three summers performing at Pickleville Playhouse up at Bear Lake. I spent one summer performing church history musicals through a service mission to Nauvoo, Illinois. I performed a few shows through the Theatre Department at USU. I sang with the Chorale choir at USU for three years. I sang with the New Horizons/Latter Day Voices choir at the institute for *cough5* years. I was able to go on 4 fantastic tours with the same choir. I have sung with the Sun Valley carolers for the past three seasons. Ummm... those are the ones I can think of right now.

I have made some fantastic friends through all these adventures. I also have come to understand how amazing my family is. I've always loved them, but I think getting older has given me an opportunity to see just how incredible they are, both as individuals, and as a whole.

Yyyyyyyep. So, re-reading this, I've realized it's a bit wordy and boring. Two things that should never come together in a post. HOWEVER. This post is more for me than anything else. I've loved thinking about this last decade and have really found some events and situations that I want to document in greater detail. Now I'm excited to go back and do that!

If you have read this post and actually made it to the end then I'll give you a candy bar. No, really. I mean it. Only... you have to come and get it. Because I'm lazy. And want visitors.

See? I even found a picture. I'm committed.

Too many "me"s.

Sometimes I wonder who I am. Is that a weird thing to wonder? Not only do I wonder who I am, but I also wonder if other people know who they are. Really the only reason I want to know about others is for comparison purposes. Am I the only one who feels this confused?

My personality changes to match the people I'm around. Quite drastically, actually. When I'm with my high school friends, I revert back to my crazy-loud-high-school-self. When I'm with my college friends I revert back to my energetic-social-self. When I'm in class I revert back to my quiet-self-conscious-student-self. I have a friend-self, professional-self, family-self, ward-self, dating-self, etc...

So - who am I?

Am I the person I'm the most comfortable being?

Am I the person it's the easiest to be?

Am I the person closest to who I feel I should be?

Am I the person I most want to be?

Somehow I feel that I should be able to combine all of these people into one, but for some reason it seems to be much harder said than done.

Anyway, I'm not necessarily looking for answers... this is just something I've been thinking about a lot lately. I've decided that it is time to do something about this question. No, I haven't decided what that might be, but... something.

Sometimes I get tired of all of the confusing thoughts rattling around in my head. :)

I remember...

I remember a time when I would pass notes back and forth with my friends, sure that my teacher had no idea.

I remember a time when I would text in class- pleased at how discreet I could be.

I remember a time when my classroom notes would be nothing more than a few words covered in a massive amount of strange looking pictures and scribbles.

I remember a time when I would sit in class wondering why the other students seemed to care about the discussion more than I did.

I remember being the quiet student sitting in the back of the room watching the clock moving ever so slowly.

I remember these times.

How do I remember them so well?

Because each one of them happened this week in my first graduate course.

Some things never change. :)

(And yes... yes I am writing this in class.)

Once upon a very long year.

I started my blog in April of 2008. In 2008 I posted 11 posts. 2009 I wrote 20 posts. Here we are halfway through 2010 and this is post number... 3. I want everyone to guess when exactly it was that I crossed from my worry-free life into my grown-up-responsibility-filled life. Any guesses?? Yeah. You got it. Right in-between the 20 and 3.

The school year ended about 2 1/2 weeks ago. I've been school free for a little while now, and let me just tell you... it's a.m.a.z.i.n.g. Really, I've just appreciated not having to get up so early!

I'm not really sure how to put into one short, condensed segment what this year of teaching was like. I have learned more in this one year than I could have even imagined! I was hired a very short time before school started and had no time to prepare. Unfortunately I hadn't been planning to teach choir at all, so the short-notice heads up was really quite a bit of a problem. For the first month I was literally keeping one day ahead of the students... if that. :) I slowly got ahead, little by little. From August until mid March I was at school everyday from 7:30 A.M. until about 9:00 P.M. Weekends? Nothing more than a chance to grade papers and prepare lesson plans from my house. Once March was halfway over I was able to get out at a more normal sort of a time.

So many teachers talk about how much they love the kids they teach. After a couple of months of teaching I realized that I truly didn't feel that connection. I had an honest desire for the students to do well in their lives, but felt no emotional connection. It made me sad because I had always assumed I'd be the kind of a teacher to create bonds with students, the way I felt bonds with certain teachers when I was a teenager. I didn't know what I was doing wrong to miss that attachment. I evaluated my classroom atmosphere and teaching style and decided that there were a few things that needed to be adjusted. I needed to start trying to see the kids more as people and less as... kids who could misbehave at any second (not that that feeling ever entirely left!). Cutting out all of the details (because I'm lazy)- things got much better and by the end of the year... I was truly sad to see (some of) them go. :) At the 8th graders "graduation ceremony"- I actually had to fight to not be emotional.

I don't know how it happened, but over the course of the year I turned in to the teacher that was known for being super strict. I NEVER thought I would be that kind of a teacher, but... I totally am! One of the parents told me that the students described me as "super strict, but way cool." Seriously- I think that is the ultimate compliment! I'll take it.

At graduation all 6 of the students that finished middle school with a solid 4.0 spoke. All of them were also in show choir and a few of them talked about some of their teachers in their speeches. At the beginning of the year I had a discussion with each of the classes and we were talking about rewards they would like for following the rules and I honestly don't remember what she really said, but I thought one of the girls suggested "boating" as a reward. It turned into a huge inside joke with that class and somehow got extended to a sleep over/boating trip. This same student during her speech mentioned our class boating trip and it totally made my day! One of the students told us what he learned from each teacher and he said, "From Ms. Dodge I learned the keys to music and self-discipline," and I'm not kidding you when I say that everyone started laughing! Both students and parents! It was pretty dang funny. The vice principal at my school told me that it was very unusual to have so many students mention the same teacher in their speeches. He said I should take it as quite a compliment. It was a good ceremony but between the students speaking and the show choir singing one last time, I just kept thinking, "I have been looking forward to this day ever since the first day of school- it's not fair to make me emotional about it!!" I really will miss them.

******************************

Now, on to the good stuff. Middle school kids are DANG FUNNY! They say the funniest things, and honestly, I wish I had written the good stuff down, but I didn't. Every single day there were at least two or three times that I would think, "Uh, did you really just say that?" or "Did you really just DO that?" I'll tell you some of the funnier stories that I can remember.

I wish I could tell you how true this comic is. :)

In one of my choir classes we got onto a bit of a tangent about frisbees. I was telling them how cool my light-up frisbee was and how much fun it was to play with at night. One girl looked a little confused at the whole concept and finally said, "Wait. YOU have a light-up frisbee? How do you play frisbee? Do you pick it up and throw it... then chase it across the room, pick it up and throw it again?? Do you just keep chasing after it??" I just stared at her for a minute and then burst out laughing. I told her that contrary to popular belief, I actually had some friends outside of the school. It was the best. We all laughed about that one for a while.

I don't remember what we were talking about- I think it had something to do with some TV show or something, but one of the girls says, "You're so cool, Ms. Dodge! You're almost like a real person!"

During teacher appreciation week I received quite a few nice notes from students. Some were anonymous and some were not, but I KNOW they weren't all genuine. I think the student government teacher had all of her students write notes to each of their teachers. My absolute F.A.V.O.R.I.T.E. one went something a little bit like this:

Dear Ms. Dodge, (scribble, scribble, scribble)

Thanks for being such a great teacher and you have a great voice.

James

After a bit of studying I was finally able to read the text beneath the scribbling:

Dear Ms. Dodge, A.K.A. SATAN

Thanks for being such a great teacher and you have a great voice.

James

:) I think I sat alone in my classroom laughing for 10 minutes straight. The thing is... I don't think "James" would have said that, so I think it was added afterward by another student. How cute.

One day during boy's choir I said, "Remember when we talked about breath control?" They all stared at me. They actually looked frightened. We all stared at each other for a second until I realized the problem. "BREATH control- I said, BREATH control!" I clarified. The relief on their faces was pretty much the funniest thing ever. I, myself, never thought that breath and breast sounded all that alike, but clearly I was wrong! I couldn't use the phrase 'breath control' again.

At the beginning of theatre class one day a boy came up and asked, "Ms. Dodge, why do we keep doing all of this acting stuff?" Uh... I don't even know how to answer that. "Well... because this is a THEATRE class." "Oh."

After telling the class how something was going to happen one boy said (with the attitude that he was really going to shock me), "Your class isn't a very good democracy!" Yeah. Cause I really WANT a classroom democracy.

Raging Waters Day: A girl asks, "Ms. Dodge, why aren't you swimming?" I gave some vague response like not having a suit with me. She says, "Oh... that's too bad cause all of the boys really wanted to see you in a swimming suit." Ah. THAT'S why.

Girl: "Ms. Dodge, did you dye your hair?"

Me: "Yeah."

Girl: "Oh. What color did you want it to be?"

Huh.

I'll probably add more of these as I remember them.