AMURCA

Now that it's been a full week since the Fourth of July I thought I should get off my lazy butt and be proactive.  Except I write sitting down, and I'm not sure if blogging is proactive.

Ha jokes are funny. 

Ok, so I consider myself a pretty legit BYU student now.  I've been here for a couple of years and I'm used to the whole mormon student environment, but this is the first summer I stayed in Utah.  Which means I got to experience Independence Day in good ole' Provo.

I started off the holiday with the Provo Fourth of July parade which is supposed to be a big deal or something.  People were starting to claim their spots by the road at noon the day before.  Let me repeat, THE DAY BEFORE.  People love an excuse to camp out on the streets.  You can joke all you want, but Mormons have to be pretty crazy to voluntarily sleep on cement--while sober.

So yeah, we didn't camp out, but we left around 7:30am.

Look how happy we are.

The parade was pretty cool...I guess.  There were a lot of high school bands which is cool...I guess.  Oh gosh, but the girls who twirl those flags had gosh-awful uniforms.  Normally their uniforms are hideous like this:

If band kids wonder why we make fun of them, this is just one reason. 

Yeah, so those are bad, but for some reason Utahns think that in order to be modestly dressed, they have to be ugly.  Or in this case, uglier.  All these poor girls were decked out in like leggings and long dresses while they twirled their flags.  I should have taken more pictures, but I didn't want to break my camera.

Just another way to make high school a horrible experience.

Ok I'm done bashing the band kids.  Now I'm going to bash the pageant girls.  I never realized how many freaking beauty pageants Utah had until I went to the parade and saw all the girls for every. single. city.  And don't get me wrong, I respect a lot of those girls.  If I were to compete in a pageant I'd have to suddenly become really talented at something, lose fifteen pounds, and grow five inches solely in my legs.  But once the sixth float of pageant girls with their blonde hair and white smiles went by, I got a little disgusted.  Also, if I see another Beautifully Modest dress with cap sleeves I'm going to hurt someone.  But not really, because I'd have to hurt a lot of people.  The thing is, you can wear a modest dress without the whole cap sleeves thing.  Modesty doesn't mean looking like a clone of every other Mormon girl in Utah.

No! I will not allow this post to become a rant.  Moving on to this awesome motorcycle gang.

I'm just curious with where they bought those pants.  Actually, the wife probably sewed them.

So this motorcycle group is pretty adorable.  They all have to have temple recommends because their destinations are the temples across the country.  MORMONS.

The most popular people in the parade were the Provo missionaries.  But seriously--they got the loudest cheers by far.

No sarcastic comment here.  Mucho respect for missionaries.

Then the parade was over and we went home.  That night I got to see more missionaries, because I never get holidays off at the MTC.  I also had to work night custodial, so I ended up watching the fireworks from the church parking lot outside of the MTC.  On the plus side, I got two free Magnum bars for working.  Which were also the only special food I got on the Fourth of July.  COLLEGE.

Oh, and I rediscovered some really attractive pictures I took on photobooth while I was bored.  Enjoy.

Try not to be jealous.