July Reads and how life is funny.

Not all that exciting of a post but I have a few things I feel like writing down. Since we have been consuming books like crazy at our house I’ve been meaning to write a little about them, so I can remember what I thought of them when I’m thinking of reading them again. Plus I like hearing about good books and what others are reading, so hopefully this interests somebody….

first up: Lunch in Paris by Elizabeth Bard

4 out of 5. This book was made for me. Recipes and falling in love in Paris, how can you go wrong? This was fun to read, basically just an autobiography of her building a life in Paris. The descriptions of the city and the food made me want to hop on a plane and fly to Paris that day.  The recipes are mostly things I would probably never attempt to make but they were tied into the storyline ex. what they had on their first date, the first meal her husband made her, etc. pretty cute.

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

4 out of 5.  or 3.5 I cant decide. this book has been widely read and highly reviewed. I was excited to read it and see what all the fuss was about.  The book was very well written, beautiful descriptions of life in the circus years ago. although the story was really interesting overall the language and **adult content** in the book was just a little to mature for me…. I’m kind of a sissy.

my antonia by Willa Cather

 

5 out of 5. most people read this book in junior high or high school, but I had never read it. I needed a book to read in Yellowstone and this was what I found. this was a beautiful story, so well written and you really fall in love with the characters. it was interesting to read about the midwest so many years ago. classic read for anyone.

POISONWOOD BIBLE by Barbara Kingsolver

5.5 out of 5.  this is the book me and mckay chose to read together this month. We both loved it. I read this book back in high school and was excited for mckay to read it. This is one of those books that you think about days after reading it, one of those books we have had multiple conversations about. I cant recommend it enough. its long, 649 pages in fact. but it’s worth every single page. The story is about the Price family whose father is a minister. He takes his family to the Congo in the 60’s intent on baptizing as many Congolese as he can. The story is told through the perspectives of the mother, and four daughters. This style of writing helped develop each character individually, which made us feel more emotionally invested in the story. love love love.

on to another matter of business.  people have been asking us about Grad School and what our plan is so for those of you who are still curious I will explain. it’s been quite the process.

Back in January Mckay applied to a number of Graduate Schools for both Chemical Engineering and Nuclear Engineering Programs. In April we slowly started to hear back from a few schools and after awhile we still couldn’t figure out what was taking all the other schools so long to make a decision. While we were still waiting for answers from several schools we started hearing a few things. From people who worked in Academics all over the country we learned that Congress had cut funding for the sciences. Because of this lack of funding professors aren’t getting the money they need to do their research and the Universities can’t afford to accept as many students as they had in the past. (Science programs usually pay their students since they are benefiting from their research.) In fact we heard that a lot of professors were going to schools in Europe where there is better funding for research. We were pretty discouraged to hear this since research is primarily what Mckay wants to do. It’s also disappointing that the government doesn’t view scientific research as very much of a priority. Anyways, so schools weren’t accepting as many students and with the recession a lot of people were leaving the field and applying to get more schooling. We heard that all this made it at least 5 times harder to be accepted into programs this year.  - another issue. The nuclear crisis in Japan made the future of Nuclear power very unpredictable in the United States. so, pursuing a doctorate in Nuclear Engineering would be a little risky, Mckay might not have the same opportunities as he would with Chemical Engineering.

So after a long, and very anxious wait we finally heard back from everybody. We did get into a few great programs, but in the end none of them felt right for our family. And so, just when we thought we were leaving BYU forever, life threw us back into Cougar-land for another 2 years. (poor Mckay…) Mckay has been working for a company run by some professors at BYU. They asked him to stay on with them to continue doing work and research for them and they would put Mckay through BYU’s Chemical Engineering Masters program.  At the end of the program Mckay will apply for a doctorate again. cross your fingers for us : ) After all is said and done we’re grateful for how things have worked out. Of course we were looking forward to experiencing Graduate School outside of Provo,  but we have faith that this is the right decision for our family right now. There are benefits to staying here for sure, the main one is that we get two more years living close to our families. major plus for mr. henry. and us. so we’ll be around for a couple more years, let us know if you want to play! : )