Sacramento - New beginnings? Yes

I recently moved out to California. I wasn't sure I'd be able to make it since I had a lot of car problems (typical, right?) among other things. But it happened! And I made the trek out, stopping for a time to see my sister in Nevada. I'm living in the most beautiful place I've ever seen (if you take out all of Virginia of course!)
Pictures to come of that.

I logged onto my blog with great hopes of writing all these magnificent thoughts and everything. I think this will be a little rough sailing! It's been so long since I've written anything of this nature!

Mostly, I wanted to get on my blog for two reasons: one, to document somewhere other than facebook my experiences while here in California, and two, to share a thought or two about the timing of life.

I'll start with the second part I think. Since coming home from the mission, it has been a little hard for me to feel purpose in my life. In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, there is a pressure to follow a sort of road map for life and should your life deviate from that road map you can feel a little... off. For the most part, people don't mean to push onto you their ideas of the timing in which certain things should take place in your life. Despite this, it does happen, whether by outside or even inside forces. Anyway, blah blah blah - what I'm getting at is that I've felt a little blue since coming home from the mission. Luckily, I've been at school and met some wonderful people, some of whom I imagine I will be friends with forever! I was privileged to participate in something called Student Support at BYU-Idaho

My council from Student Support (<3 p="">

And my sister has come up to school! (shown here second on the right side in the polka dots)

While at school I also was able to get involved in something called the Lincoln Elementary School Science Club, where we as a group of college students would go to an elementary school and do science experiments with the kids! I was assigned two girls who were just so silly and adorable! Among the experiments we did were learning about cells - they could see their own cells under a microscope, learning about DNA - they learned how to collect their own DNA and we put their individual DNA into necklaces for them, and bottles made into geysers, among many others!

We made homemade ice cream this day using things from out Biochem lab like centrifuge tubes and pipettes. They loved it. (I did too haha)

AND I participated in a research group where we used rats to study the effect hormones play on Parkinson's disease. This was a very frustrating but interesting experience. We did behavior tests on six male rats and then removed their gonads, gave them Parkinson's, and then performed perfusions and ablations so that ultimately we could do immunohistochemistry and look at slices of their brains under a microscope. Due to lack of organization and perhaps also some needed supervision, we weren't able to complete the research to the end. This research is done alongside a much larger research effort of the same kind being done at UCLA.

(A special thanks for those semesters goes to two awesome women. One a roommate I wouldn't have survived without. The other an amazing woman who had class with me every day last semester and totally kept me sane. Both from California (probably one of the reasons I like them ;) And they happen to know each other from way back when, which was cool. You know who you are.)


During this time since being home, almost two years at the end of this month, I have struggled. My testimony has been tried and tested and proven strong. I am grateful to know about Jesus Christ. I have a testimony of the Atonement, strengthened since being home from my mission, as I've made mistakes and sought forgiveness, many times on my knees as I cried into my pillow. I know Christ lives. And more than that I know he paid for me. Individually. He carried me that night as he carried each of us there in the garden. Because of Him I can start new, fresh, free of sin and guilt and especially of shame. God be praised for his Son, a marvelous Gift I think we will always fail to truly understand. I bear testimony from experience that wrongs are made right and freedom replaces guilt through the power of Christ. As we study and pray for and seek to understand more fully the enabling power of the Atonement, we can be lifted out of sin.

(Sidenote. If you missed this CES devotional, go check it out at LDS.org because it was simply phenomenal)

AAAAAAaaaaaand CALIFORNIA! Guys! I'm living in California! I can't tell you how long I've wanted to live here. Something in me has loved CA for as long as I can remember. Through the blessing of good friends and their families, I am able to live in Woodland. It's awesome to be here. I don't use that word much and I don't use it lightly. IT. IS. AWESOME.

I am here doing an internship at the Shriner's Children's Hospital of Northern California in Sacramento, California (that was a lot of capitalization haha) We are doing research to better understand neurodegenerative diseases such as Autism, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, etc. It is really neat guys. The work is a little tiring and I put in a lot of work. I recently heard a quote I have made my mantra:

"Be humble, HUNGRY, and the Hardest worker in the room."

Right? Isn't that splendid? I love it. 

Mostly my job is to do the dishes, fill solutions (which involves some basic MATH! (YEEEEESSSSSSssss)) and doing a bunch of immunohistochemistry. We read a lot of research articles (also excellent) and are focusing on something called FXTAS. 

On the weekends and in the evenings while in Woodland I've been able to do some exciting things like attend a play (no pictures - sorry), find an amazing used bookstore (uh-oh!), see Woodland's main street, eat out in Davis, and see Old Sacramento. I am so grateful to be in California and you will certainly be updated and bombarded with pictures and exclamation marks :D

To celebrate burning my skin, a good friend took me to dinner
here - where the food is mouthwateringlyamazing

This is my face after experiencing burns from 10M
NaOH. I was really lucky it wasn't worse.

At Old Sac (Sorry to my instagram followers who have seen
all these already)

Everyone knows face masks are a MUST after experiencing burns, right?
Channeling the Phantom of the Opera right here.

These obviously aren't in order. Snapped this picture on the way to catch the bus after work one day. This is the greens at UC Davis campus in Davis, CA. I think this was a Friday but I can't remember and it was afternoon so a lot of the classes were out.

Spent a whole week transferring rat and mouse brains from the tubes on the bottom to the tubes on the front ... only to find out I'd messed up and had to replace them into their original tubes - a process that took me an entire week all around since I'd done more than 100, possibly 200, tubes

Davis has a Farmers Market. The produce here is to die for.

For my Whovian friends out there, especially Hannah. Are you my mommy? Saw this walking in Sacramento to go do a drug test (HA!)

Sunset the other day in Woodland.