Country Side Living

Greetings from East Asia!! Thanks for taking the time to check out our blog. Last week we both got to go to the countryside and observe what living off the land really means! The corn you see in the picture is getting ready to be ground up and sold for animal feed.

Here is a cute little puppy that got stepped on at least 12 times.

Here are some locals doing some morning exercise stretches!

This picture is of us at a park nearby our University. Also is a picture with our classmates. Our teacher wanted to take us on a field trip to the park, so we went and we didn't complain. :)

Kitty, Puppy, and Brother fill... all at Once!

Last week Dana's brother came to visit. It was utterly delightful! It was quite a pick-me-up to roam around the city with him, eat LOTS of food, watch scary movies like we used to, and feel the love. We went to a Western-style coffee shop one day. This coffee shop has a little kitty cat that we got to pet, hold, and play with. Then a cute white fluffy puppy came in and the cat had a fit. So, then we pet the puppy! It sounds lame, but that was such a euphoric time. We hadn't pet a cat in over 6 months! Plus, we were with Dana's brother. We got our kitty, puppy, and brother fill all at one time. We love you, Justin, and are grateful for our time together.

After Dana's brother left we spent the last day of sunshine for the year at a park - the same park we played whiffel ball at on July 4th. This park is HUGE and we discovered a part of it we hadn't seen before. It was a lake that had Asian-like house boats, speed boats, and a fake beach with beach volleyball and all. We didn't play on the beach or boats because it cost money, but we did sit on the boardwalk and soaked up some warm rays. Our friend even caught a little shrimp with a net she brought!

Parks in this country are quite different from in the states. Not good, not bad, just different. If you look at this sign, for example, it is forbidden to play with a ball, bring pets, or step on the grass. Unheard of in the states! We did, however, see camels, sheep with their shepherd (blurry because Dana took the picture riding her bike) and horses. Notice how small the horses are compared to the horses we are used to. They are much furrier too. They are small and furry so that they can survive in the cold winters where food and warmth is hard to come by.

Dana's birthday was the 14th. The day before John took her to get a 2.5 hour massage. Yummy! Then we went to a fancy Westernish buffet and gorged ourselves (pictured above). They next day we had a really fun party with friends - ice cream cake and all!

The picture below is simply our city at night from the 18th floor of an office building. Colorful, right?

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!