Award Winners

Hey Y'all Provo Enthusiasts,

Greetings from Los Angeles, "home of the diverse... even when you don't want it to be." I am loving Los Angeles- I have really made it my home. All that I really had to do to make it home was to simply arrive at the conclusion that I wasn't going to miss Provo anymore. To be candid, I don't miss Provo. Not at all. I do miss my friends in Provo, but the intense pressure for me to date, get married, and just act like a Mormon is completely gone.

With this stated, I am grateful for all the love you have sent my way since BYU started its Fall semester. It has been great to receive texts from you all and to hear how much you miss me. I am grateful I have such friends. So grateful in fact I have decided to give you guys awards.

                                                                   
Best Documentation of a Relationship on Instagram 
             Andy Romney & Chelsea Livermore

"Amazing," "astounding," & "unbelievable" are just a few of the adjectives used by critics to describe the ferocity with which the two of these individuals have posted pictures on Instagram. Thanks to Instagram, there has never been a question in my mind whether or not my cousin and my future cousin were still together. Whether it was the two of them swimming in the Cherry Village pool, taking a trip to California, or just walking around Provo, I always knew exactly where the two of them were and what they were doing.

(Runner Up: Alex McDonell and His Skateboard)

First Phone Response

Samantha J. Topham 

This award was a tough one to give out. Between Jake Balser, Samantha Topham, and the rotting corpse of my Grandma Pingree it was a virtual toss up. However, after sending off eight consecutive text messages and three phone calls without the slightest iota of a response, I decided that if I was going into cardiac arrest I'd just say "Screw Life Alert, I am calling Sam Topham."

Best Boiled Chicken 

Jason M. DeLange 

The thing I may miss most about not living in Provo is coming home to fresh aroma of partially thawed chicken. No sweeter smell has ever graced the olfactory senses than that of Jason's chicken. 

Happy Birthday to Kelsey Page!

Kelsey-
Not only do you get your very own blog post on my blog, but I am also going to get Google Reader just so I can follow your WordPress blog.

Two Decade Man

I'm officially a two-decade man. You may be wondering, "what the F does that mean?" Well I'll tell you. For quite some time this girl in Teach For America has been after me. This in itself is a rare and isolated occurence. However, the strangest thing about this girl is that she is no girl at all. She is a fully grown woman. She has a child by the name of Domminick who turns 14 in September. How old is she? I'm not sure, but this may give a clue as to how old she really is. She told me that she was in the same hotel Tupac was staying in the night he was killed.  And she was in college then... Meanwhile, I was in Ms. Drake's kindergarten class and I had just mastered using the toilet unassisted. This screenshot is also another example that shows her age.

Notice the xoxoxo's. I thought texting killed that. 

Now let's be objective about this. She's pretty good-looking, in a "soccer mom" kind of way. I'm cool with it. Anyway, shes been wanting to go out with me for a while now. I finally said yes. We got Indian food, and it was fun. She was way interesting. She told me that she graduated in 1991. This is big news for me. This means that I now have a 20-year spread on dates. 

Bloggers, from here on out you can refer to me as Veinte, Dos Decades, or the Berlin Wall.

Until next time, may my spread increase. 

Rojo 1991-2011

P.S. She told me that she was 37 but I personally think she's shaving off a couple of years to impress me. 

Markhem

My first week of teaching has finished, and to be candid with you the stories that I have from my classroom have really been quite a letdown . I am teaching at Markhem Middle School in Watts. The school is surrounded by four of the largest projects in Los Angeles, one of them being the second largest this side of the Mississippi. When a friend of mine googled Markhem Middle School, the first article that showed up had this opening “even in the most challenging of economic times, many unemployed teachers would rather remain jobless than teach in one of the harshest environments.”

The lack of scholarly expectation for this school created a high expectation for stories to be told within my mind. Sadly this has not been the case yet.  The students in my mind are too well-behaved. They are too obedient, and they are too boring. My first week on the job has been relatively boring. I mean there was  John Williams III (da third) who wants to go to college, have a wife and kids, and own a house. When I further pushed and questioned John about his future profession he said "naw Mr. Evans I got that figured out… After college I’m gonna bag groceries at Wal-Mart." For the most part, the stories of these children have been rather dull and boring.

           
While there has been a relative lack of excitement in regard to the drama in my students' lives, there is no durth in the troubles that they face. There are about five kids in my seventh grade Pre-Algebra class who haven’t the slightest clue how to perform the times tables. One kid even used a freaking numberline. I have about three kids reading on grade level, the rest are behind a grade or two, and there are about three who have a first or second grade reading level.

The saddest part about all of this is that these students are in the magnet program of the school. They are the scholars of Markhem Elementary. I hope they can succeed and I hope that I can help them, but I will be dead honest- can one teacher really change the life of all thirty of his students? I’d like to believe so and I want to work towards that, but I’m not sure it can happen.

My greatest fear is failing to give up as much as I reasonably can for these children.  I always feel like I can do better and I always feel that I can do more to help. We will have to see how everything works out. I hope it will go well.

Honeymoon Mixtape

It's official! I'm engaged!
You may be thinking to yourself, "I didn't even know that Rom was dating anyone... I'm such a crappy friend."

Well I have news for you...

Steph Adams has responded to three of my texts in a row!  This is big. This is the biggest thing ever to happen in our relationship. I consider ourselves to be madly in love. I'm sure she feels the same way and if she doesn't then she will soon.

I didn't believe it when others told me previously, but being engaged is so hard. The temptations are just so great. It's a good thing that Steph is in Arizona and I am in Utah, or I don't think we would be having a temple marriage.

Our wedding will be in the Mesa, Arizona Temple in July... I've always wanted to be a July groom.

Since the wedding is so close, I have done a lot of planning. I'm letting Steph plan the wedding. Right now I am planning the mix tape for our honeymoon. 



 
Here it is

This remake of the Beach Boys "Wouldn't it be Nice" will really set the mood.

This is Steph's favorite band so I guess I will have to bite my lower lip and suffer through a track or two. 

But here is where the night takes a turn for the awesome...

Nothing says love like  Richard Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries."









 (at about minute two is where a naked RoJo gets up and starts conducting an imaginary orchestra)

This one speaks for itself 

I hope you have enjoyed this musical journey as much as I have...

Indiana Rom

Introducing Jason DeLange, CFO of My Blog

As you are all aware, I recently added my roommate Nate Moorhead as the official editor of the "Rom's Greetings From" blog. It's been a wonderful time having him here, and I think that he really has influenced the blog for good, even though I feel that some of you enjoyed my terrible punctuation and even worse syntax.

                Since having an editor has been such a positive change for my blog, I have decided that I need to appoint a chief financial operator for my blog as well. Fellow followers, I hope you give a warm welcome to our new CFO: my other roommate, viz. Jason Michael DeLange. What a joyous time this is for all of us.

                Now you all may be thinking to yourselves, "Rom why the heck would a blog with only thirty followers and no advisers need a chief financial officer, isn’t that completely superfluous?"  To which I say, “fellow readers, my blog needs a CFO like a heart needs a beat; it's not at all superfluous.” Well, besides the fact that Jason has been nagging me to make him the chief financial officer.
I will now give you six jobs that my CFO will perform for me.

1.     Complain about how the apartment stinks right after pan-frying unthawed chicken that has been freezer burned since you moved into the apartment.

2.     Keep you up all night as you hear him having a one-way conversation about who knows what.

3.     Frantically call and text you to come home "right now" because he really needs to talk to you. Only to find out he wants to know if he should text some girl he’s interested in today or tomorrow.

4.     Wake you up every morning at 7:00 a.m. with bagpipes for his alarm.

5.     Occupy the TV you bought to watch shows you're not interested in.

6.     Be such a good enough friend that you're able to overlook steps 1-5 and still love him all the same.  

So, readers, it is for these reasons and many others that I need and will now have an official chief financial officer for my blog.  You’ll be a natural, Jason.

Beantown

Dear Family,
          Greetings from Boston, "where the weather is almost as poor as people's sense of style." Boston has a proud Irish heritage. For nearly one hundred fifty years Boston has been a place of refuge for one of the most persecuted people ever to make it across the Atlantic. Bostonians are proud of this heritage. Catholic churches litter the city. Pubs are found on every block. Even Boston's basketball team is named the Celtics. Indeed, the apple that is Boston does not fall far from the Irish tree.

          Perhaps the greatest thing that Bostonians and the Irish have in common is that the citizens of both areas have no idea how to dress. That was one of the first things that I noticed when I reached Ireland. Everyone in that country had a polo shirt that looked like it came straight off the racks at Salvation Army, coupled with a pair of tattered jeans. It was not the prettiest of sights. I am glad that people don't dress like this in most of the states.
          Relief from fashion faux pas did not come to me when I returned from Ireland and reached the shores of America. Boston has been rather unkind to me in that sense. I got on the T and immediately felt like I was back in Ireland. The same exact outfits were worn. I have hope that Utah will be better to me, but who knows, maybe I've missed the start of a terrible craze.
          Although I may dress well (some, like my editor, would say very well), I have little room to talk about trying to save money. Saving money has become an addiction for me on this trip. I just hate spending money especially when I feel like it is not my own money to spend. This disorder has caused me to do a great number of stupid things, e.g. missing an opportunity to look at the inside of Westminster Abbey and not viewing Paris from atop the Arc Du Triumph.
          I must admit, missing the Arc Du Triumph and Westminster Abbey pales in comparison to what I did today. As you are well aware from previous emails, I have also become an advocate of going on free tours of cities. I just love it. So much so that I googled free tours of Boston and saw that there was a freedom trial tour that was going to start this afternoon at 2:00. So I rode the T into the city, ate lunch with Johnny Palmer and then tried to find this so-called "free tour." Unfortunately for me, I was unable to locate the tour this afternoon. However, when I am on a trip I do not fret; rather, I improvise.

Today was by no means an exception to my improvisation. I looked around Freedom Park for a tour to join. Occasionally, men and women dressed in outfits from the 1700s would lead elementary and middle school students on a tour. Now, since I have graduated from college, I feel more like an adult. And because I feel like an adult, I don't believe that it would be too absurd to believe that I have a kid. I didn't even think it would be that out-of-the-question for me to have a child in eighth grade, so I decided to pose as a father and join a tour of eighth graders.

          For the first two stops of the tour I was pretty confident that no one noticed that I was just a cheap, twenty-three-year-old college graduate, but to be safe I stayed in the back of the pack and tried to hide behind the biggest eighth grader (who happened to be half a foot shorter than me). As the tour progressed, however, the tour guide began to make some strange announcement in a British accent (which he put on in an attempt to make the tour more realistic). "Remember my Yankee school children, this tour is private and for John Hancock Middle School mates only." The man would then look straight at me and I would quickly divert my eyes from his harsh glare in an attempt to remain on the tour. This exchange continued until we reached Paul Revere's grave, when the Redcoat looked straight at me, and said in a perfectly American voice, "leave."
          Well that's pretty much it for me. My trip has been amazing. I have a layover in Phoenix for a couple of hours, and I'm gonna try to use my charm to see if one of the people at the gates will allow me to postpone my flight until later so that I can catch the Dodgers and Diamondbacks at Chase Field. #pipedream
I love you all and thanks for being my audience.