Pictures - Monkey Island boat, Scooters, Abigail & Zoe

Pictures - Pa La U Waterfall & Elephant Village

Christmas - Thai Style!

Well if you can't spend Christmas at home, we highly recommend spending it in Thailand with friends! What an amazing week filled with sunshine, laughter and lots of new adventures! Here is the quick recap...

For starters as soon as we arrived Monday night we met Zachery & Katie Sue Linn - two of our dearest friends from Fayetteville (actually some of Kelly's best friends) so vacation was a 10 already despite anything else that we might do!

Tuesday was spent discovering the resort & area of Dolphin Bay - the pool by our 3 bedroom villa, two large resort pools, the open air restaurant, the beach, the local shops. We also already had a Christmas tree all decorated (thanks to Katie Sue & Zachery) - we brought it home and have decided it will be our traveling Christmas tree until we are home in the US again!

Wednesday, after a short stop to learn how pineapples grow (thank you Zachery!) it was off to the Pa La U waterfall to swim and try to catch the fish with bare hands (which people came close but never actually caught one). We had a Thai lunch at a local outdoor restaurant and then headed out to the Hua Hin Elephant Village - very fun trudging through the forest & water and going off track when the elephants got hungry.

Thursday was another relaxing day at the beach for Sue, Megan, Lindsey, Zoe & Abigail, while the others rented scooters to go into Pranburi (the nearest town) for some grocery shopping. Megan was planning to go but changed her mind after seeing her Dad drive the scooter for the first time and decided he needed a little practice before she joined him! The older kids also took the scooters down into the national park to do some hiking & caving and also have some scooter breakdown fun! In the evening we headed back into Hua Hin for the night market - dinner was meat on a stick (in Asia you can find just about any meat on a stick but we stuck with the chicken & pork) and fresh fruit smoothies - very yum! We did a bit of shopping and then headed to Swensen's Ice Cream shop - where the older kids had chocolate fondue with ice cream balls & waffle cookies. Can anyone say delicious?

Friday - Christmas Eve day (which we needed to keep reminding ourselves!) we headed out with a local fisherman to Monkey Island, a short 20 minute ride from the beach at the resort. There were probably 15-20 monkeys, all very friendly unless you threw something at them (just ask Katie Sue!) as they took the bananas right out of your hand and if they thought you still had some they would just right up on your leg and crawl up! We had Christmas Eve dinner at the resort - all the fixings of turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, plus a whole assortment of Thai food. After dinner Santa came to give gifts to all of the kids...only Andy was missing from our table since he was Santa riding in on a rickshaw!! He said it was actually a lot of fun just with the look in the younger kids eyes as they gazed at Santa...we had Zoe & Abigail on strict hush orders, although I'm not sure they really would have recognized him if we hadn't told them!

Saturday - Christmas Day! We started off with gifts & stockings - a fun assortment of gifts from Shanghai, India and Fayetteville! Then it was another Tesco scooter run for the older kids and Andy (with Megan this time!) - yes that's right, a grocery store trip on Christmas Day! For Christmas dinner we headed back to the night market to the Mexican restaurant we had seen earlier in the week. While it probably wasn't the best Mexican restaurant when compared to some back in Fayetteville, it was absolutely delicious for the 8 of us that have been overseas for several months and missing some really good nachos! The owners were from Texas and very friendly and we arrived early enough to have the entire place to ourselves - it was wonderful and certainly a Christmas dinner like no other we have ever had!

Sunday was another adventure day heading out to the floating market - lots of small boats loaded with fruits, vegetables, prepared foods, and souvenirs. It was wild - if you looked slightly interested in someone's wares, they had a pole and pulled your boat over to theirs. Then when purchasing you had to negotiate them down to ~30% of their original price to pay something reasonable for your purchase! We bought quite a few more souvenirs and tried the jelly tea (some kind of slimy drink!) with some mango/sticky rice/coconut milk (much more tasty than the tea!). We then headed further north into Thailand to the River Kwai where we floated down the river on a bamboo raft and then took a tour of the historic bridge & area. Another reminder of how what our freedom means and all the people who fought through many wars for it. What should have taken normally 3 years to build, took 6 months because of the forced labor from Asian laborers and POW's.

Monday was everyone's last day - Zachery & Katie Sue spent the day up in Hua Hin for some last brother/sister time before they are together again in May when Katie Sue returns from India and the Thielman crew relaxed at the beach, took some photo walks among the local area. We had dinner at the resort - fondly known as Abigail's favorite restaurant because she enjoyed the breakfast there so much! The older kids then stayed up (similar to several other nights) listening to music and playing cards out in the restaurant until Zachery's taxi arrived at 1am for the 3 hours trip up to Bangkok.

Tuesday morning we left for Bangkok as well - the Thielman seven and Katie Sue who is staying with us for another 3+ weeks!!! Leaving vacation is not as bad when you get to take your friends home with you!!

Shanghai Christmas!

Merry early Christmas from Shanghai! Since for the first time EVER we will not be 'home' for Christmas, we celebrated our Shanghai Christmas on Saturday with a mix of some old & new traditions. Started off the day with our favorite holiday breakfast - french toast casserole, fruit salad and blueberry muffins. A few alterations on the normal ingredients and it all pretty much tastes the same! After that we headed to the subway for our Merry Metro Madness Christmas scavenger hunt! We traveled together to People's Square (the largest metro stop) and then broke into our teams - Andy/Abigail, Sue/Lindsey/Zoe, and Kelly/Megan. We were then off traveling about the city for the next 3 hours - snapping pictures of smiling Chinese children, things that are red, Christmas trees, and our team as we explored new areas of Shanghai. It was great fun exploring more of this city that never seems to end! After returning home we played the exchange game (using the gifts we had purchased on our scavenger hunt) and built gingerbread houses - I think the older girls enjoyed these more than Zoe/Abigail, putting all the decorations on just right! Ended the day with a viewing of "It's a Wonderful Life" while eating our apple crisp! Today everyone was filled with excitement as we packed for Thailand to see Katie Sue & Zachery on Monday!!! We have a few people that won't be able to sleep tonight from sheer excitement alone!

Sheng Dian Kuai Le (aka: Merry Christmas!!)

Grocery Shopping

Thought we'd share with everyone a typical grocery shopping trip - only because they are all so fun! So we primarily shop at Carrefour (figuring it is a global chain, meaning reliable safe supply of food) - we supplement Carrefour with trips to Pines or City Shop which are expat grocery stores where you can find Dorrito chips for $7 USDabag, a can of soup for $5 and a box of 12 candy canes for Peppermint Bark for $5. Andy & I went to Carrefour last Friday and it was such a sight we just had to take some pictures! Friday is fresh eggs day so A LOT of people come out, first thing in the morning and wait in line for their eggs - there were probably 40 people in line and you would buy a bag of eggs (not sure how you actually get them home without breaking!) We bought our pre-packaged eggs (which are still not refrigerated, similar to the milk!) and moved on to the fresh section - where you can find fish in the tank, or already gutted sitting on some 'bloody' ice (and no I am not swearing in UK English!) or you can also find your fresh eel, frog and turtle. There is a reason we usually don't take Zoe & Abigail grocery shopping (and it isn't just because we've seen lots of unpackaged raw meats in the carts that kids ride in!). So we move on to vegetables - where people rummage through various green leafy veggies in buckets on the ground and also where the cleaning crew dumps their garbage into the same buckets as you are searching for just the right 'fresh' veggie - we decided to go without the salad that day! Take Wal-Mart on a Saturday afternoon in the States, double the people shopping in store, add some really strange selection of goods (oh and take away most of the stuff you like to buy) and you've got it! It is quite an adventure - that must explain why we do it so often!!

On a different note, we did hunt down the one Krispy Kreme location in Shanghai last Saturday - fun trip on the metro to West Nanjing Rd, asked lots of locals where to find it (since our only information was 'near the metro stop') and finally came upon a most wonderful sight! Even with the 'hot now' sign not lit, they handed us donuts as soon as we walked in, we watched them make the donuts, then proceeded to buy more donuts to eat there and finally bought some donuts to bring home! Obviously they were quite tasty!

In the Air

It's that time of year...the fresh snow, the smell of evergreens & fresh baked cookies, everyone out doing their Christmas shopping...WAIT...STOP...that isn't here sorry! We do have carols in the stores, large displays of plastic decorations and a lot of expats getting ready to leave the country on vacation! We successfully found an artificial tree (key word artificial as nothing about it looks remotely real), some bright and fast blinking LED lights (the only option!) and now we just need some presents to go underneath (as you can see the tree starts about 2 feet off the ground!) - we try not to look at the tree too closely because it could give you a headache or worse yet, cause some seizures! Good thing Christmas isn't about anything but JESUS!!! He is all we've got and He is all we need!

We celebrated the holiday season with our church group here (fondly referred to as the B team!) - actually had a meal with all the typical US fixings including sweet potato casserole, green bean casserole, apple crisp and pumpkin pie. It was absolutely delicious and such fun to have some fellowship with other families!

Andy ran in the Shanghai Half-Marathon last weekend (him and 25,000 of his closest friends!) He went with two other guys he has been running with and ran with them for the first ~5 miles until they got separated at a water break amidst the sea of runners. He finished strong at 2 hrs 6 minutes - it sure was easy to spot him coming across the finish line as the only blonde person!

Our latest distraction is air quality - apparently really bad in Shanghai since the world expo ended (not trying to impress any foreigners any more!) and also in our house with the discovery of mold in both of the girls bedrooms. We are having the Cadillac of air/mold/water/lead/radon tests done (along with lots of calls to the landlord to fix the mold issue) and will hopefully have a plan soon so we at least feel like the air we are breathing is clean! Please be praying that the issues get fixed!

We've had a variety of school field trips (Anita - Zoe saw first hand Coke in a bottle being filled!), Christmas concerts (Zoe and her friend Genevieve from Singapore in the picture) and a start at the Christmas shopping. Can't believe it is 17 days to Christmas (or 12 days until we leave for Thailand!) - praying for you all as we prepare to celebrate our Saviour's birth!