Day 9 - 10 people who have influenced me

April challenge
Day 9 - List 10 people who have influenced you and describe how.

Only 10? Really? OK, here it goes. (These are going to be in no particular order again, just as I think of them.)

1. My parents. They are, without a doubt, the most influential people in my life so far. Their careful guidance and support throughout the years has definitely moulded me into the person I am today.
2. My grandparents. Even though I didn't get to know my paternal grandparents as well as my maternal ones, I have wonderful memories of Sabbath lunches at their small house with the interesting backyard. My Grandpa Q. was always going to auctions and buying new and interesting, and probably most of the time not-very-useful, stuff. But we always thought it was great fun to root around the toy box in the living room and find new acquisitions whenever we came over for a visit. The items around the backyard were fun to play with, too. There are pictures of us climbing and playing around the big willow tree (the site of one of my first bee stings), pretending to ride the old rusty bicycles leaning against the garage, and pulling each other in the wooden wagons. And of course the always-filled glass candy dish on a bookshelf near the living room always held a lot of appeal for us youngsters as well. One of my favourite and most cherished memories of my Grandma Q. was on one Sabbath afternoon (or maybe another day, but we seemed to mainly go there to visit on Sabbath's and holidays). That candy dish was tantalizing, but I was too scared to pop open the lid and grab a piece myself. I walked back and forth in front of the dish with a hungry look on my face while the ladies were preparing Sabbath lunch in the nearby kitchen. I think my parents told me not to get any ideas because I should eat my lunch first before scarfing down any candy. But later, when no one was looking, my Grandma Q. showed up, gave me a knowing and conspiratory smile, and sneaked me a piece or two of candy. I kept that special secret for quite some years before sharing it with my parents. And I'm quite sure I ate a hearty plate of Grandma's amazing gluten steaks despite the couple pieces of candy. And then there's my maternal grandparents, the set I was much closer to after my Grandma Q. died when I was eight. They only lived a 5 minute bike ride away from our house and I have so many great stories of my times of them babysitting me and my siblings while our mum went out to do errands. I remember the great sandbox/play house my Grandpa W. built with the help of my cousin. The wonderful canned peaches my Grandma W. served at many meals. The fun Christmas Eve's exchanging gifts with our relatives at their house. Oh, so many things. They were always my biggest fans and still are!
3. My grade four teacher, Mrs. Halravich (no idea how to spell her name anymore...). I will always remember post-lunch-hour reading time in her class. She introduced me to so many of my all-time favourite books and for that I will always be grateful.
4. My grade five teacher, Mr. C. He was my first male teacher and in my opinion he did a great job. My favourite memory from his class was a social studies unit on the forts that Canadians used to live in back in the day. Our group project for that unit was to make our own model forts and he encouraged us to use things we could find outside. It was the most fun I've ever had in a socials class (and that's saying a lot since it's one of my favourite subjects) and our groups had a great time learning to work together (and to safely wield hot glue guns) to design our own old-time Canadian forts.
5. Mrs. Smith, my high school home ec teacher. While cooking is definitely not something I really enjoy, I did like all of the classes I took with Mrs. Smith. She always had a bright smile on her face and had such a positive personality. Even the kids who didn't like school liked Mrs. Smith as a teacher and enjoyed her classes. The only thing I wasn't crazy about in her class was the rule that we weren't allowed to taste our food while we were cooking, only at the end when everything was finished. I had no idea how we were supposed to know if we liked how our food tasted or if the dish needed more seasonings without being able to taste it. But that was just a minor inconvenience, and the food almost always came out tasting amazing, a true testament to her wonderful teaching and cooking skills. And I was always amazed that even in a cooking class, her love of God shone through everything she did.
6. My violin teacher, Bev. I learned more from Bev than from probably any other person not related to me. Probably more than all of my school teachers combined. Not only was she an excellent violin teacher, but she also knew a lot about kids in general. She did an early childhood education degree before deciding to get her RCM certificate (Royal Conservatory of Music - it's a Canadian thing) and teach violin. And I think that was what made her so amazing. She realized that not all children learn things the same way. And she formatted her teaching style to fit each and every student she taught. I've never known another teacher to do this and find it truly remarkable! Whenever I see highlighters I think of Bev brandishing a multitude of colourful highlighters and markers on enlarged photocopies of music to visually show where we needed to shift into another position. I could go on and on here, but I could never do justice to how big of an influence Bev had in my life. One thing I will say, though, is that she was instrumental in discovering that my sometimes-lazy-eyes were the reason I had such a hard time reading music. Once we figured that out, we could be proactive in trying to fix the problem. Without Bev I might never have known why I could play a piece through so easily after listening to it, but struggled for so many hours trying to learn a piece by only reading music.
7. Mrs. Semiotuk, a professor and later chair of the journalism department at Walla Walla College. A fellow Canadian, I felt I had a connection with her that some of the other students didn't have. Even though my time doing journalism at WWC was tough, she never doubted that I could make it in that major if I decided it was the one I wanted to pursue. She was also one of only two teachers in all my time at WWC who held a class somewhere other than in our classroom. The one time we had class at the bakery down the road from campus will stick in my mind as a very creative teaching opportunity and to this day I really appreciate it. I've kept that textbook, too, and plan to someday go through it again and redo the course on my own. The only thing is, I have to wait for a time when I know I won't need to read anything because one requirement is taking a week off from all reading (to enhance your own creativity). It was terribly hard to do once, and I don't know if I'd have the fortitude to do it again.
8. My sociology teacher from WWC (can't for the life of me remember her name right now). She was the other teacher who taught a class somewhere other than our class. It was a three hour once a week class on Monday nights about race and ethnicity. And for one of our final classes she had everyone over to her house near campus and made us Ethiopian (I think) food since she and her husband had been missionaries there (or some other nearby country...man alive, what's wrong with my memory right now??). It was a fun evening with every class member bringing a dish from their heritage for a big potluck. She wasn't in my life for very long, but I enjoyed her class and her method of teaching.
9. Mrs. Ball, my adviser and journalism professor at Southern Adventist University. She is a wonderful lady and her classes were a joy. She was also a great adviser and worked hard with me around some pretty tough circumstances (such as me losing credits for transferring from a quarter system school to a semester system one) to try to get me graduated as quick as possible. Whatever we came up against, she always found a solution, and she always listened to my ideas as well. I suspect she's the one behind getting a bunch of useless and not-needed classes waived for me, even when the ones I took at WWC didn't exactly match up perfectly to the ones at Southern. I thank the Lord for her!
10. Ms. Chamberlain, another journalism professor and my boss for my last semester at Southern. She was probably the hardest teacher I had in my whole college career, but I learned so much from her. I'm not a designer, in any sense of the word, but somehow I passed her design classes, even pulling an A (a very rare thing apparently) in her web design class. (But I think I owe that mostly to the TA who put in a lot of time and work helping me on all my websites, especially my final project.) Ms. Chamberlain was a journalist in the true sense of the word. She was passionate about unbiased journalism and correct AP editing. And through her teaching, I too, became passionate about those things. It also didn't hurt that her office was always pristine, while also being aesthetically pleasing to look at. That designer thing again, I guess.

OK, well if you look at that list, it seems parents, grandparents and teachers are the biggest influence in a child/teenager/young adult's life. I was so surprised to get up to 10 so fast. I hadn't even gotten to my church family yet. All you Orchard City Church members, you're all really specially and influential to me, too. I love you all! Wow, I'm so blessed to have all of you really wonderful influential people in my life!