Goodbyes, Zoo Adventures, and Harry Potter!

Dear Grace,

            It’s so weird to realize that in a mere four weeks I’ll be gone from here. I’ve been writing a few letters and cards to people I have to say goodbye to, and honestly I’m starting to regret doing it because it’s making leaving so much harder. It would be so much easier if I could just leave and not have to say goodbye. Goodbyes seem so final and permanent, and they indicate the end of one thing in life and the beginning of another. But I’m also glad I took the time to write to those people, because it also helped me to realize just how much they all mean to me. As I stared at the pile I had in front of me when I had finished, I couldn’t help but get a little choked up to see all of the wonderful people the Lord has sent into my life and blessed me with.

            I put in my two weeks’ notice last Monday at work, so this will be my last week there. I’m so excited to be done, because I’ve made several hundred dollars more than I had anticipated, so I’m thrilled about that working out, and hopefully I’ll be able to put that towards a study abroad trip to London I’ve been looking into for next summer. I wanted to quit a week early because I really haven’t had the chance to hang out with Andrea and Alyssa and Mom and Dad as much as I would have liked, so I’ll have that extra week to hang out with them as much as possible. What makes me sad is that I have this last week at work, the free week after that, our Fish Lake trip the week after that, a Lake Powell trip with Andrea after that, three days home with Mom and Dad, and then…I move out. It’s sad to me because I realized that the end of my childhood is just around the corner, and I don’t want it to come.

            I know that moving out and all that is part of life and I’ll get used to it and learn to love it and all, but more and more I find myself wishing I could go back to when I was five, where being cool meant you had a 64 pack of crayons with the sharpener in the back, boys had cooties, homework was 2+2, and the drama was over who stole my eraser? It’s funny how I’ve spent my whole life waiting to grow up, and now that I’m legally ‘grown up’, I wish I could be a child again. It’s kind of not fair how my attitude about that changed haha.

            Here’s a story I don’t have a place for, haha. There’s this guy I’ve been working with at Sonic for about the past year or so. His name is Chandler, and I have to admit that when I first met him I didn’t think he was cute at all and that he was very quiet. The first thing I noticed was that his eyes were uneven (one is higher than the other). But over this last year I’ve worked with him, and especially these last couple of months, I’ve come to know him a lot better, and I’ve grown to love him. It’s a strange kind of love, though, something I’ve never really experienced before. It’s strange because although I know that nothing will ever develop between us (one of my coworkers tried to set us up but he said I was too young for him), I’m not brokenhearted. I still love him because I see in him what I hope to find in my husband someday.

He’s quiet, but he’s smart and he’s funny. He’s on the BYU ballroom team, and he sings and he loves Broadway and Disney and big band music, like me. He’s a strong returned missionary, and he was the choir director in his last ward. He’s been working hard this summer to save up for school (a grueling 70 hours a week to be exact), and he has a plan for what he wants to do with his life. I’m so happy when I get to work with him, and I love his smile. Every time we work together he turns on a couple of my favorite songs on his iPod while we work so we can sing and dance to them. He’s the kind of guy I look at and think, “This is the kind of guy Dad would tell me to marry,” haha.

I’m sad to be leaving my singles ward too. I’ve gotten involved a lot and I’ve been going to all the activities and I’m on the fellowshipping committee and a bunch of stuff, and I’ve really come to love the people in my ward (plus there’re a couple of super cute guys in my ward who I wish I could date if I were staying here ;) ). I just hope that the ward I’ll be in down at SUU will be good too.

Andrea and I had a Salt Lake day last week, haha. We decided to go to the zoo and then visit various pastry shops and do a little shopping at the Gateway mall before heading home to get dinner.  It was a ton of fun! It rained on us a little bit while we were at the zoo, but it was still tons of fun! I haven’t been there since I was a little girl. I’ve only been once before, on a field trip when I was in first grade, and I couldn’t remember much about it. I think Andrea is the only person in the world I could wander around with in a zoo all day and have as much fun as I did, haha. Oh, and we also discovered the hill where part of Forever Strong was filmed, where all the guys are shown jogging uphill in Salt Lake. Yeah, we drove down that road and we felt totally epic. Andrea’s the bomb, I love her.

Another thing I did last week was go to the final Harry Potter movie premier with Alyssa and Andrea. Andrea organized everything so that we had people taking shifts waiting in line from noon until midnight. I had to work until six, and I didn’t get to the theater until eight. We all dressed up in costumes, and before I left the house I told Mom that I was sure I would feel very weird until I got into the parking lot, because by then I would fit right in. And boy was I right! EVERYONE was in costume, and let me tell you, there were some dang impressive costumes! I felt right at home as soon as I walked up in my costume with a homemade sorting hat and Snape doll in tow, haha. There were lines going all the way down the sidewalk, and people had tents and picnic blankets and lawn chairs and everything lined up. We were so lucky because our group was right at the front of the line for our movie time. Alyssa dressed up as Hermione Granger, and Andrea dressed up as Bellatrix Lestrange, and I wore a black choir robe over a button up shirt and gray shorts. Alyssa and I decided that she was school Hermione (she was wearing a skirt) and that I was street Hermione, haha.

They let us into the theater a couple of hours early, and we were so luck because we got the best seats in the house. You know that front row of the theater with the bar you can put your feet up on, above the crappy seats that are too close down in the front? Oh yeah, we totally took those. And honestly I think I had more fun playing around before the show than actually watching the movie. We made friends with the random strangers sitting next to us, and we practically mauled the only guy we could find wearing a Snape costume so we could get pictures with him and meet him. Then we danced around the theater, cast spells at each other, sang, reenacted the Mysterious Ticking Noise, and then some random dude whipped out a ukulele and started playing songs from A Very Potter Musical, which most of the people in the front row joined in on. I was especially tickled when I went over to talk to a friend who happened to be sitting by the guy with the ukulele, and when my friend asked me who I was dressed up as and I said Hermione, the ukulele guy proceeded to start playing the Hermione song from A Very Potter Musical, haha. Basically, time well spent J.

I’m not gonna lie, I’m kind of getting nervous about my housing assignment, as I have only three more weeks, and they still haven’t sent out the housing assignments yet, despite our many phone calls and emails. Hopefully they’ll get their crap together and get those sent out soon. I’m mostly worried that I won’t get LDS roommates, so be praying for me that things will work out there.

Well, that’s all the excitement for now. I’ll write again if anything new comes up! Love you tons!

Love Always,

                        Katie Jo