Sunday, February 1, 2009

Toledo!

Holy Toledo!


This last weekend the whole group made a trip to Toledo. Toledo is known for its history, its marzipan, and its SWORDS. Toledo is famous for its mass productions of swords. They actually supplies many of the Lord of the Rings swords.

There are about 10 stores like this on every block. You may be saying to yourself, "Oh Mark's such an exaggerator!" But no, I am not. There are swords and other sharp things everywhere. I probably spent more time checking out the local weaponry than the local historical sights. And yes, I bought a sword. I need to get a picture of it though. I look like Russell Crowe in Gladiator with it.


Oh, Beautiful Toledo



This is the Cathedral of Toledo. Amazing.



And this is the Alcazar. Closed, but also amazing.



And last but not least, Donor Kebab. An amazing restaurant! In a trip that lasted less than two days, I ate it three times. So good.





Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Valencia

After a 6 hour train ride, a rousing game of Scattergories, and much trial and tribulation, Tim, Alina, Megan, and I made it to Valencia! We ran into some Sister missionaries on the way to our hostal and had a good time talking to them. Here is our hostal with the awesome wallpaper
Orange trees line the streets of Valencia, and the worst part? The fruits are the most bitter, sour things on this planet. And Megan and I found out the hard way.


There are still miracles on earth today... In the form of a Double Whammy Banana


One of the most amazing, beautiful man-made places I've ever seen


Us on the beach, despite the cold water, the wind and the stinging sand that came along with it.

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Spain in a Nutshell

Lo, and behold! I have internet at my house! I have been living in Spain with a host family for the past 3 weeks and have just now discovered that we have wireless! I am very astute. The times that I've had internet elsewhere, I wasn't interested in using my precious time on a blog post, but now I have all the time in the world.

Now it's time to catch all of my many readers up on what's been going on over here:

I live in Alcala De Henares with the Nieves, which includes Brother and Sister Nieve, their son David, and their insane dog Toy. ....Oh, and there's Tim Davis, my American roommate.


Toy and Tim. (Toy likes to wear little Pink Panther shirts. Tim does too but he likes playing his guitar more.)


Every day Tim and I eat hot chocolate milk and cookies for breakfast, which I enjoy, a lot. Especially since it has been raining and snowing ever since I've gotten here.

My first week in Spain was spent with my parents traveling around Western Spain. We checked out some pretty near Roman ruins and went into Portugal for a little while.

Those Romans were classy.

Last weekend some of our study abroad group made a trip into Cuenca. Cuenca was built on cliffs and some of the houses are literally hanging off the edge. It was pretty majestic.



I'm making a trip to Valencia today until Saturday so I'll try to take some decent pictures.

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Spain?

I'm in Spain.
That is all-
for now...

Saturday, December 20, 2008

Again? Already?!

For those of you who know me well enough, or have been reading my blog, you know that I recently broke my elbow. It happened about a month ago and was the first time I had ever broken a bone! Needless to say I was pretty excited, and pleased with myself. Now, a month and a half later, after regaining full use of my arm, I've gone and broken my collar bone!



It hurts to sit, it hurts to stand, it hurts to exist. It hurts, it hurts bad.

It happened while snowboarding last Thursday. Remember that free pass I mentioned earlier? Yeah. So now I get to go on study abroad in Spain while wearing a stupid, giant, blue sling for a month and half! I'm going to look super fly. I do get painkillers though, which is always nice. They made Kung Fu Panda about 10x funnier than it was meant to be.

In other news, I went to the Neil Diamond concert on Friday and had a gay (adjective: having or showing a merry, lively mood) 'ol time. Due to all the snow, the trip up to Salt Lake resulted in our car doing a doughnut across the entire freeway, but seeing Neil in all his splendor was worth the near death experience.

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

The Dogs

Lizzie and Darcy were very calm and perfectly photogenic yesterday, which never happens so I took the opportunity to snap a few pictures.


O snap.

Monday, November 24, 2008

The Brotherhood's Conclusion...

"Why must all good things come to an end?" - Nelly Furtado couldn't have said it better.

We concluded our Brotherhood of the Traveling Pants last night by watching Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2. It was an emotional night filled with friends, candles, and burnt popcorn. Our awesome, white pants traveled the world. They went to Disney World, New York (2x), St. George, Cedar City, Italy, Switzerland, and France.

Traveling the world can take it's toll on a pair of pants, and this was no exception. Our white pants were no longer just white. Since one of the rules of the traveling pants is that they can never be washed, they took on a yellowish tint with splotches of black, gray, brown, and blue. Last night after the movie, the pants got their first wash in almost six months. And how did they turn out??



Before and After
(Slight exaggeration)

Here we all are at the commencement exercises, about six months ago... (Notice Tim's face)


And last night.... (And Justin's in this)



A group of friends brought together by pants...

We are awesome.

Monday, November 17, 2008

The Greatest Elephant Ever Made


Some people slept with bears, I slept with an elephant, and I would like to dedicate this post to my little stuffed friend, who is also my oldest possession. He is named, simply, Elephant, and my sister, Kimberly gave him to me before I can even remember. I picked him up about a week ago and realized that I've been neglecting him after all he has done for me. He slept by my side through thick and thin, hot and cold, and now that I'm older it's time he gets some recognition, in the form of a blog post. He'll always have a spot in my heart, and my bed.

Monday, November 10, 2008

I am the Hero of Hyrule!

I've finally done it! After 18 and a little years, i finally beat the original Legend of Zelda on the NES- and with one arm! Ganon didn't stand a chance against what I got!

What a joyous occasion it was!

Sunday, November 9, 2008

A Mission Farewell, a Brick Wall, and a Cow from Hell

...not in that order.

Yesterday was pretty decently eventful day. It started off, like every Saturday, with me trying to sleep in, only to be disturbed by the morning activities of my family and our two overly noisy dogs. Eventually my dad comes into my room and tells me to get up and do some odd job. This morning it was to help clean out the garage of all our family's piles of worthless junk that seem to gather every summer.
Lucky for me, my buddy Robert came to pick me up at ten so we (Robert, Jack, and I, along with Robert's special guests, his cousin and her fiance) could go tail-gate at our final BYU game together... Robert leaves on his mish in about a week and a half and gave his farewell talk today. He gave a great talk: funny, inspiring, and just plain good.

BYU easily laid waste to SDSU at the game. After Robert dropped me off we met up again to play basketball at his friend James' church. I swear, whenever we play with James, he ends up bringing along at least one idiot. I never know which person it is until we start ballin. The way you can tell this person apart from the others is that he believes the very survival of the team depends entirely on him. Yesterday this person thought that he was JJ Redick in the sense that he would try to shoot the ball from about 6 feet behind the 3-point line. It didn't really matter that any of his 4 team mates were open. If he didn't take that shot - We wouldn't stand a chance! What a freaker.

Later that night I went to Rachel Smith's house to hang out with her while she was visiting from Logan. We talked for awhile before going to Smith's to get some candy for her and egg nogg for me. At Smith's we decided to buy caramels and make caramel apples. As we searched for the best apples to use in our little activity, we stumbled upon the "Grapple." Looks like an apple, tastes like a grape! Needless to say we bought some of those as well.

Our caramel apples didn't look very impressive but tasted pretty good. Mike called and came over with three other guys and partook of the caramely fruits of mine and Rachel's labors. It was at this time that Rachel causally informed us that she had a long horned cow in her back yard. We were a little skeptical so she grabbed a flashlight took us outside to show us. It turned out that it was actually on the other side of the fence of her back yard. We shone the flashlight into the darkness on the otherside of the fence but the yard was too large and we couldn't see anything. Mike and I decided to hop the fence and look for this cow. We slowly moved into the darkness, flashlight in hand. We got close to a small shed-like structure and I shone the flashlight into it. That's when we saw it's eyes looking at us. They glowed green in the light. It started to slowly walk out of it's shelter and that's when we saw the massive horns on it's head. In the darkness it seriously looked like something straight from Hell. I don't remember all that was said and done, but about two seconds after it started out of the shed towards us, it turned its walk into a run straight at us.

Running from a charging Hell cow is just as intense as it sounds.

Luckily, with some difficulty on my part, we made it over the fence. The next hour consisted of Mike and I telling our story about 25 times, making it sound better every time.

Eventually we were joined by Tim, Tyler, and Chris. We all went to Cascade park to play steal the flag with Tim's brother Sam and a bunch of his friends. Mike and I volunteered to be on defense of the flag and the jail. Now, how I managed to break my arm by running as fast as I could into a wall is hard to explain but I will try my best. The "jail" was a bench that runs along a wall on the East side of the school. About a half hour into the game a couple people were trying to free their team mates from the jail and I was trying to block on in particular. He tried to run around me in a curl route to the jail. Trying to beat him there, I ran fast as I could straight at the jail to try and cut him off. About two feet before the jail I tagged him but I guess that since I was so focused on him, I didn't realize that I was headed straight for the brick wall and when I finally did realize this, I had a split second to put out my hands to stop myself. I hit pretty hard and fell to my knees holding my right arm in pain. Fortunately that pain wore off and I kept on playing.

Later at Tyler's house I realized that I couldn't straighten my arm all the way, and it hurt to bend it too far, but didn't really think about it. It wasn't till I woke up in the middle of the night, gasping in pain because I had rolled over onto it, that I realized that something was a little messed up. It looked like I had a very obese elbow. I really don't know why, but I decided to tough it out till morning and then told my parents I needed to go see a doctor, but only after Robert's farewell! So that's what we did! They took some x-rays, during which I felt some of the worst pain of my life as I tryed to position my arm how they wanted it. They told me later that i had a Radial Head Fracture. I can't have a cast for it because it would make my elbow stiffen up so all I've got is a sling and some Pain Killers. It's not all bad though, my parents tie my shoes for me and plus, I've always wanted to break a bone. I can still use my fingers, I just can't put my hand in positions that make them useful. However, there are certain things that I've found to be difficult without the use of my right hand.:

1.Taking off / putting on shirts - This has to be the worst part. I don't have a cast to stabalize my elbow from bending so getting in and out of t-shirts makes me want to scream.

2.Peeing - It's rough, and potentially messy.

3.Tying shoes - I feel like a little child asking my mom to tie my shoes.

4.Scratching - Some places are inaccessible to my left hand and will forever itch.

5.Sports - I'm in a volleyball class at BYU. That's a no-go now.

6. The Trapese - It's hard to hold on with one hand

Thursday, November 6, 2008

Butter

I saw the second Batman movie for the fourth time last night, and guess what! It's still awesome.
I saw it at the new theater in front of the mall. They opened it up for a free night of movies for University students. The best part of the night? Free popcorn and drinks, and at this theater they let YOU put on the extra butter. Never again will I be watching a movie with a lack of greasey love on my warm, salty, kernels. Yum.
That was sick.

Monday, November 3, 2008

The Cathedral of the Madeleine

On Saturday I completed one of my tasks in order to prepare for my trip to Spain. The assignment was to visit the Cathedral of the Madeleine in Salt Lake City using only public transportation. The idea was to help get us used to using public transportation since that's all we'll be using while we are in Europe. The Cathedral was awesome I didn't even know this place existed! Enjoy my awesome pictures:

Crazy cool. This is called a tympanum. It took seven years to make, and it's on the front of the church.

The ceiling was the coolest part. It was made to look like a starry night.


We stayed for the beginning of a mass before we headed out. To begin, they had a youth choir sing. The way that their voices reverberated off of the walls made for an amazing, booming sound. Once the pastor started his sermon, my group and I decided to leave because it was a little.
Before we got on TRAX to head back to the bus stop, we had lunch at The Lion House, and I would recommend this place to anyone. It was delightful.