Thursday, September 18, 2008

Pray the Devil Back to Hell

I am the film and lecture series chair at my college and this film - Pray the Devil Back to Hell - was our opening film in our series for this year called "Be the Change." So I thought I'd share my thoughts.

The movie was intense and eye-opening. There were graphic scenes from war torn Liberia that made you cringe and the stories that the women told were horrific. Even with all that, it was divinely uplifting, especially for women. The women of Liberia non-violently ended the civil war that was killing their children and making soldiers and rapists of their boys. It was inspiring to see how these ordinary women forced the war lords who were ripping their country apart to begin peace talks, and when those peace talks became stagnant, they forced them to come to a close and sign the peace agreement. Then, they worked to elect the first woman president in Africa who is rebuilding their country and keeping peace. These women took control of their country and changed the direction of their society, their story is incredible.

You can check out the widget above for more information. I tried putting it in this note but something in the code isn't compatible or something... very annoying.

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Sunday, September 14, 2008

My ill-fated last camping trip

This story happened the last weekend of summer.

I bought a truck on Thursday for $400 from a neighbor. It's an old '89 Mazda b2200. It's really cute ha ha, I seriously fell in love with it - probably just because it's my first car and my friends were all saying "oh, you're Bella" (from the Twilight series ha ha).

That Saturday, a couple of my friends and I thought it would be fun to get one last camping trip in over labor day weekend before school started. I worked late that night but we were planning on just going up and sleeping in the back for the night. We bought some snacks, put some foam mattresses in the back and grabbed our pillows and headed out. We decided to just go up Farmington canyon and find a place to park.

Well, at the base of the Farmington canyon, of course there is a cop parked right there. He was off to the side of the road so I pulled passed him, just waiting for something to go wrong. Yep, as soon as I passed, his lights went on. Grrr. So he comes up to my window and I'm like "What's the problem?" He said the light over my license plate was out. Ok. Then he asks for my license and notices that my license is from Utah and my plates are Idahoan. I hadn't gone to the DMV to get my truck registered yet, 1. because I was stupid and thought that there was some sort of grace period and 2. because they are closed Fridays now, so I couldn't have done it anyways. So he cites me for driving with improper plates and having no insurance because I didn't have my card with me and then is "nice" for giving me a warning on the light issue.

He asks me to get out of the truck to explain the citation to me. We walk to the back of the truck and he has me sign and everything. He says he's being nice by not impounding my car. So stupid. Then he is like, "When is the last time you smoked weed?" I was like what? I told him I don't smoke. Then he's like "Who's in your car?" and I'm like "my friends." He asks me when they last smoked or if they ever smoke and then he wants to search my truck. So I was like whatever. So he searches my truck. He only searched the cab and my friend was joking, "ha ha, sucker, the weed is in the back!" (not loud enough for him to hear of course). But it was really dumb.
And so I went to traffic court and have a pre-trial conference in October. Ridic.
O and just to make things even better, I get in an accident with my dad's car later that week! It was the other guy's fault. Basically, he did a U-turn into my side. Ugh. Such is life I guess ha ha. It's totally my luck.

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