In June, Emily moved to LA for her residency in anesthesiology at UCLA. Most of my family went with her to help her move in. She and my mom had found a really nice, albeit expensive ($1600 a month!), one-bedroom apartment in Westwood a couple weeks before. It's right off Santa Monica Boulevard and very near the LA Temple. The picture to the left was taken on the Sunday after they had moved her in. If you've never seen the LA Temple, it is in a very prominent location on a busy street and, as you can tell from the picture, it's beautiful. What temple isn't beautiful? Well, perhaps the Provo Temple, but I won't get into that!
Anyway, my mom went to LA last week to visit Emily. Last Thursday afternoon she was driving back to Emily's apartment when she was detoured. Santa Monica Boulevard was completely shut down in front of the temple because of the protesters who were upset about Prop 8 passing. My mom described the scene as being very organized, considering the nature of the event. The police had about 5 helicopters above the temple, motorcycle police barricading streets, and a SWAT team in full riot gear in case anything broke out. She didn't venture too near because the protesters had some pretty vile posters about the church and she felt kind of scared. I'm not going to post any of those pictures on my blog, but if you're interested, go
here. It's a Mormon website that has some pictures of the protest and a few articles, one of which is written by a cop in LA who happens to be Mormon.
After observing some of the protesters on the news and reading news articles about this, I'm still confused as to what the protesters are trying to accomplish. They are protesting because they are upset with the outcome of a vote. If we all acted this way when we didn't like the result of a vote, I, along with 58 million other Americans, would be protesting Barack Obama. The gay marriage issue was voted on before in California and the California Supreme Court threw it out. I guess that's what these protesters want done again, but how is that constitutional? Why should a judge be able to go against the people?
As a Mormon, I completely support my church in their effort to pass this proposition. I think it's great that so many members, most of whom live in California, donated time and money to get the word out. Unfortunately, that has made our church a target, even though Mormons were but a small percentage of the people who voted for the proposition. Some think the church shouldn't have gotten involved, but I believe the leaders of the church have foresight that the rest of us don't have. They know what this could mean and what effect, if not passed, it could have on the church in the future. I, for one, am going to put my trust in them.
Here's my bed and my desk.
Here's the view of my bed from my door. This is what you would see when you entered.
Here's the view from the window. You can see my full desk as well as my dressers, which I've had since I was a little girl.
Here's the view from my bed. The door to the left of the TV goes out to the hallway and the main house. The door to the right goes into my bathroom, but I'm not posting any pictures of that because it's messy!
Lastly, here's a closeup of my desk. If you look on the top shelf you will see the Williraye Nativity set that my mom gave me last year.
