Sunday, September 27, 2009

To Cut or not to Cut?!?!?

Well I think I might take the plunge and get quite a hair cut tomorrow!!!

I have been able to meet some new and amazing people lately through the church and it is fun to have some couples to hang out with.  Well I have meet a girls who wants to get her hair done and I offered to show her around and I need to get a hair cut so I think I might take the plunge and get it chopped off!!!!!!  I am not sure if I will be able to have the courage when I get there but it still will be shorter that it has been in about 6 years!!!   We shall see tomorrow!!!!

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Thoughts for the day!

So Norris and I were talking yesterday about our plans and life in general.  We are talking about getting out of school housing and getting our own apartment.  This made us think for a few minutes about all of our apartments.  We have lived in 5 apartments in 4 years.  Although this one we have lived in twice!  Well if we do live in a new apartment it would be 5 different apartments in 4 years!  I think we like change!  I think if this is any indication about the rest of our lives we are in for a fun ride!!!!!  Anyway we are looking forward to things in our future but oh my what are they going to be?!?!?!  Oh well I guess we will find when it happens!!!  I guess we will find out when we need to know!  I wish we could plan it all out right now and know what is going to happen but I guess that really can't be the case!  Someday we will know and some day we will be able to settle down and have the house with the picket fence and  rose garden and little kiddies runny around our ankles!    SOMEDAY!

Sunday, September 20, 2009

Very Expensive Banana's

Well Norris and I are back in Cairo and we still have not started school!  Not until the 3rd of October now!  No worry to us we are enjoying the time to spend together.  It is getting a little boring at times but we have had plenty of things to keep us busy!  We have been doing our Tae Bo and taking walks and going to the store before they all close for the three day Eid!
Today we decided to walk to Korba (about a 30 minute walk from our house) and go the the starbucks in the neighborhood!  It was a great day for a walk.  There actually were clouds and a little bit of a nice breeze!  Fall is definitely upon us!  Well we went to starbucks so Norris could do some planning and I could read the 4th Harry Potter book!  Yes sadly we have become obsessed with these books and movies!  They are cute plot lines with great friends and fun adventures!  Anyway....after we had our nice cold drinks and enough reading and planning we decided to run to the near by Metro Market and get some water and a couple other things....(SODA!)  Well while we were there we decided to get some fruit because sometimes they can have a better selection of fruit then our place.  We picked up some mango's, peaches, and bananas.  A couple of Sodas and water and we were good to go!  We got up to the counter and the lady said it was 175 pounds.  WHAT!  That is like $40 dollars and there is no way it should be even close to that!  Well we were not really paying attention so we gave her a hundred because maybe we heard her wrong.  But sure enough she asked for another hundred.  Well we gave it to her because it is quite difficult to get into a discussion with people and the language barrier!  Well I looked at the receipt to see if I could read it and to my surprise it was in English and I read IMPORTED DOLE BANANA'S 104 pounds!  WHAT $20 dollars for banana's!  Well Norris and I started laughing!  There was nothing we could do we had already bought them and taking things back does not qutie work very well especially produce!!!!  Apparently Norris did not know he was feeling home sick for some Florida Banana's!  We were laughing so hard the lady thought we were crazy!  But Norris felt so silly!!!  Good for me though because now I can get a special treat for our apartment!!!!!!!!!  What a funny day!  No dullness around here!!!!  Those better be some GOOD banana's!!!!!!! 

Monday, September 14, 2009

Elephants!

Well the last couple of days in Chiang Mai have been pretty awesome.  We flew like monkeys at the flight of the Gibbon.  That was really neat.  It was different Zip lines we went on all across the rain forest stuff.  It was not quite what we thought it was going to be but we did enjoy it!  Then we went on this trek up a mountain to a waterfall and it was breathtaking!  I love waterfalls and they have plenty for us here in Chiang Mai.  I think the best waterfall we saw was the one at the National Park.  It was the biggest waterfall I have ever seen.  Now I have not been to Niagra Falls but it was pretty cool!  There was definitely no swimming here because it was way to fast and strong.
We have meet some really cool people on our outings.  This is the low season so there are not many people around.  That has been good and bad.  It has been good because there have not been to many people on our tours so we can have a little more fun getting to know them.  When we did our trek to the waterfall we were with one other couple and they were so cute!  They had just gotten married and they were on their honeymoon!  They were Irish but they lived in Australia.  We went whitewater rafting and it was crazy!  Never really thought I would do it but I am glad we did!  Then today was the best day of all!  We got to spend an intire day with the elephants.  It was AWESOME!  We each got our own elephant and we bathed it, feed it, rode it, swam with it, oh yes and checked its poo!!!!  We needed to see if our elephant was healthy!  MINE WAS.....very wet poo!!!!  I think the best was swimming in the waterfall with him!  I will not be able to spell the name right but it was something like Puchong.  He was so cute!
Puchong was about 7 years old and he was quite rambunctious!  He waned to eat everyone elses food!!!  He thought the grass looked greener on the other side!!!!  I loved him!  I think I liked his tongue the best!!!!  He would suck my hand in his mouth when I gave him a snack and he was sooooooo cute!!!  I won the best elephant prize and it was a big kiss from my elephant!!!
We went on this long trek through the jungle and it was down pouring!  It made it sooooooooo much fun!  Norris kept saying he felt like we were in Swiss Family Robinson!!!  It really did feel that way too!!  Any moment I just knew we were going to see an Ostrich run by!!!!!  The rain did make it challenging though for our elephants!  It was very slippery but they made it just fine!  My was the youngest and he kept trying to get in the front!  He wanted to go very fast!!!  Norris elephant was soooooooo cute!  She was older and fatter and was NEVER full!  She ate the entire time!  Every step she took was only to find more food!!!  Every time I turned around I could hear her crunching on some new bamboo or sugar cane!!!  She was adorable!  We learned many words to help our elephant but I am sure they did not really listen until their trainer said it!  At least mine anyway!!!!!  Any time he saw his trainer coming he got very excited and wagged his tail and ears almost like a dog!  It was very cute!!!
Just a couple more days and then back to Egypt.  It has been nice to get a little change of scenery before we hunker down for a long year of teaching!!  We feel so blessed that we were able to come back to Thailand!  We really do love it here!!!! 

Friday, September 11, 2009

Chiang Mai

well it has been a great start to our Chiang Mai trip.  We have only had rain once and it lasted for about 20 minutes and it was while we were hiking to the waterfall.  The only sad part about the rain was that we could not take our camera up to the waterfall.  We have been able to see some amazing things!  The Lord is so good to us. 
So far we have been able to see the Zoo which was awesome!  I have never seen panda's before and they were soooooo cute!  then we went to a couple temples so that was fun....  I think so far the Zoo and the treking we did today has been our favorite!  The Zoo was great because there were so many different animals, from Panda's to Monkey's to deer.  We did not look to long at the deer seeing how we see them all the time in Michigan and Indiana.  I also got to see the Koala's.  They were sooooo cute!  I really do like the Zoo's!  It would be a great place to take kids to also becuase there were all sorts of placed they could play.  May favorite was the snow globe.  The Thai people were very excited that you could go in the globe and play with snow!  We decided that we did not need to do that...we see it enough!! 
Today we went hiking through the jungle.  It was pretty awesome!  We climbed right through the river and it was beautiful!  We thought the waterfall was amazing.  It rained on our way up to the waterfall but it was incredible!  We loved it!  We also went to an Orchard farm and butterfly farm!  We saw somw amazing butterflies.  They were huge and they were sooooo colorful!  The orchards were really nice but I am sure if we had been there during the summer or spring it would have been breath taking! 
Our hotel is awesome!  We are the only ones staying here right now!  The joy of the low season!  They are a wonderful family that takes care of us very well!!!  They do everything we could possibly need.  We have a great pool and they are the best cooks ever!!!!!  We can't get enough Pad Thai and Chicken Parcels!  They are sooo good.  Oh and the spring rolls we eat with every meal!  I will say they are not as good as aunt Doy's but even I know better than to wish for that!!!!