God's creation seen at it's best!

As some of you already know, we got to spend some R and R in Alaska and enjoy time with friends and family. It was much needed rest as the weather in our city with getting in the 100's and INSIDE our apartment consistently averaging 91-92 degrees. We really never felt like we could cool down. Couldn't sleep at night, our fans felt like they were blowing hot air, and we would literally sweat all day and feel fatigued and tired. Soooo with that being said you can imagine how wonderful Alaska was!! We had some weird feelings and emotions coming back to the states (First time back in almost a year and a half). For example,

1. We caught ourselves numerous times staring at Taco Bell with our mouth's wide open and salivating.

2. When we saw how expensive food was at restaurants in Seattle we just wanted to order fat free water.

3. We were frantically looking for a Wal-Mart just to go look around.

4. We didn't have to worry about Taxi drivers cheating us.

5. We were a little weirded out at the airport when we saw customs and homeland security all carrying guns! (Not used to seeing a lot of guns in our neck of the woods).

6. Didn't have to worry about getting the runs!

7. Having to tip again was a little strange.

8. Everyone was friendly and could speak our language.

9. When we smelled something good, we weren't afraid to take a second whiff (people who have been to our city know exactly what we're talking about).

10. To be honest we forgot how to act American. We just felt socially awkward and didn't really know how to communicate with other Americans (Really weird feeling!).

We are back home safe and sound and the weather is actually finally cooling down! We took a lot of pictures of course and want to share them with you all.

Reunion with Dana's family at the Seattle airport

This is Mount Rainier. Can you see it?? It's kind of hidden but if you look close enough you can see the beautiful snow capped mountain.

Of course the Space Needle!

We found a cheesecake factory or did it find us?? Either way it was amazing!

The first Starbucks restaurant ever!!

This picture is of us on the cruise just after leaving Seattle!!

This is Sitka, Alaska. This was one of our four stops.

Standing with Justin at a Totem Pole

Seals on icebergs!

In front of Hubbard Glacier

Every night the cruise workers made cute little animals out of the towels and decided to make this one look a little cooler than the others by putting John's sunglasses on him.

Simply amazing!

Mendenhall Glacier at Juneau Alaska.

Breathtaking

A whale!

Formal picture with friends and family

This next picture is a little misleading...Dana is standing outside on the deck while the children are swimming in an indoor pool where it's nice and warm!

Making small talk and enjoying the beautiful ocean!

This was a very yummy dessert with real gold powder on top!

Here we are at the famous Butchart Gardens in Victoria, BC! Very beautiful place!

Lesson on Gross Meats and Good Meats

We had some good friends stop by and visit us and our city for a few days. It was a treat to spend some time catching up with them. Thanks for stopping by Justin and Yvette! One box of cereal is already gone, despite our effort to ration!

We didn't want our guests to miss out on any inexpensive and relaxing massages, so naturally we accompanied them to our favorite place we'd been to a couple times. They really do a good job on the foot massage part. When working one foot, the usually wrap the other foot in a cloth so it doesn't get cold. Well, this time they added a cute little bow to the cloth as they wrapped Dana and Yvette's. They were really hoping that the masseuse would give the boy's a bow, but sadly they only tucked.

Here's a random picture below, but we thought we'd give you an idea of what a typical person in this city might sleep on. Still complaining about your Serta mattress being too firm? This bed belongs to our dear friend who invited us to his home for some homemade hot pot. Yummy! He used his rice cooker - good idea!

The world cup was a much bigger deal here than in America. People would stay out late watching the game. Restaurants would put screens or tables outside with some tables for people to enjoy a late dinner. Below is a new shopping mall where they would show the game for whoever wanted to come and watch.

John stayed up until the wee hours of the morning watching the game at a friend's house. Dana was at home sick, but he did come home after the sun was up! Congrats Spain!

Here's one of the birthday parties of last month. John picked the "Gangsta" theme. Anyone reminded of middle school? Dirty.

So here's a lesson on meat. If it's been outside for who knows how long, smells, and has eyeballs on the same dish... don't eat it.

If it is barbecued right when you order it, seasoned to perfection, and you know what meat it is... eat a few sticks of them! We love these meat on a sticks. They are made by a Turkic minority group here in the city, so kosher is good. It's lamb and spicy and delicious and I'm hungry!



We came here for another birthday party. This really is the best way to eat these kabobs. No fumbling with chopsticks! Also good with their "pizza" or "unleavened" bread! (Nan)

We went to the new Karate Kid after barbecue. (It's a big deal to go to the theater here and it be in English!) It was pretty awesome - especially watching it while in Asia! We thought they did a great job with a lot of the cultural things and Jackie Chan is the bomb.

We're going to meet Dana's family in Seattle on Friday for a 7 day Alaskan cruise. We'll be sure to post a bunch of those pictures in a couple weeks, so stay tuned...

Eastern Medicine is NOT the same!!!

Have we got some stories for you!



This week was the Dragon Boat Festival. Shown here is the traditional food eaten during this time. It is glutenous rice wrapped in leaves with something inside. The most common is red dates or sometimes red beans - mine had the dates. It was STICKY and MESSY!



It is a rare thing to have movies shown in English here in the theaters. We lucked out with Iron Man 2 though! It sure was a blast. We smuggled in cherished American candy. For our anniversary, John gave Dana a jar of imported dill pickles (if you really know her, you'd understand). Well, she even smuggled in a couple of these because you certainly can't buy those in the theater! The only time we were reminded where we were was when anytime in the movie Russia was mentioned, it was dubbed over. Why? You ask? No reason! Just roll with the punches!




Food court around 2PM. It seems like every country but America has a nice and long after lunch nap. What's up with that? I say we incorporate one! No matter where people are, from 12:30- 2:00 PM it is nap time. Often we see waitresses crashed out on a table or construction workers sleeping on a stack of bricks!

Now we understand why usually 50% of food court selection is some kind of Asian cuisine. This food court goes on as far as the eye can see, and further! There's Chinese, Korean, and Japanese all together here!

I did it! I finally finished my very first pair of socks! Thanks, Sara, for talking me through some of it! I can't wear them now since it's supposed to break 90 this week. I'll have to wait until around October I suppose.

Not fair, I, Dana, have been growing my hair out since I was born. This girl is still in Elementary school! She's dancing for me - I teach her English on Saturday. The title of the dance is "Horse's Mane Blowing". I wish you could have seen it too!!! Pretty interesting! I'm just glad she didn't expect me to dance in return as they do with their singing.

This one is long, but well worth reading:

One of our friends biffed it on her bike and ended up dislocating her shoulder! Not good in a developing country! When we took her to the hospital, she had to walk to the x-ray room because they had no wheelchairs. Then they wanted to just reduce (pop) it without any pain meds or sedation or all! Ha! Unheard of! She, obviously, wanted some pain meds, so they had to go through the admission process - as her fingers got more and more tingly and numb. Oh! And she had to pay first - no money, no treatment in this country! Finally a stretcher - without side rails - was found and the right department was finally found. And the Anesthesiologist was found to give her the meds - which any nurse in America can do. (Did we mention to be a doctor here they study for 5 years whereas in America it is over 10 years.) They wanted her to change her clothes too - as we're appalled that she still hasn't gotten ANY pain meds. We negotiated with just the lower half of her clothes - seeing that is was impossible and contraindicated to move her shoulder. Over 3 hours later, they finally ended up reducing it... in the operating room!

For the whole unit, I think there was only one nurse - and we thought the nurse-to-patient ratio was tough in the States! However, all she ever did was give meds when called. When my friend's IV bottle (still use glass here) was out, we had to call the nurse. Anyways, patients depend on family or have to hire someone to help them with other things. So, another girl and I (Dana) stayed the night with her. I just couldn't turn my "nurse mode" off all night. I can sleep better than anyone that ever walked the earth (right mom? Michelle?), but that night I sure didn't. The staff was kind enough to provide blankets without the normal deposit. After we inspected them, we asked if they had any clean ones. Her response was, "This is a hospital." Enough said. I could write a novel about this experience!

The good news - they got it back in place and she is slowly getting better!

Which blanket would you pick? Large yellow stain, or smaller dark red stain? Tough choice, huh?

Oh! Another medical story:

Another friend of mine fell (we're really a clumsy bunch) and hit her shin on the ground last month. I took her to get her leg x-ray because it still hurts. Come to find out, she had had a small hair line fracture on her lower leg. They gave her some traditional Eastern medicine to take. Some pills to take (or eat as they say) that when I translated was "Fracture, Bruise Capsules". They also gave her stuff to rub on it and translates to "Bone Setting Water". Needless to say, she didn't take any of it, just taking it easy!

Onto lighter news... last week there was a World Veterans Ping Pong Tournament near our house. There were people from all over the world there! It was nice not being the only foreigners in town for once!

All contestants were age 40 and older. The above player is from Japan - she is standing on her feet! Isn't she the cutest?

Below are two more women from Japan warming up. They were actually a team. They had doubles and singles championships. To our hearts dismay, they didn't win, but they were adorable! The oldest player was over 100 years old from Australia!

For the singles championship, we sat among the Danish crowd, and they were WILD!!! The 40-50 year old men's championship had one of their players from Denmark playing against Germany. (Which we learned that Germany is really good at ping pong. Up there with Japan and China!) They got us cheering for their player, doing the wave, and even singing their National anthem! Their player lost the first 2 games (was to 11, best 3 out of 5). He came back and won the 3rd and 4th! They were neck-in-neck for the championship game, but our guy, Alan Bentsen pulled through! We, I mean, they won!!!

Summer Fun is Beginning

Here is a picture of the University John teaches at!

Sometimes their food here is very beautifully arranged. For example, here is a fancy, delicious, and overpriced plate of fruit.

We had to put this one on our blog. This cute little girl was following the colorful kite.

Dana and her friend hanging out at the musuem here.

John and some of his buddies playing baseball at the park. It wasn't so much playing but more teaching.

The warm weather has finally arrived. A few weeks ago it actually snowed! We recently went to capital city and John found one of the best things on earth, a good old fashion American style hamburger! After a while Mcdonalds just doesn't seem very good. When we go to the capital we shamefully stuff ourselves with as much western food as we can and then go back fat and happy!

Here is what a a lot of construction, all going up at the same time looks like!! It's actually very common to see this. In fact we can honestly say there is probably about 200 buildings that look like this scattered all throughout our city. It's growing very fast!

Recently we have been getting wind storms 25-30 mph so Dana decided to take advantage of it and went kite flying with her friends.

Now this next picture is God's favorite food. Green chile. People who live in the south part of our country really like spicy food and they have migrated to the north and opened up some resturaunts. The picture below is tastey green chile in yummy marinade sauce!

Here is a picture (a little hard to see) of a resturaunt with a traditonal oven. They feed coals into the fire and do their cooking right on top.

We also celebrated our 3rd wedding anniversary this week! We had coffee, massages, and Thai food to celebrate!

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!