So Long, Farewell, Auf Wedersehen, Adieu to You & You & You

"If you feed your faith, your fear starves." --unknown

Well, many of you know that I'm about to leave you very soon, but don't be sad! I'm trying to keep myself together and I'm surprised by how calm & tranquil I've been. I'm going on my mission to Berlin! I fly out tommorrow and I report to the MTC on Wednesday. And I'm 90% packed!

For those who don't know what I mean, I'm serving a religious mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for 18 months; I'll basically travel all over the northern part of Germany and talk to people about my religion and serve them however I can. It's very exciting, but I'm well aware of wonderful things (and people...) that I'll be without for those 18 months.

So if you're slightly (or maybe not slightly) wondering why I'll be radio silent for so long, it's not because I have nothing to say, that's for sure! You can still follow me and my adventures by clicking on the cute German flag to your right! :)

Thank you all for your comments and for reading my venting or geek-out sessions. I'll be picking up where I left off as soon as I return, I promise!

Have an adventure everyday!

"21-year-old Me", Meet "high school Me"

“I was outnumbered, unarmed, weak, and screwed. In that order.”  Jennifer Lynn Barnes' Raised by Wolves

Well, it’s sort of been a while since I’ve written, and I have a very good reason for stalling! It’s a big under-construction post that will be coming your way, I promise! Just a reminder, the poll is still going until July 1^st! But…I’ll probably just extend it anyway.

With such a long time here at home away from school, I’ve been cleaning through my things to get rid of things that I don’t really use anymore, while having a very interesting experience looking at the middle school/high school me. I’ve already blazed through 3 years of college and it’s amazing how much I’ve changed and it’s sort of weird; time can feel so short and so long at the same time.

One of the things I found was this silly book called The Totally Righteous, Awesomely Cool, Simply Outrageous List Book. Yeah, blast from the past, huh? It’s a book where they have a bunch of lists of like top 10 this, all-time favorite that, most of which, if not all of them are just as corny as the title of said book. No wait, it gets better! It comes with stickers—with phrases like “the bomb!”, “as if!” “phat!” and “not even!” Let’s just say I never got around to really filling out every last list.

It just floors me how much pleasure I get out of making lists—and if it’s a “to do” list, I get a kick out of crossing things off! Woot! One list that sort of floored me was this list I wrote in the back of things I wanted to be when I “grow up” or really, things I wanted to accomplish while I’m alive and ready to live. Here’s the list:

I want to be a:

• novelist
• mother/wife
• world traveller
• graduate
• musician
• missionary
• artist

These goals sure haven’t changed!  It’s crazy to think that I’m getting really close to accomplishing all of these things! Heck, I’m going on a mission to Berlin in less than 6 weeks!  Every time I think about it, I feel so grateful that I’m finally accomplishing one of my biggest goals I’ve ever set for myself. Granted, it seems a little scarier than I imagined as a kid, but I’ve spent so much of my life telling others that I had what it took to serve and that I could handle the pressure and reach out to complete strangers, and here’s my change (finally!) to make that possible and make the ones I love proud of me.

However, now that I’m thinking about it, I feel like I need to update this list to make it slightly more specific and yet things I’ve been thinking about adding to the list. They’re not in any particular order, just in order of subconscious thinking:

• be the best sister missionary I can be
• not be frustrated while re-learning German
• publish DS [my affectionate nickname for my novel]
• be a [published] writer
• get a job as an editor, somehow wheedle myself into the publishing business
• graduate from college!
• keep this blog going
• get married/be an awesome mom & wife
• keep in touch with as many friends as I can
• keep travelling! I just cannot stop!
• be the best hip-hop dancer I can be
• go to a renaissance fair WITH a homemade costume!
• choreograph a full song’s worth of MOVES.
• Huske danske efter min mission, ellers lærne igen!
• try to not compare myself to others (there’s gotta be a plus for being a “jack-of-all-trades”)
• host more parties (when I get back to Provo)
• get far enough as a writer that people actually know who I am and yet don’t berate my work like so many people have with Twilight.

I think that’s a good start; I’m good at adding onto these sorts of things. Just after writing this past sentence, I added 2 or 3 to the list! I’m tellin’ you, it’s like a crazy twitch! Do you have a bucket list? If so, share it w/ me, it might give me some great ideas! It’s amazing that as kids we dream so big, and what’s even more amazing is how willpower can really get us there, despite how crazy the world and life can get.

P.S. I couldn’t end this blog w/o sharing a ridiculous list I wrote in the back of this book. I wrote it w/ a great friend of mine Karin Allred (affectionately called ‘Charlotte Blackwood’ as well) and it’s called:

Things NOT to do on a Plane:

1.  Move your seat back and forth when the person behind you has food on their tray.
2. Open your carry-on and whisper loudly, “got enough air?”
3. Get up frequently to go to the bathroom if seated by the window.
4. “Test” the help button—just to make sure it works.
5. Claim to your neighbor that you made the plane and keep saying, “it’s not supposed to do that!”
6. Laugh constantly during the in-flight movie.
7. Remind your neighbor, “As my mom always says, what comes up must come down!”
8. Make a point of showing your neighbor your fake gun in your pocket.
9. Constantly open and close the small tray in front of you.
10. Bring a hamster
11. Mimic the safety procedures
12. Steal others’ bags of peanuts.

I'm not sure if we actually came up w/ all of these or were under the influence of the internet, but we were rather creative back in the day [if not still to this day!]

Deets on the Mission Address

Okay, so if you've been living under a rock, or don't have a Facebook (nuance, really) I'm serving a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in

BERLIN, GERMANY.


Yeah. Fan-flippin'-tastic, right??


Everybody's wanting the deets on the address so that they can write to me later (but seriously, I haven't left yet, so you can still talk to me. I'm talking to all those people who say that they'll write me but I haven't heard a thing from 'em since finals ended!)


But seriously, I have the addresses, so here they are! I'll also post it on my FB for those who are silly and haven't discovered this budding blog.

This is my MTC address! You'll probably need it from August-end of October-ish.

Sister Whitney Olsen                                          

Germany Berlin Mission

Provo Missionary Training Center

2005 N 900 E
Provo, UT 84604
United States

This is the big mission address! It might be changed with time, so stayed tuned.

Sister Whitney Olsen

Germany Berlin Mission

Zerbster Strasse 42

12209 Berlin

Germany

It floors me how supportive everyone is of my mission and I'm so grateful for my family & friends; I've been wanting to be a missionary for a long time and they're all there for me. I just hope I'll be a good missionary!