I am listening to "Don't look back in Anger" by Oasis. This song takes me right back to 8th grade. Every time I hear this song, I get that nostalgic feeling in my stomach. Flashes of the street where I lived and the people I surrounded myself with appear to me too easily. I am not much of a music fiend. I start liking songs by accident most of the time. I never seek out music that I think I will like. Often I find myself annoyed at friends that insist on playing me songs that I don't know and will never hear again. What I enjoy about music is being able to sing along to all the lyrics which means I have to have heard the songs enough to memorize the lyrics. I also enjoy songs that take me back to a different place. And sometimes I like a song just because the beat is so darn catchy. But I don't dissect music and I feel no need to.
Now that that soliloquy is over.... Let's get an update on my life shall we?
As you may know I have been teaching English as a Second language through a small private company for about a year now. I have also been working as a recruiter of international students for a private university in the area. Since I started, the CEO has decided to found a preparatory college in Redlands. We got all the investers and we are opening this fall. I am now the director of the ESL department there and am working right now on creating the classes that we will offer. I am still recruiting students for the other university as well. PLUS, I was just told that they held aside a couple regular classes that they thought that I would be good at teaching. So you are looking at (....reading the words of) the new teacher of Intro to Acting and Intro to Oral Communications!
Anyway, for those of you who have taken classes such as these, I was wondering there were any assignments you paricularly liked/disliked, things you hated/loved about the teachers, things that you remember helping you learn, and any other precious nuggets of truth......
People usually don't respond to pleas such as these, but please help me out ok?
Sunday, August 05, 2007
Saturday, August 04, 2007
New Zealand
Hello all! Starting on July 16th, Jason and I were in New Zealand for two weeks. I got back on Monday and have been meaning to write several posts about our trip but I have been playing catch up at work and home. Jason didn't come home with me because he went on to Papua New Guinea on a month-long mission trip. That is right, he will be in the country that just outlawed cannabalism in the 1970's for a month......
Anyway, he has the camera so he transferred all of our New Zealand pictures onto my ipod so I could bring them home and include them in my blog. I tried to transfer them onto the computer yesterday and quickly found there were no pictures on my ipod..... under settings the photo import was turned off. So....it has been a horrible blow for me.... :] Just kidding. Everything will be fine, you guys will just have to wait a month to see our pictures and hear our stories. I think I will import one picture from the internet from a particularly beautiful place we experienced. That will make me feel better.
Anyway, he has the camera so he transferred all of our New Zealand pictures onto my ipod so I could bring them home and include them in my blog. I tried to transfer them onto the computer yesterday and quickly found there were no pictures on my ipod..... under settings the photo import was turned off. So....it has been a horrible blow for me.... :] Just kidding. Everything will be fine, you guys will just have to wait a month to see our pictures and hear our stories. I think I will import one picture from the internet from a particularly beautiful place we experienced. That will make me feel better.
Interestingly, none of the pics on the internet were as good or taken from the same angle as the ones Jason and I took. It is interesting because there is a huge sign that says "Best View of Banks Peninsula.....20 meters" . And it really was the best view. Anyway, here is a different view form Banks peninsula. And yes the water really is that blue....
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Here they are...
So I got a week to go up to Bend to celebrate Jason's mom's birthday. I celebrated my mom's birthday right before I left but since none of us were avid photographers, I don't have much documenting the good time I had with my mom and co. But I have lots of pictures in Bend. So enjoy!
Just kidding, we stopped just to see this elephant seal and I don't know if there even is such a website.
Here is a silly picture of us. Jason looks funny becuase they used a wide angle lens.
We went to a lake and I took my nieces on a wave runner ride.
We were coming back from a movie when we drove past this strange modern pirate man. And realized it was Jason's step-dad........
We drove part of the way home along Highway 1 from Seaside to San Louis Obispo. Here are some particularly beautiful shots.
We stopped at a beach along the way to dip our feet in the sand and what do you suppose we saw lurching it's way towards us but this scary monster! So we ran back to the car after documenting the strange beast to send to unidentifiedmonsters.com.
Just kidding, we stopped just to see this elephant seal and I don't know if there even is such a website. We are back home now and very happy to be unpacking and cleaning our house.... sigh.
Monday, July 02, 2007
The World Today
I thought this was an extremely interesting article. I found it on the Daily News website and in light of the recent botched car bombings in the UK, I thought that I would copy and paste it here for you to read. I am in Bend, OR right now so soon I will update with some fun pictures.
"I was a fanatic...I know their thinking, says former radical Islamist"
By HASSAN BUTT - 2nd July 2007
When I was still a member of what is probably best termed the British Jihadi Network - a series of British Muslim terrorist groups linked by a single ideology - I remember how we used to laugh in celebration whenever people on TV proclaimed that the sole cause for Islamic acts of terror like 9/11, the Madrid bombings and 7/7 was Western foreign policy.
By blaming the Government for our actions, those who pushed this "Blair's bombs" line did our propaganda work for us.
More important, they also helped to draw away any critical examination from the real engine of our violence: Islamic theology.
The attempts to cause mass destruction in London and Glasgow are so reminiscent of other recent British Islamic extremist plots that they are likely to have been carried out by my former peers.
And as with previous terror attacks, people are again saying that violence carried out by Muslims is all to do with foreign policy.
For example, on Saturday on Radio 4's Today programme, the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, said: "What all our intelligence shows about the opinions of disaffected young Muslims is the main driving force is not Afghanistan, it is mainly Iraq."
I left the British Jihadi Network in February 2006 because I realised that its members had simply become mindless killers. But if I were still fighting for their cause, I'd be laughing once again.
Mohammed Sidique Khan met with the author on two separate occasions
Mohammad Sidique Khan, the leader of the July 7 bombings, and I were both part of the network - I met him on two occasions.
And though many British extremists are angered by the deaths of fellow Muslim across the world, what drove me and many others to plot acts of extreme terror within Britain and abroad was a sense that we were fighting for the creation of a revolutionary worldwide Islamic state that would dispense Islamic justice.
If we were interested in justice, you may ask, how did this continuing violence come to be the means of promoting such a (flawed) Utopian goal?
How do Islamic radicals justify such terror in the name of their religion?
There isn't enough room to outline everything here, but the foundation of extremist reasoning rests upon a model of the world in which you are either a believer or an infidel.
Formal Islamic theology, unlike Christian theology, does not allow for the separation of state and religion: they are considered to be one and the same.
For centuries, the reasoning of Islamic jurists has set down rules of interaction between Dar ul-Islam (the Land of Islam) and Dar ul-Kufr (the Land of Unbelief) to cover almost every matter of trade, peace and war.
But what radicals and extremists do is to take this two steps further. Their first step has been to argue that, since there is no pure Islamic state, the whole world must be Dar ul-Kufr (The Land of Unbelief).
Step two: since Islam must declare war on unbelief, they have declared war upon the whole world.
Along with many of my former peers, I was taught by Pakistani and British radical preachers that this reclassification of the globe as a Land of War (Dar ul-Harb) allows any Muslim to destroy the sanctity of the five rights that every human is granted under Islam: life, wealth, land, mind and belief.
In Dar ul-Harb, anything goes, including the treachery and cowardice of attacking civilians.
The notion of a global battlefield has been a source of friction for Muslims living in Britain.
For decades, radicals have been exploiting the tensions between Islamic theology and the modern secular state - typically by starting debate with the question: "Are you British or Muslim?"
But the main reason why radicals have managed to increase their following is because most Muslim institutions in Britain just don't want to talk about theology.
They refuse to broach the difficult and often complex truth that Islam can be interpreted as condoning violence against the unbeliever - and instead repeat the mantra that Islam is peace and hope that all of this debate will go away.
This has left the territory open for radicals to claim as their own. I should know because, as a former extremist recruiter, I repeatedly came across those who had tried to raise these issues with mosque authorities only to be banned from their grounds.
Every time this happened it felt like a moral and religious victory for us because it served as a recruiting sergeant for extremism.
Outside Britain, there are those who try to reverse this two-step revisionism.
A handful of scholars from the Middle East have tried to put radicalism back in the box by saying that the rules of war devised so long ago by Islamic jurists were always conceived with the existence of an Islamic state in mind, a state which would supposedly regulate jihad in a responsible Islamic fashion.
In other words, individual Muslims don't have the authority to go around declaring global war in the name of Islam.
But there is a more fundamental reasoning that has struck me as a far more potent argument because it involves recognising the reality of the world: Muslims don't actually live in the bipolar world of the Middle Ages any more.
The fact is that Muslims in Britain are citizens of this country. We are no longer migrants in a Land of Unbelief.
For my generation, we were born here, raised here, schooled here, we work here and we'll stay here.
But more than that, on a historically unprecedented scale, Muslims in Britain have been allowed to assert their religious identity through clothing, the construction of mosques, the building of cemeteries and equal rights in law.
However, it isn't enough for responsible Muslims to say that, because they feel at home in Britain, they can simply ignore those passages of the Koran which instruct on killing unbelievers.
Because so many in the Muslim community refuse to challenge centuries-old theological arguments, the tensions between Islamic theology and the modern world grow larger every day.
I believe that the issue of terrorism can be easily demystified if Muslims and non-Muslims start openly to discuss the ideas that fuel terrorism.
Crucially, the Muslim community in Britain must slap itself awake from its state of denial and realise there is no shame in admitting the extremism within our families, communities and worldwide co-religionists.
If our country is going to take on radicals and violent extremists, Muslim scholars must go back to the books and come forward with a refashioned set of rules and a revised understanding of the rights and responsibilities of Muslims whose homes and souls are firmly planted in what I'd like to term the Land of Co-existence.
And when this new theological territory is opened up, Western Muslims will be able to liberate themselves from defunct models of the world, rewrite the rules of interaction and perhaps we will discover that the concept of killing in the name of Islam is no more than an anachronism.
"I was a fanatic...I know their thinking, says former radical Islamist"
By HASSAN BUTT - 2nd July 2007
When I was still a member of what is probably best termed the British Jihadi Network - a series of British Muslim terrorist groups linked by a single ideology - I remember how we used to laugh in celebration whenever people on TV proclaimed that the sole cause for Islamic acts of terror like 9/11, the Madrid bombings and 7/7 was Western foreign policy.
By blaming the Government for our actions, those who pushed this "Blair's bombs" line did our propaganda work for us.
More important, they also helped to draw away any critical examination from the real engine of our violence: Islamic theology.
The attempts to cause mass destruction in London and Glasgow are so reminiscent of other recent British Islamic extremist plots that they are likely to have been carried out by my former peers.
And as with previous terror attacks, people are again saying that violence carried out by Muslims is all to do with foreign policy.
For example, on Saturday on Radio 4's Today programme, the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, said: "What all our intelligence shows about the opinions of disaffected young Muslims is the main driving force is not Afghanistan, it is mainly Iraq."
I left the British Jihadi Network in February 2006 because I realised that its members had simply become mindless killers. But if I were still fighting for their cause, I'd be laughing once again.
Mohammed Sidique Khan met with the author on two separate occasions
Mohammad Sidique Khan, the leader of the July 7 bombings, and I were both part of the network - I met him on two occasions.
And though many British extremists are angered by the deaths of fellow Muslim across the world, what drove me and many others to plot acts of extreme terror within Britain and abroad was a sense that we were fighting for the creation of a revolutionary worldwide Islamic state that would dispense Islamic justice.
If we were interested in justice, you may ask, how did this continuing violence come to be the means of promoting such a (flawed) Utopian goal?
How do Islamic radicals justify such terror in the name of their religion?
There isn't enough room to outline everything here, but the foundation of extremist reasoning rests upon a model of the world in which you are either a believer or an infidel.
Formal Islamic theology, unlike Christian theology, does not allow for the separation of state and religion: they are considered to be one and the same.
For centuries, the reasoning of Islamic jurists has set down rules of interaction between Dar ul-Islam (the Land of Islam) and Dar ul-Kufr (the Land of Unbelief) to cover almost every matter of trade, peace and war.
But what radicals and extremists do is to take this two steps further. Their first step has been to argue that, since there is no pure Islamic state, the whole world must be Dar ul-Kufr (The Land of Unbelief).
Step two: since Islam must declare war on unbelief, they have declared war upon the whole world.
Along with many of my former peers, I was taught by Pakistani and British radical preachers that this reclassification of the globe as a Land of War (Dar ul-Harb) allows any Muslim to destroy the sanctity of the five rights that every human is granted under Islam: life, wealth, land, mind and belief.
In Dar ul-Harb, anything goes, including the treachery and cowardice of attacking civilians.
The notion of a global battlefield has been a source of friction for Muslims living in Britain.
For decades, radicals have been exploiting the tensions between Islamic theology and the modern secular state - typically by starting debate with the question: "Are you British or Muslim?"
But the main reason why radicals have managed to increase their following is because most Muslim institutions in Britain just don't want to talk about theology.
They refuse to broach the difficult and often complex truth that Islam can be interpreted as condoning violence against the unbeliever - and instead repeat the mantra that Islam is peace and hope that all of this debate will go away.
This has left the territory open for radicals to claim as their own. I should know because, as a former extremist recruiter, I repeatedly came across those who had tried to raise these issues with mosque authorities only to be banned from their grounds.
Every time this happened it felt like a moral and religious victory for us because it served as a recruiting sergeant for extremism.
Outside Britain, there are those who try to reverse this two-step revisionism.
A handful of scholars from the Middle East have tried to put radicalism back in the box by saying that the rules of war devised so long ago by Islamic jurists were always conceived with the existence of an Islamic state in mind, a state which would supposedly regulate jihad in a responsible Islamic fashion.
In other words, individual Muslims don't have the authority to go around declaring global war in the name of Islam.
But there is a more fundamental reasoning that has struck me as a far more potent argument because it involves recognising the reality of the world: Muslims don't actually live in the bipolar world of the Middle Ages any more.
The fact is that Muslims in Britain are citizens of this country. We are no longer migrants in a Land of Unbelief.
For my generation, we were born here, raised here, schooled here, we work here and we'll stay here.
But more than that, on a historically unprecedented scale, Muslims in Britain have been allowed to assert their religious identity through clothing, the construction of mosques, the building of cemeteries and equal rights in law.
However, it isn't enough for responsible Muslims to say that, because they feel at home in Britain, they can simply ignore those passages of the Koran which instruct on killing unbelievers.
Because so many in the Muslim community refuse to challenge centuries-old theological arguments, the tensions between Islamic theology and the modern world grow larger every day.
I believe that the issue of terrorism can be easily demystified if Muslims and non-Muslims start openly to discuss the ideas that fuel terrorism.
Crucially, the Muslim community in Britain must slap itself awake from its state of denial and realise there is no shame in admitting the extremism within our families, communities and worldwide co-religionists.
If our country is going to take on radicals and violent extremists, Muslim scholars must go back to the books and come forward with a refashioned set of rules and a revised understanding of the rights and responsibilities of Muslims whose homes and souls are firmly planted in what I'd like to term the Land of Co-existence.
And when this new theological territory is opened up, Western Muslims will be able to liberate themselves from defunct models of the world, rewrite the rules of interaction and perhaps we will discover that the concept of killing in the name of Islam is no more than an anachronism.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Pretty Funny....
Ok so I know that this video is pretty long but it is very interesting and well.... funny. The funniest part is toward the end. Anyway, watch it if you would like. If you don't like politics, don't bother.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=9JE48XHKG64
Here is another one that is gives you the jist of the first video. The first video is uncut from C-span or something and this one is edited by fox news.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=0h6gehCPvpk&mode=related&search
Keep in mind this is before the 1992 elections so the Bush he is talking about is our current president's father.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=9JE48XHKG64
Here is another one that is gives you the jist of the first video. The first video is uncut from C-span or something and this one is edited by fox news.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=0h6gehCPvpk&mode=related&search
Keep in mind this is before the 1992 elections so the Bush he is talking about is our current president's father.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Santa Barbara
A couple weekends ago, Jason and I headed to Danelle (Jason's cousin) and Josh's house for Jason's birthday. They live in LA but we decided to go up to Santa Barbara for a day trip. We went a pretty waterfall (Nojoqui Falls). I guess sometimes it can be a torrent of water but most of the time it looks like a fairy land of trickling water because of all the moss that the water runs over. Anyway, since this is the driest that Southern CA has been in years, the waterfall is pretty sparse but there was still enough water to be beautiful. Here is Danelle and I in front of the trickling waterfall.
Jason and I posing in front of the waterfall. You can see how lush and green it is.
Jason and I posing in front of the waterfall. You can see how lush and green it is.
Here we are back in LA walking along the beach. As you can see, Danelle is 5 months pregnant! Jessica, another cousin, came with us.
That's all for now!
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Who can believe it?
So, this is an effort to start writing on my wonderful blog again. I am determined to do so. I have decided to keep our small canon elf camera in my purse so that I can better take pictures. One reason I never updated was because loading pictures from our great big beautiful camera took to long and was too complicated for my little brain to really get into. So hopefully this will be the catalyst to get my blog going again.
This is the director of the play that I was in in January. Humph. Why should his picture come up for my name? Honestly, getting a free ride off my fame! ;]
It has been so long that most of you who ever used to read my blog probably won't even notice that I started writing again for quite a long time. Another thing that keeps me back from writing on my blog is that I realize that this is something that ANYONE can read. That keeps me from being too honest on here. Not that I am being dishonest... but I don't ever write about my deepest thoughts and feelings. I feel that those should be kept in a journal. But I don't have time to do both so I figure I will do one at least and that will help.
I have always had so many ideas for this blog and I am not sure if I will put them all into action but hopefully I will try to make some of them realities. OK, well thanks for checking my blog again. I appreciate it!
Here is the one picture that is actually affilated with me when I look up my name on google images. 
This is the director of the play that I was in in January. Humph. Why should his picture come up for my name? Honestly, getting a free ride off my fame! ;]
Saturday, November 11, 2006
For every failure there is a triumph.....
This last week, we were doing some English exercises (as one often does in an English class) and I called on one of my students to complete a certain exercise. The sentence was "The lights went off." She was supposed to make it into a sentence with a time clause or something. She looked at the sentence, looked at me and said "This mean.... cat feed me dinner eats?" ........
I really didn't know what to say. I felt like a complete failure. Why am I even trying to teach anything?
But last night, Jason and I heard a knock on the door- actually it was more like a bang and a bit of muffled Korean as they tried to get through the screen door. There stood my students. They handed me a plate of freshly made kim-chee pancakes and smiled and giggled. I had never eaten Kimchee and it was VERY good. Along with the pancakes, they handed me a card that simply said "THANKS". In that simple gesture, all my failures were forgotten and I felt hope again.
I really didn't know what to say. I felt like a complete failure. Why am I even trying to teach anything?
But last night, Jason and I heard a knock on the door- actually it was more like a bang and a bit of muffled Korean as they tried to get through the screen door. There stood my students. They handed me a plate of freshly made kim-chee pancakes and smiled and giggled. I had never eaten Kimchee and it was VERY good. Along with the pancakes, they handed me a card that simply said "THANKS". In that simple gesture, all my failures were forgotten and I felt hope again.
Monday, November 06, 2006
Star Sightings...
First, can you guess the famous star in this photo?
I will tell you if you are right at the end of this post.
This weekend, Jason's dad, step-mom and step-brothers came to visit. We were going to go hiking at Joshua Tree but then realized that it was really far away. So then we decided to go to San Diego instead. Ha. Well, yes San Diego is farther than Joshua Tree but whatever....
We went to old town San Diego. Here is a picture of me outside the old prison!
Then we went and saw the oldest wood hotel in the US. Or something like that. It was beautiful with the full moon and everything!
Sunday the adults had to go to a conference so us kids went surfing. I actually decided to just lay there and read a book while the guys surfed and that is what I did. It was a really nice day. Then we drove around and looked at the beautiful mansions of Bel Air and walked around the UCLA campus.
Then we went to get ice cream and happened across a movie premiere! Jason let me jump out of the -slowly- moving car so I could see the stars as they were just beginning to walk in. If you guessed Brad Pitt, you are RIGHT! It was the premiere of "Babel". All the stars were right across the street from us. I guess we missed Richard Gere. Jason's step-brother Phil was heckling Brad Pitt. Yelling "Hey Brad" Trying to get his attention when the rest of the crowd was silent. It was embarrassing. But he got some good pictures so I didn't mind that much. Plus now Phil can say that Brad Pitt has heard his voice. Heh. It was really too bad that I was the only girl there. Because all the boys were like "This is so ridiculous. Who cares if it's Brad Pitt. He's just a human like us." So that was uber-annoying. Like I think he is a god or something. Geez, snobs.
I have been trying to add more pictures of Brad Pitt and a picture of Cate Blanchett but I am having technical difficulties so maybe I will add them later. Yeah, I saw Cate Blanchett. She was really pretty.
So that was my weekend. It was fun!
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
Halloween Party Korean style
My students have been planning a Halloween bash for about a month now. They don't celebrate Halloween in Korea and had only seen Halloween in the movies. So they were VERY excited. They wrote out beautiful invitations and I explained all about RSVPs and Halloween traditions.
I told them that some people don't celebrate Halloween because they think it is worshiping he devil. I told them about bobbing for apples and trick or treating. Then I told them that some people kill black cats on Halloween because they think they are evil. I realized I gave them the wrong idea when I read one of their diary entries (a school assignment): "We learned the holiday Halloween. Some people don't celebrate Halloween and kill cats because they think they are evil." Oops.
Their oven was broken so they came to my house to bake pies and such. I made some rice Krispie treats because they said they don't have them in Korea. Those are pretty easy to make. Here I am walking out the door to the party with my costume and my treats. I am an Indian...er... Native American.
I had taught them those games earlier during a culture class. None of them knew any card games except "one card" which is uno with playing cards. Anyway, we had a good time and I want to have a Halloween party every year. That would be fun.
I told them that some people don't celebrate Halloween because they think it is worshiping he devil. I told them about bobbing for apples and trick or treating. Then I told them that some people kill black cats on Halloween because they think they are evil. I realized I gave them the wrong idea when I read one of their diary entries (a school assignment): "We learned the holiday Halloween. Some people don't celebrate Halloween and kill cats because they think they are evil." Oops.
Their oven was broken so they came to my house to bake pies and such. I made some rice Krispie treats because they said they don't have them in Korea. Those are pretty easy to make. Here I am walking out the door to the party with my costume and my treats. I am an Indian...er... Native American.
My mom made this cosutme for me for last Thanksgiving. She likes us to dress as Indians and Pilgrams for our meal. It is quite a sight. Anyway, this is a picture some of my students in their costumes. They decorated their house up nicely!
A lot of people came. I was glad becuase NO ONE RSVPed. I was actually kind of embarrassed. I taught them about RSVP and then no one did. They borrowed a Japanese horror movie to watch. They told me it was really scary. I didn't think it would be that bad so I watched it. It turns out that this is the movie that "the grudge" is made from. "The grudge" is just the English version. I never saw "the grudge" because I really didn't want to. So I was tricked into watching it with subtitles basically.
After that, I taught them to play spoons. They really got into it and there was a lot of shrieking and trash talking. Then we played black jack and rummy.
I had taught them those games earlier during a culture class. None of them knew any card games except "one card" which is uno with playing cards. Anyway, we had a good time and I want to have a Halloween party every year. That would be fun.
Sunday, October 29, 2006
Whew, it's been awhile....
Sorry. Anyway, to update everyone, I have a job. I am an English as a second language teacher. Right now I have 5 Korean students. That number should increase 5-fold in January. We will see. I really like teaching English. My students are very excited to be in America so it makes it so much more fun. None of them had ever been here before. I am only working part-time right now. Mon-Thurs, 9-2. Not bad hours eh?
Today I had the pleasure of calling my students and trying to explain to them what Daylight Savings time is. I told them "You need to turn your clock back one hour". And they asked "This is a popular thing to do in America?".
Here is a picture of us at my house. We just finished watching "America's Next Top Model". They were a little wary of the fresh guacomole I made, but that was ok with Jason and I. We just got to eat more.
For those of you who don't know what bunny salads are; have no fear, there is a picture below.
Today I had the pleasure of calling my students and trying to explain to them what Daylight Savings time is. I told them "You need to turn your clock back one hour". And they asked "This is a popular thing to do in America?".
Here is a picture of us at my house. We just finished watching "America's Next Top Model". They were a little wary of the fresh guacomole I made, but that was ok with Jason and I. We just got to eat more.
I also had them over to make some traditional American food. They said they didn't need to learn how to make any American food because they have all the American restaurants in Korea and American food is easy to make. Well humph! I told them that there are many American foods that you can't find at KFC or McDonalds and that they should experience those foods as well. Then I had to think of a food to make to prove my point. This was the tricky part. I decided we would make the Friday night traditional meal in our family. Potato soup, Drop biscuits, and bunny salads. Here is a us partaking in our wonderful dinner.
For those of you who don't know what bunny salads are; have no fear, there is a picture below.
We are having a merry time in class and I hope they are learning. If anyone has any teaching plans that you thought were especially helpful in your language classes, please tell me! I have never taught before!
Cheers!
Monday, August 07, 2006
Our Beach Trip
Jason and I bought a surf board. Yeah, I know. Anyway, we used it this weekend at the beach with our friends. The camera lens fogged but I think we got a couple good pics. Jason would like there not to be any pictures of him surfing so there are only pics of me. Here is a picture of me waxing our new board.
I really didn't like doing that. It covered up the pretty design. Here is me surfing.
Kind of. Thanks to Jessica and Niel for teaching us how.
Wednesday, August 02, 2006
Our Trip
Some interesting things happened on our trip down here to Southern CA. Mostly what was interesting was when we went to visit Adam, Jason's best friend, and his wife Susan at Stanford. First we got a nice tour around campus. They have a free bus service that I found extremely helpful (that was a segue). So we took some pictures around campus.
Here we are in front of the Stanford church. Inside, I think it is the most beautiful church that I have seen in the US (as Susan said). I also went to pilates class with Susan and got a MAJOR charlie horse in my arm. In other news....
We saw something that could have been out of national geographic!
No this is not on the Stanford campus, we had to drive several miles to see it. We went to a preserve for elephants seals and saw them fighting. In April, they come to this beach to have their young. I want to come back around that time to see the cuties!!
We have our new dinnerware and I thought you would be interested to see how beautiful it is.
Actually I am sure most of you would not be interested. However, having reasearched quite a bit of dinnerware before purchasing these, I would have appreciated more reviews out there. So here is my review. These rectangle dishes from Crate & Barrel are really nice. They are durable and they match the other Crate & Barrel white porcelain dishes. They are dishwasher/microwave safe and very cool looking in person. Good price too. There, I have now done my duty!
Sunday, July 30, 2006
I'mmmm Baaaaack!
Well, I finally came back to my blog. This post will be dedicated to updating everyone on our new abode.
We are now residing in Loma Linda, CA. Jason will be starting Medical school in a few days and I am looking for a job. We moved into our nice little house and we are almost settled in. We got our house through the school for a good price. It is 2 bd, 1.5 bath with a cute little backyard big enough for a garden, a garage and lots of storage space. So, we are happy. Here are some pictures:
We are now residing in Loma Linda, CA. Jason will be starting Medical school in a few days and I am looking for a job. We moved into our nice little house and we are almost settled in. We got our house through the school for a good price. It is 2 bd, 1.5 bath with a cute little backyard big enough for a garden, a garage and lots of storage space. So, we are happy. Here are some pictures:
Here I am leaning over our table that Jason's mom so kindly gave us. We are having burritos and it is beautiful, not that you can tell from that distance. Here is a closer pic
Yes, that is a paper plate. We have had a really hard time with dinnerware. First of all, we are really picky. Finally we decided on some we liked and ordered them online. When they got here however, they turned out to be white plastic as opposed to the white porcelin we thought they were. So we are sending those back. And getting some nice new dinnerware. we even went to the store in person to make sure that they were what we wanted.
Since we got here, we haven't been doing a very good job of documenting things. Which we are sure to regret someday. Heck, I am already regretting it since I am trying to write a blog post and I don't have interesting pictures for you. More later.....
Wednesday, January 11, 2006
Switching
Well, I am on my honeymoon now and am switching over to a new blog while I am gone! There is a link on my sidebar. It is called Around the World. Enjoy!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)