Vacationmania!

We're back from our visa run in Hong Kong and our lovely vacation in Thailand! Enjoy the pics!

MACAU

Our first day of vacation, we went to the old Portugese colony of Macau. As you see in the yellow Cathedral, there were many beautiful architectural buildings. Where's John - hint - he's got Starbucks in his hand!!!

Another treasure we found while in Macau - that John especially got a kick out of - was the "ObaMao" shirts! These were mass produced on his last visit to Asia and was made as a compliment, but I think that many Americans took it a bit differently! Enough said.

While there, we even made it to the 10th tallest tower in the world! It cost money to go up, but we did watch some people bungy jump off the top!


Hong Kong

Next we did a bit of traveling around Hong Kong while our visas were processing. We couldn't wait for Thailand to go to the beach, so we made our way down to the bay. The water was too cold to swim in, but nice on the feet. The sun felt SOO warm to us!

Here's a shot of us in this cool tree down by the beach. The camera was set on Dana's sandal and timed. I think this is take number 5 or 6! At least we were entertainment to some bystanders!

One of the days we took the metro to what is called the mid-level escalators. It is the longest outdoor covered escalator system in the world. Near the top we stopped and had some amazing Greek food and after did a bit of shopping.

Northern Thailand

Then we made our way further south to Northern Thailand and stayed with some friends that are working down there. Wouldn't mind working down there ourselves. So beautiful, and ethnic. Here we are enjoying our strawbetty shakes (they were like drinking a strawberry) at a German restaraunt. You know we ate brauts with kraut.

One day we went to what is called an Elephant Camp. There are these super cute elephants that are so smart. They play the harmonica, soccer, and paint! We even got to do a one hour jungle trek on one of them!

Here we are enjoying the show drinking delicious coconut milk. (You were right, Justin - delicious!) The cool thing was that after we drank it, we were able to feed them to the elephants. They crushed the coconut like it was a banana - no problem. Such a loud noise. They're such strong animals.

After the elephants we went to the butterfly orchid and ate a Thai lunch. Arn't the orchids beautiful?

Later we went soaring through the jungle by ropes.... ziplining! Here we are getting ready to propel about 150 feet down. It was a blast! The tour guides didn't quite understand why John kept screaming so high, but it sure made us laugh!

After ziplining, we did a little hike up to a waterfall. What an unbelievably beautiful area.

Southern Thailand

Finally we made it to the beach area. The first day we went to arguably the best rock climbing in the world - Railay Beach. What a blast! Other than a slight puncture on John's knee, we were really sore the next day!

Our lives were in the hands of this small man. See the size difference?

Here's Dana nearing the top!

One of the guides had a baby monkey in his pouch. This little guy smelt banana being eaten from yards away by another tourist and came climing up his leg to get some. He was so cute!

There are so many small islands all over the place down there. We got to travel on a speed boat to the Ko Phi Phi Islands where we saw where the movie "The Beach" with Leonardo Dicaprio was filmed (horrible movie, breath-taking setting) as well as many other spots.

They replaced this beach sand with flour... or so it seemed. It was really something you dream about. White sandy beaches with warm and clear blue water. AMAZING!

Don't worry about this sign. The waves were even too small to boogy board - but the snorkling was amazing. We saw 3 little Nemo fish on an anemone as well as a few large Dora's. We saw a jelly fish briefly, little sword fish, and some sea urchins (yes, Michelle, the spiky black kind that your hand got very familiar with before). Other than John's back becoming red as a beet, it was a blast.

You can say that we got a good fill of hard playing, as well as some good rest and relaxation time down there.

On our island tour, we briefly stopped on Monkey Beach - no explanation necessary. We saw so many monkeys down there. One day we got some Subway sandwhiches (yummy!) to go and were going to have a picnic. John went scoping out a place to settle while Dana watched the stuff. All the sudden a couple monkies came out of the jungle and straight for Dana! She grabbed the bag with the seeds and the sandwhiches, but didn't have enough arms for the rest of our coconut shakes... those dirty theives took them and drank the rest right in front of her! Grr... savages!

We even got to see Chicken Island on our way back. Cool, huh?

Our last day we went sea kayaking where we saw even more monkies. We're now back home fully clothed. Dana's hands and feet are back to their usual cold and turning blue, while John's back is in the gross peeling process. We had so much fun, but it sure feels good to be back home.

Winter Sports this Week; Summer Sports Next!

We are still surviving the winter and making the most of it! Other than harsh cold wind, there are some good things that winter brings. For example, this is what we awoke to see our bedroom window to look like. Don't worry, the ice was on the outside window this time. Beautiful, right?

Below is Dana struggling to dodge the piercing wind in front of a random performance. See the guy with the funny hat conducting the people in yellow banging on cymbals? Weird!

Dana and her friend got to go ice skating and catch a movie, completely in a foreign language with foreign language subtitles. We're used to only getting the gist of things by now!

We even went skiing/snowboarding this week! They have a hill on the outside of town that they blow snow on. Not quite Colorado, but this will have to do for now.

Our next blog will be much different because we are migrating south these next 2 weeks. We have to leave the country to get a "workers visa" because we want to teach at the medical college this year. Then, we're going to do some defrosting and relaxing in the hot sun!

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. :)