A reasonable response: Postpone your soccer or golf game until Saturday. Play video games today. Besides, it's cloudy, windy, and cold today--not good soccer or golf weather.
Monday, March 14, 2011
Explanation of nuclear power plant problems...
A reasonable response: Postpone your soccer or golf game until Saturday. Play video games today. Besides, it's cloudy, windy, and cold today--not good soccer or golf weather.
Back to school...
Saturday, March 12, 2011
EARTHQUAKE!
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
The beginning of the end...
I am excited to go home and see everyone but saying goodbye is tough. These next few weeks I will basically have one foot in America and one foot here and that will be awful. Looking forward to the future but saying goodbye to people I may never see again.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Hitches in the trip...
The amount of travel time in buses, taxis, tuk tuks, and catamarans. Evidently I get sea sick and supposedly its ok to shove 15 grown adults in a tiny bus for 6 hours.
My debt card got eaten by an ATM
The places we stayed weren’t awesome.
Emily got sick several times.
I lost my scuba mask on my last dive (the night dive) and no I hadn’t even paid for it yet.
When I got home I found that my scooter had been stolen. AWESOME!
Though all of these things happened…I wouldn’t trade this trip for the world. I loved it and can’t wait to go back to Thailand and get my “Dive Master Training” which should take about 2 to 3 months. Whose with me???
...then Thailand!
We took a bus from Bangkok to the mainland of Thailand and then catamaran to the island of Koh Tao. I didn’t do so well on the catamaran with seasick meds. Yikes! Koh Tao is the cheapest place in the world to get your scuba license and I’ve wanted to do that since I got a taste at the Great Barrier Reef on Pac Rim. The resort we stayed at was right on the ocean and had an amazing view. The Thai people ran the restaurant but for the most part, the dive shop and instructors were English speakers. Many were from England and Australia. Our instructors name was Sonia who is from England. We were able to start classes the day we arrived and from there set off for the sea. I was so excited! The open water course consists of 4 dives. We did mostly morning dives, which start around 6:30am. It’s not exactly what you think of for vacation but I was loving it.
The most exciting thing that happened during our open water training was our last day out. The nice thing about the open water is that they make a video of you on your last day so we were preparing to be on camera all day. We go down on the first dive site and all of sudden there is a SHARK!!! Now normally I would have been a bit freaked but no fear it was a WHALE SHARK! These sharks don’t have teeth and only eat plankton. So I was resting easy and soaking it in that I was seeing a whale shark swim right past me! It was about 6 meters and I could have reached out and touched it. It was amazing! Needless to say my video is awesome with me swimming with a whale shark!!!!!!
During this dive, Emily was sick so neither her nor Luke was able to finish their open water with me. They finished the next say and I went on to get my advanced license. This would consist of a deep water dive (30m), navigation, computer training, and a NIGHT DIVE!!! Everything was awesome and they saved the night dive for last. I was super excited but pretty nervous. In my dive group I had met another couple from England. Polly and Nick were so much fun. We spent a lot of time together diving and hanging out. Of course I continued to be the 3rd wheel as per usual. (Lots of cute guys at the resort but none worth mentioning) Anyway, the night dive was awesome!! So interesting and beautiful what the ocean is like at night.
We were able to spend Christmas and New Years abroad this year and luckily we had so much fun that we handled it quite nicely. Of course no one likes to be away from their family during the holidays but thankfully we had a great trip.
Cambodia
Ankor Wat?? What is that?? I had no idea and knew nothing about Cambodia. Mito church supports our missionary, Joel, to go and do some mission work with the street kids but that’s all I knew. We set off for Cambodia on December 23rd. After volunteering to get booted from our flight for a $600 voucher, taking the red eye to Bangkok, bus to the Cambodian boarder, trying to get a visa, then a taxi to Siem Reap we finally made it to our final destination after about 30 hours of travel.
Ankor Wat is why we went for the most part. They are ancient ruins of temples delicately sculpted with designs done thousands of years ago. We were able to see it was sunrise, sunset and in the middle of the day. I for one got my share of temples for a loooong time but Luke loved it! The history of it was fascinating to him.
Our mode of transportation was a tuk tuk. It is basically a scooter with a carriage on the back. Our driver’s name was Venna and we were able to get to know him throughout the week. It was a fantastic time. A highlight for me was sticking my feet in a tank of fish would proceeded to eat the dead skin from my feet and legs. Yes it sounds gross but it was awesome after I got over being soooo ticklish. After 5 nights we made the trek back to Bangkok preparing for the relaxing week at the beach!