Stay cool soda pop

I should really be sleeping, and therefore i think i'll update my blog. I don't know what it is about 2 in the morning that makes me feel like not going to sleep. Maybe it's the recurring, guy smiley nightmares.

So, the last couple of days have been fairly eventful. I went swimming tuedsday, and played soccer with the spanish speaking members and missionaries. That was way fun, it's been too long since i've played legitimate soccer, and it was nice to see that i can still hold my own. I scored two goals, blocked a bunch, and even managed not to injure myself. So that was an accomplishment and a half. I still can't dribble worth anything, but dribbling is for babies and international soccer phenom. Real men pass the ball.

Today i helped some ward members move several hundred pounds of food storage across biloxi, lifting mostly with my back. My philosophy is that if i lift enough with my back, it'll be so strong that it won't get injured. Most people just don't lift enough with their back. There's their problem.

So apparently hurricane Gustav might come our way, brining with it impending, katrina-esc DOOM. Incidentally, Katrina hit almost exactly 3 years ago. We should have had a party. Anyway, so there's talk of evacuation, all our stuff getting destroyed, scary things like that. On the plus side, i might end up going to jackson again. Starkville looks more likely, but we'll see. If i'm going to be spending 2 weeks someplace while waters recede, i'd like to be somewhere i've been in the last 10 years. Either way, this is probably one of the more threatening things anything named Gustav has done. I really hope it won't be on the scale of katrina, it'll ruin the funniness of Gustav forever.

Tomorrow i'm getting my eyes checked and backing up the hard drives (maybe) and going on exchanges with the elders, and going to institute, and then probably doing fun stuff afterwards. It's just a packed day. So i'm going to go to sleep, and hopefully the next time i update this thing, i will have shifted my sleep 5 hours back, or at least a few, so that waking up at 6:30 doesn't kill me.

Until then, i'll be defeating evil, one idiot bike thief at a time
(oh yeah, my little brother's bike got stolen. That's messed up. What's even more messed up is that it'll cost around 3x the price of the bike to fix the car window. Who breaks into a car to steal a 8 year olds bike and then leaves everything else in the car of value? Maybe some guy really needed to teach his son to ride a bike.)

You know, i've noticed something. In the midst of tv's witty repartee (ala psych, veronica mars, firefly, all the other shows i watch, etc) nobody ever laughs at their really quite clever jokes. I mean, not laughing at your own jokes is pretty key, but it seems like people around would catch the cleverness and laugh. But then i guess it wouldn't be witty repartee. It just seems weird. I still prefer it to laugh-tracks. I'm glad no one really uses those anymore.

~So 90's

Guatemala plays really dirty, too bad they got beat.

Today i learned how the world cup qualification works, and i decided that i want to go to the 2014 World Cup in Brasil. I figure with 4 non-missionary years to think about it, it shouldn't be too hard to scrounge up the necessary funds and convince as many people as possible to join me (i'm looking at you Logan, imagine how much a six year old Søren would love a world cup.). At South Africa, early games are only 20 bucks for the nosebleeds, so that's pretty reasonable (a nice seat at the final is $900, I can just save a few Euro from my mission and the way the dollar is headed, they'll cover it). But i'm thinking that would be extremely awesome, plus i hear Brasil is a pretty nice place, and it'd be fun to break out my not yet new found bilingualism. So yeah, i think i should do that. I generally don't make plans more than a couple days in advance, so making plans for something that'll happen when i'm 25 is a bit ambitious. I don't have a lot of plans carrying over from when i was 13, but i've been planning on a mission for at least that long, so i think this is plausible.

In present news, today was ok, i went swimming which felt great until i threw up all over the bathroom. I don't think swimming has ever made me throw up before. It was the 200IM that did it. Still, I managed to swim a solid kilometer,and i'll be going back tomorrow, maybe going a little easier.

Anyway, i'm supposed to be sleeping, so sweet dreams everybody.

2 days ago I killed a pizza.

true story.

I actually did something yesterday. Realizing that 3 months is far too long to go without knowing anybody in biloxi I've started going to institute and singles activities. So yesterday there was this dinner thing that i went to, and afterwards we drove up to Hattiesburg for a singles dance. That was pretty fun, especially because i got to see all the jackson stake girls (all the guys i know from there are either on missions, married, or are not yet 18) and got to know some gulfport stake people to boot. So that was cool, hopefully i'll have legitimate friends sometime soon, not having any friends is boring.

It's amazing how quickly i've become used to the idea of going to portugal, and now i can't imagine going anywhere else. I am a little worried about learning a new language, but i'm way excited about being proficient in another language. There are two people i've met down here that speak portuguese, one from brasil, on a return missionary, so that's cool.

So i think it's ridiculous that we change the names that countries choose for themselves. In some cases, like when it's really hard to pronounce or i guess if the spelling doesn't sound look the pronunciation to english people, it makes a bit of sense, but there's no reason to call Italia italy, and spell Brasil brazil, so from now on, in the interest of Globalization, i'm going to follow Google Maps' lead and try to call countries by their actual name. We'll see how that turns out.

By the way, here's the address for sending me stuff in portugal. There'll be a different one when i actually get there, but that one will still work. Eventually i'm going to turn this blog over to a responsible adult who will be able to add my MTC address (which i don't know yet) and my real address, and keep this blog updated with letters and stuff so that you guys can keep updated at the speed of the interweb.

Elder Ammon David Perkes
Portugal Lisbon Mission
Apartado 40054
1500 Lisbon
Portugal











~Here, Dear, alone with all your letters

I can tell that we're going to be friends

Report to Room 305 in Milton Bennion Hall on the University of Utah campus. If you have a cell phone, please turn it off before you report to Room 305. Please report to Room 305 within 5 or 10 minutes of the time you were scheduled to arrive. Proceed through the door to Room 305 and go to the back of the room next to the windows. There will be an envelope with your name on it taped to the wall of the cubicle on the left. Open the envelope and follow the instructions within.

When you leave, close the door to Room 305, but please do not lock it. Thank you for your participation.

I am a fricken spy!

Actually that's untrue, and if it were i would be a very poor spy for posting it on my blog. That's actually the instructions for a survey i'm going to be in tomorrow. I'm going to steal something and then lie about it and get paid. If that isn't in keeping with the standards of a soon to be missionary i don't know what is.

In other news, physical therapy is good stuff. Is basically guided torture, but i have, for all intensive purposes, regained complete functionality. I still probably can't play soccer, or even go for a long jog, but i can run again, and i'm about half an inch shy of being able to straighten my leg out completely. Now it's just an issue of getting the strength back in something i haven't really used for 4 weeks and then keeping my ACL from getting torn the rest of the way. The Physical Therapist said that the ACL felt pretty sturdy, not that it's not a danger, but it shouldn't keep me from doing things.

Lets see, other news, it was gorgeous outside today, upper 70's, sunny, i set up my hammock outside and got a bit sun burnt on my knee (i forgot to put sunscreen on my legs, oh well). School's still winding up, i leave 2 weeks from tomorrow, which is down right frightening. But it will be nice to get back and have nothing to do all day but watch isaac...i'm sure it'll be fantastic, and at some point i'll make it up to Jackson to say hello and goodbye to all my friends out there.

I want to learn to play the guitar, and ballroom dance. Those are both things i'm probably going to work on after the mission, since i'm sure i'm capable of maintaining motivation to start something for two years. The simple fact is that being able to dance would be way cool, mad hot, if you will, and i want to be that guy.

Someday i'll finally get settled in to someplace and then not have to leave it for a long time, but until that day, aloha.

I think i've used that title before, oh well.

two things to do before this year is done:

Learn to play the guitar (i doubt that'll happen)
Learn to solve a Rubik's Cube.