Greetings from Korea!

So i'm sitting in the Korean Airport, and it turns out they have free internet! hurray!

Everything has gone smooth so far, we met up and drove up to SLC airport without a problem. We had 2 12 passenger vans taking us so we didn't have to worry about getting up there on our own. There was a huge amount of traffic heading south, i'm sure going to lake powell for the long weekend, but northbound was relatively traffic free.

We checked in and everything went smoothly at SLC! Hurray!

Dr Balling has given us each a number so that we can count off and figure out if everyone is present. We've been doing that, it kind of makes me feel like being in elementry school, but i guess it's effective. We've been joking around about buying a rope and putting knots in it so that we won't get seperated just like the sunbeams in church. I'd love to see us crusing around the busy streets of beijing with that!

We landed in LAX and then had to leave the secruity area to go to the international terminal. I am grateful that Dr. Schultz knew what was going on and could lead us to where we were going because i was sooooo lost! It is not a very organized airport! That and then there were just these random arrow signs showing where to go as parts were under construction. all in all very confusing.

When checking in it was finally the transition to the accented english, you know, the part where you have no idea what's going on and then they stop talking and are waiting for you to respond. I'm going to have to practice my listening and deciphering skills to figure out what is happening so that I don't have to ask people to repeat everything.

We had to sit in the LAX internation teminal for about 3 hours. Tyler has an oldschool computer game that he brought that can play multiple people, so we passed the time playing that game. It's a pretty fun game that keeps the time passing.

We all say by ourselves for the long flight over. I don't know how seats are assigned, must be when you check in, but i was disappointed to learn i'd be by myself. My seat was a B seat, so i felt confident know that i'd be a roach for the 12 hour flight. When I sat down right behind me was a couple that had the 2 seats on opposite sides of me and wanted to sit together, so hurray! i got to move over and sit on the window seat directly over the huge wing.

At least i wasn't squeezed in.

The flihgt wasn't anywhere near as bad as I expected. I mixed it up with that i was doing and thing went just fine. I started with a movie. Silly me, i thought the movies would be edited. I was watching Grand Tourino, and it turns out definitely not edited. I got to a scene with a gang and the f word was getting dropped all over the place. If i were a good person i probably would have turned it off and watched it when i got home on clean flix, but i was already wrapped up in the movie. Thankfully that was the worst of the language and while there were a few time my ears hurt it wasn't too bad.

For dinner i had steak. It was the only thing I could understand the flight attendent saying. The steak was actually pretty good except i think they forgot to cook it. It was almost completly red the whole way through. Good thing I was hungry and while not my favorite was able to eat it.

I then slep horribly for about 4 hours and then listend to the Count of Monte Cristo with my eyes closed for another hour. I had to rewind and relisten to parts and had cat napped through, but the book was really exciting, it made me excited to listen to the rest of it!

I then watched Yesman, the lights were off and the reading light that was supposed to shine for me shined on the nice little korean lady 2 seats away. Oops. So no reading was accmplsihed until just before landing.

Yesman was actually way funnier than I thought it would be, but that might be because i hadn't gotten much sleep.

After htat movie the flight was almost over so i read the rest of the way.

While not something I would want to do, it certainly wasn't as bad as I anticipated it being.

Now i'm just chiling here in Korea. We have a while before our flight leaves so i'm hurrying to finish the email so tyler and I can go walk around for a bit.


If you have other questions feel free to email me!

-Richard

Wow...

So I am now at work and Richard is on campus waiting for 4:00 to roll around so he can go to the airport and go to China. I knew saying bye would be hard, but I didn't anticipate breaking down in tears mere seconds after dropping him off. I called him less than a minute after saying goodbye to tell him that I miss him through my tears. It was intense. The weekend will be rough since I have nothing to do, but hopefully on Monday when I head out for my own adventure it won't be quite as hard. I am looking forward to my own adventure and to him having his own adventure, but I can't wait for June 10th to come so we can be together again and share all of our fun adventures.

Slacker

So I know I have been horrible and not been posting anything. The problem is that life is ridiculously busy as I am sure you all know. And when life isn't busy blogging is not the way I want to spend my time. But I promise that when I get back from Guatemala I will be good and post about all of my adventures and the pictures I have. And I will also make Richard blog about his China trip...I promise! But until then I am sorry for being a slacker!

HELP

Some of you may be wondering why my blog still has a Christmas themed background...the problem is I CAN'T CHANGE IT! I have changed it before and I have been following the directions on thecutestblogontheblock.com to a tee but it won't change...I click save and nothing...still green, snowflaked background! Help it is spring and I want a new background! :(

MWC Tourney

It has been about three weeks since we got back in town and I have been meaning to blog about our little trip ever since we got back but I kept forgetting (aka being ridiculously busy!). The second weekend in March Richard and I went to Las Vegas with my dad and Jordan. It was really fun. We left on Thursday (bright and early at 5 am!) so that we could get to Las Vegas in time for BYU's first game of the tournament.


We made it with a couple hours to spare so we drove to subway so that we could get 5 dollar footlongs to last us the whole day and they definitely did. BYU played Air Force in the first game and we won by about 10 (hurray!) then we watched UNLV and San Diego State battle it out. Before the game started we thought for sure that UNLV would win because it was on their home court but SDSU demolished them and we were pretty excited about not having to play UNLV on their home court (because they beat us every time and we had already beat SDSU twice earlier in the season).



After those games we went outside and relaxed until it was time for session number two. First Utah played TCU and beat them at the last second. :( Then Wyoming and New Mexico played, again this is a game where we thought for sure New Mexico would win easily but that was not the case, Wyoming won by a significant amount (I can't remember the score because it was too long ago but you get the idea). The first day of the tournament was very entertaining, all of the games were much more intense and enjoyable than we had anticipated. Which was a very good thing becuase needless to say we were VERY tired and it had been a VERY long day since it started at 5 AM!

The second day started out with a couple of girls games which we decided not to go to since we were still recovering from the long day on Thursday. So at about 11 we finally dragged ourselves out of bed and vegged for a couple more hours. Then at about 1 or 2 we went to In n Out Burger for lunch...DELICIOUS! Then we headed over to the Thomas and Mack Center for the men's games. We were first against SDSU. It was not a great experience. It was a tight game for most of the way, but unfortunately we just couldn't quite finish and we lost. :( However, the most entertaining part of the game was the guy sitting in front of us...there was some guy sitting in front of us who was not a fan of either team but it quickly became obvious that he was VERY anti-BYU. He had been quiet for most of the game so we didn't know just how anti-BYU he was until the game was over...at which point he jumped up, turned around and with the most psycho look on his face I have seen he just screamed over and over again..."YES! YES! I have been listening to you guys all night long! YES! YES!" All of this in our faces and then as he ran down the stairs he continued to demonstrate his psycho excitement...he kinda looked like this...

The last day we watched the men's and women's championship games both were between SDSU and Utah and Utah won both of them. For lunch that day we went to our favorite Mexican restaurant in Vegas and then for dinner we went and got 2 for 1 at a casino buffet.

We drove home on Sunday. All in all it was a great weekend, the only thing that could have made it better was us winning the whole thing! :)

Scope, scope, scope

Here are some pictures from when I had my scope about a month ago...I don't know why but the thing I kept asking Richard when I woke up was "did you take a picture?" They are ugly, but if it was that important at the time I figure I should at least post a couple...

Birthday #21!

It has been a weekend of birthday celebrating, it actually started on Wednesday. My family took us to Spaghetti Factory for my birthday dinner, it was delicious!

Friday was my birthday and it was GREAT! I went to school and work (not so great, but still good). Then I came home and my friend, Diane came over to visit for awhile. Then when Richard came home he made me dinner. It was so great, chicken and mashed potatoes (MY FAVORITE!).

Then it was time to open presents. I opened a gift from my grandparents and also Richard's gift. From my grandparents I got all of my grandma's personal history stuff that she has been working on, it was so GREAT! Richard got me a zune (MP3 player)! I was so excited! I absolutely love it! He is the best!

On Saturday Richard's Grandma took us to breakfast for my birthday then I went shopping for clothes with my mom. Today (Sunday) we went to my house for a dinner of Tigerani with Strawberry Shortcake for dessert! It has been a GREAT birthday weekend!