I Think I've Finally Found It

My last post, as far away as it seems, was about my new quest to find my true passion. I can happily say that I think I have actually found it! I thought it would take quite a long time to discover, but after spending almost 3 months teaching preschool in Egypt I have realized how much I truly love my job. I can talk about it nonstop, I can make preschool plans for an endless amount of time, and I find myself looking forward to my work. That being said, there have been some very difficult situations, some extremely hard days, and some instances where I have just wanted to give up. But through it all God has helped me try to stay positive, shed His character to those around me, and keep up my motivation. In reality, every job will have its ups and downs, but until now I have never found something that I continually hunger for and never grown weary of. Yes, there are days that I am ready to just come upstairs to my apartment and forget the worries of the preschool, but after I bounce back I am ready to step on the gas pedal again. I've realized that teaching preschool is an area that I am passionate about, and I believe that God chose for me to be here this year and that this is right where He wants me. I am learning so much, enjoying my job and my life, and growing in areas I never could have imagined I would. I thank God for sending me to Egypt and to this job, and I am so thankful for all of the preschool families, and the children especially. I have found my passion...my quest is complete!

PassionQuest

Last weekend I was camping with my siblings and some friends. We went on a long quading/dirt biking trek up a mountain and took a break when we got to the top. Somehow during this break my brother Tyler and I got into a discussion about passions...if we had anything in life that we were truly passionate about. I quickly realized that I couldn't think of something that I had a continuous drive to constantly be doing. I have many interests, but I don't find that most of them pervade my life or that I have a never-ending thirst to be taking part in them. I really want to find something that I constantly yearn to do, that I strive to improve in, and that I can attain a high level of expertise about. I started mentally going through all the things I enjoy, and these are what I came up with:

Volleyball, football, racquetball, hockey, soccer, swimming, quading, boating, snowboarding, snowmobiling, bike riding, frog hunting (just finding and releasing!), music, learning new instruments, traveling, missions, cooking, shopping, blogging, creating videos, children, teaching, being the subject of pictures, and school-learning from thought-provoking classes.

Of all of these, I definitely have the greatest thirst for traveling, yet it's not the type of area where one can become an expert in. It's more experience-based, simply sightseeing and traversing to new places. Yet it's something that I always want to do, and could basically be up for after a moment's notice. I also greatly enjoy missions, although I don't know if it's something that I yearn to make my permanent lifestyle. I want to find an area that I can become proficient in and that truly means something to me. Something that I find a deep meaning in. Something that burns within me. Something that others notice as a true passion of mine.

I'm wondering if teaching preschool in Egypt this year will bring about this type of passion. I know I enjoy working with children and I know that I liked teaching violin lessons when I was in high school. When I return from Egypt after spending a year teaching in a school setting, I hope to find a community music school in BC where I can teach violin lessons. I sent my resume to some music schools this week to see if they thought they would have any openings for a violin teacher beginning next school year. I've received 2 replies so far...each one saying that there's a possibility that I could get a job after I return. I'm really happy about this, yet I don't know if simply teaching private lessons is what I want to do for the rest of my life. I wonder if maybe one day I might combine my musical skills, my teaching skills, and my love for children into one complete package.

The other day I found a website for a center that combines music and music lessons with child care and preschool. I was quite fascinated by this concept, since I didn't know centers like this existed. It seems as if it's a daycare and preschool that uses music as a focal point and where lessons are also offered. I think that if I feel passionate about early childhood teaching after this year, then maybe I might be interested in getting a masters in some type of education area, such as early childhood education or special ed...which are both areas that intrigue me. Then maybe I could mix my work into different fields, or work in one area on certain days and another area on other days. I think it would have more of an interest factor to me if I taught at a community music school for a couple days a week, then worked in a school setting on the days that I wouldn't be at the music school. These are only thoughts, but if I find that my passions lean more toward this area after this year, then maybe these thoughts could eventually become reality.

In the meantime, I want to take part in all the activities that I can and really put myself out there to try new things, because I never know if something will catch my interest or if a new experience will become my lifelong passion. I plan to travel as much as I can throughout my life and keep up all my interests, and hopefully somewhere along the way I can find at least one single true passion that will enrich my life more than I could ever imagine. This year marks the beginning of my PassionQuest...I'm going to follow my heart and see where it takes me.

TV Show Episode #1

Danielle and I made a few episodes of a TV show during our last year at Southern. The show is called The Gniriuq-Alapprak Show (our last names backwards). We were planning on showing a bunch of different places where lonely freshman go on campus, but we only got one in on this episode, so more are to come in later episodes. This one didn't go exactly as planned but we still had fun anyways. So enjoy!

my future: the next 12 months...

so i've realized that a lot has changed since my last blog post. i don't know why it's taken me so long to finally post again, but for some reason it has. last time i wrote, i was trying to decide between a potential job teaching violin next year and going as a student missionary. now looking back on what i wrote i realize how much has happened between then and now. i decided against the job even though it would have been a great opportunity, because i didn't want to compromise my wish to serve as a student missionary. if i didn't take this chance now, then i think i would have a harder time trying to make my missions dream a reality in the future after i had already got settled into a post-graduate life. so all in all i feel at peace with my decision to let the job opportunity go and instead spend my upcoming year at a location very far away from home, doing something i've never done before. things have fallen into place quite nicely. yes, it's taken me a long time to get all the student missions paperwork in and get the process merrily on it's way, but i finally did, and now i'm looking forward to spending 12 months in egypt! i know it's going to be very different from what i'm used to. i've traveled a lot, but none of my trips have been anywhere near this extensive in length. i think the longest trip i've been on has been probably somewhere around 3 weeks, and the longest i've been away from home has been a semester, which i've done 8 times throughout my years at southern. but nothing will quite equal the experience of being in a foreign country for a year. i'm really excited about what's to come throughout the next year that's coming upon me so fast i can hardly believe it, but i also am getting a sense that this may very well be the first time i experience homesickness. i never felt homesick in the least while i was at college or on mission trips i've been on, but i'm wondering if the feeling is going to rise throughout my year. i really hope it doesn't, because i enjoy new experiences and being independent, yet i just have this feeling that my world is going to be so far from what i've known that i'm going to be feeling things i've never felt before. it doesn't help that my favguy will be across the atlantic ocean from me for an entire year too. i'm gonna miss him immensely, but i hope that with God's help i will be able to get through this year and come out a better person from the things i have experienced. i also want to be a witness to those that i meet in egypt, but i realize that it may be hard to witness in the typical sense of the word since egypt is predominantly muslim, and i may not be able to speak freely about God. yet i want to serve as humbly as i can. i will be in charge of running a preschool...something which i've never experienced, and which i have no professional training in. i've worked with children in different areas of my life and i've love it, but it has never been in a school setting. i just hope i'm able to do the job and be the willing person that God will want me to be. this year will be tough i'm sure, but i hope it will also be the most rewarding of my life thus far. i'm looking forward to it with a hesitant eagerness, if that makes any sense at all. i just ask for your prayers as i venture out into this new life that lies ahead of me...

new developments...

i am currently at a loss for what to do with my life next year. i thought i had a plan, and i did, but now there is potential for more than one pathway that i could take next year. my plan for as long as i can remember was to be a student missionary, if possible the year after i graduated from college. so i have kept this idea in the front of my mind all throughout my college experience. i was planning to figure out during this coming semester where i want to go as an SM next year. but now it seems that i have to decide what i'm going to do in a very short amount of time. i got a message from a girl who used to take violin lessons from my former violin teacher. she's been teaching at the community music school in my hometown of kelowna for the past few years i believe. so she told me that saw i was studying music and graduating this school year, and then she said that the music school is looking for a new suzuki violin teacher for next school year...to start teaching in the fall. the music school is apparently having a meeting in a couple weeks to discuss this issue, which means that i need to make a decision pretty quickly. i realize that it's not a job that i for sure would get just if i say i'm interested, but if i do say i'm interested then there's potential for me to get the job. so now i don't know what to do. i hadn't wanted to come back to my hometown right away after graduating, but since this opportunity has come to me, i'm wondering if it might be an opportunity from God. my first thought was that although it was pretty cool (seeing as that's exactly the type of work i would want to eventually do) i still wanted to stick to my plan of being an SM. but after thinking about it and talking to my family i'm wondering if maybe i should tell them i'm interested. then i can leave it up to God...if i get the job then that will hopefully be what he wants me to do, for the time being at least...and if i don't then that will be my sign to be a student missionary next year. anyways that's the new news in my life recently. my plan for now is to pray about it this coming week and see where that takes me...

new himym site from last night...

video on the website:



the website:

http://www.itwasthebestnightever.com/

anthem by 6, 7, and 8 year old singers...

check out this video...

canada's got talent...

because of the popularity of britain's got talent and america's got talent, maybe there should also be a canada's got talent. this could be a great act for it, haha. i'm sure some of you have seen it, but i'm also sure some haven't. oh and we don't say "about" the way she says it. i don't know why that stereotype even exists. anyways enjoy the canadian 90s...

blogging time: random things...

it's time to blog again. i miss southern! i can't wait to go back, except for facing the humidity. it'll be nice to get away from the smokiness of kelowna though, due to kajillions of fires in the area. well ok, not quite THAT many, but everywhere you go there seems to be another fire. the weird thing is that the biggest fire currently in bc is at this mountain which i quaded to the top of a mere 5 weeks ago. when the fire started it was only 2 weeks after i had been there. anyways at least i have pictures on the mountain proving i've been there. on another note, im sipping the world's biggest slurpee right now. tyler got this humongous slurpee jug at 7-eleven and filled it up the whole way. he couldn't drink it all so he passed it off to ali and me. by now it's basically orangey water. at work i'm inserting a bunch of new cabinet sizes into spreadsheets. extremely thrilling i know. oh well. my playlist just changed to owl city, so that's a bright spot in the day. which reminds me that a bunch of us are going to an owl city concert in atlanta in september! it's gonna be AWESOME! what isn't awesome is that i have my rcm music history 4 exam in 2 days. when i did theory and history in high school i always did the courses in lessons over the span of a year. but this time i'm doing it on my own and i started about a month ago...ya procrastination loves me. so i'm a little freaked out, but i hope it'll go ok. once the exam's done (if i pass) then i can finally get my official certificates for my grade 10 violin and grade 10 piano exams...so yay for that! anyways the last random thing i have to say is that i ate some watermelon the other day. that's it for now, so goodbye till next time...

logoeing...

ali and i created a new sport called logoeing (basically canoeing, but on a log and paddling with your hands), we logoed halfway across this lake on our faithful log steed henrietta, from an island in the middle all the way to one of the ends...it took us about 45 minutes, (it probably would have taken less than 5 if we were swimming)...

singing cats...

budget brake and muffler...

the ultimate coolest brake and muffler store, budget brake and muffler, has been a favorite of mine and ali's for years. not because we ever go there, cuz we don't, but because they have the coolest song ever on their commercials. the radio song is slightly better than the tv song, but all i could find was the tv version. so you can be entertained by 2 budget commercials and one budget presentation:)



Commercial #1
Commerical #2
Presentation

to find out more about budget, visit their website here!

inspiration...

my siblings keep telling me i need to start blogging again. well anyways, here we go. i'm back home for the summer and it's kinda weird. i like being at school, and when i get back home and there's no schoolwork or anything like that i just get restless and wish i was back at college. i love college, it's so many millions of times better than high school, and i'd rather go to school any day than work. it's not necessarily working i guess, but it's the whole summer job thing. once you're out of college you have the freedom to pursue the type of career that you trained for, doing what you want to do. but in the summer, well for one thing you have to work to make money for college. if you didn't, you would just be plain bored doing nothing. but it's only a summer job so it's hard to find a job that really means something to you, motivates you, and interests you. the best parts of summer are definitely when i have chances to go on any type of trip. ty and my dad are on their 2nd work trip of the summer already, they went to a woodworking show in germany and now are at software training in montreal. so far i've been to vancouver/whistler. it was fun, but i want to go on a big exciting trip. my mum wants to go somewhere with me and my sisters, but so far there's not really anything planned out. in the meantime, i want to have some type of project this summer to keep me busy and so that i have a goal and something to work towards. i'm hoping that me and my siblings will make a cd that will rock everyone's socks off. tyler has recording equipment so i need to start thinking of some killer musical ideas. anyways that's all of my ponderings for now. seeya next time...

southern 08/09 video...

this is a video of pics of me and my siblings and friends throughout this school year. if you watch it, you might see yourself...

my composition...

so for analysis of musical forms class i had to write a canon the other week. a canon is a contrapuntal composition that employs a melody with one or more imitations of the melody played after a given duration. a simple example is row, row, row your boat. anyways, i wrote it between my classes on the day it was due and finished it on time to hand in. it's a 2 voice canon in c major, with the 2nd voice coming in at an octave below after one measure. so now i will let you hear this amazingly inspired composition, haha...



now we have to write the exposition of a fugue, which will be millions of times harder. it's supposed to be kind of like the equivalent of a term paper. so we'll see how that goes...

animation pictures...

ali gave me the idea to post an animation pictures blog...so here it is! now, for all of those who don't know what in the world animation pictures are, let me tell you. or rather show you. or how about both. ok, animation pictures are a set of at least 2 pictures (or sometimes 3, maybe even more) that are similar but slightly different. they are taken one after another, with slight or more varied movements from some people or objects in the pictures. in order to see the animation, you have to go back and forth between the pictures as fast as possible. the key here is not just going forward and then stopping, but after you reach the last picture, you have to press the back arrow and see them backwards, then go forwards, then backwards...and so on for quite a few times to get the full effect. they can get really funny sometimes, especially with ali's computer since it has the ability to go from picture to picture basically at the speed of lightning.
animation pictures were first discovered during orchestra tour to europe last year, when ali and danielle discovered 2 very hilarious pictures that we got of a fellow orchestra member. thus these types of pictures were called animation pictures. i'd love to show you this particular set of pictures, but it may cause embarrassment to this person if they found my blog. but i'll show you some others that we have happened upon. i wish there were a way to put them on here so you could arrow back and forth between them, but i guess if you wanna do that you can drag them to your desktop and try it from there. anyways, here are some examples:

this first set is of ali during this past christmas when we were getting our christmas tree:





next is from orchestra tour last year...the main animation is me going from sitting up to lying down:




also during orchestra tour is this group of 3 jumping pics in gronigen, holland...the first picture was an entirely separate jump from the last 2 pics, but i think they kinda work well all put together, mostly looking at AJ (the guy who's jumping really awesomely):





to end off, here's a set from last summer when we drove 2 hours into maine from new brunswick just so we could get to our 43rd state...so this is ali and tyler demonstrating "hip shifts" that was shown on a sign at a welcome center, telling you to change your position when you're driving for long periods of time...so first the sign, then the animation pictures:

tucker's 6th birthday...

so today we had a family birthday party for my nephew tucker. he turned 6 on january 6. whoa i just realized he had his golden birthday!! wow! anyways here's ali and coral and me playing with legos first off:



then we ate...and tucker's mom made him this awesome magic treehouse cake...



i don't know how she did it cuz it looks super hard to create. coral ended up with a really chocolatey mouth:



tucker got a stomp rocket toy so we were all playing in the backyard with that for like an hour. that was the funnest part. here's tuck about to try it out:



and here's coral with her quiver:



tucker and me:



and now i shall show you a couple videos of me and tuck teaming up on the stomp rocket:

#1:


and #2:

christmas break current events...

wow i haven't blogged in so long! for over a month! hopefully i'll have a chance to update this thing a little over christmas break. so um...ok here are some current events:

1-got through christmas concerts, gigs, my violin jury, and finals...
2-got home for christmas break yesterday morning after being stuck in seattle airport for awhile due to weather...my dad came to rescue us cuz our flight to kelowna was canceled...we got a flight arranged to vancouver for friday morning, but instead my dad drove 6 hours to seattle to pick us up, got there in the middle of the night, turned around and we headed home...
3-one of my suitcases got lost on the flight from minneapolis/st. paul to seattle...so i'm waiting for it to get here, and in the meantime i have no shoes cuz they're all in that suitcase (i was wearing some of ali's shoes on the trip home), so anyways, for now i have to rely on ali's shoes till my suitcase finds me...
4-kelowna is very cold and snowy! yay! right now it's around -20 degrees, but fluctuating up and down between -10 and -30...
5-i have an organ now! our church got a new organ, and one of the organists at our church got the old church organ, and so she gave me her old organ! i've been playing it tons since i got home...very extremely fun!...
6-i got a viola loaned to me from the music department at southern since i'm playing viola in a quintet next semester, so i brought it home and am trying to learn my part for the trout quintet...
7-i'm freezing constantly cuz my room downstairs does NOT really seem to get warm no matter if the heat is on or not...
8-ty moved to the room downstairs across from my room (he used to be upstairs)...so now we're just across the hall from me...it's pretty awesome having him down here...
9-it's hard not having my own car here and having to plan things out all the time since ali's, tyler's, and my cars are all at southern and we just have my mum's car and my dad's truck here...to split between 5 people...
10-i still have basically all my chrismas shopping left to do...so i have just a few days left to get everything!...

well merry christmas to you! have a great holiday season...

oh and here's a picture of tyler piggy-backing me to my room last night when i was too tired to walk down by myself, haha...you can tell from my eyes being basically shut that i was sleeping before this...i fell asleep upstairs and woke up enough to get down to my room...

remembrance day and poppies...

this video was created for remembrance day in memory of the veterans who served in the war...by honoring them with 2 minutes of silence, as is practiced at 11:00 am on november 11 (remembrance day) in canada...



this is another remembrance day video that reminds us to wear our poppies (a canadian tradition) because of the poppies in flanders fields...

an example of how to unsuccessfully chop wood...

this is me trying to chop wood at tim's brother's place during midterm break...as you can see, it didn't produce the desired results...