La Traviata!

I went to the opera "La Traviata" last night, it was the first opera I've ever been to. It was actually really cool! Not to mention I could understand a lot of what was being said! (or sung) It's fun knowing Portuguese and Spanish.

The story was interesting. It was rather depressing, but quite good. The music was amazing, I loved it! I was talking to Sarah who I went with, and we were shocked at how ridiculously difficult it would be to be blasting opera-style singing for 3 hours! All I can say is, I can't sing like that! It was a very fun time though.

Now I'm going to go buy myself a Little Caesar's Pizza for my dinner! Delicious! A wonderful five dollar meal! Then I'm off to the BYU Philharmonic Concert! I'm really excited, I've been wanting to go to one of those concerts for a while now! Should be good fun!

Tchau tchau!

Uma Festa Multicultural

Exciting deal!!! I found out today that I totally aced my math exam!!!! Super stoked about that!!! Didn't think it was going to happen, but sure enough it did!!! Happy day!

On the other hand, I don't think I did so well with my Biology exam. But they haven't even given me the scores yet, so for all I know I could have done really well on it, but I somehow doubt it. I'm positive I didn't fail it, I just don't think I did as well as I could have. Oh well. I suppose I could say that about all tests I take, I can always do better. (except those I get a lovely 100% on!) ;)

*****

Here's a quick Mission Picture and Story of the Day!

Some of the awesome Portuguese Members!!!

This picture was taken on the Multicultural Party that the Christie Ward had in September of 2010. (at least I'm pretty sure it was September....) Anyway, since there are people from so many different countries in that ward (Brazil, Portugal, Angola, and like 10 different Spanish speaking countries) they have this party once a year to get together and celebrate each others' countries and cultures. It's incredibly fun!!! There is food from tons of different countries, which of course is one of my favorite parts of this party, and most people dress up in the traditional clothing of their country (or in the case of the Brazilians, their soccer jersy) ;)  and have presentations of dance, singing, and other really fun things! It was a great party, and an excellent activity to bring investigators to! Very good for fellowshipping and just having a lot of fun! It was awesome!

In that photo there is André in the middle holding a massive pot of "feijoada" that Joel cooked (Joel is the other one on the left with the Brazilian Jersy on) which is beans in a delicious sauce with all kinds of meat mixed in (usually pork) and you put it over rice. It is SOOOO delicious!!!! That's just one of the many amazing foods that were there!!! It was an incredible party, for the 10th time.

*****

So I watched some most excellent episodes of Doctor Who last night with my brother David (widely known as "Davo") and I absolutely loved them!!! Actually, they were so good that somehow Davo  convinced me to watch another one... Then another one... All I can say is I've never watched that many episodes of Doctor Who in one day before! Once I watched three, but that was because it was a three-part episode, but this time it was 4 episodes... Well, the good thing is I wasn't doing it at the expense of homework or anything else of importance. If I didn't watch those, I probably would have watched something else. :) It was just one of those nights.

Well I'm going to go take my Book of Mormon midterm now. It should be pretty easy. My teacher said if you actually read what you're supposed to, it won't be a problem. So that's good. It should be nice and easy! :) Wish me luck! Tchau tchau!

Is it the Weekend Yet?

We're only to Wednesday, and already yesterday I wanted it to be the weekend. Yeah, it's that bad... I'm attempting to finish a ridiculous lab for my Programming Class (so as you can see, rather than do that, I"m writing in my blog! Lovely, eh?) Anyway, I can't finish it till I get some help, and that doesn't come for a bit, so I'll do something productive rather than stare at Facebook until then.

So I've been thinking a lot recently, and I have decided that I love being home! Not to mean that I like being home more than being on my mission, because I've decided they are two different things and I can't compare them! I discovered that there are so many possibilities being at home!!! Like watching AMAZING television shows such as Doctor Who!!! (see clip below...)

Yeah... It's that awesome!!!
I can also do other awesome stuff! Like do homework! (oh boy, I'm shivering with excitement at the thought... NOT) I can hang out with all my amazingly awesome friends!!! And not to mention be in this BEAUTIFUL valley of Utah! I absolutely LOVE having the huge majestic mountains surrounding my home. It's amazing!

So yes. I love being home! It's great! Do I miss my mission? Yes. However, I do have an AMAZING job that gives me many of the joys and experiences from a mission!!! So I've got the best of both worlds!!! Oh yeah!!!

All right, I'm starving so I'm going to go home, eat, then get help on my lab! Tchau!

100% Chance of a Slight Possibility of Snow

So for the last one to two weeks we've been hearing over and over "Snow tonight, accumulation up to 4 inches" and "Winter Weather Advisory, big snowstorm going to hit, accumulation from 4 to 6 inches" and all manner of stuff, and it was always "This time, it's definitely going to happen!" Well... Let's just say we're still waiting for this extreme winter weather. I think it's rather funny, because so many people on Facebook from this area are saying "This warm weather is the build up to extreme winter weather tonight!!!" ...And it never comes.
So therefore I've decided that the world's climate has changed this year. We have summer on Christmas, and a wintry Fourth of July. The good news is that because of this, we'll be able to do fireworks at our house! The place will be covered in snow, so there is 0% chance of fires! That, of course, is contingent upon whether or not you can get the thing to go off in such a wet environment, but hey! No fires! :)

*****

Time for the mission picture and story of the day!

Our Beloved Home.

This amazing little house was where I lived in one of my favorite areas, Bowmanville Ontario. It's a cute little city (almost could be qualified as a town) located about an hour from Toronto, maybe a little more, depending on traffic. (which is always horrible on the highway known as the 401!) Anyway, my story for today is the time I called 911. :)

The first time I called 911 on my mission was one or two days before the transfer, which I would be training a new missionary. So my companion at the time, the one who was being transferred, pulled up to the house around 9:30 and we were filling out our kilometers for the day, when there was a knock at his window. An old man was standing there, and so we got out to talk to him, and he said "That house is on fire!!!" and pointed to the white-blue house you see to the left. So we looked up, and sure enough, there were flames coming off the top of the roof, and we could see the curtains glowing from the flame inside. Well, my companion ran to get the member who lived above us in the house, and I called 911 immediately. Being a small town, the fire department got there within minutes. During that time we pounded on the person's door to find out if anyone was in there. Because of our pounding and yelling, we managed to wake up the guy inside the house who was slightly drunk and had fallen asleep, and he grabbed his 2 year old son who was in there as well and staggered out. They were both black with the smoke and coughing pretty hard. We brought them away from their house, because the man wanted to try to go back in and put out the fire, but of course he was delirious, so we had to get him and his son away from the house. Three firetrucks pulled up and began hooking up to the fire hydrant. It was actually a little funny, because there were a bunch of people gathered who were watching across the street, and as the fireman hooked his hose up and turned on the fire hydrant to get water going, he accidentally turned on the wrong side and it shot out tons of water, completely soaking everyone who was watching. So that was slightly humorous. :) (you have to think of the positive side of things, right?)

So the fire department finally got their water going, and they entered the house to tackle that fire. (by this time, the flames were quite large above the house) They were able to eliminate the fire, though to do this they had to rip a hole in the roof to get to the fire in the attic and on the roof. They fought that fire bravely, and finally took it down. (I'm sure all the women there were swooning) We were finally able to go into our house though. They had told everyone in the houses next to that one to stay out, in case the embers got blown and caught on those houses. (my companion and I were joking, trying to decide what is of most worth in our apartment that we would get if it caught fire... Of course there was the typical missionary answer of the Area Book... Frankly, I think that was the thing of most worth... missionaries have lots of junk) Anyway, they put it out (they had sent the man and his boy to the hospital long before this) and we went inside and finally went to bed. Needless to say, it was a very exciting thing! It's just great though that we were able to pull up right at the time that we were able to help! Any sooner, and we wouldn't have noticed the flames and would have gone inside. So I'm glad we were able to help.

*****

I will say, I've got some pretty sweet stories. Missions are the ultimate jackpot of sweet awesome stories to tell for the rest of your life! I love it!

I am now going to go gorge myself on lunch. Or I would, if we had anything incredible for lunch. So I'll most likely scrounge up whatever I can find. There will be no gorging involved. Anyway, I accomplished that quite well last night at Brick Oven with three of my best friends! So I've done my gorging for the week. All right! See you all later!

The Post That Yesterday's Should Have Been

Ok, so now I've had a good full 9ish hours of sleep (although I'm not feeling it as much anymore, because I've had three classes and a session of homework) and feel much more bloggie. So here goes.

Today in Math we made boxes out of paper... Yup, just like I did in 2nd grade. We took a piece of paper, cut squares out of the corners, and folded up the sides. What do you think of that? Ok, so there was a little more to it, but for the first 20 minutes I was thinking to myself "Hey, this is cake!" Then we got into other stuff, which was still fairly understandable and easy, but not the delicious cake I thought it was... Anyway, I of course didn't have another one of those awesome smart person moments. Oh well. Maybe another time.

*****

Mission Picture and Story Time!!! Yay!!! I'm hoping you all aren't getting bored of these. If you are, leave a comment or a message telling me and I'll choose something else to do. Anyway, see picture below.

Petey the Pigeon

This monstrously ugly bird is known affectionately as Petey the Pigeon. He was our pet when I was serving with Elders Wray and Workman in the Weston South Area. One day we were studying and we heard this squealing noise on our deck outside, and we looked outside to see a big pigeon attacking this old hideous bird. I yelled "Oh my gosh!!! It's killing it!!!" I didn't know why, but that big bird was murdering that hideous old bird!!! Then suddenly the big one grabbed the little one by the beak and started doin' its thing into his beak, and it dawned on us. It's a baby pigeon and it's being fed! So I was much happier, because I didn't want a dead pigeon on our deck. That's nasty. Well, we found out that this baby had hatched either on our deck or the one next to ours, but either way, it seemed to take a special liking to our deck for some strange reason (probably not because we kept feeding it... nah, definitely not) and made its home there. Well, at first my companions wanted to kick it off. I didn't let them. Sure it was absurdly ugly, but still, it was just a baby and couldn't fly. So we spared its life, and after a little bit we gave it a name. Petey.

After a while we all got kind of attached to the ugly beast. So we fed it, played with it, and eventually he grew old enough to fly, and his parents had left him, so my companion nudged him off the deck to learn to fly. I was impressed, he flew! Not super well, but not bad! He managed to land on the deck below us, and later that night flew back up to ours! So he had finally learned how to fly! After a few days he finally disappeared. I'll admit, even though he was hideous, I was a little sad that he left. But it was time for Petey to move on to bigger things in life. (although frankly, I don't know if he'll be able to find a wife looking like that! Hopefully he gets a little more handsome than he was...) So anyway, that is the story of Petey the Pigeon.

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I'm going tonight to a sweet restaurant I haven't been to in years!!! Actually, the last time I went to this place, Brick Oven, was the day that I entered the MTC!!! I remember it veeeery well! It's a delicious place!!! Incredible pizza and pasta!!! I can't even decide yet what I'm going to get... But there will definitely be a frosty mug of root beer involved!!! Yum!!!

*Begin salivating here*

Anyway. Basically I'm dying to go and can't wait! I purposely didn't eat lunch today just so I could enjoy it in all its glory!!! So I'm super excited!!!

Dear Blog,

I am starving.

Love John

Sleepy. Very Sleepy.

Yes indeed, I am exhausted. Ok, maybe not quite that dramatic. I'm just very very tired. Let me tell you why. Every other day of the week and on weekends, I work from 5:45 in the morning until 9. Yeah, I know there are many people out there, some probably reading this blog, who work way earlier than that. I understand that. But as this is all I've known, it makes me beastly tired. :)

Actually, it's not that bad. It's a tiresome business, especially in school. However, the real issue is that on a Friday and Saturday night, I'm just not willing to go to bed early! The night is young! It's the weekend! I'm in college! Come on! I'll have plenty of chances in my life to work super early, but I've only got this time to be a university student! So therefore, I must take advantage of it, even if it means losing a couple of hours of sleep. Anyway, I can make those up in afternoon naps! ;)

So the point of this portion was to say that... I'm really tired right now. :) MOVING ON!!!

*****

Well, it's kind of sad, there's no more parts to the Broken Ankle Epic, but that means we're back to the MISSION PICTURE AND STORY OF THE DAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oooooh yeah!!!

This first one here is just for fun. This was probably the coolest picture I took off of our balcony. Click on the picture to see it in all its glory. As you can see, the CN Tower is towering off to the right, and the dark yellow rays are bursting through the clouds shining down upon Downtown Toronto. Also I love the smoke-ish cloud things that are in front of the buildings. That's just cool. Yeah, this was one of my greatest mission photos of Downtown... Ok, real picture and story.

Christmas Party

This was taken on December 11th, 2010 when I was in the Portuguese Area. The person in the middle is a member named Sidy. She's super awesome! She also helps out the missionaries a TON. She was baptized a few years ago and is a really strong member. The girl to the left is a person who was learning about the church, her name is Deborah. At this time she was being fellowshipped by Sidy. So she came to our Ward Christmas Party! It was a SUPER fun party! Lots of excellent food, a great message, and the "Christie Quartet" did a couple of numbers! The Christie Quartet was a quartet made up of myself, my companion, and my two Zone Leaders. We called it the Christie Quartet, naturally, because we were in the Christie Ward. But we actually sounded really cool together! It was awesome! I love singing, especially in a quartet!

Anyway, it was a GREAT party! Deborah loved it, and it left everyone feeling the Christmas Spirit very strongly! A most excellent day!!!

*****

So tomorrow I'm going to a missionary farewell of a good friend of mine and then to my singles ward. It'll be a busy day, that's for sure! I'm REALLY looking forward to the fact that Monday is a HOLIDAY!!!!! NO SCHOOL!!!! :)  Yeah, there are few things that make me as happy as that.

So now I believe I'm coming down with a case of the munchies. (for those who don't know what that is, that means I'm not exactly hungry, but I want to eat something. Or more like snack. Yeah, I just want to snack. :)  One of my favorite things to do!

Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!!! I know I will! Tchau tchau!

Homework... 'Nuff Said...

In my extreme boredom and unhappiness yesterday, January 11th, I wrote this portion of a blog entry, but never finished it. So here I'm going to finish it.
"So currently I'm blowing my brains out doing homework. Earlier this morning and last night I fried my brain doing Math homework, and even so there were a few problems I just couldn't do! It drove me nuts! So of course, here I am a few hours later after class, and I'm chuggin' away at it again! Attempting to smash my way through all this homework I suddenly have. I'm thankfully almost done with the actual homework to be graded. After that I just have to do my reading. Fun fun. But basically I got so fried here whilst converting decimal to binary and binary to decimal that I just had to finish up my blog post just to get away from 16 bit 1st and 2nd's Complements.

I think I'm getting it, which is really nice. I'm not worried about it. It's just long and taxing work. Very dry stuff, binary numbers, but necessary. :) I actually am having a good time learning it. It's quite fun."

Yeah, it was so bad that towards the end I was actually trying to tell myself that it was "quite fun..." I think someone spiked my water. Also I was really hungry. That makes for a messy situation...

P.S. I was about to get into the car today, and I twisted my bad ankle really badly again!!! Yeah, I have the worst of luck with that ankle. So I limped around for the rest of the night. Fun fun.

P.P.S. I'm thinking this post sounds extremely depressing. I assure you, I'm most certainly not this depressing of a person. I promise my next post will be more normal.

P.P.P.S. I love Caesar Salads. With Creamy Garlic Caesar dressing. Heavenly.

The Dreaded Part Three

That's right folks, you heard it here! This post is the Dreaded Part III in the epic of the Broken Ankle!!! However!!! This is not the section which deals with that! So you'll just have to wait! (or like most of you will probably do, you can skip down to the correct part) ;)

Anyway, so I went to work this morning (beastly early in the morning) and had a great time! I did some calls today, along with my regular chats. I got incoming calls from people calling for either a free DVD, or a request to be visited by missionaries. It was great fun, I loved it! Although there was this one drunk guy who called me five times in a row. The first time I talked to him and found out he was visiting with missionaries and wanted to get baptized, but he couldn't yet because he liked to drink. (as I could easily tell talking to him) So he just talked to me about all sorts of crazy things, as he was totally smashed, and finally I found out that the missionaries were going there that day, so I told him that the missionaries were very willing to help him out. So I thanked him for calling and hung up. Well, he called back 4 more times, each time saying "John, thanks so much for talking to me. I want to be baptized. I'll leave you to your work. Bye." (with varying levels of clearness and understandability) Thankfully he stopped calling, and I could continue with my work. He was a very nice man... Just a tad intoxicated.

*****

This is it ladies and gents!!! PART III OF THE SAGA OF THE BROKEN ANKLE!!! See picture below...

The Dreaded Boot...

So, as left off yesterday, I had just been transferred to Pickering. Well, to my incredible luck, one of the members there happened to be a doctor! So I asked him about my ankle and told him how it had been eight weeks and it was still hurting quite a bit. Yeah, I know, stupid me for waiting for eight weeks before I ask anyone about it. ;)  Anyway, the doctor knew immediately it definitely wasn't a simple sprain. So he got me an order for a bone scan at the hospital (a different one this time) which I went to do. Well, they first injected me with a radioactive isotope to get flooded through my body. (that was a comforting thought...) Then they told me to come back a few hours later. So of course, in the interim, I just HAD to see if my pee would glow in the dark... It didn't... I was disappointed.

Ok, moving on! So I went back, and after a half-hour scan, they looked at the results and said "Yeah. I don't know who read your X-Rays, but your ankle is broken, and you've made it more stressed by walking on it. It should have been in a cast." So I though oh... thanks x-ray guy! Well, anyway, they put me in the AirCast shown above in the photo. However, that one turned out to be really lame and did nothing, so they switched me to another AirCast that goes up to my knee. So I had this massive ugly boot thing on my foot. (not matching at ALL with ANY of my clothes, especially missionary ones!) Let's put it this way. In a Zone Conference the following week, my mission president asked me during it to write something up on the board during the meeting. I walked up to the board, and as I passed him he looked at it and basically yelled "WOAH!!!! That thing's BIONIC or something!!!!" Naturally everyone laughed. It was pretty funny. Anyway, so for a Transfer and a half in Pickering I wore around that absurd boot. Lovely.

That is the end of PART III of the SAGA OF THE BROKEN ANKLE!!! Although it doesn't end there! TUNE IN FOR PART IV NEXT TIME!!!

*****

Well, I'll be honest, I don't have much for you in this last portion. Except that I got a cell phone number finally! Oh wait... Maybe I mentioned that last time... I don't know, I can't remember! :) But I'm about to go out to eat at a fabulous burger joint known as BURGER SUPREME!!! Honestly, it's not nearly on par with Hires Big H, but I would definitely say it's number two! So it's going to be deliciously fun!!! And I'm starving my brains out right now, so I'll stop thinking about it!

All right, that's all from here! Tchauzinho!

Still No Job!

Hello Hello Ladies and Gentlemen!!! This is John Woodruff! (obviously)

Anyway, so as you can probably guess, I still don't have a job. Yup, that's my life right now! But that's ok, because looking for jobs is fun! (sometimes) (not really) (ok, not at all) Oh well. I just did my teaching evaluation today for the MTC, which I applied to. It was pretty cool, the two returned missionaries who were my evaluators were Elder Murray and Elder Moreno (I think that's how his name is spelled....) from Preach My Gospel: The District 2. (that's one of the training DVD's they use in the mission) So it was pretty cool, I got to actually meet the guys that I sat and watched, praised, criticized, and evaluated who knows how many times on my mission. Fun stuff! So I taught them about Accountability, and I thought it went pretty well, we'll see what they think.
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Mission Picture and Story of the Day! Here's the picture today!

Korean Grill!!!!!

Ladies and Gentlemen, this is a photo of me and my companion in THE MOST DELICIOUS RESTAURANT EVER!!!!!! Ok, maybe not ever, but it's absolutely incredible!!! It's called The Korean Grill. For lunch you pay 8 dollars, and you get all you can eat DELICIOUS meats and rice and all kinds of other stuff! They bring you the meats raw in an amazing marinade or seasoning or something, and you then cook it at your table. Yeah. It's ABSOLUTELY DELICIOUS!!!!!!!! This picture was the day I went to the CN Tower with the other Office Missionaries, it was super fun! I've rarely encountered a restaurant I love as much as this one. (one of the only exceptions is Hires Big H in Salt Lake City!) (Shown below in all its glory!)

Aaaaah yeah!!!!! SO GOOD!!!!

Anyway, I'm now absolutely dying of starvation, so I'll definitely move on.
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So I was thinking the other day about when I lived in Brazil. Those were good days!!! We did all kinds of craziness there!!! Made tons of movies, hung out with all those Brazilians, and just had a smashing awesome time! :D Here's a picture from those days!

Good Times...

Actually, that was sort of from the end of those days.... But this was a main hanging out group!!! The cast and crew of Dungeonman 2! Classic film...

Anyway, those were great days. I wish I could re-live them. That'd be sweet. Ok, I'm just rambling now, so I'll sign off! Tchau tchau!