Mmm... BBQ

First of all, we just wanted to say we put our winter clothes up prematurely. The sewage on the streets are re-freezing and it snowed yesterday. Oh, and the heat gets turned off tomorrow all across the city :(



Secondly, John broke his nose playing basketball last week. It's only slightly crooked.



On to other news....

Did we mention that there is a new fancy sushi place in town? It's delicious. This one John picked out has colorful sprinkles on them. Can you see them? If you know John, you know he'd pick the one with sprinkles. He goes for quantity - ones filled with cucumbers; whereas Dana goes for quality - ones with salmon. Prices even out though!

Easter was a great time. It was a warm day, so John barbecued some chicken and steaks. Man were they good. Meanwhile, the girls were up decorating Easter sugar cookies!

Here is our center-piece. One girl we celebrated the holiday with got together the day before with some of her local friends to decorate eggs. They were the most beautifully detailed Easter eggs I have ever seen. To add to it, here is one of Dana's wool applique decorations of the Easter bunny on it's last day out before Easter was over.

Here's our buffet table! We made the deviled eggs.

Last week we went out with a couple of local friends we hang out with every now and then. First we went to a Korean BBQ place. We stuffed ourselves silly. See the pork, beef, and sweet potatoes on the grill?

Here we are across the grill from our friends. Yes, the Kimchee is right in front of John next to his bowl of rice. I must tell you a famous quote a waitress once told John at a Korean restaraunt in El Paso. "Normal man eat 2 bowl rice. You eat 4 bowl rice!"

After our delicious meal, we went bowling. Bowling here is much more glamerous than in the states. Instead of nachos, pepsi, and classic rock, we sipped on green tea and listened to opera like civilized people!

John did well, but Dana is having a good day if she bowls above a 70. Sorry dad, I didn't inherite that gene! I always think if I lean far enough, the ball will go the same way. It never does!

Sara, I finished my first sock! Here I am completing the toe! I've never knitted in the round or used 5 double point needles before! I think the other sock will be done by the time it gets really cold again.

"Did you go to Disneyland?" you ask. No. This is a very common sight in our city. People hold wedding celebrations in restaurants all the time. We ate upstairs this day while the smoky wedding was downstairs. People love immature things here all the time too. I always see male taxi drivers with Hello Kitty decorations in their cabs! The funny thing about this picture is that Mini Mouse is really a man!

Well, until next time, think warm thoughts for us as we endure our house without heat! We miss you all!

Baking Frenzy

Who needs Papa John's?? This is what a real live homemade pizza looks like in East Asia. It actually tasted really good. Can't go wrong with green Chile's and pepperoni. The crust and sauce are homemade, pepperonis and cheese are from an import store and green chile's are from lovely New Mexico.



Here's a picture of us with some local friends (No we are'nt giants and no they aren't midgets) near our home on Red Lantern Festival Holiday! Sounded like a war zone!! We tried to upload the video but after 5 hours of waiting we gave up.

Along with many things to do here we have found that John has found a new hobby...baking. John decided to make a big batch of cake doughnuts (yes, Justin, we used your doughnut icing recipe). There are really no doughnut shops in our city so we just have to learn how to make things from scratch.

Here's a picture of a wonderful seat cover Dana made for John's bike. It's perfect for John because it's his favorite color and provides great cushioning support!

That's all the pictures for now!

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.