Winter Break is Here!

We hope your Christmas and New Years were well. We wish we could have celebrated with you, but we had some fun here too.


Any guesses what this is? Fried chicken wings... with cheerios on top. Only here would you see this! Dana met a girl in the gym that has excellent English last week. She invited us to go to a coffee shop and watch her play the violin. Very talented girl. It was her, an amazing piano player, quiet, coffee, and little cigarette smoke in the air(compared to the normal choking amount) . Had there been no stale cheerios, it would have been perfect!

For Christmas, our local friends gave us a ton of delicious fruit. The citrus here is unbelievable. The large yellow fruit is called a pomelo, or asian grapefruit. The one in the center is about the size of 2 oranges. And the little one is adorable. They are like chips - can't eat just one!

The other picture is the adorable little slice and a huge pomelo slice. Cool huh?

Here we are in front of our Christmas tree in our house on Christmas Eve. We just got done hanging out with some local friends. One friend told me (Dana), "This is the first time to do this - hold little plates with little snacks on them and talk while standing at a party!" That's what a party consists of in America! Crazy cultural differences. Along with our New year came some snow. Enough to stick. It's VERY dry here, but it's snowed maybe 4 days this last week. What a blessing. Although, it really makes biking really hard and scary because now most of the bike lanes are frozen. Even walking you'll more than likely pull something because this country has a plethora of marble. So much marble they don't know what to do with it all, so they use it as sidewalks. Pretty, but extremely unpractical when there is wetness or ice. Here's the park across the street from our house. We love how the snow quiets even the noisiest city.

Merry Christmas!!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!! Our first Christmas overseas has been exciting thus far!! Besides the suuuuper cold freezing weather we are really enjoying it here and are trying to make the best of it. We have been cooking/baking some familiar holiday foods and put up our very own christmas tree! John went down to the local park and cut one down (not really, but he really wanted to!)

The huge Christmas tree to the left was put up right in front of a shopping center down the street from us.

As we mentioned earlier about it being very cold here, we thought we could show you some pictures of our bedroom window!! (The ice is on the INSIDE of the window!) I don't ever want to hear a New Mexican complain about cold weather ever again! Some fresh baked brownies and cookies would really help us get through this cold weather! :) And last but not least we wanted to show you all a beautiful ice cycle outside our kitchen window. Behind our apartment we have about 5 or 6 restaurants. All of thier exhaust fans lead right outside in perfect view from our kitchen window. Just when we thought we have seen it all we see a frozen grease iced cycle....nice. Here are pictures of some local people around our neighborhood all bundled up trying to stay warm for the winter.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it... is that it?

We traveled to the capital city 2 weeks in a row. Both trips we took an overnight train where you sleep in these hard beds with loud tracks underneath. The first trip wasn't too bad because we awoke to see this scenery below! It is rare to snow here because we are in the dessert. So, we were really enjoying the snow. We don't know when we'll get to see it again.

It looks like this train worker has his work cut out for him today! He sure was sweeping that snow hard. Better to do it now than when it becomes ice.... which reminds me of a story~

The drains in this country are horrible - you're not even supposed to flush toilet paper down the drain. (Gross, I know). Needless to say, quite frequently we see manholes with stinky "water" seeping out. As you know, we bike everywhere and seldom does the temperature make it above freezing now. It doesn't take a genius to see where this is heading. The back road we take to school has a manhole that is extra leaky. Dana's bike tires are quite skinny and one false move on the "ice" and she's a goner. On her way back home after school, she had to veer due to oncoming traffic and out came her bike from under her! That's right... I fell on frozen sewage!!! And boy was I both disgusted and mad! YUCK!

Back to the capital... and snow... You can see that their taste in snowmen in this country are much different than ours. This Buddha and man reading a newspaper were just chillin' on a car outside of Starbucks (I think we drank one of everything in the 2 weeks we were there!)
Happy belated Thanksgiving! We are thankful we have good families and friends like you to miss during this time of year. We are also thankful have some other foreigner friends here in the city to ditch school with and eat turkey.

We played crazy pants football out in the freezing weather. The more you move, the quicker you warm up! (Mom, those hand warmers you put in our stockings every year sure did come in handy while we played football!)

I made our sister-n-law's, Sara's, sweet potato casserole except I added nuts to topping and marshmallows that I found in the import store! It was a hit! It was the desert before desert! We love you guys and hope to hear from you!

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.