Wallace Family

Michelle and I were talking about what a fun weekend we had and we both agreed that it was basically a perfect weekend. We got to spend lots of time with lots of our friends and the weather was perfect! The weather was so nice in fact that I think it kind of caught a lot of us off guard. (blog continued below pictures)

The temperature kind of skipped the 50's, 60's and 70's and jumped right up to the 80's and 90's. It feels like I have been waiting forever for it be warm enough outside to not need a big jacket. Well that is definitely not a problem anymore! On Friday there was a Elder's Quorum BBQ at Green Lakes and everyone's families were invited. Everybody helped chip in to help bring stuff and it turned out amazing. There was so much great food and an amazing turnout. Those of us who could still run after eating multiple burgers and hot dogs played ultimate frisbee. This BBQ is one of my favorite experiences here in Syracuse. On Saturday we went to a really beautiful State Park that some of our friends told us about. It is called Chittenango Falls. There is a nice waterfall, some easy hiking, and a fun little river to walk around in and cool off. We went with the Matthews and Jenny and Michelle did some very brave exploring walking upstream in the river barefoot. It was another amazing day outside and I can't think of any better way to have spent it. Finally on Sunday we had a great time hanging out with friends and again eating as much as we could handle of the amazing taco dinner that some of our friends organized. All in all the weather was perfect and we got to spend so much time outside and with our friends. Don't ask how but I somehow managed to write the final paper for one of my classes on Saturday as well.

Michelle and I wanted to go to a Chiefs game this weekend (the Chiefs are the AAA baseball team for the Washington Nationals). We were leaning towards going to the game yesterday until I saw on the schedule that today's game was sponsored by the Catholic Diocese and you could get free tickets form any of a number of sponsors (there stores, restaruants, etc). So I went to one of the restaurants yesterday morning after my class to ask them for some tickets and the guy was like, "How many do you want?" And I asked if I could have six, and he instead handed me a stack of 63 (I counted). So I started telling pretty much everyone I knew that I had enough free tickets for any one to come. It was pretty cool. It's AAA so its pretty high quality baseball and usually some of the players have been in the Majors but are down in AAA for one reason or another. The Chiefs won today so it was even more fun. It was an exciting game with a couple home runs and quite a bit of action. Me and one of my friends each paid a dollar to see how fast we could throw a baseball. There is video of me throwing a baseball. It is a lot harder than I thought...as you will see by how fast my pitch was.

This past Saturday night my friend Jenny and I had an Easter party for all of our friends. We started it out with an Easter egg hunt outside - you're never too old for that. Then we all dyed eggs and voted on the best ones. Chad made a "Charlie Brown" egg which he was quite proud of. His egg made it into the semi-final round for best decorated egg. We also had an "egg-smashing" tournament (Jenny's family tradition) where we counted to three and hit eggs together and the person with the egg with the most cracks was out. We kept going until 1 person was left. Chad made it pretty far in this contest too. Here is a video of when he finally got out. We had fun hanging out with all of our friends and eating lots of chocolate. Chad decided to be the Easter Bunny for the two of us this year. He hid plastic, candy-filled eggs for me to find when I woke up Sunday morning. He did a good job. It was fun.




Here is a video of Chad competing in the egg smashing contest.

Anyone who reads or follows the news at all will undoubtedly have heard that Obama wants to relax some of the U.S.'s policies with Cuba. I believe he right now just wants to relax the rules for Cuban American families and their visiting rights. I believe he plans on relaxing more than just that though in the months and years to come. I know many have speculated that by the end of his first term he will have restored all diplomatic relations with Cuba and allow normal trade. According to a poll released today by CNN, 7 out of 10 Americans are in favor of this normalization of relations with Cuba. There are a lot of people in the news and in Congress though that are very unhappy with the prospect of normalizing relations with Cuba. I know Senator Mel Martinez of Florida is a Cuban American and is very opposed to any of this. There are other congressmen and politicians that are also very against this. From what I can gather, and I have been trying very hard to understand this situation, many Cuban Americans (and a vocal minority of politicians, mostly Cuban Americans) are opposed to this because Cuba is a Communist regime and is clearly guilty of gross human rights violations. According to the Cuban Democracy Act of 1992, the U.S. continues its embargo against Cuba because of "human rights" and "democratic values." Many Cubans have been jailed unjustly and are treated poorly, probably worse than I can even imagine. Cubans are not free to pursue their interests. You can go to jail for five years for trying to connect to the internet. The organization Reporters Without Borders ranked Cuba the second biggest prison for reporters, second only to none other than....you guessed it...China. I have only scratched the surface of the human rights violations in Cuba and have only barely begun describing its oppressive communist government. But the point of this blog is not to rant against Cuba, it is to ask for someone to please explain to me why we do not hold countries like China to the same standard. Why do we not have an embargo agasint China? Why didn't we boycott the Olympics when they refused to hold up their end of the bargain and stop committing human rights violations? Let me briefly remind anyone reading this blog about how horrible China's oppressive communist government is. First off, many organizations including the U.S. State Department have documented China's human rights violations. For decades China has had a 'one child policy' which has resulted in abortions and infanticide. There is an outrageously unbalanced proportion between males and females in China because the one child policy often times leads the Chinese women to abort the baby if it is not a boy. I cannot even begin to describe how much this disgusts me. China leads the world in executions per year. In 2005, a member of the Chinese Congress announced that China executes around 10,000 people per year. Of course there is not religious freedom. Tax fraud and 67 other crimes are punishable by death in China. You could fill volumes writing about the treatment of rural and factory workers. I will leave it at that though. So why does the U.S. have this completely rigid economic and diplomatic policy with Cuba but nothing of the sort with China. Not only do we do business with China, they practically own us. I am barely exaggerating. China owns 24.07% of our debt which is 739.6 billion dollars. The U.S. would go bankrupt if China did not continue to buy our debt and give us loans. In addition to the national debt, we do import from China. I am guessing most things in my apartment are from China since I do most of my shopping at retail stores. Don't get me wrong, I like the cheap prices at the retail stores, I wouldn't want to change that, I am just trying to illustrate the inconsistency of trading and doing business with China but not Cuba. Both countries are oppressive and guilty of human rights violations. From what I can gather it appears that China is worse. If nothing else China certainly is performing the human rights violations on a much larger scale because of how big of a country they are. Our secretary of state routinely visits China, we do business with them, they own a quarter of our debt and could call on it at any time, we participated in the olympics there, etc etc etc....but we will not have even trade with Cuba or normalize relations? I am genuinely asking for someone to explain to me why. I have found this topic to be very interesting but I still have not found any satisfying answers. The only answers I have found is that 1. Cuba is so close to the US that it is embarrassing that they wont let us influence or change them. 2. Many Cuban Americans living in the U.S. have negative feelings (for obvious reasons) towards Cuba and do not want to normalize relations with Cuba because they hate Cuba so much. This small but vocal minority of Americans located mostly in Florida are represented in Congress by people who keep up the fight to not normalize relations with Cuba to satisfy their constituents, which is their job. 3. We cannot afford to not do business with China but we can hold out (on principle?) on Cuba? That's about the worst reason I can think of...This has been a very long blog and has been somewhat political. I don't like to write about politics in our blog but this topic is something I am genuinely looking for answers to so I thought I'd open it up to others.

One of my really good friends started a weekly "Thankful Thursday" post on her blog and I thought it was a great idea. Thanks Claire!

This week I'm thankful for:

1. An amazing husband who not only regularly volunteers to help me make dinner and do the dishes, but even had a yummy dinner waiting for me when I got home from work today!

2. The warm weather is coming back and it was so sunny today!

3. The old man who was a patient in my office today who had made everyone's day and had everyone happy by the time he left (a nice change from lots of our regular patients)!

4. The good friends we have here to celebrate Easter with!

I just found out about this today after doing some reading, it is really too funny or ironic or coincidental or scary or something. From the years 1990 to 2000, the president of Peru (where I served my mission) was named Alberto Fujimori. Like most Peruvian Presidents, he had many scandals and severe problems during his presidency. During his presidency, he performed a coup on his own country's congress to get rid of opposition, he went through a scathing bitter divorce and he consequently named his eldest daughter 'First Lady,' through changes in the constitution and some finagling with the courts he ran for and won a third term as president even though the constitution was only allowed two terms, and he was essentially exiled from the country during his third term when the legislature performed a vote of no confidence while he was abroad in Brunei (so he just never went home and insted moved to Tokyo where he had dual citizenship). He never tried to go back to Peru until 2005 when for some narcissistic reason he thought he might have a shot at the upcoming presidential election. So he flew in to South America thorugh Chile, I suppose in an effort to 'test the waters' of his political viability (he couldn't just go straight to Peru because there were all kinds of warrants out for his arrest for all kinds of mony embezzlement i think). To make a long story short, he was convicted today of human rights violations from acts committed during his presidecny and sentenced to 25 years. Oh yeah I should mention one more thing...his slogan in 1990 was 'Change,' and he won the presidency primarily out of disgust with the then current preisdent Alan Garcia. You could say it was something of a referendum on the Garcia presidencia (haha, I really typed that on accident-I mean presidency). Sound familiar? Ironically, there was controversy over whether Fujimori was born in Peru Japan. There were conflicting stories and reports from the embassies and stuff like that. While I was in Peru a lot of people beleived he was not actually born in Peru and therefore would not constiutionally be eligible to be president (just like in the U.S.). Alright here is where it actually gets funny: Alan Garcia was actually able to win back the presidency after all the Fujimori scandal and Fujimori eventually leaving the country (Garcia is currently the president). So if this pattern hold true for our country, which it would seem it could because of all the parallel characteristics, Geroge W. Bush will run for and win back the White House in 2016 after Barack Obama has been in for two and possibly part of a third term. OK I am just kidding and I don't think there is actually any way that could ever happen in a million years, but I thought it would be funny to wright about.

Despite the fact that it snowed and rained all day today here in Syracuse, the weather is getting much warmer generally speaking. Most of the days are warm enough now to want to spend time outside and perhaps even wear shorts and sandals occasionally. To emphasize just how warm it is now, I actually had to sleep with the fan on me the whole night last night. Our apartment stays pretty warm though. Some of our friends here in Syracuse cannot believe that we never used the heater in our apartment. We absorbed a lot heat from the people below and to the sides of our apartment...kind of like when we lived in Utah. That reminds me of a funny story from when we lived in Utah. One night in the middle of the winter it was so hot in our apartment (again, from all the heat we absorbed from our neighbors. we had people above, below, and on both sides). I literally could not sleep. I think it was like 1 or two in the morning and I was going to go to Wal-Mart to buy a fan but Michelle said I just needed to tough it out for the night. It was miserable. Keep in mind that this is the middle of the winter, it was probably like 10 degrees outside in the middle of the night. So to cool off and be able to fall asleep I opened our window and laid down on the ground up against the wall and let the cold air blow on me. Somehow Michelle and I always end up in apartments that have quirky little things about them. Well, we have only lived in two so far since we have been married but so far they have all had funny characteristics.

I started a rape aggression defense (self-defense for women) class on Tuesday. It is once a week for three hours a night and there are 4 nights. Several of my friends had taken it and said good things about it, and it was free so I thought I would try it. I love it! The point of the class is to teach you some skills to help you get away from a dangerous situation - just get in a few good hits and run as soon as your attacker is down or caught off guard. It is a lot of fun and very educational. Tuesday was my first class. There are only 6 girls in the class and three teachers so we get a lot of help and practice. We learned 3 different "defense" stances, 4 kinds of strikes, 3 different kicks, and 2 blocks. We practiced blocking as the instructors tried to hit us (with pads). It was a little intimidating at first, but they started out slow and I did well. We practiced all our kicks and strikes on pads that they were holding. I went home with red, swollen, and cracked knuckles - worth it though. We also learned that it is very important to be vocal. We have to yell "No!" every time we hit, kick, block, etc. Yelling is important because it attracts attention, warns your attacker, and makes it easier for you to keep breathing in such an intense situation. At the end of the class one of our instructors is going to wear a padded suit and helmet and actually attack us in several different scenarios. We will use what we learned to try to fight him off and get away. This will be a really good practice and probably kind of scary. My friends said you adrenaline really kicks in when he rushes to attack you and you just start doing what you learned and fighting back. It's a great class so far and I would recommend it to anyone. 1 out of 3 women in this country are raped, so it never hurts to be prepared. Hopefully though I will never need to use any of this. The picture on the left is of the simulation on the last day of class - the full body black suit is what the attacker will be wearing (or something similar). I'll get to wear the helmet, knee pads, and gloves.