Moving, Studying, and Lots of Dancing

 

Well hello there bugs! Surprised to see that I’m actually posting when I said I would? I know, I’m pretty proud of myself.

As promised, this is basically going to be me telling you about my oh-so exciting life. The last year has probably included some of the biggest changes I’ve had to go through within a very short period of time. It’s been eventful to say the least. So, here we go…

All throughout my freshman year I lived in the dorms. They were nice, but I really missed things like cooking my own food, not sharing a shower with 24 other people, and having a decently sized closet. I know, picky picky. Anyway, last year my parents were in Missoula for spring break and they found a house for sale that they fell in love with. They had been planning on retiring in Missoula for a while, so they basically just decided to buy it so that no one else could even though they still had over a year until they could move here. For me that was awesome because it meant that I got to live in a house less than a mile away from campus for free until they moved in. Score.

Well, mostly score. I love living in the house and it’s infinitely better than the dorms, but living off campus also makes me more of an adult than I was before. Now I have to do adulty things like grocery shopping and cleaning the house and doing dishes. It also means that my friends aren’t all living in the same hallway as me anymore. Then again my friends kind of scattered out to a bunch of different dorms this year so that wouldn’t have really happened anyway. Basically what I’m trying to say is that any change, even if its a good one, takes some time to adjust to. This past year I’ve moved into a house, gotten a new roommate, made my own meals, and have just been a lot more independent in general. Not a bad thing, but definitely something to get used to.

This year I also have the excitement of taking a 300-level Anatomy and Physiology course. I’m currently taking my second semester of it and I have a love-hate relationship with it. In one way it is awesome because the information is super interesting (and I’m one of those nerds who doesn’t at all mean that sarcastically), but on the other hand it pretty much consumes my life. It’s one of those classes that would be perfect if it was the ONLY class I was taking. But I’m taking 17 credits and it’s only 4 of them. Oh, that’s another thing. It’s only worth 4 credits but I do about 5 times the amount of work for it than I do for any other class. Petition to let it count as 20 credits. Anyone with me?

Over the course of each semester we have 3 tests overall in the lecture portion of the class as well as 2 lab practicals throughout the semester AND a lab quiz every. single. week. And to top it off, the lecture and the lab don’t always correspond with each other, so half the time I pretty much have to study as if they are two separate classes. Learning about the origins of the muscles of the arm in lab doesn’t help me much when I’m trying to simultaneously memorize what the hippocampus of the brain does for lecture. My roommate is in the class with me and one time we calculated how many hours we spent studying for just A&P alone. I think we calculated 25+ hours per week. And that’s NOT including open labs. Open labs are basically extra study hours where you can show up to lab and ask questions. They are one of those things that is technically “optional”… but if you want to do well they are pretty much mandatory. Yayyyy college.

Overall though the class is pretty cool. It’s turning me into a nerd because I think way too in depth about the simplest of things now. A normal person would say something like “It’s cold, I have goosebumps”. But I say exciting things like “MY ARRECTOR PILI MUSCLES ARE REALLY WORKING HARD”. Which is basically a fancy way of saying that I have goosebumps.

Oh and my roommate says the same types of things. We have super exciting conversations. Oh what nerds we are.

NEXT TOPIC. I have recently done something that scares me a bit but also makes me REALLY REALLY EXCITED. I am currently training to become a certified aerobic dance instructor. There is a type of dance called OULA that is basically an aerobic dance workout and it’s the funnest. workout. ever. It’s called OULA because it started in MissOULA. Clever, huh? Anyway, I started taking OULA classes my freshman year and fell in love with it. So last summer I officially decided that I wanted to teach it. Back in December I had a “training weekend” where the OULA masters basically taught about 20 trainees, including myself, everything we need to know about OULA. We have 3 months since then to learn lots of choreography, practice how to put playlists together and how to cue for classes, and teach as many practice classes as we want. When we feel ready we can then record a practice class and submit it as our “audition” to become an instructor. Once we submit our audition it takes a week or two to be informed if we passed or not. I recorded a practice class that I did last weekend and I actually think that I might submit it as my audition, but I haven’t gotten up the courage to actually press the magic button to send it in yet. But hopefully in the next 3 weeks I will officially be certified!

This is going to sound super cheesey (though we all know how I love the cheese). But OULA has seriously done so much for me. I have met some awesome people along the way and found a great support system through the OULA community that is there for me throughout any and all OULA endeavors as well as general life hurdles. I have also come such a long way in just my physical dancing. The first class I went to I was barely comfortable swaying my hips, and now I’m dancing through the choreography not caring what I look like because I know it’s just for FUN! And it’s not about how you look, it’s about how you feel (that’s kind of our motto). A few weeks ago my friends and I were dancing around my kitchen being goobers like usual and one of my closest friends told me that she loved watching me dance because I looked so happy and comfortable and because she could tell how much OULA had done for me. That put a smile on my face for a long while. My friend group has been coming to my practice classes these last few weeks and they are really embracing OULA now- it’s great! They get equally as excited as me when a recognizable OULA song comes on on the radio, they’re all attending my classes and some of them are even attending other classes too, and it’s something for all of us to do together just to have FUN! It makes me so happy to see that I’m already spreading it to other people. Especially when they are some of the people who mean the most to me.

On Valentines Day I did a practice class that about 34 people showed up to and I seriously felt SO GOOD after teaching. I had a few minor choreography errors, but for the most part I seriously rocked it (not to toot my own horn). I sang along, I cued the moves, I put my all into it for the entire hour, and most importantly, not only I but also my participants had a great time. Another instructor that was there told me that she wouldn’t have even thought I wasn’t certified based on how I taught. That comment seriously put me on top of the world.

Here’s a selection of my awesome friends who have become my support group throughout all of my crazy OULAness. I’m seriously so lucky to have these guys.

Well those are kind of my big updates for you. My boyfriend and I are still doing that fun long-distance thing, but spring semester is actually a lot easier than fall semester because we have different spring breaks so he gets to come to Montana for his AND I get to go to Texas for mine. He, my parents, and my best friend are going to be coming to visit for a week during their spring break in just 13 days (but who’s counting?). I’m super excited to see them. No matter how great my support system is here, there’s still always a part of me that misses my Texas support system too. Anyway, I don’t need to gush about my relationship for too long on the internet. But since this is a blog about my life I figured it was worth it to mention that my boyfriend does in fact exist and he is not a figment of my imagination. Maybe you’ll hear more about him when he visits in a few weeks. He’s super cool. And has awesome hair.

Well that’s about it for now! Now it’s time for me to study for the 4 tests, 2 quizzes, and the lab practical that I have in the next 2 weeks. Deep breaths….

Love,
Laney-Bug ❤

 

 

On the Road to Wellness… Theoretically.

Alright bugs. So… it’s been a while. But, I’M BACK. (I know, I know, I say that every time). However, now that I’m back, this whole blog thing is going to work a little differently.

I obviously didn’t blog much last semester (judging from the fact that my last published blog post was about my trip to Africa… jeesh), and that’s because I let school and this thing called stress that often comes along with school get the best of me. Not only that, but when I let school get the best of me I didn’t have much time to do art. When I didn’t have time to do art I often didn’t have time to blog. And when I did have time to blog I didn’t have any art to blog about. Life is a struggle. Anyway…

SO. NEW PLAN. I am no longer going to call this an “art blog”. This will now just be a blog where I talk about whatever is going on in my life that I feel like sharing, whether it be art, school, or blabbing on to you about how great my friends are. AND THIS IS WHY…

So I am currently enrolled in a class called “Personal Health”. As an exercise science major it’s apparently important to learn about how to take care of yourself as well as how to exercise properly. Funny, huh? Anyway, about two weeks ago we completed this funny thing called a “wellness wheel”. Basically the point is to answer a bunch of questions regarding different aspects of “wellness”, get points based on your answers, do some math with those points, and see what portions of “wellness” are fulfilled in your life and which ones are not.  I got super high scores (which means they are fulfilled) on things like exercise and nutrition, I got about average scores on social life and sleep, and I got some not-so-good scores on the mental health and stress levels of my life. Figures. ANYWAY, this semester we are supposed to come up with a “plan” to try and improve our levels on the aspects that we didn’t do so well on, so I have to come up with things that will help decrease my stress levels. Generally the things you hear regarding how to decrease stress levels are “eat healthy” and “exercise more often”, but clearly I’ve got those things covered. So at first I was totally flabbergasted at how to even go about life in a way that doesn’t stress me out. I mean, we all know that that is new territory for me. However, we talked about the “stress” chapter in class yesterday and one of the suggestions was to reflect in some way, such as a journal or… a BLOG. So here I am. Hopefully melting some of my stress away by ranting to you (whoever you may be) about the chaotic life of a college student who is still trying to figure out this whole “life” thing.

Also my best friend is currently studying abroad in a far far away land and she blogs, so I decided it would be cool if I could read her blogs and she could read mine and we could pretend (at least for a few moments at a time) that we weren’t thousands of miles apart. Hi Kit-Kat. 🙂

Well, later in the week I will try to give you basically an updated version of my life since I haven’t posted anything in 5 months. And wow, a lot has changed in the last 5 months. But for now, just know that I am back and haven’t dropped off the face of the earth. That’s reassuring, right? Maybe it’ll decrease your stress levels.

Have a fantastic weekend, bugs!

Love,

Laney-Bug ❤

 

 

 

This is Africa – Part 3 – Swaziland and Mozambique Adventures

Alright, so I know that it’s been 6 weeks since my last post. But I have a one word explanation for you… School. Turns out that taking a 300 level anatomy-and-physiology class, along with 3 other classes, is a bit of a time suck. But, better late than never, right?

So continuing on with my African adventures! Next we passed the border from South Africa into Swaziland! One of the highlights of Swaziland was a visit we did with a local orphanage. ISV provided us with some money to purchase food so that we could donate food to the kids at the orphanage. We also had the option of buying additional items with our own money if we wished to donate more, so I found a cute elephant puzzle that I threw into the mix. We were told that the kids are always happy to get new toys or things to play with so I’m hoping that my puzzle will make one of them, or some of them, very happy! Most of these kids have some pretty harsh backgrounds but it was so sweet to see how happy they were just from receiving an apple and a banana from us. A lot of the volunteers donated things like footballs and hula hoops so we hung out with the kids and played with them for an hour or so after handing out all of our food donations. The little kid in this picture was about 3 years old, he was pretty shy and didn’t talk much so I never caught his name, but he glued himself to my side for the majority of the hour and I carried him around with me as I visited with the other kids. He hadn’t been around cameras much so when I pulled out my phone and put it on selfie mode he got super excited and kept a smile on his face for the camera for a solid 10 minutes.

While in Swaziland, we also went to Milwane Wildlife Sanctuary. We had the option of paying extra money to either mountain bike through the sanctuary or horseback ride through the sanctuary. So, naturally, I signed up for both. I mean, when else will I get the opportunity to bike or horseback ride through herds of zebra? So that is pretty much literally what we did – we rode right by a bunch of different animals on both the bikes and the horses, including zebra, wildebeest, and even a few crocs by a few different bodies of water. My favorite moment though was riding right through a herd of wildebeest on the horses. We were able to get closer to the animals on the horses than on the bikes because the wildlife was more calm about it if we were on some type of animal. I guess us humans are scarier on our own than we are when we are on horseback. Anyway, this isn’t the greatest picture ever but here is a picture of one of the wildebeests that I got while on my horse – even though it isn’t the best picture in the world, I still love it because it reminds me how cool it was to see them so up close.

The owner of the lodge that we stayed at in Swaziland had an albino python that had been rehabilitated at one point in time and got so used to living in captivity that that is how he lives now. I don’t know the full story behind this guy, but I know that he is a rescue of some sort. Although he isn’t really considered “wild” anymore, I still think this picture is worth sharing. The owner took him out of his cage one night and told us about what type of snake he was and allowed us to hold him, which was really awesome. This type of snake constricts around other animals when it wants to make a kill, which means that it’s got killer muscles (literally). It was insane how I could feel its strength just when it was chilling out on my shoulder – I can’t even imagine how much force he has when he wants to constrict around something. This is a picture of another ISV volunteer and I holding this magnificent albino python.

The final Swaziland adventure that I feel worth mentioning is “adventure caving”. Now, adventure caving is much more… well, adventurous, than normal caving. You don’t simply walk through a cave, you literally crawl through tiny little holes and scale walls to get through. We even went adventure caving with Swazi Trails, which is the original company that kind of invented the term “adventure caving”. We hiked to the cave, went down in the cave, made our way back up, and then hiked back to camp. This was another fear I conquered because I can get claustrophobic at times, another point for Laney! I did pretty well with it though, I got a little claustrophobic towards the end of the caving adventure but I controlled it well and had a lot of fun overall. I also liked seeing the bats in the cave – we had to be quiet around them to avoid waking them up, but they were so tiny and adorable! We were told that waking them up could be a crucial mistake because if they woke from their slumber they would begin looking for food, which wouldn’t be around at this time of the year.  These particular bats were horseshoe bats, which means that they have cute little faces that look like horseshoes. Here is a picture of the little cuties (along with some other ISV volunteers), followed by a picture that our cave guide got of me as I made my way through one of the tiny cave holes.

Our final stop of the tour was Mozambique – which is literally a sandy paradise. As soon as we crossed the border into Mozambique all paved roads disappeared and all of the roads were simply sandy paths. Our accommodation was in Ponta Do Ouro and it was basically a bunch of cabins right on the beach. Shoes were optional and I’m pretty sure our tour guide literally left his shoes on the bus the entire 3 days we were there. Mozambique was a lot of fun but also felt a lot different than the other places we had been because the scenery was so different, it almost felt like a completely different trip. One of the first things we did in Mozambique was a dolphin encounter. We basically met with a dolphin expert that has been studying the dolphins of the area for 10 years and she told us all about dolphins. Once we knew more about them and had a bit of a safety talk, we hopped on a boat and road out into the ocean. We cruised around looking for dolphins and eventually found 3 of them about 30 minutes in to the trip. The guide looked around the area to make sure it was safe for us to get in the water and decided that it was, so we all put on our snorkels and fins and jumped in the water. We basically floated around on the surface and got to watch the dolphins swim around right under us, it was pretty amazing. We only got to be in the water for about 10 minutes before the dolphins swam away, but what happened next was so awesome that it was worth it. We hopped back in the boat and wandered around for a bit hoping to find more dolphins. We didn’t find any more, but we saw something else that was equally as cool if not more – the humpback whales are currently migrating and a group of them swam RIGHT by our boat! We saw them come up to the surface and go back under, slamming their tales against the water as they went back down. It was so cool to see! Unfortunately I don’t have any good pictures of the whales since I didn’t bring my camera on the boat, but here’s a good shot that the dolphin company got of the dolphins!

We were also given one hour of surf lessons later that day, which was something I had never had any prior experience with! I stood up twice for about a millisecond each time, and there were a number of times that I didn’t quite stand up all the way but I got into a crouching position and held it for a few seconds. So I was pretty bad at it, but I had a LOT of fun anyway! Here is me being a beach babe with my lovely surfboard.

This next picture doesn’t have that much of a story to it, but it’s one of my favorites so I have to share it anyway. The drinking age in Africa is 18, so I got to have my first official drink of my life in Africa. How cool is that? They have a super popular drink called a “Savanna”, which is basically an apple cider. I think I only drank two times the entire four weeks that I was in Africa, but here is a picture of me enjoying my Savanna on the beach. Best first-drink story ever.

The last big thing we did was one of my absolute favorite things that I did the entire trip, so I was very excited that I got to end my trip with something so great. We had the option of paying some extra money to go scuba diving. I debated it for a while because I wasn’t sure if it was something I would absolutely love or if it would just freak me out and make me feel claustrophobic. I thought about it for a while but eventually decided to go for it, and I am so glad that I did! It was a two-day program, so the first day we were got in a pool with a scuba instructor and learned some basic skills to get comfortable with the gear, and then the second day we actually went out into the ocean to dive in a reef called Doodles Reef (if you say that you’ve ever heard of a reef with a more whimsical name I won’t believe you). When we went out I did have a slight bump along the way, but I was very proud of myself for getting through it and having a great time anyway. About halfway to the bottom of the reef, which was 14-18 meters deep overall, I couldn’t get my ears to pressurize and they were starting to hurt. I started to freak out a bit so I swam back to the top and gave myself a little pep talk on the surface. I headed back down and went super slow and steady, and then once I reached the bottom I was just fine. Success! We swam around for a total of 42 minutes, and we saw so many things! We saw some potato fish, which are huge! They were longer than me! We also saw a few lyon fish and some awesome jelly fish as well. At one point I swam right over a manta ray that was buried under some sand on the ocean floor – I didn’t realize he was there and when I swam over him he quickly scurried away, but it was really cool to see him! He was literally within touching distance. We also swam through some schools of small sized fish, which was really cool. Though I think that one of my favorite things about the entire dive was that we could hear the humpback whales as they were migrating. They were too far out for us to see them, but we could hear them very clearly – and yes, they did sound like Dory in Finding Nemo when she mimics a whale. It was super cool to hear, it took me a minute to realize what it was but once I did I was so excited! The company we swam with was called Back to Basics, and their slogan was “There is no adventure within your comfort zone”, which I really loved since this was another one of my conquered fears! One of the divers that went with us recorded the whole thing and got some great shots, so here are a few of my favorite pictures. The first one is me in the pool when we were learning how to use the gear. The others show one of the jelly fish and one of the potato fish that we saw in the reef!

  

Our final night in Africa we hiked up to a nearby lighthouse and watched our final African sunset with a beautiful view. It was truly a great way to end the trip. This was truly the trip of a lifetime and I am so thankful for the opportunity. I stepped out of my comfort zone a number of times and every single time, I was so glad that I did. I may be back again someday, but until then…. Stay beautiful, Africa. And thanks for listening, bugs.

Until next time… (which hopefully will be sooner than 6 weeks from now),

Love,

Laney-Bug ❤

This is Africa – Part 2 – South Africa Adventure

Hello again! As promised, here is part 2 of my African adventures. I’m just going to pick up where we left off and jump right in.

Now that we’ve gotten through the volunteer weeks in part 1, let’s talk about the adventure tour, shall we?  I won’t give you every detail on account of the fact that this post would take about 6 weeks to read if I did. But, I promise to give you the highlights.

The first few nights of the adventure tour we stayed at a place called Glen Afric, just about 40 minutes away from Johannesburg. Glen Afric is a lodge that is also home to a lot of awesome animals. They have a few different housing options, but I and a friend were in one of the “tents”. Now, I use the term “tent” very lightly because they were ridiculously fancy tents. I mean, we had a bath tub and a toilet. But the coolest thing about the tent was that there were zebras and giraffes roaming around outside of our tent. Oh, and monkeys too – though I only ever heard them and never actually saw them. I was so excited when I woke up the first morning and walked outside to see a giraffe standing just a few meters away. Heaven for Delaney.

Anyway, I’m getting off track. The first activity of our adventure tour was an “elephant encounter” at our accommodation. While some of the more harmless animals, such as the giraffes and zebras, got to wander around freely, others were kept in a nearby area but slightly farther away from guests to give everyone peace of mind. The elephants were one of these animals. Now, don’t think that they were in a tiny zoo enclosure though – I promise that they still had lots of room to roam around. They had 3 elephants that had been transported to Glen Afric because of rehabilitation reasons. I’m not sure of the exact stories for why they were there, but I know that for one reason or another they couldn’t take care of themselves in the wild so they are now happily living their lives in Glen Afric. There are a few workers that are a bit like zoo keepers that take care of them, and occasionally they let people come in to see the elephants. While we were there the workers stayed close so that they could tell us if we needed to back away for any reason, so it was very safe. We got to pet the elephants and even feed them and it was so amazing! In case you were wondering, the skin on the back side of the ear of an elephant is super soft and feels really cool. One of my favorite moments was when I was holding out a branch to one of the elephants for it to eat the leaves and it wrapped its trunk all the way around my leg before reaching up for the food. There was one adult elephant named Three and two babies named Hannah and Marty. Don’t be fooled by the term “baby” though, they’re still huge even when they are three years old. The elephant encounter gave me a newfound love for elephants and I’m now even more obsessed with them. Below you will find a picture of me kissing one of the babies, one of my personal favorite pictures of the whole trip.

Our next stop on the adventure tour was Kruger National Park. We went on two drives around the park – a morning/afternoon drive and a night drive. The very first animal we saw was a cheetah, which was super exciting because they are the second rarest animal to see in the park! Between the two trips we also got to see all of the Big 5, which was totally awesome. They were all pretty amazing, and we were all especially excited to see rhinos since they are becoming more and more scarce with poaching issues. However, I would be failing as a blogger if I didn’t tell you specifically about the leopard we saw. When we went out for our night drive we were all really hoping to see a leopard because it was the only one of the Big 5 that we hadn’t yet seen, little did we know just how lucky we were going to be! About 20 minutes into our drive we thought we spotted a leopard so we stopped the vehicle to see if we could sneak another look. A few minutes later we saw not a leopard, but a hyena, pop out from a patch of tall grass. He wasn’t quite as exciting as a leopard, but we stuck around to watch him for a bit anyway because he was still pretty cool. As we watched, we realized that he was following something… a leopard! The leopard emerged from the tall grass where we could see him and climbed up a tree, where he had previously hung a warthog carcass. He sat down in the tree next to his kill and quickly went to sleep, while the hyena sat at the bottom of the tree and longingly looked up at the carcass, waiting and hoping for it to fall. The leopard had quite literally stuffed his stomach, check out his belly in the pictures I got! You can also see a bit of the carcass hanging above him. We were so lucky to see this, it was a truly remarkable sighting.

The next stop on our trip was the Blyde River Canyon. However, we took the long drive there so that we could make a few stops and see some sights. Our first stop was at a place called the “potholes”. We stayed here for about an hour and I spent about half of my time wandering around and exploring the beautiful area, and the other half enjoying the sound of the rushing water as I journaled. We were basically surrounded by little miniature waterfalls and some super pretty scenery. It was a very peaceful place, the type of place that you would go just to sit down and read a book. In this first picture you can see me exploring the potholes, and the second one shows all of the ISV participants relaxing among the beauty of it all.

Our other quick stop on the way to Blyde River Canyon was at a place called Honeymoon Rock. This is apparently the third largest canyon in the world, but the first largest canyon WITH vegetation. It’s called Honeymoon Rock because there was a couple that honeymooned there and got thrown off the rock by the wind… so as you can see, there are now fences around it to keep history from repeating itself. The view was stunning and the scenery was equally as beautiful as the potholes!

After our Honeymoon Rock stop, we then made our way to Blyde River Canyon! One of my favorite activities of this part of the trip, much to my surprise, was cliff jumping! Well, technically we went kloofing and cliff jumping was only a portion of the activity. “Kloofing” basically consists of hiking around on a mountain and occasionally jumping off cliffs into water. There were 4 jumps overall and each one was higher than the last, the largest being 11 meters, which is about 36 feet. This activity definitely challenged me to face my fears, but once I got myself to jump I was so glad I did!  I even chose to do the 11 meter jump multiple times! The water was ridiculously cold, but luckily the first jump was just 1 or 2 meters tall so it was mostly a warmup jump to get us used to the water. Not only was the jumping fun, but the view was absolutely stunning as well.  While we hiked around on the mountain we overlooked a huge valley and it was absolutely beautiful. It was postcard-picture worthy.  In the below picture you can spot me braving the freezing cold water of the waterfall during one of our quick breaks on our way up the mountain.

The other activity in the Blyde River Canyon that I just can’t stop myself from talking about was our visit to the Moholoholo Rehabilitation Center. We were given a tour of the center and we learned a lot about the various animals. The center takes in injured animals or animals that simply can’t take care of themselves in the wild for one reason or another. The hope is that they can rehabilitate the animals and eventually release them back into the wild, but some of their animals are there permanently because they simply won’t ever be able to survive on their own. That concept is a bit sad, but it also makes me happy that places like Moholoholo exist so that the animals can at least live a happy life within the center. Most of the animals in the center were there for one of two reasons. One of these reasons is that they had been injured by snare traps. The other is that humans had taken in a wild animal and tried to keep it as a pet, realized it wasn’t going to work, and took it to the rehabilitation center because the animal was no longer able to take care of itself in the wild since it had become dependent on people.

There was one specific bird at Moholoholo that had a particularly interesting story. This guy is a Southern Ground Hornbill. In the hornbill world, a male will pick up a rock or a leaf or something of that nature in its beak, present it to a female, and if she takes it they are immediately mates for life. However, this particular hornbill was a pet to humans for the majority of its childhood and imprinted on humans. Because he never had any contact with other birds for the first part of his life, the center has to keep him in his own enclosure because he literally tried to kill the other hornbills that they originally housed him with. As a result of his human-dependent life, he presents a rock to almost every female human that walks by. Poor little guy just wants someone to love him.

At the rehabilitation center I also had the pleasure of petting a cheetah and an eagle, and feeding a leopard-faced vulture. Petting the cheetah was basically like petting a giant cat because, well, that’s exactly what it is. Except that while petting it, it was almost like I could feel its strength. I know that sounds really strange, but I could see how incredibly developed its leg muscles were. I can definitely see why they’re the fastest land animals.

While the cheetah’s fur felt about how I expected it to, the eagle was very different than I thought it would be. The feathers on the back of it’s neck were actually SUPER soft. And he seemed so much bigger than I ever expected him to once I was standing right next to him!

Now onto the vulture! You wouldn’t believe how heavy this guy was, you can tell from the picture that the tour leader literally had to help me hold my arm up because I couldn’t support him all by myself! As you can see, when his wings were fully expanded they went way over my head due to their huge size. Due to my vegetarian ways I kind of had to block the fact that I was holding raw meat in my hand out of my mind. But hey, another fear conquered, right?

Well, I’ll tell you all about Swaziland and Mozambique in part 3 soon! Thanks for listening bugs, stay tuned! 🙂

Love,

Laney-Bug ❤

This is Africa – Part 1 – Volunteering

Why, hello there! Long time, no see! I know that I’ve fallen behind on my regular blogging schedule, but I have a pretty good excuse… I was just in Africa with no wifi for a month. Though I also failed to blog the month prior to this grand adventure, so I guess I’m technically still at fault. But now I am going to provide you with part 1 of my 3-part story all about my amazing African adventures, so that makes up for it.

I went to Africa with a group called International Student Volunteers, or ISV. I heard about the program from an ISV representative that spoke briefly in one of my lecture classes back in September and immediately knew I wanted to participate. They do trips to a bunch of different places, but Africa was the one that really captured my attention. The basic idea of their trips is that you work on a volunteer project for 2 weeks, and then you get to go on an “adventure tour” and do a bunch of really awesome things for another 2 weeks after that.

So before I get to the tourist-y adventure tour part of my trip, you get to hear all about my volunteer project. For my first two weeks I was in South Africa in the Waterberg Mountain area, staying in a little village called Telekishi. Just down the road from the village was Masebe Nature Reserve. Masebe used to be open for tourism but unfortunately closed to the public in 2005 due to money issues and poaching problems in the area. However, there is a company called WEI, Wildlife and Ecological Investments, that is now doing research to find out if they can eventually reopen the reserve to the public. In order to do this, they need volunteers to help them gather data on the area – that’s where I come in.

What I did for the majority of the first two weeks is the kind of thing that some people find really cool and interesting, and other people think sounds totally boring and lame. If you are of the second variety of people, then you should still be excited while hearing about this because you can just remind yourself how lucky you are that there are funny people out there in the world, such as myself, that enjoy it so that you don’t have to get stuck doing it instead. We had two primary tasks as volunteers – habitat assessments and bird point counts. Habitat assessments basically consisted of walking out into a specific area of the bush and identifying trees, measuring the height and the density of the grass, determining if animals have grazed in the area, and a few other assorted things of that nature. We split into groups of 7 to conquer our habitat assesments and each one of us within the group had our own unique job – I was given the exciting task of measuring the height and density of the grass. It took us about an hour to do one habitat assessment, however some took longer than others, depending on the area we were in. Some areas had lots of scary demon bushes that were full of thorns so they took longer to get through because we had to avoid being stabbed to death. Others had grass that was taller than me so I took longer to measure it because I needed to call for assistance from someone of a taller variety than me. And others had a ridiculous amount of trees and it simply took forever to identify and measure all of them. Here is a picture of my habitat assessment group on our last day of volunteer work. I’m on the left in the rockin’ pink sun hat. The giant orange stick I’m holding is called a Disk Pasture Meter and was used to measure the density of the grass.

On top of these habitat assessments, we also conducted bird point counts. In order to do a bird point count, we basically had to stand still, and quietly, for 10 minutes while writing down information about any birds that we heard or saw in that time frame. I personally liked the bird point counts because by the end of the two weeks I could actually identify about 12 different african birds by their calls. My favorite bird was the yellow billed hornbill, which is what Zazu is for any Lion King fans out there. For your enjoyment, I have included a picture of the yellow billed hornbill. This picture wasn’t actually taken on the reserve, I got it while at Kruger National Park during my adventure tour – but you’ll hear all about that part of my adventure later. As you can see from the picture, Disney lied to us when they made Zazu blue. But it’s Disney, so I guess I’ll forgive them.

As most of you are probably aware, I’m a little obsessed with giraffes. Okay, maybe more than a little. Which is why I was more than excited on days that we finished our bird point counts and habitat assessments early and also got to go on giraffe ID drives – which basically means we drove around the reserve hoping to see giraffes, and when we did see one we stopped and took pictures of it to identify it based on its spots. The point of this was to see what areas of the reserve the giraffes typically spent time in, and to check if there were any giraffes in the reserve that the people running the reserve didn’t already know about. Masebe has 14 giraffes in total and we saw 5 of them – they were super cool with knobs. Here is one of the giraffes that we saw on the reserve.

Every day for the first two weeks we were up at 6 AM and would leave Telekishi by 7. We would go out and do 3 bird point counts and a habitat assessment, followed by a giraffe ID drive on some days. We would come back to the village for lunch and then we would participate in some sort of discussion, usually with a topic along the lines of sustainability or conservation. Then we would go back out to do one more habitat assessment, come back for dinner, and just chill around the fire for the rest of the night. There were definitely a few aspects of life in Telekishi that took some getting used to, such as the tap water that was safe to drink but came out red and tasting like iron, having to keep an eye out for black mambas on our hiking trails, never knowing if we would get hot water or water pressure in our showers, and getting used to living in huts made out of dried out cow poo. But overall our experience staying at Telekishi was totally worth the rusty water and cow poo huts. But before I get ahead of myself, first thing’s first. I think it’s time to show you a picture of my cute little cow poo hut.

Now that that is out of the way, I can continue telling you how awesome the experience was. We were able to experience the culture of the surrounding area, and we learned so much about the animals on the reserve and about conservation through the discussions we had with our leaders and the WEI field guides that we worked with. For your entertainment, I have gone through the trouble of writing up a list of my favorite animal facts that I learned on my trip. Here they are, you are welcome.

• 1 – a group of giraffes is called a tower or a journey
• 2 – a group of zebras is called a dazzle
• 3 – a group of rhinos is called a crash
• 4 – female warthogs have one set of tusks while males have two. That’s right folks, Pumba is a girl. You can thank me later for crushing your childhood.
• 5 – male giraffes fight each other by slamming their necks and heads into each other. As a result, you can tell if a giraffe is a male by looking to see if it has funny shaped knobs all over its head.
• 6 – There is a creature called a spring hare that is possibly the funniest animal I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s the size of a bunny but has a giant paddle tail and hops around like a kangaroo with his front feet off the ground. If you have never seen one you really need to go online and find a picture. We saw one on a night drive through the reserve and it literally just hopped around in circles in front of the truck – they aren’t the brightest of creatures.
• 7 – The chinspot batis (a south african bird) has a call that sounds exactly like the “Three Blind Mice” song.
• 8 – Baboons usually travel in groups called troops, however occasionally two males will fight for a position as the alpha, and as a result the losing baboon is kicked out of the troop. There is one specific baboon that we named Bobby that was kicked out of his troop by another male and now hangs out around Telekishi. He has been hanging out in the area for years and has never been a problem, but recently he has gotten a bit too close for comfort. We had to go to another building to use the bathroom and we were under strict orders to look out our windows and check for Bobby before going outside at night so that we could avoid being mauled to death by a monkey.
• 9 – The “Big 5” (rhinos, elephants, buffalo, lions, and leopards) are considered the 5 most dangerous animals to hunt. However, hippos are kind of the “honorary Big 6” because hippos alone kill more humans a year than all of the big 5 put together. I always knew they were scary.
• 10 – There is an animal called a hyrax that is nicknamed the rock rabbit. It looks like a large rodent and is brown and fluffy, but it is actually more closely related to elephants than rodents. Who knew that elephants had small fuzzy cousins that spend their time sun bathing on rocks?

The discussions that we had during our volunteer project kind of put me on an emotional roller coaster. I loved learning about how we can be conservative and sustainable to help the earth, but it’s also sad to realize how messed up the earth really is due to human impact. We watched a video called “The Story of Stuff” during one of our discussions that really got me thinking. If you haven’t seen it before, I highly recommend it – typing the title into google brings it up right away. The basic idea of the video is that as humans, we have established a linear process in which we take resources from the earth, turn them into “stuff”, sell the stuff, buy the stuff, and then throw the stuff away. However, having a linear system is not the best plan because we only have a finite amount of resources. It’s sad to think about the fact that this is happening, but the video also talks about how humans are the ones who created the system, so we also have the power to change it. In a way it’s uplifting to think about the fact that we can change it. We just need to have enough people who make small changes in order to eventually make a big change. If everyone says “the actions of one person won’t make a difference”, then we never will. But if everyone believes that it’s possible, I think it would be.

Anyway, another big topic for discussion at Telekishi was conservation of animals. We talked a lot about the poaching of rhinos, which is a very sad reality. They are basically being poached for their horns because some cultures believe that the horns have healing powers. However, I knew about the rhino poaching before my trip. What I didn’t know is that there is also an elephant problem right now, except it’s the exact opposite of the rhino problem. Years ago elephants were starting to die out, and humans worked to save them. However, the efforts worked a little too well. Now there are more elephants in the wild than there ever have been before. Kruger National Park is meant to hold about 7000 elephants and there are currently around 15000. This can be a problem because elephants are obviously pretty huge and have a tendency to knock down trees and be destructive. People have tried to come up with solutions for this but there is no one clear answer. One possibility is culling the elephants, though this is a highly debated issue because it can be seen as inhumane. Another option is transporting some of them from areas with too many elephants to areas that aren’t as populated by elephants, but this can be expensive. Another option is to perform a contraceptive surgery on the elephants so they can’t reproduce in later years, but this can also be costly. It makes me sad to think about the fact that the rhinos are dying out while the elephants are becoming so populated that people are considering culling them. Sometimes life just doesn’t seem fair. But, since humans are a big reason of why these issues are happening in the first place, I like to think that we have the ability to fix it too. I know that this part of my post may seem a bit depressing, but the least I can do for the cause is to let other people know about it. So here I am, sharing my knowledge with you so that you can tell everyone you know and maybe just maybe someone will find a solution to save both the rhinos and the elephants.

Well, there’s my first two weeks in a nutshell. I loved working in the bush and catching glimpses of animals, I loved learning about the animals and about conservation, and I loved being able to spend the two weeks with like-minded people who not only didn’t mind rusty water and cow poo huts, but who embraced it with me. And, I even made it through the whole 2 weeks without being mauled by Bobby the baboon, so I would call that a success. Maybe I’ll be back again some day in the future to see Masebe Nature Reserve as a tourist rather than as a volunteer. I would love for it to reopen some day so that more people can see how awesome it is!

Well, stay tuned for part 2 of my trip, bugs! There’s a lot more to tell you about!

Love,

Laney-Bug ❤

Weekly Whimsy – Challenge Your Limits

Ahh, here we are again, with another weekly whimsy post! And as promised, today will include the story of my first triathlon. So for those of you that either follow this spiffy blog or know me in real life, you are fully aware of the fact that last semester I suddenly became spontaneous and joined the triathlon team at my university, something that no one really saw coming. All throughout high school I never really had the opportunity to participate in sports because I went to a very small school and our extracurricular options were very limited. So when I got to college I decided to try something new… and I definitely got that. I found the tri team and started by going to “just a few practices” to see if I liked it… and then one day I realized that I was pretty much on the team. Pretty much from that moment on I started swimming, biking, and running like crazy in preparation for my first triathlon, which happened last weekend. So I’m going to take this section at a time, because that’s the best way to tell this story.

So for those of you who don’t know much about triathlons, we start with a swim. The swim in this case was 1000 meters, or 40 laps. Simply put, my swim went “swimmingly well”… you see what I did there? Ha. I crack myself up. There were 4 people in my lane and I was the first one out of the water, which really helped to boost my confidence for the rest of the race. On top of this, when the times were released a few days later, I discovered that my swim time was 2.5 minutes faster than it has ever been before! Score! I hadn’t been faster than 19 minutes any time that I had timed my 1000 meter swim prior to the tri, and for the race I only took about 16.5 minutes – clearly I was pumped up for the beginning of the race. There were a few bumps along the way in the swim, mostly because one of the people in my lane was much slower than the rest of us and we all kept getting bunched up into a group behind him. Eventually he realized this was happening and let us pass him, but it happened 2 or 3 different times every time any of us caught up to him again. Overall though, the swim went really well. And my time was still faster than it had ever been before, so clearly I can’t hold too much of a grudge against the slower guy in my lane.

As for the bike…. I definitely experienced some issues. Not only did a bug manage to fly into my face and get stuck between my eyes and my sunglasses on TWO different occasions (seriously, how does that happen?), but I also had to hop off my bike once to put my water bottle in my water bottle holder because apparently the holder is not positioned correctly. I also realized that apparently I don’t drink water enough on my average bike rides because I had never noticed this as a problem before. But the bug and water incidents are nothing compared to what comes next. The entire bike ride is approximately 12 miles long, and just about a mile after the turn-around, I ran over something sharp, and completely blew out my back tire. That’s right – big hole, no air whatsoever. As I was riding I wasn’t completely sure what happened, but what I knew was that I was riding on a flat tire and still had 5 miles left to go. I briefly considered stopping and trying to pump up my tire, but because the flat had happened so suddenly, I had a strong hunch that there was probably a hole in the tire and that pumping it up wouldn’t do anything except waste time. So… I kept riding. At one point I even had to get off and walk my bike for a minute or two because I hit a really steep up-hill and literally couldn’t push my legs hard enough to make the bike move. Once I reached the top of the hill, I hopped back on the bike and kept pushing to the transition area.

So on to the running portion now. At this point you probably expect that I was a bit discouraged. However, it was actually quite the opposite. As I was biking on my flat tire, much slower than the other triathletes around me  with properly inflated tires, I was becoming a bit discouraged. However, once I hit the running portion, I was incredibly proud of myself for getting through the bike despite the obstacles I faced along the way. I was ready to get through the run and pass the finish line knowing that I hadn’t given up. So… I started running. Overall, the run went pretty well. There was one mountain trail that went off of the main level-trail that I didn’t know would be part of the course, so it did throw me a little off-guard and I ended up walking a small portion of it due to my legs being on fire from the previous swim and bike. However, I still ended up being in the fastest half of the recorded run times – which is definitely a success in my book. And even with my small amount of walking, my overall time for the run was still less than 30 minutes – which means that for the 5k run I still ran approximately 10 minute miles. Although a 10 minute mile may be considered slow to some athletes out there, I was barely able to run 2 miles without stopping just 2 months ago, so I was incredibly happy with this.

Crossing the finish line was a pretty amazing feeling. I knew that I had worked hard for this, and that I should be proud of myself. I also finished the entire race in 1 hour and 55 minutes. Considering the fact that nearly half of my bike portion was done on a flat tire, I was very excited that I was under the 2 hour mark. As I passed the finish line I had a few friends waiting on the other side, cheering me on. A good friend of mine showed up to support me, as well as my training partner (who completed the race about 20 minutes before I did), and my coach (who didn’t begin his race until later on that day). I wasn’t sure if anyone would be there as I passed the finish line, so having a few people waiting for me really meant a lot. It didn’t really sink in until a few hours after I had completed the race that I had actually completed my first triathlon. I had been preparing for it for so long that it seemed so strange that it had finally happened.

Alright, alright, so you’re probably wondering what ended up happening with the bike. I got back to the dorm room, inspected the tire, and found that yes indeed – something sharp had leaped out of midair and slashed my tire out of spite. Unfortunately, I am one of those people who rides bikes all the time but knows absolutely nothing about how they work and how to fix them when something goes wrong. I had a spare tube and the equipment to replace the old one, but I had never had to do it before. I spent that evening figuring out how to take out the old tube and put in the new one, a process that included various youtube videos, a few screams, a lot of bike grease EVERYWHERE, help from my roommate, and a break in the middle to reevaluate my life since I appeared to be yelling at a bicycle tire. All in all I ended up getting it fixed, with the help from my swell roommate… or so I thought. Later on that week I went on another ride and it blew out again. So at that point I took it in to a bike shop and figured out that either something had still been stuck in the tire, or it simply hadn’t been inflated enough. However, it’s all good now and the bike is working like a pro again.

Anyway, back to the original quote used for this weekly whimsy post….

Don’t limit your challenges. Challenge your limits. 

This quote really describes my new triathletic adventures. At the beginning of last semester I was barely able to run a mile without stopping. Last summer I had never really had the experience of biking for fitness. And 2 weeks ago I had never swam 1000 meters in less than 19 minutes. I have come so far in such a short amount of time, and I can’t wait to see what I can do next, because I will continue to challenge my limits. Up next… my first open water triathlon in Texas at the end of June. I have given myself a bit of a break this past week, but starting on Monday, it’s back to training for Laney… and I’m ready for it. Bring it on. 😉

Oh and of course I need to provide you guys with a picture of this exciting experience… I hope this inspired some of you to challenge your limits as well, because without challenging your limits, you’ll never know what you’re truly capable of! Thanks for listening bugs! Until next time…

Love, Laney-Bug ❤

Art Marks

Why hello there Bugs! Funny running into you here! It’s been so long!

Okay, okay, so I am just going to come out and say that I am aware of the fact that I haven’t blogged in over a month, despite my seemingly “genius” weekly-whimsy plan. But I have a good excuse. Well, a kind of good excuse. And that excuse is…. that life has been a little crazy lately. Then again, that’s nothing new. So maybe it’s a lousy excuse. I’ll leave that up to your discretion.

At first my blog posts were nonexistent due to the fact that I was actually able to spend time with my family –  one week during their spring break when they came to see me and one week during mine when I went home to see them. It was great to see everyone again but now it’s even harder to get through these last few weeks because I got a little taste of home during break… but I just 4 more weeks left now! Anyway, after getting back from that extravaganza, I pretty much was immediately thrown into pre-finals finals week for 3 weeks in a row; within the last 3 weeks I have literally had 6 tests and a speech to give in my classes. Oh my goodness. That’s college for you. Today was my last big test for another 2 weeks so hopefully life will calm down a little bit now. Well, that is, until ACTUAL finals week. Oh, and on top of all of this my first triathlon was this past weekend! I would love to give you guys more information about that but I actually think I will make another post within the next week dedicated completely to my triathlon story, so for now all you need to know is that I had a terrific time and am already gearing up for my next one in June!

Anyway, let’s talk about some art!

So, do you guys remember when I told you about the online art classes my mom and I have fallen in love with? Well, this is from that! This is the “Artfully Inspired Life 2015” class by Joanne Sharpe and if you like what I’m posting you should definitely look into taking some of her classes! They are simply awesome.

Anyway, I have not completed the March pages yet (even though it’s currently the end of April, eek!), but I HAVE completed my “art marks”. For this lesson we were told to make what are basically watercolored bookmarks, called “art marks”, and also some watercolor pockets. To actually make the page we simply stick the art marks in the pockets and then stick the pockets in the art journal! Super cute idea!

I really enjoyed creating my art marks, I made each of mine represent a different aspect of myself. And plus, I got a lot better at watercoloring throughout this process! I used to always feel like the color went everywhere and I couldn’t control it and color “in the lines”. This project (well, part of a project) was a success because it was a mixture of learning how to control the color a little more AND of being okay with the color not always staying in the lines, which is quite the dilemma for an OCD mind like mine.

Anyway, these were a lot of fun – and I absolutely LOVE the way they came out! I honestly can’t decide which one of the 8 is my favorite, every time I think I’ve made up my mind I end up changing it again.

The bike and running shoes represent the triathlon-and-fitness-loving side of me. Although the bike also kind of represents the fact that I can enjoy a nice bike ride without it being for a “workout” as well, since it’s more of a ride-out-to-the-park-for-a-cute-picnic type of bike than a competition bike. This works out well though because it shows that I can be the type of person to go out for a leisurely ride, as well as the type of person who goes out for a ride intended to be for exercise.

By the way, it took me a long time to get the running shoes to look right – it’s apparently really hard to get the proportions just right when drawing sneakers. Who knew?

The dress represents my girly side – and honestly if this dress existed in real life I would be really excited and buy it in a heartbeat. I love the way the colors came out on this one.

The guitar of course represents my musical side – and although my guitar in real life does not have flower tattoos, you have to admit that they do give the guitar some wicked personality.

The hummingbird I won’t get into too much detail about because it relates to an inside joke among my friends and I, but the basic idea is that it represents my friends because it reminds me of laughing and having fun with them.

You guys have seen enough giraffe pictures on my blog by now… I don’t think I have to explain this one anymore. You are all aware of my obsession by this point.

The snap dragon is pretty straight forward… snap dragons are my favorite flower. If you say that you’ve ever met another flower with more personality than one that can bite your finger off, I won’t believe you.

And lastly we come to the mushrooms. These represent me because they are my two favorite colors, purple and yellow, and of course because they have ladybugs on them. Plus I really enjoy drawing mushrooms for some strange, unknown reason. I find their shape to be whimsical.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy my lovely art marks bugs! Be sure to check out Joanne Sharpe’s online classes if this looks like something you would enjoy 🙂

Also, tell me which one is your favorite! I can’t decide, so I’m interested to see everyone else’s opinions.

Happy arting bugs, keep your heads held high – the semester is ALMOST OVER!

Signing off now,

Love,
Laney-Bug ❤

(Medium used: black Micron .1 pen, Koi watercolors, Proart Watercolor Paper)

Weekly Whimsy – Relax

Why, hello there bugs!

So, we are going to start this week with a short story time.

Once upon a time there was a girl, we will call her Laney, who was known among her family and friends as someone who works incredibly hard most of the time but occasionally has a mental breakdown because of it.

Okay, I won’t tell the whole story in the third person. But you get the point.

So I basically do this thing where I focus like crazy on school and everything is totally fine and I’m doing really well, and then all the sudden in one day it hits me that I haven’t sat down and relaxed for more than 10 minutes at a time for the last 8 weeks. Suddenly I start freaking out and basically have a little mini-breakdown. This usually happens about halfway through each semester. Well… that happened on Monday. And just for the record, today is exactly halfway through the semester, so it happened right on time.

I felt okay Sunday night. I felt a little off but I didn’t think it was much of a problem, I just thought I was tired because I’m in college and that’s part of the deal. That is, until my boyfriend informed me the next day that he was legitimately worried about me because apparently I hadn’t seemed myself when we had skyped the night before. He told me that I had been really distracted, looked physically exhausted, and just seemed stressed and anxious. As soon as he said this I realized he was right. I suddenly realized how tired I was and how stressed out I had been. This was around 8:30 on Monday morning, and I decided to skip my 9:10 weight training class, which is pretty big for me. I never miss class – even weight training. I skipped partially because I didn’t want to do something stupid such as drop a weight on my face due to my anxious state of mind, but also just because I suddenly felt that it was really important for me to go back to the dorm and take a nap. And call my mom.

So I did just that.  My mom talked me down a bit because, well, that’s what moms are for. She did successfully calm me down, but I still felt in over my head. After all, that type of stress won’t go away with one phone call.

My roommate also gave me a hug and told me that it would be alright, which helped as well. It’s amazing how much a simple hug can do.

So at noon I went to my next class of the day, then in my 2-hr break I forced myself to at least try to be productive since I hadn’t been that morning. At 3 I went to my last class of the day, and that night I did a little more studying but mostly let myself relax. I didn’t even go to swim practice, which is also pretty big for me. After swim practice I typically don’t get to bed until 10:30 or 11, and I decided that that probably was not the best decision for me at that point in time.

So, after my studying I did a little bit of art (which I will hopefully be posting about soon), ate the last piece of leftover birthday cake, talked to my boyfriend on the phone, and went to bed early.

However, before going to bed I did one more thing – I looked up quotes about stress on pinterest. Because I’m a teenage girl and you’re not allowed to judge me for the fact that this makes me feel better. The quote I have chosen for this week is one of the quotes that I found that night;

You have enough. You do enough. You are enough. Relax.

This really made me reflect and realize that I could chill out a bit without any severe consequences. I realized that I have high A’s in all my classes right now, but that if I totally stopped studying for my upcoming chemistry test RIGHT FREAKING NOW, that I would still probably get a low A. Of course, I didn’t completely stop studying for it because I am who I am and it is pretty much physically impossible for me to stop studying, but I did decide to cut back a little bit. I realized that as long as I do my best it will all be alright, and I don’t want to push myself so hard that I’m not taking care of myself.

While talking to my mom that afternoon I realized that I hadn’t sat down and done art in about a month. A MONTH. There’s problem #1 right there. Art is a major stress relief for me, so I have now made a mental note to make sure to make time for it. It’s not that I haven’t wanted to do it, it’s just that I’ve been so busy that I haven’t gotten around to it in a while. But it’s important to get some of that stress out of my system!

Another thing I realized about myself is that while exercising and training is also a stress relief for me, I need to balance it with my art time as well. Exercising is a stress relief because it gives me something to focus on for a while and get my mind off of my chaotic life. However, art actually makes me evaluate my troubles and realize that they really aren’t as troubling as I’m making them. Both of these types of stress relief are important for my sanity, and I need to remember to have a balance between the two. Just because I’m training for a triathlon doesn’t mean I can ignore my artful side and just focus on my training. I need to do both, so for now on that is what I will do. For the sake of both my sanity and my happiness.

Anyway, I’m doing much better now – my tests for the week are all over and tonight my family and boyfriend are coming into town and I can’t wait to  see them. Next week I don’t have any big projects or tests for my classes so I plan on focusing on spending time with family and relaxing a bit.

Anyway, keep arting bugs, and stay positive! 🙂

Love,
Laney-Bug ❤

Weekly Whimsy – Surround Yourself

Hello, bugs!

So this week I decided on this quote;

Surround yourself with people who encourage you, inspire you, and believe in your dreams.

I really like this one right now, mostly because it relates to how I’ve been feeling lately. I’ve just been thinking a lot lately about all the people that I have chosen to be a part of my life and why they mean so much to me.

So last week was my birthday and I had some friends throw me a “pseudo-surprise party”, meaning that I knew that I wasn’t supposed to make plans for Friday night and that I should “look pretty”, but that was all I knew prior to showing up. At 6 o’clock my roommate got a text from the party planner, telling her that it was party time and that she should bring me down to the lobby. When we got downstairs I had 6 of my closest college buds waiting for me, most of them dressed in purple in honor of my favorite color. First we went to the school cafeteria for dinner, but made it “fancy” by pulling out a table cloth and some fake candles (you know, to make it classy). Then we headed back to the dorm, and I quickly realized that they had claimed one of the study lounges as a party area and had decorated it with party streamers, paper snowflakes, and a giant “HAPPY BIRTHDAY” sign. The two masterminds of this whole event then brought out the cake, in the shape of a lady bug of course. And since I simply can’t finish this post without showing you guys the cake…

We sat around and ate cake and ice-cream for a while, and I had a present or two to open. While this was going on, they surprised me by skyping my boyfriend and placing the laptop on the table across from me so that he was there with us to celebrate, which was a particularly great surprise. Lastly we watched Frozen, my favorite movie of all time, while singing along VERY loudly. Luckily it was a weekend so the quiet hours of the dorm didn’t start until 11:00, and by this point it was only 8 or 9. No one could stop us. Muahaha.

After Frozen we took some seriously great selfies, and then about 4 of us decided to stick around and do an encore showing of Mulan as well before cleaning up and retiring for the night. Overall it was a whole lot of fun, and it made me realize that I’ve made some pretty great friends in the short amount of time that I’ve been at college. We have all gone through the first-year-of-college traumas together, and for the first time I’m starting to feel like I’m really getting settled into a group again. My high school was super tiny and I was really close to my whole graduating class (“whole” being 20 students – told you it was small), so it was a big transition for me to get to college and not know anyone. I’m really glad I have a group again that I feel a part of.

At one point in the party I also looked around and laughed a little bit about how different we all are. We had 3 people from Montana, 1 from Nevada, 2 from California, 1 from Illinois, and of course me as the Texan. We also had a mix of majors; 1 computer science, 3 wildlife biology, 1 music, 1 pre-law, and 2 exercise science. We all have so many differences yet get along so well and I just think that’s a really cool thing about humans. In general I often think that humans as a whole are pretty stupid, but this is one of the things that I actually think is pretty wonderful.

Anyway, linking back to the quote now. The friends who put this party together did it purely because they wanted to get together with friends and have a good time, and because they wanted to make me feel special on my birthday. Those are the kind of people I want to surround myself with – the ones that do things for other people just because they can and want to. The kind of people who are always there for you no matter what, and the kind of people that you can always count on for a good laugh when you need it. The kind of people who encourage you, inspire you, and believe in you – and in one another.

Well, I kind of got sappy with you today but I suppose that’s okay. After all, it is my blog. So ha.

Oh, and of course I have to share a few of the fantastic selfies with you guys; (one serious and one silly, duh)

Take Home Message: Surround yourself with the people that make you happy!

Love,
Laney-Bug ❤

Weekly Whimsy – Something Good

Hello there, bugs!

I hope everyone is staying warm! I don’t know about you guys, but my college town has been very chilly the last few days! On Sunday I made the mistake of looking outside to judge the weather rather than checking the temperature on my weather app. It looked nice and warm and sunny outside. However, as soon as I walked outside I quickly realized that the appearance of the outdoors deceived me and that I was in fact going to freeze to death while walking 15 meters from the dorm building to the cafeteria. Okay, maybe that was a bit of an exaggeration, but you get the idea. My philosophy is to drink hot chocolate and wear scarves. And run on the indoor track until these absurd temperatures are slightly more tolerable.

Anyway, onto the weekly quote! This week’s quote is about enjoying the little things in life, well at least that’s my interpretation of it; 

Every day may not be good, but there is something good in every day

This one kind of reminds me of the week-long calendar that I posted a few weeks ago from my art journal. It reminded me that while each day may not be super exciting, that every day has at least something good in it. I have pretty much been working on homework nonstop since about last Friday morning (with a few short exceptions here and there), so to cheer myself up from that and clear my brain of chemistry and public speaking class, I am now going to think of something good that I have done each day for the last few days, NOT involving homework;

Friday: Had dinner with a friend that I don’t normally get to see much anymore due to conflicting schedules. It was nice to catch up again.

Saturday: While walking into the dorms, I passed the kitchen and saw some of my friends cooking cinnamon pancakes. They let me steal one. It was wonderful. Also this was the one day I really allowed myself to have some fun by going to the movies in the evening with some girlfriends and consuming popcorn and milk duds. Yum!

Sunday: While tutoring at work, I successfully helped someone with a geometry problem that I am not technically a tutor for, and I felt like a genius for figuring it out!

Monday: Ran my new fastest mile this morning before weight training class – 8:09! Woohoo!

Tuesday: I had a chocolate milkshake with my lunch today. And yes, it was delicious.

Well, this exercise actually makes me feel a little better. Because although 95% of my time was in fact spent doing homework, at least there was something relatively notable in each day that didn’t relate to it. Even if it was as small as a chocolate milkshake. What was your favorite good-moment of the day?

Well, talk to you later bugs! Stay warm!

Love,
Laney-Bug ❤