graduation day.

Well, I did it folks; I graduated from Brigham Young University-Idaho. Now all that’s left is student teaching. It’s a little difficult to set something up like that long distance, so I hope to work on that as soon as possible in New York. 

It was really great that my parents were able to come all the way to Idaho from Michigan for the weekend. Not only were they able to attend my graduation, but they were a tremendous help with packing the car and cleaning the apartment. It was nice to see and spend time with them after a very long year.

I was happy to graduate with my friends that I have met in my classes over these past three years. I’m not going to lie, the best friends were definitely made my last two semesters, which makes it harder to say goodbye. 

It’s quite a relief to be finished with college. When Jason and I first started talking about getting married, we realized there was a slight issue with him graduating in the Spring of 2011 because if I kept attending school two semesters a year, I’d be done two years after him. This meant I had to start going year-round. It was kind of stressful to attend college six straight semesters with only a seven-week break in the summer to get married, but by doing this, Jason only had to wait a year in Rexburg. Luckily, he had an awesome job to keep him occupied, as well as keeping busy with finalizing plans for Graduate School at NYU and figuring out the logistics of relocating to New York.

It’s weird to think that the next time I am in a classroom it will be to teach. I really learned a lot from my courses and I feel like they have adequately prepared me for the actually task of teaching. The thought of having my own classroom with my own students just makes me more excited and I can’t wait for what’s next. We left Rexburg on the 22nd of July and started our road trip to Michigan (where we'll be staying for about a week) and then move into our apartment in Westchester, New York.

a day for hemmingway.

     A few weekends ago, Jason told me he really wanted to visit the grave of one of his favorite authors: Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway’s grave just happens to be in the town of Ketchum, Idaho. I think Jason would have been really disappointed if we had left Idaho without visiting, so we hopped in the car and made the 3-hour drive. 
     When we were in the actual cemetery, we had fun looking for Hemingway’s headstone. We read on a website that it was between two trees, but that’s all we really knew. Luckily, the cemetery wasn’t very big and there weren’t too many trees. Although we were the only people visiting the site that day, you could tell by the amount of pennies placed on the gravestone that many people visit. We wondered what the pennies represented, so I looked it up. It can mean many different things; the most common traditions or superstitions are for good luck or to show that someone had visited. It is also an old tradition that people would be buried with coins to pay the toll in the underworld to cross the River Styx. I’m not sure what exactly the coins represented, but from their appearance you can tell that Hemingway is still sought out and loved.

Ernest Hemingway's grave

     After listening to Jason tell me a little bit about Hemingway’s life, he sat by one of the trees and began to read a short story written by Hemingway: A Clean and Well-Lighted Place. When he was finished, we took one last look at the place that marked the life of Ernest Hemingway and said our goodbyes. 
     Ketchum is a beautiful ski town that sits beneath Bald Mountain and many of the people that visit aren’t from Idaho or even the United States. It was enjoyable to sit down on the patio of an Italian restaurant, Rico’s, we had never heard of and listen to the conversations of those around us. Before leaving Ketchum, we stopped at the Cold Springs Bridge because Jason, of course, had to take a closer look. This type of bridge is called a Pegram bridge. They were used for the rail system and there are only seven Pegram bridges left in the United States, six of which are in Idaho. We enjoyed the peacefulness of the river flowing under us, the butterflies all around us, and the bikers passing by.

Rico's

Cold Springs Bridge

     About an hour into our drive home, we stopped by Craters of the Moon. This is a well-known place in Idaho and is the largest mostly Holocene-aged basaltic lava field in the lower United States. We didn’t stay long, but we did look across the fields of rocks and dust. Jason said he felt like we were in some sort of post-apocalyptic movie.

Craters of the Moon