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top 10 experiences in Cappadocia (part 2)

2011-10-03T17:01:00.000-07:00

continuing from my previous post....

#5 - horseback riding through the valleys around Göreme. each one has its own name (we visited rose, red, pigeon and love valleys via horseback) and the name corresponds to the valley's unique landscape. we had originally planned to cover some of the same area by foot - hiking in these valleys seemed like a fun way to spend an afternoon, but travelling by horseback was a much more interesting experience (how often do you get to feel like you are a cowboy in an old western?!) AND we covered a whole lot more ground than we could've on foot! riding a horse (my first time ever!) was so much fun, but that was probably more to do with the docile nature of my particular horse; Lisa's horse was a lot more independent and free-spirited, she would linger and drop behind, only to catch up to the rest of the group by trotting (and then repeat the cycle). unfortunately, Lisa had some more bad luck too; when we were stopping for our mid-ride break in "love valley", she got injured because her horse ran her into an errant tree! even in spite of all that, this experience made it onto both of our top 10 lists - it was just a wonderful way to see the area (it's also very "authentic" too - the first settlers of Cappadocia were the Hittites, who were well-known for their horses. we ran into a few people touring by ATVs; come on, the Hittites probably never used those!). lastly, in the ultimate coincidence, we later ran into the two other girls in our horseback group a few days later - in Istanbul! (this was a very good coincidence since I'd wanted to send them some horseback riding pictures, but had had no way of contacting them before that!)

#4 - hiking in the Ihlara Valley. on our 2nd day, Lisa and I joined a day trip tour of the Ihlara Valley, in the southwestern part of Cappadocia; the 'I' in Ihlara is *not* the more common Turkish 'İ', so Ihlara is pronounced something like "ugh-lara". the main advantages of going with a tour group are 1. not having to deal with any of the travel arrangements (we just happily rested on the hour drive out and back from Ihlara Valley) and 2. having a knowledgable (and in our case, funny too!) guide to curate the parts of the valley we visited and to tell us about what we are seeing. I really liked the other 4 people in our tour group too; everyone was really nice and since we have this shared interest in travelling, there was a lot to chat about during the 7km hiking portion of the day. the valley itself was gorgeous (as might well be expected), all red rocks and poplar trees; it was so interesting to imagine a time when the cave homes and churches in the valley were inhabited by up to 1000 people! thanks to Gonca (our tour guide), this was also the day when I learned what a "dovecote" is! the Cappadocia area is covered by them; so many of the rock homes and churches we would see have these little squares niches dug into the walls. these were for pigeons to rest and nest in since, back then, pigeons weren't just a nuisance but they were very useful as sources of fertilizer (pigeon droppings) and to make/preserve frescos (egg shells used for plaster and egg whites used to coat the completed frescos). I also happen to think dovecotes make the rock homes/churches LOOK so much more interesting by adding that extra bit of texture :) the painted cave (below) is an example of one fresco in one of the churches we visited - this was on the ceiling of a church, so it was subjected to less vandalism than the poor frescoes on the walls. this is completely unpreserved though, so the color that is remaining is all original - it seems like the pigeon egg white coating was pretty effective since the fresco still remains relatively colorful after 1000 years! (i think the lack of sun within the caves helps too :)). another tidbit gleaned from Gonca: this hand symbol (with the ring finger touching the thumb) represented the trinity; it's a little funny how things cycle around over time, because that is ALSO the hand symbol of our high school mascot (the sundevils!).

#3 - Selime Monastery. this is probably my favorite of all the sites that we visited in Cappadocia! we visited the Selime Monastery as part of the same day tour - after hiking the Ihlara Valley hike and having lunch. the only downside was that we simply did not have enough time here (this is the disadvantage of joining a tour group I suppose, although without them, we probably wouldn't have even made it out to Selime!); there were large portions of the monastery that we didn't get to look at, but I loved the parts that we DID see. there were so many nooks and crannies (and tunnels connecting them) to explore and the churches in this monastic complex (we only saw two) had some of the most elaborate shapes of all the rock church we saw, like the mountain had been carved to form big arches and rows of columns. it definitely didn't hurt that the monastery is set on the top of a mountain, giving you the feeling of floating above the Ihlara Valley, nor did it hurt that the weather was just simply perfect during our visit. definitely on my list of places to go back to "some day" :)

#2 - renting a car, driving around Cappadocia and exploring areas on our own - this was a new experience for both Lisa and I (driving in a foreign country), one that became even more interesting when the car we rented turned out to be a stick shift! luckily, we both know how to drive non-automatic cars (I to a lesser extent, although I actually drove more time-wise!). there were two stops where I felt that we were being especially independent and resourceful with our very limited Turkish (is it cheating to reference *two* experiences as part of one top 10 item? oh well!). in Mustafapasa, a smaller Greek village, we actually found someone to open up the locked-up church just for us - we had the place all to ourselves!

also, we found the Keşlik Monastery (tucked away from the main road) by asking some other Turkish drivers which way to go. this was a much more peaceful monastery to visit; it was easier to imagine active monastic life "happening" there (it felt more contemplative simply because there were only a few other visitors). there were definitely stressful moments to driving on our own too (not the least of which when we were caught in a traffic jam with a big herd of sheep!) but it was yet another different but enjoyable way to see the area.

#1 - early morning hot air balloon ride over Cappadocia! I'd like to let this picture do most of the talking here; there's not much more to add except that we left our hotel at 5:30AM and it was by far the most expensive activity we did during our entire trip, but IT WAS WORTH IT (on both counts). being one of 100s of hot air balloons sharing the early morning skies was a surreal experience :)

top 10 experiences in Cappadocia (part 1)

2011-10-03T16:13:00.000-07:00

hi again! I'm going to pick back up on blogging about our trip in Turkey, but for the record, my physical person is actually back in the states now (just arrived in Seattle about 2 hours ago :)).

the next leg of our trip (after Ephesus) was 3 action packed days in the Cappadocia region. we did so much in that short amount of time; I've come up with a sort of "top 10" list to share the best of what we did and saw. I ♥ CAPPADOCIA and here is why....

# 10 - living in a cave! the Cappadocia area is known for their unique rock formations - made out of this (relatively) soft volcanic rock. the level of "softness" was perfect as it was solid, but still allowed people to carve homes (and also in the past, many many churches) into the rock. our hotel - and I realized after arriving, almost all hotels in the area! - was styled as a "cave hotel"; the rooms were built into the rock, although reinforced with square bricks and fitted up with modern electricity and plumbing. we stayed at the Sultan Cave Suites (a sister hotel of the highly recommended Kelebek Cave Suites) and really enjoyed the stay! even though it was hot during the day and cool in the evenings, the room remained a nice "medium" temperature throughout.

# 9 - Uçhisar Castle. on our 3rd day, Lisa and I rented a car and drove around Cappadocia on our own (more on that later on in the list too :)). near the end of the day, we were driving back towards our home base of Göreme. we'd originally been planning to take in a few viewpoints on the way back, but during the drive, it actually began to rain (quite heavily too!). at that point, given the weather and the fact that we'd had a pretty long day already, we were planning to head straight back. the drive required us to go through the village of Uçhisar (the name literally means "upper castle" and this is the highest point in the region) - miraculously and suddenly, the weather cleared up *just before* we pulled into Uçhisar. we were really excited (almost giddy) as we walked up to the castle; the castle itself (from the outside) is so beautiful. and just a short climb away, the panoramic view from the top is amazing too. also, since the weather had just been raining, we basically had the castle entirely to ourselves (which I normally love). in this case, it turned out to be a little TOO empty; we had somewhat of a bad experience after I ran into someone I thought was a castle guard but turned out to be giving us a free introduction to the castle in hopes of (I think) trying to sell us some stuff in the village afterwards. that left a slightly sour taste, but from these pictures, I think you can see why Uçhisar Castle still makes the top 10!

#8 - Soğanli Valley. this was the furthest stop on our driving day - the landscape in this (southeast) area of Cappadocia is predominantly wide valleys surrounded by these large "table top" plateaus and had quite a different "look" than the other places we'd been visiting. getting to the valley involved driving across one of these table top plateaus - it was an incredible feeling of being on top of the world (if the world really was flat, as they'd though in the old days). Soğanli Valley (the 'ğ' is silent, so this sounds almost like "swanly valley") is a bit off of the typical tourist track, so this park was pleasantly uncrowded too. we arrived a little later than planned, so were not able to hike through the entire park; walking the the entire park takes about 2 hours and includes visiting 6 churches (we only saw 1!) and an abandoned village (which we did see). I'd like to spend more time here "next time" I visit Turkey; ideally on a day with slightly better (less cloudy) weather too! during the parts of the afternoon that were cloudy, the abandoned rock churches had a bit of a gloomy feeling.

#7 - Göreme Open Air Museum. this is a UNESCO World Heritage site and a must-see for any Cappadocian visitor; we went during our first afternoon in Cappadocia. the open air museum is a large monastic community carved into a group of rocks; at the height of the Christian era in Cappadocia (from the 10-12th centuries), it seems like 100s of people lived and studied in this compound. it's cool because you can visit the churches (there must be 10 churches/chapels right next to one another, and all of varying sizes and styles) AND see remnants of how the monks (?) lived too: kitchens, refectories (these are like VERY LARGE dining rooms with table and benches carved from the rock too), and larders (for food storage). this park is also particularly noteworthy because it's one of the few places in Cappadocia where the beautiful 1000+ year old frescoes have been restored and are actively protected (the frescoes in most of the other churches we visited were woefully in disrepair and usually covered with graffiti - if you can believe it!). we spent a fun first afternoon climbing in and out of rock caves (some living quarters and some churches) and finding cute little nooks to take photos; I think this is where we discovered a shared love of "framing" photos with uniquely shaped rocks! the ONLY downsides to the Open Air Museum were the crowds (the smaller stone churches were almost impossible to visit when we first arrived as one tour group after another filled them entirely to capacity!) and the rules prohibiting photos inside (even without flash). in particular, I would have loved to take photos of the Dark Church - the church's name comes from the fact that there are no windows, but yet, every inch of the walls and ceilings are covered with the most beautiful, detailed and vibrant fresco paintings (I imagine they must have been painted entirely by candlelight!). the frescoes depict scenes from the life of Jesus and were used for instructional purposes - my understanding is that students here and elsewhere around the turn of the 1st millennium were taught the Bible using these images (rather than through the text itself). I think that makes sense, given that this is all pre-Gutenberg and the Bible itself must not have been widely available yet. I really wish I could share the frescoes with you - creating them was definitely a labor of love (not to mention a demonstration of talent!).

#6 - Dinner at Seten. it was hard to pick one favorite meal from this leg of the trip, since the food we had (not just in Cappadocia, but everywhere in Turkey) was all pretty darn good, but this dinner at Seten Anatolian Cuisine stood out for a few reasons - 1. we were actually reeeally hungry! it was a later dinner (post-horseback riding) and we'd also skipped lunch that day (having had a late breakfast when we arrived in the morning), so our stomachs were ready by the time dinner came around. I think we may have even been like 10-15 minutes early for our reservation :) 2. the food was all really good - and it was different than the more "standard" Turkish fare we'd been eating. there was a lot of bulghur (it featured in almost all of the dishes we ordered!) and as it turns out, I guess I like bulghur :) 3. the dessert deserves its own shout out - in a country full of sweets (baklava in particular), this dessert was memorably good! 4. the restaurant was at our hotel, so there was no cold post-dinner climb uphill (our hotel was at the top of a moderately steep hill). since this was the first night there, I'm not sure we fully appreciated how nice it was to stay full, cozy and warm while we easily meandered upstairs to our room, but in retrospect that was a huge plus!

to be continued....

Whirl through Ephesus (and around)

2011-09-28T16:50:00.000-07:00

hi again! I haven’tbeen able to post as often as I’d hoped since we’ve been on the move quite a bitthe last few days – we did most of our intra-Turkey travel in the last 48 hoursor so; even though the trip is only halfway through, most of our “transporting”is done. we’ve been joking that we’regoing to try every form of transportation available during our stay, but I can’treally think of many that we aren’t using (besides the obvious ones likesubmarine or rocket of course). from Istanbulto the Ephesus area, we rode on a ferry, two trains, a metro and three taxis;from Ephesus to Göreme, a whooping four buses (one of which was an overnightcharter bus). our last leg will be asimple flight back to Istanbul (so conventional!), but while we are here, weare planning to take a hot air balloon ride too (so exciting!). oh, I also rode a horse today! (more on that later....)

for today’s post, I wanted to focus on our time in theEphesus area – the ruins of the city of Ephesus were the primary draw to thispart of Turkey, but since we were in the area, we also visited nearby Selçuk andŞirince. It really was a whirlwind tripthough; we were only “on the ground” (although we technically neverreally left the ground!) for less than 24 hours!

short language lesson/side note: the funny Ş (witha hook underneath it) is pronounced “sh”; likewise, çis pronounced “ch”. also, moresurprisingly (for me), the ‘c’ in Turkish is pronounced like an English ‘j’,and a ‘j’ is pronounced like an ‘s’. in case you are wondering though, the Turkish ‘s’ remains similar toan English ‘s’ :) all that to say, when wefirst started this journey and were asking for directions to either Selçuk (“sellchuck”) or Şirince (“syrin-ge”), no one knew what we were talking about!

ŞIRINCE
to be honest, we didn’t really spend much time in the actualvillage of Şirince– most of my interaction was from overlooking this village from our hotel atthe top of the hill behind the village, but let me tell you, thatwas one great experience!

after our epic day of travelling, I would’ve been happy to bealmost anywhere, but the place we stayed (the Nişanyan) was such a delightful place – a perfect placefor us to make our temporary “home”. ourroom was comfortable and the decor throughout the place had such cute littledetails (there was a library! and a littlereading “nook” with an old-fashioned sewing machine doubling as an endtable!). the first photo is Lisa’s happy reaction to some of the little tidbits in our room.

the second photo is of us at dinner; yes, it was taken in thereflection of the window we were sitting next to! it was already a little late by the time wegot there, so it was great to have dinner on site at the hotel’s restaurant(which is a deservedly top-rated restaurant in its own right too). the food was really yummy; my favorite wasthe “mommy style” (as per the menu!) beef stew, cooked in a clay pot. our only regret was forgetting to pre-orderthe chocolate soufflé – by the time we got to dessert, they kitchen had stoppedmaking those… and we just had to keep suffering the rich chocolate smell comingfrom our neighbors’ tables :)

we rose early the next morning to have a chance to walk thegrounds of the inn prior to getting breakfast and heading on our sightseeingway – the hotel has an amazing view of the Şirince village; I actually think it’smore “idyllic” from this vantage point than it was down in the village itself (ohhow reality can disappoint sometimes!). the last photo is the awesome breakfast spread, served on a terrace ofcourse, that just sealed the deal – we’re officially in love with this place!

I didn’t really mean for this to be a hotel advertisement, butjust to say, it was a nice respite in the midst of a ton of travelling!

EPHESUS

now onto the main event – visiting the ruins ofEphesus! there was so much to see that Ican’t comment on it all (although I probably will end up trying to). a few things that I learned from thethree-ish hours that we spent here:

I like ruins a lot more than Lisa does. that’s probably more a statement of how much Ilike ruins (a lot!) rather than any strong ruin hatred on her part; I think inan alternate lifetime, I could be a pretty happy archaeologist. this is expressed most clearly in the photosas you track them over time – in spite of the heat and the at-time-overwhelmingcrowds, I seem to just keep picking up more energy and joy as the visit wenton. (it was pretty hot though!)

trying to time your visit to “beat the crowd” is almost an artform! we were originally trying to getto the ruins early (as the guidebooks suggest) to avoid the crowds; thedelicious breakfast slightly waylaid us, but we got there not too long after itopened and it was already packed. Ithink the word had gotten out that “early” was the way to go! however, about two-thirds of the way throughour visit, we turned around to head back to the entry gate we started at (tocatch our bus as well as to visit the rumored museum shop). the museum shop ended up being non-existent,but that didn't matter – somehow, the ruins had completely emptied out by thetime we made our return trip! it waslike a totally different place! we tookour time heading back and snapped some of our nicer photos during this muchmore peaceful walk.

Ephesus was a pretty huge and metropolitan city in itstime! I guess I usually think of thechurch of Ephesus (like from the Bible) rather than this major city ofpolitical and economic importance across multiple empires – for example, didyou know it was once the Roman capital of Asia and one of the biggest cities inthe world? it’s pretty interesting that mostof this huge city sits in well-visited and well-preserved ruins, but throughthe bible, pieces of the modest church of Ephesus still remain relevant to (partsof) the modern world.

people get remembered for the most random things – case inpoint: the third photo is a statue of awoman named Scholastica, who helped finance a restoration of the public bathhouse (this restoration then included a statue of herself near theentrance). I’m sure she did a lot of otherstuff in her lifetime, but that statue remains today and is visited by hoardsof people every day; in a way, her name goes down in history for having donethis one nice thing for this one bath house.

all in all, it was such a great site to visit – highlyrecommended!

SELCUK AND AROUND
with our few remaining hours in the area, we spent some time in the nearby "main town" of Selçuk. we had a quick lunch and visited two places in town: (1) St. John's Basilica - haha the first photo is from there and captures Lisa's surprise to see that the basilica ALSO lies in ruins. "more ruins?!" :) it was a pretty special place though mostly because this is where John (the apostle) was buried! his grave is beneath the plaque in the third photo - that location used to be where the altar was located when the basilica was still standing. one other interesting thing that happened while we were here... we were filmed for a Turkish tourism video! they took some video footage of us walking around and taking photos; i'm sure fame and fortune is soon to follow.... (2) the Temple of Artemis - to round out this ruin-ous day, except this is a site that Lis picked to see. it's like a bite-sized amount of ruins, really just one column remaining out of the formerly *127* columns of this temple. in its heyday, this temple was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world (no shabby credentials!), but all that remains today is this lone column with a HUGE bird nest atop it. the last picture is just noteworthy because my outfit that day (in various shades of khaki, cream and brown) really just blended in so well with all the ruins we visited - i'm basically just an extension of the column at this point :)

phew - what a marathon post! thanks for reading and good night!

istanbul (part one)

2011-09-26T14:36:00.000-07:00

[since the original writing of this post, we've safely made it to Izmir and onward to Selcuk - in fact, I am currently ensconced in a lovely hotel in pretty Sirince... but more on that later!]

hi again, although not from Istanbul! we actually just left Istanbul this morning(I'm writing this post on the train to Izmir). it's been quite a long morning; we left Istanbul via ferry this morningat 7am, arrived in Bandirma (which I can never pronounce - I keep thinking itis band-i-mar instead of bond-er-ma :)) and transferred to the train. it'll be a long-ish ride though (6 hours), sothere should be plenty of down time now :)

I was actually going to post about Istanbul after packinglast night, but in a strange twist, our hotel completely LOST POWER for about30 minutes! it was pretty scary at thetime, but Lisa and I bravely shuffled downstairs to find out what was going on- when we got to the lobby, it looked deserted (cue more scary music) but itturned out the receptionist was outside waiting for someone to come fix thepower situation. we also ran intoanother guest whose room was subterranean, so she didn’t even have the benefitof light pollution from the street as we did in our room; that encounter left me feeling reallylucky, all things considered. anyways,back in our room, I ended up falling asleep instead :)

more about our time in Istanbul itself though! we were in Istanbul for one evening and onewhole day – it wasn’t enough to see everything we wanted to see, but we’ll beback again next weekend for about two more days.

the highlight of our sightseeing (thus far) has to be the Aya Sofya – it’s probably the most well-known site in Istanbul (maybe in all of Turkey) but in my opinion, its reputation is very well deserved! walking into the main nave (inside) of thechurch literally took Lisa’s breath away. apparently this is not an easy feat as her breath has only beentaken away one time before. my responsewas a bit more subdued, but I too was really astounded by the beauty of the place;I think the multi-domed building is, for lack of a better term and without the proper education to understand what I am saying, "architecturallyperfect" I also loved the fact that it had withstood several dramatic changes inempires! originally commissioned byEmperor Justinian and built to be the grandest church in all of Christendom, itbecame a mosque about a thousand years later (circa 1453), before becoming amuseum in the 20^th century. this rich history is literally written on the walls – a mixture oforiginal mosaics of Christ (dating from the Byzantine age) and very largewooden medallions (bearing names of God from the Koran – added later on, duringthe mosque-age). the whole place just has a way of making you feel very small and insignificant before a great and mighty G-O-D. the last photo below is of a beautiful mosaic that was tucked away by the exit to aya sofya (you actually have to turn back to even see it). the mosaic is incredibly well preserved and the picture is very... cute (not quite the right word, but it'll do...); if you zoom in, you'll see on one side, Emperor Justinian offering a small version of the Aya Sofya to Jesus and the Virgin Mary, and on the other side, Emperor Constantine offering the city of Constantinople (now "Istanbul" as we all know, thanks to that catchy song!) to them as well.

we’ve also visited a bunch of other places too – even thoughthey were not “the highlight”, I still really liked them too!

we spent the first night joining the crowds that walk along Istiklal Caddesi (a bustling street full of shops, cafes, restaurants, historicbuildings, bars, and lots and lots of people). the street was unexpectedly decorated with holiday lights – snowflakesand icicles – on a warm summer evening, but was also a peek into how urban anddeveloped the city was.
the Topkapi Palace (especially the harem – the privateresidences of the sultan, his family, concubines and eunuchs) was a really coolglimpse into life in the sultanate as well as a display of some incredible tilework! I think we (in the US) are notused to tile as a decorative material – in Lis’ words, it evoked a feeling ofreally really nice bathrooms? – but after thinking about it more, it makessense in really hot places since it kept the rooms cool while still adding alot of color (and it appears to have preserved well too).
we also visited the Egyptian Market (spice bazaar), wherefriendly vendors sell a variety of spices, teas, and Turkish delights. Lis purchased a modest ½ kilo of dried fruit,which she then had to carry all around Istanbul… a heavy (ha ha) price to pay,but this fruit is proving to be a nice snack for our travel today. we skipped the larger Grand Bazaar (this timearound) since we plan to come back next weekend to pick up things to bring backhome.
the Rustem Pasa Camii was the first active mosque that wevisited (we are also planning to visit the Blue Mosque on our return toIstanbul). this mosque dates from the1500’s and has a lot of the same classic Ottoman architecture as other morepopular mosques, but on a smaller scale. Lis and I were among the few visitors when we went (unlike our futurevisit to the Blue Mosque), which allowed for a quiet visit – very quiet infact, as we weren’t allowed to speak inside. the mosque lent us long skirts and scarves too, which lent us an uniqueAsian peasant appearance; we really must have made quite a pair as othertourists asked to take photos with us too.
to round out our first full day in Istanbul, we walkedacross the Galata Bridge and climbed the Galata Tower around sunset. the plan was to watch the sun set over newand old Istanbul from this vantage point (good plan right?) but the climb tojust get to the tower and the line to enter the tower took a little longer thanexpected, so we ended up there pretty squarely into dusk. not a big deal (it was still light enough tosee everything, and pretty in a dusky way) except that it’d also gotten quitechilly and fellow visitors had blocked off the narrow path to the exit – so weended up verrrry slowwwwly shivering our way around the tower.

lastly, since I know you are wondering, the food here hasbeen delicious! I’ve tried some prettyinteresting stuff though – the first being a (sweet) pudding that is made offinely ground chicken (among other ingredients). it sounds completely crazy and I wouldn’thave normally tried it, but it’s apparently quite a specialty here and wasn’tsupposed to taste like chicken at all. fromfirsthand experience, there really wasn’t much of a chicken taste, but there was a bit of a chicken texture ifthat makes sense. also, I’ve been eatinga lot of lamb! that’s not interesting inand of itself, but given that I nevereat lamb – kind of noteworthy that I’ve had lamb at almost every meal here sofar (with the exception of breakfasts!), usually in various forms of kebabs. I’ve (kind of) liked the lamb too! it’s a little hard to tell if I like the lamb here, or if I just reallylike the way it is prepared, but it’s definitely been good so far. we’re on a little bit of a kebab-and-breadoverload though right now, so looking forward to trying some new stuff as wetravel outside of Istanbul. the appletea is also a local specialty – I’ve only tried one glass of this so far (atthe Egyptian Market) and I’m already a fan! it has a similar taste to hot apple cider, so you can see why I’d likeit. most of the hotels where we arestaying also provide complimentary breakfast – we’ve only had one day ofhotel-breakfast, but if other places are also like this one, I think this willbe a great start to each day!

we’re now almost in Izmir (arriving in just 15minutes!). yes, this blog post took 6hours to write! (just kidding – a longnap and some reading mixed in…) butonward to our next stop, Selcuk and the nearby ruins of Ephesus. so exciting!! bye for now!

hello again.... from london!

2011-09-23T15:53:00.000-07:00

yes, i am on vacation! :) i arrived in london yesterday (thursday) morning and have spent an action-packed - well, in this case "action" means mostly "walking" :) - first two days here.

two highlights from yesterday:

first, the "mad hatter" afternoon tea at the sanderson hotel - including the "drink me", a small bottle (to be taken in 3 sips) of 3 layered drinks. the first sip tastes like apple pie, the second like lemon, and the third like english toffee. totally creative and the weird thing is, it really worked! second, while walking around, we stumbled upon the building centre - where lisa showed me this cool MODEL of the entire city of london. we located her apartment, plus nearby hyde park.

and then today...

the highlight had to be the tower of london! this is actually my 4th trip to london (all-time) and i'd never been to the tower... more surprisingly, lis (whose been living in london for two+ years) has never been either! it was definitely very interesting (i learned a lot about those english royals of the past - who have always been pretty fascinating to me anyways!) and also very picturesque (as seen below). i'd definitely highly recommend this to anyone else who is visiting london; we (very luckily since we were not planning this!) made it just in time for the LAST walking tour of the day. these tours, given by the yeoman warders (a.k.a. the "beefeaters"), are both informative and entertaining. i was really really impressed by how bellowing our guide's voice was; it carried over a very large audience!

lest i dwell too much on the positives of this trip, let me mention two scavenger hunt fails that happened these days too (yes, i averaged about one scavenger hunt fail per day!).

justin and ann had been in london a couple of weeks ago and they left me this clue on their blog. we decided to tackle this on our first day and headed to the british museum straightaway after tea. unfortunately, the timing was just bad tho - as we got to the museum, they were busily shutting everything down. the closest i could get to the rosetta stone was a souvenir guidebook (even the gift shop postcards had been locked up!).
as part of the london design festival, there was a treasure hunt (intended to guide people to visit 10 festival sites - and a chance with win 1,000 pounds too!). we had a really hard time finding the starting station though, and weren't able to join the hunt until 2pm (an hour after the official start time). that was okay though, since it wasn't a *race* to finish first, everyone who finished at all got a chance to win the prize. unfortunately, when we figured out and found the first clue - which led us to a particular student display at the designbloc. the students there were earnestly introducing us to their exhibit, and we felt too shy to ask them for the next clue! (it seemed so callous, like we were visiting their exhibit not because we wanted to see their work, but only to take part in this competition...) and, we were running out of time to make it to the tower of london, so we just abandoned the hunt. haha maybe NEXT TIME we can do better! it was fun though; the one site that we visited was really cool and had a bunch of neat displays (and some really yummy gelato too :)).

unfortunately, that's it for london this time around... or fortunately, since we're off to turkey tomorrow morning! these two days in london have been pretty useful for us too, in terms of planning our time in turkey from the convenience of lis' apartment :) we've been a little delinquent with respect to figuring out just exactly what we are going to do - but now we know, or have a better idea at least! will write more from istanbul - bye for now!

one year later!

2011-04-23T23:52:00.001-07:00

we recently took a trip to new orleans to celebrate our 1 year anniversary :) this is one of my favorite pictures of us from the trip, taken one wonderfully warm afternoon while walking through the french quarter.

prayer for japan

2011-03-13T22:59:00.000-07:00

i think most people who have seen japanese footage from the last few days have had their hearts go out to japan. i personally have had a soft spot in my heart for japan since our trip there two years ago and was deeply saddened to hear the news reports, but i posted this image as a reminder to myself (and maybe as an encouragement to any others out there who are in the same boat), not to just feel sad or hope the recovery goes well, but to be actively giving (if you can) and praying (if you believe). i remember being in china during the szechuan earthquake and seeing how encouraged and moved the people there were to see the tangible signs of how much "the whole world" cared about their personal tragedy and their local damages.

i'm far from a prayer guru, but i've been challenged - seemingly from all sources and all directions this week! - to TRULY AND WHOLEHEARTEDLY BELIEVE that God is able to do awesome, marvelous and supernatural things. to heal and restore both ruined people and ruined places. to bring peace and salvation. and amazingly enough, He wants to partner with *us* when we come to Him in prayer.

i'm definitely not *there* yet, but i'm hanging on to God's promise to help us, even if we just believe that He can help us with our unbelief!

we're married! (again! :))

2010-05-02T23:20:00.000-07:00

we had a second wedding celebration tonight - at the pearl restaurant in san diego, with about 150 of my parents' closest friends from around southern california :) even though it's been a while since i've seen many of them (and some i even met for the first time at this wedding reception!) but it's just so great to have such a company of people supporting us and being happy for us as we start off our lives as newlyweds :)

thanks so much to everyone who was at both weddings - your happiness FOR our happiness actually makes us even happier too! (what a nice positive cycle :))

my lu parents also flew down for the event, so it was a great chance to see both sets of moms and dads on the return side of the honeymoon!

6:30am flight back to seattle tomorrow morning... so i guess that means it is time to get some zzz's! it's so crazy to think that i'll actually be back at work/back in the office tomorrow!!

christchurch (the end of our trip!)

2010-04-29T12:30:00.000-07:00

hello from christchurch, the largest city on the south island and unfortunately, our final stop in new zealand! we’re flying out from here later this afternoon and will arrive in san diego (via auckland and la) on thursday afternoon PST… it’s always funny when the return trip seems to take “no time” :)

we drove to christchurch yesterday (it was epic drive #3!), taking a longer route so that we could stop by the moeraki boulders. it was actually the cover image on the rough guide to new zealand guidebook that we reference multiple times each day, so we thought we had a good idea of what to expect :) however, these large spherical rocks still managed to surprise us – i didn’t realize there’d be so many, or that we’d see fragments of now-shattered spheres. it really makes you wonder how these were created since the rock fragments definitely don’t look like they are solid “rock” but kind of hollow and amber colored on the inside. so interesting :) (that first photo is from just outside queenstown at the start of our drive – finally a truly “nice” day and the sheep seem to be enjoying it :))

speaking of ROCKs, we’re definitely winding down on our travelling energy and looking forward to being home again :)

we haven’t done too much in christchurch – the city is actually quite a bit more urban/ghetto than we were expecting (just very different from the rest of the south island!). we did visit the large christchurch cathedral for their wednesday evensong service after arriving last night (quite a lovely presentation of praise from the full choir and a reading from the old and new testaments) – the concept is very neat to have a community time of hearing the word in the middle of the week and has inspired us to try out an evensong practice in our own home too!

we spent this morning seeing the best (well, what we hope/believe is the best :)) of christchurch! we had breakfast at c1 espresso, where the water is served out of a repurposed sewing machine! it was a little difficult to get the water, but such a neat visual effect :) after that, we walked along the avon river and rented a canoe and floated with the ducks for a while. from there, we walked through the former campus of canterbury college (now converted into “the arts center” – a collection of shops, cafes and artists’ studios) where we saw this floating building! it’s hard to see in the photo, but it was kind of like a staircase to heaven … lastly, we visited the christchurch art gallery for an eclectic mix of contemporary art and new zealand art from throughout the years.

these two weeks of our honeymoon has passed by really quickly and adventurously! it’s been a blast but i (we!) hope it’s just the beginning of an even more awesome marriage :) throughout the trip, we’ve been reading through this book (which we’d meant to read BEFORE getting married but hadn’t had the time to do so!) called saving your marriage before it starts. it’s been good food for thought and discussion for us as “newlyweds”… like, on a day to day basis, being married doesn’t seem THAT different from being engaged, but i think we’re starting to more fully grasp the very real and permanent change that has taken place between us!

anyways, heading to the airport soon… signing off for the last time from NZ! :)

extra day in queenstown (and glenorchy and arrowtown!)

2010-04-27T21:00:00.000-07:00

not tooooo surprisingly, the last planned activity of our trip (jetboat-ing and funyak-ing in the dart river) has been cancelled due to concerns about the weather (or more specifically, concerns about the high water levels of the rivers in the queenstown area BECAUSE of the weather). add one more to the list of things to do on our next NZ trip :) the list is getting quite long, so we are very seriously looking at when to make that next trip! (let me know if you’d want to come too! :))

despite the cancelled trip, the day was actually pretty clear most of today (definitely the nicest day since we arrived in queenstown!) so we took advantage of the nicer weather to visit a few places in the region we’d wanted to see.

first stop was glenorchy! we’d already planned to drive here before the dart river jetboating/funyaking trip started, so the cancellation just allowed us to get to a slightly later start (than the originally planned 6am departure! :)) the fields and most of the walkways here were either slightly or completely flooded over, so we kind of picked our way around as best we could… it was really a beautiful and extra quiet small town; i later learned (from a stop at the museum) that glenorchy telephones were using a operator-manned switchboard until quite recently (1987), which gives you a sense of the remoteness of this area. we’re definitely planning to come back here – both to do the dart river trip and also (as long as we are physically able) to hike the 3-5 day routeburn track which starts in glenorchy.

after returning to queenstown, the day was still mostly clear, so we rode the skyline gondola up to get a nice bird’s eye view of the city! (we’d been putting it off the last few days since it was always either rainy or really cloudy!) queenstown is really quite perfectly situated, right at the foot of the remarkables (yes, that’s the name of this mountain range!) and right along the coast of the large lake wakatipu. after a quick lunch, we walked and shopped our way to the other corner of town – through the queenstown gardens (last photo).

there was STILL daylight left, so we took another short drive to nearby arrowtown. this quaint town is full of historic/preserved buildings from when it was home to a large gold rush camp! believe it or not, a single miner used to be able to pull pounds of gold per day from the rivers in a single day… haha it’s just so hard to imagine :) anyways, we juuuust missed the autumn festival (it had ended 2 days before we got here) but the rich autumn foliage was still vividly on display. even though it’s been “autumn” here throughout our honeymoon, it’s only in the southern most parts of NZ that we’ve seen leaves beginning to change colors and fall. arrowtown also has the best preserved chinese settlement (from when many many chinese miners came to NZ during the gold rush); looking at the very humble homes and reading about the persecution and racial prejudice faced by these chinese immigrants was emotionally tough to do... especially in light of the book I am currently reading (strength in what remains by tracy kidder) about the genocide and racial violence happening in more recent history in Burundi. how unfortunate that violence arising from race differences has been a problem since the start of time but has still not been completely extinguished!

all in all a very relaxing day – lawrence and I both agreed that it was nice to be able to walk around again and that the cancellation was probably a good thing; it was a nicer day that we'd seen of late, but definitely still too cold to be cavorting about in the water :)

doubtful sound

2010-04-26T17:00:00.000-07:00

what an adventure! :) we just (barely!) returned from a two-day trip into the fiordland national park region of new zealand. the fiordland national park is a huge area in the southwest corner of the south island, full of narrow waterways between tall, rocky, mountainous land. if you look at at map, the land looks like so many little fingers sticking out of the main coast :)

lawrence and i were originally booked on an overnight cruise through milford sound, the most well-known part of the fiordland, and supposedly the most beautiful as well (famously called "the 8th wonder of the world" by rudyard kipling!). i was so excited about this trip, especially since all of the photos i'd see of milford sound were sooo spectacular AND THEN the guidebook was like, no matter how many photos you've seen, nothing prepares you for the wonder that is milford sound... :)

it turns out that the fiordland was also formed from (now-melted) glaciers within a temperate rainforest, very similar to the franz josef/fox glaciers we visited earlier! the main consequence of that is, the fiordlands are the WETTEST part of new zealand :) it's also pretty remote and mostly uninhabited, so the roads are all pretty small... and with all the rainfall yesterday, the road to milford sound was closed! apparently this is not an uncommon occurrence (although it was very shocking to us of course!), but at that point, we had to make a split second decision about whether to join the overnight cruise through doubtful sound (also part of the fiordlands, but just.. a different part from where we'd wanted to go :)). i was doubtful (ha ha) about it at first, but in retrospect, it was an awesome opportunity to still GO on a trip in the fiordlands after our original plans fell through.

it ended up being a great decision though. doubtful sound (despite its less than awe-inspiring name :)) is a truly beautiful place, and while it poured the rest of the day yesterday, we were able to see the thousands (literally!) of impromptu waterfalls that formed on the rocky mountains throughout the park. it's kind of like how water runs in tracks down your window when it's raining, but on a much much larger and grander scale :) lawrence even joined the crazy adventurers and went for a short kayak ride in rain (and on the kayak ride, we STRONGLY SUSPECT that he saw a kiwi bird!! so lucky since even most new zealanders have not seen a kiwi in the wild... he says that seeing the kiwi has changed him into a part-new zealander :))

also, despite the rain yesterday, the day dawned clear (or at least, clear-ish) today and we were able to see a lot more of the sound on our return trip :) we really enjoyed the trip, and a lot of the locals that we met on the boat even told us that they preferred doubtful sound over milford sound, so we definitely don't feel like we got the short end of the stick (although we are still adding milford sound to our list of places to go to on our next NZ trip :)).

to add craziness on top of craziness, there'd apparently been so much sustained rainfall in the region that most of the roads to take us back to queenstown were closed today! there was an hour or so earlier this afternoon when it seemed like we might be stuck in the middle of nowhere since the roads out were flooded :) (ironically, the road to milford sound were open today :)) after some investigation, our awesome bus driver decided to take an alternate route back and we are safely ensconced in queenstown once again :) as much as i enjoyed our trip to doubtful sound, i was (am!) so glad to be back... the entire time i was there, i pretty much consistently felt a little damp and cold and wasn't sure i could handle that much more of that! the risks were definitely quite real though, we saw lots of fields that had been flooded over... and along one of the closed roads (not one we drove on thankfully!), we saw a car that'd been carried downstream into a field by one of these newly formed "rivers"!

anyways, i'll end this post the way i started it.... what an adventure! :) the trip is going by so quickly though... only 3 more days before we fly back to the u.s.! thanks for following along :)

bungeeeeeeee!

2010-04-24T21:00:00.000-07:00

hello again! i am happy to announce that we both took the leap and survived our first (and probably only?!) bungee jump :) the company we went through is actually the originators of bungee jumping (back in 1988!) and the actual "jump" we did was their highest one... the nevis highwire (134 meters high!).

we started bright and early, since i didn't think i'd be able to focus on anything else if i knew i was jumping after that! a bus took us out to the nevis river, and up to the bungee center. the drive up the mountain was pretty scary in and of itself (and technically, according to lawrence, the most dangerous part of the trip based on pure statistics :)).

once we got there, we rode a little cart over to the gondola -- which is suspended (by wires... albeit very STRONG wires!) over the river canyon. once there, we each took turns being attached to the bungee cord, shuffling to the jumping platform, looking over the edge into the canyon floor FAR FAR below... and jumping! i was incredibly nervous; as soon as it was my turn to be attached to the bungee (i was the last to go in our group of 5), my legs were shaking. haha and as the guide walked me to the jumping platform, i tried (slightly) to prevent him from releasing his hold on my back. but it was weird, i never really considered backing out... once it was just me on the platform and they counted down 3-2-1, i just jumped! (lawrence said i was very brave, but apparently i also screamed as soon as i started falling :))

one big difference between our two jumps is the way we returned to the gondola. after you bounce 1-2 times, they have this strap you can pull to release your feet (so that you are right-side up again). this lets you enjoy the beautiful canyon as you get pulled back up to the gondola... but i wasn't able to pull the strap loose! haha as a result, you can see lawrence looking cool and happy as he is pulled back into the gondola, while i'm hanging upside down like a barbeque duck in a chinese restaurant window :)

anyways, we both made it! but after the adrenaline rush leaves you, i think you get super exhausted... out of laziness (and probably also because the weather was so cold and wet!), we didn't really want to do anything else the rest of the day (so much for the early start!) except watch hot tub time machine, which just opened in new zealand this week :)

we also realized later on that the day we went bungee jumping was also our 2 week-versary :)

glacier walking and epic drive #2

2010-04-23T20:30:00.000-07:00

did you know that franz josef and fox glaciers are actually located *within* a temperate rainforest? i certainly didn't :) what an oddity if you think about it, a HUGE block of ice just sitting there within a temperate (i.e. not too hot, but still, hardly what one thinks of as "glacial" conditions!) rainforest. anyways, i guess knowing that little fact, it's hardly surprising that the weather forecast was showers for thursday through the weekend... they'd need a lot of rainfall to maintain that "rainforest" status :)

however, all that aside, thursday morning actually dawned pretty clear and even SUNNY! we were (as per our usual here!) up early and just hanging around in the small franz josef town waiting for our 10:30am heli-hike departure - yes, we were going to ride a helicopter to the top of the glacier and walk around! we were so excited buuuuut then, the clouds rolled in and it actually started sprinkling close to 10am :( it still looked like we miiiight be able to go (the clouds were so low!) and at the last minute, they made the call that we WOULD go after all. (yay! what an up-and-down morning :))

it felt like we'd been waiting forever just dreading the cancellation notice, but once they decided to go, we all moved into high gear. we quickly donned the provided ice hiking gear and hopped onto the helicopter... and lo and behold, when we got to the top of the glacier, the weather was super nice! sunny and actually surprisingly warm! (case in point: our guide was wearing a t-shirt and shorts, and even i only needed one light windbreaker over my underarmor :)) we were taken on a guided walk on and *in* the ice - including crawling through a super deep ice crevice (ld) and sliding on our backs through a low ice cave (both of us!). all in all a truly amazing and unique experience - we learned a lot about glaciers and i also learned that walking on ice is surprisingly easy when you have iron crampons attached to your boots :)

and then, this morning, we left franz josef for epic drive #2 - destination: queenstown! the weather was truly horrible this morning (pouring rain and heavy cloud cover) so we weren't able to make any of our originally planned stops - walks at lake matheson and knight's point (now added to the places-to-visit-next-time list :)). on our drive out of the glacier area, we felt so sorry for the people we saw standing around the glacier tours starting point... hopefully they can go tomorrow!

instead, we drove all the way to wanaka in one go (pretty much 85% of the drive). the weather there was really nice (definitely no rainforest here :)) so we enjoyed a nice lunch, a short walk along lake wanaka, and then.... a visit to THE PUZZLING WORLD! it's basically an entire place dedicated to puzzles and optical illusions :) since both lawrence and i love figuring out puzzles AND we turned out to have a free afternoon, this seemed like an awesome opportunity that was just meant for us! we had a lot of fun walking thru the illusion rooms and then picking our way through a giant maze :) and then continued on to queenstown!

one interesting update: after arriving here, we signed up for... the nevis bungy! we're all signed up now to go bungy jumping at 8:30am tomorrow!! i'm really excited and only a little nervous... well i'm sure i'll be posting more about it afterwards, but wish us luck and i'll see you on the other side :)

epic drive #1: nelson to franz josef

2010-04-21T21:00:00.000-07:00

we made it! almost exactly 10 hours after we left nelson, we rolled into franz josef! this is a pretty small village; the main tourist draws to this area are two large glaciers, franz josef glacier and fox glacier, that we hope to see tomorrow (weather permitting since it’s supposed to rain…).

the drive actually felt pretty manageable since we broke the trip down into several chunks. we’re planning to take the same approach for upcoming epic drives 2 and 3 :)

nelson to cape foulwind (3 hours)
at cape foulwind, we visited the seal colony at Tauranga bay! there’s actually a nice ocean walk here that was on the short list of things we could do, but the weather was really gloomy when we got here… so we had a really nice brunch at the bay house café :)
cape foulwind to panakaiki (1 hour)
at panakaiki, we did the short 20-minute loop walk to see the pancake rocks! (we’d literally driven into much nicer weather and it was sunny and warm by this point :)) the pancake rocks are pretty awesome looking, just all these layers upon layers of limestone… after all the talk of pancakes, i was a little tempted by the cafes selling pancakes (the edible kind, with syrup :)) outside the park entrance :)
panakaiki to hokitaki (1.5 hours)
the main purpose of stopping in hokitaki (besides the fun-to-say name!) was to pick up some “takeaway” (to go) indian food, since we were both reeeeeally craving some RICE by this point and our guide book had raved about this one curry shop in hokitaki :) unfortunately, the restaurant was closed for the afternoon and we weren’t willing to wait an hour and a half for our indian food… but the awesome-est coincidence was that we later found another branch of the SAME indian restaurant just a block from our hotel in franz josef! :)
hokitaki to franz josef (2 hours)
last leg of the trip, just focusing on getting to our destination before dark!

one highlight of driving today is seeing what i’ve been calling the “trees of new Zealand”. I’m a little bit obsessed with the trees! whenever we drive around, there are so many trees that I wish I could photograph… but if we stopped each time I wanted to (not that there are many safe places to just pull over on these narrow highways!), we’d never have made it here today :) they (the trees) have such distinct shape and “character”, almost as if they each have their own story to tell! my favorites are the ones that are bent almost sideways by the strong winds, both next to the ocean coast or in the middle of a green grassy field full of grazing cow or sheep. I even saw an old sun-bleached white tree trunk laying sideways in a field with a smaller tree growing out of it! lawrence suggested that one day I could produce a coffee table book and share these trees stories with the world :)

another interesting thing we encountered is one-lane bridges! quite a number of the bridges in these less trafficked areas actually just have one lane, and one direction is assigned to “yield” to traffic going the other way. yes, so you look and if it seems clear, you go for it across the bridge! some of these were a little nerve-wracking to cross :)

we took a look at our other upcoming “epic” drives and it turns out that today's was the longest of the 3! so yay for getting the most difficult one over with already :)

the rest of abel tasman and our stay in nelson

2010-04-21T09:20:00.000-07:00

hi again! once again, I’m typing as we drive :) today is the first of three “epic” drives through the south island – our goal today is to drive from nelson to franzjosef, about 500km and an estimated 7 hours on google maps! we’ve planned out a couple of stops to break up the drive… it’s actually pretty easy to do since most of the drive is through some incredibly scenic areas (I feel like I’m becoming quite repetitive about how pretty it is everywhere here :)) anyways, we’re currently driving west through a mountainous forest area and eventually, we’ll hit the west coast (of the south island) and drive south along the coast the rest of the day.

we spent our day yesterday (after that sunrise I posted about previously!) hiking the 12km from torrent bay to marahau – on the “coast track” of the abeltasman national park. the weather continued to remain incredibly fine, it was even less windy than our first day at the park, so there was barely a ripple in the waters of the bay… would’ve made for some nice kayaking in theory, but in reality, my shoulders were pretty tired from that first kayaking trip and coincidentally enough, both lawrence and I have these blisters on our thumb knuckles!

one stand-out place from yesterday’s hike was the little beach at the watering cove. perhaps because it is small, or because it is a ways off of the main track, lawrence and I were the only people at this beach when we got there! in fact, the beach’s white sand was pristine of any footprints, so we must have been the first people to be there all day :) there was a cool rock formation here that resembled a kiwi bird dipping its beak to get some water from the bay – hence the name watering cove I would guess!

for both the night before and after our 2-day trip in abeltasman national park, we stayed in the quaint waterfront city of nelson – although it was very cute, it actually turned out to be quite a large city/hub of the area! we stayed at the most awesome place too, the wheelhouse inn, owned by a couple originally from socal, who’d started sailing around the world but ended up setlling down in new Zealand over 20 years ago. they’d built a set of little houses all around their own house, all set on a hill with the most beautiful picture windows and views! (the second photo is of the boat shed café, a small restaurant where we had dinner one night in nelson :))

thanks for following along on our trip! we’re about 40km from our first stop now (cape foulwind for brunch at the bay house cafe), so signing off for now, bye!

abel tasman national park

2010-04-20T07:20:00.000-07:00

hello from torrent bay! we’re in the middle of a two-day guided kayaking/hiking trip in the abel tasman national park. the group running our trip owns two lodges in the middle of this park, so we spent this past night at one of those lodges (specifically, the one facing the torrent bay beach). side note: at the other lodge, there is a wedding going on! i think they have that lodge at full capacity (30 people or so?) enjoying the park and celebrating the wedding – what an awesome idea :)

we started our guided tour yesterday morning with a boat ride out to tonga bay – this is the north-most point we’ll be visiting in the park (it was about an hour boat ride). from there, we kayakaed/hiked about 2/3 of the way back south to the starting point yesterday, and we’ll hike the remaining 1/3 today. abel tasman national park is really breathtakingly beautiful, all these tree-covered granite slopes descending into the turquoise blue waters of the marlborough sound; you could easily spend a whole week here exploring all the bays and hiking trails :)

i think this was my first “real” kayaking experience, and it was quite challenging! there were a couple of points (usually rounding the parts of land that jutted out into the water) where the wind was really strong and unfortunately, blowing in the opposite direction that we were trying to go! :) but we managed to survive without capsizing (yay!) and even sort of keep up with the other two (obviously more experienced!) kayaking pair buddies. the kayaking equipment and short introductory training they provided us with was really awesome… the best part was this “skirt” we all wore that fitted over the opening of the kayak that we sat in, it reeeeeally kept us from getting completely soaked! also, kayaking is really the very best way to see the cool granite formations all along the coastline that are created by the crashing waves AND the best way to see the seals!! the seals we saw were mostly sleeping on sunny rocks…. but apparently the seal pups are very curious and not scared of people, so they sometimes swim right up to kayakers :) this didn’t happen to us, but how cute is that! :)

we kayaked for two and a half hours to a quiet beach to enjoy our packed lunches (food had never tasted better! :)) and then kayaked for another 30 minutes to medlands beach. from there, we said goodbye to our kayaking buddies who were catching the boat back to the starting point that afternoon. as for lawrence and i, we hiked the 6km from medlands beach to torrent bay where we stayed last night. the hike was pretty enjoyable, we pretty much walked along the top of the mountains most of the time, so whenever there was a clearing in the trees, the view was just spectacular! we were pretty tired and had a limited amount of water on hand, so we basically headed straight to the lodge at a brisk pace – we only took a slight detour down to sandfly bay during the hike since it looked especially intriguing :)

at the lodge, we took some much needed showers (so much salt water on my face from the waves! :)) and then met our fellow lodgers over dinner – an interesting older couple from los angeles. pretty incredibly (to me), we learned that their daughter had written the screenplay for he’s just not that into you (a movie i had definitely liked) as well as never been kissed (which i love!).

today, we woke up extra early today to catch the sunrise over the beach – i love sunrises; it’s so quiet and peaceful at dawn and, no matter how many times i see a sunrise, i’m always surprised by just how much brighter it gets when the sun has risen! we’ll soon be getting some breakfast and then heading out for our day’s hike back to the starting point of the park. the weather looks to be great for hiking today too, so that’s always a nice plus! :)

okay, signing off from abel tasman national park! i’d definitely recommend this as a place to visit in new zealand, especially with the wilson group that organized our two-day trip – the logistics were all handled so perfectly :)

wellington and the end of the north island

2010-04-18T10:45:00.000-07:00

i’m typing this aboard the interislander ferry, on our way to new zealand’s south island! after 4 days (including 9 hours of driving!) in the north island, we’re heading over to the other island for the rest of our honeymoon.

most of yesterday was spent on the road to wellington and then exploring the city after we arrived! wellington is the capital city of new zealand, as well as sort of the “cultural” hub of the country – site of the best museums, lots of great shopping, and the home of new zealand espresso/café culture! as you can tell, there were several reasons i liked wellington right from the get go :) unfortunately, there was much more than could be seen in the one afternoon/evening that we were there for, so a few places in wellington are at the first entries on my list of places-to-see-next-time-we-are-in-new-zealand :)

not to focus on the negative, but to document for future reference, the places we didn’t get to go to yesterday are: (1) te papa – the national museum of new zealand! it closes at 6pm so we simply didn’t have enough time to do a judicious visit this time around. (2) pravda café – aside from the name (which was appealing because it reminded me of this russian bar we visited during our bachelorette trip to new york!), this café is supposed to have excellent food and fabulous desserts :) we tried to eat dinner here, but it was the first of two restaurants we went to that were closed for a private function! those wellington-ians sure know how to throw a private function! :) (3) shopping in the old bank arcade – even though this shopping area was only 1.5 blocks from our hotel, for some reason, i didn’t notice all of the interesting shops here until 7pm-ish… after they’d close for the day. unfortunately, we were on the road again at 8am this morning, so all i could do today was take another look into the closed storefronts when we went for some morning coffee!

what did we do then? well, first off, the day was really beautiful and sunny by the time we arrived in wellington! it’s supposed to have some of the fiercest weather in the country (actually nicknamed the “windy city”), so that was a nice treat for us :) after the 4.5 hour drive from turangi, we stopped for some afternoon snacks – steak and mushroom pie from trisha’s pies (recommended by james and min, and luckily we got there just in time… when we walked back to our car just after 2pm, the shop was all closed up!) as well as coffee from café l’affare, supposedly the original/pioneer coffee bean roaster in the country!

after that, we took the cable car up for a great view of the harbor and the city; the whole cable car was kind of akin to the peak tram in hong kong (going up through vertically-oriented and rather packed residential areas), but on a smaller scale. at the top, the wellington botanical gardens winds down the side of the hill, so we walked down through the nice, tree-lined paths. it was a really nice walk and dropped us off right by the parliament and other national government buildings! from there, we walked through the business area of the city (all closed down and quiet since it was saturday!), down to the harbor, and kept walking along the water on this street called “oriental parade”. haha i’m not sure the origins of the name (i’m sure it has something to do with oriental bay, the body of water we were strolling along), but that didn’t stop us from joking about us being “on parade”! :) we hadn’t meant to spend the day walking, but by that point, the sun had set, we’d probably walked about 5 or 6 kilometers and we were hungry for dinner! thanks for a great day wellington; we’ll be back to see you again some day…. :)

tongariro alpine crossing!

2010-04-16T19:00:00.000-07:00

we made it!! 21 km of hiking later, we're back at the lodge resting our tired feet and legs :)

it actually ended up being a bit of an adventure! our bus *did* pick us up on time, but on our way up to the plateau where the tongariro crossing trail starts, the bus company decided to turn around and not take us today (because of the risky weather and wind conditions). we were assured that the weather would be much better tomorrow and that it'd be a more pleasant (and safe!) climb that day. unfortunately for us though, our schedule has us in wellington, NZ tomorrow (and that's about a 4 hour drive away!)

as the bus company was driving back, lawrence came up with a "plan b"... we decided to take a risk and drive to the end of the tongariro crossing trail, park our car there, and hike backwards along the trail. the idea was: we could turn back at any point if conditions were too bad AND in an ideal situation, we might be able to reach the main peaks before we doubled back.

it ended up working out even better than we could've hoped! the weather had never been bad at the bottom (it was sunny, albeit slightly windy), the concern was just about the wind conditions at the top and the potential for being blown off the trails :) but as we walked, the weather was just really reeeally nice for the first 1/2 of the ascent. it got a little cloudy and rainy towards the top 1/2 of the ascent, but then, it was so amazing... right when we got to our final destination (red crater and the emerald lakes), the clouds just blew away and there was a 30-40 minute period of pure sunshine at the top! we ate our lunch there and then hauled our tired butts back to the car, enjoying clear weather all the way! it was a lot more walking doing this round trip approach (21 km versus 19 km - believe me, those 2 km really would've helped at the end! :))

finished off our day with a big order of fish and chips from grand central fry (really yummy!). all the fish on the menu were either local names or local fish, so we had no idea what we were eating... i actually can't even remember any of the names now, except for hoki (our favorite!) which is kind of like a super fluffy cod?

it's 8pm and we're already exhausted.... we've been sleeping super early (mostly because of all this walking!) and waking up really early, so it's kind of like we are still operating on seattle time!

lake taupo

2010-04-16T06:00:00.000-07:00

hi again! it's 6AM and we're up and about, getting ready for a day hike through the tongariro alpine crossing :) our bus is going to pick us up to take us to the starting point at 6:40, so we're not being early birds for no reason! it's supposed to be a pretty strenuous hike, but through some truly amazing scenes, so hopefully we'll have good things to report on the other side :) (the only concern i have is that we don't seem to have packed enough non-cotton layers *nor* do we have hiking boots -- both of which were recommended when we bought the bus pass! -- so wish us luck!)

we spent the day yesterday driving from auckland to lake taupo (it took most of the morning to make it here) and then hanging our the lake taupo area for the afternoon. it's the largest lake in new zealand so most of the things we saw were water related.... well, after we first had lunch at fine fettle, a yummy (and all organic!) cafe in downtown taupo. (1) huka falls - a slightly disappointingly "short" waterfall along the river that flows away from the lake. but although short, you could definitely tell there was a lot of water going thru there, power generated from this river produces like 15% of the whole country's energy! (2) crater of the moon - a loop trail that brings you through a region where lots of underground pools were being heated up to boiling temperatures and steam was escaping through the ground! and (3) lake taupo itself!

coast to coast walkway

2010-04-15T09:30:00.000-07:00

hello again! i’m writing this as we drive away from auckland, headed for lake taupo. (quite a short stay – even though auckland is the largest city in new zealand, there really isn’t as much for tourists to do here as compared to the rest of the country!) i’ve never tried typing in a moving car before, but it’s surprisingly easy! unlike when i’ve tried reading in a car (which i can't do), i’m not really getting carsick because i can look away from the keyboard and screen while writing… it’s kind of surreal though, typing while looking out the window at the scenery we’re passing!

anyways, yesterday we *did* manage to complete about 80% of the coast to coast walkway. we figure we walked about 8 miles all told… it was pretty tiring (a lot of up and down the various hills of auckland + we are pretty out of shape) but the awesome views and (mostly) spectacular weather made it a really great way to see the city! there was one patch of rain which lasted about 5 minutes (lierally!) but aside from that it was sunny and warm enough to walk around without a jacket (yay!).

the walk started at the ferry building, which was only a block from our hotel. there was a pretty nice view of our hotel from the ferry building – it kind of looks like it’s floating out over the water :) first major stop was albert park (named after prince albert, but shout out to the two Albert L.’s in our lives – we thought of you while we were there!). the path then loops through the university of auckland, but we took a small detour to eat at middle east, a popular falafel and shwarma place. on our way, we also found an intriguing stand selling “korean pancakes” with your choice of filling – we tried one with red bean; it was suuuuper oily but really really yummy :)

the next major area we walked through was the auckland domain. (i think they use “domain” to refer to large parks? that’s what it seemed like at least, since several of the larger sites we passed throughout the day were called domains…) the auckland domain was a nice hilly park with huge green lawns and lots of tree-lined paths. the main attraction there (i think) is the large auckland war memorial museum. we’d originally planned to stop there for a while, but since we still had a lot of walking to do (and the weather was so nice!) we decided to just keep going…

did you know auckland (and in fact, most of new zealand) was formed through a lot of volcanic activity? i never knew that, but the next two places we went to were actualy former volcanic areas that have now become these beautiful hills with great views of the city and the harbor! the first one we went to was called mount eden – quite a name to live up to, i’d imagine! :) – which was particularly cool because you could still see the crater where the volcano used to be. it’s since been overgrown with grass and in fact, kind of resembles what i imagine a nice skiing “bowl” would look like in the summer months.

the next stop (and last stop for us since we decided to head back after that point!) was cornwall park and one tree hill – haha no, not the tv show, but apparently this hill was the muse/inspiration for a u2 song? both of these were given to the people of new zealand by john camplbell, one of the first european settlers/landowners in the area (he was also one of the founders of the city, and maybe even the country!) another nice walk through a beautiful park culminating in a big climb to the summit – the top of one tree hill is an obelisk dedicated to the maori people (the aboriginal people of new zealand) as well as campbell’s burial site. this park was also populated with a looooot of sheep – which are much *less* cute up-close than i had imagined!! – and also seemed popular with the local people too, a lot of whom jogged along the same hills that we were wearily walking on :)

after that, we took a bus ride back to the city center, marveling at how far we’d walked that day (it took about 20 minutes to bus back along a reverse route). it was only 5pm, but we were exhausted though, between the walking and also the time difference… we sleepily ate our way through a delicious dinner at euro* to finish out our first day in nz! (the food was all really good, but the fresh baked ciabatta bread with truffle butter and the rotisserie chicken were my favorites!)

whew. thanks for reading and no problem if you skimmed… i’m kind of documenting this for ourselves just as much as to share with others :) onward to taupo! (i’ve written so much that we’re already like 1/3 of the way through our 4 hour drive!)

first morning in auckland...

2010-04-14T09:15:00.000-07:00

wow, we finally made it to the hotel. driving here is definitely a challenge! besides driving on the opposite side of the street (extra scary since lawrence tended to drift to the left out of habit), the roads seem to wind and bend and not line up squarely :) but being here (at the hotel) just a short time has already been so refreshing - the hotel is lovely, situated right on princes wharf so there are unobstructed views from all sides, and our room has this little patio with a really awesome view of the harbor!

after a short break, we're planning to head out for the "coast to coast" walk through auckland. it should take us a few hours (it's a total of 17km) and hopefully the weather holds up for the whole time!

hello from auckland!

2010-04-14T06:30:00.000-07:00

specifically, hello from the auckland airport! our flight here was pretty uneventful (in a good way)...

right off, we watched an awesome movie (the blind side! i'd heard so many good things about it, but even so, it still exceeded my expectations - i love it when movies can do that :)). even though we had individual tv screens, we were trying to watch "in sync" but i thiiink mine was a few seconds ahead because sometimes i'd be laughing by myself!

after that, i watched the first two episodes of glee, both of which i'd never seen since i joined the glee bandwagon a little later. awesome too, of course! one (small) bummer about travelling this week is that we are missing their first episode back, but i guess that just means.. glee marathon when i return to the states! :)

then, i think i slept for 8 hours straight! i've always been pretty good at sleeping on airplanes (or cars, or bus rides, or really, anywhere!) but this was pretty remarkable in that it was such solid/deep sleep - according to lawrence, it was even through some moderate turbulence! it was pretty needed tho, i think i've been in a state of post-wedding adreneline for the last few days (waking up on my own at like 6:30am two days in a row!) so catching up on rest was really great...

anyways, off to pick up our rental car now! we arrived at 5AM new zealand time, but i actually feel quite peppy (it's like 10am PST) and ready to start our first day here :)

just married!

2010-04-12T14:31:00.000-07:00

lawrence and i got married this past saturday :) :) <-- these smiley faces somehow seem underwhelming in expressing the happiness of the occasion!

we're at the airport now getting ready to fly to new zeeeeeeeealand! :)

welcome HOME! :)

2009-05-27T23:57:00.000-07:00

yesterday, lawrence and i got the keys to our new house!! the first piece of ANYTHING in our new house was this cute little housewarming gift from angela :) it was funny because we had bought something really similar as a bridal shower gift for vicky (except instead of a milk carton-shaped vase, it was a milk-carton shaped cream + sugar set) -- but at the time, she'd already been planning to give us this! i guess great minds think alike?! :) it really matches the colors of the house too...

do we look like homeowners? :) here we are outside of our house, about a week before the closing date.

judy and jason's wedding

2009-05-26T00:03:00.000-07:00

just returned today from a long weekend in southern california... this memorial day weekend was made *memorable* by judy and jason's sweet wedding in malibu! you guys looked so *happy*, your wedding was so beautiful, and we all had such a good time too :)

if a picture speaks a thousand words, how many does a video say? this one captures everything i could have said about the wedding... and so so sooooo much more too!

(special props to vince spielberg for making this awesome video!)

i think it's something special to carry your high school friends into your grown-up friends... there's a certain comfort, depth and familiarity that's grown over the years. i'm so thankful that you guys have been (and will always be!) in my life :)

graduating from georgetown...

2009-05-25T23:57:00.000-07:00

i recently went on a trip to d.c., where quincy, lawrence and i ALL graduated from law school... :) just kidding of course, but the pictures below may have given you *sliiiight* pause (or just a small smile at our silliness!).

in all seriousness though, congrats quincy! we're all glad to have you back in seattle (for a little while at least!).

pretty surprises :)

2009-05-12T00:53:00.000-07:00

hi again! two pretty spring surprises to share from this past weekend...

first, we surprised our mom with a flower delivery on mother's day (even though julie and i were both in opposite corners of the u.s. that day). i called in an order to four seasons florist -- yes, the same place we used to order corsages and boutonnieres for high school dances :) -- and combined my current favorite flowers, white calla lilies + yellow gerber daisies. i'd never seen them arranged together, but i think it turned out as nice in real life as i'd hoped for in my brain. thanks to vince for being the magical flower delivery elf that made this all possible! (and i mean "magical flower delivery elf" in the very very best way!)

secondly, angela and i went wedding dress shopping on sunday afternoon ... it was a *lot* more fun than i had expected! there are so many pretty dresses, and trying them on, it's kind of like playing dress up in a really awesome (all white!) closet :) we strongly believe there is a correlation between the sunny-ness of the day (it was super sunny on saturday!) and how much you like the stuff you try on (i really liked so many of the dresses!). it's going to be hard to make the final decision... you can only choose *one* after all! i better go back on a cloudier day :)

hello again!

2009-05-08T23:41:00.000-07:00

it's been a long time since my last post; at that time, i'd only been at work for a week?! i've now been at my "new" job for.... over 3 months now! :) my, how the time flies!

so this weekend is mother's day... happy mother's day!! this post is really inspired by my mom. a few weeks ago, she asked me why i'd decided to stop blogging... i think i replied something like: "um, i haven't stopped blogging?" but i realized that i pretty much *had* stopped for all extents and purposes, and ever since then i'd been meaning to write again. so anyways, 你好!

a few pictures that i recently posted from a family photo shoot we did back around christmas: one of my mom (so cute!) and one of julie and i picking her up (since she always picks us up... not literally anymore, but her steadfast love for us is always an encouragement :))

[photos taken by moe and misa of moleyphotography -- thanks guys!]

another small push in the direction of blogging again came from vince. (indirectly; in fact, he probably never even realized!) we saw each other at albert and amara's wedding, at which point he asked me how my new year's resolution was going. it was a pretty simple resolution, to floss every single day in 2009. i'd started out pretty strong all the way through february, but i hadn't even realized i'd kind of gone back to my *typical* dental routine! anyways, along with resolving to resume flossing, i somehow decided to help julie complete *her* single new year's resolution for 2009... to blog more! :) so roundabout, but here i am! by the way (and much more important than my return to the blogosphere!), the wedding was a truuuuly wonderful and joyous celebration... if you know them but couldn't be at the wedding, check out this awesome video! you can totally see the happiness oozing out of them when they look at each other throughout the day. albert is one of my oldest and best friends and i'm so happy that he's found (and married!) the love of his life! congrats again a&a!

anyways, BACK TO ME AND BLOGGING :) i think it'll be easier to blog if i just write about what i've been doing or thinking in particular moments, instead of trying to capture it all! so let's see how this goes shall we?

today i watched the new star trek movie. i'd never watched any star trek tv shows or movies, but our whole team was going to the movie theater this morning, and i decided to join them! i'm so glad i did... it was such a great movie! i'll admit that i'm not the most discriminating moviegoer (i almost never dislike a movie) but this one is one i'd be pretty confident recommending. haha and yes, i did say *morning*, it was definitely the first 8:45AM show i'd ever caught! :) my conclusion? watching a movie while sipping a soy latte is not a bad way to start a day. but driving to work after that, well, it's a little odd :)

austin and feyon shared at church tonight about their work in the slums of goa. it's so cool to see how they've dedicated their lives to serving those who are neglected and forgotten - not only taking care of them spiritually, but emotionally and physically too. i think we need more "whole person" love everywhere - but i must admit that i easily become focused on myself and the things that i need to do, instead of really noticing others' needs. austin asked this great question: how can we say we love god (whom we can't even see), but yet look at the people all around us and feel nothing? can't say i have a good answer for that, but it's definitely a challenging thought. i don't think big changes happen overnight (as much as i would like them to!). maybe going from feeling nothing to feeling a little bit, and then a little bit more, and so on... instead of waiting for a huge transformation to happen in my heart all at once. kind of like my approach to blogging, i'm going to try caring a little more. and then, hopefully one day, i'll realize i care a lot more than i did when i first started!

austin suggested that lawrence and i go to goa for our honeymoon. how cool would that be? it's a beach town AND we could sort of help out with some of their ministry there. oh hmm... so a few other things have changed since my last post too! did you hear... lawrence and i are engaged! :)

one week and counting!

2009-01-19T21:40:00.000-08:00

hi again... one full week after moving back to seattle!

it's been a pretty awesome first week; definitely no complaints from me :) first of all, it's only been a few days (orientation and then about 3 full days IN the office), but so far, i really really like my new job! my project (for the coming year or so) seems interesting - even, dare i say, fun?! - and the teammates i have met so far are all so helpful and friendly too. sometimes, i catch myself walking down the hallway with a big grin on my face - wow, writing that down makes it seem extra goofy, but i wanted you guys to hear about the good times, since i'm sure there will ALSO be tough/busy/difficult times at some point :) of course, coming back to the same company is a little bit nostalgic, and i've recently been thinking of my old job and my coworkers from my previous group; i miss them too! haha but that's easily remedied since their office is only a hop, skip and a jump (or a 5 minute shuttle ride to be more exact :)) away.

capping off the first week, in northwestern style, we went on a snow trip to whistler! i'm pretty sure whistler is my favorite ski resort in the whole world (although my exposure to the "international" snow scene is admittedly very slim :)), and the weather this past weekend was just AMAZING. the visibility was perfect, letting you admire the full beauty of the mountains, even hanging thousands of feet in the air (yes, we rode the new peak-to-peak gondola... and even snagged one of the cars with a glass bottom to let you look down as you travelled from blackcomb mountain to whistler mountain!). plus, it was so sunny and so warm, my fingers and toes did not even have a chance to feel numb the whole time! there was some strange weather pattern, that made the alpine areas warmer than the base of the mountain, so it was a little destructive to the snow conditions, but it made it really pleasant to be out and about during the day. having not snowboarded in almost two years though, that really affected me quite a bit! physically, it was harder to actually do the snowboarding motions (and i'm pretty sore now, in the aftermath of the two days on the slopes!), but mostly psychologically... i was kind of a big chicken the whole weekend. *bawk bawk* :) aside from the outdoor daily activity, it was also really fun hanging out with the group - 14 of us humans, plus one dog :) - especially when the girls totally crushed the guys at pictionary one night!

finally back home now, after a lot of driving (a.k.a. sitting in a driven car) today, and i'm looking forward to curling up with a good book (i'm currently reading shantaram, one of vince's recommendations), before catching up on some sleep, before going back to work tomorrow. one week down, presumably quite a few more to go, but tonight, i'm definitely feeling optimistic and thankful about things in general :) good night, readers! and happy inauguration day to you tomorrow too!

digging on... lenka! :)

2009-01-12T23:28:00.000-08:00

tonight, i joined angela and betty at the triple door for a performance by lenka. it was pretty impromptu, since they happened to have an extra ticket and i happened to be in seattle a little earlier than expected, but i'm so soo glad i could be there! (by the by, the triple door is a really cool venue! tonight was my first time there and even if i hadn't totally loved the concert, i think i still would have enjoyed the vibe of the place itself :) although the good music definitely helped too, of course!)

as for lenka herself, i can't think of a better word to describe her... she's just completely and utterly *cute*. i mean, check out her website, listen to some songs, and let me know if it doesn't just cry out: cute! (i actually wish that i didn't use that adjective so often because it seems to take away from my sincerity in this instance!) as the concert came to an end, we all had these huge goofy smiles on our faces, because the music just makes you feel good and upbeat :) riding the post-concert music-induced buzz, we waited in line and met lenka herself! i hardly ever ever meet famous people, so this was quite an anomolous treat for me :) i know she's not like super-famous yet, but it was quite surreal to see her in "real life" after just watching her perform on stage for an hour or so!

pre-lenka, lawrence and i had dinner at steelhead diner in pike place market. the sandwiches here are delicious, filling, and pretty reasonably priced... not to mention, served with awesome (with the perfect amount of crispiness) fries! my temporary, company-provided housing is located close to downtown seattle, so i'm really hoping to take advantage of the opportunity to experience the "city life" :) today was my first day of work at the new job, so it seems like thus far, i'm off to a good start on this... you know i'm not really one for living it up (in the conventional sense), but i don't want to simply sleep in the city without actually living in it first! :)

welcoming 2009...

2009-01-11T13:42:00.000-08:00

hi again!

it's actually been a little while since my last blog post... and so much has happened since then! first of all, i'm in seattle now! i moved to seattle last night, and i'll be starting my new job TOMORROW. whew. it's been rainy since i arrived, which was oddly reminiscent of the night i first moved to seattle (during a serious downpour of a night in 2003), but aside from that, the two moves have been completely different! it's been sad leaving san diego, and moving away from my family and my close friends in so-cal, but at the same time, arriving in seattle has felt like... coming home! the roads and neighborhoods are familiar, seeing friendly faces, going to eastside church, it's all still very much the same, but being away for so long seems to have given me a new appreciation for everything.

within the last few weeks, i've also become a chargers fan :) it was incredibly exciting watching them win the last game of their regular season, just barely qualifying for the playoffs, and then winning the first playoff game against the colts. wow! unfortunately, they just lost today... ending the streak that had visibly lifted the spirits of the people of sd; it has been really great seeing how strangers can bond over their mutual excitement for a sports team's progress. typically, i'm a hot-and-cold fan, totally committed for oh... maybe ONE game or even the rest of a single season, but i have a feeling i'm going to stick with the chargers for a while! :)

i miss san diego. i miss the sunshine, the people, heck, even the chargers! but you know, when i was in san diego, i also missed seattle too, so i guess all i can do is appreciate the great things about the here-and-now (and i mean, it's not like the there-and-now is gone forever or anything!).

wishing you a happy 2009! i had a few ideas for new year's resolutions, but the one i've kept vigilently so far is a commitment to floss... each and every night! here's to better dental health :)

christmas in san diego

2008-12-29T14:05:00.000-08:00

merry christmas, everyone! having spent the last christmas in taiwan, apart from my parents (although thankfully, julie could come to asia last year), it was especially awesome to be all together this year. lawrence was snowed out of seattle for a few days too, so our house was reeally chock-full!

some photos from the holidays:

(from top-left to bottom-right)

(1) we had our traditional christmas eve hot pot dinner - here's my mom adding some food to the pot!

(2) group photo with our extended "family", with lawrence and bobby. this is from dinner one night when the tanenbaums came to our house. we have been family friends with them since back in 1989, when we all lived in the small town of henniker, nh.

(3) julie and i on christmas morning. we are both wearing the gifts we'd just exchanged - ajames perse cardigan for her, and a hbs sweatshirt for me. our family has a trend of increasingly extravagant gifts for one another, not just for the sake of extravagance, but with what i believe is a genuine desire to get something really NICE for one another. but this year, we decided to exchange more simply, a pre-arranged decision that was wise and led to more useful gifts :)

(4) annie and vince at the baby shower for jerm and niki's soon-to-arrive baby boy! on the day after christmas, the three of us planned a small and simple shower for the chiens to celebrate with their southern californian friends; it was also a really great way to get a bunch of old high school friends together. (more pictures are posted here.)

this christmas, i definitely saw a lot MORE high school friends that i had the past few years. i'm sure several factors played into that - more people just happening to be in town this year, people reconnecting at the 10 year reunion last summer (although i could not attend, i am also reaping those benefits!), and even the baby shower bringing people together and providing an opportunity for making plans and meeting up. for the most part, my catching up with people seem to follow the same pattern - initially, people seem to be almost exactly the same as when we graduated high school 10 years ago, especially because many of us actually physically look pretty unchanged! however, after digging a little deeper, i can see that everyone has carved out a unique path for themselves and discovered their own passions, interests, and even through bad experiences, learning what it is they definitely don't like. it's really amazing how many varied and incredible experiences people have been through since parting ways in 1998. i'm so proud of you guys, and i feel so lucky to be able to call you friends! :)

of course, then there are the old friends you have never lost touch with. vince and i drove up to irvine two nights ago to visit annie and sean again. they were hosting a LAN party (kind of like... BYOC, bring-your-own-computer!) on saturday night, but we carved out a little board-game-party in the midst of all the computers and network cables :) we played bang and also ticket to ride (europe edition) - for the latter, i broke my recent streak and actually came in not-last place! sunday was just a perfect day for being outside; we met up with judy in laguna beach, which is already close to perfection on most days, so you can imagine just how great of a combination that made. old friends + warm sunset + vast ocean = waves of thankfulness and contentment. estoy muy contenta.

reunion at cesar

2008-12-22T16:52:00.000-08:00

claudia and babak got married this past friday! congratulations :) :) <-- that's one smily face for each of you! this photo is from their sunday lunch reception at cesar (in oakland), one of their favorite restaurants that I'd always heard about but never had a chance to go myself... until this past weekend. :)

the food was really good - it definitely lived up to all of the hype! I especially loved the giant, banquet-sized pan of paella (meant for super-sharing!) and the sundaes made of cinnamon churros and rich chocolate ice cream. yum! but, even the exquisite food paled in comparison to the wonderful company gathered together at cesar that afternoon. the setup of the reception was pretty casual, without place cards and assigned seating, leaving the guests free to mix, mingle and chat with everyone there. it seemed more like a party than a wedding, but I think people liked it a lot; in fact, quite a number of times, I heard the expression "without being stuck with the same group of people at your table" used to describe the difference :) it's a good setting for meeting new people, but even better for catching up with old friends you haven't seen in some time!

claud and I met each other as computer science undergrads at cal, and although we didn't really become close friends until after college - it's funny sometimes, how distance actually can deepen friendships, isn't it? - our sets of college friends overlapped quite a bit. bonding over the challenges of our, at times intense, coursework, you'd think that our friendships were more circumstantial than substantial, but in the years since graduation, I've come to realize that we all care a great deal for each other and truly enjoy seeing one another's paths and successes in life. we took a cal group photo at the wedding that I'll post later (once I get my grubby photo-aholic hands on it :)) but first, let me share two older photos of some of these people ... one from stanford graduation 2004 (both howard and lis got their masters that year) and one from a beach in vancouver (circa fall 2005). sometimes I think the most striking changes are in our hair-dos :)

cookie monster!

2008-12-18T22:03:00.000-08:00

after the cookie exchange, I felt like I kept seeing really appealing cookie recipes that I wanted to try making! you know how it is, once you have a reason to notice something (cookie recipes in this case), and suddenly, it starts popping up everywhere :) two really jumped out from the bunch, and finally this afternoon, I took a couple of hours to try them out. here's a photo of the final result - I think they are both pretty delicious! :)

what are they? the lighter ones in the front are peppermint bark chocolate chip cookies (from this recipe) and the darker ones are triple chocolate espresso bean cookies (from this recipe. as you can tell, I'm a big fan of 101cookbooks.com :)). which one is better? well, I think I prefer the chocolate-coffee flavor of the 2nd cookie, but there's quite a bit of caffeine in them - coffee grounds, chocolate covered espresso beans, plus the chocolate of course! - so after snacking on one just now, I definitely feel a slightly hyper buzz :) that's a good and bad thing of course (especially at 11pm... ).

what makes me suspect that I might truly be a fiercesome cookie monster? well, it appears that even the snow is afraid of me! fiona, albert and I left new jersey on a balmy 50-degree day (december 15th), but apparently it had snowed both the week before we arrived *and* the day after we left :) coincidence? perhaps. BUT! their were fierce forecasts of record snowfall in the seattle area, predicted to begin on the night of the 16th. I was hoping to see some snowfall prior to leaving in the early evening of the 17th, but no luck! it started the night I left (after my plane took off of course).. and apparently snowed a TON today too. haha I don't reeeally think the snow finds me truly fearful, but it really is quite an interesting coincidence isn't it? I'm heading up to sf this weekend, so bay area residents can relax, you should be snow-free til monday at least :)

in other news, vince is back in the u.s.! haha after travelling the world for 9 months, he arrived back in san diego yesterday morning. I saw him today and can confirm that indeed, he has made it home :) it's been real exciting following along on his journey (via his photos)... even though I was out of the country for longer, he definitely saw much muuuuch more! note: I even show up as part of his trip around the world - we were able to meet up in beijing this past june :)

speaking of travellers, my poor sister's trip home from boston today is taking way longer than expected. an unplanned re-routing through denver caused her to miss a connecting flight.... she's still in the air headed for las vegas and will probably not be able to get back to san diego until tomorrow! I guess this whole blog post comes full circle, because I'd be trying to finish the cookies in time to welcome her home tonight. good thing they'll keep til tomorrow too :)

double surprise in new jersey :)

2008-12-17T08:41:00.000-08:00

two cute photos from this past saturday...

the first is from our surprise baby shower for yiyin (and caleb)! she took fiona and i to the annual christmas party hosted by the ladies group at her church (calvary baptist church), but after the dinner and white elephant gift exchange, we turned the tables on HER and surprised her with a baby shower that same evening! it was pretty funny because yiyin hadn't thought that we'd want to go to a christmas party with people we didn't really know, but in fact, the whole time, we were just waiting for her to bring it up to us! i'm really glad fiona and i could be there for the caleb-preparation-and-celebration time; she also received so many super cute clothes that we could ooh and ahh over :)

the second surprise of the night happened when we arrived back at greg and yiyin's house. while we were at the christmas party/baby shower, albert and greg had baked a birthday cake for fi! a real handmade from scratch white chocolate raspberry cake. they even made the raspberry frosting and decorated it! (look at how pretty it is :)) well, this was a surprise to me too, and i let out a small (quiet-ish) squeal when i saw the cake upon arriving home! (fi didn't hear tho of course :)) it was really ingenious of the guys to pit the two surprises against one another... bc both yiyin and fiona were so caught up in their own plans, they didn't even notice the somewhat odd behavior of others around them. creating distractions.... it's a good idea for future surprises i think! :)

all in all, our weekend together was really wonderful! we arrived early friday morning and spent that day (after a nice nap!) in new york city, touring the christmas tree scene at rockefeller center and the light shows at the large department stores, and of course... eating a lot of delicious food! the hos introduced us to shanghai cafe, a reallly scrumptious shanghainese restaurant (serving delicious, freshly steamed xiao long bao among other things!), nancy introduced us to patsy's pizzeria (serving up that trademark thin-crust new york style pizza) and brought us to a new location of magnolia bakery on the upper west side. it was also such a treat to SEE nancy again after a long series of years of being bi-coastal email friends after college! :)

saturday and sunday were spent travelling around new jersey (actually quite a bit prettier than you'd think from the name/reputation!). visiting greg and yiyin's favorite places, attending a few church gatherings (i bought a few interesting looking books!), and also playing games. my first introduction to wii fit... it's really fun! or should i say, wii-lly fun?! :)

some pictures of us from this weekend: the girls riding on the new york city subway, and all 5 of us (yes, i was a wonderful fifth wheel! :)) at the hos' house!

back in seattle!

2008-12-09T11:58:00.000-08:00

seattle can be so pretty! these two pictures are from alki beach and seattle center. you can almost SEE that it's 20 degrees colder than san diego tho! i'm sitting at "my" little desk in lawrence's study room right now; it's quite cold (even indoors!) but i have my trusty little space heater pumping warm air at my feet. haha even though i'm getting a little hungry, i think i'll wait a bit in my warm bubble before venturing down to the kitchen :)

it's been really nice being back so far! seeing old friends (it's funny because BEFORE moving to china, i'd kind of considered my washingtonian friends my "new" friends, but now they've apparently become ancient?! anyways...), spending time with lawrence and his parents, meeting the new babies (i'm totally in love with madeline garrison!) and even visiting some new places:

* urban craft uprising fair (which really inspires me to try new craft projects!)

* quinn (a newish restaurant from the same owners of zoe, but with a completely more laidback vibe... the braised short ribs were the daily special that night and they were AMAZING!)

* matador (i really liked the happy hour menu. and playing yahtzee in our booth there was fun too, although i guess since WE brought that, it doesn't have much to do with the restaurant itself per se. although it was a nice environment for playing, so thanks to them for that!)

* the new locations of cafe vivace (a nice bright yellow environment, but i still miss the exposed brick walls and large windows of the old location!) and el gaucho (now in downtown bellevue, AND with a happy hour!)

welll, with all that being said, hmm, it seems like we've been eating out a lot...

this past sunday, connie hosted a cookie exchange for some of the postpsalt girls (i guess a self-selected group who enjoys baking? :)). i had wanted to try something different, so i made and brought 6 dozen of these "healthy" banana-oatmeal-chocolate chip cookies (that i had tried/posted about previously). this second batch turned out a bit better since i was using real almond meal (from trader joe's) instead of hand-crushed almond slivers! also, rolling them into little balls before baking gave them a nice and consistent shape. ironically though, despite my original intention to be unique in providing a healthy alterna-cookie, isabel's applesauce oatmeal cookies also kind of fit that bill :) (it's okay though, it just gives me more breakfast options haha.) the photo on the left is of some of my cookies, and the one on the right is of the girls gathered in the kitchen.

the glass castle [jeannette walls]

2008-12-05T18:21:00.000-08:00

i read this book about a week ago; i really loved it! in fact, i liked it so much that, prior to even finishing the book, i bought an extra copy to include in a care package box that i sent off to my former teammates in china :) (i hope you guys like it!) so many people had recommended this book to me, but i'd always put off reading it because i had this notion that it would be a really sad or depressing story about a tough childhood. i'm so glad i finally gave it a chance; it is so much more than the (for lack of a better word!) sob story i had expected.

the book is jeannette wall's memoir of a unique childhood, raised by brilliant but free-spirited parents. i suppose an outside observer would describe jeannette's dad (rex walls) as a drunk with grandiose plans who lacked the work ethic to carry them to completion, and her mom (rosemary walls) as a struggling painter/writer who should have taken better care of her 4 kids. their family drifted between desert towns in the southwest before coming to rest in the mining town of welch, rex walls' hometown in the mountains of west virginia. the first lesson you learn is that things are not always what they seem at the surface. those who would espouse such unflattering assessments of rex and rosemary would be able to support their statements with hard facts and evidence of parental negligence, but at the same time, that is not at all the way the kids saw their lives. they loved the carefree adventure story that their parents wove around the events of their lives and the creative education embedded within their unconventional family life. the title of this book comes from one of rex wall's elaborate plans, to build a family home out of glass, a beautiful castle with limitless views (and all running on solar power too!).

as the book goes on though, we empathetically join jeannette in her gradual realization that, at some level, things actually were how they seemed, eventually joining her, and her three siblings, as they board long-distances buses to new york city to escape their parents' seeming self-destruction. which is the illusion and which is the true reality here? were rex and rosemary loving parents or irresponsible menaces? i think they were both, in parts, but perhaps more importantly, i think these simple terms, these absolute labels, cannot completely capture the complex role they played in their children's lives. jeannette walls simply tells her story, i didn't feel that it was intended to be either a condemnation nor an exoneration, but each page of her honest exposition is infused with a deep love for her parents and a kind of longing for their unfulfilled dreams. (that is how i read it at least!)

i was also really intrigued by the character of rex walls - who in many senses is the main protagonist in jeannette's story. in him, there's a really clear struggle between his charismatic genius and the alcohol addiction that takes a growing hold on him as the years pass, playing out like a struggle between light and darkness, waged within the realm of one single human soul. jeannette loved her dad for the previous, thinking him a knight among other men, who made the dads of her schoolmates and neighbors seem boring in comparison. however, even as her sister and brother became increasingly disillusioned with rex's behavior and his drinking, jeannette loves him and accepts him wholly. i think it is this unconditional love, this deeply rooted faith in rex's ability to achieve his dreams and in the possibility for things to turn up for their family, that makes jeannette his favorite, and causes her eventual departure to new york to be the hardest for him to accept. would more typical parents have served their children better? is a steady "okay" state preferable to an up-and-down roller coaster between brilliance and desperation? in the end, it was not a matter of preference for the conventional, but of the alcoholism becoming impossible for the children to cure or to live with. i don't think any of the children wished for another father per se, but i think all of them wished fervently for their same father to be able to resist drinking.

i think readers will be divided about the true legacy that rex and rosemary bequeathed to their children. some might say that their irresponsible parenting limited their opportunities, but i would agree with the opposition who believe the gift of imagination and the development of independence and survival skills are in fact, of great value. there were many risks and hazards to their upbringing, and many times when things may have turned out less well, but in hindsight, it appears that, in this case, the adage holds true: whatever doesn't kill you simply makes you stronger. furthermore, not only did the children learn how to simply survive, but i believe they were conditioned to see life as an adventure, and to expect something more than just a "normal" life.

in short, i loved this book. rex walls' glass castle never took physical form, but even so, it provided a sort of metaphysical setting for a most unique fairytale :)

happy thanksgiving!

2008-12-01T17:21:00.000-08:00

this year, we did a sort of extended thanksgiving ... 3 days. haha soon we'll catch up with the 12 days of christmas! (all those lords-a-leaping and ladies-dancing must just be resting on their laurels or something... ha ha? i'm not sure if that's such a GREAT joke, but i'll just leave it in there for now :)) wednesday night, we went to cbc (chinese bible church)'s thanksgiving dinner. my parents are really involved in the congregation, so it was nice to meet some of their friends and eat with them ... but i had to skedaddle out a little early to pick up julie from the airport! (yay! round trip from boston may have been pricey, but having us all there for thanksgiving was pretty priceless :)) thursday night was our family dinner at home, and friday night was the bigger thanksgiving dinner with the wangs and the lees. really good times... good company and really yummy meals! :) pumpkin pie is definitely my all-time favorite, but this year, i tried sweet potato pie for the first time too. haha maybe i just like ALL autumnal flavors of pie?!

some cool pictures from the week:

from top-left to bottom-right: (1) julie and daddy with the annual thanksgiving pies! my sister makes them from scratch every year! (2) julie and mommy with other parts of our family dinner. (3) me and julie at the ramona overlook, the destination of a hike we did on friday morning. the whole iron mountain trail area was really popular that morning - i guess lots of people wanted to walk off their thanksgiving dinner calories? :) (4) dim sum at china max with bobby, his sister and his cousin. we've been jasmine-devotees for years, but it's fast becoming our favorite dim sum place in san diego!

i'm not working these days, but since it was a national holiday, everyone else was also not working and hence, free to travel about... so i was also able to see jenny wu and ryan briefly during their respective visits to san diego. it's always nice to be reunited with an old friend and realize that, even though external circumstances have changed a ton, the core essence of the friendship is still intact :) old friends, new friends, near or far, i love you guys! :)

a few other random notes....

* i really enjoyed the movie twilight! (altho i would only recommend it for those who have read/enjoyed the book. otherwise, i'm guessing you'd like it as much as the guy sitting next to us - in other words, not at all! after each preview, i heard "i wish we were watching that movie..." :)) * this coming weekend, i'll be participating in a cookie exchange - my first one ever! - so i've been looking for interesting cookie recipes to share with the other girls. this afternoon, i gathered the ingredients to make this "healthy cookie" recipe (seen on 101cookbooks)... it's pretty different from any "cookie" i've had before, and i like them at least! haha i wonder how "healthy" they are when you keep popping them down one afte another? :/ * i've also recently joined goodreads.com (you can see my profile here - and if you are also on goodreads, do add me as a friend please! :)). i know i've tried other websites for book sharing and recording what you've read, but this one seems extra good! i like it so much that i've updated the "what i'm reading..." sidebar on this blog AND i've even gone back and added in all the books i've read since 2004! (haha it's pretty dorky, but i started keeping an excel spreadsheet to track my reading, so i have good records as of '04 :))

that's all for today! hope you had a great thanksgiving too - and that your coming year is full of even *more* reasons to be thankful :)

weekend in santa cruz

2008-11-25T09:10:00.000-08:00

i headed up to the bay area this past weekend for claudia's bachelorette party in santa cruz! she's totally not into the traditional wedding thing, so there was no partying it up in the city, no toilet-paper bride (although we did learn, surprisingly, which brand of t.p. claud insists upon!).... instead, claud gathered a group of 13 girls in a santa cruz cabin for a weekend of relaxing, cooking, dining, wining and playing games :) even though claud and i are good friends, i hadn't met many of her other girlfriends before, so it was a really neat opportunity to meet the other "main characters" in her life; many of the names definitely preceded the faces in this case!

claud's a definite "foodie" and a few of the girls (special props to carmen, anne and jane) prepared an absolutely a m a z i n g menu of food for us. i've been to a few fancy restaurants in my days, but this may have been the best meal of my life, AND i was so impressed that "real people" (i.e. not professional chefs - altho they may have taken culinary classes before - and cooking in a small cabin kitchenette) could produce that kind of food from scratch ingredients. haha it's really quite an inspiration to me, as a novice (or even pre-novice) cook myself! :)

(from top left to bottom right) * anne rolling out dough for handmade pasta noodles! * carmen serving the terrine of soul * group picture in the cabin stairwell * lisa visits "mr. toad's house", in front of the the barn on the rental property! *

going gourmet, part 1

2008-11-17T14:57:00.000-08:00

while living in china, i definitely tried a lot of new food, but this seemingly simple bagel sandwich was something that i thought i could bring to my own kitchen! :) since bagels are kind of hard to come by, even in beijing where they are only available at international supermarkets and western restaurants, i almost always jumped at the chance to have one. this particular bagel (from olive restaurant, near workers' stadium) was served with an unconventional - to me at least! - combination of avocado, cucumber slices, cream cheese and some other things :) i was bagel-deprived at the time, but i am sure that's not the only reason why i loved the sandwich!

i made one today for my lunch, unfortunately to much less fanfare! apparently, it is those "other ingredients" (that i couldn't identify and hence couldn't replicate) that made it such a delicious sandwich :) one of the missing ingredients was crushed black pepper - i question my own sanity a little at this point, was i just blind that i couldn't find any in our kitchen? - which would have helped reduce the blandness for sure :)

ah well, better luck (and hopefully a better lunch!) next time.

recent projects

2008-11-14T13:05:00.000-08:00

project \ˈprä-ˌjekt\ noun -

looking it up online, it seems like there are a ton of different ways to define this word! (not that i didn't know what project meant before, but i was just curious how others would define it.) my favorite is "a planned undertaking"; i cut out the other specifics, like usually research-related, government-funded (is that true?) and often involving a group of students, to make it fit my usage :)

i usually use the term to refer to anything that i'm *making* - in china, it was usually a photo collage of some sort (haha i really never minded being the "collage girl" of our team :)), but these days, i find that i have the time to take on some bigger/more challenging projects! annie and i are collaborating to make all of the paper-products for judy and jason's wedding - the save-the-dates should be in the mail and invitations/programs/name cards/etc. are on their way. i've helped with bits and pieces of wedding paper-products before (some of my favorites are shown below), but this is my first time with a whole wedding s e r i e s!

i was also tapped a couple of weeks ago to make a flyer for a christmas celebration - in beijing! (it's the annual christmas event at haidian christian church, the church i attended when i was living in beijing... so not a true international "commission" haha.) of course i was glad to help out, and made this simple quarter sheet design. since so many things in chinese are designed in a more flashy style, i thought an extremely clean and SIMPLE design might actually be more eye-catching in that environment? well, we'll see how it works :) getting the details on the map correct was the most difficult part, since the english maps are not as detailed, and i am only 1/2 literate in chinese :)

lastly, just this morning, i decided to start working on a scrapbook - yes, an old skool (haha) scrapbook with photos and ticket stubs and the like - for going to the olympics! and hopefully after that, another one for the trip to japan, if i can keep the momentum going! i've always loved scrapbooking (and include it in my mental list of "my hobbies"), but it's been a loooooong time since i've actually MADE one, so this is an exciting beginning for me :)

ah *happy sigh*... i *heart* my projects :)

anyways, i know a lot of people have been wondering what it is that i do every day, so hopefully this gives more of a glimpse into my life these days. i am beginning to understand that as human beings, we are designed/wired to (for lack of a better phrase) work. i don't mean work as in holding a steady job, or even physical labor, but just doing/making/contributing to *something*! as much as we love vacations or bumming around, there definitely comes a point when doing nothing just isn't enough anymore - at least it has in my experience at least! i am looking for a job of course, but regardless of whether or not i have a job, i'd say the more important question to ask myself is, do i feel that i do meaningful work each day? jury's still out on that one for now :)

happy birthday, annie! :)

2008-11-10T23:08:00.000-08:00

2008 has been kind of special for annie and me - it's the first year (since high school maybe!) that we've been able to celebrate BOTH of our birthdays together :) this past saturday, sean threw a really cute (and fun) birthday party for the annieman - a night full of friends,bowling, fried chicken, balloons, sushi, cupcakes, rock band... all while trying to avoid the two cats that many of us are actually allergic to :)

the balloon theme was especially genius i thought (props to sean), and so simple too, as most genius ideas are! annie loves balloons. the house is decorated with balloons shaped as flowers. we all bring balloons (one per guest). we made balloon faces with little stickers. and voila! the house is literally now FULL of balloons! there should be enough helium to make everyone's voice sound like mine for at least a few minutes ;)

happy 28th annie! i actually posted pictures to my flickr out of chronological order to get this post up in a timely way (phew, 40 minutes to go!); yes, that is how much i love you :) i mean, by this point, i figure we're pretty much going to have be BFFs for life... and i'm okay with that.

finally done!

2008-11-09T14:26:00.004-08:00

i am one of those people who really likes checking stuff off of my to-do lists (usually mental lists, but sometimes i do jot things down). so anyways, today i made a huge celebratory CHECKMARK (*insert checkbox icon here* :)) since i fiiiiiinaaaaalllllly finished uploading the pictures that lawrence and i took during our trip to japan this fall!

we were there for about 3 weeks, and must have taken thousands (literally thousandS! plural!) of pictures, but in the end, i posted a modest 863 of them :) haha it is a staggeringly large number, AND they are all fairly extensively caption-ed, but don't worry! it's okay if you don't want to look at all of them! i mostly did this for me (well, and for ld :)) so that we'd have a pretty good record of our trip and the things that we saw. i always find the little stories about the places so interesting, but it's easy for the details to fade or blend together as time goes by, so this was a good chance for me to get it all written down before they get lost in my old age ;)

some of my favorite memories:

seeing two of the "three most beautiful gardens" of japan (kenroku-en and korakuen, both really sooooo beautiful to just be IN), visiting kyoto and seeing the mesh of traditional culture with modernity (easily my favorite city!), climbing mt. fuji (this wasn't really a PLEASANT climb, but definitely memorable!), watching sumo wrestling in tokyo (they are much more than just "really reeally big guys" but actually very quick and athletic fighters!), living in a buddhist temple overnight (in mt. koya, many temples now also serve as hostels for travellers... they even invite you to join in temple life, from meals to other routine activities), enjoying an early morning stroll at the famous "floating torii gate" of miyajima (in the quiet calm before all the day-trippers arrived, and coincidentally during low-tide, when we could walk right out to the gate!), visiting hiroshima and gaining a deeper understanding of how the atomic bomb has actually led the city to become an advocate, not for war or revenge, but for sustainable world peace, and of course, THE FOOD (so delicious and always so prettily served/presented). and those are just a FEW of the many special memories that jump to mind immediately :)

some of my favorite pictures:

to see all the pictures: click here.

yasmin and phillip - 10.18.2008

2008-10-23T11:24:00.002-07:00

hello hello! loooooooooooong time no blog :) there's actually so much to update on, but instead of playing "catch up" for ages, i just decided to start with what is going on *these days*!

that being said though, i guess you DO need to know, first of all, that i'm back in the states! i'm living at home in san diego for the time being, which has been suuuch a blessing... being around my parents and getting to know their new-ish (um 8 years and running?) "empty nest" lifestyle. they really live it up sometimes! a couple of nights ago, we had a dinner picnic and watched the sunset by the beach in del mar. haha apparently they do this semi-regularly in the warmer months; how classy is that? :)

anyways, this past saturday was my good friend yasmin's wedding! (haha it's funny how it always call it "yasmin's wedding" when her now-husband - phillip - is really just as much a part of it as she it! it's all a matter of perspective i suppose :)) anyways, they were just the CUTEST couple, affectionate and just glowing with happiness... exactly what you *hope* to see in a bride and groom; it made me so certain about the "rightness" of them being together. so... yay, congratulations! i hope you two will only grow more and more in your love for one another :)

in what's become sort of a tradition, our little group of high school friends (who are still really close after ... TEN YEARS ... sadly i missed our reunion this august, but anyways!), we try to do a little *something* special for each person who gets married. for yasmin's wedding, we made a little video of the wedding day, from OUR persective...

hope to post again soonish! :)

long overdue update!

2008-05-13T04:55:00.005-07:00

hi again :) no time like the present to get caught up on all of my updating i suppose! i'm going to start from the current time and work backwards okay?

end of session 2.7
this is already the last week of this current session of TIP! it's been a lot busier for everyone this session, because it's the largest one we've had this year... over 150 students! yeah, so it's definitely quite a change :) and it has been an especially BIG change for me too, as i moved into a new role, leading some of the *large group* session time -- as in speaking in a "lecture"-esque setting to all of the students at one time! it's a little funny because, at the beginning of the year, this had been one of my "no way jose" roles... i had told our program leaders that i was willing to help in any capacity except i just could NOT teach in the large group. but now, here i am!

in the morning, i am teaching the "morning motivational" hour -- which is basically reading and extracting a message from a motivational (a la chicken-soup-for-the-soul) story. on quite a few occassions, i've had to use the message of the day to pump MYSELF up before the classtime begins to build my confidence for teaching! haha, for example, saying to myself, "you can do it!", "attack your limitations!", and so on... these sentences are so common/popular to say at TIP, but it's really been great seeing how they really CAN encourage a person (i.e. myself!) to try to do something that they otherwise would not think that they can do. i feel like i'm finally USING some of the things i've been saying (or maybe peddling? :)) to others, and thankfully, it really DOES work so i haven't just been speaking nonsense to our students these past 9 months! :)

also, i've been more involved in some administrative aspects of our program this session, kind of preparing to take on more of a managerial role in the summer TIP session - helping to oversee the summer program and the short-term teachers who come to work at TIP for the summer months. it's both exciting and also a little overwhelming, thinking of how BIG the program will be in the summer - with 3 times the current number of teachers and also many many more students too! i feel encouraged though, when i remember the biblical truth that god does not call us to do everything on our own, but through his strength, his power, and also with his deep joy and peace through it all!

sunday school at fengtai church (beijing)
two weekends ago, kelly and i had the chance to go to beijing to teach sunday school at fengtai church for one sunday. it was supposed to be a sort of "teaching exchange" with the sunday school teachers there; a chance for us to give an example lesson and then for all of us to discuss the differences between sunday school teaching in america and in china. to make a long story short, pretty much NOTHING was as we had been told it would be (it was so extreme as to be quite comical! :)), and in the end, we had to scrap almost our whole lesson (which was planned for a mostly middle school audience with some english) and i ended up teaching two sessions of sunday school, in mandarin, to pre-school aged students! (i felt like i was grasping at straws but actually ended up using some ideas from the vacation bible school we held at eccc in the summer of... 2005?! :))

afterwards though, we did have some good conversations with the other sunday school teachers (who also didn't speak much english though, unfortunately!), and i really felt that god blessed the time we had together... because, in all likelihood, we won't have many chances to see each other ever again! i also need to give a shoutout to kelly who demonstrated so much graciousness those two days - even though i SPOKE chinese, i often felt confused and out of the loop, so i can only imagine how much more left in the dark she felt. but god is really really good, and the kids were really really ridiculously cute, both of which always help make any situation more positive :)

travels in sichuan and xinjiang provinces
just before the beginning of this session (towards the end of april), lisa, claudia and babak came to china for a visit and we travelled to some exciting and interesting places in western china! originally, we had planned a trip to tibet, but with the recent events these past few months, it became impossible for us to go there, so we made some last-minute decisions and ended up travelling to 4 very very different places: jiuzhaigou, chengdu/leshan, kashgar, and turpan. just looking at these representative photos of each place gives you an idea of the RANGE of environments :) i'm so so glad the three of them had the chance to visit - in between seeing all the sights, we had plenty of time to hang out, catch up, play cards, and just enjoy the company of good friends!

if you are interested in seeing ALL of my photos from these places, you can take a look at these albums: jiuzhaigou, chengdu, kashgar, turpan. it's been such an awesome experience to travel around china this year; it really is such a vastly diverse and naturally/historically/culturally RICH place :)

and now, looking ahead...
last but not least, i'm really excited because NEXT WEDNESDAY (may 21st), my parents will arrive in beijing for a 10-day visit!! i haven't seen them since october, so i'm really really looking forward to it :)

prayer for the people in sichuan

2008-05-12T19:32:00.004-07:00

hi guys!

i know it's been a long time since my last blog post, and there are so many things to "update", but i just have a moment to write a short message encouraging everyone to please *pray* for the people in the sichuan province. there was a HUGE earthquake there yesterday (7.8 on the richter scale... and serious reverberations were felt even in beijing, over 2000km away!) and so many thousands (the last figure i heard was over 10,000) are believed dead and many many more have been affected by this natural disaster. it is so unexpected of course, but especially surreal because i was just IN the sichuan province myself a couple of weeks ago, so i feel extra heavy-hearted for the many kind strangers that we interacted with during our travels there... i really really hope for the best for them!

to be honest, i don't know much about how we can help more tangibly, so if you know of organizations establishing relief efforts in the area, please let me know! but in the mean time, i just wanted to quickly update you all, let you know that we are all a-okay here in my program, but that many in the sichuan area are suffering and in need of your help and your prayers.

three inspirations at the start of a new session

2008-03-27T22:12:00.007-07:00

today is the end of the first week of the 6th session of TIP! in this session, holly and i are co-teaching a class of 17 lower level students. actually, there are a lot less students in this TIP session than we had originally expected (30-something as opposed to the initial projection of 150!), so even tho our class is the lower half of the students, there is a huge range of levels within the group. it's been a big challenge trying to lead activities that challenge the higher students without losing the lower ones, but hopefully a great learning experience too! our students are really really great, and i'm really excited to have this chance to teach a class again, and also to work with holly for the first time :)

in the few days before this new session, i was blessed by 3 separate, but all special, sources of inspiration! just wanted to write a little something about each of them to share with you :)

(1) rural women practical skills training center (农家女学校)
last friday afternoon, i had the chance to visit this school with lynn, doro and molly :) we were introduced to it by tiffany, one of molly's students from this past session, who is an English teacher there. basically, the school provides scholarship-funded training for girls (ages 16-20) from rural/less-fortunate provinces of China; the training is for 3 months, and equips the girls with a practical skill to find a job: teaching kindergarten, dressmaking, hairdressing, computing, etc.

it was really encouraging to see the heart and the commitment of the staff of the school -- they really devote almost all of their time to their work, and many of them have been employed by the school for over 5 years already. their lives were just so inspiring to me; maybe we cannot completely "solve" or "finish" the problems of our world, but i hope we never give up trying to do what we can to make a positive difference. i mean, to put it another way, each of the 2000+ graduates over the past 10 years is an entire human LIFE that has been transformed, and i don't think anyone can put a value on that!

(2) ms. julia, our program director! :)
julia is always a source of inspiration to everyone on the team, but this past weekend she taught me a really great lesson about fairness and impartiality. like i mentioned, this session is smaller than others (with fewer students), so we were setting up a new (smaller) room to hold some of the classes -- cleaning tables, arranging chairs, etc. my goal was to get-it-done-and-move-on, basically to make the room "good enough" for the new students, but i saw that julia really wanted to make the smaller room a GREAT place for them. at first, my attitude was that it wasn't worth the extra effort (i mean, at that time, we were predicting a REALLY small group of students!), but her example kept tugging at my heart... until i finally gave in and admitted my own laziness and hypocrisy! :) i often profess that each student is important and valuable, but if so, why was i so reluctant to put in some extra effort to make these students experience at TIP a great one? anyways, it was a really important realization, and especially timely that i realized it BEFORE they arrived (instead of like.. after their graduation or something! how tragic would that be!). yay for julia! :)

(3) easter sunrise "service" (with cristina, joy and julia!)
on easter morning, the four of us headed out of our dorm at 5am (literally before the "crack" of dawn... it was still dark outside!) and climbed up the small mountain right next to our campus in time to catch the sunrise! this is the first time i've gone up this mountain, and i was amazed at how close by it is... we were able to reach the top about half an hour after leaving our house by foot! and the sunrise and the time of praying, reading from the bible, and singing hymns together was just SO amazing and so sweet! :)

here are some of our photos from that morning. *happy sigh* :) it's especially meaningful to see the rising of the SUN that day because, on easter, we celebrate the rising of the SON (jesus, the son of god). another mini-realization from that morning is that, even before the sun rises, the sky seems QUITE bright! (when we reached the top of the small mountain, it was so light outside already that i was a little afraid we'd *missed* the actual sunrise!) BUT, after the sun REALLY rose, the sky was many many MANY times brighter -- and i thought that that was a really great analogy to the difference jesus has made in my heart, and how much more light there is now as compared to before! can i get an amen? (amen! :)) so i just feel really thankful and really joyful -- hallelujah, he is risen! :)

springtime in beijing! :)

2008-03-17T16:45:00.005-07:00

yesterday was the last day of the 5th TIP session of the year! it was pretty cool timing because the day of the students' 15-minute speeches coincided with ... st. patrick's day! :) for breakfast that morning, daniel, patrick and i made four-leaf clovers to pass out to the (very nervous!) students, wishing them good luck on their speeches. it was a good way for them to sort-of experience this holiday, but it was a little funny because, throughout the day, i heard many students wishing one another "happy patrick's day!" -- haha and with our teammate patrick dressed a little bit like a leprechaun that day, it wasn't so far fetched to think the holiday was about HIM! but anyways, it was fun and also the first time i've celebrated st. patrick's day in a long long time! :)

looking at these photos, you can see how beautiful the weather has been lately :) i've been trying to take advantage of these nice days, because i have a feeling that the... (at times) overwhelming heat of the summer is fast approaching too! there's an expression for that, isn't there? something like "on the coattails..."? haha sometimes i think my ability to express myself in english has become a little more limited!

last weekend, i went with a bunch of teammates to attend a bit of SPORTING HISTORY in china! it was the first (american) major league baseball game to play in china -- and not only that, but one of the teams playing was the san diego padres! now, i'm no huge padres' fan, but when it's your *hometown* team playing halfway around the world, it's pretty exciting news :) here are a couple of photos from the game!

also, since the weather warming up coincided with one of my less-busy sessions, i've been able to start running again these past few weeks, too! haha that sentence makes it sound like my running had been hampered by the winter weather, but, to be honest, it's really been a whiiiile since i've had a regular habit of running. now that i've become used to these quick morning jogs over the past 3 weeks though, i'm remembering what a great way it is to start off a day! the air is so crisp in the early morning, and the campus is really empty and quiet.... actually, it's a little funny because i had meant to "sleep in" this morning, but i just naturally WOKE UP at 6:15am anyways! well, that's good for YOU lucky readers, because it gave me time to start writing this blog post before going to the graduation ceremony this morning too :)

oh! and speaking of tried-and-true favorites, i recently made a pumpkin pie to share with my teammates! (a million thanks to shar for her thoughtfulness to send ready-bake pumpkin pie materials all the way to beijing for me! so... sweet! ha ha ha, that is a joke, but it really was very sweet, in both meanings of the word!) i meant to take a photo of the completed pies, but we all were so taken in by the aroma that we just dug right in :) really, i had forgotten how much i love pumpkin pies!

and since i probably won't post to this blog again before this weekend... happy easter everyone! :)

lessons learned

2008-03-12T18:57:00.009-07:00

hi again!

i'm a little overdue for an update... haha i'm not even sure if people still read my blog (hello to you, btw!) but it doesn't matter since either way, i think it is still a good habit for me to keep sharing about the things i'm doing/learning/experiencing over here :)

it's the middle of march now, and more and more, we're coming to realize that our year in TIP is drawing to a close! when i first left, it seemed like i'd be gone for a long time, but it's really been flying by. next tuesday will be the end of the 5th session, and then we have a short 2-day break before the 6th session, and then the 7th session will be our last one all together! i personally will be staying here for two more sessions, but it's really strange to think that in just 3 months, i will no longer be spending almost every moment of every day with my 12 dear teammates. it definitely has not always been smooth-sailing living/working/breathing together, but through this entire experience, god has taught me so much about community and what it takes to build and maintain community -- i once thought (a little naively) that if you threw any group of people (especially any group of christians!) together for enough time, they would grow to love and care for one another, but it really does take a litttttttle more than just sheer exposure :) commitment, compromise, the humility to accept when you are wrong and the courage to stand up for what is really right... it's definitely been a good year (so far!) of growth in these aspects, and i'm thankful for that and hope we continue to learn thru this living/working arrangement!

in this 5th session of TIP, my responsibilities have been less session-focused, so in many ways, i do not know this group of students so well. my two student-focused responsibilities have been the special project class and my tried-and-true science club :)

special project class 2.5

i hadn't been involved in special project class these past two sessions, so it was really refreshing to be back in that environment! when i am teaching a whole class, sometimes i feel like i am just talking to everyone as a collective UNIT, so after a few months of that, i re-realized how much i really do LOVE the small group interaction because it gives me a chance to get to know each one and to follow each one's progress. (this session's special project class included 5 young ladies who were either really shy or really needed extra English instruction.)

science club 2.5

to be honest, i'd grown a little tired of science club! i mean, this science club would be the 6th time going thru the same curriculum... and i was having a bit of a blah attitude towards it: yet another bridge building, yet another time watching October Sky, etc.. :) the first night didn't seem so auspicious, as many students seemed worried about "science" club (it really doesn't have the most appealing name, does it!) and wishing they could be in music club or something! but they proved my initial dismal outcast completely wrong, as this group of clubbers were really so great and got so excited about all of the activities... it kind of re-ignited my own interest and passion in the activities! they were so sweet to ME personally too, always helpful and friendly, and giving me way more love, grace, and just ... more credit than i deserved. a touching example is from our last night of science club, when the students showed me how much they had enjoyed our club -- the time was up, but they didn't want to leave the club, and instead, THANKED me and sang "you are my sunshine" (some of them even had tears in their eyes!). now this may surprise some of you that know me, but i've become a lot less emotional through my time at TIP (maybe in part due to the steady stream of goodbyes?), and as a result, i was a little insensitive in my response to this unexpected situation... i mean, really, i was going to see them all every day for the next 2 weeks still! but i was encouraged to know that they had enjoyed the club activities so much -- and am no longer dreading science club in the coming session :)

re-connecting with session 2.4 students

so both of those things have been great, but the deepest JOY in this session has come from continuing to see/connect with students from my class in the previous session (session 2.4, from before chinese new year). two of the students from class A are volunteering as AAs (administrative assistants) in this TIP session, and a few more have been joining the english worship service at the church i attend in beijing. also, many of our class A students are teachers in the beijing area, and i've had the chance to visit a couple of their own classrooms and schools. it's been an eye-opening experience for me, seeing "real" english education in china. even more than that, many of these teachers teach at schools for children of migrant workers -- meaning their parents have come to beijing from all over china to look for work -- and i've had the chance to learn a little about the challenges facing this group of people and the resulting effect on their children. these teachers' heart for their students has been an inspiration to me, as well as their success already (in these few weeks!) in using some of the teaching methodology they learned in TIP in their own classrooms!

of course, i care about these former students for much more than just what they are doing with their TIP training; many of them have become good friends and as i think about leaving TIP/china and returning to states, these future goodbyes are already casting a shadow i can see from a distance... :/ that being said, i'm still prayerfully considering what to do after this summer; i don't mean to be vague, but i am not so sure myself yet! :)

so this post has become really long! haha if i had any readers, maybe i would have lost them by this point :) j/k.. but in all seriousness, thanks for reading and thanks for your thoughts, concern and prayers on my behalf! :)

an extra week...

2008-02-23T05:46:00.006-08:00

hi again!

the next TIP session began this weekend! (session 2.5... it's a little amazing that we are already in the fifth one since i arrived here! but it has been almost 7 months since we first landed in beijing! :)) a really neat coincidence: marry, the first student i met tonight at dinner in the cafeteria, is actually a classmate/good friend of lisa, one of my students from the previous TIP session! it made me so happy to "reconnect" with lisa in a way, and of course, i am looking forward to meeting more of these new students in the coming days!

those of you that are more observant may have noticed that this TIP session was supposed to begin LAST weekend! as our chinese students would say, "so clever!" :) it was decided to postpone the beginning of this session by a week to allow more students to travel to Beijing (after the aforementioned ubiquitous spring festival holiday!) -- and we used this week to do some work on a few other side projects! one of the big projects we are working on is a comprehensive "manual" of everything that goes into a TIP program; it will be quite a monstrously large document, and it is a bit tedious going into so much detail about what we do, but the hope is that this document will be useful for training people who join the program staff as well as... drumroll... enabling the possibility of replicating our program at other campuses around the country! i really believe that attending TIP has been a positive experience for our students -- beneficial for them as English speakers, teachers, and even in other ways -- so, it's great to think of making this opportunity available to even more people! :)

some highlights from this week:

(*) speaking of propogating the TIP program, some of my students from this past session have set up a mini-TIP English camp for their students! their students (5th and 6th graders at an elementary school for children of immigrant workers) are participating in a two-week long English-only camp, very much like our TIP :) i'm really amazed at how dedicated they are -- this is obviously the first time the two of them are leading a mini-TIP (having only graduated from TIP themselves a few weeks ago!) -- but they have so much enthusiasm and are doing a great job with rethinking some of our activities for a much younger audience :) i had the chance to visit them last week to see the mini-TIP program in action, and it was just ... so exciting to see! and so encouraging to me personally, to see how much these students had truly enjoyed their experience in my class -- enough to want to share it with their own students too! :)

(*) work/play day in sanlitun (三里屯). we were without internet access on campus, so a group of girls went to beijing for a cafe workday :) (and i love cafe-dwelling, so of course i joined in! :)) we spent a good number of productive hours at the bookworm -- a cafe/bookstore/lending library that i had been hoping to visit! -- and then joined yeats (another one of my students from this past TIP session) for afternoon tea at green t house, his aunts' really amazing restaurant, before finishing up the evening with dinner (and more work on our laptops!). sanlitun is one of those neighborhoods that i'd like to explore more of, but rarely have the chance to do because it's like almost the opposite corner of the huge city of beijing, so i especially enjoyed the choice of location too! all in all, a productive AND fun day in beijing :)

(*) team day at the national art museum of china! :) we saw an exhibit about the dunhuang grottos (along the silk road) and art work inspired by the dunhuang grottos. i found it really interesting, and i'm kind of a slow museum browser, so i was only able to see one floor of the museum by the time we all met up again.. but i was pretty well saturated by that point already! :) also, that day was lantern day (元宵节), which marks the official end of spring festival, so beijing was just ALIVE with fireworks that night! we literally watched multiple huge firework displays set off just a few feet in front of us! it was amazing! :)

春节快乐! (happy spring festival!)

2008-02-10T09:33:00.000-08:00

i always thought that it was just "chinese new year", but in fact, it's much more than just a simple passing from one lunar year to the next. spring festival has to be the biggest and most highly-anticipated holiday in china! :) (it's really quite a long holiday for most chinese people, beginning at chinese new years and usually lasting a week or two! yes, the WHOLE country -- the world's most populous country at that! -- is on vacation at the same time.... i must say, it's logistically crazy and yet equally wonderful too! :))

in my head, i had anticipated that my first chinese new year in china would be a really festive affair, full of big parties in the streets and beautiful fireworks, but the reality is that the core of the holiday is to have all the family members gathered together to share a good (no no, better than just "good"... a great! amazing!) meal, to set off fireworks, to talk and catch up, and to play cards or mahjong. all of which is more of a quiet (haha although with all the firecrackers, quiet is not really the best word! but at least private) affair with most people traditionally celebrating in their homes. but even though i did not actually SEE many people celebrating, there is a definite *feeling* of HOLIDAY everywhere you go! people are happy, excited, travelling home, seeing family and old friends, taking a big break out of their daily grind! (it all kind of reminds me of the madonna song: "it's time for a good time; forget about the bad times! just one day out of life... it would be, it would be so nice!" :))

unfortunately, i am not celebrating spring festival with my family this year, but i definitely feel like i have a newer/deeper appreciation of the significance of the holiday that will carry over into other years to come! also, even though the hwangs are still far away in the states, at the end of the last session, lawrence came to visit me in china for spring festival! (he arrived on january 30th, and actually, he's going to be here until the 17th! :) that's right, in time for valentine's day, although, funny story.... that was an unplanned coincidence because, believe it or not, lawrence didn't know the date of valentine's day! yes, as in february 14th! am i crazy for thinking that that is really funny? do other people also not know the date/have to look it up whenever the month of february rolls around?? is it just a girl-thing to know that date... haha dare i say, to know that date "by heart"? ha ha *elbow nudge* :))

annnnywayyyys! lawrence's arrival coincided with the end of tip session 2.4, so we've done some travelling this past week or so! first, we spent a couple of days in haerbin (哈尔滨), enjoying the ice festival there :) it's really really amazing! i took sooooo many photos, and i will post them soon-ish, but i was really surprised by the ice craftsmanship and the SCALE of the ice festival! (it's huge! literally an "ice and snow big world" as the chinese name implies: 冰雪大世界!) it was also freezing cold ... -20C when we arrived, and that was a warm day by their local standards! :) because of the weather, we spent quite a few hours sipping hot drinks, reading, and generally thawing in various cafes around the city! it felt a little like a ski trip, but without the actual skiing, if that makes sense? :)

after haerbin, we spent a couple days in shanghai! i've really enjoyed my previous visits to this city, and it was fun to show lawrence around the little that i knew :) we saw some old friends, visited a few neat places and ate some great food, but actually, interestingly enough, the highlight of these days was probably watching the superbowl! we went to a bbq restaurant turned brunch buffet/superbowl party at 6:30am on monday morning with the other serious american football fans, and watched the unfolding of (in my humble opinion at least!) one of the most exciting underdog victories ever! i never thought i would stand up in public to cheer loudly for the new york giants (haha, which by the by, i thought was the name of a BASEBALL team until pretty recently!), but i guess stranger things have happenned! :) don't get me wrong, i'm no giants fan, but i do tend to favor the underdogs!

lastly, we spent one day in hangzhou(杭州). we were literally there for less than 24 hours, due to some difficulties with obtaining train tickets (adding to the craziness of the entire country being on holiday at the same time is the system here, where train tickets can only be purchased from the departure city, and only within a couple days of your trip!), but we packed in as much sightseeing as we could in that time! we spent most of our time making a big walking loop of the beautiful west lake, walking quickly to keep ourselves from catching cold and to see as much as we could without missing our train back! even though it was a short stay, i'm really glad we made this extra stop! :)

phew! so that's a little bit about what i've been up to recently! i got back to beijing last night and the next teaching session begins this friday, so i'll have a few days to hang out here before then :) i should be able to post some pictures, so keep an eye out for those soon!

happy chinese new year! welcome to the year of the rat, i wonder what all this little rodent will bring! hopefully great things are in store for all of you, dear blog readers! blessings to you in the new year :)

week 2 begins :)

2008-01-14T21:51:00.000-08:00

hi again! soo, it is now the beginning of the 2nd week of this TIP session. once our classes begin each session, the time really flies by so quickly! at the same time, some of my students' faces and voices have become so familiar and dear to me that it is strange to think that only a week ago, i did not know them at all! :)

here are two photos of some of my students in this session! the first photo is from one of our afternoon game times, when i taught them how to play UNO :) before coming to china, i hadn't played in a long time.. i'd forgotten how fun it can be! (it's also pretty easy to explain the rules in english too!) game time is always one of my favorite times of the day, and this session's students seem to really enjoy playing games as well! the second photo is from lunch time one day. the typical chinese cafeteria habit -- either at universities or even in workplace cafeterias -- is to eat QUICKLY (like in 5 minutes or less!) and then get on with their rest/nap time before resuming classes in the afternoon. but we turn that around in our program, asking students to stay in the cafeteria for a required 30 minutes and encouraging them to TALK as they eat! it's a great chance for them to practice having natural conversations in English, and after the initial awkwardness, many of them come to truly enjoy this time :) it's funny to see how they change from watching the clock and bolting after the 30 minutes are up, to dawdling and chit chatting even after the cafeteria is closed!

there are 21 students in my class A this session; many of them are English teachers at various schools for migrant workers' children in beijing. from talking to them, it is very evident that they have a deep love for their students and really invest a lot of themselves for their students' success. in many ways, they take on part of the "parent figure" role for their students, since many migrant workers (their students' parents) must work very long hours and do not have a lot of time to spend with their children. among those who are not teachers, we have 4 students from a christian church in the Fujian province and other students from Dalian, Beijing and Tibet! i really like all of our class A-mates a lot; they are all so enthusiastic and hard-working... in many ways, it makes it really easy for me too :)

it's only one week into this session (for some reason, that phrase just reminded me of the barenaked ladies song "one week" :)), but i feel a little physically exhausted already! but just like we keep encouraging all of the TIP students... "you can do it!", so yes, i believe that *i too* can do it :)

long time no see!

2008-01-04T22:27:00.000-08:00

wow, it's really been a long time since my last blog post! haha i've been meaning to write so many updates, but i think, the longer i put it off, the more there is to write, and the more overwhelming the task seems to become! :) BUT for 2008, i am going to try to write blog updates at least on a weekly basis! (you can keep me accountable to that too, a gentle reminder never hurts :) haha like how my mom asked me the other day if my blog had stopped working or something! :))

anyways, first things first, *merry christmas* and *happy new year*! i spent the holidays with my dear sister julie, who flew out to asia from california to see me! :) we spent most of our time (9 days - including christmas day itself!) in taipei, visiting extended family, seeing some friends, and eating some delicious taiwanese food (oh how i have missed it! :)). from taipei, we were going to travel to beijing, so i could show her our campus and introduce her to my life here in china! but in a neat travel arrangement, we were able to extend our layover in hong kong to 2 days, and spent new years there! :) throughout all of this, julie was working on her business school applications too, so we spent lots of time in cafes (which i love to do ANYWAYS, so it was kind of a nice win-win situation!) where she would write her essays, and i would either read or do a little writing of my own :) all in all, a really great break and i'm so happy to have had the chance to see julie! i was also really touched by the care that a few people showed in sending cards and packages all the way to china... you guys kind of amaze me/blow me away with your thoughtfulness. not to break all the positivity, but i must say tho, it reeeally was different/strange having christmas come and go without my parents being there... so, to my parents and friends in the states: i really do miss you guys all the time, but espeeeecially so over the holidays!

it seems like i am going backwards in time in this update :) so, going even further in my recent history, is our 3rd TIP session. this past session (which began just after thanksgiving and ran until just before my trip to taipei/hong kong) was a really special one for me! it was the first time i'd had the role of "class faciliator", which basically means you have a class of your own (a lot of our activities are organized by classes, so they are kind of like the family unit of our program!) and lots and lots of chances to get to know THAT group of students :) doro and i co-taught class C, and i really felt like we had the most awesome group of students ever! (i know that every teacher probably thinks that, and especially since it was a "first" class, but our students WERE really cool i think!!) our class contained the students with the lowest English levels (based on the initial assessment interviews), but they really worked hard, had great attitudes, and made so much improvement in just 3.5 weeks! it was amazing, humbling and just an all-around wonderful experience! :)

there really is SO MUCH MORE i could say about the class, our students, things i learned from teaching and from working with doro (we became like shadows, following each other around all day every day :)), but i think i'll just end this post with a couple of my favorite photos of this class, as well as a link to a short slideshow/video i made of this session: http://www.veoh.com/videos/v1679236DFstBEZP

two other noteworthy things that i was reminded of as i chose these photos: it SNOWED one day (*real* snow that actually stuck on the ground for almost a week!) and even tho it was a littttttle early, we celebrated christmas together this past session too!

our NEXT session started this morning, so i made a big effort last night and caught up on uploading pictures from all of this "recent" stuff :) not to overwhelm you, but you can see the rest of the pictures from that past TIP session, as well as photos from taipei and hong kong at your leisure! :) again, i'm going to try to post more regularly, so this isn't goodbye, but just a talk to you soon! :)

thankful... :)

2007-11-23T18:39:00.000-08:00

happy (belated) thanksgiving, everyone!
this past week has been a really great one, and there is so much to be thankful for! :)

last saturday, our team began a 4-day team retreat in 怀柔 (pronounced huai rou, about an hour drive to the east of where we live). even though the 14 of us live, work and play together on a regular basis, there was something special about taking time to get away from the hecticness of our normal day-to-day routines to focus on building ourselves up as an united *team*. I felt like we were able to break through some of the superficialities that we'd gotten comfortable with and really... get to know one another better. of course, it's not like we've arrived and know each other completely and are all the best of friends, but there was definite progress made! progress that I believe will have positive effects on our work together and our lives together :)

two highlights of our retreat were (for me):
(1) our bible study of 1 john. this was actually my favorite book of the bible already, but it was really awesome studying it all together and hearing different people's insights helped me come to a deeper understanding of it!
(2) our hike to the "wild" great wall! I had visited another part of the great wall before, but it had been one of the more popular (and maintained) sections and had a pretty "touristy" feel... although the wall itself was definitely really spectacular, even in that setting! this time though, our retreat location was located pretty close to part of the great wall, so we drove to the vicinity, hiked about 40 minutes up a pretty steep slope, and just like... came upon the great wall! this portion of the wall isn't maintained, and it really fit the name of "wild" great wall -- it was crumbling in parts and there were trees/shrubs growing out of the wall itself too :) the best part was just that we had the wall (as far as the eye could see) all to ourselves and could focus our attention on appreciating the beauty, majesty, and... sheer awesomeness without any distractions!

here are some pictures from the great wall trip:

after returning from the retreat, we immediately entered into *thanksgiving mode*, as our team prepared an "american style" thanksgiving feast for the chinese staff that we work with from Peking University, our former-students-turned-program-volunteers, and (let's admit it) for ourselves too :) pretty amazingly, we were able to include many of the thanksgiving staples: a roasted turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, bread pudding, and even... pumpkin pie!! :) it was a lot of fun preparing everything all together (since we were all sharing our one small kitchenette!), celebrating the holiday itself on thanksgiving night, and of course, the subsequent meals and meals of leftovers... :) this is the first year in my life that I've spent thanksgiving separate from my family, so I think that throwing myself into the preparations for dinner here really helped me to avoid the cloud of homesickness that seemed to be looming just around the corner! also, I figure this is probably the only time that this group of individuals will be able to celebrate thanksgiving together, so we should take advantage and cherish this opportunity too, right? :)

lastly, a new group of fresh-faced students arrived on our campus yesterday for the third session of TIP :) this weekend is a little bit more relaxed -- kind of like the proverbial calm before the storm! -- because the students participate in orientation for most of the time, while we get ready for the program itself to begin on monday! I'm especially excited for this session because Doro and I will be co-teaching a class of our own for the first time. :) I'll try to keep you guys "posted" (ha ha) on how it all goes!

hope that you had a wonderful thanksgiving too, wherever you are and however it is that you celebrated!

"But I have trusted in Your lovingkindness;
My heart shall rejoice in Your salvation;
I will sing to the LORD,
Because He has dealt bountifully with me." - Psalm 13:5

thoughts at the end of session 2.2...

2007-11-12T23:50:00.000-08:00

last tuesday was the end of our second session of TIP... this is probably partly because I flew from southern california to join the session a couple of days into it, but it just FLEW by so quickly! the official 2008 TIP schedule was recently released, so in the rest of my year here, I'll be taking part in seven more sessions. in some ways, that seems like a lot, but at the same time, I really don't feel as though I've been in china for a very long time, so I'm going to try my best to appreciate each session, week, day that's left!

a big part of my role this session was more behind-the-scenes, mostly planning and doing research to prepare for a *new version* of TIP that we are creating for... software/IT people who want to improve their oral english!! helping chinese engineers prepare for working in or with international companies is something that's getting a lot of attention now, and our organization is modifying our program to gear it towards IT people and to help meet this need. it's sort of strange that I actually come from that kind of background and can help with this new project, because the idea wasn't even in the works at all before I signed on board with TIP; it sort of feels like providentially arranged you know?

I think under normal circumstances, working primarily on this planning project would have limited my chances for interacting with and getting to know our students, but we actually had a record-small session of students this month, so we ALL got to know ALL of them (and vice versa!) pretty well :)

this picture is of me with two girls named sandy and lucy, two of the students from Tibet that were in my special projects class this past session. (special project class is an extra conversation practice class for a small group of students who are either really shy or have lower levels of English.) I really really loved them; they were so sweet and always had big smiles for me whenever we (tried to) converse. haha I say that they have big smiles, but this photo is one of the *biggest* smiles I have of lucy out of the many photos I have with her! :) this photo was taken just after the TIP graduation, which is why they were dressed in their formal tibetan dresses... so lovely! :)

sandy and lucy were both shy and we were limited in how much we could actually TALK about in english (and even, after our program's official end, in chinese because their primary language is tibetan!), but I felt we developed a genuine friendship through a lot of sitting together, smiling and nodding. it's difficult to imagine keeping in touch (it's very difficult to replicate that kind of interaction over email!), but I will always remember them and hope that they have much happiness and success in their futures :)

jenny and ivy, two more special students from this past session! this photo was taken after science club, which was really fun to facilitate (as it was last session too!). i think that these girls had a really great experience at TIP, and they are both planning to return next session as AAs (administrative assistants), so thankfully we have not had to say our goodbyes yet!

these two photos above are from the student-organized talent show/party that took place during one of the weekends. I was really impressed by the creative initiative and dedication that this group of students took in planning this and other activities! They really went above and beyond and made all of the facilitators feel so special... the example that stands out the most is for the closing ceremony performances on the final morning, the students rewrote the lyrics to "You are My Sunshine" and wrote a verse about each of the 14 facilitators! so sweet and moving... we'll definitely remember this group of students for a long time to come :)

my trip home!

2007-10-25T00:21:00.000-07:00

as I briefly mentioned in my previous blog post, i spent some time (about 10 days all together) in southern california earlier this month! so many things to be thankful about from the trip, but i'll just share a few of the top moments with y'all okay?

(1) spending time with the other hwangs :)
about a week before i landed in la, i wasn't even sure if ANY of my family members would be able to meet me when i arrived! my sister's current case for work seemed like it might require a work weekend in the bay area, and my parents would be in taiwan (and potentially even detained because of typhoon weather conditions), and... well, there's really only the 4 of us! :) but it worked out perfectly so that i landed on saturday evening and had that first half-of-a-weekend with my sister, and then my parents and i drove down to san diego together on sunday night. with annie and sean's wedding the following weekend, i was really glad that circumstances worked out such that we could spend more time with each other at the beginning part of my trip!

(2) annie and sean's wedding was just... perfect!

true, all weddings are very beautiful and special, and maybe i am biased, but this one seemed ESPECIALLY beautiful to me :) i believe it was the (forgive this cheese, please!) annie and sean's joy and happiness that made the whole day just *shine*! they really did have the best attitude too; case in point, the night before the wedding, it started raining, and it was still raining the morning of the big day... all the way through lunch time! all of us were mildly to moderately panicked, but annie was by far the calmest - knowing that however the day turned out, the truly important bit would definitely come to pass, and that, at the end of the day, they would be married :) and they were! in absolutely beautiful, sunny, fresh and crisp aired autumn fashion too :) congrats to the kaos... wishing you the best in greece, and then irvine, and beyond! :)
[links: the photographers' photos and the rest of my pictures]

(3) celebrating my birthday!

- lawrence and i spend the day *before* my birthday visiting lego-land, which i'd wanted to visit for some time now! it's probably geared for a primary audience that is like 20 years younger than we are, but we still had a great day together... partly because we started out with the intention of having a great day (which really can make such a difference, you know?), but also partly because lego-land is really quite cool! there's a mini-land section of the park that features small replicas of famous world landmarks and even a few american cities... but this whole "small world" is all made out of legos! (over 2 million all together if i remember the figure correctly!)
- the day of my birthday began with a yummy american-style brunch (oh how i have missed these!) at hash house a go-go with my dad, sister and lawrence. it was a friday morning, which meant that in some way, they'd all taken the morning off of work to spend it with me! :) (my mom had no more vacation hours after returning from taiwan, but she was there in spirit! :))
- my birthday continued with the wedding rehearsal and then... dinner with some of my oldest friends! (and a bunch of annie and sean's relatives and other friends showed up too... so odd! j/k, i am referring to the rehearsal dinner of course :)) as i would say in my little sharing at the wedding ceremony the next day, the way that our friendships have withstood the test of time (over 10 years now!) really says something! and by that i mean, something good! :)

so now i am back in beijing, safe and sound and fully recovered from jet lag! our second session of the year is in full swing (we are 2 weeks in now!) and i will have more to share about that in a future post :)

thanks to everyone who emailed, called, facebook-messaged, etc.. to wish my a happy birthday; i definitely felt a lot of love and support even if you were physically far away :) thanks also to those who emailed to express concern about my family in the recent (and still on-going-but-abating-in-our-area) wildfires in southern CA... my parents did evacuate, but thankfully they were both okay, and my dad's office was not too uncomfortable (even equipped with a shower and a TV?!), and they are back at home now!

mid-october update

2007-10-10T07:03:00.000-07:00

hi everyone!

sorry for the long delay in posting to my blog... but i really have so many things to share now :) first of all, i'm actually typing this from my parents' house in san diego! (hello again, usa!) i'm in town to attend annie and sean's wedding this saturday (i'm still so happy and thankful that i can be here for it! :)), and to see family and friends... but more about my trip home later!

our first session of TIP ended on september 25th, which is actually a chinese national holiday! (mid-autumn festival... my first time celebrating it in china! it's supposed to be a time when everyone returns to their hometowns to celebrate with their families, but for our team, it wasn't really TOO different, because well, our hometown in china is just where we live/work regularly anyways! :)) the session was only 3.5 weeks (as all of our sessions will be), but it was really quite remarkable how closeknit our group of students became (with us as teachers, but more so, with one another!), and how much their english improved too! the time passes by so quickly tho when we are in-session (mostly because each day is filled with so many activities), that towards the beginning of the third week, i started to make a conscious effort to really cherish and make the most of the time that we had together ... since i sort of pre-realized that i would miss the students once they graduated and left campus! it's a little heartwrenching to think of saying goodbye to group after group of students throughout the year, but actually, in the two weeks since the end of the first session, i've already seen how possible it is to keep in touch with students (and i've even seen/hung out with a couple of them in shanghai and beijing!). so 'goodbye' is really not a forever-goodbye, but like the chinese phrase 再见, only 'until we see each other again'... :) and that's the same with you too, my long-distance friends! :)

here are some photos from end-of-the-session events :) the photo on the left is from one of the *class dinners* that happens after the last day of classes (but before graduation the following morning!). i was invited to the class A dinner, and here we are all wearing white silk scarves from tibet :) (gifts to the class -- and friends of the class like me! -- from the three tibetan students in class A.) and the photo on the right is of four students with their esec-beida certificates for completing TIP! the certificates look so nice; i almost wish i could have one too! :)

after the end of the session, dorothy (one of my teammates) and i took a trip to shanghai! she needed to go to visit a family friend, and i was going to keep her company on the trip (and plus, i thought it'd be fun to travel too :)) ... we ended up spending almost a week there! since you typically buy train tickets from your city of departure, our stay got extended because train tickets to beijing had sold out by the time we arrived in shanghai. but it was a really great week and i really like the city of shanghai!

(1) the architecture of the city is really beautiful! i've read that some too-cool-for-school designers think that it's a little tacky, but i loved the mix of modern and historic and the mix of asian and europen influences :) we walked around A LOT but i would just drink everything in that we passed by! (left) here we are at xintiandi, actually just outside the site of the first communist party congress in 1921. (right) the bund at night!

(2) during the course of the week, we were able to meet up with so many friends, old and new! on the 'new' front, we saw the other teachoverseas teachers (there is a group of them who teach IN shanghai, and three other teachers who were visiting from other parts of china too) and afra (one of our former-students-now-friends from this most recent session of TIP). on the 'old' front, i saw an old high school friend (whom i hadn't seen since they graduated in '97... and yes, that's 1997!) and doro saw some college and study-abroad friends too! (left) afternoon tea (in a traditional chinese tea house) with other esec teachers ellen and mary :) (right) dinner with afra at an authentic shanghainese restaurant!

anyways i should go... i woke up extra early today (prolly as a consequence of having slept a lot my first two days in sd!) but now it's time to get going with the rest of the day :) hope you are doing well, dear readers and ttyl!

autumn in beijing!

2007-09-18T22:56:00.000-07:00

after a month and a half of quietly hoping and wishing for the HOTNESS of summer to be over with, it seems like autumn has arrived! :) the strange thing is that it happened sooo quickly! the two photos that you see above are both from my special project class last week (i especially love these students btw! :)), and the change in the way we are dressed kind of indicates the change in the climate... and these photos are LITERALLY separated by only 1 or 2 days! we went from sweating up a storm to shivering in our light sweaters and jackets like, overnight!

i have been looking forward to autumn for so long now (it's always my favorite season, but especially so this year because the summers here are almost unbearably hot and humid!), but i had never pictured it arriving with SO MUCH RAIN :) the first few days of cooler weather were accompanied by so much WETNESS; and it was really odd but (maybe because of the clouds or something), the days started to seem dark really early.. like by 3 or 4pm! i almost caught myself wishing for summer again! hopefully i can remember to be more thankful for good things, instead of always wishing things were just a *little more* perfect :) (haha i guess that would be good for non-weather-related things as well too!)

the rain has stopped now, so it's beautiful, DRY *and* cool all the time lately! i took some photos too since the campus looks so pretty and really *clean* after all the rain :)

anyways, happy autumn to everyone! have a slice of pumpkin pie for me please :)

our first session of TIP...

2007-09-11T05:30:00.000-07:00

hi there, everyone!

what a long delayed blog post! i've been hoping to post an update for some time now, but it's been difficult to find a block to time to write down the things that have been happening here :) the TIP alumni did warn us about this, but once we are in session, the days do become reeeally full... it's like there's always something to do!

we're about a week and a half into our first TIP session, and it's really been an awesome experience so far! throughout the year, i think we will have something like 6 or 7 sessions, so it seems like we'll have a chance to try out different aspects of the program (which would also provide some much needed variety by those later sessions, i would imagine! :)). so far this session, i've had 3 main responsibilities...

(1) first off, patrick and i taught science club last week! "club time" includes eating dinner together with your club-mates in the cafeteria and then about an hour of content-based activities in the evenings. personally, i think science club is a lot of fun (with activities like making bridges out of chopsticks, a mock town hall discussion about the pros and cons of opening a new factory, create-your-own inventions, and even a screening and discussion of the movie "october sky" :)), but this time, it seemed like the students really enjoyed the science club time a lot too! one student even (heart-warmingly!) referred to it as "the popular science club"?! (this kind of reaction, btw, is almost unheard of for science club, which usually pales in comparison to the more exciting music and sports clubs! i may be a bit of a nerd, but i think... science club is only receiving its just and long-overdue rewards, because we *do* cover really interesting topics!) here are a few pictures from science club time to give you a peek into the awesomeness... :)

(2) also, i've been teaching the "special projects" class, which is an hour of class time each day for some of our students with lower oral english levels to get additional help and practice. it's a smaller class, so it also provides a "safe" environment for some of the shyer students to participate and *speak out* in english (which can be very scary for our students, even tho many of them are middle school and high school *english TEACHERS*, since most chinese who studied english in the past did not often have to speak or listen to oral english). at first, i was a little anxious about this class; i really didn't want the students to feel ashamed or to think even more poorly of their oral english ability *because* they had been put in the class, you know? but truly, this class has just been... such a blessing to all of us i think! the students in the class seem to be really blossoming (not just from the "special projects" time of course, but from that in conjunction with the rest of the TIP program) and even tho it's only been about a week, i can already see improvements in their speaking and listening. it's so wonderful to be a part of helping them build their understanding AND their confidence... and the students in special projects this session are just SO SWEET; i just look forward to seeing them and i'm so happy that i've had this chance to get to know them better through this daily class time too!

(3) lastly, each morning there is a larger "morning exercises" session (with all of the TIP students gathered together). this session is part motivational to get the students pumped up and psyched for a new day, and part diction and pronounciation practice, and part general announcements. anyways, i haven't been speaking at this session (i would get stage fright speaking in front of such a large group i think! :)) but each day, i've been helping to make the powerpoint slides for this session... when i first signed up for this task, i thought it'd be fun to do (which it is...) but i didn't realize that it'd end up being like, an investment of a couple of hours each day! :) granted, i definitely make it harder for myself by being somewhat of a perfectionist about it... but i think that it's helped me to review and better understand some of the topics that we teach in this time too!

that's a little bit about what i've been up to! thanks for those of you who've emailed or otherwise kept in touch with me... i know i haven't been gone that long, but it's nice to feel like i'm still remembered :)

before i go, let me just share a few last thoughts...
* i've always been kind of impressionable in my speech patterns, like picking up accents and phrases pretty quickly from the people i spend time with and stuff. i think that i've been picking up some phrases from our chinese students' english too! a few things are adjustments to help their understanding (like "primary school" instead of "elementary school"), but some things are just because the students say it a lot! for example, i say "maybe" like ALLLLL the time now... haha it's hard to explain the many possible uses of "maybe" but it is maybe a very good filler word! :)
* also, in "getting older" news, my 10 year high school reunion is scheduled for next summer! if you're also mchs class of '98 (woo hoo!), here's a link to the official reunion website... apparently there's also a myspace page, so you can add the reunion as a friend? (i've always found myspace a little confusing since non-people entities can be your "friends"... but anyways! :))
* eternal sunset - watch a sunset at any time of day... from somewhere around the world! :) i just finished reading the little prince, and i wished i could forward this link to the little prince, since he loves sunsets so much! :)

ta-ta for now! thanks for still checking this blog... i should be able to post more regularly once i get used to the swing of things too :) hope you are doing well!

welcome banquet and some days off :)

2007-08-25T07:41:00.000-07:00

this past thursday, our summer training came to an end with an official welcome banquet! the banquet was hosted by SAFEA (the state administration of foreign expert affairs) and included all of the teachers in our program - many of whom we had met when our training began in pasadena and who were headed to schools all over china the following morning, so it was a really *unique* opportunity to be all together. the photo on the left was actually taken after we'd returned home from the banquet, but you can see some of our team members dressed up (many of us in black and white :)).

since then, we've been sort of on break, with a 4 day weekend before we start preparing for our first session! the session starts on august 31st (this coming friday!), and i'm really excited to meet our first students and to get started with teaching :) so the break has been quite relaxing... yesterday, dorothy and cassandra f. went to beijing with me, since i needed to pick up my plane tickets for my trip to LA in october (yay! annie, i'm really going to be there! :)) , and we took the opportunity to visit the main campus of peking university. the photo on the right is from outside the west gate (xi mer in beijing-nese :)).

today was even more low-key since we woke up to a campus-wide power outage AND no running water ... by the time everything came back up (around noon), we'd mostly settled into a day of lounging around at the house! a few of us went into the nearby city of chang ping for dinner tonight, and then went to this outdoor park where we always see lots of people milling around in the evenings... i've obviously never been anything but ethnically chinese when visiting china, but it's sooo interesting to be in a group with teammates who are white, since the chinese nationals find them SO FASCINATING, so fascinating that they just stop what they are doing and stare at them! (and by the transitive property, me, when i am standing "with" them!) like literally, blatantly, obviously *stare* :) tonight, most of the people in the park were gathered around the street musicians, but after we arrived, a little circle of people actually formed around us... as if being foreign was a performance in and of itself! (it was so bizarre, but this seriously happenned! :)) anyways, i think i'm understanding a little more about how different my experience this year as a chinese-american will be from my "more" american teammates (more in the eyes of others that is, since i am just as much a citizen of the us! :)). i think both have their good and bad points, but i guess i never realized how our ethnicity can have such a big impact on our interactions with people!

little nini and eating scorpions!

2007-08-18T17:17:00.000-07:00

for the 2008 olympic games, there are a set of 5 mascots: beibei, jingjing, huanhuan, yingying and nini (together, they sound out [chinese chars?] bei jing huan ying ni... "beijing welcomes you!"). these mascots are quite adorable, and you see them ALL OVER the city! so, this is *particularly* significant for me tho, because nini (the green mascot in the picture above) bears my chinese nickname! (it comes from my chinese name [chinese chars?], pronounced hwang hui ni.) actually, a little known fact, when my family first moved to the states, i registered for elementary school with the name Nini Hwang :) i later adopted the name Jennifer when i entered the 4th grade, and finally, picked up the nickname Jenn in high school! (with the variation of "Jennin" added after moving to seattle :)) so yes, i absolutely *love* that Nini is the name of one of the mascots! it's almost like i'm dr. evil and she is my mini-me...

anyways, this weekend, we also had a team photo-scavenger hunt in beijing city! it was a fun (altho long!) day, as we became more familiar with public transportation options and walked around a few areas of beijing (the city is so huge that it will take me a *long* time to explore it all!). one of the more noteworthy parts of the scavenger hunt (for me to share with you all) is that i ate a fried scorpion!! (i know! i'm surprised i did as well!) scorpion-on-a-stick is a relatively common snack food here, and having one of our teammates eat one was one of the photo-scavenger items. two people on our team tried a scorpion each (the stick came with 4 all together), and after their very positive reviews, i just spontaneously decided to try one myself too! to my surprise, it really was quite tasty... and crunchy :) i actually think i would recommend it to others too (to try at least!), altho i probably will never have it again myself!

a better team picture!

2007-08-16T08:05:00.000-07:00

here is a good picture of our whole team! i'm identifying everyone so you can put a face to the names :)
back row (standing people): daniel, julia, kelly, holly, molly, patrick and kristi.
front row (sitting people): cassandra f., cassandra g., cristina, joy, doro and me!

summer training continues...

2007-08-14T02:26:00.000-07:00

hi again! today marks the end of the summer session of TIP (total immersion program) here at the chang ping campus of beida. even tho we have only been here for a short portion of the session, i have really enjoyed spending time with the summer facilitators and the students that i've had the chance to meet! after helping out in the S class a few times, they sort of adopted me towards the end of the session... welcoming me to their cafeteria table, conversations, and even taking me out to their class dinner and KTV (karaoke!) last night too! (the students from this class are the ones in the pictures i have posted above :))

so.. the short-ish answer to the question: how i am doing? i've been *really* enjoying teaching, preparing lessons, and getting to know students... and even though it has been *quite* draining for me, i still wake up each morning excited about what the day will bring! i'm also really starting to see beijing (and especially the chang ping campus!) as my home, instead of feeling like just a temporary visitor who is about to leave. which is good, since we won't be leaving for a while! :)

anyways, looking ahead, the next session (aka the first one that i'll be a part of from start to finish!) starts at the end of the month, so we have a little bit of time for some more training and also, since our entire team is now here... more team-building as well! let me take this chance to tell you a little bit more about our team too...

this photo is of all but one member of our TIP team for the upcoming year (he was the one taking the picture!). there are 13 of us in total, from all over the us and of all ages between 20 and 30. we *are* mostly girls tho (11 out of 13... yes, i definitely hope we won't make the guys feel TOO terribly out-numbered!), which will be an interesting change for me - especially coming from the boy-heavy cs environment at school and at work!

there are 6 of us who are beginning our first year as part of the TIP team: (1) holly, a former IT admin from south dakota (she's going to be in charge of networks at our house :)) and possibly the nicest girl you'll ever meet! (2) kelly, a special education teacher and true texan at heart, she has us all saying "y'all" already (and even the occassional "all y'all"!). (3) cassandra f., my roommate at training, a fellow californian and a recent college grad from cal poly slo. she loves dancing and is always on the lookout for ideas for new business opportunities, especially ones in which earning royalties are involved :) (there are two cassandra's on our team AND the name is hard for some of the students to say, so.. during sessions, this cassandra will be known as "cassie", even tho she's always been staunchly against being called that!) (4) cassandra g. (who will be going by CJ in china), a recent graduate of bible college in pennsylvania who is part-time planning her wedding for next fall! (5) dorothy (who we've been affectionately calling "doro" :)), who is also a recent college graduate (from virginia!). she's spent the most time in beijing/china of the 6 of us newbies, and has helped us to notice and appreciate the differences in mannerisms and fashions .... and i make six! having spent most of my last three and a half weeks with these girls, i feel like we've become more than just teammates, but good *friends* too. i'm so thankful for all of them! :)

there are also 7 returning TIP teammates, who are now beginning their second year with the program. several of them have actually been teaching english in china for longer than that though! (1) julia, our program director, is originally from washington, d.c., but has been teaching english in china for 3 years now. (2) joy, the friendly and energetic alumni that met us at the airport when we arrived :) she's from alabama and is the self-proclaimed rebel of team... i haven't seen too much rebelliousness, but i do know that joy has an AWESOME honking laugh when she finds things truly hilarious :) (3) molly, from buffalo, ny and also recently engaged! (4) kristi, originally from iowa, but she's been teaching in china for several years now, and has decided to start working on her distance masters in TESOL from Azusa Pacific University. as part of that program, she'll be teaching abroad (most likely in china!) for at least another 2 years too! (5) christina, who is from minnesota and actually a part of john piper's church there! :) ... and last but not least! our two guy teammates (6) daniel, another texan who's also working on his masters in TESOL from APU, and (7) patrick, who i haven't had many chances to chat with yet, although i believe he is from new york and has also been teaching in china for at least a couple of years. we haven't spent as much time with the alumni yet, since everyone has been so busy in the past week wrapping up the summer session, but hopefully we will get to know one another better in the coming weeks too!

phew. well, i hope that this post hasn't been too long to read! it sort of feels like there are are so many new things happenning that i want to keep you guys updated about... since i don't want my life here to be completely separate or disconnected from all y'all back in the states! :)

first week in beijing!

2007-08-06T22:37:00.000-07:00

hi everyone! tomorrow will be one week since we arrived here in beijing :) hmm.. 50 more weeks to go?! j/k.. i'm not really counting down like that, altho i am occassionally QUITE homesick at times tho :)

it's been pretty good so far... we're continuing our TESOL training here (TESOL is the new term for teaching ESL - "teaching english to speakers of other languages" :)). there is currently a summer english session going on, so we've been observing some of their classtime. i actually helped out with teaching my first class this morning! it's been pretty fun, and i'm really looking forward to our first session and having like a class of my own too :)

so basically, our year will be a series of 3.5 week sessions (7 in total i think, between september and june). the program is really intensive -- students will be in class in the mornings, and have games/activities/clubs in the afternoons and evening, and *speaking english the entire time!* :) watching the students in the summer session has been really inspirational; their motivation and enthusiasm is so amazing! hopefully my students' energy will rub off on me throughout the year, especially in the times when i am tired or discouraged :)

so, that is how i am doing so far! will try to keep you all "posted" via blog posts ha ha ha :)

leaving for beijing!

2007-07-30T18:09:00.000-07:00

hi everyone!

this is probably going to be my last post from this side of the pacific ocean (for now!)... it's actually my last day in LA; our training here ended this morning and my flight to beijing leaves tomorrow morning! :) julie came to visit me today, and we're sitting at a boba place using the internet (haha yes, because there's a chance that they won't have boba in china! j/k :)).

training this past week has been pretty intense, but i think it's been a good transitional week; kind of like an in-between week, where i'm away from much of the comfortable familiarity of my "regular" life, but still in the same country! i know it's only been a week, but i already feel like i've been growing and being stretched by the experience - for example, last night, after my no-hot-water-and-actually-not-very-much-cold-water-either shower, i realized that when i dried my face, an unfortunate ant had gotten onto my towel and been smushed in the process; and i just... brushed it off and moved on! haha okay, perhaps that seems like no big deal, but i just know that i couldn't have reacted the same way even a week ago, so i'm happy to see some growth character, even if it is just some reduction of prissy-ness :)

another random thing to share and to be thankful for... yesterday afternoon, my parents had come up to la from san diego to pick up my beetle (among other things, like spend time with julie and me!), but my car choose that moment to have a faulty alternator! and i never realized this, but sunday afternoon is a pretty bad time to have this happen, since most mechanics are open every day BUT sunday :) at first, it seemed like pretty bad timing, since we were supposed to be enjoying our last "family day" in a while and instead, we dealt with car stuff for several hours, and my parents ended up having to rent a car to take home, etc... but in actuality, it was a pretty good thing! first, yesterday was inconvenient, but definitely loads BETTER than if this had happened while lis and i were driving down from seattle last week. and also, perhaps taking care of car stuff seems like a lousy "family day", but it was so great having them all there, and working together thru the unexpected turn of events! and lastly, the vw dealership was able to fix this really quickly this morning, so my car is back and well again, *and* annie is going to help me take the car as far south as irvine tonight, so... this is one story that has a really happy ending :) so to everyone reading this, if your car is working well, take a second to be thankful and appreciate that blessing!

wow, i hadn't expected to write so much, but thanks for reading :) i'll try to update all y'all from the other side of the ocean as soon as i can!!

hello from... la!

2007-07-24T15:48:00.000-07:00

haha it actually seems like, distance-wise, i'm not very far from where i was when i wrote my previous post, but i've been up to seattle and back down to so-cal since then! i spent a whirlwind 10 days in seattle, seeing friends, packing, and taking care of the seemingly endless errands you need to finish before leaving the country :) thanks to everyone who made the time to hang out with me in that time, and my apologies to those that i wasn't able to meet up with or say goodbye to personally... i wish there had been just a few more hours in each day!! some of my favorite pictures from my time in seattle (all of the pics are posted here):

and then, last thursday, lisa and i took off from seattle for our big road trip to la! 2.5 days and about 1300 miles (we took a slight detour along the oregon coast) later, we arrived in pasadena, ca, where i am starting my training for the upcoming year of english teaching in china :) i'm so glad that she drove with me - it turned the drive from something i *had* to do (to get my car down to so-cal) into a fun adventure! (click here for pictures from our road trip.)

since training started (this past saturday), i've spent what seems like a LOT of time with these 5 girls, who will be part of my english teaching team in beijing... learning about TEFL (teaching english as a foreign language) and learning about one another too! i leave for china ... next week!! :) we're pretty excited... can you tell?

hello from san diego!

2007-07-04T00:53:00.000-07:00

well, it's been a few weeks since my last update! these last few weeks have been pretty action-packed too... i have been to atlanta (for ben and steph's wedding and some sightseeing :)), welcomed izzy back from rome (and had her lovely company as our temporary third roommate at joyce's place), volunteered for a day with habitat for humanity with some others from our fellowship (and learned that i need some practice with hammering!), gone paintballing for james and min's birthdays (i never knew that pretend-warfare could be so thrilling!) ... *pause for breath* ... AND last but probably most life-changingly, i've had my last day of work at microsoft!

that very same day, i hopped onto a plane to san diego, and once i arrived here, drove a 5 hour round trip to bring my cousin and aunt to LAX to catch their flight back to taipei, watched ratatouille (you should see it if you haven't, it's reeeeeally wonderful! totally rat-ical!), attended lisa and tom's wedding (my high school friend and neighbor ... now married! it's quite crazy :)), and had a big multi-celebration brunch (mom and dad's birthdays, mother's day and father's day, my upcoming move to china, lawrence and i being in town, just to name a few!) with my family, lawrence, bobby and bobby's mom at the incredibly beautiful four seasons in carlsbad! *phew* ... and now i'm just bumming around here for another week :) i've been sleeping in like no other, reading a lot, and hanging out with my parents and albert (who also happens to be in sd to study.. and bum around :)).

interesting side note: did any of you know that frozen yogurt is all the craze down here? i had heard of pinkberry (in la, among other places!), but my first night in san diego, my family introduced me to *yogurt world*, a self-service place that offers a huge selection of "real" frozen yogurts and toppings. (apparently when frozen yogurt first appeared on the US scene in the 70's, people didn't like the sour/tart/"yogurt"-y taste of it, so, american frozen yogurt became really sweetened and essentially, just lowfat ice cream! - but places like these are bringing yogurt back to its roots!) anyways, it's really popular, and it's been super refreshing during these really hot days :) plus, it's right by my mom's office, so we go pretty often after i pick her up after work!

anyways, speaking of work... it's been a little odd thinking that i'm *not* working anymore! i guess it still feels like i'm just on vacation or something :) but i updated my linkedin and facebook profiles today with end dates for my microsoft job, so it's starting to sink in a little more. (after all, facebook did helpfully update my feed to read: "jenn left her job as..." :)) it's not as if i haven't been expecting this to happen, but i guess the theoretical acknowledgment of the change-to-come is still quite different from the reality of it! plus, the last few weeks of work were particularly rosy-hued, with the farewell lunches and the saying of goodbyes... it all made me realize how much i'd enjoyed working with my coworkers, getting to know them as people too, and how much i'd miss seeing them all 5 days a week :) (these days, there aren't that many people that you see even once a week, so it's quite a big deal!)

well... i had just wanted to write a quick update and didn't mean to go on for so long (again! i seem to always say that!). tomorrow (or today i guess!) is the 4th of july, and i'll be driving up with irvine with albert to visit annie and sean and see their new house (so grown up!) and catch some fireworks too... happy independence day!

p.s. tons of pictures of everything i've been up to are posted on my flickr if you are interested!

atlanta and gone with the wind

2007-06-13T09:26:00.000-07:00

i'd always planned to visit the margaret mitchell house if i ever had the chance to be in atlanta, and since i'll be going there this month (for ben and steph's wedding), i was really hankering to re-read margaret mitchell's gone with the wind -- it'd been so long since i'd read it and my trip was fast approaching! gwtw* was one of my favorite books as a teenager -- i must have read it at least 10 times in high school, often when i was home sick or couldn't sleep at night. however, i left my well-worn paperback copy of gwtw at home when i left for college, and i hadn't read it since! i recently purchase a new (hardcover!) copy of gwtw, and ironically, i re-read it this last month, while i was pretty sick and home from work! :)

[*gwtw will be used as an abbreviation for the full title. i actually got the idea off of the url for the margaret mitchell house -- gwtw.org :)]

it's sooooo interesting because, although i loved the book before, i really don't think i ever fully understood the story until this time around! for example, there was one line in the final chapter that succinctly summarized the "problem" with Scarlett:

She had never understood either of the men she had loved and so she had lost them both. Now, she had a fumbling knowledge that, had she ever understood Ashley, she would never have loved him; had she ever understood Rhett, she would never have lost him. She wondered forlornly if she had ever really understood anyone in the world.

in all of my past readings, i'd been Scarlett's staunchest supporter -- i thought she was just great: gutsy and courageous and willing to do whatever it took to protect herself and her family. i never really thought of her as a little misguided, blind to the true value of some of the people around her, and somewhat obsessive about money, so this all came as quite a bit of a shock to me! anyways, i DO still love the book, but i do feel like it's an onion that i just peeled another layer off of or something :)

anyways, i'd started this post a while ago, but couldn't really finish it until today... and steph and ben are getting married *this* saturday! :) below are: (1) my favorite picture of steph and ben (from their "tasting" dinner at maggiano's, where we got to have a voice in what foods would be served at the reception!) and also (2) a picture from two evenings ago (my last dinner with "miss chung" :)). congrats to the g's!

bay area weekends

2007-05-31T22:43:00.000-07:00

i spent the last two weekends of may down in the bay area! :)

the first weekend was so event-filled ... cynthia and stephen's wedding on saturday and then bay to breakers on sunday!

these photos are from cyn's wedding (haha am i being repetitive now?!). here are lawrence and i outside of menlo park presbyterian church ... one thing i remember esp. clearly about the wedding ceremony was that the pastor stood like off of the stage area (when cyn and steve were saying their vows), so even tho you HEARD him, all you SAW was the bride and the groom. very interesting! and i couldn't help but think that it'd be good for the wedding photos! :) also, between the ceremony and the reception, a bunch of girls (and a few guys too!) helped with this "scrapbook guestbook" that we were putting together on the day off the wedding! my primary responsibility was to print wallet sized photos as they were being taken by the designated photographers, using this pretty neat photo printer that could print 4 photos on a piece of 4x6 photo paper. quite an elaborate project, but i thought we did a pretty good job, if i do say so myself... esp since this was also one of the largest weddings i'd ever been too! :) and the last two pictures... our lovely bride and handsome groom toasting one another and then coming by to toast all the tables! congrats!! :)
[all wedding pictures are posted here.]

the next morning, we woke up super early to head up to san francisco for the bay to breakers 12k! well, we DID wake up super early, but we were still a little late to the start line... but we weren't so late as to miss too much :) the most awesome part about this race was just all of the costumes that people were wearing ... these photos are just a random selection of my favorites (scrabble pieces, salmon swimming upstream - running from the finish line to the start line!, and indiana jones being followed by a guy in a ROCK costume), but there were many many more fun, creative, and downright ingenious ones! you can see that we (bobby, julie, lawrence and i) were rather boringly-dressed, but we've decided we'll dress up next time. one idea i had was to get a bunch of people to dress up as checkers pieces (red and black). this would require a group of people tho, but then we could do some fun stunts like leap frog over other colored pieces (like jumping in checkers) and hopping on each other's backs to king each other... and of course, only the kinged pieces would be allowed to move backwards :) anyways, i'm really glad we participated in bay to breakers, but it was seriously so exhausting! haha i had had the idea of maybe meeting up with other friends afterwards, but we basically just stumbled back to my cousin's apartment and crashed :)
[all bay to breakers pictures are here.]

the second weekend was a lot more relaxed... mostly spent hanging out with claud, lis and shell (and their boyfriends! ... i was like a perpetual 7th wheel!! jk :)) highlights of the weekend included a visit to the pixar studio (where i got to meet my favorite monsters!), a delicious dinner at the new nua restaurant in san francisco (where we had a special menu designed just for us: "lisa & friends" :)), as well as lots of the usual hanging out, walking around, playing BOARD GAMES and catching up! it's pretty interesting that the board game that lisa and her friends were playing down in sf is one of the ones that we've been playing up in seattle too :)

[all pictures from this weekend are here.]

niki and jerm

2007-05-25T15:55:00.000-07:00

(of all the many pictures of them, this is one of my favorites!)
you guys have been on my mind a lot lately and i'm really looking forward to seeing you this weekend :)

wishlist: lapsac tote

2007-05-23T10:00:00.000-07:00

sometimes i purposely leave my laptop at home when travelling because of the added hassle of going through airport security with one (at least in the us!). haha you know the feeling right? you already have your shoes off, you're struggling to take off your jacket (or if it's in the wintertime, your jacket AND the hoodie/sweatshirt underneath the jacket), you're looking for the ziploc bag of liquids you need to set aside... no, taking my laptop case out of my backpack and out of its velcro protective case is not something i want to deal with :)

not so with the lapsac tho! i keep imagining myself coming up to an airport security line and effortlessly (read: one-handed! no struggling!) getting my laptop out of my bag and into an individual plastic container for scanning. and it's quite cute in design as well! there's this brown color option and also a greenish one (the greenish one is kind of pastel-y and patterned all over) -- i think i'm leaning towards the brown personally.

anyways, i just think it'd be super handy for anyone who is often on-the-go and who likes bringing their laptop with them! i'm thinking of getting one, and i almost bought one for julie as a birthday present too :)

the lapsac is available through nanda home for $58.

reuniting old friends!

2007-05-22T11:25:00.000-07:00

two weekends ago, lawrence and i had mother's day brunch with his parents at newcastle golf course. not surprisingly, i took a picture! :)

my aunt in taiwan sees this picture on my flickr and recognizes lawrence's mom! apparently they were good friends back when they were both kaohsiung girls' high school! :) what a small world, isn't it? they'd lost touch after high school, but as of last week, are now back in touch again... i'm so glad to have been a part of making this reunion possible :)

i'd always been a big flickr fan, but this just ADDS to it... :) so much so that i also just bought flickr pro for julie as a birthday present too!

jenn-eral update (early may)

2007-05-10T15:06:00.000-07:00

hi everyone!

a couple of updates/details about my upcoming year in china! for starters, i'm now certainly going to be located in beijing... which i think will be cool, especially at this somewhat historically interesting time (given that the olympics will be held there next summer and all!). i also learned that, even though our 5 week training doesn't begins until july 21st, we'll actually be leaving for china on july 30th to continue our training on-site (which is a few weeks earlier than i had expected to leave the country!). all in all, it's quite rapidly approaching... how exciting! :)

as far as my "current life" goes... i've recently read two really good books! the first is the new oprah's book club recommendation the road (by cormac mccarthy) -- about a father and son's struggle to survive (but more importantly, to not become part of the "bad people") in a world devastated by nuclear winter. i probably wouldn't have even picked it up for myself, but for the fact that jeff highly recommended it, which makes me think that sometimes it's really beneficial (and rewarding!) to read outside of your normal genre/style. haha unless i just happened to be lucky this time :) anyways, continuing on, the second book is one i picked for myself (and loved!) called the girls (by lori lansens). it's the first person story of two sisters who, at face level, are quite different from julie and i (for starters, they are conjoined twins!) but it somehow speaks to the experience of sisterhood in a very universal and identifiable way! she doesn't know this yet, but i think i'm going to send it to her to read when she has a chance... :) oh and i don't know if you've noticed, but in the sidebar of this blog, there is a widget (from shelfari.com) that shows the last two books i've read at any given moment!

lastly, our volleyball team is playing in the semifinals tonight! here we are after our (surprising!) win in our first round playoff match last thursday :)

*update* soo... we didn't end up winning the semi-finals, but here's a picture of our complete team after the last game :) from left to right: neville, jane, jon, lawrence, jeff, me and janette.

changing of the (camera) guards

2007-05-02T14:03:00.000-07:00

last week, i received a couple of cool things in the mail. the first was my new camera!! my family purchased the snazzy canon sd800is (the "is" represents optical image stabilization.. whoo hoo!) for me as a present! (for those eagle-eyes out there, yes, that camera photographed to the left is neither new NOR the canon sd800is, but rather, the camera i've been toting around for the last few years. the important part is that the photo was TAKEN with my new camera :))

anyways, i'm totally liking my new camera (you can take a look at my flickr for some of the pictures i've taken recently using it!), but i *do* feel a little bit of nostalgia as i set aside my trusty pentax camera (and it's faithful accompaniment, the curious george altoid tin!) . my very first digital camera, it's definitely served me well... i recently broke the 10,000 mark in terms of photos taken on it! to be honest, i wish i hadn't held out so long before switching to digital ... it's really been a ton more convenient for me than film cameras. i'd probably have a bazillion more pictures of my college years if i'd been using a digital camera back then :)

oh last but not least! another highly-anticipated item was a copy of the urbana 06 conference "soundtrack" :) basically a cd of the worship band performing some of the songs that we'd sung at the conference - many of which were written by members of the worship band themselves! :) listening to it has brought back really great memories and been a reminder of the challenges that we called to while were where there too!

jenn rogers

2007-04-18T15:37:00.000-07:00

both this morning (when i first got to work) and this afternoon (when i came back from lunch), i took my coat off and replaced it with a cardigan i had had hanging on my chair. i felt remarkably like mr. rogers :)

oh-so thankful!

2007-04-16T14:22:00.000-07:00

china plans are still chugging along, but i wanted to quickly share about some really wonderful news that i received this morning!! :)

first, some background: a few months ago, i posted about the oh-so exciting news of annie and sean's engagement and their pending fall '07 wedding! however, it turned out that the teach overseas program typically discourages its staff from returning to the u.s. during the term abroad (primarily bc adjusting and then having to re-adjust is quite taxing...), and furthermore, that the chinese schools don't allow for flexible vacations/leaves when school is in session. so, instead of being a bridesmaid in one of my bestest friend's wedding, it seemed like i might not be able to attend at all! how sad i was!

but... even taking that into consideration, i decided to accept the teach overseas offer and just.. hope and pray that the schedule would allow for me to return to LA for the october wedding. annie's support through all of this was just *huge*... this quote just totally speaks to her selfless friendship: "if the wedding's the only thing holding you back, i would say you should definitely go! i mean, this is a big chance for you to do something big! weddings are a big deal, but i know you'll be there for the marriage..." how sweet she is!

anyways, it's been a looooong time since i'd had any reply regarding the matter, so i had pretty much accepted that i just wouldn't be there, but then! just this morning, i heard back from the director of teach overseas' china program and the word is a go! so i'll be there after all!! :) words can't fully express the thankfulness, relief and joy that i've been feeling today :) it may seem like a small thing, but it's just been a confirmation that i've made the good/right choice, and also a reminder of how god does provide for us when we let go and lift up our concerns to him.

wishlist: daisy diaper bag (i know!)

2007-04-13T12:49:00.000-07:00

i must admit, it's been a pretty blah week here -- work has felt a bit like running on a hamster wheel... working really hard w/o really *getting* anywhere :/ my conclusion: i don't think i'd make a very good hamster :)

in the middle of this blahness, this cute and bright burst of color was a most welcome distraction!

haha yes, i do understand that this is a DIAPER bag, and i don't have much need for carrying around diapers :) but! i just feel like it's so cute and could be used for other (non-diaper) purposes too... the website suggests make-up and knitting supplies, but i would probably end up using it to hold scrap papers/memorabilia and maybe even a small book or journal (with pens too?! :))

available for $40 from 2modern.com.

exercise and energy levels

2007-04-02T15:37:00.000-07:00

i'm always hearing people express sentiments along the lines of how *great* exercise is for their energy levels -- like how it helps to relieve stress and gives them a rush/boost for the rest of the day! but to be quite honest, my experiences with working out have almost always been contrary to this seemingly-universal pro-exercise "because it feels good" culture. i've always felt more tired after working out than when i don't work out (all else being equal), and today is no exception! :) i managed to get myself to the gym on a monday morning (yay!) and while i fully acknowledge that working out IS good for me, i am soo not feeling any of that goodness yet :) instead, i find myself walking around my office like a torpid, slower-witted version of myself... (haha, case in point, i'd like to include a funny little analogy here, but i can't seem to think of one :))

the reason for working out today, you might ask? well, dear reader, i've signed up for the 2007 bay to breakers run in san francisco! my reasons for doing this:
(1) despite living in the bay area for 5 years (and being somewhat of an amateur running enthusiast!), i've never participated in this classic (and even quintessential?!) sf event :) it's more than a race, it's like a party on feet!
(2) this year's race is on may 20th, which is julie's birthday and she'll be there running too! since cynthia is getting married the day before, i would already be in the bay area for my little sister's birthday, so i can't see any reason not to spend the day with her :)
(3) and perhaps contrary to what i sounded like earlier this post, i genuinely DO enjoy running (even if it does make me really tired afterwards!) and hope to get back into the habit more and more :)

... and while we are on the topic of running, i'd like to give props to lisa and shelley for running 1/2 marathons this past weekend! you girls rock so much and inspire me :)

jenn in china!

2007-03-27T11:42:00.000-07:00

exciting news, everyone! :)

i've decided to join teach overseas in china for the 2007-2008 school year! i'm very much looking forward to serving god, teaching english, and just... getting to know a lot of new people and living in a new place :)

[the photo is of my parents and i at the great wall of china, from the last time i was there -- in the summer of 2002!]

some details... (these are usually the first things people ask me :))

what will you be doing?
i'll be a part of the Total Immersion Program, which means that we'd literally be sharing lives with our students ("24/7" although i imagine there'd be time for sleep and all of that :)). i was drawn to this program because it seems to provide more opportunities to get to know people outside of the classroom setting -- although i admit that i don't know very many more specifics than that... yet! :)

how long will you be gone?
training will begin this july (in less than 4 months!) and i will be moving to china sometime in august! the program will run through the following june, at which time, i'd most likely move back to the us... so it won't be for very long; just under a year!

where in china will you be?
i'm not sure yet -- i don't think our location assignments have been set, but i'll be sure to update you all when i learn more!

can i come visit you in china?
yes! if you'll be in china in the next year, let me know and i believe i'd be able to meet up and even travel a little bit with you in the times when the program is not "in session" (roughly one week every month or month and a half?). i'd love to see you and share part of this adventure with you!

some hwang (and one huang) girls :)

2007-03-21T18:24:00.000-07:00

highlights of my past week...

- finally visited the *top pot* doughnut shop in seattle after many many months of driving past it (either on my way somewhere else or after it had closed) and thinking "wow, that looks like a pretty cool doughnut shop!" :)
- had the chance to spend time with julie (my little sister! so also a "hwang"...) when she came through seattle on her way back from whistler! here she is, about to eat brunch at portage bay cafe (just thinking about this place brings back fond jaci house memories!). luckily, last sunday was also one of the nicest/sunniest days i've seen in a loooong time, so we were able to enjoy some walking around and outdoor window shopping too :)
- this is an old picture, but it represents my *bon voyage* wish for... izzy! best of luck to you in rome for three months!

email subscriptions!

2007-03-16T15:47:00.000-07:00

i've added an "email subscription" widget to this blog... see at the top of the right hand column? so, for those of you who don't use an RSS feed reader, but want to be informed when i post new stuff, this is for you! once you sign up, all new posts will be sent directly to your email :)

hope that it helps! :)