cinco de mustache round 2

April is near. Last year that meant something awesome. Initially it meant all the males in the click were to grow a mustache starting on april 1st and continue it until the 5th of may(cinco de mayo-hence cinco de mustache). Pretty soon word got out and a lot of ignite was in. My end result was nothing too impressive. I had a bit of hair but it was pretty invisible UNTIL i had the brilliant idea of putting mascara in it, which made it disgusting and awesome.

This year cinco de mustache has reached it’s sleazy arms all the way into Australia. There are already 25 confirmed guests for the Hillsong Cinco de Mustache facebook event. That probably means nothing, but it makes me think that this cinco de mustache is going to be awesome. I’m hoping that i have grown in masculinity some over the last year and hoping that this year I could display a proper stache. I will put up pictures every couple of days showing my progress. VIVA MEXICO

#1

I believe the greatest trick of the devil is not to get us into some sort of evil but rather have us wasting time. This is why the devil tries so hard to get Christians to be religious. If he can sink a man’s mind into habit, he will prevent his heart from engaging God.

-D.M.

camparoo’s

I just went camping and it was rad. Observe:

Me, Johnboy, Ben, Edwardo, Milo

 My girlfriend(hopeful) and I

ruck

Really recently I have wanted a motorcycle really bad. I don’t really know why. But think about how fun it would be to have you and three-four friends who all have motorcycles and to go on a road trip. I think it may be ruckus withdrawal. Boy do I miss ruckus rides.

how things are

so when I was preparing to leave for Australia, although it is very far from home, it was not too hard because I knew it wouldn’t be that hard to adapt. It’s not like I’m in Ethiopia. But still there are some things, mostly little, that are a change from the U.S. For example, the first night I was here I woke up to a baby screaming it’s face off and I was a little concerned. That’s actually just how birds sound here. They look really cool, but don’t sound very nice. Some sound like babies, some like monkeys, some like pterodactyls.

Toilets here are different, there are two buttons on the top of the toilet; one for small flush and one for big flush. And when you push the button it’s not like a drizzle running down the side of the toilet, it’s like a dam broke.

Hamburgers have beets in them

There is no: Taco Bell, Dr Pepper, Pop Tarts, Root Beer, 1$ menus, wal mart, cinnamon life cereal…………and probably some other stuff I have waned since I’ve been here. You can buy Dr Pepper at a store called Sugar Fix that has a lot of American stuff that you can’t get here, but a 24 pack is 40$.

Shopping carts are called trolleys

Traffic goes the opposite way, which I was forced to get use to quickly after almost getting hit by several cars. Also, the crosswalks here are much cooler and make an awesome Star Wars lazer gun noise when it’s okay to cross.

Australian’s have a sense of humor that is impossible for me to not laugh at.

Ketchup is called tomato sauce and pronounced tomahto sauce. If you say ketchup to someone at McDonald’s they will roll their eyes and grab you some. If you say tomato sauce with the hard “a” the will say, “it’s tomAHto sauce”. And even if you say, “can I have a bunch of tomAHto sauce, they will give you two packets.

Ice cream is way better. Probably worse for you, but it’s so creamy and thick. Ice cream cones at McDonald’s are only 30 cents. I have had several

There apparently isn’t really an Ozone here, so sun burns happen a lot easier. A lot of people will say, “Oh I don’t really get burned”. They always get burned

nice timing

This week has been the hardest since I’ve been gone. I haven’t been homesick up to this point but I have felt it pretty good this week. It has been cool though because there has been several different times this week when someone has come up to me and said something real nice and it kind of brings me back into a comfort. That is good. Life is good. I am going camping this weekend with some other guys and it will be raaaaad.

how dare you

so a few days ago I spoke of how much joy I had holding small kittens…………..and it was truly great. Kittens brought so much joy to me that day. Too bad it was ruined by whoever made these pictures.

 I want to punch whoever keeps making these in the face.

you ruined the cuteness of kittens

living conditions

this is what my flat looks like. I made it kind of confusing, kind of on purpose. If you try hard you’ll be able to figure it out. Like a game.

Don’t be confused by the mattresses on the floor. That’s where three of my roommates and I sleep, I am not really sure why we do. Originally it was because that’s where the air conditioning was and it felt really nice but now we found out that air conditioning is too expensive. It makes for some cool conversations. Sometimes we play catch. Pretty much the only purpose my bedroom serves is a dressing room/closet.

happy

Last night I went to a birthday party and I got to hold kittens and I was stoked.

Planes, rough neighborhoods and airport terminals. How I got to Aust

I have lived in Australia for six weeks now and it has already been a pretty intense six weeks that has seemed more like 3 months. For you who don’t know, I had a pretty good amount of trouble getting to Sydney. I was lucky enough to get a buddy pass from a friend who is a pilot for United airlines, which means I get a really cheap ticket, but have to do some things that normal revenue passengers don’t. One of the extras a buddy pass flier has to deal with is flying on standby, which is where I will begin telling my travel saga.

I was scheduled to leave Denver on the 21st of January, get to LA that night and fly out of LA to Sydney at 10:30 that night. On the 21st arrived at the airport with my Bass, two 50lb suitcases and a carry on, just to find out the flight to LA was over-booked and, being a stand by passenger, that there wasn’t a chance I would be able to make that flight. We drove home that night knowing the flights to LA looked better on the 23rd. I hung out for a day and a half in FoCo and on the 23rd we returned to DIA where I had no problem getting to LA. I had a couple hours in LA before my flight to Sydney that night so I sat in LAX terminal 74 for about four hours. 9:00pm rolled around and I started getting very excited.

I have told this story to a lot of people, so it’s not very fun to tell again but what ended up happening was I couldn’t make it on that flight that night so I had to call a relative of some friends that live near LAX at about 11:30pm and see if it was okay to stay at their house. We worked it out to where I could ride a shuttle bus from the airport to a hotel in El Segundo(made famous by “A tribe called quest” where Q-tip left his wallet). which is only a 30 second walk from these peoples house. I arrived at the hotel close to 1:00am where aunt Wahyu, who was honestly one of the nicest people I’ve ever met, met me and showed me to her house. She fed me and we talked for a little. At one point in our conversation Aunt Wahyu looked at the clock, noticed it was about 1:30am and went over to the front door and ever so calmly jammed a chair under the knob. She walked back over to the area we were talking like nothing happened. Meanwhile I am having a miniature panic attack thinking my life is in danger and looking around the kitchen for a big knife or sharp umbrella or something I could use for defense. Apparently El Segundo is a pretty rough neighborhood, even compared to G-town aka Fort Collins.

This was me in my room at the house

For the next four nights I would load up my belongings around 7:00pm and catch the bus from the hotel to the airport, get my stand-by ticket, wait through security, sit in terminal 74 for 2hours(thank you arrested development), find out there was no way I would be able to get on the flight, watch the flight take off and then catch the bus back to the hotel, return to the house and go to bed. After four days of this routine, I began getting very hopeless and confused. My parents and I decided to look at other options of getting to Sydney. We ended up changing my LA-Sydney flight to LA-Honolulu because we found a relatively cheap Honolulu-Sydney flight. I got on the flight to Honolulu no problem, spent 13 hours in the Honolulu airport and on tuesday, January 29th, I landed in Sydney, the happiest boy in the world.

A lot has happened since then also, but really I would be surprised if 5% of the people that start reading this post actually finish it because it is the size of Texas and about as interesting. Ooooooh shoot, in your stupid face Texas. So yeah, maybe you enjoyed that. If you did let me know.

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