Tour

So right after I got engaged Kristen left to go to check things out in Colchester, the city we were supposed to be moving to. I figured that as long as she was going to skip town I could get away with doing that as well. So I chose to go on tour with the Choraliaires. If you remember correctly this was the group I was going to leave after I graduated and found a job. Well I didn't find a better job until after the second semester ended and the job still allowed me to go on tour. So I headed out into the vast unknown otherwise known as Taylorsville, Tooele, Ely, and Elko.

Tour basically means that we get to sing a whole lot in a multitude of differing places and ride on a bus to get there. We sang at rest homes, seminaires, railroad stations, stake centers, etc. We also performed the show that we did at Weber State back in April. We didn't get a whole lot of sleep during the week, but it was an experience that was quite unlike anything I'd experienced before.

We get the chance to stay in member's homes for the week and they were kind enough to make us breakfast and pack us a lunch. Sometimes we hit a homerun with the lunches they packed for us and other times...not so much. The first night the family we stay with had a party with the young choir members and the old members of their ward. It was a fun time and probably the most eventful night of the tour.

We meet a whole bunch of cool people on tour, not only members of the choir that I never talked to in class but different generations as well. At the end of the week we picked awards for one another and I ended up with the person most likely to come away from the rest home with a new best friend. I think this was probably pretty accurate.

But we don't just sing on tour, we also get to see some pretty sweet sites. We went to the cooper mine and got to play around for a bit. I had been there once before a long, long time ago and not much had really changed. Still the large tire and the big open pit. I think that the video they showed us was new though. As a side note, our tour directors had us wear matching shirts everyday so we could all look goofy together. I didn't mind it so much, except now when I look back on the photos everyone looks the same and it sort of bores me.

We also went to the Benson Grist Mill near Tooele and had to pose for photos.

In Ely we went to the local museum and this was painted on a building nearby. Here I am with my roommate for the week, Austin Packer. We did make for quite the interesting pair. I have served my mission, taught in Taiwan, graduated from college and I am getting ready to get married. Austin on the otherhand did early college and is eighteen. We did get along well though, especially after we realized that had I signed up to be a counselor for EFY this year I could have been his.

Our last stop was the Salt Flats. They were nice to stop by and see but I'm really not sure what all the hype is about. We ran around and even licked the salt but other than that I wasn't real sure what I was supposed to be doing. There are some videos of the running and licking but apparently I can't add the links from facebook, so you'll have to get there by yourself. So it was a fun week, full of adventures but I did miss Kristen, who attempted to find us a sweet place to live in England but instead got accepted to the University of Edinbourgh in Scotland and so we will be moving there instead and pushing up the wedding by a few weeks.

An Engagement

Hopefully, you have figured this out. I'm getting to the woman I love and moving to Colchester to be a supportive domestic engineer. Wish me luck! And in case you didn't know her name is Kristen Irvine. At least that's what it is at the moment.

Adventures: Green Island

I've decided that since I don't really have anything brand new to blog, I will back track and hopefully cover some more of my Taiwan adventures. At the end of the school year we still had to stay within Taiwan for another two weeks so we could get the full tax break. So the first stop was Green Island.

Let me tell you right now that just getting there was an adventure in itself. We had this crazy guy from South Africa telling us that there wasn't a chance in the world that there would be a typhoon and we shouldn't worry about. He also warned us not to get hurt because there was only one doctor on the whole island and he is drunk most of the time. Turns out he was wrong, as you find out later in our little story. He told us a whole bunch of other stuff to but currently it escapes me.

After the South African dude dropped us off at the bus station we had to take an overnight bus to Tainan so we could catch the ferry to the island. The bus had no airconditioning and we were all convinced that we'd die, at least that is what I wanted to do. It was sticky and nasty but we finally woke up only to get on another bus and then on the vomit barge. I won't name any names but most of the party managed to sacrifice some of their breakfast during the voyage to the island. A kind sacrifice, especially since it wasn't required of me. If my memory serves me right we finally got to the hotel and took a nap for some time in order to recover from our night of misery.

After the napping we went to a BBQ and cooked a whole bunch of meat. Not real sure what I ate but I think it tasted pretty decent. We were then forced to sing in front of the Taiwanese people and I wonder what they thought of a bunch of Americans singing in native English, I bet we sounded pretty bad ourselves.

We couldn't go along of course and so six of us shared the two microphones so we could rock out to the Lion Sleeps Tonight. This was also the same song we had to use for the graduation performance. The teachers were kind enough to let me prance around like a lion and chase them with a jump rope. I made a few kids laugh, made little children cry and I'm sure I made other parents consider taking their children out of our program.

That evening Emily and a few other girls were kind enough to do Joseph's hair for him and what a sight to behold. I'll let him do the explanation though. As a sidenote his head was killing him in the morning when he took out the braids.

We did other cool things on the island too, like scuba diving and hottubing in natural salt hotsprings. Jessica and Sara even got a little adventurous and run into a mountain.

Yes sir, the scooter went crazy and they hit the wall. Sara managed to do this to her eye and brake her left arm. Jessica had a whole bunch of skin scraped off and it still isn't fun to talk about cause I get sick.

A bunch of the teachers say sunrises and sunsets cause they enjoyed getting up early. I really enjoy sleeping so I let them take the pictures. But then I felt guilty since I never made the effort to see nature in all its glory so I deleted the photos. But the island was still beautiful and even now I wish I could end up there once again.

Snow

I think that I have seen about enough of this stuff to last a lifetime. My car doesn't do well in the snow anymore, perhaps I should get a new one but then again if I moved out of the country again, to someplace like Scotland, would I really need a car? Probably not. Even still I wish I could get away with wearing shorts more often. My legs are still a pretty pasty white and both me and my legs would like to see the sun again. But then after about two weeks I'll be wishing it was cool again. But really this snow has got to stop cause I want to see more of this:

I love bugs and I love taking photos of them. It is much easier taking pics of them without snow cause I don't have to freeze. But now I am just rambling and I should be more productive and try to get things done. In fact I think that I'll go ahead and spend some time with:

Well I would but I'm stuck at the institute for a practice and she's at a sewing class. So I'll just finish a book and read my scriptures, or something along those lines.

"Roots"

This is not a blog about the clothing company so I apologize if you have google searched it and ended up at my blog. That being said I thought I would put in a short plug for for book. It was amazing, at least I thought so. It was fascinating hearing about the life of a man brought from freedom in Africa to slavery in America. The story tug at my heartstrings and has made me grateful for what I have and even more grateful for the protection I have been given. I really don't know what else to write in the this review thingy. I am curious to know who has at least heard of the book/mini-series, seen the mini-series, or read the book. So please leave a comment.

My face might have been taken over by kids, but I'm not dead yet

I realize that I haven't blogged in about a decade and I don't really have any good excuses for it, other than the fact that Kristen made me promise to get enough sleep this week so I don't get sick for my performance. She must have been inspired because Thursday morning I woke up with a lump in my throat. Since I had been getting eight hours of sleep since Sunday I still felt pretty good. I got another eight hours of sleep last night and my throat seems to be doing a little better. You see I have this nasty habit of ALWAYS getting sick right before a concert, so long as I have to sing a solo or in a small ensemble. So this week was no different and I am hoping that I make it through the performance and I think that I'll be just fine. Maybe next week when I have Thursdays free once again I will be able to find time to blog or maybe I will just spend more time with the people I love.

It's NOT fun to stay at the YMCA!

On Friday night I went to the gymnastics meet at the Uof U. We got up during half-time and had to sing the YMCA song. The song never brought any feelings to my heart until this past vacation to Ohio/Canada. I had the blessed opportunity to stay at the YMCA and it was not my favorite. It was a little dirty and felt just a bit creepy. Could have been because it felt like we were in the ghetto and we probably were. I had an experience there which I will never forget. I was brushing my teeth in the bathroom and accidentally dropped my toothbrush. I thought maybe I could brush it off or something, you know the 10-second rule. I picked it up and it had black specks all over it. I decided that throwing the thing away was my best bet. So as the song played over the loudspeaker I got to thinking about the places we stayed at while in Thailand and how I would have preferred to be staying there.

While in Chiang Mia we stayed in a hilltop village with wooden floors raised up on stilts and a bathroom that, well you can see for yourself. I was prepared for what awaited me and I didn't expect first class service so I wasn't disappointed. I even slept like a log and then breakfast was waiting for me when I woke up. So I would rather stay at the top of a mountain instead of the YMCA.

After traveling down the mountain we made it back to our 83 Baht or $2.5o hostel. It had plenty of room and we were happy to have warm water once again. It might have been a little cramped but it's a foreign country and it only cost two and a half bucks. We were pleased with the situation.

While in Krabi we went all out and spend $30 for two nights in our own private suites. The bathrooms were crawling with ants but that is what the spray thingy was for. So the moral of the story is don't spend $20 a night for a room at the YMCA. It isn't worth it. And never let me book your hotel room because this time it was all my fault.