8 for '08

Top 8 Memories of 2008
(in no particular order)
1. Sitting along the Dnepr River with Alosha and, after HOURS and HOURS of conversation, getting pretty close to figuring out the meaning of life just before the sun came up.
2. The birth of Joie, my niece, who we like to call Roo.
3. Surviving life threatening rides with Bogdan, who took us all over Western Ukraine at TOP speeds on VERY bumpy roads.
4. Spring Break trip/ tour of USU with Zac Moe and Kehaulani.
5. Dressing up for dinner, eating fresh fruit by the pool, then heading to a foam party at a dance club in Turkey with Galya and the girls from Belarus, who never, ever quit dancing.
6. "Skype reunion" celebrating the 11th anniversary of entering the MTC with Elders from my MTC district, some of the coolest people in the entire world. We've all reconnected once again.
7. Krista's wedding in beautiful San Diego. Krista and I have been friends forever and I was thrilled to see her marry Ardi.
8. Seeing "Wicked" and cruising all around Chicago in the freezing cold with some great, very photogenic friends.

Snow!?!

Whudda thunk? Snow in Vegas. School was even canceled. Hooray! :) But we have to make it up later in the year, so... :( And even worse, the snow all melted before the "Snow Day" even started.

I love the Aggies. (We all love the Aggies!)

Did you see this article?

I went to a USU basketball game over Thanksgiving break. Ags won by 40 points. I'd almost forgot how exciting it is to be part of that crowd. The crowd was cheering, "Up by 40!" at the top of their lungs. Domino's delivered pizza to a few lucky spectators and others played "bungee basketball" during half time. Football? Not so much, (although USU won last Saturday's game by 45 POINTS!), but basketball games were always the best.
Oh, to be in college again!

The moral of the story? One vote really DOES count.

I couldn't believe how quickly this got out.

A whole extra hour of birthday-ness...

I realize I should feel lucky to have an entire extra hour on my birthday, but even this extra time has not helped me. I tried to come up with a creative list.
32 things to do in the year of 32.
I really could only come up with about 6 things to put on the list, so...
Guess everyone's right. Old people really do lose their creativity. :(
Here's the list anyway.

1. Travel more.

2. Reconnect with important people I've lost contact with.

3. Take photos. I have access to 3 digital cameras and a decent camera in my phone, but for some reason I never take photos. I know I'll regret this.

4. Be nice. (I AM nice, but sometimes the sarcastic comments I THINK are funny may not be quite as funny to everyone else.)

5. Spend more time with my family.

6. Start working on my list of 33 for 33 a bit earlier next year so I can come up with a few more ideas.

Happy, or not so happy, Halloween everyone!

Vote!

* Warning. This song WILL get stuck in your head.

Kids Gone Wild (a.k.a. The Primary Program)

I'll be honest. I usually hate my family ward. (Crying babies, noisy kids throwing cereal, the lack of hot single guys to distract me from boring talks...) Today, however, was an exception. The ward primary program.

If you've seen a primary program in the past, you may have a fairly good idea of what I'm talking about here. Kids waving to parents. Yelling "Hi, Mommy!" from the stand. The occasional youngster who stares at the audience in fear rather than repeating the lines his teacher whispers into his ear.

Today's program did not disappoint. I wish I had audio of the performance, but you'll just have to take my word for it. With all the mumbling and microphone feedback (caused by kids nearly eating the microphone), I was only able to understand about 30% of the kids' parts. (There were definitely a few moments when I wished for closed captioning.) Though I am still not entirely sure what was said, a couple of things surprised me:

1. There wasn't a lot of screaming.
Usually, it seems like there is a bit more kicking and screaming by shy or tired kids. These kids, overall, were quite well behaved. This may be because one very prepared teacher even gave her Sunbeams candy and mini Etch-a-sketches to keep them busy.

2. Parents were not embarrassed.
There were a few children I simply would not have claimed as my own. Namely, the nose picking girl in the front right and the singing at the top of his lungs without knowing any of the words Sunbeam on the front row on the left. The mom who's child yelled, "Hi, Mommy!" from the pulpit just smiled and waved back. The father of the boy who SCREAMED the few words he knew, then LOUDLY hummed through the rest of every song, just laughed.

Overall, pretty much an amazing program.

With the help of this video, my decision is made.

Hopefully this will help the undecided voter.

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

Ugh...

Where have I been lately? Buried under a stack of papers that, sadly, looks something like this.



I'm turning into an English teacher who does this.




Why? Well, my school has pretty much turned into this.













I should, instead, just give up and do this.

Have you seen this?

Yikes!

This blog is seriously just too much! It would be even more funny, if it wasn't so sad that so much of it is true!

Alosha's Tree: Part 2

Regular readers of my fabulous blog may remember a post (see July 4th) about my dear friend Alosha's gigantic fake tree project. A Ukrainian television station was filming the project while I was visiting Kiev this summer. Well, it's done!
Here's the before photo, just as a reminder:


And here's the after, complete with a beautiful flat screen TV:

And the entire apartment, just so you can get a feel for the whole place. There's even the added affect of tiny little lights in the branches and trunk of the tree. (The guy worked at Disneyland, so I guess that should pretty much be expected.)

Alosha, moi giraffchik.
He's pretty much pretty talented.


.

Vista's AVID class of 2009

'09! This is their year. These kids look so nice and innocent, don't they?

The end of summer...

Summer is really, sadly over. The last month has been busy! Here are the highlights:

I got back from Ukraine just in time for Nicole's bridal shower.

The next day, I went to a week long AVID conference in San Diego.

I visited my family in Logan for a few days before school started. Joie's growing quickly, Jacquie's running all over at all times, and Matt's pretty good about letter her crawl all over him.

My friend Tanya and I hung out with some of our favorite AVID kids, just before they left for college. Curtis went to Grambling, Reggie to UNR, and Boo returned to Lincoln University in Missouri.


Matt and I took a quick weekend trip to the best concert ever in San Francisco. Pretty much all of my favorite bands in one place at one time.









There are always a few weird people at concerts, but this was a bit extreme, even for San Fran. Check out this guy in the Santa suit.

Overall, good summer. As my friend from the Tepee would say, "Good times. Good times."

Odessa

Bogdan and I continued our Ukrainian world tour and made a quick trip to Odessa. Some of the highlights:

Mickey D's

For some reason, McDonald's tastes better outside the U.S. I've never quite been able to figure out why, but EVERYONE agrees. When McDonald's first opened in Russia, thousands of people stood in line just to get a hamburger. And if you're looking for a clean (free) restroom in Ukraine, McDonald's is still your best shot.

Not only is the food itself better, but there is often live entertainment. Please see examples:
There's a regular old Playland, but people can also rent motorized toys or ponies for their kids to ride.

Kamenets-Podilsk and Chernivtsi

Bogdan, Galya, and I enjoyed a quick, action packed trip to Western Ukraine.


Besides the obvious, one of the highlights was dinner at this amazing, delicious, surprisingly cheap restaurant called "UTAH". We're sure a little uncertain about how the restaurant got its name, but apparently they have some type of relationship with the medical school at the University of Utah. You can imagine how excited the servers were to meet someone actually from Utah. (Okay, so they pretty much didn't care at all, but you can maybe imagine how excited I was at the time.)

Lviv

Kristin and I went to Lviv for the weekend with Bogdan and his girlfriend, Taniya. It's a five hour drive and the bad roads made it seem more like 15 hours, but we thought it was worth it once we finally got there.


On our way we stopped at Olesko Castle.


I've been to Lviv a couple of times, but this time was different. We rented a gorgeous apartment in the center of the city. Spacious. Clean. Jacuzzi. The apartment was so nice, we considered staying in Lviv permanently.

The view from our balcony:



We didn't take a tour and weren't in a rush, so we just wandered through the streets looking at things and taking pictures. We sat in cafes, listened to live music, and found unique souvenirs.


I love the different colored buildings in Western Ukraine. It reminds me of Poland.





People in Western Ukraine are usually more friendly, too. They to be more religious than the rest of the country. Some stores are actually closed on Sundays. There are different kinds of churches all over the city.

Armenian Church
Bernadine Cathedral

Dominican Cathedral
Of course, we went to this nice, pink LDS church.


The Opera House, where we watched part of "The Merry Widow". (It was in Ukrainian and a little LONG, so we left after the first act.)


Even the fire station is beautiful.


Ukraine. It's just a beautiful place. :)

Kiev Temple

Last night, Bogdan took us to see the construction of the temple here in Kiev. They broke ground in June 2007 and are currently working 24 hours a day, but the temple
isn't scheuled to be completed until April 2010.

It was almost midnight, so we couldn't walk around, but we still had a decent view. The chapel was finished a while ago, so now the construction workers are focusing on the hotel and the temple. They've already started the 2nd floor of the temple. Unless you're Ukrainian (or emotionally Ukrainian, like me), you may not understand how completely amazing this is. I'll try to get some good pics during the day, but until then...

Alosha

My friend, Alosha, invited me to watch him work. INTER, a television station here in Kiev, is filming a half-hour program about one of his projects. It's basically the Ukrainian version of Extreme Home Makeover or This Old House.

He's building a fake tree in the middle of a living room and putting a flat screen TV in the middle of it. Unusual, yes, but pretty much a regular day's work for Alosha. :) He's a painter, sculpter, designer... талентливый молодой чеповек. When we worked at Disneyland in Paris, he buuilt trees like that all the time! (Sadly, when he lived with me in Barstow there were no orders for fake trees, but lots of orders for portraits.) You can check out his work here. You'll also find my portrait on the site. (Aww...)

Here's some pics of the beginning... (Don't anyone worry. I'll update the with pics of the construction process so you can see the finished product.)

The Binyuks

I've known Jenya for 10 years. I met her husband two years ago when they visited me in Las Vegas. Their baby, Olgert, is 11 months old.

We visited Chernegov, a small town filled with beautiful churches and monks buried in caves.


We went to Pirogovo, the outdoor museum just outside of Kiev.

Funny things said in Turkey.

Please, come drink some tea with me. It will only take a few minutes for us to drink some tea and get to know one another. Let's just drink some hot tea or some cold tea. Maybe you want apple tea. Just some simple tea for us to drink together.

You (insert nationality here) are different from the girls of our country. I am always attracted to (nationality). You are so alive. Our girls are not attractive. They have no feeling. They have no passion.

I think you and I really could be happy together. If you came tonight after I get off work, we can go together and get to know each other better and be happy. I think we will be so happy.
(* Kind of cute and flattering, if sincere, and cute the first five or six times you hear it, but EVERYONE uses the same line!)

And you also are Russian? Because I do not think you are Russian, but you are Russian? These Russian girls want sex only. Our men also want only sex, but we are not like these Russian girls.

Tonight we will meet. I will finish working and you will meet me. You must meet me. There is not choice. We must be to meet together. We will have some drink and we will talk. We will talk about everything.