I remember at 23

I remember at 23 having a few weeks where I was basically homeless. The contract for my apartment that summer ran out before I had to be in Mexico to student teach. Leaving me homeless. So I decided to take advantage of the situation.

First I took Elena to a BYU football game. Somehow she had been my roommate for over two years and I hadn’t gotten her to a football game yet. When she told work that her roommate was making her go to a football game they rightly guessed I’m from Texas.

After the game that weekend I took a Greyhound bus from Provo to Vernal and spent several days with Grandpa Giles. I’m really glad I did that. Then it was another Greyhound back to Salt Lake and a flight to El Paso to stay with some friends for a few days before going to Mexico.

When I left Mexico I did some more homeless wanderings. I spent a few more days in El Paso. While there I spoke in the ward I attended in high school, I went to visit some high school teachers, and I attended a session at the Ciudad Juárez temple. Then I flew to Houston for about a week.

My brother had come back from Brasil and I hadn’t seen him in almost two years, so it was great to spend some time with him. He found a friend whose floor I could sleep on (hi Montreal Zen!), that was memorable meeting her, and set me up with a trip to Johnson Space Center for a day. Which was very much awesome for me. We went to some museums and saw the cow statues too. We thought about getting me set up to perform with the MOB that weekend for their football game but decided against it. We went to a hockey game and randomly ran into my neighbors from my apartment at BYU at the game and then after the game lost the car (we knew where it was, we didn’t know where we were).

When I finally got to my parents’ we drove back to Texas, Waco this time, for Thanksgiving as a family.

It was a lot of suitcase living the first half of my 23rd year, but it was a lot of fun too.