England Manchester Mission!

President and Sister Preston

Welcome Sister Gish

"Your daughter has arrived in the England Manchester Mission safely and is ready to go to work as a Missionary."

In Which Sister Gish Kisses Planes 

and Breaks Her First Rule

Did I ever tell you *guys about the tradition started on my trip back East a few weeks ago?  Probably not because I'm a lazy blogger.  Well it all started when Griffin, being the mature adult that he is, dared me to lick the plane before we boarded.  And I, being the mature adult that I am, refused to turn down this dare.  So I walked closely behind Griffin to hide any suspicious activity, cozied on up to the plane and licked it.  I did this in New York and where ever we had that one layover.  It's good luck I think. I also got sick that trip.  No direct relation I'm sure.  

BUT.  Now that I'm a missionary, a dignified representative and all that, I settled on a little better version.  Plane kisses.  Kissed each and every one of them.  You know how they say you kiss all the people your boyfriend/girlfriend has kissed?  Right, well if you kiss me you're getting New York, Chicago, England...  Lucky lucky!  Not that I'm thinking about kissing.  Never.  I'm a good missionary.

Speaking of which, it took me a total of 12 hours to break my first rule.  It was an honest mistake I swear.  After I got set apart, I remembered to shake Clyde's and Justin's hands, NO PROBLEM.  But then the next morning I was saying all of these goodbyes.  Hug Grace, she's a girl it's cool.  Same goes for Allie.  And Mom.  Oh and Griff is family so a nice big hug there.  Papa Jim - Yeah I love that man!  Come here Pops!  Hey my good neighbor Max!  Max!  Let me run up and throw my arms around you!  ...

Crap.

 Vaguely in the background I heard Allison or Grace go "Wait!..."  But I had no idea what the fetch they were talking about.  Why are those girls so weird?  It took a good 2 or 3 minutes after that to realize I'd broken the "no touchy for non-related-dudes-rule."

Honest mistake.  

I've only been at the MTC for and hour and a half, so not much to report.  But I feel good and excited to be here.  This is awesome.  Stay tuned for more stories next week.  Looks like Billy BYU made it to England with me.  

Love ya!

Seeester Geesh

*Elders and Sisters for those of us in the mission field.  I was informed on the bus that "guys" no longer exist.  No, "hey you guys" or "these guys."

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

How I felt when I woke up this morning:

I leave.... TOMORROW!
I'm getting set apart... TODAY!

I feel like a freaking child on Christmas Morning

Changes

I won't apologize or make excuses for not writing all the goodbyes I intended to write.  Please.  You know me.  Did you really expect that?  I don't feel guilty.  But I will at least acknowledge that there's been a drought.  It didn't go unnoticed.  Let me summarize this: life is fun and full and sad and beautiful.  Now to the point.

5 days.

FIVE fu-reaking DAYS!

This is going to change into a mission blog after I leave. (i know.  I know. Mission blog.  I'll fight off the shudders if you do.)  I'm going to try and make some time to write down of the funny anecdotes that happen.  But that's in addition to all the emailing and writing some of you don't believe I'll be doing. (Ahem.  John. Ahem.  I'm going to prove you wrong.)  If you want extensive details well - you won't.  How boring would a minute by minute recitation of my day be?  Here let me help you out with that answer.  Super. Boring.  But iiiiiif, hypothetically speaking you did want some more in depth-stuff, here's my email: sierra.gish@myldsmail.net

And even if my posts aren't consistent, I (or rather, Carol, bless you dear sweet woman) will be putting up my mailing address.  So if you REALLY want to get personal - and you do, right?  riiiiiiight - send me some letters.

When in doubt, send them to the mission home.

Sister Sierra Jade Gish
England Manchester Mission
Springwood, Suite G5
Booths PArk, Chelford Road
Knutsford WA16 8GS
England, United Kingdom

And if you can address that ridiculously long thing and write me a letter, I'll be very impressed.  Like pay for your carpel tunnel surgery impressed and grateful.

Right.  So that's that.

Miss me.  I'll miss all of you.

K bye.

Thoughts on a Tuesday Eveing

I haven't written for awhile, not necessarily because I don't have anything to say.  Of course I have things to say.  Don't you know me?  I always have things to say, long involved stories often about nothing.  The problem is right now I have too much to say.  I can't even get a handle on my emotions.

I want to write about my thoughts on serving a mission (29 days.  Twenty. Nine. Days.)  but being aware of the depth and vast range of those emotions, I can't even begin to delve into them.  It's much much easier to recognize that I'm leaving, and stop there.

I'm excited mind you.  I don't want that to be a question for a minute.  I don't doubt my choice.  But humans are hardwired to fear the unknown right?  I think I wrote an essay about it way back in my AP European History Class.  And I'm adventuring into the unknown, a weird kind of structured unknown where I kind of think I know what I'm doing?  The general logistics and overall goal and all that, yeah. But the details?  No clue.  What will my companions be like?  No clue.  What's going to happen to my family, friends, and certain relationships while I'm gone?  No clue.  I mean I have trust and faith and all that, so I'm not really to ulcer level anxiety or anything but if I'm being real then yeah, there's a little bit of fear there.  (Read: TERROR)  And I could go on and on about that.  But I don't want to.  I don't want to concentrate on that.

I want to tell you about visiting my family back east, the sights we've seen, the states we've visited, my lovely and interesting relatives.  And of course the stories of finals, heavily studded with Billy BYU moments.

You know I'm a nostalgic old man right?  Papa Jim style?  Well I'm brimming with nostalgia and sentimentality, and maybe even a few fond tears and I want to talk about that.

Mostly though I want to continue the tradition I started last year, cataloguing some of the people I found in these two semesters of school.  I need to tell you about my roommates, how I'm drastically happier than I've ever been since beginning college.  But two of the most important relationships I've experienced... well I don't think I have the words for those. Here's my conundrum.

1.  These two experiences were crucial to my development and I want to do them justice.
2. I don't want to gloss over them like they didn't exist, though they turned (or may turn) out not so happily in the end.
3.  And I hate people who give mysterious allusions to an event without actually giving details.  Usually I tend to think those people just need validation from others begging to know what happened.
4. I don't want to be like that, because that's not what this is for me.  I write pretty much for me.
5.  BUT this online any joe shmoe can read.
6.  And because it's online and involves other people and is very personal, I can't really say everything I need to anyway.

So I can't NOT write about them, I can't KIND OFF write about them, and I can't COMPLETELY write about them.  I don't know.  I'm pretty sure this can be categorized as a quintessential Catch-22*

All this leads to being a little overwhelmed.  I'm tired already.  Too much to say, too little time.  But I'm going to try.  Beginning tomorrow I'll peg away at the ice block of my brain, hopefully fast enough before it melts into a mess.

Let me put it this way.

"i have come to believe that writer’s block is not so much an absence of ideas as it is a tremendously strong desire to take a nap, all. the. time.

when the desire to sleep is greater than the desire to write–to say something–that’s writer’s block.

perhaps it is that the act of writing or thinking or forming words is the very thing that overwhelms and exhausts. sometimes it’s just harder. sometimes it just costs more.

All this thinking and pondering and remembering crap has worn me right out.  So in light of that, I'm going to bed.  Sweet dreams.  I'll see ya tomorrow.

* I hated that book.  Call me an uncultured unappreciative neanderthal**.  I don't care.  Really, go ahead, do it.

**Irony: needing to look up how to spell "neanderthal"

So Fetchin' Grownup

I don't know if I've really established this before.  In case I haven't, let me just put it out there for the record.
I am a child.
While I may pretend to be blase about many things, inside I'm a screaming romantic, making a big deal about every stinkin' thing.  The smallest of things excite me.  Let me give you an example.
This weekend I boarded a plane to visit my best friend Lizzie in Texas.  I've ridden planes before but this time I was all BY MAHSELF, not family.
My dad dropped me off at the curb and I'm all, "ok dad, thanks, see ya in awhile!"  Completely calm and collected (or at least trying to be) because you know, this is no big deal.
Sike.
This is a HUGE deal.
I just felt so grown up.  There I was going to visit my married, pregnant, best friend living in another state.  All I could really think was, "this is the terminal.  I'm walking through the terminal.  alone."  "I'm going through security.  I went through security without getting confused or losing my mind!"  "Oh my gosh.  Now I'm walking onto the plane.  I'm on a plane!  I'm touching the plane with my hands!"
And this, my friends, is why you should be thankful I don't have twitter.
Don't even get me started on the actual flying aspect.
"I'M FLYING!!!!" was my very mature thought process.  I swear I've done this before.  I took off and landed a total of 6 times in the past 4 days and it never got old.  I was on a fetchin boeing 747, a giant metal contraption holding a hundred people or more and we were in the FRICKIN AIR.  So cool.

Now let's see if I've mastered the picture thing yet.

Looking super grown up on the late night flight
Don't judge my ghetto phone for taking crappy pictures.

Normal signs in the Vegas Airport

Welcome to Texas my friends.  Isn't is gorgeous?

This is my best friend.  I love her more than I can say.  She's gotten me through a lot.  Thanks for such a wonderful time LizDawg.  (Sorry I can't stop calling you that.)

i WILL enjoy this

Right now I'm sitting in my front room, with the windows open because it's raining, wearing a sweatshirt and and blanket because the windows are open and it's cold but hey, it's raining and smells good and that way I can hear the car that passes every once and awhile.

Last year when I needed ambient noise for studying I used to search "rain with cars" on youtube.  People make videos of this for real.  Three hours of just rain and a highway.  But right now, I'm experiencing it first hand.

I want to remember this moment.  It could really suck, because I've been up for an hour already and I'm tired, but I'm up because there's tests to be studied for, papers to be written, and because of the procrastinator I am, very little time to accomplish it all.  But it doesn't suck.

Because this is not forever.  Someday (soon) I'll be studying scriptures in the morning, doing companionship study, or maybe prepping lessons.  I'll come back to school yes, but it'll be a different place, with different roommates.  Carla won't be down the hall in the kitchen also studying.  And then there will be a man roommate (not in the way of cohabitation mom, don't worry) and eventually little teensy (loud and smelly) roommates and then bigger roommates (still loud and smelly) until it's empty again.  Maybe I'll still sit in the front room early in the morning then and listen to rain but I'll probably be in an adult diaper or something by that point.

This is a sweet moment.  Right here.  Right now.  My computer has been acting up and it freezes for ten seconds every time I stop typing or moving the mouse.  So even when I need to pause and think or edit, I'm hitting spacebar and delete.  Spacebar and delete.  It's annoying usually, but right now it seems only a vague and endearing quirk.  And as a result this is a word vomit (as my dear friend grace so charmingly puts it) blog post.

You see, the thing is, I like studying.  I like the mornings, even the painfully early ones.  I even like being kind of tired, in the way that I know it's because I have things to accomplish, in the way that it pulls me from homeostasis.  I like being just a little bit cold, on the parts where the blankets doesn't cover.  I'm warm almost perfectly, with just a hint of a reminder of that I could be cold, but I'm bundled up and I'm not.  I like the rain and since I'm up, I like sound of the birds.

It's everything cliche right now, essentially I've written a hallmark card, or a commercial for a brand of coffee.  But it's true.  Everything sentimental has been wrapped up into this one weird moment and I feel nostalgic and wise and life stretches out ahead of me and I remember that I won't remember this, but I want to.  This is what makes up life.

Sometimes things are special because they don't last.  This is that.  So I will enjoy it.