Basketball Frenzy

The highlight of this past week has been our University's basketball tournament. It's a pretty big deal here and very competitive. Both of us got asked to play on the international team. Both of our teams ended up in second place! The tournament took place outdoors on an asphalt court. Playing in this tournament gives a whole new meaning to street ball! We felt the referees needed to watch the NBA a little more. We learned quickly that what is supposed to be a jump ball is a foul, a clean block is sometimes a foul so the person doesn't get embarrassed or loose face. (A lot of these rules don't make much sense but so does a lot of things here :) With all that being said we still had an awesome time and will feel pretty sore for the next week!!

Here's a picture of John extremely happy about his tres leches cake! Our sister in law Sara was so kind to send us everything we needed to make tres leches cake! Thank you so much Sara it was tasty!!!

First Week of Fall

It's really starting to cool down over here. Today was a high of 52 and it's gloomy outside. Good day to snuggle up in a sweat shirt with a hot cup of tea, don't you think? School officially back up in session. We have more afternoon classes than we'd like, but our teachers all seem great. We're taking anywhere from 14-16 hours this semester - haven't quite decided if we wanna take Listening or not yet. For sure we'll take Speaking and Comprehension. It's a bit of a lighter load than last semester, but we wanna try to focus on some self study as well.

We have had some fun these last few weeks with some friends. One friend had a birthday this week and we had an "Apple" theme. Crazy, but fun. We made apple cake and another girl made apple crisp. We drank apple juice and even bobbed for apples. Here's John with his prize. Dana found out she isn't as good as she thought she'd be at it - with her big mouth Harper genes and all. Second time, though, she got it with no problem. Apple bobbing is actually quite disgusting (something that you don't really notice as a child). All the saliva and bubbles from other peoples mouths and all. It was quite entertaining to watch people trying to get the apples, but being very careful not to drink the water that was from the tap. Who wants to get Giardia?

Some more of our friends threw a Mexican party with a homemade pinata and all. It was indestructable. Double bagged! We eventually got to the candy and all but the starburst was mutillated!

We thought we'd include a couple pictures of last month since last month was more photogenic than this month. Here we are at a nearby city on a wonderful historical sight. It was so green and beautiful there.

Friends and Family

We are in the middle of our summer break and we had some friends and family come thousands of miles to visit us. It was such a joy and blessing. We got to go with them to a nearby city for some vacation time. We don't have too many American or "western" food resturaunts in our city so when we go to a bigger and more modern city, we mean business. We have some pictures below for you. Enjoy!

Us on a montain in the big city.

The Bird's Nest! Despite the heat (92 degrees with 90% humidity) it was awesome to visit the olympic stadium.

Dana and her dad. Good looks runs in the family!

Caution: The picture below may not be suitable for anyone.

Thats right...Scorpions and Seahorses (now we have seen it all). John couldn't bring himself to eat any but Dana's dad and Morris ate 2 scorpions each!! The thing about it is that they are still alive, they deep fry them and you eat them whole. I hear the stingers make good toothpicks. Overall we had a fun and relaxing time!

Dana's dad came this weekend to visit for 2 weeks. It has been SOOOOO great to get to see him and spend some good quality time with him. He came with some good friends of ours too. In the picture here at a massage place, he's the one with the peace sign! It's been a hoot hanging out with them so far. At the end of his time we are going to have some fun sight-seeing, eating, and shopping in the capital. The most exciting thing in that city is probably Starbucks. Sounds shallow? You try living without it for over 3 months. Instant coffee just isn't the same.

Along with Dana's dad came lots and lots of goodies, gifts, and awesomeness from loving family back home. My dad's back needed the good asian massage, and maybe another, for toting all the heavy gifts across the globe for us. Pictured left is Dana making-out with Rotel (which is time consuming to make from scratch and just not the same). Thanks for packing them mom - along with everything else! Pictured right is John having fun with his new Cities of Knights game (Dana really does think he has some type of OCD with this game).

Now that summer break is FINALLY here, we have had more time to fix up the house some. Dana has hemmed our bedroom drapes and made dinning room curtains out of bed sheets (you can see a little of those behind her picture kissing the Rotel). Our bathroom was one of the biggest projects. You see... we are lucky enough to have a shower... more like a shower head. There is no shower. The water simply sprays on the vinyl floor and heads to the other side of the bathroom under the sink to the drain. First, John put a shower cutain up to prevent splashing all over the toilet, sink, towels, what have you. Then we scrubbed the walls and floor - which didn't seem to help much. John did cover up some of the sickness with fresh calking - pictured here. After that he rigged a barrier so the water will flow behind the toilet to the drain. A channel if you will. Now Dana can do her hair and makeup while John showers without shower shoes and we can step out onto a dry rug! It's really the little things in life we should be thankful for, you know.

Dana's herb garden is procressing nicely. The main concern at the moment is her Rosemary plant. It is the tall skinny one in the middle. Does it look like a weed to anyone else?

For 4th of July we went to a distant park to play some wiffle ball with some other Americans here and eat some awesome brawts that were brought in by an American. It was a blast! We even shot off some fire works at the end of the night which was fun while it lasted. The funny thing about playing in this park (other than no grass to play on) was the different interruptions we had. As you can see in this picture, there is a bride and a groom walking right in the middle of our game. This would never happen in America, but I'm sure what we were doing was strange and foriegn to them. This was not the only bride and groom to pass through our infield. There was also several people who biked thru, children with golf carts, cleaning ladies, and children smashing ants with their palms - all unanticipated interuptions.

Summer Break

Summer is here and there is a lot of fun things happening here in the city. The picture of the guy cooking all the meat is a great place to hang out and order some "meat on a stick," that is what we call it (sorry Jusin and Sara I know you miss this). The summer time in the evenings are a lot of fun because people are out and the weather is nice. We do miss those New Mexico sunsets though! There's not many of those here.

John had to get his picture taken behind "Optimus Prime" and with the other transformers. We got to watch the new transformers movie here and it was in English!! We live right by the movie theater and we often check to see what the latest movies are and if they are showing any in English.

So you would be very suprised how cheap things cost here in our city. Can anyone guess how much these vegetables cost in this picture? See answer below!

It only costs about $1! There's a saying everythings bigger in Texas but we think some Texans should come visit our city. A good example is of this spinach leaf to the left in comparison to Dana's hand. We have also found some really good green chile here. A pound of green chile is only about 20 cents! There are definately pros and cons to living in this city and we've decided to do a top 5 list of both!

CONS

5. When there is a national holiday they shut the country down. Everything is closed. Even school, however, you have to make up the missed day on the weekend or evening.

4. Because were foreigners we get the "foreginer tax" and people up thier prices when we buy things.

3. The streets can be so congested at times that we have both have gotten in minor bike accidents (we're fine).

2. Bike theft and pocket picking happens VERY often so we have to always be on the lookout and watch our things extra carefully. (Even in restaurants Dana has to keep her purse on her lap.)

1. Everyone says Hello! and stares and says "wai-guo-ren" which means outsider. It stopped being cute a long time ago.

PROS

5. Local markets and storeoweners love and flock to us because were foreigners.

4. They have several import stores so we can buy things like crisco, corn flakes and sometimes cheese (the local cheese here is just not the same).

3. You can walk outside of your apartment, look to the left and see a bank, post office, 5 different resturaunts and a hardware store. Look to the right and see a fruit stand, supermarket, a park, and Mcdonalds all within 3 minutes of walking distance.

2. Everything is cheap and we mean everything and plus you can bargain for mostly anything too. (Bottled water - 15 cents, Bus ride to destination - 15 cents, average meal - $1-2)

1. We are homesick at this moment and had a hard time with culture shock this week, so we can't think of another pro! :)

Thank you for checking out our blog! We would love to hear from you!

Spring is in the Air

Happy Father's Day!!! We are still doing great! We have our "cultural" moments (like when a high school kid kept following Dana around the gym as she worked out so that he could practice his English. He not only had no manners, but now personal space as well. He took pictures with his phone too. Weird), but overall we feel great! We just wanted to share this random picture of us staring off in space at McDonald's. This is what we look like when we don't know anyone is looking at us.

It's been getting in the high 80's lately. May not seem so bad, but when there is no air conditioning in buildings and you have to bike everywhere, it seems a lot hotter. Our face and arms are so tan and it's only the beginning of summer. Dana was asked if she spoke Spanish by a local in the gym the other day all the way in Asia!!! (Everyone thinks she's Latino!)

John's hair was becoming ridiculous and he kept putting off the hair cut do to fear of the barbers here (you should see their hair). One day in class he out of no where decided he wanted to shave his head! He shaved his head when he was younger and he said it made him look like he was 10. But, he went through with it and Dana shaved it off!

Before picture on the left.... ridiculous. The new John is not John. His new name is Carlos Martinez. Nice, right? (He's shaved his dirty mustache since the after picture - to Dana's great relief!)

We've had some fun birthday parties lately. (John's is the 25th of this month btw.) One party (to celebrate 4 birthdays - John's included) was themed 1969 where Dana was a flower child. John tried to do hippy, but only looked Vietnamese, so he went with that instead!!! He got this SWEET board game his friends made. It's exactly like Ticket to Ride, but in America. They even put our hometowns on it - Las Cruces, Alamogordo, Spokane, Farmington, and our friend's hometowns). We're gonna play it Friday. Here's a happy picture of us receiving the game - 1969 style:

We miss our garden. However, Dana successfully planted an herb garden. It brings us joy to see the progress and growth they are making. It's not even been 2 weeks and they've all sprouted! From left to right she has Oregano, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme (yes, like the song) Basil, and Chamomile. She thanks her mom for giving her a genetic green thumb and her brother Justin for giving her the seeds! We'll keep the growth posted!

A Little Taste of Home

Hello, and welcome back to our blog! The past few weeks have been very busy! Language learning has been getting better and we are pretty much fluent now! (Yeah right!). But we can read and write some really cool new words and get around the city for the most part. Dana usually does the cookin' around here and one night we found some colorful bell peppers, tortillas, salsa and chicken. We ate delicious fajitas and green chile cornbread that night. It was kind of like Applebees to be honest. While Dana cooks an awesome meal John usually try's to be productive and wash dishes or sets the table.

So we were walking around our city and found a really cool looking building that we wanted to show you below.

We also wanted to show some random cultural pictures that gives you a better idea of what we see day to day. (Thank you "Russian" friend for letting us borrow some pics!) Enjoy!