Morning Time in Bangalore 5:39 AM

So I have done very well waking up in the morning here in Bangalore.  For those of you who know me, you know that that has always been a big task for me to accomplish.  I like my sleep, A LOT.  But here are some of the activities that we do in the morning that make it hard to sleep in.  

First of all we wake up at 6ish.  this is what i saw this morning when i woke up:

Yes thats right, THREE monkeys sitting on our porch.  Robby fed them some bananas and those little rascals didnt leave for at least thrity minutes waiting for us to give them another banana.  they kept looking through the windows and see our bananas then looking directly at us.  it was a great site to wake up to.  

once i was awake i took a shower and made breakfast, we left the apartment.  out the door, down the elevator 5 floors, and walk outside and you get this:

this is our compound and what it looks like on the inside.  it is like a big square ring where you get apartments that look out and then some that look in.  we look out and see trees and other buildings and im happy.  the inside is pretty but not as nice. we then walk out of the compound to our bustop which is right outside our compound and we have to be there by 8am, or else the bus driver gets mad (trust me, we know!):

And theres the bus.  its a great A/C bus:

There's about 10, maybe 15 people on it everymorning.  and this bus is a special HP bus that only picks up HP employees.  when we get to our work there are about 5-7 other buses also that come from all over to drop off HP employees.  i think our buses are some of the nicest.  

That is a morning in Bangalore.  sights to see, animals to play with, food to eat, and buses to catch.  all that within 2.5 hours.  we usually make it to work around 8:30 and have about a half an hour to check our emails and facebook before we have to start work at 9am.  so if i sleep in i miss out on a lot of things.  plus who would want to live in India and sleep all day.  

Not Me

A: is home B: is work

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Bangalore Storms 5:51 AM

So i know you all probably want a good introduction post to Bangalore before i do this but right now all i have are pictures of this crazy storm that came in and blew really hard on sunday night.  storms like these used to come into africa and they were crazy looking.  i tried to capture them well but the crazy thing is that there are no mountains around here, so a storm cloud with wind can whip across the earth pretty quickly.  what i like the most is when you see the cloud from far off because all it looks like is a huge black death cloud coming at you.  sort of how i pictured the last section of the Lord of the Rings trilogy where Sauron releases all his armies and they are preceeded by a blackness.  these storms look like that and then about 30 seconds to a minute before they hit you will feel a cold wind come and then all of the sudden it is raining, and storming, and lightning everywhere.  it is great!!  these pictures were taken from our apartment.  and don't worry there will be more pictures of the apartment also.

my Workplace 6:43 AM

ok so im sorry that i have not updated in the last couple of days. i have been very busy with adapting and getting things ready for today, which was my first day of work. for those of you who don't know im working at Hewlett Packard for the summer in Bangalore, India. I'm working in the Imaging and Printing Department working on the firmware for the inkjet line of printers that HP has.  

today was my first day and i pretty much went through orientation all day and did a little researching on how the system works here. im very excited. i have a corporate email address and i feel like quite the business man. i'm working on the 6th floor in an HP building that is 9 levels high which for bangalore is quite high and i have an almost window office which is quite good if i stand up the window is less than fifteen feet from me. today there was a thunderstorm that blew by and i didnt get wet. it was great. 

im living in a service apartment which is very nice. the features include three bedrooms, three baths, a kitchen with a fridge, microwave, something like a george foreman grill, a two burner stove, and a washer machine. the living room includes a flat screen television, and a surround system and soon to be wireless internet i hope. i am currently at the office. i am staying after a little to post this and check me emails because it is fast and free and the power does not go off here like in other places of this city. i hope to get some pictures up tomorrow after work so please be sure and check back soon.

Paris in 24 Hours 3:53 PM

i started out on tuesday flying ealry in the morning to atlanta.  There i met up with my intern partner robby parker.  he had already been outside the airport to travel around.  to my surprise Atlanta reminded me of Africa for one very plain detail.  all the residents i saw there working on positions in the airport were black.  i got onto the plane to go to paris and i was seated by two business looking men.  one was a native of Delhi, India and the other was on his way to Lagos, Nigeria working in the oil fields.  i was very excited for my position and i started conversing with each of them but after about an hour of talking with them and realizing that the plane hadnt even left yet i was questioning things.  i was listening to the concerned french pilot speak to his flight attendants and hearing that there was a problem with the fuel, i started to become concerned.  they had to evacuate everyone off the plane and we had to wait in the terminal to load back onto the flight.  well eventually our flight took off and was about a little over two hours late getting into paris.  so naturally most of the people with connecting flights had problems, including us.But this is when the fun started.  we talked to an agent in Paris and she gave us a free dinner and a free breakfast and a free nights stay at a local hotel called Campanile, which is located very close to the airport.  so we left the airport and got on the hotel shuttle and showed up here.  we got a little food and walked around the area before the shuttle came back to pick us up for the metro station.  these are some of the sights we saw:

we then came back to the hotel to catch our shuttle and our adventure of paris continued in the downtown district.  we saw sacre coeur after battling a thunderstorm:

after sacre coeur we continued and found some of the best looking views ever.  c'etait tout magnifique.

Cimbing in Rock Canyon 7:57 PM

so me and my roommates being bored and living in provo without really having a place to live decided to go rock climbing all day on monday. we took off to Rock Canyon which is a local canyon that is very close to BYU campus and went climbing. these are some of the pictures. i happened to forget my shoes so i belayed all day. the day was full of some intense and dangerous moments but all of us came out of the day, healthy and a better understanding of what the end of the rope looks like.

Squaw Peak 12:53 AM

most people think of squaw peak as a make out point. we like to think of it as a different type of adventure.

Jackson for Conference 12:49 AM

this year we decided not to stay in the salt lake valley for General Conference and we took off for jackson hole so that we could watch all five sessions on bradleys big screen. the group included mallory and bradley, me and kelly, and then our legendary fifth wheel llyr. we had a great time and it was beautidul both days that we were up there.