20th Blog

Blogging has been a cool way to share a cyber journal.  Of course I don't write the same things on my blog as I do in my journal.  I don't believe a person should be sharing personal stories on the Internet anyway, but at the same time I think it depends.  For example I remember a girl had a very bad accident and to self sooth herself she would write about how she was feeling, and how life was going.  By doing this she received a lot of support from people she didn't even know from her blog.  Like I say, It's just my opinion about people not sharing personal stories, but at the same time I think it depends.  In my blog I never did share a super personal story, but I felt like I shared enough to allow people to connect with me.  Now, I'm a dude so I don't have the cutest blog in the world, but I tried to make it look as good as possible.  I think blogging is more of a girl kind of thing to do.  For example Morgan just took a look see at my blog and did all sorts of things to it to make it look better.  I had no idea you could do some of the things she suggested that I change on the blog.  Right now I'm looking at all the blogs of my classmates and it looks to me that they've all done a better job than I.  Not because I didn't put a lot of effort into it, I just don't think I'm a great blogger.       

Peruvian Houses

In Las Flores I had some of my best mission friends.  Las Flores was an area in Lima Peru.  In our mission due to safety all the gringos had to have a Latino companion.  Don't get me wrong I loved all of my companions, but living with someone from a different country that doesn't speak your native language it can get tiring.  This area that I was in was so awesome because I had so many friends in it.  Not only Latino friends but Gringo friends as well.  We all decided that we were going to have some big service project every friday before lunch.  One such project took us many weeks.
In Peru they will just dig a whole into a rocky mountain and build a home in it.  You may ask from the picture, "How do they get concrete up there?"  Well, I'll tell you, they find missionaries who are willing to haul it up a 300 yard staircase.  We were always willing do service like that.
It was the most hilarious thing hauling all of that sand up there with those friends.  So many of them complained, and I'm not sure why but the way they complained made me laugh.  Elder Memmott was always the most funny when it came to complaining.  He would always talk about how after all of that hard work he was going to get a crappy lunch.  Sometimes the lunches were pretty bad, cow stomach was never my favorite thing to eat after hauling a bunch of sand up a mountain either.Although some of the service projects were really hard we had so much fun doing them.  I can remember accidentally poring the sand from the meshy bags onto my friend and just laughing.  Of course he wasn't laughing in the moment, but I was.  

Havasupai

This past summer I went on one of the best vacations I've ever been on.  The place is called Havasupai.  It's an indian reservation located in the middle of the Grand Canyon.  My brother and seven other friends planned to go in August.  When it came time to go many of our told us they weren't going to be able to make it.  It definitely bummed us out they not that many people were going to go, but my brother and some other friends were determined to go.  I've always liked to finish what I start.

When we got there it was two in the morning, but when you get there you aren't quite on the reservation yet.  You have to hike in ten miles.  So that's what we did after driving almost twelve hours.  It was one of the most awful hikes, but when we got there with all of our packs and such it was a blast.  We would go hike to all of the different water falls, but my brother and friends and I would do it a little differently.  When we hiked, we would basically river hike down the river.  This was the best part of the whole trip.  We would come to certain rocks during the river hike and do some flips off of them and things.  If I can just give you a quick visual of what we looked like.  We had on our bucket hats, with our camel backs with some water shoes.  There were times when we would be fully submerged in the water with all of our clothing on during the river hike.

Before you would get to the place where you could pitch your tent, you had to pass the indian village.  As I observed them I don't think they liked living on that reservation.  They all seemed so depressed and by the way it seemed like I was in third world territory.  It was very dirty, no plumbing no nothing.  Although there were little houses that looked nice to live in, but it was definitely a village.  When I smile at someone I usually get a smile back, in fact I expect a smile back.  During my time in the village I would try to talk with people or just smile at them and I got nothing in return.  We didn't hang around the village all that much, we just played all day hiking in and out of water falls.  

Ouch and Yikes

The other day I got this photo.  The first words that come to mind when I saw this was, well I actually laughed first.  Then I wondered how in the world it had happened.  She told me that she tripped while she was curling her eyelashes and ripped half of them out.  I saw her later that day and I had to give her a little smirk and she asked how bad it looked.  It did look bad… But it was probably because I was looking for it.  I immediately went searching the internet on how to grow eyelashes to see if we could help her out.  Turns out she was doing all of those things, like not using certain mascara, to use vaseline when taking make up off and all that stuff I have no idea about.  There was something she wasn't or hadn't used.  It was call Latisse.  It was some expensive solution that you put on your eye lid to help them eyelashes grow.  She has been using the solution for a month now and has made good progress.  Poor girl I thought to myself.  Isn't having luscious eyelashes one of the most important things for girls to have on their face?  Anyway she has been a trooper through the whole thing.  She acted very confident through it all and didn't make it seem like it was a big deal, even though it was for her.  

When bad things happen in life I guess you just have to stay confident through it to stay a stay a happy camper.

"What the Heck"

My grandpa has always taken us fishing.  Fishing is a great thing to do with a grandpa.  All grandpas like to teach their grandchildren how to fish.  When fishing with grandpa we do it on a boat, his boat that is a totally ghetto boat.  We put down riggers in the water to gauge the depth that we want with three other poles trolling the back of the boat.  There is a total of five poles in the water which means for a lot of catching.  In the Soldier Creek reservoir in Utah the fish we catch are good sized rainbow trout and cockney salmon.  What my grandpa taught me about cockney salmon is that they have very soft mouths.  So if you wrestle with one he will rip the hook out of his mouth.  All cockney salmon do is wrestle with you when you're trying to drag them in.  To remedy this problem he put elastic rubber bands on the ends of the hooks.  A very smart idea to catch the better tasting fish.

When I caught one he said it was too small and that I needed to put it back in the lake.  As I was taking the hook out of his mouth I forgot for a second that fish don't breath out of the water.  Due to that fact I had the fish out of the water for too long and when I finally got the hook out of his mouth it was too late.  The fish was dead.  I tried to run the water through the gills, but it didn't swim off, it just turned belly up.  When that happened my grandpa got very irritated with me and let out a few curse words.  When my grandpa curses at me I've never taken it personally, I just laugh.  I like when grandpa is that way with me actually it allows me to have a closer relationship with him.  

Mom's back

My brothers and I were very close growing up and still are.  I have a picture that brings back some memories, which is the photo on this post.  When Mom was single she would run a lot of marathons and half marathons with her friends.  She left for a weekend to the Oregon coast to run a half marathon.  I never have understood running marathons and such.  The greatest distance I've ever ran was three miles, and I only did that to complete a requirement for scouts.  When I finished I said to myself, "Well I'm never doing that again."  I actually never have ran that kind of distance since, sad to say.  Anyway back to Mom.  We always did miss her when she left for whatever reason.  And as you can see in the picture we were very excited to see her when she came back from Oregon.  In that picture she brought us headbands and T-shirts from the race and we were very happy to receive them.  Hayden (the littlest one) didn't have one because he probably would have been swimming in it.        

Guitar at home

Playing guitar has been one of those things for me that I really just like to do.  I started playing when I was twelve years old.  I can remember that birthday, I was sent on a treasure hunt and that's what I found.  There were a couple of things that inspired me to play the guitar.  The first thing was my step-father.  He didn't play a whole lot, but he did play enough for me to realize that that was something I wanted to do.  The second was a movie with Jack Black in it called the "School or Rock."  When I saw that movie I decided that playing the guitar was something I wanted to do.  Come my birthday that's what I got, and I've never put the guitar down since.  Kenny and I would always play, but now that I don't live at home we don't get the opportunity that much.  One of the highlights of me going home for the holidays is to play the guitar with him.  Since I've gotten a guitar Kenny has stayed stagnant in his progression which means when we play now I have to play easier stuff so he can keep up.  I've tried teaching him new things, and it's not that an old dog can't learn new tricks it's that they don't want to learn new tricks.  That's the case with Kenny, he just doesn't want to put the time in to become better.  Despite all of that it's still fun to play the guitar with him.  Thanks to Jack Black and Kenny I have a hobby that can last for the rest of my life.   

Chemistry is the worst

Chemistry… Chemistry is the hardest class I've ever experienced.  I don't know if it's BYU chemistry or chemistry in general.  I know that BYU is notorious for having a rigorous chemistry department but I still thought it would be possible for non-super human people like me.  I study the material I do the homework, I go to class but it just doesn't seem to pay off any.  Once I get into the testing center it's like seeing a different language for the first time.  Not only that but everything I seemed to have studied is not recognizable on the test.  Anyway I could just say, "Oh my brain doesn't work that way."  But I don't want to believe that.  I want to believe that I can do this chemistry stuff in the testing center.

I have heard many people say, "I can't help it, that's just the way I am."  I never have believed that people "can't do" or "have to do" because, "that's just the way they are."  In my case with the chemistry stuff, I obviously know there's more I can do to understand better.  Even though I've tried long hours to understand sometimes it doesn't work out, which means to me that I need to try harder.

Coming Home

Coming home from a mission was one of the most bitter sweet experiences of my life.  I can remember thinking when I was about to come back to the states, "I don't feel likes it's time to go back home."  I really did feel that way although I was excited to see my family and such.  When I said goodbye to my family at the MTC I wasn't too sad because I knew I was going to see them again.  When I said goodbye to my Peruvians I was a mess because I knew I probably wasn't going see them again.  Going home meant goodbye to everything that I had grown to love.  I didn't want to leave.  Never the less I did come home and it has been great although it wasn't when I first got home.

When I got off of the plane I had knots in my stomach and I didn't understand why.  Before turning the corner where I knew I'd see my family I let out a big sigh.  I made the corner and saw my mother jumping up and down when we made eye contact.  I couldn't help but feel a little emotional with a smirk on my face.  She gave me a big long hug.

Being home I realized I wasn't an "important" person to people anymore.  I wasn't thinking about people anymore.  Mainly just thinking about myself.  Where was I going to go to school?  Where was I going to work?  How was I going to make money?  After my mission it all became about me.  I had a problem, because for two years my thoughts had been him, her, they, them ect.  All I wanted to do for a while was take a one way plane ride to Peru and keep going where I left off.  

5th Wheeling

This year is the first year of my little brother's college career.  He goes to UVU and before we both got up here, we agreed that we were going to be roommates.  While I was doing summer sales in Texas he called notifying me that he sold his contract and was living elsewhere closer to UVU.  I couldn't help but feel angry, because now I was going to get some random kid for a roommate that I didn't know.  I tried to tell him that he would have a better social and a overall better college experience if he lived in Provo with me.  He told me that it didn't matter, but that he wanted to live closer to UVU.  Despite my trying to change his mind he didn't.  Come a semester later he hates where he lives and his roommate situation.  He admitted to me that if he could choose again he would have roomed with me.  So now he feels home sick, and misses his girlfriend back home.  During thanksgiving break my parents and I along with Hayden and his girlfriend (when we go to Boise I never seen him because he's always with her) all went to a movie.  I was totally 5th wheeling with them all but we all had a great time.  So now when my bother and I are in Boise he's the happy camper where as I'm the happier camper when we're at school.  I took a little picture just to give you a visual of my movie night with the family.

Grandpa Kissing Nurses

My grandpa on my mom's side never said much.  Not to me, not to anyone, he was just a quiet man.  Before I left on my mission he told me I has going to have two of the best years of my life.  I came back two years later to find him crying at the airport.  We were quite excited to see each other.  I noticed that my grandpa had grown old in those two years I was away.  I noticed that he couldn't keep his balance hardly at all.  In fact when I saw him in the airport he was falling over and I had to catch him, just to let you in on his physical state.  

It was the day of my home coming talk that it had happened.  My grandpa's balance was so bad that when he went to go get the mail that afternoon he fell and hit his head on the side walk curb.  My uncle got the call from my grandma and we all went to the emergency room.  Grandpa had never been the same since.  He recognizes people but he can't remember anyone.  He is much more out going in his state now than he was in his fully conscious state.  He will laugh and try to make jokes, but really they never make sense.  It's quite funny actually.  

This thanksgiving my older brother and I went to go pick him up at his nursing home.  I'm a fan of the nurses that take care of my grandpa, they're very good to him.  And he seems to like the girls because every time he leaves he'll give them a fat kiss.  . . . Now I've always like to tease my grandpa by playing with his ears.  I do this because he doesn't like to be touched.  For some time during the car ride to thanksgiving dinner I was playing with his ears.  He was sitting in the front seat while I was sitting in the back, so I had an unfair advantage.  Just because Grandpa isn't the same anymore doesn't mean I can't still have fun with him.