watermelon in winter

What is art? What is literature? What is love? What is beauty? What is a sacrifice? What is ugly? As I was reading an assignment for my Brazilian Literature class, I got thinking about how abstract life can be, how we can't often define things in one way and have that way apply to everything in life.  Your definition of art is probably very different from mine, and what we find beautiful could also be extremely different.  How you feel love for someone is different than how I feel love for someone, and it is not even something that can be put into words and fully expressed. BYU has a motto, "The world is our campus".  I was thinking about this over the last couple of weeks as I was in my geology classroom...out in the field.  Just as I am not limited to a classroom to learn, I am not limited to a dictionary definition of abstract words, words that really have no definition.  I can spread my wings and fly away with how I interpret things to be, and ...

So just now, I was randomly reading old posts of mine.....man, I used to be quite the writer.  I don't know what happened; I think my blog inspiration has just expired or something.  I wonder if I can renew it like a magazine subscription... But I think it's because i am dealing with real-life big decisions right now.  At the moment, I'm on a one day break between weeks of geology field camp.  Last week, I learned a really awesome lesson in trust.  Trust in the Lord, that is.  It seems I am ALWAYS relearning this lesson, though always in a different way.  have you ever made a map before?  Specifically, a geologic map?  Yeah, I hadn't either.  And yet, week one of field camp was going to Little Cottonwood Canyon and mapping an area there.  I had the mountains, a topographical map, a pencil, an eraser, and my compass as resources.  I had never had a class in this and had no idea where to start.  Each day, I began my day wi...

So I thought it would be super cute if I could blog from a café in Chicago (I know, not as cool as Seattle), but i didn't have time for that.  So instead I'm blogging from Chicago Union Station....also pretty cool!  I have been "on the road" in a sense since June 17....and I was thinking today about how many miles this nearly-two-month-long journey will take me.... I don't have an exact number, but the total comes out to a little more than 15,000 miles!!!!  It has been epic, to say the least. I don't really have a lot to say, other than this has been a life-changing summer!!!!!!!!