Today I learned

why Americans and Europeans use their forks in different hands. Turns out it's because France was only beginning to accept fork usage into polite society when the future US was colonized and gained independence. So in other words, France made up a bunch of rules to make it acceptable, and America liked forks before they were cool.

And also, we possibly eat like Davy Crockett or Daniel Boone. Because we're frontier cool like that.

Finland is the best country because...

It's midsummer and high time to show some love to the Northern countries, so without further ado, here are some suggestions for how to complete the above sentence:

... they host the annual World Wife-Carrying Championships, and the winner of this obstacle-strewn sprint takes home his wife's weight in beer. Which leads me to ask, is it better to take a light wife so your chances of winning are better, or a heavy one so winning is more worth it?

... they don't just host the World Berry-Picking Championships, they divide them into 5 different classes. So if you are a hermaphrodite born in 1995 in possession of a rake, I suggest you high tail it to Finland to claim all five of your gold medals.

... Newsweek named them the Best Country in 2010, and if Newsweek says it, it must be true.

... Forbes and Gallup named them the world's second happiest country in 2010. The same poll ranked Libya at number 3, and we all know that civil wars and revolutions are excellent happiness indicators.

... they herd reindeer.

... if you are torn between your love of Ikea and your love of the sixties, Finland is the place for you.

... and did I mention the World Air Guitar Championships, World Mobile Phone Throwing Championship (complete with a freestyle category for the choreographically minded among you), and the naked 5k? *Warning: If you now have or in the past have had a sensitivity to saggy old man bottom, do not click that last link*

... sometimes it looks like this:

Vitamin Nicotine

I was making chocolate milk in Germany one day when I happened to glance down at the ingredients on the nutrition label and see the word "Nicotinamid." Vitamin nicotine what? No wonder their kids start smoking so young! No wonder I love this chocolate milk so much!

The next time we were at the store I checked the ingredients labels on several brands of kids chocolate milk, and sure enough, they were all nicotine fortified. I decided to check my translation of the word "Nicotinamid" against my trusty dictionary and was surprised to find that it actually translates to Niacinamide, Vitamin B3.

Well, I went home and forgot all about this incident, until this morning when I once again encountered Nicotinamide, on the ingredients of my generic Life cereal. Two minutes with wikipedia later, I can now inform you that Niacin is a made up word for NIcotinic ACid vitamIN. Turns out the first niacin was isolated by treating nicotine with nitric acid, but once its nutritional value came to light, the powers that be thought it best not to actually name it vitamin nicotine. They thought it might stress people out to think there was nicotine in their cereal and vitamins in their cigarettes :).

I'm Going to England!

If you had any plans to see me this summer, you'd best hope they've already been made because I'm running out of time in a very good way! My work is sending me to Tahoe, I'm going to a family reunion, my work is sending me to the less exotic destination of Ogden, and I'm sending myself to England! I've even purchased the tickets, so this is for real! Aside from all those destinations, I'm hoping to move, and at some point I'll need to be in Boise for my bro's big send off. Whew! Also, now would probably be a good time to mention that I do get my own classroom at the high school next year, so I'll just be trying to plan a couple courses, assemble supplies, and get my room set up in the midst of all this. No biggie. I'm kicking it all off with spring break in California, too, and suddenly writing this post is making me see how wonderful it is to be employed! I'm kidding myself to think I'll ever be able to save money in the face of wanderlust...

Leaving Home (Again)

Nine months ago I admitted that I failed at being a real adult and reluctantly moved back to my parents' house. As I sit here supposedly packing my bags for adulthood attempt #2, I find that I am reluctant to leave again. Turns out home is a pretty nice place to be.

Did I ever tell you about this little running joke God and I have where He tries to teach me to stop judging people and I pretent I don't notice that's what He's doing? It came to my attention one afternoon in a Soviet style apartment house in Erfurt. See, I've always been selectively judgmental. Certain triggers that I didn't even consciously notice, like guys who came home from their missions with terrible American accents in their mission language, had me assuming they just didn't try hard enough/didn't love the people enough/were dumb/etc. I know, I'm a snob, right? So no one should be surprised to find that I never could get rid of my American accent in German. Anyway, I was beginning to notice this 2 step pattern (1. Secretly judge someone 2.Experience what I'd just secretly been judgmental about) when we went to go visit an adorable Kazakh grandma named Paulina. The whole time we were there I kept getting distracted by this mole she had on the inside of her eyelid. I kept thinking how annoying it would be to blink or try to close your eyes. I laughed out loud and said "Okay, God, I get it already," when I woke up the next morning with a blister on the exact same spot as her mole had been. He has a good sense of irony, that one.

Point of the story: living in your parents' basement as an adult gets you sent straight down the "loser" chute on the Eggdicator. So of course, that's what I ended up doing. And I while I was there I met some pretty amazing people who were also living at home as adults for a surprisingly wide variety of reasons. Lessson learned (again). Apparently what I need to do now is start judging people for being rich, gorgeous, and fabulously happy!

Because French androgyny is so much better than regular type

Thoughts I had while watching today's Cleveland vs. Chicago game... peripherally... very peripherally:

Wait, why is there a girl playing for the Bulls?

Oh crap! It's a man, and we're wearing the same hairstyle!

Oh, he's French, so I guess that makes it okay.

20 Years Later

Today was the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall coming down, and if you know me at all, you know that this called for a party. My roommate got the used shipment boxes from her work last week, I got a few cans of spray paint, and a little good-natured chaos ensued.

We stacked the reassembled boxes on our front walkway to make the wall. It got a whole lot more graffitied than this before the night was over.

We roasted marshmallows while we waited for the spray paint to dry, and then I yelled "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" and we all charged it and knocked it down. This was the aftermath:

Then somehow my hometeacher ended up jumping out of a tree. Do not try this at home.

For those of you who were worried, these cardboard boxes made surprisingly good landing foam.
He only broke through the first layer (there were four). Then one of the neighbors called the fire department, but the firefighter who visited us in his gigantic fire truck inspected the portable fire pit we were using on the sidewalk and said everything was in order. He declined our offer of a s'more.

It was a fun party with good entertainment and great friends, and it gave me the opportunity to celebrate how grateful I am that the Wall did fall because it allowed me to serve my mission there. I wouldn't be the same today without all those wonderful people and the experiences I had learning to feel and share Heavenly Father's incredible love for them.

Getting Quasi Published!

During my last semester at BYU, I worked as a research assistant for a professor who was writing a book about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Germany during the Second World War. I did a little editing and a lot of poring through German microfilms and internet databases trying to track down the fate of soldiers who were listed as MIA. I also got the opportunity to go and help with a few interviews where we met with survivors of the war or their descendents. We listened to their stories, got as much detail as possible so we could compare it to other accounts and verify as much as possible, and took pictures of their old photos and surviving keepsakes. Anyway, the book is finally done and published and will be hitting the shelves on September 21st! I'm pretty stoked! At one point there was talk of crediting all of the research assistants who worked on this project (for we were many), but whether or not that actually happened, I still feel pretty special. Anyone who's interested in more info, or wants to order a copy can visit the publisher's website.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

My mom offered this book to me as a quick, easy, and entertaining read over the long weekend, and it was super fun! It's set in the Channel Islands between England and France in 1946, and the whole thing is written in letters between the various characters. It was engaging, human, and a something I'd recommend to anyone interested in an excellent read!

"Mother sheep! You're disgusting!"

My German class makes me laugh so hard I cry at least once a week, but these gems from Friday are just too good to pass up. At the start of class, we were discussing the gum-piercing habits of some of my favorite Germans (how does that not get infected? I mean, seriously, gingivitis... other mouth nasties.... anyway). In answer to the question "what would you tell your friend if they asked you to get a gum piercing with them?" one of the girls searched around in her dictionary for awhile, and eventually exclaimed "Mutterschaf! Du bist eckelhaft!" (Mother sheep! You're disgusting!" ) Contrary to my initial belief, she wasn't coming up with swearing substitutes. She just doesn't know the difference between 'ew' and 'ewe.' Her partner decided to respond in kind by telling her he's hardcore enough to get just such an oral decoration and came up with the greatest misspronunciation ever: "Ich bin so stark ich scheisse Waffen!" instead of "... ich schiesse Waffen." (Roughly translated "I'm so strong I s*** weapons" instead of "I shoot weapons"). Dang. You are hardcore. I'm not even sure if Chuck Norris can pull that one off.

In other news, yes Chuck Norris jokes are still wildly popular here, yes they do think Napoleon Dynamite is funny, but just not for the same reasons I think it's funny, and yes, that student's father did send me a good morning text on Friday. Most definitely the worst way I've ever woken up, including the time Jake turned my mattress upside down and dumped me on top of the trashcan.

Two years IS a big deal

I checked my mail on the way in from work this afternoon (afternoon! Hurrah for Fridays!), and was unprepared for what I found there: a letter addressed to Sister Cox in some very familiar handwriting. So familiar because it was my own. At first I couldn't believe it - it can't be! It's too soon! But indeed it is the letter that President Borcherding had each missionary write to him or herself on the last day of the mission, to be mailed to you two years from your release date. Two years! I did the math in my head and realized that, yes, I am 24 and one half years old today, which means that I will have been in the same country for two solid years this Sunday. That hasn't happened in 5 years, which must mean it's time for another vacation!

Anyway, the letter is very short, but it got me thinking about my mission, and especially about the end of my mission. I knew then that I was going through some interesting stuff, but I had no idea it was only the appetizer, and it was all still preparing me for more to come. I often have that same feeling out here 4 hours past the end of Civilization. I guess that our whole lives, really, are preparation for the next - teaching us what we need to learn so we can succeed in more eternal realms. I can't help but wonder: what are God's learning outcomes for this unit? How am I progressing toward them? And right now while I'm waiting to lose my job (please please please lay me off) and praying that the plan includes a change of location in early June the next question is the most exciting: what's the next unit and when can it start?