Still alive...still blogging

No, I haven't disappeared forever. Yes, I had my share of being too exhausted to get out of bed. Yes, things have been happening. And no, I don't remember what all those things are.

But some of them:

- I got a little tiny 1gb mp3 player with a volume up button that has a picture of a chicken/goat. The mp3 player is therefore affectionately referred to as The Choat. Like all good words, Choat has become the word we use for everything else that doesn't have a name: stupid drivers, people in class who make dumb comments, unidentifiable objects, and so on. Although I am not a Choat.

- Last week I was asked to give a woman in my ward (apparently someone who had been put on my VT route and nobody informed me) a ride to the bishop's storehouse in Orem. Her husband and 20-month old daughter came too; the woman is about 6 months pregnant and needed her husband to help load up the groceries. Anyway, I'd never met them before, but the husband sat in front with me (I guess there was more leg room...) and told me his opinions about why the Civil War really happened (not slavery, like you might think; Southerners didn't want slaves at all, and were too poor to have slaves anyway), why Mormons are so judgmental, and how blacks (he referred to them as "Cain's people") are, as a group, unable to feel good emotions and have contributed nothing to society. I'm not sure I have ever been so offended. While he was talking I got so angry I was near tears. And the thing was, he was so calm telling me all of this. When I finally dropped them back at their apartment I rushed home and shared my fury with the Romgi, who was appropriately shocked and dumbfounded. I will elaborate in a later post what exactly the guy said, but this is the gist of it. Horrible!

- I do need to mention that in our biology class this semester (the Romgi and I are taking it together) students get into pairs and do a 5-minute presentation on a current event that is somehow related to biology. People are getting really weird about it; the most common issues are steroids and air pollution, but there have been other things like reconstructive surgery for knee tendons, conjoined twins, and so on. A few weeks ago two guys got up and one of them introduced their topic: rhinos. He said that rhinos are his favorite animals, and he showed us pictures of the Malaysian rhino (or something like that) that he really likes because it so closely resembles the prehistoric wooly rhino. Yeah. After his presentation I started seeing him everywhere on campus, and I have to smile every time. Ah, Rhino Boy! So much fun.

- More later. I have a study group in a few minutes. This week I have 5 tests and 3 papers. Yuck!