Welcome to Galoon!

One day my friends said to me, "Do you want to go to Lagoon?"

"Yes," said I.

And so last weekend we went to the best amusement park in Utah, and I had a blast.  I have never been to frightmares, but it was way fun.  I'm pretty sure that Lagoon in the summer pales in comparison to Lagoon in the fall.  I've got two words for you:  Way short lines and no sweltering heat!  Now you can look at some pictures of it if you want.

The rocket is scary

They caught me breaking the rules

All the peeps on the swings

Me and Sarah waiting in a short line

We parked somewhere and took the free shuttle, thus saving us 24 dollars worth of parking.

The whole Lagoon trip only costed 8 dollars.

I am it

What I mean by that, is that I was tagged by Lisel.  If I understand correctly, when one is tagged by another person they are supposed to answer all the questions.  I will now undertake to do this.

Eight things that make me feel good:  Getting my homework done, getting above one hundred percent on exams, when BYU beats Utah, actually getting one hour of scripture study, eating a tasty, healthy and large meal, finishing a book, helping people, catching a honkin' fish.

Eight things I did yesterday:  Went to classes, worked, caused huge problems at work by allowing the dye tank to overflow about 20 gallons all over the floor, finished my homework right before class started, went rollerblading/rollerskating and did some sweet tricks, went and got a slurpee (watermelon and pepsi flavor), watched "I Am Legend", ate five Lynn Wilson burritos for lunch.

Eight favorite eats/drinks:  Corned beef and cabbage, slurpees, chili-cheese dogs, apple beer, chimichangas, borsch with sour cream, betos burritos, grapefruit.

Eight things my wishlist:  The full set of the Joseph Smith papers project,  alot of guns (before Obama takes them), a nice buck on my wall, unlimited gift certificate to Deseret Book, new underwear, my car to be fixed, a few extra hours per day to do homework and play my banjo and guitar, a BYU victory.

Eight things I love about fall:  Football, the start of school, hunting season, meeting new friends, watching the leaves change in the canyons, I like nothing else about the fall.

Eight favorite TV shows:  Heroes, Histories Myseries, Myth Busters, Man vs. Wild, anything on the History Channel, anything on AandE (Cops, Investigation shows, etc.), anything on Discovery Channel, anything not on TLC.

Eight things I am looking forward to:  The end of the semester, Christmas, Thanksgiving, going to Aida with Sarah, registration for next semester, the BYU - Utah game, stake conference, Veteran's day.

All of my friends have already done this or been "tagged" as it is called, therefore I will not complete the last portion.

Halloweenie!

Perhaps you are keen enough to know that it is almost Halloween.  Halloween really doesn't make me as excited as it used to when I coud go trick or treating and when my friends at school actually thought it was cool to have a good costume.  It is still fun, I guess, thanks in large part to the annual party hosted by my sister.  I would have to say that the best part is all of the food that she makes and also my nieces and nephews in their costume.  Unfortunately I'm the last one of all of us to make a blog of this so if you've already seen it, then you may be honorably excused from further viewing.

She was a half-human-half-dog 

I thought he was a real army man

My favorite part is the cheezy grin

This is us before we dressed up for Halloween

The Paint Dance

Scarcely have I had more fun in my entire existence!  Last weekend Utah State had their second annual paint dance, and it was hilarious.  "What does that mean?" you may be asking.  I will proceed to explain.  It's just a normal dance out on the rugby field, except there's dozens of gallons of paint, leftover from painting the street for homecoming, left out for everyone to play with.  We just threw paint on each other for the first 20 minutes and then it was all gone so we just danced after that.  To top off the awesomeness, I also crowd-surfed for the first time in my life.  I nearly killed one person, as I am quite large to be crowd surfing, but once I got going it was fun.  Then they threw me really hard to one side where no one was standing and I just flew onto the ground and landed on my head and shoulder - it was so funny.  After the dance we were the nastiest people alive and it took at least 3 days before I was mostly clean, but it was definitely worth it.  Check out the pictures.

Ashley, Heidi and Brittany

Kelsie, Paula and Nikell

Me and my roommates

I got a haircut!

My roommates kept telling me that my hair was ugly and I shamelessly admit it was, but I just never had time to get a haircut.  I finally broke down and did it the other day and I got pictures of it before.  I wasn't trying to be cool and grow an afro, it just happens that way.

The Elusive Scriptures

It was quite a horrible day two weeks ago when I lost my scriptures.  I didn't even notice until I went to study them one morning and they weren't there.  I remembered that I had taken them with me to all of my classes after institute so I figured that I must of left them in one of the classrooms.  Well two weeks later they still hadn't shown up in any of the lost and founds.  Then I checked my e-mail for the first time in two weeks and lo, and behold I read this:

"One of the professors found your scriptures.  He  left them for you in the Language Arts Dept, Old Main 204."

Needless to say we were finally reunited today and then I just went and checked my e-mail and look what I got:

"You can pick up your stuff in BNR 101 any time 8-5 tomorrow. Just ask Judy for it."

Yep, that's right I left them in another place just a few hours after I found them.  It's quite embarrassing.  Maybe some day I'll learn how to keep track of my stuff, but for now I'll just count on good lost and found locations throughout campus.  The moral of the story:  we should study our scriptures every day.

September Morning

Sorry this post is coming a little early, but maybe semi-quarterly is better anyway. Today I decided that working on Fridays for sure is not cool. When I get home at nine all my friends are already out doing something cool and it's too late for me to join, kind of like coming at halftime and expecting to play. All I know is that this semester is going to be ridiculous - I really didn't think 17 credits would be hard at all, but it turns out that when they're all hard classes it can be kind of taxing. Two chemistry classes, calculus (the easiest of my classes), Russian, and two chemistry labs. I actually love it though compared to not having enough to think about. I also am working 20 hours per week which is good for me. Thursday night I went to bed at 5:00 in the morning and woke up at 7:00 for class, I had to do a big fat presentation in Russian the next day. To top it all off there are cool people that live all around and they all like to stay up until 1:00 A.M. everynight and try to not let me sleep. Despite the busyness (as opposed to business) life is amazing when you have good roommates. We've already been fishing, tubing down the canal, and all kinds of cool stuff. Basically the point of this post is to say that college is good and I like it.
P.S. The only horrible thing that happened was the other day on the way to work. I had the tubes I borrowed from someone to float down the river on in the car and I think it got to hot and next thing you know one of them straight exploded. It was quite sad.

I am officially almost a real bum

I'm home now. It's not quite as fun as the last two weeks have been, but I suppose I'll manage. It was a long trip from Venice to Salt Lake, via Bristols, Holyhead, Dublin and New York on planes, trains, automobiles and ferries but I finally made it.

That' s Holyhead, England and the ferry I caught from there

The best part was on Friday night when I arrived late at night in Bristols, England. I didn't want to pay for a hostel so I went to the train station and thought I'd spend the night there. Everything was great as I slept in the warm, waiting room all alone; and then the stinking janitor booted me out at about 1:30 A.M. I went outside and slept on a bench close to the train station, I saw alot of interesting people. At about 3:00 all of the clubs started shutting down so all the drunk kids started to join me on benches and on the ground all around the station. So now I can say I've done it - I've been a homeless person for a night. I think that's the only interesting thing I have to say about the end of a good vacation.

Arivaderci

I don't know how to spell that word but arivaderci anywho. I also don't know what it means. So we enjoyed the rest of our night in Serbia, it was I'll admit quite frightening later in the evening. We were out just sitting in the square watching people and street performers when a group of political marchers walked by with their flags and singing songs. Apparently we chose to be there on the day the candidates for some large race were to give their speeches in the city center. All was peaceful at first but on the way back from using the internet we saw that the streets were lined with SWAT teams and anti-riot police, we took it as a hint that something was going down. We started walking back to the station but we had to go back through the center and right through the crowd. We passed through with only several scowls but it was obvious that tension between the parties was increasing, when we got off the train the next day in Zagreb, Croatia all of the papers had pictures of the riots that happened right after we left. That's pretty intense huh? Right before the train left we took baths (don't worry, just our upper bodies) in the drinking trough at the station, it was pretty hilarious but I don't think everyone was amused.
When we got to Zagreb we found out that we couldn't make it to Sarajevo and we were kind of bitter about that but we decided instead to take the short train ride to Ljubljana, Slovenia and see it really quick and then ride back to Zagreb and see that all in one day. Ljubljana was nice, one of the prettiest we saw and the fact that there was so few people there made it even better.

View of Ljubljana from the castle.

To be honest I don't really remember what we saw where until I look at the pictures. Zagreb was nice but it didn't make the list of favorites, there was one large church and of course a castle in the city center.

The church in Zagreb, stinking construction.

We rode in the train back to Zagreb with two sisters from Australia who were living in London, we hung out with them in the city and then we caught our train to Trieste, Italy.
Trieste was incredible, it's a nice seaside city with tons of beaches and sweet views. We spent the day on the beach, mostly sleeping off our exhaustion and swimming a little bit in between. We went to a palace on a cliff above the ocean and walked along the oceanside road and that pretty much took the whole day.

A view of Trieste from the palace (

Sunset in Trieste.

We found a nice hostel in which we nearly boiled to death over night and then we got on a train to Venice and that's where we are now. Venice as expected is awesome but we don't really have a lot of time to look around, because I have to go catch a ride at nine o'clock.

Gondola on the main canal.

Italy is a good place but they have got to do something about their rediculous store hours. There is no reason to not work in the middle of the day and no one does it anywhere else in the world, they are out of control.
Unfortunately my trip is pretty much over and I'm on the last leg. I should be in Bristols, England tonight at about 10:00 P.M. and then the next morning I'll get on a ferry to Dublin and then I'll catch my plane from there. Mom I'll be home at 8:11 on Sunday night, see you then. It's been fun and it will be even better when I can post some sweet pictures on Sunday.

Unbelievable!

It just gets better every day. Sunday after we used the internet we walked around a little more and then we started to walk home. We thought we knew the way and we didn't want to use a map so we just started walking. You can just guess what happened, we got lost for about an hour and a half, but it was awesome. We had a good night sleep and then we went to the train station early in the morning and took off to Budapest, Hungary.
Who in the world knew that Budapest was so amazing! I was expecting nothing, especially when we got off the train and saw how old and crappy the station was. We had some difficulty getting our next tickets, but then these nice people attacked us offering to help and telling us where to go and what to see. It was by far my favorite place yet in Eastern Europe, even better than the Czech and Krakow. We saw a big fat castle and parliament and some nice churches. To top it all off, for dinner we went to this awesome little restaurant that some guy built himself and he made really good food.
This is the parliament building.

Looking over the river from Buda into Pest (there's two cities)
That night we went to catch our next train and I nearly died. We couldn't find our booth anywhere and they kept kicking us out of all the train cars and telling us to go to the next one. Eventually we ended up in the 2nd class cars where there are no beds just seats, and our room smelled worst than any outhouse I've ever been in. We shut the door and luckily no one else came in the rest of the night so we could lay across three of the seats each. It was really dirty and kind of gross but I thought it was hilarious. The stinking police kept waking us up every hour to show them our tickets and our passports.
Early this morning we arrived in Belgrade, Serbia and it is not a very aesthetically pleasing city. We went to the castle first thing in the morning and walked around for a few hours.

Serbia is a crazy place.

One of the buildings inside is a war museum so we went into there, and it was something else. Most of it was dedicated to the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires but in the last room there were a few displays on the recent war in Bosnia with NATO. They had on display the weapons and gear of the pilot that was shot down and of a few captured ground soldiers. The explanations all talked about it as if it were an unwarranted attack on the Serbs. It was very interesting to see.

A statue near the war museum.

Serbia and Bosnia are not war-zones like they once were, life goes on just like normal here and everyone pretends like nothing ever happened, we haven't seen any resentment in any of the people. Tonight we are heading off to Zagreb, Slovenia and we'll see how that is. Our final destination is Trieste, Italy and then I'm starting the long ride up to Paris to catch the high speed to Dublin.
Just so the family knows, I'm not buying any junk while I'm here except if you tell me to. So if you want something you should write it in a comment before Thursday and I'll see if I can find what you want.

Wiener Schnitzel

Here I am in Vienna, Austria and I am once again pleasantlz surpriyed. Apparently Austrian keyboards switch the y and z because that does not look right. I think the last time I blogged I was in the Czech Republic and it was raining. I think after that we just went back to our hostel and slept. It was a waz nice hostel for how cheap it was and it was good to finallz have a decent night's sleep. The next day we went all around Prague and saw everything that we didn't see the day before. To me the coolest thing there was an enourmous monument on the top of the hill looking over the city. During the height of communist rule there stood a statue of Josef Stalin and then they burned it down and now the base remains covered in grafiti and delapidated. It is a beautiful city but a day and a half was plenty of time to cover it. We took a night train on Friday night to Krakow Poland and it was another sweet ride. Our roomies were two larger girls and an Asian lady and her daughter, all of them snored and the Asian lady made us shut the window and we seriously almost died of heat stroke.
We spent all daz Saturday in Poland. As soon as we got off the train we hopped on a bus to Auschwitz and looked around there for a few hours. It is always so sad to think how people could actually be so mean to other people and the reality of a concentration camp is the epitomy of hate cruelty. We went back to Krakow and saw the cathedrals and castles there and it was nice. We were kind of tired of walking around so we sat in the square and people watched for quite a while. We saw some good break dancers and some good pick pocketers. After all of the fun we got on another night train to Vienna.
This train ride was probably the most tame of all, we had two normal Polish girls and some old Slavic lady and her daughter. The Polish girls found out we were from Utah and then asked if we were mormons and so we talked to them about that for a minute, everyone here is so surpriyed when they find out that you're a mormon. Right when we got to Vienna we checked our stuff into a hostel and then caught a train to Bratislava, Slovakia. We spent most of the day and afternoon in Bratislava, it was alot like the Czech Republic except it was extremely hot today and we couldn't find cold waters anywhere. Needless to say that pretty much almost ruined our experience there. The rest of the evening we spent here in Vienna eating Wieners and looking at stuff. I wasn't expecting anzthing cool here but there is actually alot of sweet churches and buildings and a huge square with tons of street performers.
Tomorrow we'll be headed out to Budapest, Hungary. I'm still loving it and I think the funnest part is going to a new city, not knowing what to expect there and then finding out when you walk around it for a while. I've decided that there is no reason for anyone to spend more that one day in any European city, unless your doing some kind of historical research then you can reasonably spend two days. Also the food has been great everywhere except for that it is expensive no matter where or what you eat. Every stinking meal costs ten dollars. We have been trying to eat authentic foods and that is one of the best parts of the trip I'd say. It is also extremely entertaining trying to learn Czech and Polish and Slovakian. They all use the roman alphabet but they are Slavic languages and are pretty similar to Russian so we slowly start to pick things up. I think when I get home it will be a hobby of mine to learn other Slavic languages. That's all for now, sorry I don't have a way to transfer pictures. Blogs really stink without them and I would not read this if I were you until there was some pictures on it.

It's a Crazy Life

Holy Cow!! Pretty much this has been the craziest three days of my life. Right now I'm pouting because I realized that I left my USB cord for my camera at home so now you just have to take my word for it as I describe things until I can actually post the pictures. I had a good flight to Paris overall, I nearly had problems but then my girlfriend at the United Airlines desk hooked me up. My flight had been delayed and that would have caused me to miss my connection, but then she just pushed alot of buttons and all of a sudden I was going Continental and would arrive at about the same time. I should have kissed her, but she was a little old. My flight was beautiful and I didn't sleep a wink, just talked to an American Woman who worked in Indonesia and watched movies (not chick flicks).
When I finally got to the airport I navigated the Charles de Gaulle airport like a genius and made it out on the metro only 3 hours later. I was on my own for the day in Paris and I just walked all over the time through the city, I saw the Louvre (but not inside because the terds close on Tuesdays), the Eiffel Tower, the Musee d'orsay, and some other large buildings that looked really nice and old so I figured they were important. At night I found my shady hostel, which I was kind of nervous about; but it turned out to be decent and my roomate was a normal guy from Baltimore. I tried to sleep but it didn't work so I just layed there until about 7 in the morning and ran back to the airport to pick up my friend Jordan Briggs (for those of you who don't know we served together in St. Petersburg). I got lost in the airport until I heard some French woman paging me over the loud speaker to the information desk - it was pretty cool. Once we met up we just went and reserved train seats and went inside the Louvre. If anyone is considering going to the Louvre, I definitely recommend it, but the Mona Lisa is overrated and not a fraction as cool as all the other things there. We ate some dirty Greek food on the street and headed off to catch our train.

Nice scenery in Paris

That tiny thing back there is the Mona Lisa

The train was quite an experience indeed. The first leg we sat by two kids from Denmark who were awesome. We played hearts and Texas Hold 'em and talked about universal healthcare and education - they love it and I hate it, but it was definitely interesting to get their perspective.

We had a layover in Koln, Germany of about four hours. We got off the train with our new Danish friends and went and got some food and talked some more about Denmark and America. We had no idea that Koln was even cool and then we exited the station and 200 yards to our left was the largest and coolest gothic style cathedral I've ever seen. We had another near-crisis at the train station in Koln when the board kept giving us faulty information and we almost left the station because we thought we had two more hours. Luckily we asked some man and he told us to run back to platform five so we busted a move and sprinted and barely made it in the nick of time. This train was a sleeper and each room has 6 bunks in it, when we opened our door we see that there are 4 teenage American dudes totally wasted and passed out in our beds. We got the train lady and she slapped him and blew whistles in his ear (three woke up easily but the 4th was a challenge) but he didn't wake up until the supervisor started dragging him off of the bed. Needless to say they were morons and were being extremely annoying and we got no sleep until they got off in Berlin - good riddance it was to them. The rest of our ride into Prague was beautiful and I finally got some sleep. The day in Prague has been great so far, we got a way nice hostel and I took a shower (a rare occurence) and we got some good authentic Czech food. We've seen a couple of the sights in Old Town and now it's raining so we are sitting in here using the internet. View of Prague from the church tower

Basically that is the longest blog ever and probably extremely boring but it will be cool once there's pictures on it. Well I hope you all enjoy your vacation, because I am!

The Death of Me

I have to start this blog with an explanation, or rather a list of excuses, whichever you want to call it. Having been diametrically opposed to blogs, facebook and other things of that nature, I always thought that the day I started would be the day I dyed. I didn't have anything against people who did these things, I just thought that they contributed to a general lack of communication skills in society today; and heaven knows that that's the last thing a communicationally challenged person like me needs. It seems, though, that blogging is something like sin; it starts with curiosity, witch develops into sympathy, and the next thing you know you're all up in the very thing that will kill you. Now for your convenience I've listed my justifications below:
1. Blogging is actually not a sin and it won't kill you. In fact it, as well as other technologically advanced means of communication, has been encouraged by the most spiritually enlightened as a whey of advancing the cause of truth and righteousness.
2. Everybody is doing it. My brothers and sister each have one and they make it look so amazing - probably I'm jealous.
3. Three was my goal, butt I just can't make it happen.
So if you ever are board and you want to perpetuate and prolong the boredom, you may reed my blog; however, you should never feel obligated to do so, and you should never expect greatness.

This is me and my friend, his name is Al.

P.S. Please excuse the spelling errors