I Am Finally Starting to Love the West

It’s been at least three weeks since I last wrote and a decent amount has happened.  I’m going to try and capture at least the highlights.

Here's a fun start - a video and some pictures from a ward party we had a bit ago. They had an awesome inflatable obstacle course and did a competition for it with a bracket and everything.  Paul made it to the semi finals!  Here's the last one of his runs (I think he was a little bit tuckered out though at this point!)

A few weeks ago Paul and I went to see the National Dance Company of Siberia perform at BYU.  Paul was at first not super excited since he had never been to a dance recital and never had an interest in going, but did want to go with me since I was pretty excited about it.  I enjoy going to the different cultural events that are put on at BYU which they bring in from various different countries.  My favorite performance I ever went to at the Y was put on by Chinese acrobats; that was quite a thrilling show. 

The dresses they seemed to "float" in

The men were impressively good tumblers and leapers

The Siberian dancers were quite amazing in their technique and display of culture through dance.  To start with, the costumes were beautiful, elegant, and unsurprisingly, winter and snow themed.  One of the first dances consisted of the women dressed up in floor length snowy looking rather stiff gowns literally gliding across the stage.  I was practically looking for tracks on the floor to see how they were gliding so perfectly without so much as a ripple in the skirts of the dresses.  I soon realized that they were simply taking very delicate shuffling steps that made the appearance so ethereal and floating.

 Two other favorite dances of ours were the manly war dance and a whistling bird dance.  During the dance with all the men, it was rather like a war meeting where all the men were gathered in bright pantaloons and hats brandishing swords.  There was a lot of joyous yelling and shouting accompanied by graceful leaps and jumps with swords being clacked together with great force which made them emit sparks.  They must have coated them with something to make them put off the showers of sparks they did.  The ****** dance consisted of two men and a woman, with the two men obviously courting the woman and challenging each other for her affections (a relatively common theme throughout many of the dances.)  However, in this one, the dancers were pretending to be birds and were moving in a birdlike manner and making highly specific, toned whistles to express their moods and feelings as they danced.  We still have no idea how they made such perfect whistles that were so expressive and varied in tone.  Overall, the performance was definitely a glimpse into their culture and made me feel that winter must be coming soon although it’s been about 80 degrees midday consistently in Provo for the past little while.

I saw this deer just chilling on Freshman Hill near the Tanner building at BYU just the other week… with like 5 students including myself taking pictures of it just feet away.  There ain’t no fear in these here Provo deer.  That’s probably a good thing though, really.

Another “cultural” event we took part in recently was BYU’s homecoming – just one of the dances, however.  Paul and I don’t care about football too much, and he hasn’t been to a game yet (he’d like to more or less just for the experience – I went to one once only.)  We ended up going to the formal dance (they have casual, semi-formal and formal dances here at BYU students can choose to go to) and so we got dressed up all fancy.  I hadn’t ever seen Paul in his black tux before, so that was a novel experience.  He looked quite dapper I daresay.  This dance was held in a place called “The Underground” in Provo which used to be a speakeasy back in the day.  It was certainly decorated in a 20’s/30’s style which was pretty fun, and had a nice club-like atmosphere while being fancy.

There is, however, a funny story behind these pictures.  They’re obviously not professionally taken.  When you spend however much money to go to a formal dance, you’d definitely expect there to be good pictures taken of all the handsome couples, right?  Apparently, wrong. There was a live band that was playing there initially, just random swing dance songs and a few pop songs (they were pretty good, but as I told Paul, when it comes to my pop music/dance music – just leave it to the professionals who originally did the music, I think) and after they did their half hour set or so they went over to this fancy bench and it was all set up to take pictures.  The photographer proceeded to snap the band and a bunch of us assumed that if we waited in line, the photographer with the nice set up would take our pictures as well.  After about 15 minutes of waiting (and dancing in line, don’t worry, we know how to use time wisely and have fun) the band left and then…. The photographer started to leave too.  We were all like, wait, forreals?  Turns out the photographer was only with the band.  We were all a little exasperhated and decided to just get other couples to take pictures of us on our phones.  It…. Didn’t work that well  as you can see.  Cell phone cameras (at least mine and Paul’s) still haven’t quite caught up to what real cameras can do with lightning and all. 

We were rather disappointed in the lack of real picture taking and I was a little sad that although they split the music about half and half between a live band and a DJ they brought in, the DJ wasn’t really playing good party music you could dance to, mostly just more swing dance or the kind of music that people just like the lyrics of a song and shout it really loud but it isn’t really great for dancing.  It was pretty good, but having gone to the semi-formal in the past where they played really fun party music, I think we’ll go to the semi-formal dance probably next time.  They did, however, have delicious ice cream sandwiches there like they make them in the Philippines.  There, it’s called “dirty ice cream” though because you never really know how sanitary the street food is.  They essentially make home made ice cream and buy ice to put in a cart (non electric ones, so they replenish it regularly throughout the day) and although they have cones for it the favorite way its served is as a “sandwich” where they scoop out a few balls of ice cream onto a cookie, put another cookie on top of it, and put it in a little bag for you to eat.  Those were definitely a delicious treat.  The ones they served at the dance followed the same principle and were also delicious – they used BYU creamery ice cream and I got brownies as the sandwich part and coated it in nuts and chocolate syrup.  That was pretty enjoyable, and I’m thinking we’ll have to make them again on our own sometime.

Menacingly fabulous?

Paul and I are enjoying this fall together.  We found this leaf river one day walking home from school; a leaf blower man was there and for some reason had made the pile like this.  The way the leaves drop off the trees all around our apartment is so magical to me; sometimes I’ll spend ten minutes or so just watching them fall and pausing to reflect on the beauty around me. 

Also in our parking lot, this is what I like to call an almond-coated tire.  Delicious, no?

This is the first pie we baked together.  Okay, really, Paul made the whole thing, but I approved the amount of spices put in.  We don’t have a round pie tin so we made this cute square one.  It tastes SO GOOD.  I’m pretty glad Paul’s a good chef and that we split who cooks meals about 50/50 at this point.

This weekend we had the awesome opportunity to go down to visit with Paul’s grandma’s family, the Robisons.  They were having a family reunion/fall fest and Paul’s Uncle Thomas kindly invited us to go down with him.  It was held in Logandale, Nevada, where most of that side of the family still resides (or at least is near to still.)  In the areas of Logandale and Overton, there is a great deal of family history still there as the Robisons were some of the main stalwart families in the area for the past however many generations.  We saw where Paul’s great great grandparents lived and had their farm and raised their family.  To this day Paul’s great uncle and his wife still live there and are helping keep up the farm.  We had a lot of fun getting to know that side of the family, especially because the last time many of Paul’s great aunts and uncles had seen him was when he was a tiny baby.

I had never seen or walked on soil this dry and cracked before!  It was super fun and crunchy under foot.

Baby cloud to big cloud....

 They had a doughnut eating contest and convinced Paul to do it, but since he has relatively tight throat muscles he came in second to last ;)  It was funny to watch him standing there chewing for 15 seconds between each bite, but I definitely give him an A for effort.    I didn’t even do it because I know I’m terrible at those things/I like to savor my desserts.

They also had a nice little genealogy moment conducted by another one of Paul’s great aunts.  She told a story of how Paul’s great great grandmother and her family escaped death at the hands of highway robbers. This is a paraphrase more or less, but it should be pretty close to correct.   This great great grandmother and her family were all on a train riding back from some trip when the train stopped (I think it broke or something, but they weren’t supposed to be stopped that far away from their end destination) and it meant they wouldn’t be able to catch the coach that was going to leave the next morning to go to their hometown.  They ended up staying the night in a shady railroad inn filled with sketchy railroad workers, her being the only woman there with her kids.  They spent a restless night there and the next morning managed to find their way back to their hometown.  People were happy to see them, but were also confused.  They asked her, “Weren’t you supposed to be on the stagecoach carrying the banknotes and payroll with the mail? It hasn’t come yet, and we thought surely it would be here by now….” They sent out a search party for the coach and eventually found it pulled off on the side of the road, with a bullet through the coach driver’s head and all of the money stolen.  This was apparently historically the last recorded stagecoach robbery in the United States.

 

(Just a random stagecoach robbery)

After the fun party and happy mini-reunions, our little group of three drove up to Saint George to stay the night at a different great aunt’s house we hadn’t met yet.  This great aunt and uncle were very kind to us and we enjoyed talking to them a great deal.  Their house was beautiful and their home-made, natural food (like delicious pomegranate jelly and pomegranates right off their tree, and a “cheesy sauce” made predominantly from cashews and no cheese but tasted remarkably like the real thing) was quite a tasty novelty to us as poor college students.  Their house is very perfectly situated in the St. George desert area of Utah, and just from being in these different areas of the West outside of Provo I could definitely feel myself warming up to this dry, desert place so foreign from the leafy greenness of my beloved East Coast.  The next morning Paul and I went to church with his great aunt and uncle.  His aunt asked us if we wanted to sing with the church choir that day since she was going early anyway to play piano with them.  We agreed since it wasn’t a difficult arrangement of a hymn.  It went well, and it was fun to sing in a choir – Paul and I will always enjoy singing, I believe.  Church was especially nice because the speakers were all missionaries, from full-time missionaries to a senior couple who actually has lived in that ward for a long time but volunteered to be missionaries for the ward, which is a cool idea I really like.  On the note of speakers and church, here’s a slightly irreverent joke I heard the other week/ it’s also kind of good advice when it comes to giving a talk.  “A Church talk is like a woman’s dress.  It should be long enough to cover all the essentials, but short enough to keep everyone’s attention.”

An armadillo, duck, plane, and a "Honda" gas tank spider created by another one of Paul's great uncles who is a great tinkerer and made some beautiful clocks as well

We had the fun opportunity to go to Snow Canyon in St. George.  There were so many awesome sights to see there and SO much rock.  I was flabberghasted at the sheer amount of rock there was, and how effortlessly unintentional it looked and yet so perfectly formed it seemed that it must have been intentional.  It was soothing to my soul to see so much beauty and to have escaped the confinement of Provo.

Names of pioneers written on this rock in the 1800's

A giant pile of icing?

My favorite "rock" is in this picture.  

Majesty

While we were out, it was still drizzling a little bit

I don't think I'd ever seen cacti in the wild before.  So I touched one.

I really think Uncle Thomas and Paul bear a strong family resemblance.

This tree, on the top of the rock hill, seemed very poetic sitting in the puddle formed by the fresh rain

We had an amazing trip, and feel very blessed to have such good extended family as well as getting to go out on this adventure.  There were a few times I felt like I wanted to crawl into a crevice in the rock and stay there to evade the imminent exams, papers, and obligations I knew we'd come back to in Provo.  It was so beautiful and wild there.... but alas, we must do responsible things for a while so that we can have real fun at other times without living hand to mouth.  Although... Thomas was telling us about the real desert life, living out of a pick up truck and just driving to new mesas and hiking trails to tackle the next challenge.  I'm not really in shape enough for that at the moment, nor am I quite that ready to let everything go, but one of my life goals is to eventually hike the Appalachian trail for a solid week just for fun.  We'll see where life takes us - but it will definitely involve camping either now or soon.

I also went to the Utah Capitol for one of my Journalism classes to listen in on various committees to report on and so we could dip our hands in government reporting.  It is truly one of the most beautiful buildings I've ever been in - I wonder if they'd ever rent it out for a private ball or something, haha.  SO much marble, so delicately carved.  

We actually sat in on a committee that was talking about a bill that would legalize medicinal marijuana in Utah.  One of the main thrusts of the bill was that certain people (including the Senator who presented it who suffers from epilepsy and took medicinal marijuana in a different state and felt that it helped his sickness) such as vets with PTSD and people with chronic pain should be allowed to take medicinal marijuana.  From what transpired in the committee, I think they might pass it.

There was also a protest on the front lawn with a tiny press conference.  They set up white crosses all over the front lawn of the capitol, reminiscent of a military graveyard.

Once again, the white crosses - reminds me of the memorial in Manila

We've had a great few weeks and we're excited to see where the next few take us!