Sunday Evening Diddies

I'm supposed to be studying right now but I decided instead to write. I don't really have alot to write about as far as an opinion on some important topic or anything....just some more updates and random thoughts.

Lou and I went camping last weekend and it was so much fun! I haven't camped in forever, and while I don't doubt my ability to survive the wilderness, I was a little concerned about certain things, like how many people would be around, and how many eight-legged creatures would be stalking me, and how many psycho killers would be lurking in the woods... The first and third issues weren't issues at all. The second, however, was almost a deal breaker. They were everywhere! Especially on our hike. They were scampering all over the place, running out in front of me and looking at me with their beady little eyes and then scurrying back under a rock to laugh as I screamed and ran by with my head in my hands. Stupid arachnids. I hate them. Other than that, it was a great trip, and one I hope we take more frequently (preferably to an arachnid-free zone).

Our tent was awesome!


Beautiful sunset over Lake Texoma.


Makin s'mores over the campfire.


After our 5 mile arachnid-infested hike.

As Lauren has already posted, our ten year high school reunion is coming up in October and I have to say, I am actually looking forward to it. As much as I loathe most of my high school years, there were some good times had and great memories made, and I really am excited to see some people. Most of them I could really care less about though, but I'm sure that's how it is with everyone. I can't honestly think that people change so much as to give a rats ass now about someone they didn't give a rats ass about 10 years ago... I'm more interested in just seeing what happened to people; not so much to make fun of them, but just to see how life's ironies played out. Did the popular kids marry each other and have beautiful children and buy a mansion? Is the nerdy kid still nerdy or is he a smoking hot business man? Is the girl who tried to beat me up in middle school still a bully? These are things I wish to find out. I know that alot of it is going to be, "Oh my gosh! HOW ARE YOU!" kind of bullshit and people will pretend to care for the few hours we're together, but the reality is that once its over, these people will return to real life and forget how, for just a few hours, we were "besties" again. That might be a little cynical of me but hey, I'm a realist. I do think it will be fun though. And I really AM excited to see some people. The plan is to go to our homecoming football game and then have drinks at the Fox and Hound afterwords; Saturday will be more formal with dinner and dancing at the Branding Iron at Firewheel. I hope they play Far East Movement "Like a G6" as I walk in. That would be my theme song of choice. HAH.

In other news, my brother, Eric, left a couple of weeks ago for his Peace Corps assignment in Morocco. He'll be there a total of 27 months; the first three of which involve training in Casablanca, I think. After that he'll be assigned to a smaller town or village where he'll be in charge of youth development and business development. He is really excited about it and I know he'll be making a huge difference in those peoples' lives. He is supposed to be documenting his adventures on his own blog; as soon as he gets that together I'll post a link to it here. Before he left, I had some pictures taken of us to give to our parents and family, etc. I think they came out pretty good :-) (Thanks Mindy!) Here's a sneak peak:


Big sister, little brother.





P.S. GO COWBOYS!!!!

Changes and Updates

Loving this crazy weather we're having! It's a nice change from the constant warm sunniness we've had the last part of this summer. Change is good. Freshens things up a bit. So I hope it pours s'more over the next couple of days so I can wash all this stale funkiness off of me and start the fall nice and freshhhhh. So fresh and so clean, clean. ;-)

Speaking of change, there are lots of changes happening lately. To name a few:

• changes at work....hopefully for the good, but we'll see how it works out
  
• new classes in school! looking forward to finance...ironically
• graduated to "high blue belt" in taekwondo...only 4 more to black!
• Bubba leaves for Morocco in 5 days for his 27 month Peace Corps assigment :-(
• starting a 28 day "detox" beginning next week...need to cleanse my system
  
• started working out/running in the mornings (eww)...its been interesting....

In other news, I've been a busy little bee going here and going there and doing this and doing that. We took a family vacation to Cedar Creek Lake and it was ah-mazing and very relaxing. We rented a boat one day and went tubing and water skiing, and that pretty much made the entire vacation for me. That and the awesome volleyball game we had the last evening.

my silly daddy


lou going fishing


total relaxation


everyone!

Took another sewing class at City Craft with momma. We learned how to make decorative pillows with cording and invisible zippers. We had a great time and our pillows came out very nicely! I like hers better!!! So fall!


Flew out to Ooooodessa a few weekends ago to visit my friend Angela. We pretty much did everything there is to do in Odessa in a few short days: saw Ratliff stadium; ate at a BYOB italian restaurant; went to Music City Mall; ate at Jum Burrito; wore cowboy boots; saw dust blow; drank the best milkshakes (bring all the boys to the yard) at Texas Burger; ate the best pizza at Patrino's; saw about 100 exotic animals including elephants, giraffes, buffalo, cheetahs, a skunk..... It was a great time!!!!

cowboy boots


chocolate malt


brunch


RICH.

Let's Hygge

My brother has been involved for the past 2 years with an organization called Children’s International Summer Village (CISV). They are a global group of volunteers who create cultural diversity experiences through educational programs. They operate on the belief that peace is possible through friendship and that the real difference can be made by starting with children. The organization was created after World War II by Dr. Doris Allen as an initiative to build and maintain peace. The first summer village took place in 1951 in Cincinnati, Ohio with delegates from 8 countries. Today they have chapters in over 60 countries around the world and host around 180 programs a year. Since its inception, more than 190,000 people have participated in over 5,000 international activities. The Summer Village program is the cornerstone of the organization’s education philosophy and is reserved for 11 year olds. It is a unique 4 week international camp where children (delegates) from 10 to 12 other countries participate in educational, cultural, and sporting activities with emphasis on “cooperative global and intercultural living.” Each delegation is made up of 2 boys and 2 girls with an adult leader and is coordinated by a staff of Junior Counselors ages 16-17 years. (cisv.org) The USA chapter's website is here: http://www.cisvusa.org/

Last year Eric took 4 kids to Prague. This year, he is in Denmark with 4 new kids. He absolutely loves it, maybe more so than the kids! The camp this year has a blog site where they are posting pictures and accounts of their daily activities, so I have added it to my blog roll and will post it here in case any of you are curious. It sounds like a really fun opportunity and I am considering applying for next year!

This is the camp’s blog: http://letshyggevillage.blogspot.com/

And in case you're wondering what the heck "hygge" means:

Hygge -
One of the fundamental aspects of Danish culture is "hygge", which, although translated as "coziness" is more akin to "tranquility". Hygge is a complete absence of anything annoying, irritating, or emotionally overwhelming, and the presence of and pleasure from comforting, gentle, and soothing things. Hygge is often associated with family and close friends. (taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_of_Denmark )

So yes, let's hygge. :-)

Happy Mother's Day...

to all the special ladies in my life:


My beautiful momma



My Grandma Mary-Ellen



My Grandma Irma



My Cindy

Adventures of Eric

As most of you know, my brother Eric has been in China since the beginning of January. He’s been teaching English at a university camp called Storm as well as doing a ton of traveling. He is really enjoying himself and has been sending frequent emails updating us on his adventures. I decided to post a few excerpts on here along with some pictures. He’s posted a ton of pictures on Facebook. I know many of you…uh…older folks don’t do Facebook so I have chosen a few good ones for your enjoyment.

1/24/09

So I am alive. There was no internet at the school and it took about an hours walk to get away from the school and into town, so we weren’t having that. Class was good though. I taught the level A kids which was harder and easier at the same time. Harder because they speak little English, but easier because the things I had to teach them were much more basic. Also, they are, on average, much younger than the C level that I usually teach, so we played a lot of games. Yesterday I went into town to meet up with a student, Amber, who is staying with her Aunt in Beijing for the spring festival. We ate some Pizza Hut (her idea) and toured the Birds Nest and chilled at a ShinBaKe (Starbucks) and did some shopping. It was insane cold, almost -20 Celsius and super windy. So the tour of the Birds Nest was quite unpleasant.

The Bird's Nest and Qingdao Olympic park area

2/11/09

I was teaching at my camp and then went directly to a new school for a few more days so I have been internet-less for almost 2 weeks. Everything is going very well. My storm camp was awesome; the kids were cool as ever and classes went well. I taught 1 level A and 2 level B. Met a lot of friends and had a few kids come back from past camps. All in all, very good. The morning after the camp I was taken to a new school where I taught 3 more classes. These were slightly different classes but I still did a lot of conversation exercises. The kids levels of English varied a little more in each class but I made it work. I taught there for about 4 days, 3 classes per day, about 11 hours teaching per day.

Class C1 and Class C2

2/21/09

I am in Qingdao right now. It is in Shandong Province on the eastern coast. I was here last summer and I came back to visit some of my friends again. I am staying with Alan, the same person I stayed with last time. I'll be here for 2 more days then leave for Weifeng, which is very close to Qufu, which is where Confucius was born. After that I will go to Tai'an and climb TaiShan (Mount Tai) with a friend. Then I will head south to Nanjing (South Capital) and then to Shanghai and then to Hangzhou, all very big cities. I just recently left a small city in Shandong called Jimo where I lived at a restaurant owned by the parents of a student. It was very interesting to live in a restaurant. They put a bed in one of the small dining rooms and I hung out in the lobby a lot. OH and they let me cook! I made them chili one night and then omelets and taquitos the next morning, they were very impressed. I ended up staying there for about 5 days.

The restaurant he lived in for a week, the family he stayed with, and the food he cooked.

2/27/09

Well, I am in Tai'An right now. After I left Lancun (the restaurant) I went to Qingdao to see Alan. Then I went to WeiFang to see Daisy and we went to a few museums and to the town she was born in. You know the city of WeiFang invented kites thousands of years ago. Yep. The birthplace of kites. Every year in April there is a huge kite competition and all that. ShouGuang, the city she was born in is the largest producer of vegetables in China. They have a huge exhibition hall and a large show every spring. I just arrived in Tai'An last night. Tomorrow I think we will go climb Mount Tai. We may not be able to because it takes so long, but we'll see. After that, I was going to go to a few more cities, but I have to go back to Beijing first. I lost my ATM card and I can only replace it at the bank that issued it. I can’t even withdraw money from the same bank in a different city without that card. Stupid right? So I have to go back, get a new card, and then come back this direction. Terrible.

Weifang, the city that invented the kite. The 2nd pictures Eric notes, "This room was called, loosely translated, "18 angry women making kites all day long wondering what their lives have become".

This is when he climbed Mount Tai; he says it was 7,000 steps to the top and took him about 5 hours to climb. The first picture is the hotel at the top where he stayed.

3/25/2009

I think I mentioned that I lost my Chinese ATM card so I had to go back to Beijing to get it replaced after I left Tai'An. I stayed there for a few days then left again for Bengbu which is a small town in Anhui province. Probably the noisiest city I have ever been in. After that I went to NanJing which is the old capital of china. It has a super long history and lots of neat stuff to see. I stayed there for about 6 days and met quite a few people. It’s a nice city, though not as cosmopolitan as Beijing. Very old mixed with very new. Kind of weird. Then I went farther south to Hangzhou in ZheJiang province and stayed at a hotel near my friend’s university. We visited West Lake and some marshland and some other water related things. Very wet here near the coast. Anyway, I spent most of my time hanging out with her friends, visiting sites and things. Then 2 days ago I arrived in TaiZhou which is very near to NanJing. I thought I was going to a different TaiZhou which is farther south, but I was wrong. So back to Nanjing then a bus to this TaiZhou which is probably the most depopulated city I have seen in China. I gave a lecture the other night to about 250 students about why they should speak English and not just study English. It is very common for Chinese students to know a lot of grammar rules and vocabulary, but most of them cannot speak very well at all. This is something I try to combat. So tonight I will go to Nanjing and tomorrow I will take a train to HongKOng to renew my visa. It will be a... 30 hour train ride, more or less. Tons of fun as you may well imagine. From HOngKOng i'll visit Macau which is right on the southern coast of China. Lots of gambling there. A very fun city from what I hear. Then I will travel up the central china, stopping maybe 4 or 5 times, then back to Beijing.

View of Nanjing, dragons at XuanWu, and the Goddess of the Lake at XuanWu.


He'll be back May 4th!