When in Rome, or anywhere else...

Officially Moved In

2010-11-09T09:42:00.000-08:00

Okay, so any and all updates are now moved from this blog to tylerandamerica.com. We've also imported all the old blogs, so there shouldn't really be a reason to check this blog ever again, hallelujah!

Moving On

2010-11-08T23:24:00.000-08:00

This blog will soon be straight re-directed to our new blog: tylerandamerica.com

I'll also at some point try and forward everything on this blog to the new one, after which this one may permanently disappear. Thanks for following, follow there as America and I both update things!

Unbrief brief synopsis of our recent lives

2010-05-31T13:18:00.000-07:00

So this isn't the best update, but I don't really care to describe this last semester. It was insanely busy, as you might recall from this blog post at the start of the semester.

So this semester we were able to accomplish a lot and it was a great step for us as a family:

America finished her awesome internship at the ELC
America finished her final semester and graduated in Linguistics and TESOL!!! Hurray!
America finished and quit her job at Pizza Pie Cafe
I finished a wretched semester of Chemistry without shooting my face off (well without shooting my face off with a real gun)
I quit my job at Chinese Flagship Center (it was time), just before heading out of the country
I spent way too much time getting ready for El Salvador, and apparently not enough at the same time...
I finished my EMT certification program, and passed my state exams, so now I'm an official EMT-Basic! Yay fun

That's all...so here are some pictures:

Ashlan had her bachelorette party ... at some point in time.

America and her people's from the ELC.

The week of America's graduation both her parents and my parents were in town as well as Alex, Jessica, Stephania and Giovanni. Our parents stayed at a resort outside of Park City, and Alex and Jessica stayed with us. It was a lot of fun. My parents arrived first and America decided to get all fancy and made shrimp linguine, she had to flambe it so it was an event.

Self explanatory pictures...

Our friends Jackie and Jang got married, hooray! It was a good time, and we got down with our bad selves.

America and I gutted out all the crap we've been lugging around since we moved to Utah. We took advantage of having to put some things in order in the apartment since we were leaving for the summer anyway, and threw out a LOT of stuff, mostly clothes (okay, so it went to the DI, not thrown out, though maybe some of it should have been).

And now we're in El Salvador. If I ever get around to updating this again in the near future you can learn about our fabulous lives here, but if not, check out what the team is up to here: http://help-elsalvador.blogspot.com/.

Yesssssssssssssssss

Check Out El Salvador

2010-05-07T11:58:00.000-07:00

Too busy to blog, but check out the El Sal team blog, I spend more time on that since its kind of required.

http://help-elsalvador.blogspot.com/

Viva Las Vegas

2010-01-28T09:34:00.000-08:00

A few weekends ago America and I got to spend a few days in Las Vegas with the in-laws. It was a lot of fun, and good to see them. This year is going to be pretty hectic with America graduating, and us working in El Salvador for the summer, on top of just being insanely busy to begin with we figured that we're not going to get to see our families as much as we normally do.

So we got to spend a few days with them. They were awesome enough to treat us too, my little brother Miles put it this way:

"...oh Vegas sounds fun. i wish i could go to Vegas. and not have to pay. and get to do fun stuff. and not have to pay....i hate you by the way. because you got to go to Vegas. and didnt have to pay. and got to have fun. and didnt have to pay..."

I think he's only a little bitter, he went on to post this on America's facebook status only a day or so after writing that to me:

"bah ha. you are awkward. muah hahahaha. hey i got a good idea. how about you complain some more about a free trip to vegas!!!!!"

We sure miss seeing him.

Anyways, during our "free trip to vegas!!!!!" the folks were super happy to have a car (we drove down). They go down every year for some Real Estate Conference that Dad gets his jollies at. While he's doing that, Mom enjoys the sites, this time it was way more fun for sure because we were there! We drove up to see the Las Vegas temple, it is pretty, unfortunately it was closed for cleaning, we wanted to do a session while we were there, I've actually never been inside it.

On our way back to the strip (we stayed at Planet Hollywood):

Dad saw a reflexology/massage place, and got us all massages! It was awesome:

So while in Vegas we did a bunch of fun stuff. We went and saw the aquarium at Mandalay Bay, where Mom was birthed by a Mayan fertility statue:

And we saw the nifty sharks through the shark tunnel thing (not that you can see them in this picture, but that's cause we're more important and deserve to see them):

We also went to a bunch of shows (thanks to the folks as well, as Miles so eloquently stated), including a reenactment of the Beatles, Jay Leno standup (which was really funny):

and we also had dinner/show one night at Tournament of Kings, a basically the same general idea as Midieval Times. To which Miles so politely noted:

"...the midieval times thing sounds fairly homo-errific."

It was actually lots of fun. We also just walked around (as mormon's tend to do in Las Vegas, as opposed to the other nightly adventures one might have there) and enjoyed the warmER weather than the deathly bitter cold of Provo (it's seems colder because of the high percentage of I hate Utah-ity). It was fun, we found this Harley Davidson store alongside the American Indian artifact store in old-school strip/downtown Vegas:

All in all it was a great trip. A lot of fun, we got to do more "Vegasy" stuff than last year's trip, though last year's trip was a riot for ...other reasons (AshlAn + Toby = good times).

Family Pictures

2010-01-26T18:22:00.000-08:00

Over the holidays we really wanted to make sure we got some new family pictures. Since the last time either of our families took full on family pictures both sides have had some additions, like us being married, kids on both sides, etc...

Over Thanksgiving we got some Nelson shots:

And then we took the serious one:

That's more like it. We also took pictures of individual families:

WHAT?! I don't know why anybody thought that would be funny, us with a child frankly scares me just a little bit.

That's better, aw precious.

We coincidentally got the whole Ruggieri clan together as well, other than Emer, :( Adam's girl who now lives in ...random... Portland!

Our families rock!

'Twas the Season

2010-01-25T16:04:00.001-08:00

DISCLAIMER: This post has been months in the works, so be prepared for many pictures, and as little information as I can get away with.

This may come as news to many of you, but I have a tendency to ramble on about things people other than me don't really care about. I'm going to try and do my best not to do that, but this will be a long post regardless.

Last semester I deemed my Physiology class as prime time to write blog posts, (not so much because it was boring, more simply because it was one of the few classes I got wifi). Lucky for you, I get wifi in all my courses this semester, and even luckier for you, my D&C class is pretty lame, so I easily get distracted.

Either way, our first holiday season married was awesome. We had so much fun, but it was pretty long and exhausting as well. So much so that we haven't completely recuped yet.

Let's start WAY back in November. Thanksgiving was in Portland and Christmas/New Year's was in Illinois. When we got to Portland we drove basically straight to the first Annual Hall Family Basketball tournament. The young'ns vs. the old'ns. The young'ns won (not that I played, otherwise it might have turned out differently).

Look how tired they look, sad.

We spent Thanksgiving day between both my mom and dad's families. We had Nelson dinner at my aunt Jannie's house around 1, and then another full on dinner at my mom's parents' home at 4:30, delicious! Very reminiscent of last year's busy day of giving thanks. The third generation is now starting to have babies, so even though my aunts and uncles are finished having little ones, now all the cousins are, so there are always babies everywhere, and I don't think it will stop.

Haha.

Awwww.

So since America and I were to be in Illinois for Christmastime, and my brosky Miles also was gone for the holidays this year, we thought we'd do a Nelson family Christmas early, the weekend after Thanksgiving, since it was the last time we were all together. We did the same type of thing last year, since America and I spent last year in Illinois for Christmas as well (Portland's turn is this year, wahoo!). It was a lot of fun.

Amber was the designated gift-hander-outer.

After Portland we had only a few weeks left of school (felt like longer) until we flew to Illinois. We got back on Monday, which happened to be America's birthday:

We went out to eat, at Tucanos, and saw a movie. Good times.

Since it was just after Thanksgiving, it seemed appropriate for us to Christmas-ify our home. We went out and got a tree.

And then decorated it:

We also put up stockings, and decorated the house:

And did other Christmasy things, like buy Christmas music on iTunes, play it nonstop, and have delicious things like hot apple cider:

Decorated sugar cookies, eggnog, etc... (The sugar cookies were disgusting, but that was my fault...)

We also did some other festive things like when we had our friends Teej and Jules over for au natural gingerbread house making, it was a late night:

So it was almost time to head out to Illinois. We decided we'd have our own little family Christmas together the Sunday before flying out. We exchanged gifts:

And made a delicious Christmas dinner:

Illinois was a blast, as always. We actually don't have as many pictures as we should have, but if you want to know how it was, this picture (undoctored, mind you!) pretty much sums up the two weeks our entire family was at Ma 'n Pa's in Tuscola:

Can't tell what's going on in the picture? Neither could we at any given time of day. Papa Ruggieri lasted about fifteen minutes after the kids arrived:

In all honesty it was a whirlwind. We hung out with lots and lots of family, went to Indianapolis for a few days over New Year's, and spent time with each other. We had a lot of fun, and got to spend really good quality time with family, family that we don't get to see that often. So that was really good. I mean how can you resist having fun when you spend all your time with this:

Giovanni, he's so cute. And I'll mention that he happens to love me lots, he and Stephania both do, more than they love Aunt America, yessssssssss. Though I guess my nieces and nephew like America lots, Amber loves her more than she loves me, so we're pretty even.

Christmas day was fun to spend with the kiddos:

All in all the whole holiday season was a lot of fun but was really really...

...exhausting. And not just for the kids:

We got back two days after school started, and haven't quite caught up yet. America was really sick over our 6 month anniversary, so I, the loving husband, gave her the gift of holding her hair out of her face while she yacked for our anniversary. Psyche, she got flowers, and candy, which she won't eat until she's feeling better.

All in all our holidays were jam packed full of stuff, but worth it to see friends and family as much as we did. Especially now that this summer we will be gone the entire time in El Salvador working, we want to see them as much as we can, which isn't a whole lot.

Where we've disappeared to...

2010-01-19T22:52:00.000-08:00

So life seems to like us, a lot, so we're always spending our time dealing with it...

Fall semester was pretty busy, or so we thought... busy has a whole new meaning now.

We spent the holidays (about two weeks) in Illinois with the Ruggieri side. It was a lot of fun, maybe too much fun since we got back two days after the semester started and haven't caught up yet.

America started her internship a few weeks ago, and is taking a full load of classes as well, her last semester! Woohoo! She's interning at the ELC (English Language Center) and has a group of a bunch of Young Adults with basically zero English background, she likes it a lot and gets to teach them several times a week. She's also been assigned to tutor a guy from the Congo and a lady from Peru, so I'm excited to practice my French with him, and reminisce with her about my homeland.

Did I mention she's also working still at Pizza Pie Cafe, which she...loves, yeah...that's it.

So she's up to her neck in all that stuff. Not to mention taking care of me which might as well be time and a half.

I'm busy busy busy too. I've got a full load of classes, though less than the usual, I'm only taking four, but one of them is Chemistry, I HATE CHEMISTRY. Which may be one of the reasons I'm four assignments behind already, just maybe. Also I'm taking an EMT course, so hopefully first week or so of April I'll be certified as an Emergency Medical Technician and can get a part time job doing that. I'm really excited about that possibility, though the course is 6pm to 10pm Mondays and Wednesdays, after being in class all day, and 8 hours once a month on Saturdays. A little overwhelming. I'm still working on campus for a website that I manage, as well as TA-ing the Infectious Disease class with Dr. Cole, my favoritest job and class ever so far!

Actually, my ALMOST favoritest job, since I just got an awesome one for this summer. I got hired as a Country Director for HELP International, a Provo based NGO doing development work around the world. So America and I will be living in El Salvador for four month this summer, something I'm really excited and looking forward to. We have a lot on our plate for sure, so hopefully I'll be able to blog a little more as I get more on top of things.

Our holidays were great, we had a wonderful first holiday season together, spent a lot of time with friends and family, and then got to travel and spend time with family. We were in Las Vegas last weekend with America's parents too, we had so much fun. Anyway, school looms over us, work looms over us, internships loom over us, etc... ... ...looms over us.

Final Entry of: Best Honeymoon Ever - Costa Rica!

2009-12-10T09:29:00.000-08:00

Man alive (barely), it's so freezing cold outside I feel like my face is going to fall off. We finally got the snow that I was hoping would just not come this year... Is that realistic? It downpoured (or flaked) on Sunday and Monday, and Tuesday. So now there's snow everywhere. Luckily it's more dry today than it has been, so we're not trudging through slush to get onto campus like before, and the roads are generally safe again. Well, relative to Utah anyway.

Today is my last day of classes, finals are next week, and then we're outta here! I can't wait for this semester to be over. Being the first semester as a married couple, let's just say America and I didn't get a lot of schoolwork done, and so I'm ready for a fresh start. I've been so distracted, that it's taken me going on 4 months just to finish writing about our honeymoon, granted it was more than a month long, but still...

Costa Rica was our last country, and we had our airfare purchased to take us out of San Jose. So we had our end goal, and a couple things we wanted to do before leaving. Our first stop was at the coast. We thought a couple more days on the beach would do us some good, so we spent two night on the Northern Pacific side of Costa Rica at a beach called Playa del Coco (Beach of the Coconut). It was another black sand beach, which I think are way cooler than white sand.

We decided to go snorkeling and ended up going out with this french guy and his two kids, they were really cute and funny. They thought it was pretty nifty when I said that the sand dollar they found in the reef (they were scuba diving) was "chouette." Haha. Man, I really want to improve my French.

Anyway, the water was beautiful

And we saw some good stuff even just snorkeling. This grouchy old man turtle swam around with us for a while, I got pretty close, within two feet or so I'd say, it was pretty cool. Unfortunately my flippers were just a tad too big for me, so they kept rubbing against my feet, and the end result were giant craters in the sides of my feet, even now that they've healed there are giant scars there.

This picture doesn't even do them justice.

Anyway, we spent time there relaxing, had some amazing smoothies on the beach, and got massages literally on the beach. It was a really nice break from the running around we had done the majority of our time in Central America. But we enjoyed the running around too, just for different reasons I guess.

We then headed towards the capital, San Jose, where we figured we spend the last two nights before hopping our flight home. It happened to be our one month anniversary that day, kind of funny that we'd been on our honeymoon that long that we'd already been married a month. For our wonderful anniversary meal we got some awesome grub at the pit stop between the beach and the city.

Looking good.

Somewhere earlier on in the trip I stumbled across some info in our Lonely Planet Guide (definitely recommend if you want to travel around like we did), that mentioned there was Bungee Jumping in San Jose. I'd always wanted to bungee jump, and got really excited, and terrified at the same time. So we got there and I was all excited to do it the next day, our last full day of our honeymoon. Since it was still our one month...iversary thing, we went to the local mall and saw a movie and got some real food (well, "real" meaning American fast food, blah).

So here's how the next day went down. America will still claim that I pressured her into jumping, but that is definitely not the case. I wasn't even thinking she was going to do it, and knew that she didn't want to and was more scared than I was, plus I'd already had her doing crazy stuff all month. So my intention was to sign myself up. Here's how the conversation went, I swear!

America: Well I'm not doing that, you can, but I'm not.
Tyler: Yeah I figured you'd not want to, no worries.
America: ...
Tyler: (silent while I was registering myself for the jump)
America: ...
America: ...well what if I wanted to!
Tyler: Oh really? Well you can if you want to, I didn't think you would though.
America: Well kind of...but I'm scared!
Tyler: It's not a big deal, you don't have to.
America: ...ok.
America: ...FINE! I'LL DO IT!
Tyler: Really? Are you sure?
America: Yeah.
Tyler: Okay, our reservations are at 1 pm.
America: Wait, oh man, now I have to do it!

And so on... But either way, we were totally freaked out once we finally got to the top of the bridge we'd be jumping off.

It looked higher than it actually was I'm convinced. Not to mention that it happened to start pouring once we got up there and then lightning and thunder rolled in the background. It made for a pretty intense moment.

America: THIS IS SO STUPID!

I was so proud of her, and she says she'll never do it again, but if the opportunity came up like it did then I think she would. It was so awesome!

I don't know why this picture is coming up so big. I didn't do it on purpose I promise.

So we ended on an extreme high after that. It was literally an experience of a lifetime. Actually, the whole wedding/honeymoon was, as one would expect, but ours especially. The next day we had to pack up and go home, we had our taxi take us past the San Jose temple first, we didn't want to miss the opportunity to see it since we were there.

And then we were off. I was sad to be leaving, America was happy to be heading to warm showers, clean floors, and "real" food. I guess I can't hold it against her.

Our flight took us into Portland, where the car was, and all our wedding presents and stuff. It had been there since we left Provo after finals, two months before. We only had a few hours in Portland before we had to be on the road to Provo in order to have the weekend to move in together finally before classes started the next Monday. What a whirlwind, but it was worth it!

Now that I've finally finished the honeymoon maybe sometime soon I'll drop in some wedding pictures and write about our first few months of married life. We leave for Christmas in Illinois pretty soon!

Best Honeymoon Ever - Nicaragua!

2009-12-03T18:08:00.000-08:00

Things are starting to get crazy as the end of the semester is getting closer. We spent way too much time in Portland over Thanksgiving and missed a good three days of classes, during which time we did nothing to make up for what we were missing, or even try to keep up with what was happening. Now we're one week away from the end of the semester (I can't believe how fast it's gone by!) and having to scramble to get everything done in time. I guess I can't really say it's the first time this has happened, it's happened just about as much as semesters I've been in college/high school...ha.

Anyway, our last week-ish in Central America got more and more fun. We had a lot of fun in Nicaragua and Costa Rica. We skipped over the first half of the country in a charter bus straight from capital to capital, San Salvador to Managua. It was a long bus ride, luckily the central americans have some infatuation with Hugh Jackman since we watched Wolverine, Australia, and I don't remember what other film he was in that we watched on the way.

So we stayed the first night in Managua, walked around and looked at some of the sites there, (not much), went to this crazy local market with thousands of little posts with local trades and artisans.

Our second day we went to Granada, a colonial town (very touristy though) not far from the capital and quite close to Lake Nicaragua.

It was a fun town to walk around, see some of the fun stuff they do there, and there they have a lot of high adventure stuff you can do. There's a volcano climb where you can see lava at night, zip-lining through the tree tops, adventure hikes, and more. We went for the zip-lining to save time.
America was a real trooper. She hates heights (and I'm not the fondest of them either, which is weird why I'm always wanting to do this crazy stuff...), but she followed me all the way regardless of what it meant. That's why I married her I guess (among many other reasons of course...).

After we were done in Grenada we took this ferry out to Ometepe Island, in the middle of Lake Nicaragua. It's this cool island formed from two volcanoes right next to each other jutting out of the lake. The little ferry took us out there and we were able to stay a couple nights on the island. It was really nice, the first day we did absolutely nothing, we just hung out in the hammocks at the hostel we stayed at all day. Went and got some grub, Nicaraguan style, and just sort of relaxed. It started to actually feel like we were on our honeymoon for a change, ha.
That feeling didn't last long. The next day we attempted to scale one of the volcanoes. It was insane. We went in with two Danish guys that were at the hostel and got a guide to take us up. It was necessary. The climb was incredibly intense, and America just couldn't make it. I don't blame her though, it was pretty crazy and I was starting to feel dizzy by the time we turned back.
The Danes continued on up and told us later that it was many hours after that they made it to the top, while it was worth it, they assured us that it was just as well that we turned back. The guide was necessary because on our way back we got lost, and it took a good few extra hours to find our way back to the main road to hop the local run down school bus to make it back to the small group of hostels where we were staying.

As sore as we were the next day, we took the ferry back to the mainland and hopped a bus into Costa Rica.

We thought Nicaragua was pretty awesome and were sad to leave, but also excited to be moving on to another country. So far we'd been out on the honeymoon almost three weeks, if not a full three weeks. I think by this time America was looking forward to the ever approaching return of hot showers, clean floors, and cushioned cars, not me so much, but I think that is a difference I share with most rational people I know.

Best Honeymoon Ever - El Salvador!

2009-12-01T12:32:00.001-08:00

It's been ages since I've had access to the internet while in my PD Bio class, probably about as long as it's been since I've last posted a blog, ...coincidence?

So you might think from that that my class isn't that interesting, nothing could be further from the truth though, I really like it. We're talking today about the Digestive System...wahoo! My favorite though was when we went over the Immune System. You don't care, I know that.

So anyway, one day I'll finish all the countries we went to on our honeymoon, El Salvador was crazy, we were only there for a few days, but we had a blast. We crossed from Honduras at a place called El Poy, from there we made it to San Salvador by bus. From there we got a hotel for the night, planning on getting to the coast the next day. We were pretty excited to get to the beach again after Guatemala and Honduras. Our beach-time in Belize wasn't as awesome as we had hoped, so we were hoping for some more beach time. Apparently tourists are a common site in San Salvador carrying their surf board around and catching buses to the coast. All around you'll hear "El Tunco" on everyone's lips as the place to go.

San Salvador was really fun. I really liked it there, we didn't do much, but just driving around it you get a good feel of how the city is. I felt really comfortable there and we walked around at night without much trouble. We went and saw a movie while we were there, had Taco Bell (never a good idea, even in the states, but seemed like one at the time), and just relaxed (finally!).

We took a bus the next day to El Tunco was the first black sand beach I'd been to (outside of Peru, but they're not quite as BLACK there). It's actually really cool, and I almost prefer them to white sands.

Since surfing was the thing to do there, we decided to give it a go and had some beginner lessons and spent a good afternoon pretending to surf. It was really fun, America might have done better with some more appropriate attire, but we won't go there. I'll just leave it with her teenage trainer got a bit more than the ten bucks we paid for the lesson.

Surfing got pretty tiring fairly quickly. Not to mention the water was full of seaweed and other unmentionables, (don't even really know some what of the things I was stepping on were...). Either way we were really glad to have that experience and then just chill out. We stayed at this random, really awesome hostel called La Sombra. It's basically a surf bum's paradise. Everyone there is hanging out in hammocks, and like most people you'll see walking along the roads have dreds or longer surfer hair, boardshorts as a permanent fixture on their bottom half, and any range of limited clothing above the waist. Its funny because it's all in Spanish, but seems like any one of these guys would feel right at home in Southern California.

We grabbed some papusas (amazingly delicious Salvadorean tortilla thingamajiggers), complete with special sauce, laid back on the futon at La Sombra and watched a bootleg copy of Star Trek. It was pretty laid back, and a nice time after being on the go for so long. We'd been on our trip probably about two weeks by then.

There were shuttle services from El Tunco that could get us back to San Salvador in the middle of the night where we decided to try and save some time by catching a charter bus that would then take us straight from San Salvador to Managua, Nicaragua, well into our next country, so that we could spend more time there and in Costa Rica before having to leave. So our time in El Salvador ended with a REALLY long day on a bus for a good 12 hours, but it was worth it. The rest of the trip was even more fun than what we'd done so far!

Best Honeymoon Ever - Honduras!

2009-10-13T12:54:00.000-07:00

It has been a crazy past few days. So Blake and Jodi (my bro and his wife) came to stay with us this past weekend. We had a lot of fun, went to Temple Square, toured the Conference Center, saw a few movies, went out to eat, and went to a haunted corn maze out past West Jordan. We also had some unexpected craziness, like having to take the car to the shop (America...) and having to get a new computer 'cause my old one totally crapped out on me. I didn't go to class Friday or Monday because I straight up didn't feel like it, and that's how I roll.

Anyway, so now I'm only a lot behind in my classes, and have to sit down and actually figure out if I have assignments due, or tests to take, or whatever. Luckily last time this happened I ended up with 2 As and a B on the tests that I wasn't prepared for, so I'll just go ahead and not stress out about it...

Well, after we managed to survive the "ferry" from Punta Gorda, Beliza, to Puerto Barrios, Guatemala, we stayed the night in a hostel right there on the dock and the next morning got up really early and took a cab to the customs office outside of Corinto, Honduras where we crossed the border. We then met this fat Honduran "who's friends just call him Flash" and crammed into his truck, and he drove us to Puerto Cortez where we then took a bus to San Pedro Sula. San Pedro is the second largest city in Honduras, and commonly known as the most dangerous city in Central America. I had been there before (on last year's trip) and didn't think it would be that bad. Though with the added political drama this year we were wary of the issues there. Suffice it to say we didn't have any issues, and it was very comfortable, the only difference was the political graffiti in the main square:

"Zelaya doesn't give up, the people aren't silent!"

America was a little nervous that first night, the division game between Costa Rica and Honduras was that same day in the Olympic Stadium, at everyone's warning that it would be too dangerous for us we decided to not go, though now I wish we had, it was apparently not any crazier than a normal game, and I have still yet to be at a latin american soccer game, it's still on my list.

The next day we headed out to check out a waterfall located a few hours Southeast of San Pedro, called Pulhapanzak. It was really cool:

So we started hiking down to the waterfall and this guy who we paid to take us down told us we might want to lose some clothes since we were going to get wet. We weren't quite informed as to how wet we were going to get, but we stripped down to our bathing suits, good call since we literally scaled the waterfall, climbed across it grappling onto the giant boulders as the entire waterfall crashed down on top of us. We were able to skirt across in and out of small caverns behind the water. It was such an amazing thing to do. I only wish I'd not worn my shoes (I was worried about stepping on something sharp, instead I ruined my shoes).

We stayed the night in a town close to the falls, called Pena Blanca, the next day we made our way back to San Pedro and from there took a bus to Nueva Ocotopeque (another fairly long ride) which is just this side of El Poy, the border town with El Salvador, where we planned to cross the next day into the fourth country on our crazy adventure.

Best Honeymoon Ever! - Belize

2009-10-06T12:20:00.000-07:00

I've taken three tests in the past 18 hours, what's wrong with the universe? I also enjoy the fact that I didn't read or prepare for any of them, and probably will find out the wonderful fruits (bad grades) of that work in the next few days. Though French usually isn't too bad because I can B.S. it just putting Spanish grammar with French vocab. Ehh well...

So I'm in my Human Biology class, talking about embryonic development, which for some reason made me decide to write a blog, continuing our awesome adventure in Central America for our honeymoon.

When we crossed from Guatemala into Belize, it was so bizarre, like walking across a border onto a Caribbean Island, seriously! On one side of immigration everyone was short and squat and spoke Spanish, we were crammed to bursting capacity in local buses and zipped along the highways at dangerous speeds, then on the other side of immigration everyone spoke a Caribbean English, most looked of African decent, and there were only two people per two-person seat, traveling at a generally normal pace, and all the music was the typical Caribbean Reggae sound. It was really crazy, and I wasn't really expecting it.

We made our way from the Western border with Guatemala to Dangriga, a small town on the Atlantic Ocean in the more or less central part of the country. This was our little cabana there, way more expensive than other places (I think we paid like 30 bucks for it, triple the usual fare). It was right on the water, and Ruthee was entertaining...babes.

We eventually made our way south to a town called Placencia, supposedly it had the best beaches in southern Belize, we weren't crazy impressed with the beaches, but we didn't fork out the dough to go out to the cayes (Keys), which is where the more known beaches are you see in postcards.

We had fun in Belize though, and I think America liked the break from Spanish. We then ferried and bused down to a place called Punta Gorda, where we caught a ferry back into Guatemala (Puerto Barrios) where we planned on crossing into Honduras the next day.

Funny story here, our "ferry" from Punta Gorda, Belize to Puerto Barrios, Guatemala was in reality a small 6-foot wide plastic canoe with a motor on it; to travel across the gulf between the two countries, which happens to be quite large, to the point where halfway across you don't necessarily see land anymore...and that's where we ran out of gas, and when it started pouring down rain:

Good thing there were tarps on board for just such an occasion:

I think I had a little too much fun. Good thing developing countries can afford cell phones even when education and health are at all time lows, our "captain" called across to Puerto Barrios and another "ferry" brought some more gas. It was good times.

We stayed that night at a little place off the dock in Puerto Barrios and hopped into a truck the next morning across into Honduras.

Best Honeymoon Ever! - Guatemala

2009-10-03T12:22:00.000-07:00

It went from great warm dry Utah weather, overnight, to REALLY cold, and rainy. Arg.

There was snow on the tops of the mountains already. Arg again.

It's not snowing here yet, and things haven't started freezing together (e.g. windshield wipers, etc...). Not arg yet.

Anyway, so I was thinking about how I hate the cold, and miss places where winter means it just rains, but is still warm, like, oh I don't know, the best honeymoon EVER!

Our honeymoon was so incredibly awesome that I can't talk about the whole thing in one blog, so I'll do it country by country. Our wedding festivities were insane. The week of the wedding America's family flew into Portland, and we spent time on the Oregon Coast, around the Columbia River Gorge hiking up Multnomah Falls, and other "Oregon" festivities, it was a lot of fun. We then got married in the Portland Temple (someday I'll put up a post with pictures), then spent about a week in this nice resort in Bend (Central) Oregon. After that we went to Illinois with my parents and little brother Miles (who was stuck in a mandatory training the day of the wedding...stupid ARMY), and had a second reception at America's home in Tuscola. That was great too, and fun for my family to be there.

Then we took off for the second phase of our honeymoon, it was awesome! We flew from Chicago to Guatemala City, and spent the first five-ish days in Guatemala.

Before heading out and about from the city, we stopped by to see the Guatemala City temple. Then we headed out to Antigua, the old capital of Guatemala.

This was a "typical" meal we ate in a hole-in-the-wall restaurant in Antigua. This was where the delicious drinks started, they never ended.

Here is my sexy wife on the rooftop of La Merced monastery in Antigua.

We then took some crazy local buses across the Eastern Highlands to Lake Atitlan, claimed to be the Waters of Mormon by the local LDS members. It was really pretty. Rather than staying in the over-touristed commercial town Panajachel, we took this little "ferry" to a small town on the opposite side of the lake called Santiago Atitlan, where we found a cheap hotel and stayed for the night, it was a lot of fun.

The dock pulling up in Santiago Atitlan.

The next day we headed back to Panajachel to see if we couldn't find some fun souvenirs for our new apartment, and to head back to the capital for a bus up north. As soon as we got there and started looking around, torrential rains came out of nowhere. I guess we knew it was the rainy season...

I went to find an umbrella while sexy lady America hung out in one of the little souvenir stands that lined the whole main road. This seems to be a common occurrence seeing as how within minutes everyone working there had plastic tarps and coverings whipped into place. These didn't happen to be of much use to me since it only took a matter of seconds to get completely soaked. By the time I found an umbrella (20 minutes later) it was kind of pointless. Though America appreciated it.

After staying another night in the capital, we got on a 12-hour bus ride up north to go see Tikal, the largest Maya Ruin currently discovered. This was America's first long bus-ride, which is why she's still smiling...man she thought she knew what she was in for, whoops!

One of the larger temples in the grand plaza at Tikal. We stayed in a city called Flores, and took a bus to the archeological site and spent the day there. It was wet, and hot, (not rainy wet, sweaty/muggy wet), but it was so awesome. One of those places that you just feel special to be able to see, something that the majority of the world will never see in person, simply amazing!

So this was the first of far too many things we did that required America to overcome her fear of heights, I don't think she ever overcame them, but we had a blast trying!

Here from the top of probably the tallest temple of the site you can see some of the other temples poking out above the trees. It was truly awe inspiring looking over the jungle and wondering what life must've been like back then when this was a thriving city.

The next day we hopped a bus that took us to the Belizean border to head back south towards Honduras. But that will have to be in another post. Guatemala was great, we loved it, and would definitely go back.

Road Hazards

2009-09-23T18:01:00.000-07:00

Lots of people keep asking, "So how's married life," with the presumptuous excited grimace expecting some type of enthusiastic response like; "Oh, it's amazing, I wasn't alive before marriage." Well, I mean seriously, America is awesome, and we had lots of fun before being married, now we just have more fun, and live together, which makes life that much easier. America likes to think we're having a slumber party every day, so we still continue to not do our homework, or work, or anything but play together, so that can get stressful, and we could sleep a little more since we stayed up the other night until 2 am watching...um...Chronicles of Narnia, just because.

Here's the thing about me. Sometimes I'll just watch TV just to watch it. It's an awful habit that I hate, I waste so much time watching what I like to call junk TV. The sad thing is that even while I'm watching it I know it's not something that I even care to watch, but I still watch it. How about the SVU Marathons USA shows, the worst ever! I love SVU, by far the best Law & Order Series on TV, but I mean I'll sit and watch four straight hours of it, including re-runs that I've seen before (exhibit A - Saturday from 3-7). We've watched incredibly stupid shows like Khloe and Kourtney take Miami, Guliana & Bill, hours of Supernanny (America's favorite), etc... Pretty much anything on E!, MyStyle, you know, those networks (or maybe you don't know since it's such junk nobody should know what they are). I guess it's not as bad as when Josh (old roommate) and I would randomly watch Paris Hilton's My New BFF simply because it was on, or my personal rock bottom Underdog to Wonderdog.

Okay, so there are worse, and I'm not proud of any of them (except SVU, because it really is one of my favorite shows), unfortunately I could be...um...graduated probably if I didn't spend so much time watching TV. It's sad really.

Anyway, so that's what's been up the past few weeks since we got home, and moved in. The place looks great, we're so proud of our apartment we have people over all the time just to show it off (I mean...we love to see our friends too...). So the apartment's seen some good entertaining. The saddest thing that happened recently was that we had to officially utardize ourselves. That's right, we're officially Utards. America had to renew her license to change her name, so she had to get a Utah License, and I had to earlier because my Oregon one expired. So because our licenses changed we had to re-register the car to get Utah plates...

Here's my safe, law-abiding Oregonian car:

And only minutes later becoming automatically a health hazard for the general public simply for having Utah plates:

And I'm not even joking, I mean seriously, the Utah plate I think gives everyone the freedom to uninstall your turn signal, drive consistently at least 10 miles per hour over the speed limit, cut each other off, not let anyone merge, run red lights (because they were yellow last time I looked...a block ago), etc... You out-of-Staters understand what I'm saying. Unfortunate, but since we'll be here for a few years more we just had to do it...

Home Sweet Home

2009-09-03T15:34:00.000-07:00

Things have rapidly returned right back to normal. And by normal I mean America and I not doing our homework, staying up too late, and barely making it to class on time without really doing our homework.

It's not even been a week! Okay, so really we have an excuse. We just got our apartment put together yesterday (night). America did most of it, I have to admit, though I have been working on top of school everyday. Here's some good news, I finally have CS4 working on my computer, only took three months before I could get my computer working right. I had issue after issue with this stupid laptop, so I ended up saving the few things I couldn't do without and completely restored the whole harddrive. It took forever, and I had to reinstall all my programs (some of which I haven't done yet for lack of time), but now all is well and I have the new Web Development software I need to continue working from home (best job ever...kind of).

So really, I really enjoy my job, I like that it's my own schedule, I like that I can do it from wherever I am (or wherever there's internet and I have my computer with me rather), and that it pays more than the average, but that's about it. I can't can't can't wait to get a job related to Public Health. I TA for Dr. Cole's Infectious Disease course, and it's the job (of my four jobs, I know, I know) that has the least hours and pays the least per hour, but so worth it. It's my favorite job to do. I work for two campus web pages, and then do freelance on the side (for exponentially more per hour, BYU can suck it sometimes).

Anyway, so it's been a hectic week, getting in, getting used to classes again, getting the house put together, look at it as of Sunday:

We're moved in, Monday's a holiday, we can catch up on our reading/homework/sleep, awesome. We also get our loans in soon so we'll be able to finish off the few things the house still needs (like a TV, bedding, ironing board, some other odds and ends). Either way we're having a blast and can't wait to have company. We were hoping to do a Labor Day Barbecue at our place, before we realized it was THIS Monday, and that the backyard we share with the landlords doesn't have the most important appliance a backyard should have...the grill. So maybe a nice Sunday dinner next week will be the event to unveil our castle, we'll see.

This semester I'm taking five classes, and they're all on Tuesday and Thursday, except my French class (c'est tres chouette), is everyday. So I need a better backpack since all the textbooks for this semester have to be in it all at once, but only two days a week. Here's what I'm taking:

Intermediate French
World Religions (from Br. Choi, way better than random guy I took it from, and withdrew, last Spring)
Human Biology (liking Bio more and more, my teacher seems awesome)
Nutrition (also great teacher, and I like the topic quite nicely)
International Health (which I'm waiting to enter my first class period of the semester, it's Thursday nights, one day a week, ugh)

So Thursdays kind of suck, I have class from 9am to 8pm, with the longest break being an hour and fifteen minutes, so not long enough to leave campus/get any homework done, but long enough to wish I could.

America's packed full of Linguistics courses so she can graduate in April, wahoo! She's thinking about the Master's program at BYU for this Fall. So we're pretty busy...

Nosotros Ser Gringos

2009-08-26T15:15:00.000-07:00

Whew. Life is insane, but I guess that's what makes it worthwhile.

So, I have been married for over a month now, and I'm still on my honeymoon, like seriously, I'm sitting in a hostel in Costa Rica right now, which has wifi (go figure), and we've been nonstop since like June 23rd, and by like, I mean exactly June 23rd.

A week in Illinois, then the 4th and some odd weeks in Portland, then rushed to Utah for all of 10 hours for our temple recommends, then America's family strolled into the great Northwest (which they loved, of course) for the week of the wedding, during which we thought it a swell idea to go to the coast, hike Multnomah Falls, and introduce them to the hoard of family members that surround me constantly when home (what can I say, my family is awesome, and love me the most, it's a curse), oh and then get married too.

So we spent a week in Bend at the Eagle Crest Worldmark Resort (thanks to Ma n Pa's timeshare), which was amazing, and finally relaxing, and fortunately for everyone, we have no pictures of. The weekend after the wedding (if you've lost track, we're at the last weekend in July, 31st-1st of August) was our second reception, you guessed it, back in Illinois, where we were for a few days following as well. Then our honeymoon continued when we flew from Chicago to Guatemala City, and we've been on a 3 1/2 week hiatus from life and everything that goes with it through Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and now Costa Rica. So it's been over a month, and we've still not moved in together, haha.

So you can see why this hasn't been updated in, oh, two months-ish. But don't worry, I'm not going to do what I usually do and write up a noval catching up everything, the plan is to drop in some pictures and some fun stories from the past few months mixed in with new stuff here and there, this was more just to say something like, "blah, we're insane, but we love it!"

So alas, life has come back to get us, which I hate, cause it always does that... arg. We fly out of San Jose tomorrow morning, into Portland, and from there we drive back to Provo, to start school on Monday.

Yesterday was our one month, which is crazy, again, because we're still on our honeymoon, not that it means anything awesome, I mean this was our romantic honeymoon meal...

Yeah, we're dead sexy...

In case the fine dining wasn't clear enough in the previous picture. This was at a pitstop on the bus ride from the Northern Pacific Coast of Costa Rica to San Jose, the capital, where we are now waiting to go to the airport in a few hours. The food actually tastes much better than it might look, and the view wasn't too shabby either.

So really we did go out to a movie at the Mall here and had real food, it was nice, and fun, San Jose was a blast!

Anyways, almost packed, in time to get on the plane, get to Portland, and then pack some more, and then get to Provo, and unpack, A LOT. Expect posts to come with real details from our trips, and wedding pictures, we've seen some preliminaries, and I just have to say, well nevermind I won't say it. I won't go on anymore since these always end up longer than I originally intend. Hasta Pronto!

An almost update...

2009-06-15T10:55:00.000-07:00

Be prepared for a long blog, with many pictures, and not even being up to date completely on life over the past two months anyway. I won't judge you if you don't read this, especially since I don't really know who visits this blog anyways.

It's been such an insane past few months. Since school got out everything has been even worse, which is funny since I technically should have the time to get everything done. First we can go over some of the fun things we were able to do since my little blog hiatus:

Before the end of the semester Kyle got his mission call to Lima South, which was great! He did pronounce it Lime-uh, but that's okay, I'm sure he'll learn.

We went and saw Zack (Dad) and his Dad play at Guitars Unplugged, which was fun.

And we went to a Peruvian festival night at BYU where we saw lots of different Peruvian dances. It was a lot of fun, and our friend Eliana from Chiclayo had us over a few times for delicious Peruvian food. She's great, I think we need to eat there again before long!

Everyone left us sometime in April when the Winter semester ended and most people head back home for the summer. We did end up with a nice family dinner one time before everyone left, though I don't remember when it was....

We also had a huge Easter feast with a bunch of friends before the end of the semester. We did fairly well I must say, food was delicious, and lots of people were over.

Then things just get hectic. We've been getting wedding plans finalized, and visiting with people. America's friend Amber left for her mission to Brazil, so we went and visited with her before she left when she spoke in Sacrament.

We also saw Christina Jones, which was fun since we hadn't seen her in a while, we need to go play with her again before we leave for the rest of the summer (info coming up).

So soon enough America started Spring classes and I started working like a dog. Small cryptic updates are laced in and out of different blogs over the past few months, but basically long storIES short, we're not going to be able to go to Guatemala or anywhere for that matter for Fall semester. I'm really bummed, but okay with the fact that we'll be in Provo again for Fall. Things at BYU screwed us over a bit and we ended up in an impossible situation out of our control, and so our plans for the Fall study abroad were cancelled. We are currently in the works for planning something for hopefully next summer.

We were in dire need of a road trip or something by the time the semester was over, luckily our friends Bret and Naomi were getting married in Mesa that week. So we drove down, spent time with my buddy Patterson (from the mission) and also Melanie (...from the mission) while we were there. The wedding was really nice and we just love them!

Michele, my friend from Portland, was in town for a sheet music conference (she works at a music store in Vancouver), so we got to hang out with them as soon as we got back from Arizona, which was way fun.

After that our schedules got extremely monotonous and boring (hence the lack of blog postings).

I continued working on campus on two websites, one for the Chinese Flagship program (random I know, and no I don't speak Chinese), and another for the Women's Research Institute (again, I know, random, and no I speak women worse than I speak Chinese). Excuse the hideous beast that is the Chinese Flagship website, one of my jobs is to make it not so vomit-like, and there will be a new site in a few weeks made by your's truly. I also started working with Dr. Cole (who I have a man-crush on because he's like the most awesomely awesomest Public Health guy in the world) with his Infectious Disease class. I took the class last semester, loved it, and am so glad to be helping out with it this semester. I hope to be able to continue to do so in future semesters, it's my favorite job so far since moving to Provo. I also continue to do some web stuff on the side, so that we don't starve to death. So for the past two weeks at least I've been working around the clock, ten to twelve hours a day, and we have been pretty anti-social except for maybe with our roommates just a tad. When not working America and I have been on the wedding agenda, which is just as time consuming as everything else we're doing.

Okay, so this is getting quite long, and I'm probably losing some of you. Other news:

I had a really crappy day one day (on my Birthday, maybe because I don't really like birthdays, and America calls me the birthday scrooge.) But America threw me a surprise party, and it was great, a nice end to a crappy day.

Part of the reason the day sucked was that my lisence expired, and for many reasons, I had to get a new one, but a Utah one, so now I'm officially a Utah resident, and that makes me pretty sad.

So in other news we were able to get a bunch of wedding stuff done, but that will have to go into another blog, expect these in the next few days:

Wedding Updates, things are almost done!
A rant on "junk TV" (though all TV can be called it, particularly what I've lost time watching)
Trip to Portland over Memorial Day, best Portland trip ever
What our immediate future is looking to be (including our awesome month-long honeymoon)
Our new apartment, which will be sweet goodness
Why I don't want to register my car in Utah, and am sad to have a Utah Driver's Lisence
...and probably some other junk.

More info to follow in the wedding post, but come! RSVP here, invites are out.

Girls aren't the only problem

2009-04-08T15:29:00.000-07:00

So laddies, just because the girlies here are psycho doesn't mean you're all that perfect either, in case you were worried.

Here's my two cents:

Just because the teenage girls of the wards you served in on your mission were all over you, and the random trash on the street hooted and hollered (anyone gone to Latin America?) doesn't mean you're all that and can save yourself for Utah's (insert supermodel here), okay?! Oh, and the commitment pattern is NOT the way to sweep her off her feet, get a first date, and most definitely not the way to propose, please please please don't be an idiot and think you know everything because you spent two years being told what to do by a host of leaders and simply following orders.

So, there are lots of great girls here, and I'd say a good majority of them are available, wanna know why? Because you geniuses seem to think that texting is an appropriate way to ask a girl out, and then are amazed that she doesn't accept. Here's another reason, you get set up, meet someone in the library, run into them at some random social event, home teach them (Kort), or whatever, and somehow convince them to go out with you once, then what happens? Usually the girl isn't "pretty enough" (aka not fake blonde, chest isn't proportionately too large for her body, appendages aren't toothpick skinny, and they're lacking the bump-it under their "do" giving them that "volume" that apparently guys go for).

Guys, you're really not God's gift to girls, so don't expect the same in return, and really looks should only be a part of the reason you ask someone out, if you've never spoken to someone before and you walk up to them and ask them out purely because of looks, save yourself the trouble and be friends first. Who knows, maybe the ugly, portly, mole faced sad friend ends up being the coolest person in the world and a perfect match for you, you really don't know until you get to know them.

Don't show off how much money you have, we're in college it's really ok to be poor, no really, it is. Who studies half their life, hating their classes, just to have a job that they'll hate, but it pays well so no worries? That's just crazy. Do what you LIKE to do, it's more attractive I promise. Entrepreneurism is great, and there are some that are great at it, but I hear this conversation way too much people:

"What are you studying?"
"Business/Accounting/Something else really lame."
"Oh that's cool, what do you want to do?"
"Uh...just work in a business, something that pays well but I don't have to do a lot."

(insert me throwing up here)

Stop Kidding Yourselves Please...

2009-04-02T10:12:00.001-07:00

So I have the curse of a far too acute sense of hearing. I will randomly overhear and even understand multiple conversations at once, and sometimes (like at restaurants) I'll hear what people are saying to each other from across the room. It's not that I'm eavesdropping, I swear, if I could avoid it I'd rather not hear what people have to say, know why? Because I've come to understand that most people in the world are idiots.

Sorry to say it, but it's true. I'm not saying I'm a genius, but seriously... just shut your mouth sometimes, what you're saying either doesn't matter, doesn't make sense, or is just stupid.

Gah!!!

Okay, so this brings me to my thought right now. All over BYU Campus I seem to happen to be around psycho girls. Whether or not BYU is just simply full of psycho girls, and all girls here are in fact psycho, or it's just my luck that I happen to be around them is not my place to say, but either could be true.

So most people have seen or heard of the movie "He's Just Not That In To You." Apparently the message didn't clue in to LDS girlies. When I'm trying to study, or talk to my friends, or simply breathe in the vicinity that you are in, I don't want to hear how troubled you are because some random guy you like is lying and dating you and your sister at the same time, but he really DOES care about you, not your sister, so it's ok. Also, I don't want to hear about your relationship drama through sobs and tears when your entire relationship consists of text messages halfway across the country, and how your mom just simply doesn't understand that it's a real relationship so her advice doesn't apply to you.

How about how awesomely awesome !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! your wedding plans are coming and you're just so excited to be a real grown up (if you have to say it, it's probably still not quite true...). I also don't need to hear how much your husband matches up to the rest of the world due to his honorable status on his mission, and how successful he was, so he's obviously qualified to take on the world, I mean he was AP for goodness sake!!!

Girls, guys are lame, dating shouldn't be that hard, and there are plenty of us out there. You don't have to be married by 21 1/2 if it means settling for some lame summer selling accounting/business major with a stick up his butt and aspirations of a career in "being rich" if it's simply too hard to be with him. Dating should be EASY. I'm not saying everything should be pretty and you won't have to do any work, but come on, let's get real. If you have to invent conversations to keep yourself entertained, or justify his actions to your friends and family, or convince yourself he really does like you, he just acts like he doesn't, then get over it, he's not that great, and you deserve better. (Except you America, you're stuck with me, sorry).

So take a chill pill, leave the loser, and work on yourself. It's ok to get a degree, no really it is! I know that sounds crazy, but you can even go to graduate school, or dare I say, start a career. If you make it to 25 and still aren't married, I promise the world won't end, and your chances aren't any lower, just get out of Utah, you'll see there's plenty to be had, and plenty of good guys.

So if you could take some of this simple advice I'd really appreciate it, it'll help with my headaches ok, and I won't have to accidentally overhear your idiotic commentary on your lives.

Thanks...

SAD; defined

2009-03-20T12:41:00.000-07:00

So I don't know if this is supposed to be obvious, but I just realized in thinking to myself yesterday that Seasonal Affective Disorder spells out SAD, crazy huh? I thought it was pretty funny, and...sad.

Okay, so probably on the tippy top of the many reasons I'd rather not ever have to live in Utah would have to be the weather. I thought that living in Portland was bad, where the rainy season is as long if not longer than the sunny season, and my seasonal affective disorder would make me want to kill somebody, usually whoever was talking to me at the time.

Well, I used to think that snow was better than rain because it wasn't as wet. Well, I've changed my mind, I can't stand the snow, and worse is when it's snowy, and cold, and I have to scrape ice off my car when I'm already late for wherever I have to go, and then my car is cold, and then idiot drivers don't know how to drive in the snow and are sliding into my face, I think by that point I'd rather be slightly less cold, and more wet.

Why, do you ask, are you ranting about snow, when it's springtime and beautiful and warm?! Yeah, it's awesome, perfect weather today, the entire campus is eating lunch out on the grass, everyone's in shorts and sandals, I got lo leave my jacket in the car, what a wonderful day right? Yeah, except I've had far too many of these days, and then had resident Utards scoff at my naivete of this phenomena known here as "False Spring."

I learned about it last year when I got all excited early March at the changing weather, only to find myself buried in the snow again a few days later. Case in point, this weekend:

Anyways, so my SAD (seasonal affective disorder) was probably pretty strong this year. It always happens gradually (kind of like the weather, hmmm random) so I don't notice it until February rolls around and I hate my life, and then all of a sudden nice weather rolls around and I'm all happy again, that's when I realize I had been down in the dumps along with the weather. False Spring and snow bursts every other day don't do my system any good either.

Lame.

Get it on your calendars!

2009-03-14T16:34:00.000-07:00

So these Save-the-Dates should be going out sometime soon once I get my gay printer to print the info on the backs. Either way, save it!

February is for suckers, so suck it up

2009-03-09T00:12:00.000-07:00

Have you ever had one of those days where you just wanted to take your pen/pencil, jab it into your eye socket, rip out your eye and stomp it under your foot? When you feel like everything you do just gets messed up and you can't seem to get anything done?

Okay, well maybe you have, maybe you haven't, but I have, that was pretty much my February this year.

So I know what you're thinking, jeez Tyler, way to be totally depressed and pessimistic, lighten up and suck it up.

Calm down, calm down, I am lightening up and sucking it up each and every day. I've gotten onto this kick of like trying to...oh I don't know...have a positive attitude even as my life sucks. Sounds kind of funny, but it's true. Life's pretty lame a lot of times, but that doesn't mean you can't enjoy it still. School blows, I'm not gonna lie, and the benefits outway the negatives about being engaged, but still, being engaged is pretty lame too. It's just all really hard. Don't get me wrong, America's amazing, and I'd want to rip out both eyes if she weren't around, it would be that much worse, so I have plenty to be thankful for.

Anyway, on to less lame things. The past month hasn't been all bad. Wedding plans stress me out like no other, and school is really rough this semester. But on the bright side I do genuinely enjoy all of my classes, especially my Infectious Diseases class, most definitely.

America and I also got to go to Portland over Valentine's / P resident's Day weekend. And we flew, which was really nice for a change.

See how happy we are? Portland is always so much fun, and it's definitely a needed escape from Provo. We had a great time spending time with my family, taking engagement pictures, checking out the reception site, etc... We had Valentine's dinner with my parent's and sibling as Shula's Steakhouse, it was pretty good.

My family shanghai'd America into going dress shopping one morning as well, so I got to sleep in. The kiddos are getting so big too, it's sad to only seem them every so often, they change so fast! My niece Paige is a riot.

We also went out with my friend Traci and DEE!

Anyways, I'm in a good mood because it's like 1:30 in the morning and I have to be up in a few hours for school and work and life, but I'm not going to let it stress me out. Plus I just had a delicious Beto's breakfast burrito, so there's no way I'd be in a bad mood anyways.

This past weekend was the Hunger Banquet hosted by BYU's Students for International Development (SID) club, it was a lot of fun. I joined the club a few months ago, and have been involved in one of the planning committee's this year. It was so much fun to be organizing fund raisers again. It reminded me to a certain extent of the few fund raisers I helped do for the Free Clinic I worked at in Portland before moving to Utah, and just got me all excited to do stuff. It really was an amazing event, and packed to bursting with people. Maybe another time I'll write a little more about it, either way, it definitely boosted my spirits being involved with something so awesome.

Well, time to go to bed to get up to two tests I'm completely unprepared for and picking up America from the airport, oh yeah forgot to mention she was out of town in California all weekend, real nice Mer, real nice. As soon as I dropped her off at the airport headed to the sun and the beach, literally I pulled awar from the airport and it started snowing here, shoot me now!

We're just getting started!

2009-02-18T15:42:00.000-08:00

America and I went to Portland over the President's Day weekend. We flew, which was awesome. Definitely a nice change from the usual 12 hour drive, made twice, in under a week. Yeah, that gets old pretty quick.

So we thought it would be a good time to visit. America hadn't seen baby Ella, Sharon's (my sister) newest. I'll get some pics up of the family sometime soon when I get them onto my computer. We also wanted to get a good chance to take some engagement pictures and also see if we couldn't check out Montgomery Park, our pretty solid pick for the reception.

We got some really nice pictures taken, and we were also able to get to see the reception site. We're almost set, and awaiting just some final details with getting an ok from the caterer for the date, and some logistics at the place, but otherwise it's ours. Here are some pics of what it looks like. I had a formal dance here one year in High School, it's pretty nifty if you ask me.

We'd rent out the awesome 9-story atrium:

It's a large business complex, that rents out space on the weekends for events.

Anyway, life's been pretty hectic the past few weeks, which might be a reason I've been so late in updating the blog. We've been having a blast, and doing a lot of fun things, but mostly just drowning ourselves in school, not doing our homework, and then freaking out because our homework isn't done.

I've started working for two different websites on campus, The Women's Research Institute, and the Chinese Flagship. Both are great, really flexible, and reliable. So I'm pretty glad about that. I've also started taking on private clients and doing some freelance web stuff, mostly referrals from my old boss. Hopefully I'll get more (cause when I say private clients, I mean private client...).

Plans, plans, plans, plans, they just never end. Guess what, didn't do homework today either...

Cause I should be studying for a test right now

2009-02-12T00:25:00.000-08:00

1. YOUR REAL NAME:
Tyler Blake Nelson

2. YOUR GANGSTA NAME: (first 3 letters of real name plus izzle.)
Tylizzle (prefer Tynel)

3. YOUR DETECTIVE NAME: (favorite color and favorite animal)
Brown Bulldog

4. YOUR SOAP OPERA NAME: (your middle name and street you live on/or neighborhood if it's a number)
Blake Moore

5. YOUR STAR WARS NAME: (the first 3 letters of your last name, first 2 letters of your first name)
Nelty

6. YOUR SUPERHERO/CRIMINAL NAME: (Your 2nd favorite color, and favorite drink)
Gray Chicha (sounds kinda kinky)

7. YOUR IRAQI NAME: (2nd letter of your first name, 3rd letter of your last name, 1st letter of your last name, 2nd letter of your moms maiden name, 3rd letter of your dads name, 1st letter of a siblings first name, and last letter of your moms first name).
Ylnacsn

8. YOUR WITNESS PROTECTION NAME: (parents middle names).
Suzanne Blake (uhhhh...)

9 . YOUR GOTH NAME: (black, and the name of one of your pets).
Black Don't Have One

10 . YOUR HOOD NAME:....first 3 letters of your first name and add -iqua
Tyliqua

All about Grandmas!

2009-01-24T11:42:00.000-08:00

Okay, so you'll remember my Provo Family... well it's sort of growing (as is custom in normal families as well). The neighbor chick Jessi is all up in our business, and has been for some time. She's a good friend of everyone, the first time I met her was when America was out of town for Halloween and I was all sad and lonely spending possibly too much time at her apartment with her roommates. Jessi knocks on the door and all I can muster is (remember, I don't know who's at the door at this point yet...)

"If you're not America, I don't want to see you."

Right, so I hadn't met Jessi yet, but she was at the door and didn't mind at all that I was pining for lady love, because why? Maybe because America is awesome, and Jessi knew that, so she didn't blame me for being some form of minor douche to someone I hadn't met yet.

Here's Jessi...

She's from DC, and you can tell, it's a good thing though, probably what I like most about her. So we decided that she fit into our family enough to even make it into the blog, and we knew from early on what role she'd take: Jessi's Grandma.

Why? Why is Jessi Grandma, well I'm sure there were many reasons from the get go, but here's my small explanation. What do you think of when you think of your grandma? Probably a whole spectrum of answers depending on who is answering, I'd say someone who is around often enough, but not everyday, and who just is always around for the good stuff, know what I mean? Jessi is wise, full of advice, there to listen, but most of all, our voice of reason to the insanity of our family.

Right, so the picture doesn't do her justice, I'm thinking she was a hobo for Halloween or something, this shows her true colors:

Gotta love Grandmas!

Speaking of, this got me to thinking about my own grandmamas. So I grew up living a block and a half from my mom's parents:

Who are, by the way, amazing. I ended up living with them for a good while before my mission when my parent's moved just outside of Portland and I didn't feel it necessary to join them.

My dad's mom was involved too, but because we grew up calling my mom's mom Grandma, we (being young innocent children) called Dad's mom, Other Grandma.

(Excuse the dated pictures, I found them on my latest trip to Portland and got all excited about them that I've started using them for everything) We don't love Other Grandma any less, it simply was that we were around Mom's parents more so that the term Other Grandma just ended up sticking, I think at first she didn't appreciate it, but we were kids, so she ended up getting used to it, now it's more a joke than anything. Though if someone doesn't say Other Grandma, I'll think you're talking about my mom's parents.

Doesn't everyone have a way to distinguish between their sets of old folks? My friend Michele calls one set the Pink Grandparents and the other the Blue, and I don't remember her reasoning, it came from when she was a kid. How do you distinguish between yours?

Anyway, back on track. I LOVE my grandma. She's like one of my most favorite people in the world:

I am in search of my all time favorite picture of her from when she and my grandpa (who was my bishop through the majority of my youth and young adult life) served their mission running the Portland Bishop's storehouse, they served for two years almost exactly during the two years I was serving, I'm most definitely their favorite, and the only one with the privilege of referring to them as "the crazy old people."

My grandma, as I said, is heap cool. She's basically somewhere in the middle between M from James Bond (just the Judy Dench M):

And the Grand Duchess from Anastasia:

Not sure if that makes sense, but that's how I see it.

America's grandma, on the other hand...

Let's just say that among the first few phrases she said to me was that she'd wished America was marrying "Missouri" (what she called one of America's ex-flings). La Abuela is a little off her rocker, but America loves her, so I love her too. I'm sure there will be more to come about her.

I love old people, especially when they're related to me, and especially when they're crazy, I can't wait to be a senile old man and can get away with cackling for no reason, doesn't that sound like so much fun?

Weddings and all...

2009-01-21T19:08:00.000-08:00

Whewf! So I may have said before that it's been kinda sorta crazy busy since the semester started, well I guess you can say it hasn't gotten any better.

Looks like I may have landed a job or two, which is nice, though not enough to pay my bills, so we'll see how things pan out over the next few weeks in that regard. I finally got around to calling the temple to reserve our date, and just our luck, the Portland Temple is closed for two weeks in the summer. Guess when? That's right, the week before, and the week after, the date we had originally picked and everyone was stoked for and was perfect, August 8th. So not only could we not use our date, but we couldn't even do it the weekend before or after.

End of story, we changed the day to July 25th, and we're happy about it. We're still getting married in the Portland Temple, for obvious reasons...

And then we'll spend a week somewhere, hopefully in Oregon, then the next weekend we'll have an open house/mini reception in Illinois for America's friends and family that won't be in Portland, so like the 31st or the 1st (Fri/Sat), then we'll be straight off to wherever we end up for sure deciding on for our Field Study (which is like 95% sure Guatemala). Our plan/hope is to spend some time in Belize, Honduras, and El Salvador, as well as Guatemala before starting the Field Study, if all works out well it will be a blast.

So the only thing we have to do now is all the everything.

If only everyday were Friday!

2009-01-16T15:08:00.000-08:00

It is Friday, thank freakin goodness. It's been a crazy first two weeks of the semester.

We got back from our holiday trip to Illinois Monday night, the fifth. Classes started Monday morning...yep. We ended up getting jipped by lame-o William Shatner and were laid over in Houston for four and a half hours for our connection from...get this...Chicago to SALT LAKE! So yeah, maybe we'd have noticed that was the flight plan before we bought the tickets, but seriously, they were $200 round-trip from Salt Lake to Chicago right in the middle of Christmas/New Year's, so we though it'd be worth it.

Let me remind you that a direct flight from Chicago to Salt Lake is around 3 or 4 hours, the same distance for each leg of our connection flight, add on the layover in Houston and the three hour drive in the first place from America's house to Chicago, it was a long day. So needless to say it was exhausting, I got into bed around 3:45 AM and had a class at 9 AM Tuesday morning, which I made it to, but man was a cranky jerk on Tuesday, and just about every day since (sorry Mer)!

Okay, so it was worth it, I do really enjoy my classes, except my lameface PD BIO 120 class, I already know it's gonna suck. Wanna know how I know? Because I've skipped it twice now, TWICE, obviously it's lame.

Real quick, there have been some changes now in future plans. We had a small setback with our India plans. Apparently someone in Anthropology pulled some strings at BYU and had the India Field Study program cancelled in order to do an India Study Abroad instead, which is lame. However, America and I are now looking at several option as to where we will be doing our studies for Fall semester 2009, the most likely of which is Guatemala. This would work out great, we could spend our honeymoon between Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, and El Salvador, and if there's time even go to Costa Rica, Nicaragua, etc... It sounds like a lot of fun to me, and America says it sounds fun too, so I hope she's not just humoring me. Ha!

Either way, school is going great, I'm enrolled for 15 credit hours, 6 classes; Living Prophets, Intro to Public Health, Infectious Diseases, Intro to International Development, Science of Biology (the one class I don't like), and French 102. America and I are in French and Religion together, so we do get to see each other. Otherwise I don't konw how possible that would be. Neither of us have been as busy as we both now are since we started dating, so it's new to not be together all day every day, and it's tiring!

Well this weekend is Miles' (my little brother) last weekend off base before his deployment to Afghanistan, so I'm flying home for the three day weekend to spend it with him and family. My newest niece Ella Rose is being blessed on Sunday as well, so it'll work out well. America is not going with me this time, another first, so that will be different also. Things just pile right on top of one another, but so far I haven't had a nervous breakdown, soon to come I'm sure though.

Christmas is over, so is fun, sanity, and joy.

2009-01-11T00:40:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I started this post a couple days ago, but it's been such a crazy week/two weeks since getting back from break that I haven't even had time to sleep let alone write a semi-non-interesting blog about what I did two weeks ago. So much is going on with school and stuff that I want to talk about but before I can do that I have to catch up, it's an issue I'm dealing with.

So between Christmas and New Years we took two short trips, one to St. Louis, and another to Nauvoo. Then the Saturday before flying back to Utard we spent a day in Chicago. All three places were first times for me. It was a lot of fun and I got to see some places I hadn't previously.

We spent a night and a day in St. Louis with America's brothers Ralph and Noah and their families.

The first night we played catchphrase until like 2 in the morning with America's awesome uncle Dave. The next morning we went to the St. Louis temple. I had accidentally forgotten my recommend in Tuscola, so America and I became the babysitters while Ralph, Noah, and their wives (Liz and Cherry) went in to the temple.

America was originally gonna watch them all while I went through a session with her siblings, but I got stuck watching the kids. It seemed fine until America went to get us food and "couldn't find" the McDonalds for 45 minutes, as if there isn't one on every corner. So I had the privilege of watching the sweet natured children alone.

They actually like me more than America so it was just fine. I had fun with them, and now they call me NEW uncle Tyler, and her OLD aunt America. It was pouring down rain, and we wanted to take a picture in front of the temple, so we got soaked, but did it anyway. As we sprinted back for the car America lost her shoe and hopped just far enough to splat on her butt in the mud before getting back into the car.

We also went to see the Arch, or "Gateway to the West." Apparently it's a big deal, though I'd never heard of it, and I'd wager that many haven't. It's this huge archway that you go inside and up these teeny tiny elevators with the cement walls only inches surrounding the elevator, just a little claustrophobic...

We were only back in Tuscola for like 20 hours before hopping back on the road to Nauvoo with Noah, Cherry, and America's parents.

It was a lot of fun visiting Old Nauvoo, learning about some of the early pioneers of the church and being able to see their possessions that have survived the centuries. We got to visit Carthage and see where Joseph and Hyrum were martyred, and also visit the temple.

The last day we got to spend the morning in the temple. This time I didn't forget my recommend, so I got to go through with America's parents and Noah and Cherry. The Nauvoo Temple is really cool, I didn't think about it, though it should be obvious, that it's got a creation, garden, and other rooms for the ceremony. It was built replicating the old one, so that makes sense. Later we saw the graves of Joseph, Emma, and Hyrum.

Though the blasted Community of Christ have the rights to that area of the town. The LDS Mission side of things seems all bright and happy, and jolly (sometimes TOO jolly) old folks are dressed in pioneer garb begging everyone to go to Rendezvous on any given night. A nightly musical about the saints played by the senior missionaries trying to remember the lines and not fall asleep. It's really cute, especially because you can tell that they really think it's awesome. I can't wait to be old and senile.

Anyway, the last weekend before flying back to Provo we took a day and went up Michigan Ave in Chicago.

It was fun to see that area of the city, but there was so much more to see that we'll for sure go again and spend a good couple of days there having fun. Realistically that won't happen til after we're married probably.

So the rest of the trip was proving to America that I can be a man too. Like pushing the truck out of the ditch, hauling brush, etc...

Here's a good idea of what Tuscola's like.

Them: "Hey there cityslicker, what do y'all do in Portland for fun?"

Me: "Oh I don't know, whatever. Out dancing, or to eat, sometimes just haning out with friends or going to a movie. Why? What do people do here for fun?"

Them: "Shoot stuff."

And...I'm not kidding.

That was me, fitting in.

And we also took a visit to:

Okay, so Amishland is more of an attraction for food and buying stuff, Amish people don't actually run it. Don't let that fool you into thinking, however, that this place isn't crawling with 'em.

All in all it was a very busy trip, but I got to spend some good quality time with most, if not all, of America's family and we grew closer too. It was good to see a little more where she comes from, and to have fun. Plus, it was just a good break before having to run back into the craziness that life has become since returning to school this semester. Ah!

Updated posts

2009-01-10T17:43:00.000-08:00

Just thought I'd put a quick post because I finally was able to update a couple of the recent blog posts with more pictures.

New Years post

Country Christmas

I will be dropping a quick post about our Nauvoo/St. Louis trips just to wrap up our Holiday break trip before moving on to current stuff. It's been a crazy first week back into town, back in school, etc... I'm exhausted to say the least.

Holy 2009!

2009-01-02T19:19:00.000-08:00

It's 2009, pretty crazy if you ask me. I'm not one for really like formally making new years resolutions, but I do usually end up reflecting on what all happened the previous year as January first rolls around again. It's hard to think that everything that's happened in the past year happened in that short of time. It was only in 2008 that I;

Moved to Provo.

Finished a semester and a term at BYU.

Switched my major to Public Health and declared my minor as International Development.

Met America.

Went to Peru.

Went to Honduras.

Took an awesome road trip (with America) visiting;

Las Vegas.

Pheonix/Mesa.

The Grand Canyon.

Southern California (Anaheim, Santa Monica).

San Francisco.

Oakland.

Sacramento.

Portland.

Seattle.

Went back and forth to Portland several times, mostly with America, starting with the 4th of July where we were able to be there when Miles surprised everyone coming home from Iraq.

Got engaged.

Visited America's family in Illinois for Christmas.

Went to St. Louis for the first time.

Also spent time in Nauvoo.

Saw Chicago also for the first time.

On top of so many other little things that have gone on that it's hard to believe it all happened just this year. This upcoming year will be just as eventful looks like. We've got a wedding to plan for this upcoming summer, a field study for Fall term to organize and re-think (did I put on here how India's been cancelled? I'll have to put that up at some point...). Not to mention just simple things like going to school full time and working and being awesome, you know, the usual.

Country Christmas

2008-12-31T11:12:00.001-08:00

It's been a crazy past few weeks and there's so much to talk about! So I'm in Tuscola, IL right now at America's parents home. They live in an old brick farmhouse that's been refurbished, it was built I want to say sometime in the 1860's-ish... It's a nice cozy home.

Since arriving last Monday we've had Christmas here and also taken two short trips, one to St. Louis, and another to Nauvoo, both really fun. That's all way too much to talk about at once so I'll just get you started. They have some live-in alarm clocks that are ever-present;

We had to be at the Salt Lake airport at like 6 in the morning (at the latest) because our flight was to leave close to 7 am. So we were up early and out the door. Luckily my roommate Corey was willing to get up at 4 in the morning and get us there. We were only a little worried because of the beast blizzard that had come and gone over the past week or so in Utah, and I knew that airports all over the country were delaying/closing flights due to weather and stuff, so we were just hoping it would all work out. By this time most of our friends were already all home for the break and so Corey was one of the few still in town to take us, fyoof!

So we get to the airport just praying that our flight isn't delayed, and who would've thought, it was...

But the surprise was that it was actually somewhat warm (relatively) that morning and clear, so we weren't sure why it'd be delayed. It was the only continental flight that morning, it was to Houston where we were supposed to catch a connection to Chicago, but the windshield I guess was cracked! Holy random. So we were stuck in the back of the continental line because of course the e-check-in computers weren't working (for ONLY Continental as well). So we had the privilege of watching all the Southwest customers zip through their empty line over and over while we didn't budge in our long Continental line full of lame-o's in the same situation as us. Everyone on the phone trying to get through to Continental to change their flight. We were more than anything just worried about missing our connection. Stupid William Shatner! Nobody answered, last time I use Priceline. (dot commmmm - in the tune of the commercial, you know what I'm talking about...)

Well, a voice from heaven calls out "Tyler! ...Tyler Nelson? America Ru....???gergy?" Okay so maybe it wasn't an angelic being, maybe it was just a big polynesian woman from the Continental desk, but she only called out our names, and said "Go to American, NOW!"

We decided it best not to ask why and just bolted for the American desk, whoopdeedoo we were second in line, and stayed that way for like 15 minutes behind some pooface checking a dog on the plane. So by the time we got to a desk the flight that they wanted to book us on was boarding almost, we would've had a direct flight to Chicago leaving at 7 in the morning! Gay. We ended up sitting around for 6 + hours waiting for the next American flight, it was direct, so we didn't get in too late. But then it was a three hour drive from Chicago to Tuscola.

America was stoked to be home and see her parents, my in-laws are great though and it's been fun spending time getting to know them. We're basically Noah and Cherry's BFF's for sure.

Yeah we've spent probably the most time with them compared to anyone else. But it's been a lot of fun getting to know them more, and I know America really likes being with her family, even if Noah does smell.

Well we got off the plane and this is pretty much how Chicago felt;

It was SOOOO cold. We both started hacking the second the doors opened. The next morning America had a doctor's appointment at the little clinic she goes to. Let's just say that where she gets checked up there are two parking lots outside. Where we parked there was a sign that said "Automobile parking." Yeah, they need that sign, "why?" do you ask? Possibly because the other lot was for horse and buggy. "Surely you jest," you might say... No, no I don't.

This was another large farmhouse out past a bunch of Amish homes, the doctor there serves the folk out here as well as the Amish families, so she wears Amish garb and the like. It was interesting going out there with her.

We're only in the clinic maybe an hour, as we get out the entire passenger side of the truck (yep, truck) was covered in a sheet of ice. On our way back as we pass several Amish homes America's driving and the truck starts sliding to the left, as we barely miss smashing an Amish family's fence (holding in their horses, duh!) we swerve to the right and fly straight into the icy ditch. That's right, the entire road was covered in ice. Now I'm not trying to say I'm incapable or not manly or anything, but seriously I was like, what the?! And I had to push that monster truck (ok it was little...still though) out of the ditch while the little Amish boys stared on from their window. Like I truly belonged out in the IL country I pushed that truckcito out of the ditch just in time to get going again in front of the horse and buggy coming up behind us. Whew...

Later that night after visiting with America's older brother Ralph and his family America drove us yet again into a ditch, same truck, same day... Luckily Noah was in the back and got in the driver's seat and somehow maneuvered us out of the ditch. We were on the highway and it was between the two sides of the interstate. Anyway, we Mario Kart-ed our way out of the ditch yet again and America was banned from driving for the rest of the trip.

The ice and cold didn't last many more days and we were able to get some last minute shopping in before Christmas. This was my job:

Yeah...

Not too long after the indecisive one who shall not be named (America), continued to not know what she wanted to get for her family, so I decided to help out;

Finally Christmastime came around, hurray!

Ma 'n Pa Ruggieri were extra generous that year, or are every year maybe. We had a really good time though. My family's tradition is to do a lot of stuff Christmas Eve with extended family, and then more just immediate family Christmas Day, with a large group movie in the afternoon. Ruggieri's this year didn't have a lot going on Christmas Eve which was different for me, but then Christmas was a madhouse. It was a lot of fun, a bunch of family came out to the house;

America got to see her babies;

Let's not get any crazy ideas ok!

And I met La Abuela (dun dun dun!!!).

I think there will have to be an entire separate blog dedicated to grandmas (wink Jessi). Don't you worry, there's much to hear. I had a great Christmas, it was the first year that I was away from home (excluding mission Christmases) and my family was pissed. They continue to remind me how it's Christmastime and I'm not there, and I was really sad to not be there with them, but it's been great to get to know America's family more too. We've done a lot since Christmas too, and now it's already New Year's Eve! I can't believe how fast time has flown by. More to come...

What Happens in Vegas...

2008-12-18T23:11:00.000-08:00

Ends up on my blog...apparently.

This past weekend we took The Family down to Vegas because Melinda was playing in an Ultimate Frisbee tournament. Let me just say, Ultimate Frisbee players are freaks.

Anyway, AshlAn, Kyle, America, and I went in my car the day after Melinda and Zack headed down. We were staying at Melinda's uncle and aunt's house in Las Vegas (or so we thought...ahem it's in Hendersen, good to know if you're using a GPS!). On the way down we saw Santa Claus, and then we stopped in St. George to play with Kort. He works at Wells Fargo (lame).

When we got there Kort was in some important bank meeting (right) so to pass the time I thought I'd see what women go through when they put on "plumper" do you know what I'm talking about?

It's disgusting. And my lips were already dry and irritated, so it hurt like a mofo. Seriously, dumb thing ladies, besides it just makes your lips look swollen, not plump, so don't use it seriously, besides if you want sexy lips, that makes me think you want someone to kiss you, and if you have that crap on your lips then it's gonna get on what's his face's lips too, then he's gonna be pissed, because that stuff is definitely not comfortable.

Anyway, once Kort got out we all got excited and started making more of a disturbance inside the bank than we were making before. America was snapping off pictures like crazy until the lady was all (in front of us, but to Kort) "ahem, cameras..." Apparently you're not supposed to take pictures inside a bank, who knew?!

So we got to Vegas a little later than we'd originally planned to, but we still had a good time. We had dinner with Zackypoo and Monolinda before jumping in their uncle's amazing hot tub. The pool water was close to 50 degrees, aka cold. We thought it'd be a bright idea to jump in. How could we not when there were water slides, rope swings, and cliffs to jump off of? It was really cold, but really fun.

The next day (Saturday) was Melinda's tournament. I kid you not, 50+ mph gusts of wind the ENTIRE day. It was crazy. The birds couldn't even fly, they were stuck in place flapping their wings as hard as they could. The frisbee was just getting knocked any which way the wind wanted. But we were having fun being there together anyway.

And other than the wind it really wasn't super cold, especially compared to gay Utah.

And even with the crappy weather Melinda beasted it up.

Those of us not playing found other ways to pass the time...

Actually AshlAn had the bright idea to pull Zack's car around and those not playing piled in to watch the game from the curb. Kyle, AshlAn, America, Zack, Jessica (Amanda's brother Bryce's girlfriend), and myself were in that car for going on five hours watching the games go by miserably. Melinda was so mad at the wind she was spitting everywhere.

Good thing the window was up, talk about a splash zone, ugh... It wasn't long before poor Zackypoo was out of comission, married life apparently wears one out.

The only thing I remember coming out of his mouth was a tiny voice in the background during our constant obnoxious ruckus saying, "I just wanna grow..." He's little.

One of the best parts of the day was getting to know the team better. We got to know Pants Guy, Shorts Guy, Hat Guy, and many others from the comfort of the car. This was because we were seated behind the team, and I think all too often they forgot we were there (even though we'd honk everytime we noticed that they'd scored, we were paying very close attention of course...). Here's proof of them noticing us behind them criticizing their every move...

Let's just say we could tell he wasn't just warming up his hands from the movement that went on under there constantly... This is Pants Guy, we named him this because Shorts Guy had other issues. Let's just say, his booty was H-O-N-G-R-Y, as Ashlan put it. A little too clingy, and with the wind, let's just say he might as well have been wearing biker shorts... yeah... ew.

On the other hand the teams they were playing weren't much better. There was badonkadonk lady, Dumbledoor, Taliban Guy, Egyptian Guy, Albertson's Checker, and others. These people were wacked out, all dressed up in full on costumes with robes, beards, pointed hats, etc... running up and down this field with crazy winds, it was funny to watch. There was an entire co-ed team wearing pink mini-skirts and fishnets with garter belts around their thighs sprinting, jumping, you name it...

On a lighter note the rest of the weekend was just as much fun. We spent it haning out with the members of the fam that went (Amanda totally bailed to "go to a family christmas event" right, she just wanted to play with her new boy toy, we all know it's true...). We walked up and down Las Vegas Blvd that night til around 3 in the morning, poor Kyle got more than he bargained for as we walked by the large windows of Margaritaville. The tables were close to the front, you get the idea. We played in the toystore for far too long in Ceasar's Palace too;

Here's my reenactment of AshlAn getting accosted by Melinda's uncle's dog Toby after a well placed booty-shake and a 1-yr old dog that got a little too excited at the perfect time, and only had eyes for AshlAn;

It was an awesome weekend. We almost died on the way back as the car literally froze over from the inside out, but the weather down there was beatufil and made me just a little bitter to come back.

Couples, Family, Lights, and Music. And Kyle.

2008-12-09T17:08:00.000-08:00

Sunday was the First Presidency's Christmas Devotional. We all kind of realized that none of us had really ever gone to it before in person, heck I don't think I've ever even watched it broadcast. So we were all excited to go see it and then look around at the lights on Temple Square. SO excited, in fact, that we decided to request tickets for, oh, like eight households hoping to get some tickets. I'm not quite sure how they decide who gets tickets or not, but we ended up between various members of The Family three sets of six tickets, yeah that's right, count that up, that's 18 tickets.

So Melinda, Zack, Amanda, Austin (oh don't worry, we'll learn more about him soon enough), and Melinda's brother and his fiancee went with one set (that's right, count 'em, there's six). America and I had the other twelve, so we started asking around and our couple friends came through.

Caleb and Tasha Rutter were originally down for the game. But last minute bailed, we haven't seen them for a while so we invited them all excited-like. Well, we also hadn't done a lot with Bret and Naomi real recently, so we were just as happy for them to join us...

We sat with them and with Christina Jones (the name is only said completely), though after Sunday I like to refer to her as GPS-tina, because she got us around Salt Lake like a pro.

Look at her all important-like. Yay Christina. Her man-friend was supposed to join us but decided to throw up all night instead, so we ended up with five in our set.

Elbow to the face.

That's better.

Jackie and Caleb, another awesome couple that we enjoy quite well, went as well and took up two of the other set of six tickets. AshlAn, Jessi (another that we'll be learning more about shortly as well, don't you worry!), Laura, and Kyle went too.

AshlAn and Jessi are writing "their" missionaries, so don't pity them for not joining in the couples affair. Laura was with Kyle. ...

I guess he wanted to touch the water...?

Otherwise for the most part everyone had a date.

...that's right, EVERYONE...

So it was like the whole family plus some, it was great fun. Our original intention was to look at the lights around temple square like I mentioned, but apparently all other 21,000 people in the Conference Center auditorium had the same idea. So after just a few minutes there we decided there were too many people to really enjoy ourselves. Look behind the reflecting pool at all the people!

So we left early and continued with the planned itinerary and headed over to Zack's parents house and had a gay old time. Bret and Naomi and Jackie and Caleb ditched out, lame, so it was just The Family there, plus a bunch of friends of the Golden's (Zack's parents), it was really fun. We hung out for a while and went down to their amazing music room and listened while Zack and his pops jammed out and America sang us some sweet tunes as well.

Everyone had a really good time. Honestly one of the best nights out I've had in a long time. So it was good, and there will be more for sure, cause our friends are quite awesome.

How many K's?!

2008-12-08T14:05:00.000-08:00

Melinda and Zack decided for the rest of The Family that we were going to all run in a 5k race this past weekend. In their defense they gave us like three weeks notice. The idea was that we would run in a race that gave out free tickets to the Nutcracker, so then we could do that as a family as well. Good plan!

Well everyone seemed all for it, and I was getting excited for it too. I even started running almost everyday for about two weeks or more beforehand, seeing as how Manders is like a beast runner who could make us all look like fools, I just didn't want to look like a fag gasping for breath after six or seven paces. And believe me, the first day or two that I went out running it was a pretty sore sight, so I kept it to myself...

As time went by, America, AshlAn, and I hadn't registered for the race yet, it was definitely planned for and everything, we were just procrastinating doing the actual registering. So when it came to just a few days before AshlAn and America decided that they weren't going to run. I was all "WHAT?!" and they were all "Psh."

There seemed like there was no convincing them, but I told them I was running anyway. I registered and all, and at the last minute America caved. The problem was that; one. America hadn't run for a long time, and two. we were up til like 2 in the morning the day before the race, which we had to be at around 8 in the morning, genius I know.

In the end America caved and registered for the race less than 12 hours before it was to begin, and feeling left out AshlAn angrily registered too. The next morning we appeared at the race bright and early. I was still excited for it...

Like REALLY excited. I hadn't done something like this for a while, I was glad to be there for sure. Everyone (for the most part) seemed to be in good spirits;

...except AshlAn...

We should've thought to maybe eat breakfast before running over 3 miles, oh well... We were doing it as a family though!

And the race began!

And around 30 minutes later Amanda, Zack, Melinda and I came around to the finishline...hooray!

Feeling...great?

Shortly after AshlAn came through as sexy as always...not so angry anymore, maybe cause she was just really tired...

Then a few minutes passed and we were a little worried America had died or something. Then we saw her, yay!

Coming, coming...

And she arrived!

"I'm going to throw up, don't touch me..."

"No really, I'm going to pass out!"

Me: "Um, people have been spitting all over the ground, you might want to get up."

We did it!

Just some quick nourishment and then we're headed home.

Zack's done this before it seems...

Okay, so in all seriousness 5k isn't that far, but it was a good start. America and I decided that this is going to be a regular thing for us to do. It was nice to have something like this (physical) as a personal or group goal, and then to go out and do it, not have any major responsibilities or commitments to it other than wanting to feel good and accomplish something. So we want to run marathons eventually, we'll start small like this one, but eventually we want to get to that point, it sounds fun to me. For now we'll see what's coming up in the area. In the Northwest there's a "Hood to Coast" every year where teams run from Mt. Hood to the Oregon Coast, and I've always secretly wanted to be a part of that, so that might be something we'll look into as well. It's hosted by NIKE and is the largest running relay in the world.

Anyway, after everything we were (at least I was) exhausted. I'm pretty sure Amanda went about her day like it was nothing, and Melinda went off to Frisbee practice, psh, make us look like pansies don't they?

That night to top off the evening we went to Laura's Harp Ensemble concert, I was so tired and Harp music is such that it made for a difficult concert to get through without passing out, but Laura did really well and there were some cool numbers, so I'm glad we went. And we miss Laura, so it's nice to see her as much as we can.

That was our day Saturday for the most part.

Job seeking sucks, moreso in Utah

2008-12-05T19:27:00.000-08:00

I am one of those people that get's totally raped by the Higher Education System in this country (actually by lots of systems). Middle class white male whose parents make (on paper) a decent annual income.

So, according to FAFSA mom n pop should be able to fork out 25k a year for me to go to school, which if I had I wouldn't even need to work, just be here and go to school. Well big surprise, mom n pop have debt and bills of their own and can barely shell out a hundred bucks for gas now and again. Part of the problem is that I've been working and supporting myself since 15 or 16, so really asking other people for financial support (including ma n pa) doesn't come super easy to me anyway.

Well, here's my problem. For said reasons above, I don't qualify for any form of aid other than unsubsidized loans (that means the bad kind that accrue interest while you're in school and that the interest is also not paid by the state), and I am considered "dependent" on my parents until 25-ish or married, whichever comes sooner. So basically most blokes are done with grad-school before FAFSA considers them independent from their parents. That's right, even though I've not lived with my parents since I was 17-18 I'm still "dependent" on them.

So what happens is that I then have to find a way to pay for college myself. I land an awesome job the day I move to Provo, which has subsequently become not so awesome of a job and caused me to be dropped from Fall classes last semester and way in over my head with bills and stuff now. End of story I am now looking for another job and plan to keep my old job on a project basis to do in my free time, I wouldn't be able to live off of just one job so I need a part-time job on top of anything I can get from where I'm currently working. This leads me to why I wrote this blog...

I hate looking for a job. Now I'm not bragging or anything, but I've made myself pretty marketable and have working in many fields with great work experience. So if I ever needed to I wouldn't have the worst time finding a job. Finding a job that works with a full time school schedule and pays enough to be worth it, however, not as easy. Were I to start craigslisting Salt Lake or Portland I run across more than enough ads to find something. So I've been applying for a week or two, I've had roughly four interviews, have another on Monday, and am getting used to the idea of getting a campus job. It'll obviously work better with school, and holidays, but they pay so much lower. The highest paying campus job pays $2-4 an hour less than I've made since high school, so that's pretty lame, I am in Utah though. Ugh.

Seeing as how Utah is basically to the States as India is to the world, call centers and door-to-door salesmen galore! I'm sick of hearing about security sales, pest control, insurance programs, or whatever else is the ticket to "get rich quick." I went into a very falsely advertised interview a bit ago and the interviewer actually said "It's like a pyramid scheme." Yeah, I was hooked, count me in. I just have a problem when instead of feeling like I have to sell myself to a company someone is trying to sell their company to me. Shouldn't it be the other way around? Shouldn't I be competing with a bunch of other well qualified individuals for a worthwhile job, rather than feel like I'm walking into a company trying to get any sucker that replies to their ad to sign up? Utah pisses me off because of that. You learn how to read scam ads on craiglist and other posting services pretty fast. I've found that I actually am now used to the idea of taking a lower paying campus job and am now hoping to get one rather than look for something off campus.

I figure no matter what I get it'll have to be part-time, so it won't cover all my bills anyway. No matter what I got I'd have to supplement it with project work with Molding Box Technologies anyway, so I might as well go for one that'll be on campus, low stress, and convenient with the rest of my schedule. We'll see how things go over the next couple of weeks.

Awesome News!!! Gas is at $1.63!!!

2008-12-02T12:41:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I promised the follow up blog on Thanksgiving in Portland would be worth the wait in my last blog, so here goes...

WARNING!: Long blog with lots of awesome pictures to follow.

DOUBLE WARNING!: Questionable (aka mushy) content to follow, those with weak stomachs are advised to ask America or me a censored and condensed version.

Overall the long weekend was great, spent with extended families on both sides for lots of food on Thursday, and then most of the rest of the time was spent with the immediate family and the kiddos, which was great, we were even able to get family pictures in:

So the real story is what happened on the way home! Let's backtrack to a few months ago, August, another road trip, a fairly large one if you'll remember. Anyway, on the way home from Klamath Falls, OR America and I are driving through Northern Nevada when an Ice Cream Nazi (myself) accidentally drops a Dibs which somehow disappears:

Arg, so the Clean Car Nazi (also myself) is now not super excited to have melting chocolatey/ice creamy goodness melting over his carpeting, so the obvious reaction (and quite rational I think) is to screech to a halt on the open highway and get it the heck out of his car. Unfortunately it's found its way under the backseat. Unbeknownst to me, a slight touch of the finger warrants an easy Dibs Explosion. Luckily all over my hand and not my car, and we were able to get it out before any damage was done to my carpet, but amongst some freaking out, screaming, and irriation on my part on the side of the open highway.

Why, do you ask, am I explaining this? Well, it was that day, back in August, on the highway, that I knew that America and I were getting married. I had known already for some time, but that was the moment that I remember in my head thinking, this is it. The way she looked, and maybe a little help from the setting sun just made the moment really stand out. So knowing it was an important moment, I took a picture (which America thought was weird, not knowing what was going on in my head of course, cause I'm a jerk like that).

So, the following four-ish months were full of a lot of me pretending to not want to get engaged any time soon, seeping feelings of not being prepared, being scared of marriage, not thinking it was a good idea, basically driving America mad crazy insane.

So that brings us to this last weekend. The ring was tricky, I ended up getting it on Saturday while "at lunch" after going to a temple session in the morning with my endowed family members, and then hiding it in mom's and pop's dresser all weekend. And on an extended "bathroom break" called her dad Sunday night, all went well of course.

Alright, so now the juicy stuff I'm sure everyone cares about. There we were on the open road heading home from Portland. America and I started dating because of a road trip, fell in love/knew we were getting married on another, and got to know each other even more on another, so this isn't an unusual sight for us:

America, helping navigate of course:

And me, driving for six hours with knots in my stomach just waiting for the sun to hit the right spot in the sky:

And trying to ease my stomach by nervously downing an entire bottle of Lime Perrier...

Then finally, the sun was right, the sky was clear, and I was at a place that looked close enough like where we were the day I knew it was IT, and again we pulled over to the side of the open highway in the middle of nowhere:

Here's America, just woken up, and not quite sure why the need to get out of the car and take pictures of the nice pretty landscape:

So as I begin to mention how the setting and the sun reminded me of that day the Dibs attacked back in August I confess that that was the day I knew I wanted to marry her, and that this whole time I've been stringing her along with the nervousness/doubts/fear of getting engaged or married. To which America replies, "awwwww." And thinks, "that's sweet, at least sometimes he says nice things to me, let's get back in the car, it's cold."

Which is when I decide to drop to one knee, to which America somewhat tiffed says, "Are you joking?" Still not really knowing what's going on, she doesn't really believe me. This disbelief is well warranted since there was no way I was going to propose anytime soon, and by no means before next year, one. And two, I'm broke, it's not a secret. Three, I pretty much warned her I might pull a Jim and drop to one knee occasionally, scare the bageezers out of her, and then start tying my shoe or something (reference to The Office, check it out). So she wasn't expecting it none the less until the box came out of my pocket and then her expression changed from incredulous and maybe a little irritated, to overwhelmed and holding back tears.

Long story short(ish), I asked, she said yes, and we got honked at by the passing semis for indecent exposure (don't worry, the Mormon kind!).

The following five hours were spent in the car, still heading to Provo, on the phone (mostly America) letting people know.

We haven't set a date yet, we're for sure getting sealed at the Portland Temple:

But we won't be setting a date for a while, probably by New Year's we'll have come to more of a concrete decision but we're looking at late Summer 2009, or Spring 2010. No opinions or suggestions necessary, but thanks for thinking of us!

We're pretty stoked, and I'm just relieved that the charade is up, cause I was pretty much watching myself for four months to keep her from knowing, but it was all worth it for the look on her face when she knew it was really happening!

Once. Twice. Three times a Thanksgiving.

2008-11-30T12:54:00.001-08:00

So most people suffer (term used loosely) through more than one Thanksgiving dinner, because usually you have more than one home to visit over the Holiday. In my family we have two large extended families that always tries to get together for the holidays. Usually the days of the holiday we're with my mom's family and my dad's family will organize something the following Saturday or something like that and we get to see everyone and it's fun and gay.

Well this year's dinners started even before that. Funny story;

Jackie (my buddy) and I planned on doing some sort of double date with her current posterboy Caleb sometime before America and I were to come to Portland for the long weekend. Well this is how the conversation went;

"Hey Tyler, let's do dinner at my place on Sunday."
"Why we'd love to, but we can't really bring anything, we're broke."
"No worries, we can take care of that."

Saturday night comes around and creepy Josh is all "Hey guys, I've got a turkey that I got from work, we can make that if you want to."

So we start thinking, hmmmm... We can have a big family dinner on Sunday at America's, it'll be wonderful!

Long story short(er than it needs to be), Jackie shows up (remember she was "covering" dinner) with a bowl of rice and some steamed vegetable, and a hungry Caleb.

We ended up with 12-ish people there, hmmmmm... Saturday night/Sunday morning we get all excited (I get all excited) about having a big fancy pre-Thanksgiving turkey dinner with The Family. Zack and Melinda are in, Bret and Naomi are down, Jackie's been in since the beginning, and Manders says she'll try (we know what that means, psh), but Josh and Laura are agreed as well. Zack's parents even showed up and ate some food. Once we get everyone all pumped for it and are all stoked to have delicious turkey dinner I/we realize, we don't know how to make turkey...

I get home around 3 in the morning (no comment) and the turkey is still in the freezer, this is starting off awesome. After church we turbo-defrost that baby in hot hot water in the sink over and over and then with a full stick of butter just slapped on the top and covered in foil it finds its way into the oven. Three hours later and, voila, best effin turkey ever!

We were all seriously impressed (I was more just relieved, cause it would've been a disaster). America made some beast awesome homemade rolls, stuffing, salad, jello, and more seemed to just appear out of the cupboards, and we ended up with really one of the best meals I've had since moving to Provo, definitely the best home-cooked meal since being here. It was pretty hilarious.

We were really sad to be in Portland over the weekend and miss out on Zack and Melinda's wedding, like REALLY sad. But we're really happy for them, they look awesome, and super happy. Wish we could've been there. That's not to say we haven't had probably one of (in my opinion) the best trips to Portland we've had all year. It has been really fun, and great to be with my whole family again. I miss them a lot, even though I do have a good replacement family in Provo. Our galavanting and fun times in Provo, including a double Thanksgiving palooza (we ended up doing both Thanksgiving dinners in one day, gah!) will just have to wait for another blog, by then I'll probably have pictures to make it all the more enjoyable to read, trust me, it'll be worth the wait...

My Awesome Family

2008-11-20T18:52:00.000-08:00

I've lived in Provo for almost a year now, pretty crazy. Since coming here I've met a lot of people and made a lot of friends, I'm basically the first person in my entire extended family to move farther away than a suburb away (excluding missions). My cousins just moved to the Seattle area and are now the second ones to have moved away, otherwise all kids/grandkids/aunts/uncles/cousins/brothers/sisters/you get the idea are within an hour of each other. When I was younger We were all even in the same ward. My family is pretty big, here's an idea of how big:

My point being, that in order to survive, we've made our own "family" here in Provo. Let me introduce you to my family (WARNING!!!, all photos ripped off from Facebook):

Mom & Dad:

We decided Melinda and Zack are Mom and Dad, mostly because they're the mature ones (which is a scary thought), and on second thought that's definitely not the reason, they're Mom and Dad solely because they're getting married...

Awwww, I like this picture.

Here's a little about Mom;

She scares the crap out of us, can be classified a "beast" in a very good way, and screams like a banshee (definitely a positive quality). Were she just a little larger, she'd totally take down AshlAn wrestling (more to come regarding that one...).

And good ole' Pops:

He plays the guitar like a mofo, is more positive than most, and does whatever the beast tells him to do. I found him the other day in line at the concession stand getting water, and I KNOW he didn't want water. Unfortunately because his name is Zack, I want to call him Zacky often enough, which makes me think of this:

And doesn't that just make you feel better no matter what? (this is my nephew Zack, I'm his favorite, he calls me Tio)

So Mom and Dad are sort of like;

with the roles reversed, while Mom's the beast, Dad's the singer.

On to Baby Sister Manders:

She, as does Mom, goes to bed WAY too early, so sometimes we can't play, which is just too bad.

However, Manders is lots of fun, and has the bestest boyfriend ever who, by the way, she spends WAY too much time with:

She's funny, attractive, and always looking for a new man. She also honks when she laughs, which is wonderfully predictable. This is her happy face, it means honking may come at any minute:

...precious.

So we had a hard time deciding what role our wonderful AshlAn plays in our beautiful family:

Sexy right? Intelligent, why of course, so we thought, maybe the saucy older sister/cool aunt that was a good time and fun to hang out with. But then we remembered how she's become my warewolf associate...

And as we thought more and more on her personality, and the dynamic of our family, we came to the conclusion that AshlAn is to our family, as this lady is to the Simpsons (only in our case she's a blood relative)...

Every family's got one, you know it does! Here she is with Kyle.

Kyle, to us, would be a distant cousin, we enjoy it when he comes, but he knows us too well to stop by too often. Here he is by himself.

He especially keeps his distance because creepy Uncle Josh is often around and stares at Kyle more than he should, if you know what I mean...

Enough said, other than to note that he looks even creepier with his monstrosity of a beard, I think I have a picture that illustrates that well... yes, here it is:

Well, let's talk a sec about the other sister, Laura, (pronounced L-OW-RUh). She's the one that's never home, but sometimes stops by unannounced to say what's up.

See how she looks like she's too important for us? She knows it too.

That just leaves us:

We like to think of ourselves as the cool uncle and aunt that are always around, (sometimes more than Mom and Dad, no always more than Mom and Dad) and make everything fun. Whether that's true or not won't really change our mind, so we'll just let that be the case. Here's us thinking we're cool:

If we had to be a specific family member, America would probably be the misguided older sister that is shown up by Manders, the young peppy sister, and is always the bane of Mom's existence, and I'd be the loser boyfriend mooching off the family's food and always passed out on the couch. But for whatever reason, the family finds us endearing, or at least that's what they tell us.

I hope anyone that reads this can find their own family where they live, because I sure love mine!

01/24/09 - Update: Grandma Jessi officially added to the family.

How the days go by

2008-11-20T09:29:00.001-08:00

The past two weeks have been going by so slow.

I really am so anxious for school to start, I know I'll say different once it does, but for now I'm sick of accidentally sleeping in too late every morning, rolling out of bed just to sit at my computer and work all day on the same crap web sites. My job gets more and more frustrating, the most frustrating thing about it is that I know if I just wait it out things will be good and it's a good option to stay with the company, but right now it's getting to that point where I wish I were doing something else. I've been working for Molding Box Technologies for almost a year now! I can't believe it. As long as I've been in Provo I've been working there.

I remember the Friday before I moved I scheduled the interview, moved Saturday/Sunday, Monday went to my first classes, then to my interview, Tuesday went to my second day of classes and as soon as those were over headed over to start working. It was a crazy week, and I was so grateful to land a job so fast, and it was a great job too with awesome pay, still is, but sometimes I wonder if it's what I should be doing.

Anyway, as America pointed out all mushy-like in her blog we're definitely ready to get out of town (at least I am). Thanksgiving is coming up and we'll be gone for a few days, and then Christmas won't be too far off when we'll spend over two weeks with her family in Amish-town (shudder). But I forgot to mention, "the family" (consisting of America and me, and her roommates Amanda, AshlAn, and Melinda and Melinda's fiancee Zack) is going to head to Las Vegas for an ultimate frisbee tournament Melinda's in mid-December. That's going to be awesome and we're all really excited about it. I keep thinking we should take a family picture, especially before Melinda and Zack get married next week and leave us all. We'll see.

Anyway, so I've been so lame and bored I've finally started getting my journal moving along. I've finished a few pages of it, it's such a girlie thing to do because it almost feels like scrap-booking (which it kind of is) but in my head once it's printed in book-form it'll be so cool. Here are some examples of what the pages are going to look like. Let me know what you think!

Everything's better in pairs

2008-11-17T00:00:00.000-08:00

So it's no secret to anyone that knows us that America and I are as close to being engaged as you can get without actually being engaged. So sometimes she or I will comment about stuff that will happen "when we're married." So it's not unusual for a couple to do this even if they're not really thinking about engagement anyway.

It's a trick girls play on guys anyways, in relationships that aren't even going anywhere there's the kids' names game, or how many kids are we gonna have? game, you know what I'm talking about. So even if we weren't serious about ending up together I guess it wouldn't be crazy weird to comment to a certain degree as we do, like where all we're going to travel together, or America's favorite what kind of dog we're going to get (fingers crossed we end up HAVING to rent somewhere that doesn't allow pets, that way it's not my fault we don't get the dog).

Anyway, since starting to date we've begun dipping our pen in the couple-dating ink. It's awesome. We have some of the best couple friends, and it's too bad for our single friends, because really it's more fun that way. The unfortunate part is that probably our two best couple friends are both engaged and will be getting married soon. Zack and Melinda are getting married in like five minutes, and Bret and Naomi are getting married in April. I'm way sad that Zack and Melinda decided to get married over Thanksgiving, because we'll be out of town. I'm in Bret's wedding party, so we'll be going down to Mesa for probably as long as we can get away with in April, we're really excited for that!

So our list, as it stands now (and needs revising) is;

11/25-11/26-ish to 12/1 Thanksgiving in Portland
12/22 to 1/05 Christmas in Tuscola, New Year's in Chicago
Sometime in January or February - Portland to see my new niece Ella
Sometime in April - Mesa for Bret and Naomi's wedding (maybe a quick hop over to Anaheim for Mary)
Sometime between April and August I want to go to Peru
August to December 2009 India Field Study (oh I can't wait!!!)

Whew, so sometime in there I'm sure there will be other trips to Portland, and hopefully more to Tuscola as well, if the Amish people don't kill us the first time I go there, ewww...

Oh, so anyway, I get easily sidetracked... All our couple friends are getting married and so that sucks because I can only imagine it'll be harder to hang out with them. So until we're married or our friends surprise us and don't go all lame on us after getting married, we may be in serious need of new couple friends. Single people, get on the ball, seriously! Do it for us! We're fun, I promise!

A close up and comer is Jackie and Caleb, they may be able to hold their own, but they're just starting, so we'll have to see what happens. We have done lots of couple dating recently now that I think about it, we think we're pretty cool.

I feel busy, but am I?

2008-11-13T00:29:00.000-08:00

My life has come down to just a few things lately, and I'm not sure how I feel about that.

What I do basically all day everyday is work. I work work work. Basically from the time I get up in the morning until I go to bed at night I'm usually thinking about work or at my apartment close to the computer in case something comes up. So periodically during the day I'll go out, or take a nap, or eat, but then at some point I always get back to work, ugh!

I've been spending a lot of time working on my mission journal, the beginning of the month marked two full years since I finished my mission, which is pretty crazy. Over the past few months I've been thinking a lot about wanting to type up my entire journal, get it into a printable form with pictures mixed in and out of it as well as adding letters I sent home from my mission to correlate with the journal entries and print it in a book form. For whatever reason lately I've been more motivated and have made a lot of progress on it. I've got about 80 single spaced 11 point font pages typed up, and have only around two more months worth of journal entries left to type up, and after I'm done with that I'll begin on formatting page by page the book with pictures from the mission and letters/e-mail I sent home that I have saved. I'm really excited for it to be done, my goal is to have it done before Christmas since school will then start and I'll not have as much time for it.

I'm also reading an awesome book by Paul Farmer called "Infections and Inequalities: The Modern Plagues." It's fascinating, all about the socioeconomic risk factors of becoming afflicted with infectious diseases mostly centered around poverty stricken people in Haiti, Peru, and inner city US (like New York and Boston). I am loving it! Dr. Farmer also wrote a book in '92 called "AIDS and Accusation: Haiti and the Geography of Blame" which I think I'll read next. I can't believe how completely obsessed I've become with Public Health and Development, it's so exciting to me that I've found something to be so passionate about. I recommend the book to anyone, it's a slow start if you read the prologue and introduction, but once you get into the meat it's well worth it, full of great insights that even stem into our health care system and make you think. Paul Farmer is an amazing example of what I'd more or less like to end up doing, for those that aren't even extremely interested in Public Health and things like the books he's written I recommend reading "Mountains Beyond Mountains," it's a biography of sorts about his life and how he ended up in Haiti and all the amazing work he's done. It's an easy read, interesting, and I found it really inspiring and I think most people would even if they're not crazy about Health and Development like I am.

I only have a few more weeks before I plan on turning in a paper in the Annual BYU Religious Education Student Symposium. The winner gets a thousand bucks, and runners up get other amounts of cash prizes. I wrote a paper last Winter semester on Giants in the Old Testament compared to Giants in Greek Mythology that I think could do fairly well with just a little adjustment. The paper was for a literature class, so it's more information geared, and it'll take some tweaking to make it a more "faith promoting" type paper, but otherwise I think it was a very interesting topic that could stand a chance. So that's something I should be working on, but have been putting off since April or so, ha ha.

Other than that I spend basically all my time with America, we've been officially dating for more than four months now, though we spend every possible minute together we can making it feel like much longer. We've been so close for longer than we've been dating it feels like we were never "just friends." It's funny that way. Anyway, my life has revolved around just those few things for the past while, I really want to get out and go somewhere, especially these past few weeks typing up my mission journal and reliving all my awesome experiences abroad. Thanksgiving I'll be driving home to Portland for a few days which will be nice, and then Christmas/New Years we'll be in Tuscola/Chicago area with America's family. We're excited for both trips. Once school starts in January I'll be wishing that I only had such things as these on my plate, but for now I feel busy anyway, I guess I should be enjoying the down time out of school, eh well...

Nada especial

2008-11-11T19:18:00.000-08:00

So when I get bored working (and I'm working from home so I can justify this "waste" of time) I start messing around with other things, hence my fancy shmancy new blog layout that pretty much I made myself by adjusting my old one. What do you think?

It's nice working from my bedroom, everyone asks if I get easily distracted now that I'm at home all day, and the answer is ...sort of. My roommates come and go based on their work/school schedules, and often think I'm free to go to the gym or hang out, but it's not the case, more often than not I AM actually working... I do like it being here, I can manage my time more and work whenever I get a few minutes, so it'll be nice once school starts up again too.

I finally registered for school, and as everything in my life seems to follow suit, it was quite a stressful few days. I had to register as soon as my registration date came because certain classes I HAVE to take this semester, and they fill up quick (i.e. Infectious Diseases, Intro to International Development, etc...). Those two are the most important, especially my International Development course because it's only offered in the winter and it's my pre-req for all my other development classes, so I'd have to wait another year to even start my minor. Problem was that my summer tuition still hadn't been paid (e.g. the reason I'm not in classes as we speak) and so I had to pay that to get the hold taken off my account to register. Another important thing was that my Financial Aid was all on hold until I was registered as well.

Long story short, I paid my tuition with a check before money was deposited into my account from work, luckily the money was deposited before my checks cleared two days later, and I am now registered for Winter semester and my Financial Aid has begun processing again, hooray!

So I'm taking Intro to Health (boring but required for my major), Intro to International Development, Infectious Diseases: Prevention and Control (I'm really excited for this class, as it was this class is full, so I'll have to add it once the semester starts, the professor is Dr. Cole, my mentor for my India project, so I have an in and he said he'd add me no problem), French 102, The Living Prophets, and Science of Biology (first class of the Human Bio/Physiology series). I'm really excited for all my classes. I have some pre-reqs and religion courses that I still have to take, but this term I'm taking a full load of classes that I actually want to be taking, which I'm really excited for, and it's the first time that's happened. I'm taking my religion and French course with America too, so that'll make them more fun as well.

My ORCA grant proposal for India turned out great, I'm really happy with it, I officially turned it in October 23rd or something, and just before Halloween Dr. Cole sent in his recommendation as well, so the entire application is complete and I'll hear whether or not I'm getting any money from them for my research somewhere in February. About that time I'll be applying for a Fulton grant as well, and I can ask for more money from them too, from ORCA I can only be awarded some $1500.

Halloween was uneventful, we had planned on going to visit America's friend Mary in Anaheim for Halloween and going to Knott's Berry Farms and Disneyland and stuff. Plans kind of all fell apart and she ended up going home to Illinois to visit with her family before her brother Alex leaves for Afghanistan in just a few days actually. So I spent Halloween with my roommate Josh watching movies, people thought we were boring, but we were fine with it.

My job is getting kind of stressful, and I'm worried once school starts because my classes were all only offered at specific times, so my school schedule is all over the place and in different gaps at opposite time of even the same day, so it'll be quite the juggling act.

The only other thing interesting that's happened was the elections. Prop 8 got so much coverage here because of the Church's strong stance on it, and anything LDS gets news publicity in Provo, probably in most of Utah too. So even though it was a California ammendment, it seemed like it was for Utah too, and it's still going on even though elections are over. I voted for Obama, and most people here don't agree with me, so I don't jump into conversations about it often, a lot of them aren't really that informed on his stances anyway, so I don't bother arguing my point, I researched both candidates and his plans more closely align with what I feel would be beneficial to the country in some important areas, I don't agree with everything, but more with him than with McCain, and Biden gets a whole lot of crap, but I actually really like Biden too, probably more than even Obama. I had to vote over the phone as my dad filled out my ballot for me, haha, and he signed if for me and sent it off in the mail. The last place I was registered to vote was when I was living in Washougal with my parents, so my early-voter ballot went there and they took too long to send it to me, so he filled it out for me. I was okay with that solution, at least I got to vote, I feel it's important to do so.

If I blogged more often they wouldn't have to be so long, so sorry for all two of you that read this, oh well... I'll end here then...

I don't mind being irresponsible

2008-10-22T11:41:00.000-07:00

My OCD hates how lazy I can be sometimes.

But then again, not enough to make me get out of bed in the morning.

We ended up never going to St. George, which was kind of lame, but we ended up going to Portland instead, which was not kind of lame. It was a fun trip, just for the weekend. I was feeling like I wanted to go home (more wanting to get out of Provo), and figured that weekend before last was a perfect time to go. My cousin Caleb was getting baptized that Sunday, and the next day was my mom's birthday.

It seemed like enough reason to drive 24 hours only to be in Portland for maybe three-ish days. Well then after I was pretty much decided, I hear that my cousin Seth (who was leaving shortly on his mission) was having his open house that Sunday, and a few hours before actually leaving Provo I see on my family website that another cousin Jon (also leaving shortly on his mission) was going through the temple to receive his endowment on that Saturday. It ended up being a packed weekend full of family stuff. America last minute decided to go with me too.

We drove all night Thursday night, got there Friday morning, and spent the day with my brother Blake. Then went out to eat with a good amount of my family minus Miles (stuck on base in Tacoma), Blake (at home drafting fantasy basketball players), and Rob (working) for my mom's birthday at Old Chicago, it was pretty good. Saturday we slept most of the day, which was fun. Saturday night we went to the temple with Jon, it was really nice, it was good to go through a session with Seth there too since I wasn't there for when he went through for himself. Then America and I went to Andina again, best restaurant I've ever been to! Highly recommended.

Sunday was fun. We went to my old Spanish branch, I got to see a bunch of people that I worked with when I was a member there and then we went to Caleb's branch too, it's the deaf branch in Portland. So we got to go to two sets of meeting in different languages, which I thought was fun. It was really cool to see how ordinances (baptism/confirmation) are performed in American Sign Language. The baptism itself was a lot of fun and really special.

That evening we went over to Seth's house for his open house. He's going to Guatemala City South, I'm excited for him, Jon's going to Costa Rica, so now I'll have more spaniards in the family. We brought his luggage back with us (key element for funny story) so that his family didn't have to pay the luggage fees for Delta, he flew into Salt Lake the following Wednesday and we'd already planned for me to pick him up and take him to the Missionary Training Center here in Provo. Well since I had his luggage for a few days in my car we thought it'd be hilarious to shove some women's underwear in there for when he first opens his luggage in front of his companion and roommates. Ingenius idea I know, it was hilarious!

Well all in all we got back Monday night, life went back to being busy and normal again, but it was worth the trip. Seth flew in on Wednesday and we hung out with him that morning before going with him to his first orientation meeting at the MTC. It was so much fun. We took him out to breakfast, then he wanted to see BYU campus, so we did that. And then did the usual pre-MTC pics and stuff.

Otherwise life has been pretty uneventful the past few weeks. My job was adjusted a little bit, well not really, but kind of. I jacked all the stuff from the office that I use on a daily basis and set up all my stuff here at home and have been working from home for about a week now. It's actually great, but hard to keep motivated to do stuff. It's easy to, oh I don't know, start typing a blog rather than do work, or sleep in since your technically in your office... You know, typical stuff.

I did spend the better part of yesterday finally getting my grant proposal to a good point to turn in before Friday. I'm applying for a mentored learning grant from ORCA, if I get it it'll be $1500 that'll help on my India project in August. Since my last blog I've met a gagillion times with the International Study Program office and the Health Science Department. I've gotten in touch with Dr. Cole in Health Science (awesome guy with a bunch of experience internationally). He's agreed to mentor me for the project, I've set my project to a study on perspectives between the public and private sector on TB treatment non-compliance in India. Interesting huh? Yeah, I think it's amazing and am so excited to get started. Basically I'll be studying why people don't finish their treatements for Tuberculosis which is causing a huge public health issue in India since it has more TB cases than any other country in the world, and more people there die of TB every year.

So that was a big accomplishment, one to get the research topic defined, and two to get my grant proposal written up. I still have a lot of work to do on it though...

Finding things to do in Provo, or just leaving instead!

2008-09-26T16:29:00.001-07:00

Man is Provo chock-full of stuff to do...

Right.

However, America and I did go to the most recent BYU Choir Showcase on campus last night, and I have to say that I rather enjoyed myself. So we decided that maybe we should try and spend more time doing more than just going out to eat or watching a movie, or both, or both a couple of times in one day, yeah I know, that's my life. BYU does have some okay things to go to, but we'll see. I don't know, the Showcase featured four or five different Choirs, and one of them did a version of some Disney songs, a Cinderella/Sleeping Beauty mix, and let's just leave it at-a professional bird caller came in and the entire Women's Chorus made chirping birdie sounds to begin the number... Hmmmmm...

A good friend of our's, Naomi, is in the Women's Chorus which is why we went to the Showcase in the first place. Overall I did really like it though, there were only a few numbers that I wished hadn't been included, could've been worse.

So that got me pretty excited about next weekend. Our friends Laura and Josh are going with America and me to St. George to go see Les Miserables. My friend Kort I guess can get us a discount on tickets, so we decided we'd go and then just watch General Conference there with him. He lives in a pretty good sized house rented out to a few guys and whenever I've gone through or to St. George I've stayed there with him. It's nice. I'm excited to see Kort-cito, he's one of my best friends from the mission, and Les Miserables should be good. The drive isn't too far, but it's enough to feel like I'm escaping Provo for a little bit, even if it is just Saturday and Sunday. I guess not all my trips should have to warrant taking time off work and making my friends miss school, haha.

I guess that's all I've got for now. Peru looks like less of a possibility, but maybe early December I could squeeze a week or two off to go, and by then I may have some extra cash, otherwise it'll be next summer probably before I have another opportunity to go, and by then who knows if I'll have some money sitting around anyway as India is in August. Better to use it up while you've got it than wait and hope you still have it later. In my experience if I "save" it, it goes away anyway and I didn't get to use it on things I needed it for OR fun things, it just goes away, so I take advantage of when I have extra, then complain when I'm in the negative, it works for me, maybe just not for those that have to deal with me complaining (sorry America, baha).

Have you ever looked up jobs on craigslist for cool foreign cities? They have them! And some of them seem pretty cool! I'm just saying...

Guns or pitchforks...

2008-09-18T19:15:00.000-07:00

America is from Tuscola, IL. I know, where right? It's like on the X-files movie that's just full of cornfields and not a whole lot else (besides the alien conspiracy plants). On our road trip we stopped in a little pueblito in southern Oregon, something like Lakeview I want to say. All I can say is, creepy hillbillies scare the crap out of me. You know, the ones that live out in the boondocks with nothing around and walk around at night with their lanterns and pitchforks and rape people/animals? Yeah, those ones. I like to consider myself a fairly tolerant and open-minded person, but seriously, pitchforks?! and all their one tooth?! Come on! Creepy.

So I was all freaked out by the creepy hillbilly town in Oregon, and America just laughed because apparently that's what Tuscola is like, gah! We're going to spend two weeks-ish there over Christmas/New Years break, and I have a feeling that I'm going to be a little scared. Honestly, who's with me? I think that some mobster or gangsta (yeah I spelled it that way) with their handgun/assault rifle is much less creepy than the pitchfork rapists of nowhere land. I'd take the military buffs with their sawed-off shotguns we saw all over the place in Honduras over those guys any day of the week. You know the type, the ones with their overalls on, and nothing else. I'm creeping myself out just thinking about them.

A couple weeks ago America and I went for a drive, we got sidetracked and ended up driving without paying attention for I don't know how long, and found ourselves in some random place called Ophir, UT. Look it up, it's scary! Anyway, I could just imagine any minute for the headlights to suddenly light up some creepy man with a farmer's tan standing in the road with a pitchfork staring at us.

This is a pretty random blog, I just think that it's interesting that depending on where you come from what your perception is on what's scary or not. Am I crazy to think that they're scary? America thinks I am. Creepy hillbilly; stay the eff away from me.

Productivity's overrated...

2008-09-17T16:21:00.000-07:00

Utah is lame. I moved to Utah because I felt I was supposed to, mostly for school. I have experienced enough along the lines of choosing a career and have met enough people within the Public Health community since moving to Utah to know that I was definitely supposed to come here, so I don't complain too much, but it's still lame. Here's the thing, if I'm here for school, then I want to be IN SCHOOL!

Well, this past summer was kinda crazy at work. Again; I can't complain because it's an awesome job giving me an awesome opportunity, however when working for a small company there's always the chance that we don't get paid on time. If our clients don't pay us, then we can't pay ourselves. Such has been the case for the past two months or so. So in the end I didn't have the money in time to pay for Fall tuition, and thus I am not in school this semester and just working.

This was, at first, quite frustrating, because I'd rather not be in Utah if I didn't have to be, and I didn't move to Utah to work full time in a field that I don't plan on continuing in once I graduate. But then I got to thinking and realized that this could be a prime opportunity to get my head on straight, make some definite plans for the future, save some money, and possibly even get out between now and when classes will start again for me in January!

So over the past few weeks I've been to many a meeting with the Health Science department and the ISP (International Study Program) office. I was able to get more info on my major requirements, and in talking with the adviser there was able to substitute the mountains of Chemistry classes with cooler health classes that will more closely relate to what I want to do, Infections and Immunity, Virology, International Health, and others. So I get to take classes that I'm actually interested in, and replace those that I don't want to take, but still get the same degree in Public Health! Another reason I want to be in school right now, because I just get all worked up about it, I know, I'm a nerd.

So I haven't been doing much of anything else really productive since getting back from my awesome road trip two weeks ago. I have solidified even more my plans for the India Field Study program that I'm going to be doing, which will now (for sure I swear!) be this coming August (I realize it's September, but "this coming August" sounds sooner than "next August" or "August of next year"). That will be an amazing three months that I'm so excited for already. My plan is to hop over to China, see the Great Wall, and maybe some other cool sites in Beijing and Hong Kong before returning from India, I hope that works out. I don't think I'll ever get rid of the travel bug, no matter how much I do get out of Provo.

Between now and Winter semester though there's so much to do. America and I are going to Disneyland (hopefully conning some of our friends to go with us as well) for Halloween, Thanksgiving is in Portland with my family, and then we'll be off to Illinois/Ohio for Christmas/New Year's with her family and with my mission bud Andrew who's from Columbus. I've never been to either so that should be fun, we're planning on New Year's in Chicago, so I hope we get some more fun in while we're there.

I thought that since I'm not taking classes this semester, and won't be strapped for cash as much, that I'd steal a trip to Peru for a week-ish or so before Christmas. Hopefully I can figure out a way to work that out, but I'm not sure if it's the best idea with school and money still being sort of an issue. Loca Rosa is the name of my pensionista from when I lived in Juliaca during my mission in Peru. She went with me to Cusco, and since we saw one world wonder (Machu Picchu), she's decided that's "our thing" to do. Last I spoke with her she decided that next she's going to take me to Bolivia and Brazil and we'll see the O Cristo Redentor in Rio de Janeiro. Whether or not that actually happens anytime soon is anyone's guess, but it will definitely happen at some point, that sounds like so much fun!

For the time being I'm stuck here in Provo, just working, Disneyland will come soon enough I guess, and then I'm sure I'll find reasons to escape every now and again before school takes over my life again (not a bad thing). I did spend a good part of last week putting my videos from my Peru/Honduras trip organized and in order, now on to picking and choosing the best of my pictures to put into a good album. Those seem like okay things to occupy my time, well and of course America takes up whatever's left.

Road Trips are pretty nifty

2008-09-16T11:02:00.001-07:00

When I was 8...-ish, my family went on a pretty extensive road trip starting in Portland ending in Iowa that zigzaged across the western states. So I was 8, so I don't remember everything we did, I do remember being in Salt Lake City and taking pictures of the temple and going to the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. I also remember seeing the "four heads" (Mt. Rushmore). We stayed a few nights at my cousins' home in Kansas, and trashed their Barbie house (it had a friggin elevator in it!) and their Barbie cars (which go much faster down stairs than you'd think). And then at the end I remember a weeklong campout somewhere in Iowa with most of my dad's extended family. Other than that, hard to say what we did, where we went, and how I felt about it all.

This past year or so I've done a lot of driving, and for the first time that I've really been out on my own. In October of last year my then-future-now-current roommate Josue and I came to Utah for General Conference and to hang with some of our old mission friends. I did that a few times, I came also in April of last year for an old mission companion's wedding (Caleb Rutter). Fourth of July was somewhat of a road trip, America and I went to Portland for the weekend, but we just went to Portland and the Oregon Coast, and then came back.

So last month we went on a truly awesome, bonafide road trip, and let me just say, it was so much fun! Here was the plan; another mission buddy (Dustin Patterson) was getting married the weekend before my family's annual family campout at the Oregon coast. His wedding was in Mesa, so I had planned on getting some mission pals together and splitting the cost of gas to drive from Provo to Mesa and back for the weekend. Then, once back in Provo, to head to Portland for the campout the following weekend. Well, time will tell that all my friends are lame at making and keeping plans, days before the trip, everyone but America cancelled (story of our lives).

We decided to take advantage of the situation, and instead of driving back through Utah, we'd just hop over to California from Mesa, visit some of America's friends on the way, stop at some fun sites, and drive up to Oregon that way. All in all it was an amazing trip, starting in Provo we made stops of various lengths in; St. George, Las Vegas, Pheonix/Mesa, Newport, Anaheim, Santa Monica, San Francisco, Sacramento, Medford, Lincoln City, Portland, Seattle, and Klamath Falls. We've got some sweet pictures, and saw some awesome sites like; the Grand Canyon, Hoover Dam, Golden Gate Bridge, Seattle Space Needle, etc... We also stopped to take pictures at all the temples on the way, we got pictures of the; St. George, Las Vegas, Mesa, Newport Beach, Los Angeles, Oakland, Sacramento, Medford, Portland, and Seattle temples.

So we spent A LOT of time hanging out just the two of us in the car, it was a blast really! Seeing all the temples I enjoyed as well as most of them I hadn't seen before, though Portland is still the coolest by far we agreed. Probably one of my favorite things we did was the day we spent in San Francisco. I really like the city, it's a lot of fun, we went to the bridge and Ghiradelli Square for some awesome Sushi at lunchtime. One of my favorite places in all of California is still and probably will always be Santa Monica, it's my favorite beach of any that I've been to so far, I don't really know why, but it is, and I've been to the Caribbean so... There's this great British Pub/Restaurant right off the Pier called Ye Olde King's Head, it's great and I'd recommend it to anyone, try the toffee brownie for dessert!

While in California we visited with some of America's old friends and roommates from Idaho (I think, maybe from Utah too, or Illinois? that America...). Anyway, we stopped to visit her friend Mary who was recently diagnosed with Lymphoma, she seems great. We're planning on spending Halloween with her in Disneyland and trying to con some friends to go with us. We stayed the night at their friends Tim and Janessa's apartment for the night before heading up to San Francisco the next day.

What else... Spending time with the family for an extended period of time was really great too. The last night of our family campout in Lincoln City, OR was really special, we had an extended testimony meeting mainly centered around missionary work which was really cool and something that we as a family don't hardly ever do, and by that I mean it was the first time. Everyone really enjoyed it, and we all stayed up until like two in the morning, even the old foggies!

So we had a good time visiting Portland, America finally got to see the city for what it really is, we went to some good restaurants, and fun Portland-y sites. Pioneer Courthouse Square, Portland City Grill (on the top of Big Pink), we walked along a bike path under the east side of the Hawthorne Bridge, it was a beautiful evening. The time before we ate on NW 23rd at an amazing little Pub called Lompoc, very recommended, get the BLT. I was so excited to go out to a nice dinner with people, but time will also tell that not only are my friends lame, but so is my family, they all bailed. We ended up taking my mom out to dinner at Andina Restaurant in the Pearl District. By far the best restaurant I've ever been to, and the best meal ever! It is of course, Peruvian style, but gormet and oh so delicious. I had a pork tenderloin with Gouda Ravioli, man I want some right now!

Well the trip wouldn't be complete without our excursion to Seattle for a night. We stayed in Bremerton with my cousins Graham and Sherri, love them to death. Graham is my best friend, always has been, we grew up together and basically spent every day together until High School Graduation. He found and married Sherri, awesome girl from Sacramento. There's a blog on here somewhere about their wedding last December. Anway, we had a great dinner with them after spending the day in Seattle. We went to the Sky City restaurant on the top of the Space Needle, a little overrated, and overpriced, but the food was good, and the experience was one you have to have, we lucked out with nice weather too!

So our trip ended on a high note, going down to Klamath Falls (southern OR) for one of Prisine Blue's shows and then driving along southern Oregon/northern Nevada on the way back to Provo. We stopped at a little podunk town in Oregon called Lakeview (I think) to eat and gas up. It was an experience. There was fair going on there which we couldn't resist checking out, and we ate at one of those old fashioned diners you see in old western movies, except that to them it wasn't old fashioned! It was just the diner there. All the waitresses were middle-aged women with their hair up in buns, everyone had a real-life country accent, and I could tell that everyone in the diner knew each other, and knew that we were out-of-towners, a litte creepy if you ask me.

Well other than the $425 ticket I got on the way home, everything else went by smoothly, we had a blast, and got to know each other a lot more. I miss being on the trip, but I definitely don't miss the more than 5,000 miles we drove and fifty some-odd hours in the car. But I can't say that I wouldn't do it again in a heartbeat, or that I'm not planning on it again, because I am!

4th of July in September

2008-09-12T12:54:00.000-07:00

Yeah I know, this is extremely belated, but my OCD won't let me move on until it's here.

4th of July was probably one of the best trips home I'll ever take, and there are a few reasons why.

For some time since getting back from Peru/Honduras in June I had tried to convince my friends to go on a road trip with me to Portland for a weekend sometime. America was always up for it, and Josh kinda sorta was maybe going to think about it (hmmmm...). Everyone else wanted to, but doubted. In the end only America ended up going with me, but we had a blast anyway.

Nobody in my family knew that I'd be showing up for the Fourth, I did warn pops in case the house was a mess, because I knew my mom'd freak if I brought someone home unannounced and the house was a mess, which I'm sure it would've been.

Well it was fun showing up and surprising everyone, especially Blake, Jodi and Zack. For whatever reason Blake decides to text me that I'm a good brother (out of the blue, but perfect timing) right as I walk up to his doorstep. I slyly text back "I know" then knock. Everyone was really surprised and happy to see me, then I had to go through the whole "this is America...no just a friend...yes she's cool" for however many times.

Spending the weekend was just what I needed after being in Utah for a few weeks again and having school and a crappy roommate and stuff pile up on me. The best part was that after arriving on Thursday (the 3rd) and having the family barbecue earlier on the 4th we headed out to Blake (my older brother) and Rob's (my brother-in-law) show on the Columbia waterfront. Pristine Blue is coming along, and I'm quite impressed with them really, not to mention that their shows are always really fun. So in the middle of the show Miles (my little brother) shows up as a surprise as well. We knew he'd be back from Iraq within the next few weeks, but were not really ever allowed to know his set schedule, him being a Ranger and all.

Well him showing up was just the icing on the cake, it was the first time we'd all been home since Easter (which okay, isn't that long, but for us it is) and could've been the last time for quite a while. We still haven't had everyone together for a picture since Easter (six months already!).

Well we had a blast, the next day we went to the Oregon Coast to surprise his then-girlfriend Sarah who didn't know he was back either, and spent a bunch of time together. I wasn't able to get to see many of the people I wanted to, friends and old co-workers and stuff, but I did get to see family and a few friends. So in the end it was really just a special trip that I'll always remember.

Fourth of July was when America and I became much closer, and things began to progress once we got back to Provo, which was only a little unexpected. We've spent everyday together since, and have gotten to know each other a lot more and find ourselves just more and more compatible with the more time we spend together. We planned another road trip to Portland on our way back to Provo after the fourth, at the time we didn't know how the trip would mutate. Expect that post soon...

Just to satisfy my OCD

2008-09-12T12:25:00.001-07:00

Okay, so I want to start using this blog a little more for more than just traveling, but in order to do that, I do have to catch up, since I've done a few trips since Honduras, and since I never finished writing about Honduras it will drive me insane if I just skip over it. It was a blog-worthy trip anyway, so I can't just not write it out now being over three months since I've been back, gah...

So we hopped the ferry to Roatan (see previous blog for the first half of the trip) and spent the remainder of our trip on this Caribbean Island, which was amazing. I was surprised at how much fun I had even though we kind of just flew by the seat of our pants. Usually that would drive me insane not having things planned out, but all my time in Peru and then again in Honduras I hardly planned anything beforehand and just went from one place to another having a gay old time.

Roatan was, as I said, beautiful. At some point in the future (we know what that means...) I may update all these posts with some choice pictures from the trips I've taken. Either way, it was great to be there in the warm tropical water and just relaxing. An wanted to scuba, so there's this one-day tour where they do a crash course on scuba gear and take you for an hour and a half or so scuba diving through the reef there, which apparently is one of the largest in the world. I didn't really feel the need to get up close and personal with fish crap, so I paid like five bucks to snorkel above them. Luckily the reef wasn't too deep, so I was pretty much seeing enough of wha they saw to feel good about it, my back had other things to say about it.

So when you're out laying on the beach and you start to sunburn, you can feel it, and cover up. If not you have nobody to blame but yourself. Well, when snorkeling for an extended period of time you don't notice that warning burning sensation when your back is pointed directly at the sun with a thin layer of magnifying water over it, and then you deal with it later; which I did of sorts. I had the nastiest burn on my back, and I'm not exaggerating when I say from shoulder to shoulder and shoulders to waist, one giant burn that came off for weeks, thick, nasty, giant flakes. I took advantage of my friends, and America was generous enough to hold her nose and scratch it when it itched nonstop (over the shirt of course).

Anyway, so that was one thing we did on the island. We also decided to splurge and do the dolphin swim, though it ended up being pretty hectic at the last minute. Here's how it went; Dolphin swim was at noon, last ferry of the day leaves the island at 2, dolphin swim goes for at least an hour, ferry asks that everyone be there at least an hour before it leaves. This wouldn't be a huge deal except that An had to be at the airport, not just in La Ceiba (the city that the ferry takes us to) but in the capital Tegucigalpa (seven hour bus ride from La Ceiba after we get off the ferry). So we were worried that there wouldn't be enough time to get to the ferry, to catch a bus, to get to the airport. After everything, the dolphin swim was way worth the stress, it was really fun, and Mika was so hot for me (the dolphin). Who could blame her though?

Well in the end everything worked out, we made it to La Ceiba to catch the last bus to San Pedro Sula, then with the hopes of catching the last bus to Tegucigalpa, well we didn't catch any such bus, but found a cheap flight for An to get to the airport from San Pedro to Tegucigalpa the next morning. So everything worked out.

I ended up spending the last day in San Pedro just hanging out, walking around the city a little, and sleeping. The most humid city I've ever been in, San Pedro is around three hours from the Guatamela border (where we went to the Mayan Ruins at Copan).

The next morning I packed all my things, hopped a bus to Tegucigalpa and found my way to the airport. It was nice to be on the plane, know that all my stuff had survived the trip all over the place, and not have to worry about anything else. Once I dropped into Houston I pulled out my phone (now in three pieces) and started life all over again in Utah, lame.

It was great to see people though, after so long. I really missed traveling, and I will always have that travel bug, but sometimes you do just get sick of living out of a suitcase, or out of a car. Road trip stories to follow...

Honduras was forever ago...sad

2008-07-18T18:49:00.000-07:00

So it's been millenia since I've written here, and I always meant to include a blog about my great trip to Honduras, but it just never happened.

So roughly, I was planning my Peru trip ages and ages ago and my friend who I worked with in Portland at the Free Clinic calls me up one day and is all "Hey Tyler, want to go with me to Honduras? I don't speak Spanish, and it will be fun," to which I say, "You're an idiot, there's no way I'm going to Honduras, I'm planning a trip to Peru right then anyway," and she's all "Well just see if maybe kinda sorta, you could just go to Honduras on your way back," and I continue "You're insane, no, not going to happen, but I promise I'll at least look into it, but it's a strong no."

Okay, so that's not exactly how our conversation went, but it was pretty close to that. Out of pure curiosity I looked up three one way flights (SLC to Lima, Lima to Tegucigalpa, Tegucigalpa to SLC), and it turned out that they weren't that bad at all. So I went for it, and met my friend An in Honduras.

It was a crazy week. I had just spent the time of my life in Peru, and then I was in a new place, which was exciting. We had several things we wanted to do, and basically we got to do them all. We stayed in nasty hostels that cost like seven bucks a night (cheaper than the food by far!), food was relatively cheap as well, and then a few activities that we did was where we spent most of our money.

So pictures would make this story that much cooler, but I don't really care, and I've got them on Facebook and other places anyway. First day we meet in the airport in the capital (Tegucigalpa), get a taxi to the closest bus station (they're spread all over the city based on the company and destination) and hop the last bus to San Pedro Sula, about five-ish hours away. So we wanted to go there right away so the next day (Tuesday) we could get up early and get on another bus to go the Guatemalan border and see the Mayan Ruins in Copan. Well after we got on the bus we realized that neither of us had much currency (Lempira, about 18 Lempira to the US Dollar, confusing much? ...Yeah), and that we would be getting to the most dangerous city in the country close to midnight with no idea where we were going or even a hotel/hostel picked out.

Unfortunately we got there and everything was just fine. I say unfortunately because An was really freaked out, and I had told the taxi driver to take us to a certain place where there are several hostels, as he began to take us An sees a nice fancy hotel close and out of fear of getting murdered in San Pedro decided we wanted to stay there since it was close and stuff. I was ok with it just because she was scared, but wasn't worried originally about how things had been going to that point. Well we ended up paying like $160 for the first night, the entire rest of the trip cost like maybe $50 in hostels total, and two of those nights were back in San Pedro, so had we just gone to the hostel area we would've been fine and saved around $70 per person. Oh well...

So the first night we stayed there, the second day we went to the ruins, which were just amazing, didn't quite compare to the incredible Machu Picchu since it's up in the Andes, but it was a sight to see that's for sure. It was so muggy the whole week, but more so in San Pedro than anywhere.

That day we got back to the city, with an Israeli buddy Jonathan that we met who was traveling all around South America for going on six or seven months, he spoke ok English, and taught us how to say "I don't speak Hebrew" in Hebrew, I don't remember how it goes now... He ate dinner with us, and the next morning we got up early and the three of us got on a bus to La Ceiba.

La Ceiba is a coastal town on the northern border of Honduras, on the Caribbean. It was beautiful, and really fun and "market-y" if you know what I mean. I liked it a lot. We didn't stay anywhere there, our plan was to get out onto the Bay Islands, but not before going on a Canopy Tour.

So we lugged all our crap (which sucked because I had my more-than-a-month's worth of crap from Peru with me) around to this beast old school bus that took us to the Canopy Tours. We went up on horseback to the top of the mountain, then zip-lined through the treetops of the jungle overlooking La Ceiba and the coast, it was most definitely one of the coolest things I've ever done. Once we got back to the base of the mountain, back on horseback to a gorgeous natural hot springs halfway up the mountain. It was well over 100 degrees warm naturally cascading down the rocks and there was a natural pool created that they had built a deck around, so we spent some time relaxing there, which was awesome.

We had to rush to get back to the main part of the city because we wanted to catch the ferry (which only passes by once, maybe twice a day) and get out to the Bay Islands, specifically Roatan, out in the Caribbean. We made it barely at the last minute and spent almost the rest of the trip on the Island doing other fun things, which will have to go into a second blog, because this is getting long, and isn't very descriptive so I'm sorry, but I can get carried away blabbering on so I'm trying not to do that.

Anyway, so there's really a second half to my Honduras trip, and then a friggin awesome trip that I took a few weeks ago to visit home in Portland that I'll put in here at some point, another month or so I'm sure...

Cusco's a place, not a cartoon Llama

2008-05-31T13:56:00.000-07:00

My trip to Cusco was amazing. I had an awesome time the entire four weeks in Peru, but I have to say, that Cusco was an experience. Oddly enough, I don't think I really have a whole lot of desire to go back to Cusco, on subsequent trips to my favorite place in the world, I think I'll spend my time with the people I love there, or places that I haven't been to before.

On my list, I'd like to go see Pucallpa, Iquitos, Trujillo, Nasca, Ica, and so many different places, that I don't think I'd go to Cusco. The city itself is very touristy, which is understandable. It also is much more developed than other cities. But still, I think I prefer the south, I'm sure mostly just because there's a special place in my heart for the areas of my mission, as would be true for any returned missionary I guess.

We left from Juliaca on a Tuesday morning and got to Cusco that night. Loca Rosa came with us, it was great fun with her. My mom and I had a fairly nice room in a hotel just blocks from the Plaza de Armas, which was nice. We were so tired. Loca Rosa and her sister (all of her family lives in Cusco) took us on a quasi tour of Cusco. We walked around the city and saw many places from Loca Rosa's early married life, where she met her now deceased husband, where her oldest daughter (now grown, married and with kids, Ana is cool) used to play as a child, fun things like that. I was suprised at how much I enjoyed seeing where she spent those years.

The next day we got up at like 5 in the morning, which happened far too many mornings on my trip due to all the things we wanted to do. Loca Rosa's nephew Alvaro had us rent our own tour van for the day, and since he's a guide, he took us on a private tour of the awesome sites around Cusco, including the entire Sacred Valley of the Incas. It was an amazing, but exhausting day. We started out heading to a place called Pisaq (or Pisac depending on who's talking), and on the way ran all along the Sacred Valley. Pisaq is the first of several Incan forts that were key on the route to the jungle, ending with one of the biggest, Machu Picchu.

Most forts were for defense, but also had a huge spiritual emphasis and importance. Pisaq was one with huge spiritual importance, and the temple ruins there were quite a sight. After Pisaq we headed to another huge fort called Ollantaytambo. Ollantaytambo was actually built by the Tihuanacos as opposed to the Incans, a people that existed before and during the Incan empire. An escape Incan, Pachakutek, came across them and the Tihuanacos learned some Incan architecture from him (according to our guide), and the fort at Ollantaytambo showed alot of Incan style architecture.

From Ollantayambo we stopped for lunch in Urubamba, a fairly large pueblo in the Sacred Valley itself. I had heart, and Mom had a beast T-bone "a la plancha." From there we went to Moray, an awesome agricultural Incan testing ground. Here the Incans created a system of concentric circles one ten to fifteen feet deeper than the next, the way the wind comes in to each circle creates a different climate every level, different crops were tested in each "climate" to see in which part of the Incan empire those crops would be most successful. Every year during the summer soltice (winter solstice in Peru) there still is held the annual ceremony/festival there.

After Moray we went to this salt mine, Salineras, it was huge, and covered in salt (as should have been expected). Even so, it impressed me a lot, it was crazy windy though. We didn't end up back in Cusco until it was well after dark. We were so tired, the kind of tired where your body is sore and you don't want to get out of bed again, but of course, we had to get up again before light to head to Machu Picchu.

The plan was to get there that Thursday, stay in Aguas Calientes (the town below Machu Picchu) that night in order to take the first buss up the next morning to Machu Picchu. This was in order to ensure we could get the chance to climb Waynapicchu, the summit towering over Machu Picchu. Only 400 people are allowed to climb it per day, and you have to start before 11:00 am. When you head in you have to sign your life away basically, and sign back in when you get back, that way they can track how many people are lost. The climb up is literally completely vertical, and on the cliffside of the mountain. Needless to say, it was awesome.

Machu Picchu is huge, crazy huge, and from Waynapicchu it looks tiny. One of the most amazing experience of my life, one of those places that you see once, and even if you never see that again, you don't need to because it's something you can't ever forget. I think that there are only so many places in the world like that, but even so, each place is different I'm sure, but I think that's a good thing. There's no place in the world like Machu Picchu, and the feeling you get there is just indescribeable.

When we got back to Cusco we got up the next morning, super early again, and went to Saqsaywaman, another Incan temple, this one found within the city. We went early enough for there to be nobody there (actually, other than Machu Picchu, most of the places we visited were completely empty, which was great), and we saw that before heading back to Juliaca.

I don't think I ever expected to be as impressed with Cusco as I was.

My malaria itches.

2008-05-30T12:28:00.000-07:00

I got the worst sunburn in Honduras.

...Okay, not the worst sunburn I've ever had, because that happened in Tacoma when I was like 16 or something, but this one was really bad. I've been wanting to get rid of the thick green dead skin that literally covered my back from my neck down to my waist since I got home Sunday night, and dead skin flakes just trail behind me wherever I go. It's not my fault! There's nothing I can do about it. I have, however, spent a good 30 minutes at least every day in the shower trying to scrub what I can off. I am happy to report that it is almost all off, though I did scrape much off prematurely, and now the backs of my shoulders are quite raw and it makes me sad.

Overall my trip was insanely awesome. There's no way I can describe how much fun I had. Let's just say, I had more access to internet than I expected to have, but less time to actually utilize it than I thought. So I have made no updates on the trip in over a month, and now that I've been home for a few days am not entirely wanting to do so either, but I guess I will.

Peru was amazing, of course. Expensive! But unforgetable. I saw all 7 of my areas from my mission, and did many things that we were not allowed to do on the mission, and saw almost every last person that I wanted to see, and some that I didn't expect to see. I was there for many a convert's birthday party, as well as my own. P.S. Birthday parties in Peru are way more fun than gringo style here, that's for dang sure.

Reasons that Peru was the most bestest place ever and that my trip will be hard to ever beat:
1) I went to the sealing of a convert family that I love to death and was one of the witnesses. I really don't need to continue with this list, as this would be enough, but alas, much more happened!
2) I went to birthday parties for the following people (sidenote: I realize you don't know who these people are most likely, just know that they are either converts, close friends, or myself); LocaRosa, Edwin, Jenny, Myself, Myself, Myself. (We had a birthday party for me in three different cities.)
3) I found out that another convert family, Aldo and Lidia, were sealed last October in the Cochabamba, Bolivia Temple just before they had their first baby, awesome family.
4) I was present for the birth of Aldo and Letty's first child in Tacna, crazy coincidence because I was only even in the city for a total of 30 hours.
5) We went to Machu Picchu, and scaled Waynapicchu, two of the most amazing sites in the world.
6) We went to Los Uros on Lake Titicaca, another amazing site.
7) Four converts of mine have either served missions, are currently serving, or are waiting to leave on their mission with their calling in hand.
8) At least 7 Ward Missionaries, or members, that I worked closely with and supported and helped prepare have since gone on missions, or are currently serving.
9) I found President and Sister Galli (my mission president and his wife) in Lima, saw their house and his work and got to see them before heading to my mission areas.
10) I'm pretty convinced that just about everyone in Peru loves me the most.

So all in all, trip was amazing, and that's not even starting with my Honduras experience, which was also friggin sweet. That, however, will have to wait for another time. Pictures won't end up on here I do believe because it would just be too hard to pick a few, and there would be too many even if I just put up one from each place, so if you really know me, they will be on my facebook for all to see.

P.S. My malaria still itches.

Where to even start!?

2008-04-30T20:44:00.000-07:00

Whew,

So I've been in Peru for around a week and a half now, and it's been completely insane. This blog may be cut short because this spanish keyboard is really pissing me off... and the internet shop might be closing fairly soon...

So I'll do this in separate blogs based on where I was, and when I get back to the states I'll put in the pictures, technology not quite the same here I'll say.

Anyway, right now I'm in Cusco, we had the most incredible day today, but I'll explain that in another blog.

I got to Lima Peru on Monday, April 21st, it was awesome, and I felt better just being back in the country. Lima turned out to be everything I expected and more. I got there late at night and basically just went to the hotel in Miraflores. Early the next morning I got ready and went off to the Lima Temple. Having my cell phone working has been a life-saver, and it really does get service everywhere (the "can you hear me know" verizon guy really did his homework). Today I called my dad from the top of the Andes.

Back to Lima, I met Alejandrina, Damaso, and Tatiana (convert family) around 7-ish in the Lima temple and we spent the majority of the day there, it was incredible. They had me as Damaso's Escort through the initiatory and endowment sessions of the temple, and then I was an official witness to the sealing ceremony. Then Tatiana was sealed to her parents and we all participated in a vicarious sealing for another family.

After the highlight of the trip, we went around the center of Lima for a while and saw the Plaza de Armas, some other Plazas, and other areas, I have to say it was a lot of fun, and much cooler than I remember it being.

Leaving from the temple I ran into my old Mission President's brother, he gave me their number and I was able to call and talk to his wife that night. I was leaving the next day for Arequipa around 1:35 pm, so I hadn't planned on seeing them, which I was way bummed about, but after talking to her I was so excited and wanted to see them so bad I decided screw it all and I got up early and wandered around Lima the next day all over the place to find them. Ended up first at their home in Chaclacayo, and then at his work in Rimac, it was so great to visit with them again, and I literally made it back to Miraflores to get my stuff and head to the hotel in Callao over an hour late! I got to the gate after my group was supposed to board, so I flew onto the plane, and then to Arequipa.

Overall Lima was so crazy, so busy, but so amazing. I've only been in Arequipa a little over 24 hours the whole trip so far, I've spend the rest of the time since Wednesday the 23rd between Arequipa, Tacna, Puno, Juliaca, and Cusco. But those stories will have to be for other blogs! Hasta luego...

From the Houston Airport

2008-04-21T10:11:00.001-07:00

That's right!

My finals are over, I'm off work, America who is the beastliest beast friend helped me pack my whole life, and now I'm sitting in Houston (tired as a mofo) waiting for my vuelo to Lima, Peru!

I can't even begin to describe how excited I am. I just got off the phone with my Mamita in Arequipa. They're all ready for their sealing tomorrow, they're just going to get on a bus this afternoon and then I will be seeing them tomorrow in the temple! Oh I can't wait can't wait can't wait.

Okay, so the past few days have been a hurricane craziness, but I survived (cause my friends are awesome) and now I'm on my way out.

Hasta...

1 more final, 2 more days, por fin

2008-04-19T07:04:00.000-07:00

Funny story...

So when I was in High School my worst class ever was Chemistry, actually it was the only class I ever got a C in ever, other than Freshmen Band (long story, Band was lame, and I didn't know that until school started...stupid "pep rallies"). Anyway, I did, however, have the most awesome teacher ever, Mrs. Eames, she was this tiny short 'n' stout Chinese lady with a heavy accent (even though she was practically born in the states, you know the type). She had to climb up to sit on top of her stool, she's probably my favorite teacher I've ever had, I had her sophomore, junior, and senior year science. On to the good stuff, so I royally sucked at Chemistry, I was in the "smart kid" class, but was the dumb smart kid, and everyone knew it. Well, actually I wasn' the dumb smart kid, I was the lazy un-losery smart kid that didn't put forth effort, not to mention that sophomore year wasn't the greatest moment in Tyler History ("tastes like hands" for Josue).

Several times she would have us split into teams and we would compete in a mock science bowl in preparation for the upcoming actual one. I was awesome at educational guessing and inferring, so we would always win, even though I had almost no idea what the question meant, I'm just a good test taker and even better when it's multiple choice. Mrs. Eames really wanted me to join the science bowl team, and I was all "I've got one of the lowest grades in the class and am totally guessing, I have no idea" and she was all "that doesn't matter, half of the game is being able to get it right and make good educational guesses."

Unfortunately I think I've used that gift up dry, because I totally suck now and have to actually study and prepare for most tests, e.g. I've done really bad on all my finals so far. Five down, and only one left to do later this afternoon. All but two of my finals have lowered my overall class grades, luckily none of them lower than a straight B. My History final that I just took was awesome though. So History 220 was lame, too much reading, that I did none of, and was basically hoping to at least get a 50 on the test so that my grade wouldn't drop below a straight C. I get to the final today and the last question on the multiple choice says something like "if you want to take the average of this term's test scores and use that as your score for this final exam write that in your blue book instead of moving on the essay portion of the test." Hahahaha!!! So I got a 79 on the final, didn't have to bother with the essays, and ended with a C plus in the class, my final actually raised my grade a tit bit! I was just hoping to stay above 50, baha. I had no idea what any of the questions were talking about and by the time I got around to question 30 I stopped even trying to infer meaning because I had no clue what anything was talking about and started picking letters at random. Oh happy day.

2 more days til Peru! Holy Crap! I have to wash all my clothes, pack stuff for the trip, get stuff from the store, get my hair cut, pay the deposit and turn in my app for my Fall apartment contract, clean the whole apartment, pack the whole apartment to prematurely move out of my current place, do lots of little things like forward my address and make sure bills get automatically paid while I'm gone, and make a delicious bowl of ceviche for tomorrow's mission potluck. I would rather kill myself! Oh, and also take the French final this afternoon in the midst of all that.

Whew, but it's the last one, and then I'm finished, wahoo!

8 Days and counting!!!

2008-04-13T15:20:00.000-07:00

That's right, three exclamation points!

Man 'o' boy I can't wait to go to Peru, it's like I've been homesick for Peru for a year and a half, and I'm FINALLY going to go home.

My family hates it when I talk like that, get over it, it's true.

This week has been somewhat loco, but next will prove to be worse I'm sure. Between Wednesday and Saturday I have to take all 6 of my finals, two on Friday, two on Saturday, and then I know for sure one is on Wednesday and the other I still have to figure out when I'm going to take it. Gah...

This weekend Julie, America, and I went to go on an HNRS BIO 100 extra-credit adventure. In class Dr. Wilson told us we could get extra credit for going to see the strutting sage grouse and the Billigoats. The sage grouse were somewhere outside of Price?, and the Billigoats were like 45 minutes outside of Southern Salt Lake, so basically they were both far away and in opposite directions. I made the dumb decision to hang out with them into the wee-morning hours on Friday night, and passed out on the couch. So by the time I woke up it was pointless for me to go home and we just slept until 5 am and then we left. This wasn't the best light for them to see me in, cranky, tired, and mean (which often times seem to go together, I will say that I warned them though).

We made it to the sage grouse just before sun-up, and it was FREEZING. I wanted to die. We pranced out of the car to go see all the strutting, chest-puffed-out, screaming-mating-call grouse, what did we see? Nothing... I was disappointed, I was thinking it was going to be some grand procession of strutting grouse squaking or something like scuttle off of The Little Mermaid, but alas, they were all spread out in the fields far away and I had to peer through a telescope just to see one of them, and no squaking either. So after two seconds of watching the one strutting grouse through this random man wearing a one piece zip-up-the-front camo jumpsuit's telescope, I was all "got my extra credit points, I'm outta here" and I got back into the car. (Julie and America were outside all of three seconds before deciding to get back in because it was so cold, it really was).

Then we started back North to go to see the Billigoats, (I just like calling them billigoats, I don't know if that's even the right term for the Mountain Goats we went to see, but it sounds more fun that way.) and decided to stop to eat at CrackleBarrel or some such Omish place in Springville. It was NOT Omish, but whatever. We got there and I was deliriously happy by then to have Omishness, and then there wasn't. The waitress asked what we'd like to drink, and I was half listening half concentrating on the huge grease stain on the menu. As she started listing off random flavors of juice I burst out into full on out loud uncontrollable laughter and just pointed to the picture of strawberry pancakes and nodded my head to get a hot chocolate. I'm pretty sure she thought I was laughing at her, I honestly wasn't, I was way too tired for anyone to bring me out in public, and then as I thought about myself looking like a complete idiot on LSD or something I couldn't stop laughing the whole rest of the stop there.

America drove the rest of the way, and I passed out in the back, which was small, but I didn't seem to notice, except for when I would fly forward into the back of Julie and America's seats. The biligoats were less eventful than the grouse, binoculars or a telescope were necessary and we were all too exhausted by then to want to get out of the car, so we watched the mountainside for a good 15-20 mintes, then we all came home and crashed like zombies. I slept from 1 to 7, another glorious nap.

That was our fun adventure on Saturday, Miles called me from Iraq last night too and I got to talk to him for like an hour and a half too! I was really happy to get to talk to him, and all things considered he seems to be doing very well. Today I went to church for the first time in a bit due to Easter in Portland, sleeping in the next week, conference last week, you know how it is...

Okay, I'm done, my apartment is clean, yay!

Chaufas

...8 DAYS!!!! Oh yeah!!!

Too confused, too busy, too tired

2008-04-10T23:09:00.000-07:00

Argh... That's pirate for my life sucks

Okay, so I go to this Informational Meeting today for the ISP stuff, I spoke with the facilitators for the India, South Africa, and Ghana programs. Friggin, I want to go so bad Fall term. And the India program sounds amazing, and perfect, and I think I could get a lot out of it. At some point I definitely want to do Ghana, and maybe South Africa, or instead I would do Guatemala or some LatinAmerican country. My goal is at least three before I graduate...

Anyway, so the reason I'm "argh" is because so I leave the meeting all excited and I'm like "I'm definitely ready to just leave my job after summer and just figure out finances as I go like every other college student." Then I get to work and we start working on stuff, and I'm all "No, this is a really great opportunity, I should wait until Spring/Summer '09 to really put in enough time here," and then I get home and flip back to, "I want to go to India in August." This has been my flip flop mindset for the past week! I can't handle it and it angers me.

Ugh... Today I didn't have History or French class, so I only needed to be at my 8 am Pearl of Great Price class and then be at that Info meeting at 11, my plan was to get there, go to class, and then spend all day working on my novel-sized paper for my Literature class (don't even get me started), and of course I spent enough time looking for a parking spot to make it pointless to go to class. So I got to campus with nothing to do until 11. I say at the WILK researching my paper online and then passed out on the table there. When I woke up I had to run to the meeting.

Afterwards I just went to work early, but not before stopping at Rancherito's, dah-licious mexican that I discovered with Josue yesterday. They are open 24 hours! I'm definitely going there mucho. So I got to work early, so I was able to come home early and pass out for reals. It was glorious. I slept all afternoon, and well into the evening, though I did miss 30 Rock and The Office, oh well, I haven't watched TV really for several months, it's an okay habit to have formed in my opinion.

I like how I ramble on enough for any random tiny blog to become long and lame. Oh well. Now I'm going to bed and hopefully tomorrow I'll get a bunch of crap done. ...according to the eight ball "not in this lifetime" hmmmmm

I need someone else to tell me what to do with my life?! Do I quit my job and go to India sooner, or do I quit my job six months later and then go to India?! Blah...or better said...Argh!

Que hacer?!

2008-04-07T23:17:00.000-07:00

Bof!
That's a french word I like cause it's fun to say. Like, Nul! or donc... So I'm at a point where I have a whole bunch of options for the near future, both for just fun travel, and school plans/travelling.

I found out recently that my Bish has a doctorate in International Health, I think I may have already blogged about that, so whatever. Anyway, he had said at one point that I should find some time to meet with him and go over school plans, registration for undergrad, as well as grad programs that I might consider. I did that, and I was very glad that I spoke with him. He had a lot of insights as to where I might more specifcally direct my educational career so that it better works for what I want to eventually do.

He said that rather than pursuing a JD/MPH grad program, I should really just focus on Public Health but also find a good Medicine-directed masters programs other than medical school like Nursing or Physician Assisting. That way I can not only work in program implementation and administration, but I can also have the background to be able to work hands on with patients and refugees, definitely more what I want to be doing, a little of both.

So that was great, I've got a lot to plan and things to figure out, Peace Corp is a huge "probably" between my Bachelors and Masters. Plus, there's an awesome Master's in Public Health in Developing Countries program at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, a school of the University of London, one of the best in the world, so I'm really excited about that possibility. I also have been seriously considering pushing my international studies forward and starting on them right away as opposed to getting them all done back to back right before graduation so as to not interfere with my beast awesome job.

So I spoke with my boss, and there is a strong possibility that if I enrolled in an International Field Study for this coming Fall in India or Mexico, I may be able to work from wherever I am, there would be a lot of stuff to figure out, but if it's at all a possibility I want to pursue it. By any means he said that if I did go and come back that I'd always have a job there, just not the exact same job I'm doing right now, so my wages wouldn't be quite as good, they'd still be great, but not like what I'd be making if I were to stay or work out something to continue working while in Mexico or India.

Whew, so there's some stuff to chew on there. The advisor in Internation Development recommended that I get on the ball if at all possible and start working in Field Studies as early as possible and plan out one or two more before graduation. I'm going to take her advice, and not going to write down why because there're a lot of pros, cons, and others that go into the why's and why not's. But either way, me living in India or Mexico Fall Term is a huge possibility and I'm excited about it.

Another thing, I'm going somewhere warm for New Year's, haven't decided %100 where yet though. My number one thought is road trip to Cazakmul (I think I spelled it right...) the Mayan ruins site on the Yucatan Peninsula just outside of Campeche, Mexico. That would be the most awesomely fun trip ever, the drive being more than half the fun. A couple friends of mine have already shown interest in going.

Another option is a cruise, Hawaii or Costa Rica are top on that list, not sure really why that is, but they seem fun enough, and easy, and I'm not looking for something that's going to require a lot of planning for this trip, just a quick getaway to somewhere warm. We'll see where I end up. If the International Field Study works out, I may not want to go anywhere then and just get back to work here, we'll see.

I'm also waiting for registration to start, it already has, but I can't register until the 16th, gah! I want to shoot everyone that has signed up for Intro to Development Studies before me, it's not fair. I hope there are spots left, if the case is that I end up staying in Provo, also a very likely scenario.

Okay, I made Julie flip out by not texting her back for an entire 16 hour period, half of which I was asleep and she should have been too, it was glorious.

I'm done I guess, Peru in less than two weeks! I can't wait, then Honduras. After that Phoenix in June for a weeklong work conference, home in August most likely for my family's annual campout (in a rented house this year, yessssssssssss....), and then I guess it would be my Field Study if I end up going, so India or Mexico for three months. After that I'd be looking at my New Year's trip, and hopefully still be able to work out two weeks in Spain Morocco and Portugal next summer. Sounds fun to me that's for sure!

Easter was way too early this year...

2008-03-29T17:45:00.000-07:00

I had an awesome Easter this year, which is odd to say just because I never really plan on "having" Easter, like it's just a nice day to go to church, but as far as celebrating anything I don't think I've ever thought of it as that type of Holiday.

Anyway, this year would have been no different other than the fact that completely coincidentally my brother Miles' last weekend on leave from Ft. Lewis happened to be Easter weekend. He's getting deployed to Iraq in the next week or two, which isn't a shock, he is in the ARMY, but still, it's his first deployment. So I bought some fairly last-minute tickets to Portland, on SW which got me a free roundtrip fare, so I'm glad about that. But anyway, I ended up spending an incredibly busy and short weekend in Portland, but had a blast, it was definitely a needed break from Provo.

I wish I didn't feel it would be obnoxious to post all the pictures from last weekend here (there are like 50, no worries, I'm only gonna put a few), but I want to put them all up so bad because they are awesome, at least to me. It's funny how I feel like I appreciate and miss my family more now, even more than when I was on my mission, and I get to talk to them on the phone and see pictures all the time, and in reality if there is ever the need I can pick up and go home for a few days and it wouldn't really be that hard. Even still, I miss them lots, maybe because Provo sucks, and Peru was awesome...

So here's how my trip went...

Get up early Friday morning for school, go to all my classes, go home, pretend to start packing, not have enough time, go to work. Work for two hours, get bored and go home. Finish packing, drive to airport.

Arrive in Portland at 9:10 pm (departure was delayed like 45 minutes, ugh). Go straight from airport to my brother and brother-in-law's country rock show at "The Ponderosa Lounge" a frequented truck stop bar in Portland near the airport. That was awesome... as seen below

So after that we all went home and the Saturday was good times. I wanted to get a nice digital camera (nicer than the one I used on my mission) as well as a good quality camcorder for my Peru trip, mission accomplished both the new camera and camcorder are friggin sweet. Then almost the whole famfam went to Pietros Pizza. An old chain that used to have many restaurants in Portland, now there's only three left that I know of, Hood River, OR, Salem, OR and Milwaukie, OR. Worth the half hour drive to Milwaukie, best Pizza EVER!

From Pietros we all went out to my aunt Lizzy's house in backwoods Camas, scariest dive in the world when it's nighttime and snowing like a mofo, fortunately the weather was great over the weekend. We had fun at Lizzy's with most of the entire extended family. From there I went over to James and Ali's (cousins) and we played Pinochle with Graham and Sherri, it was really good to see them. I was sad that I might not get to hang out with them, so that was good.
Sunday we all went to church together, and then had family Easter dinner, took family pictures, and then just kinda spent the evening as a family. Miles' girlfriend Sarah spent most of the weekend with us, it was nice to get to know her, she's really fun and a great girl. We're happy about that.

So I ended up putting lots of pictures up here anyway, oh well, they're great, and now they tell a story! The best part of the whole weekend was getting to spend time with Zack, Paige, and Amber, my neices and nephew. I miss them so so so so so so so so so so much, they're the best ever, nobody can top them, it's true, as much as you try, not gonna happen. Here's why...

Then we had to say goodbye to Miles, it was really sad, but we're at the point where everyone is pretty used to the idea of him being in the ARMY. I'm happy that he's doing what he thinks is important, whether or not I completely agree, I'm proud of what he's doing and wish him the best. We all know he will be just fine, but it's still something that is new for us to deal with. Okay, so that was my fun trip. When I got back I drove straight from the airport to class and then to work, and life started all over again. I was sad though, because the whole weekend in my head I was scheming how I could move back to Portland but still reach the goals I've set for myself as far as my education goes. Anyway, once I got back to Provo I snapped out of the Portland stuppor, but I do miss it. I'll probably visit Portland more often than I had originally intended to. Portland is great.

Highs and Lows

2008-03-12T17:31:00.001-07:00

Yesterday was an insane day, but I got a lot done, but now today I want to die, which sucks.

So Yesterday I actually got up on time, and even miraculously found a parking spot more than 30 seconds before class started, and got to class for the opening prayer, which never happens. So I was feeling good, we talked about the facsimiles from the Book of Abraham in my Pearl of Great Price class (8 AM, I want to die); but my professor is some sort of Egyptologist, and by some sort I just mean that he is. So the classes are really interesting. At least I think so. So the rest of the morning went by fine, I got to all my classes on time and sat through them, oh and in my US History class we watched some OPB Special on the Mormons, so I got to sleep through class since it was an hour and a half film of Church History that I've only heard eighty billion times. Anyway, I had a good break between History and French so I got to at least pretend to do some of the homework for it before I got to class.

The weather was amazing, so I was just happy anyway. Then I get home, eat real quick, get to work, not feeling tired thanks to the great nap from History class, another miracle. So I was at work, with hardly anything to do, and after about two hours I decided, screw this I'm done, I'm going home, thinking to myself that I'd get some homework done, or read some ancient Greek crap for my Literature class for once rather than resorting to sparknotes fifteen minutes before class starts. Well instead right as I was getting ready to leave (my job is awesome that way that I can really just leave whenever) one of my good friends and companions from my mission (the one American companion I had the entire two years) called me up and another of our friends who just got home last week were both at Paradise Bakery in Sandy (which I didn't know Utah had, awesome cause Paradise Bakery is delicious). So instead of going home I drove out to Sandy and spent all evening there with them, it was so much fun and I laughed so hard my cheeks hurt by the time I was driving home.

So I was planning on leaving work early anyway because I had to do my gay ecclesiastical endorsement thingy with the Bishop yesterday sometime between 7 and 9, though the clerk told me to get there by 7 to be sure. Well I didn't leave Sandy until around 8:35. So I almost didn't even bother going and was worried about what would happen if I turned in my endorsement late since they're due on Friday. I decided to try anyway and found the bishop still there, but I sat out side his office for over an hour and a half waiting for him to finish with someone else; so I passed out in the chair and woke up all sweaty, then I was irritated and tired.

See how busy my day was yesterday? I eventually spoke with the bishop, which I'm glad I did because I still hadn't really met him, and in talking with him last night I found out that he's got a doctorate in International Health! Isn't that awesome? So he told me to schedule an appointment with him so that we can go over stuff for grad school plans as well as which faculty members to try and utilize during my undergrad, since in his words "Some are just Health Education specialists, and though they may think they know, they really know nothing about international health." So I'm really excited for some help as far as direction goes with my educational career path and long term goals. It was great.

So today I woke up late, wanted to pass out in all my classes (other than my Old Testament class, which I didn't go to because I was actually passed out), and now am at work and bored out of my mind but can't afford to not get like six hours in today. Tomorrow I'm going to SLC with some friends to some comedy show, and Friday I have plans as well here in Provo so I wont be working late either of those days. Next Friday I probably wont work a whole lot either because I'm going to be flying home.

Blah, I hate how I am that some days I'll be really good, and other days really down, it pisses me off. I think part of it is that I've been taking these vitamins that have been helping me a lot, like a whole lot, to stay awake and be alert all day, but today was the first day that I haven't taken them in like three weeks because I ran out. New ones should be showing up tomorrow or the next day, but I'm so tired. As soon as I got home from school I passed out on the couch and woke up at 3, I was supposed to be at work at 2, ha ha.

Blah.........

Because I should be doing homework

2008-03-09T14:45:00.001-07:00

This week has been insane. I had I don't know how many tests that I had to study for, and studied much less than I should have. I did do a really good job on my oral exam for my French class, I'm a beast. The written portion I think went okay too, but my other tests weren't so great. I had tests in History, Biology, and Religion, I want to die.

Anyway, so that was what I did this week, on top of slacking off at work enough to just be a waste of time, and then having to find time on Saturday to go to work, yes, that's right folks, I spent my Saturday studying, taking a test, and then working, doesn't sound too much like a Saturday to me. I guess I made up for it today by sleeping through morning and afternoon church, whoops! Must've been those two awesome movies I watched in the middle of the night, on top of the time difference that I wasn't even aware was going to happen until like three this morning (well four I guess...).

I watched 28 Weeks Later and 30 Days of Night, both intense as you know what, though 28 Weeks Later was definitely better though. My roommate Josue doesn't watch R's, so I have to watch it on my laptop with headphones, it's hilarious though because then he'll be sitting in the same room but have no idea why at any given moment I'll jump, scream, or gasp in disgust at the bloody gore spewing across the screen, then I can't help but die laughing at the thought of how ridiculous I must look, aha, I'm laughing to myself right now.

I also watched Garden State this week, one of my new favorite movies. Okay, so a real accomplishment was that I just finished my book that I was reading today, "Mountains Beyond Mountains" it's an awesome Public Health book, and really inspires me that much more to continue in the International Public Health direction. I'm a little overwhelmed with all the things that I feel I want to and have to do to make it to where I want to be, partly probably because I really don't know where I'll end up or what specifically I'll end up doing. I mean, if I were going to be a lawyer or a doctor I'd just be satisfied with knowing "oh I'll probably work as a DA in a big city of my choice, probably in California because of the weather, or in some hospital etc..." but with International Public Health I'm just kinda like "some sort of Public Health project in the neediest place I can find and get a job" so we'll see.

My roommate Josue yesterday said something like, "The sooner I retire I want to buy a big snowplow and just get up early in the morning and plow the streets in some small town." And I just thought that was definitely not for me. I think I'm doomed to be busy and stressed my entire life, I pretend that it's not my fault and that I don't bring that life upon myself, but deep down I know that I really do, so I guess it's what I want.

Now that I'm blabbering on more than anyone cares, I guess that will be the end for today, I'm relieved that I don't have to prepare for any tests for a while, and maybe this time I'll prepare as we go rather than cramming it in all at the end, hmmmm... right.

Just when the weather seemed to be getting better...

2008-03-05T19:06:00.000-08:00

So I keep getting overly happy that the sun is out and that it's clear outside and usually there aren't any clouds. But this is my first time ever living in Utah and everyone here keeps telling me that it's just a fake spring, way gay. So I'm just waiting for it to get either cold, rainy, or snowy again. The other day it was really windy though, and because it was windy it was really cold, grrrr I hate Utah.

Anyway, so I was thinking, "Oh, finally it's getting warm enough to not have to lug around my crap around campus" (like my jacket, which isn't that big of a deal until you get to walk around campus without it, and realize that it's so much better the fewer things you have, kinda like the mission, shutup Julie). And of course now that the weather is nicER here I'm taking off for Portland. But only for a few days I guess, even still I'm sure it's going to be pouring down rain there, as usual. Last I spoke with someone in Portland though it was nicer than it is here, so lets hope that's the case.

My brother Miles, 19, is getting deployed to Iraq in a couple weeks (he's not sure of the exact date, and probably wont be until he's on a plane, but it's most likely going to be mid- to early april) so I got a last minute Southwest flight to Portland for the last weekend he's on leave, the 21st to the 24th of March. This ended up being a lot sooner than I had originally planned on visiting home, if it weren't for Miles being deployed I'd probably not have gone home until August. Even with his news I thought I'd still be able to hold off until April, but oh well, the tickets are purchased and I'm going. It'll be nice though to get out of Provo for a few days, let me tell you!

The cool thing though is that I enrolled in the Southwest Rapid Rewards program, and was able to apply my various trips over the past year or so that I've flown Southwest on towards my miles, or credits, or points, or whatever they call them. So I had points from when I flew to Ft. Lauderdale last spring break, also points from my trip to LA over Labor Day, and then a few trips from Portland to Salt Lake for friends' weddings and Conference and whatnot. So I ended up with like 12 credits, and adding on the 4 that I'll get from this trip to Portland I end up with 16 credits, which is, guess what?! enough for a free round-trip Southwest flight, awesome! I'm so excited. Plus if I apply for a Chase Southwest Credit Card I'd get like 8 credits or something, so soon enough I'd have another free trip, wahoo.

So I spent way too much time today figuring out where all Southwest travels to see what fun I could have with this. Southwest goes to Costa Rica, Mexico, as well as Hawaii, and one of its partner companies goes to like Guatamela and I don't remember where else, so I don't know when, but since it's free I'm going to try and figure out a fun little tripcito sometime maybe around Christmas break to somewhere warm. I'm hoping I can find someone to go with me. If I con my Dad into going maybe we can use their timeshare or something and get a nice place to stay that I wouldn't have to pay for either.

So other than that life pretty much sucks, I'm just counting down the days before I get to go play in Peru.

Okay, scratch that plan... I just got off the phone with my pops and he most likely wont have time off work to travel around Christmas time (UPS...lame), but he did say they will try and work it out so that I can use their timeshare anyway, now I just have to find someone that will go with me.

I have way too many tests this week, and haven't studied at all for them, ugh I hate my life. Why can't I just go to class, listen to the teacher, and go home, and then just get A's? Seems fair to me.

Sucramento and Las Vegas

2008-02-26T19:10:00.000-08:00

So I remembered when I was thinking about writing about my trip to Las Vegas and St. George with Josue that I also was in Sacramento (from here on out to be known as Sucramento) for my cousin Graham's wedding. We drove down with Warren, our buddy, and stayed at Sherri's house (Graham's wifey) and then later at a hotel the night before and after the ceremony. They got married in the Sucramento Temple, it was a nice temple, and it was cool that it was so new. I still prefer the Portland Temple, but who can blame me right?

Anyway, it was a very funny trip, like when we saw the carefully situated deer-shaped christmas lights, the picture below I had to snap with my camera phone, I think I even hung up on someone to take it. We found them as we were lost trying to find the reception. There were also a lot of inside jokes that were formed that weekend too inappropriate to post for just anyone to see, so I'll leave it with just that they were funny.

Warren was almost accosted by a gay guy when we went with Graham and Sherri to do their marriage license mumbo jumbo in Sucramento, the city itself is nice enough, but not like Portland (I realize I'm biased, calm your faces those of you (JULIE) trying hard not to frantically comment about how much better SUcramento is than Portland, it's okay, agree to disagree). Still, it was a fun trip, the weather was nice too.

After the wedding the family members still in CA went to Six Flags (the one close to San Francisco, I don't remember what it's called or what specific city its in). On our way out I inadvertantly yelled at some old ladies to get out of the way, I actually said "Yeah, move it grandmas!" Hahaha, I was referring to my family members that were moving slow in front of me, just after I shouted it out I almost trampled this old lady in front of me, and felt like a douche, it was great.

The best part of the story happened after I got home. I was stuck in the back of my cousin's Scion the entire drive back to Portland between two other cousins, I wanted to die and by the time we had survived the crazy hispanic chucky girl at Carl's Jr. (another story) and had made it home I was exhausted, delirious, and wanting to kill people. On the way home I almost killed myself driving straight over the dividing curb on the freeway at over 70 mph (in Portland that's more than 15 miles over the speed limit, I know...). I was so pissed off at first, then was happy for the excuse to get rid of my piece of $#!@ Acura and buy a new car for the first time ever, funny enough it was a Scion I ended up with.

This entry is turning out to be really long, so I think I'm going to hold off on the St. George/Vegas story til next time, there were a few funny things that happened, though maybe not that funny, so maybe it'll never make it on here, oh well...

Where Have I Been?

2008-02-26T12:46:00.000-08:00

I wish I could say that I have travelled the world over, not quite yet...

When I was younger and in High School we did the typical school trips to Vancouver B.C. and Victoria Canada (typical for the NW anyways) and then we did the family trips to Mexico, Disneyland, etc... But other than that I guess we didn't do a lot of travelling. Once my family went on a road trip zigzagging from Oregon to Iowa hitting a majority of the states in between for a Nelson family reunion in Iowa, I remember that it was really fun, but not much else. We did see the "Four Heads" aka Mt. Rushmore, haha.
I don't know if I'd consider trips to the Oregon Coast "travelling" since it's fairly close to Portland, but that is always a frequented place to visit, and I do enjoy going to the coast (we don't call it the beach, it's the coast).
My mission obviously is the greatest trip I've ever taken. Peru was so amazing and I'm so excited to go back. I'm planning my trip for this spring, four weeks in Peru and a week in Honduras, I can't wait, it's going to be so awesome.
Since returning from my mission I've run around a little bit... In March I went to Ft. Lauderdale with a friend on his parents' yacht for a week or so, which was my first time on the Atlantic, great times. The same friend went with me to LA over this past labor day, six flags was a blast, and our hotel room was right on the Santa Monica Pier, it was great, and I was scheming how I could end up living there as soon as possible for the following several weeks hoping it would work out.
Last weekend I drove down to Las Vegas and hung out in St. George as well. I'm going to call that travelling since it was my first time in both places, so there.
I'm not sure where I will end up going over the next few years, but I'm hoping a career in International Public Health will carry me to many places. I am running through my head a trip next summer to Spain and Morocco. Actually it just came to me last night. I was thinking of what my next good trip should be, and Morocco has always been somewhere I've wanted to go. Spain is close enough, and another place really high on my list, so I figured I should just stick them together. The logistics of it will need to be figured out, but for the moment that's what I'm thinking, now I just have to figure out how, but I know I can do it if I set my mind to it.
April will be a fairly busy month this year, and that IS planned. I am going to head home to Portland for a weekend to see my brother Miles who is most likely being deployed to Iraq that same month, and then my trip to Peru starts on the 21st. From the 21st to the 19th I'll be in Peru, and then the 19th to the 25th of May I'll be in Honduras with my friend Ann who is now living in San Francisco but I met while working at a Free Clinic in the Portland area.
Now that I'm late for work this is going to be a lame ending to a very boring blog entry, but oh well. I think I'm going to put up some info from my trip to Vegas on my next entry, it was a fun and funny trip with Josue my roommate.

At the risk of seeming homo...

2008-02-26T00:35:00.000-08:00

Yes, yes, yes, I am a guy, and am straight, and apparently now have a blog. Leave me alone, I don't care.

My hope is to update it often enough (wait a sec, you'll see where I'm going with this), as this will hopefully primarily serve as a travel blog, hence the URL. I plan to travel as much as I possibly can, and at the moment seem to be putting hard earned student loans to good use in order to do so. It is like un heure quarante du matin and I have to be in class at huit heures du matin, not such a great idea. Actually, the fact that it's so late probably had far too much influence on the existence of this waste of time. And of course I didn't do any homework today, maybe I'll pay for that in a few hours, maybe I wont care, maybe I'll be asleep...maybe. Anyway, so I probably will just give a general update on some of my recent trips (all within the US since the mission), but from here on out I hope to go to really fun places at least once a year, and less fun places, but still other places, often enough. So yes, I hope to update the blog often, because that will mean that I'm traveling often, otherwise it might be just boring enough for nobody to care to read this anyway. Bueno, a dormir entonces.