The Belizen Experience

I know I said one of my goals for this blog was to not forget about it, and you might have thought I had done so, but to save this blog from being amongst the googlies of forgotten web pages, I decided to write about my Bedizen experience.

Last Thursday, we arrived on the island city of San Pedro. The hotel, Paradise Villa, lived up to its name providing us comfortable, cozy, and beautiful rooms and beach-front views. We had a kitchen and living room to our disposal which I was thankful for as the food in the restaurants, I'm sad to announce, was mediocre at best. The TV even received a signal from Colorado! At first I thought the TV would only be a distraction, but with the activities being scarce on the island and the Olympics going on in Beijing, we found it to be a great filler for the night time.

We filled every morning in San Pedro with scuba diving. My first real dive experience was a huge highlight of the trip and will be hard to forget, at least until I replace the snorkel I lost on my first entry. Once underwater, I immediately noticed the sense of moving in 3 dimensions as I would swim through the coral trenches like an X-wing fighter on the Death star (sorry for the Star Wars analogy, but that's all I could compare it to). My excitement for the adventure was unfortunately evident in my high intake of air which caused me to come up early, but the experience alone was unlike anything I've done and well worth it.

After a few days in San Pedro, we embarked on the road trip to Chaa Creek. The directions to get there are as simple as drawing a line from point A to point B, but we never saw a single sign for Chaa Creek. We passed San Ignacio (where the address for the resort is) and continued through some hills and farming land. Still with no signs for Chaa Creek, we stopped on the road and thought about turning around to ask for directions in the city. The thought passed me, If the resort is on the other side of this hill and we turned around now, I'd kick myself. I saved myself a self-kicking when we reached the top of the hill and Paige jumped. "Look! Chaa Creek!" Sure enough, an old broken sign bore the name of Chaa Creek and pointed down a dirt road. How much were we paying to stay here?

The sign was deceiving as we popped out of rainforest into a pristine landscape. That set the tone for the whole stay as everything from our rooms to the service followed suit. How much did we pay to stay here?

That evening we went canoeing up the river. Yeah, we went up. Paige and I struggled to maneuver up the faster currents while mom and the guide did so with relative ease (good thing Paige and I still have the energy to waste and still keep up). Our guide knew everything about everything, or at least appeared to know, as he explained everything that did and didn't move.

A few hours later we had the same guide take us on a night walk. We all had headlights on and the first thing he had us recognize were the Jewel-like bellies on the spiders by just shining your light on them. At any given time, I could have counted five spiders in front of me. Any arachnid-phobics should probably not do this on their trips to the rain forest.

The next two days were spent spelunking. The first cave we floated down on inner tubes which was OK. The real highlight were the zip linings we did through the jungle afterwords. The next day's cave had us crawl, swim, and climb to get through. In an hour, we reached some Mayan pottery and bones which were left over from sacrificial activities. The time period was 800-900 AD which made me think of the apostasy the people had fallen into; the sacrificial activities were made to the gods of the underworld. The adventure of seeing the stalagmites and the ruins was breathtaking! In some caverns you could have fit a two story house. To think that water alone could have made such formations and large caverns.

To sum up, the trip has been a success. We have 4 more days to explore, and today will be a day at the resort as Paige has picked up something in her stomach and won't be out of bed until later.

I'm In!

Yesterday morning I received an email directing me to view my status for my Isys (short for Information Systems) application. It briefly said that I was accepted and was able to begin finalizing my status. Then I started filling out a simple questionnaire (a lot of which was directed towards programming) and quickly printed off an acceptance letter to turn into the main office.

When I got to the main office, I recognized one of the professors who helped me decide whether to do Isys or accounting. After the awkward I-don't-remember-your-name stage, he congratulated me on getting in. I then configured my graduation plan and had it approved. Walking towards to Wilk, I dusted my hands off, bought a jamba juice, and rented spider-man 3 as a way of celebration.

After a long year of studies and tests, I can finally say I've accomplished a great feat. I feel good that I can say I made it. Academically, I've never been the top of my class before; I dragged my feet in high school and made it to BYU on something other than grades. So I guess you can say I've changed. That's what a mission can do to you.

To close, I'll quote the format. I think it's appropriate:
What's left to lose
I've done enough
And if I fail well then I fail but I gave it a shot

These last three years
I know they've been hard
But it's time to get out of the desert and into the sun

Thanks to everyone who pushed me through life, even when I didn't want to go.

Fruit Salad to the Rescue

I took Megan, Maddi's friend, on a date today. We went to the store and bought some fruit for a fruit salad which we took with us to the Y. Megan was struggling to get up the switchbacks, but with the view of the city I didn't mind the breaks. She started to feel a little dizzy, and we pulled out the fruit salads early and ate half of them. That did the trick as she was okay the rest of the hike. Once at the Y, we sat down on the white rocks and talked for a good hour. This was the proving grounds to see if her personality checks out. Unfortunately, it didn't (it turns out she's only 17 so she may just need some time to mature) but she was fun to talk to and I enjoyed my time with her.

I've been having daily gospel chats with a girl in my ward. Her name is Annelise and she has a very upbeat and righteous personality. However, Annelise wanted to get more out of her scriptures. She felt she was wasting her time reading because she wouldn't get anything out of it. So I called LeGrand. The next day we sat in LeGrand's office and he taught her a very important principle of scripture studying: we need to ask questions. As we find answers to these questions, our understanding becomes clearer and we can apply the scriptures more fully. To find the answers are not particularly hard either. We generally know the answers to our questions so we are mearly applying our knowledge. And since wisdom is the application of knowledge, help is always available, according to James 1:5.

Stadium of Fire

The morning of July 4th, I got a call from a friend inviting me to go to Seven Peaks, the water park in Provo, with her and some of her friends from Salt Lake. So I got my stuff together and headed out. When I finally met up with everyone, I recognized one of her guy friends but couldn't remember from where. It turned out he used to play volleyball for Poway High School, one of the local schools we played every year. In fact, we used to play beach together! He's going to school at LDS business college now. I was glad that he was there because I knew we had a lot in common already. So we talked about everything from volleyball to school to girls to home.

After Seven Peaks, Eli and I met up with Maddi and some of her friends for dinner. One of Maddi's friends is a cute girl named Megan. She's frm Gilbert, AZ and just got up here for summer term. She's a lot of fun, but I'm not sure what kind of a girl she really is; when I asked her about herself, she wasn't that explicit. It's kind of frusterating, but I'll just have to wait and see for myself.

After dinner, Maddi and her friends headed off to the Stadium of Fire, but being ticketless I headed back home to see what others were doing for the night. A couple of friends were planning on sitting just outside the stadium to watch the fireworks, and I decided that would be the next best seat in the house, but I was wrong. I couldn't have asked for a better view! The fireworks exploded right on top of us and along with the up close view, the show lasted for a jam-packed 30 minutes! It was kind of funny that we were standing right next to a gas station. (Fire hazard anyone?) All in all, I had a great fourth. I just wish I could have been with the family. I called Paige when she was at the Del Mar Ward's 4th of July breakfast and it made me miss being there. So many good memories.

Welcome to My Blog!

The other night I was at Uncle Ralph's talking about life while coincidentally having the life sucked out of me by mosquitoes when one of the cousins (I'm sorry I can't remember who) asked if we all had our own blogs. I thought to myself, Self, why don't you have a blog? I have only two reasons for why a blog would not be worthwhile:

1. I would forget about the blog all together

2. It would be difficult to talk about girlfriends if they knew about it

So I have two simple solutions: I won't forget and only family will know about the blog. Therefore, you'll always have insights into my life and even have access to the juicy stuff. Well, maybe not that juicy. Let's face it. I'm as juicy as a dried mango when it comes to romance.

I hope you all enjoy this feeble attempt. I miss writing weekly letters from the mission, and I just hope that there is enough excitement in my life to keep you all entertained and updated.