Pictures from vacay!

Here are some pictures from our travels. We went to Koh Phi Phi, Thailand. We were quite surprised by this little place. This island was pretty much destroyed by the Tsunami in 2004.  It has been quickly built back up and restored. You can still see some of its effects throughout the island, especially where some of the locals live. There are no cars allowed on the island, but it doesn't really matter because you can get anywhere you want in a 10 minute walk. There are a lot of narrow streets with tons of shopping and delicious restaurants. Thai food is yummy! Since there are no cars you must take a taxi boat like the one on the left to get to                                                                                          to more secluded beaches.

Here is a beautiful sunset view from the viewpoint on the island.

These two pictures are from our favorite beach we went to. We got to do some snorkeling while we were here. You had to take a taxi boat or kayak yourself out here from the main beach. Because it was out of the way there were very few people. This beach had the softest sand and the clearest water! 

  

These two photos were taken at the main beach. There are 2 beaches on the island you can get to without taking a taxi boat and this is the better of the two. Since the inhabited part of the island is so small they have packed as many bungalows and hotels in as they can which means it is filled with people by 11am. We enjoyed being here since it was easy to get to and you could go get food or drinks or headback to the room anytime you liked, but that meant you had to deal with a packed out beach. There were many nice people, mostly Europeans, but we met a few other Americans + another Aggie! 

 
 

You can't see it to well but these are the roots of many trees. After spending some time at a beach we decided not to take the taxi boat back to the main area and find our way back. It was a well marked path but our option was to climb over some slippery rocks or climb through these tree roots. Guess which we picked!

Back from the sand and sun!

Well folks, we are back at our home in East Asia. We enjoyed to beautiful sands of Thailand...highly recommended if you have a chance! I have attempted making some Thai food in the past and I think I will continue trying, curry is just about one of the most delicious things out there and there are so many types! 

We did have some adventures while we were there one of which resulted in us pretty much ruining our camera but SD card is still good so we didn't lose any pictures....HUGE sigh of relief! We had a great time going on excursions, hiking up to look out points, snorkeling, kayaking, getting massages for super cheap and laying in the sun.

It was hard to step onto the plane to come back to a colder and well..more polluted place. At the end of out trip we came back and celebrated Jared's 26th birthday in one of our favorite cities in Asia and just returned home last night. The vacation is over and work and school will begin shortly (actually just in time for many of our friends in America to be getting off for Spring Break!) We will be celebrating Jared's birthday with our friends here tomorrow, but for today spend time catching up on e-mails and tv shows! The only thing we have seen of the Olympics is curling--not so exciting. Most of the other foreigners in Thailand were just interested in Soccer--again not so exciting. I will post some more tomorrow when I can get the pictures up.

It has been a long time....and it will be again!

So, it has been a while since my last update my blogging friends. As many of you know not much has been going on here....literally not much at all! I hope you have been reading my emails because I can't fill you in here. So Jared and I have been filling our time watching a lot of t.v.shows (Mad Men and How I Met Your Mother), trying some new recipes (some curry dishes), playing wii (we love Super Mario Bros.) and I have been at work on updating my resume and applying at school districts in the Dallas area (one of us needs a job before we get back!). I have been trying to get in touch with many old friends teaching in the Dallas area to give me some advice and so if you see this and I haven't talked with you please send me an email! Getting all of the paper work together and being overseas has not been so easy.

In just 4 short days we will be heading out for some beautiful beaches in SE Asia! Out of the cold rain and into the sun and palm trees! We will be going to a conference and then on to personal vacation time. We are looking forward to some time together and getting to process a little bit more of our next steps after we come back home in July. We both just recently took a personal assessment called The Birkman Questionnaire and received the results. As we both just sat here and read the results, which someone will go over with us one-on-one at our conference, seemed pretty darn accurate! It was quite an extensive assessment with 33 pages for my results and suggestions for what I need to be aware personally and in relation to others. It also gives some advice of how to best use your strengths in a work environment. Maybe I should look into some other options other than teaching? :)

This was my top "job family"

Administrative Professionals
Administering and monitoring administrative systems or
procedures; includes benefits administration, internal
auditors, credit administration.

My lowest was in sales...I am staying far away from that profession!

Good bye blogging world, we will be back at the end of February! 

Pandas

What is black, white and cute all over? Pandas of course!

We recently had the chance to see these cute animals. We have probably 200+ pictures of them so I just chose a few so you wouldn't grow bored.  When we were first there they were just eating their lunch, but just after they were pretty active.

Jared and me with some Pandas

Now this was a fun panda to watch, we even have some video of him (or her...we don't know which).  We watched him begin to climb up this swing then onto one of the branches. Once he finally got onto the branch he didn't know what to do or thought it was uncomfortable, but we saw him on his journey back down which was filled mostly with us being amazed at how strong this animal is. We got scared a few times he would fall, he didn't until the very end.

A sleeping panda. If I were  to do this I would have major back and neck problems.

It's Christmas time in the City!

Christmas is upon us! Tomorrow is Christmas Eve and I am still wrapping presents, as I am sure many of you are also doing. We have some big plans for our Christmas here. Christmas Eve we will have a mexican fiesta with tacos and fajitas. Jared has put together a lessons and carols for us, I am looking forward to that! Then Christmas morning we will all get together for a big breakfast and open our secret santa gifts.

We try to make it feel like Christmas by playing some good music, we have also been celebrating advent together these past four weeks. However, in our city and even out here where we live the environment is not filled with lights, decorations, or the excitement you can feel from others at this time of year.

Yesterday, Jared and I had a date night in the city and found a few spots that were lit up with Christmas Cheer! Here are some of the pictures.

And today it snowed! (This took 3 days to finish so the top part was written before 2 days before Christmas, now it is 2 days after Christmas!)I know for many of you it was a white Christmas, but well ours came 2 days too late! We are staying in tonight to stay safe and warm from the below freezing weather.

Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Muffins!

Recently we have had some Christmas parties. Christmas parties are always fun and over here it is a great time to tell about the true meaning of Christmas. We just love it, but are so busy because of it. So it has literally been since Thanksgiving since I have posted...very sorry. It's just a busy time for everyone no matter where on this planet you live!

At these parties we received many many new funny gifts. I received a lot of good luck bracelets, Jared received a hilarious coffee cup...I must take pictures and post about that one! But we also received a lot of fruit, I mean a lot! We received more than 10 pounds of bananas, probably over 15 pounds. Anyway, there they are sitting on the floor, still in the bag, of our kitchen. We have eaten 8 of them but there are 15 still left and they are now to the point where I don't like to eat them anymore! yuck! So, this afternoon while procrastinating preparing my oral language speech to give in the morning I began making banana muffins!

Sorry for the sideways-ness of the picture, but they are muffins who cares!

This is wonderful because we are now out of the granola bars and pop tarts we brought with us here and this makes a super easy breakfast! I have only made one batch but I should soon have around 60 muffins I can enjoy.  I think this is a much better choice than nasty mushy bananas.

Turkey and some friends!

Happy Thanksgiving.....a week late!

I finally got some pictures from some of our friends who celebrated Thanksgiving on this side of the world with us so I can give you a great update.  A lot of friends and family ask how we celebrate while we are over here so I thought I would give everyone a glimpse into our Holiday festivities.

Wednesday night the girls got together to prepare some of our deserts and make preparations for the side dishes that would be made the next day.  I made an apple pie and pumpkin pie.....from scratch! Pie crust can be a pretty difficult thing to make but I had some great help from the other girls and they were done in no time at all! They turned out flakey and delicious.

We had quite a feast of mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, dressing, gravy, rolls, green bean casserole, corn casserole, deviled eggs, and of course turkey!  For dessert there were my pies of course plus chocolate pie, and wonderful pumpkin bars.  I am getting hungry again just thinking about the delicious food we ate that day...and the next.

We can easily get all the ingredients...for a pretty penny. What takes the cake here though is the turkey. I have never talked to a person here that has ever eaten a turkey before! Needless to say turkeys are rare to find and you have to plan pretty far in advance to reserve one at a specialty store or western hotel. We got our turkey for the low price of $117!  When I talked to my mom on the phone she said she got her turkey for free, and I am pretty sure ours was 1/2 the size!

After the big meal we watched Elf and Home Alone to get us in the Christmas Spirit. We played some games Mofia and Mexican Train (all the way from 12 down to 0).  It was quite late when we finally got home.

Since our mornings are your evenings we watched the A&M vs. t.u. game on Friday morning.  We stayed up late and had to get up a bit early to watch the game but I think it was well worth it. The best game of the season, even if we didn't win. I am proud of our Ags they put up a great fight! Plus we just ran out of time!

I hope your Thanksgiving Day was a wonderful one where ever you were. Now on to Christmas!