Russian Party

I served my mission in Ukraine and whenever I meet someone who served in or is from Ukraine or Russia or somewhere with any ties to Russian, I get really excited about it! I like making those type of connections.

In my old YSA ward, there were quite a few Russian speakers and occasionally we would all get together and have a Russian gathering, but as I'd thought about it recently I realized we hadn't gotten together in quite a while. I decided it was time for another Russian party. :)

I got one of my friends and fellow Russian speaker, Diana, in on the party and we started planning.

My sister, Kristina, sent me a picture of some examples of the cute large paper matryoshka dolls (seen in the picture above) to use for picture taking. When I saw the pictures of the dolls, I immediately knew I had to have them at my party. ;) It took me a couple of days to gather the materials and work on them, but I finished the dolls and above are the results.

My friends at the party appeased me and let me take pictures with them and the matryoshka dolls. Above are Armine (from the country of Georgia and Armenia), Nastya (from Russia), and Matt (served in Bulgaria).

Savannah (Hunter's wife), Hunter (served in St. Petersburg, Russia), and Matt.

Armine, Savannah, Hunter, Matt, Nastya and Diana (my friend who hosted the party at her place. served in Novosobirsk, Russia). Everyone at the party except me.

 I'm in the picture now.

Me, Trevor (he came after everyone else had left. served in Rostov na Donu, Russia), and Diana.

I think the party was a success and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. We ate lots of delicious Russian food (including borscht, pelmini, pirozhki, plov, oreshki, olivier), talked about Russian culture and news and posed for the cheesy pictures above. :) Thanks Diana for hosting and thanks to those who came! 

I am grateful for...

Willis Carrier, the person who invented the modern air conditioner. Seriously. As summer has been approaching and the heat and humidity has been increasing this year, I have been so grateful for air conditioning in my car, in my house, at work, at other people's houses, at the grocery store (so basically everywhere I go:)

Cell phones

Beware a long and boring post...

I recently had a little incident with my cell phone. No, it did not get dropped in the toilet, but it did get dropped into a tupperware container full of water. Although I took it out very quickly after it fell in, it still caused damage to my phone. It caused issues with my speakers. I couldn't listen to music (which I do all the time on my phone.) I couldn't talk on the phone with the phone to my ear. I couldn't do facetime. I could only talk on speaker phone.

I was highly upset by this all. I use my phone speakers a lot more than I thought I did and I was thinking of the money I would have to spend on getting a new phone. But when I got home after work, I immediately put my phone in rice to see if that trick would work. I was a little nervous because I had tried it before (on another phone) and it did not help. I put it in the rice and left it there that evening and overnight and the next day while I was at work, so I was almost a whole day without a phone.

Can I just say that not having my phone with me made me realize how much I use my phone and how much I am connected to it?

I didn't get my first cell phone until my junior year at BYU. I lived without a cell phone for the first 21 years of my life. Growing up, we always had a land line at home and then when I went off to school we had a land line in the different apartments I lived in. As soon as I stepped out of the house, though, I was no longer available. And you know what, I was okay with that. I mean, of course, I knew no other way, but that was life, when I left the house, no one could get a hold of me.

My cell phone usage has changed over time. My first phone, I only ever used for calling people because it was too hard to text message. My second phone I got the keyboard slide phone, so text messaging became a bigger part of my phone usage. Now I have a smart phone, I not only call and text people on my phone, but I check my email, look up random things on the internet, play Scramble, use the GPS, listen to music etc. etc.

But as I look at the stuff I do on my phone, I sometimes think, is it really necessary for me to have all of these things at my fingertips all the time?  Do I need to have access to the internet every second of the day and do I need people to be able to get a hold of me wherever I am? I've thought a lot about this as I sit in my car at stop lights and decide to check my email which I checked at the last red light 2 minutes ago and as I see people around me (myself included) texting people or looking at some sort of social media as other people are trying to talk to them in person.

Don't get me wrong, I love my smartphone and I don't think I could go back to not having one, but sometimes I just feel like I don't need to be quite so connected to the distractions that a smartphone brings into my life. Because of this, I occasionally leave my phone at home when I run errands and don't always have my phone near me at home on purpose.

Any way, back to the topic of my phone being dropped in water, (because I'm sure you're all waiting to hear what happened to it.) Soaking my phone in rice worked! When I came home from work that day after leaving it in the rice overnight and all day, my phone speakers worked again. Yaaay! Now after writing this post I need to go and check my email on my phone and see if I got anything since the last time I checked it 5 minutes ago.