Craters

Dear Sis. Johnson the Greatest,

I'm so glad to hear that you're working so hard and having such great success. It sounds like you've hit your stride as a missionary, and you know what that means! Soon, the Lord is going to throw you a massive curve ball.

It sounds like setting all those goals and doing all that planning really paid off. Keep up the good work and keep annoying your companions with your cool laser pen. It's totes true, though, that the Lord is in control of your timing and puts you not just where you need to be, but sometimes infinitely more important, when you need to be there.

Things that are happening here: well, last week was fun. Daniel and I went to swimming in the hot-spring created crater in Midway on Thursday. He got a groupon from his sister for Christmas. It was fun. The water was the perfect temperature, and there were lots of people doing their scuba certification stuff there. I can take pictures underwater with my new phone case. That was probably the funnest part.

On Friday, we had a full night. We went to see "The Importance of Being Earnest," which was good, but not as good as the movie with Reese Witherspoon, Collin Firth and them all, but still hilarious and a riotous good farce. I love that play. Then, we went and ate delicious tacos, went climbing and hung out. Quite a good evening.

Saturday Daniel was working, so I went to a Jerusalem Center reunion with Brooke and then did some shopping because I'm going to be in DC this month for a conference, which should be neat! There's an American Society for Public Administrators, and they have an annual conference, which is in DC this month. I applied to be a fellow, and got accepted, so I get to go for FREE!! 

I can't believe how fast time is flying. The semester is more than half over, and I'm going to be out of town most of March. Oh yeah, I'm going to Costa Rica with my economics of international development class March 22-30. We're going to be consulting some NGOs down there on best ways ti implement their policy objectives based on research that we've done. Cool, eh?!

The trip came as a total surprise when our econ professor was explaining our last project for the semester was to work with NGOs in the field. He said we had two options: one was to stay here and work with this local NGO and the other was to work with one of five NGOs in Costa Rica. We all freaked out  pretty hard core as he went on to explain that the Ballard Center was subsidizing our trip, and that we only have to pay $300 for the whole week.

WHAT?! So, I'll tell you all about Costa Rica. I'm working on my Spanish now, too, but it's pretty rusty/non-existent.

Sunday was a great fast Sunday and stuff, and the rest of the week was pretty much me running around madly trying to do everything that I need to for school.

Your quote this week is from the "Importance of Being Earnest" when Algy is explaining "Bunburying" to Jack in the first act, "The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility!"

I love you!

Tonya

P.S.The first pic is a pic of a solar flare taken with different types of cameras.

The second is me and Daniel underwater