Since last time...

Hi!  I haven't written in awhile.  Sorry about that... If I had been writing though, I would have written about this...

Ski season:  Another season in the books.  This one was #6 as an instructor.  But #1as a supervisor.  I supervised the 4-6 year old program.  To put that into perspective.  We average about 80 kids a day with 1 instructor per three kids.  Instructors are usually in the teen to still can't drink age group with little to no experience with children or teaching skiing.  And I'm in charge.  It's slightly organized chaos.  I have become the child whisperer!  If it goes wrong, it's my job to step up to the plate.  From code browns to huckleberries, supervisor just means I deal with everything not good.  Even though I went from teaching wealthy hot shots with deep pockets to babysitting children and the children teaching the children, it was pretty awesome.

 

Though I did get to teach Erin how to ski, and she did great!

 

Went on my annual ride in the Millennium Falcon down to the seashore to get my surf on.  We had some issues with the hyper drive on the way home, but the waves were super tasty and the tuna steaks were delicious as well. 

 

Thanks to Carrie's job at an airline, on Friday at noon we decided to go on a trip and Saturday at noon I was on the Island of Women, Isla Mujeres.  Only spent 4 days there, but it was pretty cool to be warm and be back in the ocean again, in my birthday suit.

 

 

I finally checked the redwoods off my bucket list as Erin and I drove to N. Cal. to see some big trees and find the ewoks.  We did find some very big trees, and it was awesome. Also went to the fern canyon and saw some orcas!

 

 sdgfsdfg

 

For the third year in a row I went to Moab with friends and the ward I'm in.

 Also went river rafting with the ward, and while there I jumped into some massive rapids with a surfboard again.(Though as is surfing tradition, I have no photo evidence of that....)

I got to go out on the Hatch's boat with Tami and some of the kids.  Gregg and I got ran over by a bus, er...I mean we rode the tube.

 

 

It may not seem as exciting of an item to be on a bucket list, but I have always wanted to see the Utah State Capital building.  So Erin and I went!

 

Lots of other stuff happened too, but I have to go get on a plane to go back to Australia now!  If you have read this far and you are a friend or family and I didn't say goodbye to you then I am sorry!  But I'll actually be back here in Utah pretty soon so I'll see you soon! 

2012 Year In Review.

The decision I mad several years ago to be happy, and do things that I like to do, was a very good decision!  I am still overwhelmed by the awesomeness that is living.  There are moments during days when my stoke may be diminished a bit, but in general I am so stoked about life!  From the groovy little fish in my tank that I can watch for hours to the waves I was just riding on in the frozen ocean, it's all good man...
So it's a bit late, but I will now recap 2012.  2012 = pretty dang awesome.  The year started in Utah, like they always do, working at Canyons resort.  I can't describe how fun it is to teach kids how to ski everyday!  Those little rippers are so easily stoked, inches of airtime feel like conquering the world to them.  I love their enthusiasm!  The adults taking ski lessons could learn a thing or two from their children.
I changed things up a bit for the spring and summer time.  I went to Maui in May and spent about one month there.  My old house had been taken over by drunken orgies so I moved into the Trooper.  Showered at the beach and slept in the LDS church parking lot.  Did a whole lot of surfing, ate leftover dinner cruise food, and poached the hotel pools a lot.  Terese eventually joined me and we found an actual dwelling as the trooper doesn't quite sleep two as easily as one.  The surfing continued though!  LOVE Maui, seriously, if you don't like your life, move to Maui and figure it out!
After Maui I flew to Australia to teach skiing at a place called Perisher.  I lived in a sweet little Aussie town called Jindabyne.  Summer population of Jindy is about 4,000.  Winter population is around 15,000.  Those extra 11,000 are all ski resort employees from all over the world.  Yeah, it was fun!  I lived with Aussies, Brits, Canucks, and I was the only Yankee.  Watching the olympics got intense!  I never failed to mention the irony of the National Anthem being played in London, every time it happened!  Working at Perisher was wild.  No limit to class groups.  My record was 17 kids in one lesson.  I also had a lesson with 9 four year olds!  That was interesting!  Loved it though.  Australia was always somewhere I wanted to go.  So after 4 months in the middle of nowhere I rented a p.o.s. hippie van converted into a camper and spent two weeks driving the east coast of Oz.  My friends Andy, Chris, and Sophie came along too.  Australia's beaches are the best I've ever been on!  The surf didn't suck either!
 Being so close the Land of the Long White Cloud I couldn't resist hopping a plane to New Zealand!  NZ, yeah I could live there.  SO amazing!  Did the same thing there in another mini van turned camper.  I have more pictures of NZ than anywhere else I've ever been, and none of them do any justice.  You just have to go there!
Since I didn't have to be back in Utah for another month I decided to go the Southeast Asia.  I started in the southern isles of Thailand.  I crossed ride an elephant off my bucket list, did some scuba diving, and drove a moped around like a boss!  I was here alone and that took a few days to get used to.  But it ended up being pretty awesome.  I slowly worked my way north through Thailand and then into Cambodia to see Angkor Wat, which was incredible.  Played with some monkeys and tigers and had a great time!
In the time since I left Jindabyne I kept a rough ledger of my travels, so these stats are approximate, but I traveled on:
9 taxis
6 tuk tuks
7 boats
5 trains
7 planes
2 hippie camper vans
9 mopeds
12 buses
2 bicycles
2 elephants
1 ruber raft
1 bamboo raft
7 subway trains
4 elevated sky trains
and I slept in 20 beds.

I got around pretty well!
Then it was back home in time for Thanksgiving, which was awesome since I had missed the last three.  I started back at Canyons again, this time as a ski school supervisor, which I am on the fence about at the moment.  Still love it, I supervise the 4-6 year old program.  So I literally spend everyday playing with tiny people!  Sometimes they pee, or puke, and someone is always crying, but it's totally worth it to hear them giggling all the way down the hills! 
So that was 2012 in a nutshell.  I did some amazing things, saw some beautiful places, and met some wonderful people.  Kind of a banner year for me!  See if I can out do it in 2013 now!

The Last Asian Post...

After Cambodia I had to come back to Bangkok for one more day.  So I decided to make the best of it.  I went to a floating market.  There is a city near Bangkok that uses canals instead of roads so this whole community is built on a a big grid canal system.  The houses and shops are all on stilts and the easiest way around is by boat on the water.  It was a really cool the centerpiece of the whole place was a floating market.  It's very similar to every other market in Thailand except the wares are sold from boats or little shops that are accessible only by boat.  It was very "Thai" and though the folks trying to sell stuff here were more aggressive than most, it was very fun. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After the floating market/village I did something I had been excited for ever since I first arrived in Thailand.  Back in Phuket I noticed a flier for the FIFA Futsol World Cup that would be held in Bangkok.  So the night I got back from Cambodia I bought a ticket for the semifinal round.  I had watched several of the games on tv in restaurants.  It was always easy to know when Thailand was playing as there would be crowds of people huddled around every tv in the country.  But it was Italy vs. Spain and Brazil vs. the cinderellas Columbia.  They were pretty dang good.  Though I'm sure my USU championship futsol team could have taken them!  Brazil beat Spain the next day in the final.  It was really fun. 

 

 

 

Unfortunately this was the very last thing I did in Thailand.  The next morning I took the subway, to the sky train, to the airport and flew out of Thailand!  Overall I spent 21 days in Southeast Asia, it took a few days to get over the anxiety of being alone but after that I enjoyed everything I did!