Des Moines. What's Des Moines?

I would first like to say that being engaged, even long distance, is really great and I highly recommend it when you get the chance.

I am on day three of my Wells Fargo-funded training trip to Des Moines, Iowa. I have the difficult choice tonight of either accompanying the more raucous of the group to see one of our classmates fight in a scheduled bar fight (think Robert Downey, Jr. style in Sherlock Holmes but with girls in bikinis nearby), or to accompany the conservative girls (another Mormon, a Muslim and a recent divorcee) and the one femme male to the mall. Hmmm. Tough choice but I think I know what I should do.

Aside from all the enlightening sales skills I'm being indoctrinated with, I'm experiencing a bit of culture shock. Not for the area itself but for the popular pastimes among my WFF peers. Like drinking. Swearing every other word. Gossiping. Talking trash about other people, particularly one of our more loud-mouthed classmates. And this is all normal outside of Utah. Is it? Or are these people excited to be away from home and still in the "Don't tell mom" phase? I, at an old 24, am particularly glad my perpetual adolescence ended long ago, or really never began.

The word is out around here that my coworker and I are Mormon. We've had many questions, mainly about the Word of Wisdom. Answering inquiries on alcohol and tea is easy. But really now, what do you tell people when they ask why we don't drink coffee? With people on my mission, "Because the Lord said so, seek your own answer," was often good enough for coffee and tea. It doesn't work when you're talking to coffee-guzzling twenty-somethings who want concrete facts. I need to figure this out. Today my new Philadelphian friend Bobby asked me, "So since you're Mormon, you don't use machines, right?" Our table of six had a great laugh about that. How frequently we are still confused with our Amish brethren. And Mennonites. But we are among good company in that regard.

I miss the mountains.