A vida é bela

I think they say that a little differently in italian in that movie, but there's a lot more portuguese in my life these days. I ran into another guy from the porto mission today, which as I learned today, is soon going to be just the upper half of the portugal mission. They're combining them, and I think President Torgan is going to be over all of portugal. It sort of blows my mind, that's a big mission, but it'll be good i'm sure.

I went swimming today finally. I think if i can work in exercise to my schedule i'll have just about everything covered. It's interesting for how fun my life is, how i can't seem to find anything worthwhile to talk about in my blog. My days are just lots of little good bits, without any dramatic story telling bits.

Today i borrowed o alquimista (the alchemist, in portuguese) from the library. I'm so excited to read a real book in portuguese. On a side note, I love the term 'borrow.' I went swimming, i made 20 dollars, and watched a bunch of avatar. I had family night, and made a cookie that looked like a panda. So yeah, it was a good day.

Bicycle, Bicycle

I was reading some of my old blogs from the pre-mission days. I was pretty opinionated. These days I find myself just not caring about politics and things.

There's not a whole lot of blogworthy things going on in my life right now, and I don't feel like writing about every little flux of emotion I have (which I seemed to do back in the day) I bought a bike though. That's pretty cool. It's the first Bike i've owned since that one I bought in 9th grade got stolen. I've never really found a bike since than that I liked. But this new bike only cost 100 bucks, and I like that.

I think it's interesting, considering how accident prone I am, the track record I have riding bicycles. I've never been hit by a car, or fallen down and broken something, or broken my bike. Not that there haven't been some close calls. Like that time when I was five and didn't have brakes and went flying down the hill into cross traffic, missing cars by inches. Or that time i fell down in the middle of a crowded intersection in cambridge on my way to school. Twice. Or that time i ran into a girl and flew off my bike and almost choked on the jolly rancher pop I was sucking on.

Anyway, the point is, when you consider that I've broken a bone playing hide and seek and had to get stitches from jumping on the couch (or more accurately, not quite jumping on the couch), you'd think i would have more scars from speeding around on a little 21 speed. I think I should look into mountain biking. I think I might be better suited for that than snowboarding.

Provo!?

Quite a bit has happened since I rolled in to town, although there's not a whole lot of noteworthy things. I'm not engaged, for instance. I did go to a dance though. That was a first, like ever. That was alright I guess. I've been spending a lot of time doing homework, my roommates are cool, although I think I could survive living with anyone at this point, but i have no complaints.

Hm, it appears that this post is super boring, I'm sorry, to make up for it i'll just grossly exaggerate my day to day life:

Yesterday: I woke up around 7 and it was literally 0 degrees outside. It turned out I had woken up to early, because i didn't have class for another 45 minutes, so on my way to school I climbed a mountain and then rode down it on a Puma. I have to say Puma riding is a lot less comfortable than you might imagine. The professor didn't turn up for the religion class, so we put together a 30-man choir and sang A Cappella versions of the beatles.

I had a pretty long break before my chemistry lab, so after reorganizing all the books in the library, I attended the other chemistry labs just for good measure. After class, I was doing my homework when a bunch of Basketball players started trying to tear me apart, but I got out of there, and then went to Taco Night, where hamburgers are free, but I was captured by lady pirates who tossed me in a pot of bowling water and made me run across the snow, which was all pretty difficult, because I didn't have a swim suit. By then it was about midnight, so I decided I should probably sleep, since I have my early class on wednesdays, at 9 am, so I went back home and showered, and got to sleep.

yep, life sure is exciting here at BYU.

Now Boarding:

Delta just scared the bejeebies out of me. So i'm sitting here, listening to muse and charging my laptop, and i glance over at my gate, which shouldn't be leaving for another hour, but it says 'Boarding' and there's nobody else sitting there, on the speaker they're announcing people that need to get there or lose their seats. So i throw my laptop in my bag and grab all my stuff and run to the gate, but it turns out it's just a little malfunction, and the plane hasn't even arrived yet. Crisis averted. Now i get to sit here and watch all the other people get scared as they arrive and think they've missed their flight.

I must look extra sketchy today, because getting through security was a hassle and a half. It must be the glint of revolution in my eye, or maybe my vegan shoes, or the fact that i'm pushing the limits of 'carry-on luggage' to their absolute breaking points in an attempt to bring all my possessions to Utah without checking a second bag.

It started by the sad realization that this time i would have to go through the super high def body scanner, since the x-ray thing wasn't even set up. So that was fine. So then i step forward onto this super padded mat, which was actually quite nice, and then a guy steps forward to pat me down. They weren't patting down other people, so that was a little surprising. Happily there was no inner leg action, that would have been a little awkward.

So then they swab my hands for something, i assume bomb powder or something along those lines. I have this terrible image of them finding residue from the fire works last night and arresting, but i pass.

So having established that i'm not carrying any weapons of mass destruction in my back pockets, i go to grab my stove, and the ladies are over there looking at my bag. And going through it and looking at the x-ray thing. I guess they find what their looking for because they pull out my water bottle (which in their defense, is made of metal, and must look a little suspicious, especially if it were to be tangled up in a charger cord or something). They then have a go with the magic detector swabs, but i'm safe there to. So then i get my shoes on and grab my bag and everything, and as i'm about to walk out the security guy grabs his microphone to say something, but then waits for me to leave. I though he was going to call Swat or something, but it turns out he was just reporting that I was the last person or something like that. So despite adventures and things, I made it safely to denver and am now hanging out waiting for my plane to start boarding. Hopefully I can make it to salt lake without being arrested.

~Person of Interest