Navajo Nation

I got to spend the month of May on the Navajo Reservation with the nursing program. We worked in the hospital and also out in the community doing teaching, car seat clinics, health fairs, research, etc. It was a pretty cool experience! We also got to do a lot of awesome sight seeing in Canyon de Chelley and the surrounding areas.

We started off the trip by going to Four Corners. I've always wanted to go there but it turned out to be pretty anticlimactic! Just a plaque in the ground in the middle of the desert, kind of! As usual, my favorite part of the trip was watching the other tourists instead of the actual site, so here are two of my favorite tourist shots! Some Europeans with their monster cats on leashes, and, to my surprise, a big group of Chinese tourists! My question is WHAT in the world motivated them to choose THIS place, of all places to visit in America?? It's at least 6 hours away from anything else noteworthy. Maybe it's just me. Moving on.

Canyon de Chelley was right in the backyard of our hotel so we spent the first few days hiking before we started in on our nursing duties. Here are some shots of the canyon. The first picture is of what they call Owl Rock because the two rocks next to each other look like Owls.

We went a little off one of the trails to hike up into this cave - it was pretty sweet in there. Lots of wall paintings. Here's the far view vs the close up.

This one is called Spider Rock and the picture can NOT do it justice! It was this ENORMOUSLY tall, narrow rock in the middle of NOTHING. It was amazing.

This was probably not safe... and I am terrified of heights... but worth a good picture!

Our instructor was about to pee her pants. Don't worry, no one fell off the cliff!

Some of the wall paintings and ruins we saw.

We got to see a junior rodeo one weekend (huge part of the culture there) and this was my favorite event BY FAR! It was for the 5 years and under age group. Sheep riding! (Instead of bulls!) It was SO cute and funny to watch these tiny tiny kids running around on sheep, holding on for dear life. Sheep actually run a lot faster than you would think. The kids never actually stayed on for long enough for me to get a real picture, but here are the older guys herding the runaway sheep back in. SO cute.

Here a few pictures from the actual nursing part of the trip, but I didn't take very many. The first one is what my shoes looked like every day coming home after working out in the community. Most of the roads are dirt roads and if it rains you're in trouble! The second one is me and another student/friend Jocilyn with the only elderly Navajo we met who spoke English! He was hilarious. The rest of the time we had to use our very limited Navajo skills and translators. :) The Navajo language is VERY, VERY complicated.

We taught a Stake Young Women's Girls' Camp activity and taught them all CPR, First Aid, and other good things for their girls' camp pass offs. That was one of my favorite parts - the girls were so adorable. We also did an awesome Stake Relief Society Health Fair and taught mostly about diabetes, but of course I didn't take any pictures.

One of the days I was at the hospital was National Nurses' Day, so I participated in the Nursing Olympics in the parking lot! I brought home 2 solid second place ribbons in the bed pan relay and the wheelchair race! Woot woot. Makin' the family proud.

Here are a couple random shots: I found a Navajo specific AIDS pamphlet in the hospital that just made me laugh really hard for some reason. You can't really appreciate the details from this picture, I guess, but the looks on their faces are so hilarious. Also, the pregnant woman is about 80 years old, and the drug needle is glowing fire. ??? Awesome. Anyway. Jocilyn and I also ran a 5K through the desert! Up and down sandy hills the whooooole time!

We went to the Hubbell Trading Post National Historic Site, which was about half an hour away from us. I saw my first prairie dog there! I also bought some REALLY good salsa.

We went from there to Window Rock, AZ to see the Code Talkers' monument and hike up to Window Rock.

We also met a woman through one of the community health nurses who invited us over to her house and taught us to make some traditional Navajo foods. This is Elsie making blue corn mush, one of their most traditional meals. She's stirring it with a group of sticks that I know have some sort of meaning... but I'm a bad person and can't remember exactly what anymore. The woman, Mary, made sure that none of us were on our periods before she let us help with the meal because in their culture, if a menstruating woman cooks, the meal will turn to water! After you stir, you are supposed to face east and hold the sticks upright and pray for your family's health and for the food and for whatever else you need.

Here we are eating the blue corn mush, looking happy, although to be honest I was pretty nauseous after that. Probably because one of the main ingredients is tree bark burnt into ashes. The second picture is of Mary and the nurse who introduced us to her, Ernie, showing us how to choose the best corn.

Our last fun adventure was going over to the school nurse's hogan to make Navajo tacos! This is their hogan (traditional Navajo housing). I learned how to make my very own fry bread.

GREAT trip! I was happy to get home, though!

SPRING! :D

"In the spring I have counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of weather inside of four and twenty hours." Did Mark Twain live in Salt Lake? Because the weather in April, May, and June this year has been alllll over the place! Geez, Utah, make up your mind! It is June 19th. I wore a coat today. Not cool.

Anyway.

APRIL

Started off with a visit from my dad (from Hong Kong) and my brother, sister-in-law, and niece (from Indiana) for Conference weekend! We schooled my dad repeatedly at card games, ate lots of good food, and I personally spent most of my time drooling over cute Minnie! Minnie also met her cousin Elliot for the first time, and in true Minnie fashion just sat there and stared at her while Elliot poked and kicked and played with her.

April also hosted one of our only double dates EVER. We are hermits sort of so this is a big deal. It was with our friends Julie and Leo. Julie and I are in the same semester in nursing school and met that way, and Nelson and Leo graduated from the business school at the same time and they knew each other that way. It took us forever to figure out the connection. The best part is that they will be moving to San Jose with us when Julie and I graduate in December since Leo and Nelson somehow ended up working for the same company, in the same office even, after graduation. SO nice to know someone before we even get there! Love them.

We made each other out of candy - here is everyone with their candy selves. Notice that Leo apparently thinks Nelson has a huge muffin top! (This continues to haunt him. Paranoia.)

We spent Easter with Nelson's family. Love them! I got to join in the tradition of lining up in order of ascending height to run into the living room for the Easter egg hunt. Although actually Preston totally squirmed his way in front of me! Maybe it's order of ascending age... ?? And I think Josh got in front of the line too (he's definitely not the shortest or the youngest)... BOYS. Meanwhile, Nelson had a grand ol' time making up his OWN tradition... THE EASTER PIRATE. We still don't know what the Easter Pirate does... but here's a picture. ? :)

The winter semester FINALLY came to a close, and my nursing semester had a huge sleepover in one of the girls' cabin in Midway to commemorate our last real didactic semester! In the fall we'll all be doing capstone at different hospitals and hardly see each other, so it was a much needed celebration. We played pin the needle in the bootie, guess which faculty member was taped on your back, which was HILARIOUS in many cases (thus the name tags... we didn't wear actual name tags...), and beat a pinata representing all the things we hate about nursing school. Oh, and also I was introduced to Wii dancing and I don't know how I lived my whole life without it. *If you own this game, please invite me over.*

And last but certainly not least, we celebrated Wendy's wedding! (Nelson's sister) So exciting! We spent the day before the wedding making sure everything was in order.

Last minute touch ups on the dress. Beautiful!

Brooke, Julie, and I waited and chatted outside. Fun to get some girl time in.

Then we had the immediate family wedding dinner that night and Wendy asked Nelson to make her a cake for the occasion. I guess as kids they would always make each other extravagant cakes out of funfetti mix... SO we did our best to make a Lake Powell cake! It turned out SO well...

Despite our preventative measures, the cakes wouldn't come out of the pans.

Kennedy and Preston weren't too upset about it.

So we did what any respectable person would do in this situation. Combine the crumbles from both pans, smear the frosting on top with our fingers, and add a lego boat.

Pretty! It says "Happy Wedding" in case you can't tell...

Do you see the Lake Powell resemblance?

Luckily, they laughed. The funny thing was that a lot of people still ate it...

The wedding day itself was perfect!

Aren't they cute?

The rest of the time we just enjoyed being with family!

I love this picture: Liam, Gianna, and Josh are all getting piggy backed to lunch from the temple grounds by Kennedy, Brad, and I. Classic.

And then... we finally bought kitchen chairs, a couch, and a washer and dryer for our apartment (eight months later...) and then April ended. Yippy.