Last Leg

Holy Hannah! It's been quite a ride this last week. I haven't had a ton of time to sit down at the computer, hence my lack of blogging. Since I last updated you, we visit some ruins up in the moutains, saw the largest market in Peru, traveled to Machu Picchu, got a wicked bad sunburn over my face, arms, and neck, bought heaps of souvenirs, took another 21 hour bus ride back to Lima, and Montezuma had his revenge on me.

This pictures from this trip have been spectacular. They will follow in the near future.

We managed to not get robbed at all this week, at least not stolen from, though some of the prices for things seemed like robbery.

I used up most of a bottle of aloe on my sunburns in 2 days because they were so nasty. We weren't counting on it being sunny at Machu Picchu so we didn't bring sunscreen. Between the intense sun that DID show up that day and what I assume to be thin atmosphere at 10,000 feet of altitude, my arms, hands, neck, and face ended up swollen and red from the burn. The swelling has since then gone down, along with much of the redness, but my nose already feels beef jerky and my forehead and neck will look leperous by tomorrow.

Tomorrow at midnight we fly out. It's been an amazing ride. I'll fill in more details later, but we feel really lucky to have seen so much and done so without serious accident or incident.

11,000 feet and counting

We've made it to Cusco, though now without our share of shady taxi drivers, cross-country busses, and friendly German co-travelers.

In short, Lima is a hole. To paraphrase Obi Wan Kenobi, there is no greater collection of scum and villainy in the universe. I know that´s being a little harsh, but I am only basing it off of rip-off hotels and hostels, shady taxi drivers, and frustrating service-people.

We met a couple of nice German guys who are traveling the world and teamed up to find our hostels. We´re also going to meet up for our travels tomorrow. Traveling with additional people, even complete strangers always seems to make you feel safer somehow.

No apologies, just Peru

The last 6 months since I have written here have involved love, travel, and more than a few hours of family TV time and now I am in Peru. We decided to go somewhat untraditionalist this year and are now in Lima. I rarely know what to expect because I never really form an image in my mind of what things might be like. In any case, this place is beautiful, overcast, poor, and friendly. There are a lot of bright colored buildings, rundown buildings, dogs in the streets, and clothes lines strung around. I'm typing on a keyboard that the hostel owns and there is some exposed metal on it right where my wrist touches that shocks me when every couple of seconds if I'm not careful.

We're on our way to explore the town a little before we get on a 22 hour bus ride to Cusco at the base of Machu Picchu. I'm showered, rested, and completely inept in Spanish. Lo, but by the grace of God go we into the land of Lamanites and llamas (alpacas, I know, but I wanted alliteration).

Weddings and things...

I met this girl when I was in Hawaii about 2 years ago. We went out for burgers, we went to the beach, yadda, yadda, yadda... we just got married.  Here are the pictures to fill in some of the details.

3 months seems like a reasonable interval between blog postings

Alrighty. Where to start from my last posting..... Last time I wrote something here I was single. Now I'm ALMOST NOT SINGLE which is a very different thing based on my understanding of semantics.

Lets see first of all there was Christmas in Longview. Audi came out and it was a delight.



The biggest news from that week in Washington was that I asked Audi to marry me and SHE SAID "YES!!!" Well, actually she said "yeah," but what's the difference?



We're gettin' hitched on May 23rd in the Rexburg Temple.

My first day back at work from the break I found out that I got my job with the DoD! From now on I'll be spending my days keeping America safe and, more importantly, I'll have insurance while doing it! I can finally stop walking around worried I'll get sick or slip on a banana peel and end up in debt for another decade.

These days we're scrambling to get everything planned before the big day but are somehow managing to get it done. One day at a time...