THIS is what I have to look forward to...

I'm going to Madison in June to visit Patrick's family and friends with David and Bobby. Patrick's stepdad is in a band called "Little Vito and the Torpedoes" and they're playing at Rhythm and Boom (this fireworks thing) that I am so excited to go to! Then on Sunday, Patrick's mom is hosting a big party and Corn Toss tournament. I made a countdown clock today and we have 86 days... such a long wait! UGH!

Blossoms

Cherry Blossom time again in Washington! To avoid the crowds at the festival this weekend, I did a little jog around the Tidal Basin this morning before work. Even at 6:30am on a Friday there were still tourists and photographers if that's any indication on what it will be like this weekend. Also, a VVIP was on a morning run down there so that added to the foot and vehicle traffic a bit :)

The Cherry Blossoms are going to be wayyyyy better this year than last year. Last year they started to bloom and then an ice storm hit totally ruining them. This year though, they are absolutely lovely. This morning they looked to be about 50% open and with the 73 degree temperature today I bet they will be at their peak by Sunday. SO pretty!

Malaysia!

So Malaysia didn't start out to well for me actually. By the time we landed in Penang I was pretty much crippled with food poisoning. I held it in until we made it to the hotel room, but that whole night was miserable to say the least. I was actually worried I wouldn't feel up to being on the road the next day, but I ended up rallying in time to meet the ship, Meg, and her two friends Kayoko and Jenna when they came into the Port of Penang. These girls are so fun! I love how much Brennan and Meg are clones of each other, too.



As soon as we picked up the girls, we hit the road and headed to Cameron Highlands via Ipoh. Brennan drove and I was his trusty co-pilot. We did hit a major rainstorm which made it a little scary to drive up the windy mountains. Once the rain cleared, we stopped at a little strawberry farm on the side of the road which was so cute! I think we put them in the poor house from all the samples we ate. Brennan asked the lady how business was and she kind of grunted, so... maybe not so good? We liked it anyway.




When we made it all the way up the mountains to the town of Tanah Rata in Cameron Highlands, we hotel shopped a bit and ended up finding the CUTEST little villas called Bala's Chalets. Our "family villa" had a downstairs and upstairs and was called Tiffany's Corner. It was SO great... except for the spiders. YUCK.




We spent the whole next day touring around Cameron Highlands. The highlights were definitely hiking around the highest peak of Malaysia and touring the Boh Tea Plantation. I honestly think I have never seen anything like these places. They were absolutely amazing... green and lush. The kind of place where there is mist stretching across the treetops. The tea plantations were SO neat. The way tea grows looks so trippy! It's somewhere you have to see, I think, to really see how neat and crazy the place is. I'm so SO glad we saw it. Renting the car was one of the best decisions we made the whole trip :)






Thank you, Jenna... not sure we could have found where to go without your direction.



So from Cameron Highlands we made it down to Kuala Lumpur! The most recognizable thing there is the Petronas Towers (which were stunning!). We ate and slept VERY well in KL to say the least. What was kind of perplexing about KL (and about Malaysia as a whole really) was just how kind of "any city in the world" it felt. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE cities and it was so fun to be in a new one, but there isn't anything very distinctive about what people looked like or what people were eating... their music... it was a huge mix of ethnic Indians and Chinese splattered with a bunch of Westerners. We spent a lot of time perusing markets, enjoying our awesome hotel room, and hanging out with the girls' Semester at Sea friends. It's good to know some things never change about Semester at Sea. It was like I could see exactly who from their ship equated to people from our ship. Funny.




NO KISSING IN THE CABS!



From KL we flew back up to Penang for our last night of the trip. We found this Night Market/Food Paradise that was basically a huge courtyard of tables with food stalls all around them. We met a new friend from England named Ash and just sat around the table sampling the different plates and Tigers. Brennan tried to take a picture of "the ambiance" and ended up with a picture of these two women who lived in Penang... are you kidding me!!??



Fortunately they were good sports and ended up thinking it was as funny as we did. Ash, where are you looking?



The group at the end of the night...


6:30am the next morning we left Penang and flew to Bangkok, to Beijing, and to DC totaling another 30 hours door to door. Totally worth it for what was a great trip. Good to get away... good to remember what it's like to be lost and different and anonymous and international. Good to read books and spend too long getting out of bed and trying street food I can't pronounce and trying to smile as much as the Thais do. Good to be gone, really. And good to be back now... I suppose :)

Samui Sun

Spent a few fantastic days in Ko Samui, a little island in Thailand. We stayed in Bo Phut Beach at a resort that turned out to be absolutely perfect. Lonely Planet says it's a "step down in luxury" which is probably right but we just really were pleased with the location and beach and hospitality. Plus there was a sweet buffet breakfast everyday on the deck overlooking the beach and ocean so that was nice. Actually it was just kind of fun to be there with a bunch of European families on their "holiday." I think we picked an absolutely ideal time to be in Samui because from what I can tell we were between seasons there, so it was not at all too crowded and the weather was awesome. I can't remember being more comfortable at a beach ever. Costa Rica had some sweet beaches but it was always so hot... the weather in Samui was perfectly hot but with a breeze and no humidity. One of the days we went to another beach on the island called Chaweng and crashed a five star resort to use their pool and beach area. Good idea by us! Weaseled our way into a yellow towel that made us look like we were supposed to be there. Brennan and I both managed to finish a few books which is always nice :)




One of the nights we were there I took Brennan out for his 25th birthday dinner at a place called Poppies (I will have to put a link in when I'm back on American computers). Ok seriously this place was SO good. We had a bunch of dishes but our favorite was definitely ostrich satay. We decided that if ever ostrich is on a menu in the future we will order it and always decidedly announce "this just is not NEARLY as delicious as the ostrich in Ko Samui, Thailand." The best part of the night hands-down, though, was the live music at this place. Brennan said if he could have a soundtrack of our trip it would be absolutely priceless. I'm talking 3am 80s love song infomercial style music. This included "If We Hold On Together" by Diana Ross from the Land Before Time - which of course sparked the conversation about how come Little Foot's mom dies in the movie and that I went to high school with a kid who looks just like Petri.

Saw this sign when I was walking down the beach one morning... LOVE IT!


So now we're on our layover in Bangkok on our way to Penang, Malaysia. Can't wait to see Meg tomorrow morning! Pray for us... I'm already getting an ulcer thinking about Brennan driving and me navigating the Malaysian freeway to Cameron Highlands and eventually KL! OYE.

Bangkok... check!

Just about to leave Bangkok to fly to Samui in a few minutes here, but am taking advantage of free Internet in the Bangkok Air lounge. Why aren't American airports this comfortable? There are like... snacks and everything. Amazing how customer satisfaction goes up tenfold with a bag of popcorn and cup of juice preflight!

Four movies, a 70 dollar sushi layover in Japan, several drinks and bugging the flight attendant to steal cookies from business class, and 30 hours of transit door to door got us right into Bangkok late Thursday night. We basically went right to sleep that first night but I was raring to go the next day and hiked myself down to a breakfast place (that turned out to be closed so I resigned myself to an in-hotel meal).

We spent the morning touring temples and took a much needed relaxing boat ride from one side of Bangkok to the other on the river. We had a drink at the Shangrila (that looks spelled wrong... someone help!) and took a nap before getting ready to go out.


Last night we started at the Banyon Tree Skybar on the 61st floor of the hotel and met up with a friend of Brennan's boss named Chris. I am SO glad we connected with him, as anyone knows it is a thousand times better to see any city with a local! Anyway we enjoyed the view for awhile and then headed out to a little hole-in-the-wall traditional Thai place for dinner. I told Chris he has to order to break me out of my Pad See Ew confines. It ended up being one of those dinners you wish you would never get full... so good. Dumb American alert: Did you know the Thais don't use chopsticks except for noodles? Apparently they got the fork memo a long time ago.


After dinner we went out on the town and met up with a bunch of Chris' friends... The table ended up being the beginning of a bad joke: Two Thais, a German, a Belgian, a Dutchman, and four Americans were sitting at a bar in Bangkok. Anyway the night was SO fun and I couldn't have asked for more. We ended up late night at Chris' house talking in the courtyard. He has this awesome mosquito tennis racket looking thing that zaps them that I could not get over. It was just fun, you know, getting to sit there with different people from different places with different jobs and different ideas. I didn't realize how much I needed a change of scenery! Last night made me feel like me.

Today we begrudgingly checked out of the hotel at 12pm (since we needed at least another hour or so of sleep) and headed up to the weekend market. Spent the whole day there. I love markets- they're so cool to walk around, but the problem is that since there is everything under the sun being sold, it's hard to like... actually BUY something. Is that weird? I ended up with a few doo-dads but what I really wanted was to buy Lauren and I our Chihuahua. There were many candidates for Captain Fabulous but alas I have ended up furry critter-free. Brennan was quick to want to get out of the pet section saying all he could see was disease. Cute disease at least!


Anyway off to Samui for some beach R&R... yay!

Don't Blink

Life goes faster than you think
Don't Blink

I've been listening to that Kenny Chesney song for the past two weeks that have come and gone faster perhaps than any other... ever! I know everyone in this city is busy, and I do think there is a real unhealthiness that can begin with busy-ness, but GEEZ! Life has been so busy! Ha. (I'm still at work at it's 9:05pm, if that's any indication)

A few things...

NCC in the news!
Story on lent
One on Ebz

Brennan and I leave in less that TWO DAYS for Thailand and Malaysia! I'll devote a whole post to that of course, but suffice it to say the tickets are booked, the itinerary is set, and I have a new pair of enormous sunglasses that make me look like a bug to wear on the beach. The long and the short of it is we'll do a few days in Bangkok, a few days on an island called Ko Samui, then off to Penang to meet the Semester at Sea ship and pick up Bren's sister Meg and two of her friends. From there we're RENTING A CAR (this is where Brennan and I will fight the most out of the whole trip obviously) and driving from northern Malaysia (Penang) down to a mountainy part called Cameron Highlands and ultimately to Kuala Lumpur, then catch a flight back up to Penang. Start saying prayers please haha.

I met with Pastor Chris today at Ebenezers and had a great talk. More to come on that as life unfolds, but I just want to say a thanks to Chris for being so supportive, so excited, so prayerful, and such a leader to me! My relationship with Pastor Chris is a great example of how multi-site churches work from a pastoring perspective. Even though NCC is a huge huge church and it is easy to be anonymous, committing as much as possible to one service at one location is key to plugging in and developing relationships with the church body and pastors. Pastor Chris made me realize today how I really have gone through a cycle at NCC - finding my personal faith there, developing it through sundays upon sundays and small groups, and now beginning the process of being "sent out" with the blessing of the church. It's pretty neat.