Battalion in my mind

Martha, who always has a great idea.

At the Battalion we give tours from a script.  We use our own words, but there are things we all say.  I hear the first room all day long so things stick in my mind.  The Sisters will give the tour a minimum of 1000 times while on their missions, usually much, much more.  So these sayings creep over into our everyday lives.  For example, one line in the script is, “Great idea, Martha!”  This means none of us, not one, can say, “great idea” without adding “Martha” at the end, at least in our minds.  That will probably last forever.

At the very beginning of the tour, the pictures hanging on the wall start to talk.  The picture of Ephraim starts to sing a song that you hear throughout the tour.  One of his lines is about the song and how it gets stuck in his head.  It happens!  We have all had that song stuck in our heads for days at a time.  We wake up in the middle of the night with that song stuck in our heads.  We can relate, Ephraim.  But I think all of us would like a CD of the music that plays throughout the tour.  It is nice music.  And it does have staying power!

Ephraim has a song stuck in his mind.

We can all quote what the people in the frames say verbatim.  One day it was so funny.  There was a technical glitch and the tour went down for a little while.  The Sisters decided to make their own tour and so stood in front of the frames and quoted everything the people in the frames would have said.  They could all do it.  Craig came in and played the Colonel perfectly.  I wish I had videoed it.  Maybe one day when summer is over and everything slows down, I can do that.

The Battalion tour is full of great quotes.  How about this one, “Despite the difficult circumstances, we chose to be happy.”  Good life lesson.  Or, “Sometimes you need faith to make a decision, sometimes you need it after.”  And I love this one, “God gave us what we needed most from where we least expected it.”

We have been having a LOT of tours of Chinese students who are learning English come through.  We have a couple of tours of them several days a week.  Sixty of them came through on Thursday.  These students are 12 and 13 and are from Guanzhou.  If we have a Mandarin speaking Sister on shift, she can give the tour, but if not they get the video in Mandarin and the tour guide speaks English.  It is kind of tricky for the Sisters to know exactly when to speak to the videos since it is in Mandarin, but our Sisters are champs and can do anything.

Balboa Park has at least 15 museums.  Every Tuesday several of them are open to area residents for free.   We decided to go last Tuesday.  First we went in the San Diego Air and Space museum.  We thought it was great.  So did the zillions of families and day camps that joined us there!  We knew it would be busy.  They had some cool exhibits.  Then we went to the San Diego Automotive museum.  That had some pretty neat old cars and motorcycles.  And a display all about Steve McQueen.  There weren’t quite as many people there.  Finally, we went to the San Diego Hall of Champions.  Not a lot of people there, but it was interesting.  It was a fun day.

 We have been getting phone calls for weeks asking if we’d be doing anything special for Pioneer Day on the 24^th of July commemorating when Brigham Young and the first group of pioneers came in to Salt Lake Valley.  Sorry, but no.  The Mormon Battalion was just finishing up their year enlistment in California then.  Our Director and his wife did buy pizza for us all, though.  The Sisters appreciated that!

Lots of sea lions sunning themselves in La Jolla.

Comic Con

After spending P day morning in La Jolla, we drove to Downtown San Diego for lunch.  We ate on the patio and were able to see many people coming and going to Comic Con at the Convention Center.  I wish we had taken more pictures of people in costume.

 This week we spotlight Sister Hafer from Utah who is just as pretty on the inside as she is on the outside.  She attended Utah State with an undeclared major, although she is leaning toward Social Work.  She enjoys skiing, lacrosse and playing the violin. She is Spanish Speaking and has been out nearly 2 transfers.  She is very kind and is always looking for ways to help.  And she smiles a lot!