Off Week...(updated 10/27)

So this week we've had a holiday from our language studies to celebrate a National Holiday with our friends.

Can you pick out the whities in this picture? Anthony was pumped about getting to show off his white chest and white ankles (can't see it in this picture, but his outfit is a bit short as he borrowed it from Abang...and it was purple) This is Abang's family and we spent the better portion of Tuesday (8am-7pm) going from house to house in the neighborhood with them. At every house we ate...and you change houses every 15 minutes or so- you do the math.

We learned the traditional greeting for this holiday...this is Abang and his family carrying out that tradition...

This is Abang and Anthony letting the heat and their full tummies have their way.

Wednesday we got a few errands done but had a little down time.

Yeah, we thought you'd want to see that too.

Thursday we hung out with our boss's family and a few other whities. The mall we went to downtown has a rollercoaster in it- but, incredibly, we didn't ride it. Turns out its part of a small theme park in the mall and we decided to go back another day so we could have time for all the action. Here's a little som'n som'n to keep you all satisfied until the day we make it back there.

We also saw the movie "Open Season." While we think Disney and Pixar make much better movies than Dreamworks (ie- put "Madagascar" up against "Finding Nemo" and the little clownfish from the reef with his gimpy fin will come out on top any day). BUT we watched the movie in an IMAX theater and it was 3-D. Check this action out.

And then today I went out with the girls for a traditional Thai foot massage....

Here's me and Tanya in anticipation of our hour of foot-rubbin' heaven (for about $15 US)

Buncha Girl Scouts...

Just slap a Dolphins helmet on these ladies and they'd probably be better than the '06 team (or any of the past Dolphins teams for that matter - with the exception of the '72 and '73 Dolphins of course... and Dan Marino). If anyone was thinking about taping the games and mailing them to us, don't bother. It makes me glad that I'm in Southeast Asia so I don't yell at the TV every Sunday. For those who don't follow the NFL, the EXCITING 2006 MIAMI DOLPHINS are an exciting 1-6. I'm thinking about taking the Miami Dolphin fight song off my iPod for this season... it's sort of a wussy fight song anyways. It has a banjo in it. Seriously. Banjos are cool and all, but they don't make you want to rip off the opposing players' head. Banjos are more for front porches and singing about cotton and women. There's no cotton in football.

This picture from last Sunday's game just about sums up the season. I'm gonna start watching rugby or something.

And here's a picture of Kaelyn Joy 'cause she's cute.

Old Friends, New Friends...

...Short friends, Puke(ing) friends...

So last Saturday (14th) we went to the downtown metropolis to meet Rina, a girl I met 2 years ago here. She is in law school and we have been busy learning a foreign language and all, so last Saturday was the first time we had a chance to meet up. And what a reunion it was!

Here is Rina, me, and her younger sister posing in the mall where we rendezvoused- Both girls are beautiful! (and somewhat shorter than me too). The green box things hanging behind us are big versions of the ones made from palms that they cook rice in for their upcoming holiday. You can buy a light strand of them- like pumpkin lights at Halloween, or chili-pepper lights if you're from Texas...

This is us standing in front of, what used to be, the world's tallest buildings....until last year... (if you're a frequent visitor to our blog you may recognize it as a familiar site ==>)

And this is Anthony and Rina's little brother as we were taking a hop on a bus to a cheaper place to shop...the mall pictured above has, for example, a "Tiffany & Co."...that's a wee bit out of our price range.

Our new friends just arrived from the states yesterday to come work with the same sports company as us...

This is them, the "Kings," (as I have so affectionately nicknamed them). Don't they look great after 30 hours of traveling? I think so. The smile on Mr. King's face wasn't just because I was snapping his picture like a paparrazi. No. The real reason was because of this...

a sweetastic banner. Our boss's kids all call us "Uncle" or "Aunt"...they don't get to see their real one's that often. It's fun, though it did add a little tongue twisting as all their names start with "K" -and we already had 5 "K" neices and nephew...now we have 5 more. Our boss just numbers them "K1 - K5"...I believe K2 and K3 are holding the banner. Hopefully the banner will bring them comfort as they have already caught a mini-tummy bug (Hence the last piece of my introduction teazer)

Reflections...

So we're totally ganking post ideas from two places- The Chanclers and John Mayer. These people lead interesting lives.
The first reflections are things that we've said since arriving here- some you would utter in the US of A, but here it takes on new meaning. Here's a selection of our favorites.

1.“No, honey, we don’t need to buy bug spray – the glass cleaner works just fine.” -Sharon to Anthony. Ants abound here. Clean or not, you have ants. So I've found glass cleaner kills the ants as well as removes whatever the ants were flocking to in the first place.

2. “It’s hot.”

3. “Apa?” -Our most used foreign word. It means, “What?”

4. “Just go. They’ll stop.” -Said at every intersection/merge lane/roundabout/bridge/ highway/sidewalk/dirt road. What's scary is EVERY other driver is saying the same thing.

5. “Sorry... American moment.” -Said when driving on the wrong side of the road, getting in on the wrong side of the car or turning on the windshield wipers instead of the turn-signal.

6. “We’re married.” -Said to new acquaintances, once we realize they think we’re shacking up because we’re Americans without kids… this is usually followed by an “Ohh! When are you going to have kids?”

7. “We meet again, Seafield Toll Plaza.” –Uttered the first time we actually meant to go through the Seafield Toll. All the other times we were lost.

8. “My arm is a hair-brush.” –Anthony trying to say “I hurt my arm” in another language.

9. Anthony: “It’s natural.” Sharon: “So is death.”- Said (and responded to) after smelling a stinky armpit of a guy holding an overhead ring on a train. Which its not like people don’t stink all over the world, but you’re more likely to run into them here because 1. there are less anti-perspirant/deodorant sticks available and 2. there are more trains.

10. “We (Americans) may be crappy at foreign policy, but we invented Coke.”- said after all at the table in the food court guzzled their cokes (some vanilla coke). It got a good chuckle from the locals.

The second reflection is of us. At www.myheritage.com you can upload a picture of yourself and see which celebrity you most resemble. Visit the site...you know you want to. And don't be scared...yes, there are celebrities that are ugly, but more than likely you're gonna look like someone attractive so no ego is in jeopardy. They say to do it several times and see which ones repeat.

Who did we come out looking like?

Anthony- Carson Daly (and a couple of girls with big lips) No other repeats really...which is just funny because Anthony's brother calls him Carson sometimes. Jason, you were right!
















Sharon- Ashley Judd, Anne Hathaway, Sela Ward, and an Asian named Tata Young. Interestingly when we tried the other women in Sharon's family, Anne Hathaway and Sela Ward came up as well...we think its the eyebrow(s))











We're not really sure how these celebrities would feel about resembling us, but we left the site feeling pretty ok. Let us know when you try it and who you look like.

2 Months- WooHoo!

Today, October 9th marks two months of us living overseas. We like it. They say we'll start to not like it around month 4 and then like it again month 5. But we're not there yet so today has been great.

Our company thought we were doing such a phenomenal job that they decided to buy us this...

Just kidding. Well, about the whole "Phenomenal Job" thing anyway. This is our new ride...an upgrade from an old HUGE Toyota van that could probably seat 17 people on a good day and screamed "WHITE PEOPLE ARE DRIVING THIS, PLEASE STARE!" This is a Toyota "Unser" and it blends in much better with it's surroundings. It's only a coincidence that we got it on the 2-month mark - and it's not really ours per se. Details, details. Tonight Kakak was so excited about us getting this - more excited I think than we were- that we all went to McDonald's in it to get ice cream. If you come see us, we'll let you ride in it.

Gila Week

We've had some, shall we say, interesting expericences (or gila-'crazy') this past week. Last Saturday we went to a forest reserve park that had a beautiful waterfall. We were with an American and a Koren family and had a great time climbing up and down the waterfall. After 4 hours or so we all decided it was time to leave, so I (Anthony) went to a restroom at the vistors center of the park to change into some dry clothes. As I was changing, I suddenly realized that I was not alone in the stall. Attached to the back of my leg was a leech, now fat because he'd been attached to my leg for some time. I was his own personal Golden Corral. So I suppose this means I'm now an offical "Southeast Asian Jungle Trekker." Two others of us found little surprises on their legs too. Below is a picture of the little bloodsucker's stompin' grounds.

This week we also did some more painting to make our house a little more like home. Going along with the gila theme, here's my isteri gila (crazy wife) painting a wall in our upstairs loft/tv room/hallway (we're not sure what to call it).

Let's review this picture for a moment, shall we? What you're looking at is Sharon, on top of a chair, which is on top of a 7ft wardrobe. She really wanted to paint this wall, and if you know my wife she's not easily deterred by petty little things like 15 ft walls or the lack of a decent ladder.

Our last gila story has no pictures (sorry April). Well, that's not entirely true - Sharon took about ten pictures of her eye last night but none of the pictures turned out good. Why was she taking pictures of her eye, you ask? Because last night we had our first visit to the klinik. We were over at Kakak and Abang's house yet again playing with some fireworks. Sharon was off to the side playing with their 2 year old son, helping him hold his sparkler. At one point she got a bit too excited and shook the sparkler, sending one little spark straight into her eye. It only hit the white part of her eye, so all is ok. As the doctor said last night, "Not too bad. If hit black of eye, very bad, but good news it hit white"-Luckily we only paid $2.50 for that diagnosis and the eye drops.

Just for fun I'll post a couple pictures Sharon tried to take of the little burn mark on her eye. The first one shows a bit of the redness, and the second one I feel is a good ending for this gila post.

Buggy Situation...

So tonight I painted our front door. It was an ugly off-white/creamy/but-more-yellowish kind of color and it just didn't look right next to my "bluemoon" wall. So as I was getting done, Anthony came downstairs and said "Aw." I said "What?" He said "Look." On the other side of the door (which was already painted) were about 10 bugs stuck to the beautiful white paint. There was no gettin' em off either.
SO...I thought it'd be funny to share it with you guys and went looking for the camera (about 8:15pm) and couldn't find it. Over the next couple hours I kept looking and couldn't find it, and was getting worried- because we spent a pretty penny on it and our blog would surely lose it's place in your hearts if there were no more pictures.
Then about 10:30pm as I'm putting out the fan for it to dry the door overnight, Anthony comes in with the camera! He snapped this photo as my bewilderment over the lost camera came to an end...gosh I look old...eww....and yes, that's paint on my right temple. Anthony laughed so hard at this picture that it confirmed the need to share this evening with you all...
Within the couple hour span between the first sight of the bugs until 10:31 or so, a few more found their way to its brillant finish...

So tomorrow I get to pick bugs off my door and spot paint...which should upset me more, but the camera has been found so it takes the edge off.