Happy xxth Birthday Mom!!

Happy Birthday to a GREAT Mom. Instead of getting you a gift, we're making a BLOG POST. That is what an amazing son you have!!! WE LOVE YOU!!!!! Happy Birthday!!

Hudson Reading

Hope you like this video of our blooming reader. Mostly because it took me three cameras, a card reader, bluetooth, two computers, video converter, and a few hours to get it to this point. ENJOY!

Fruit and Tea

One of the tasty treats we have here is a drink called "pulled tea" the name being obvious as you see the photo below. A true artist can get this stream of tea as long as his two arms combined! It blends and cools the tea and creates this great foam you can use to make a sweet-tasting mustache.
Here we are chowing down on some tasty bread and yakking it up. Notice Craig's plate in the foreground that has had all the curry "sopped" up.
After breakfast we went to the market, tasted some fruit, and bought some, too. Then later we chopped it up and ate dragon fruit (dark red), pineapple, water apple, and jack fruit.
The favorite? The water apple and the jack fruit. Tasty!

Cultures Combine

While our friends from Georgia (USA not Eastern Europe) have been here, we've been keeping our wheels rolling. One place we went was to the home of a friend for afternoon "tea" -- called "tea" because that is what I said when I asked but no tea was actually served. Instead we had some great chicken noodle soup, fried chicken, and strawberry soda.
My friend and our helpful host with his grandson.
New friends! We had a great time sharing pictures and prayers. Getting beyond what people see on TV (on both ends) is a great part of the job!

Cute Kids

Deepavali

Saturday folks around here were celebrating the holiday Deepavali (or Diwali). As a major holiday it has greeting cards! Plus as a major holiday here it comes with small envelopes to put cash in and give to kids. I had seen this for Chinese New Year other places but every holiday has it here!
Holidays here also mean open houses so you can drop in on your friends and they give you food. We need to pick up the open-house concept in the US. Except that people don't actually stay at their homes enough to to receives guests. This is a Hindu altar one family we visited had outside.

I believe this is Ganesha and honestly, it weirds me out. A lot. We tried to ask around about what Deepavali meant but didn't get much traction with people. It seems it has to do with good trouncing evil (hence the tag: Festival of Light) but that was as far as we got. Also, it seems to depend on if you ask a Hindu, Sikh, or Jain. That is how India rolls ... with variety. Lots and lots of variety.

Neighbor Kids

October has been our busiest month since arriving in Asia two years ago. We've seen a lot of people and eaten a lot of great food. Here are some of the cuter faces from the past week or so.

Her "peace" sign is nearly lost in that yellow dress but there nonetheless.
The kids love all the activity of party set-up!





Finally kids lined up at a local home. The host gives out little envelopes of money after the kids show him some respect by taking his hand and touching it to either their forehead or sniffing it. Seriously, they sniff it -- more respectful that just the forehead.

Hanging With the Neighbors

This week we've been able to hang out some with our friends. Eating, talking, and eating! Not a bad way to spend a few days.

While the ladies are eating the guys go house-to-house praying a blessing over the house and family.
Notice the difference here: these guys said, "Take our picture!" and smiled.
These older guys said, "Take our picture," but looked away. HAHA!
One of the coolest things I saw, where we have suitcases stacked to the ceiling under our stairs, these folks busted their wall out and made it into a big aquarium! Pretty unbelievable or pretty and unbelievable!!

Treasures!

Rolled into our no-so-local, local supermarket this week and found these two beauties!! Its been a while since we have seen any Fruity Pebbles. Honey Comb shows up now and again but sometimes is about $15 a box, so we normally pass. This week they both happened to be around $4 a box so we leaped and got 2 boxes of the Flinstones Fav. Yep ... BIG spenders!!

Happy 29th Birthday Richie!

Hope you have a fine birthday. Sorry we don't have any more recent pictures but this shows your progress the last 10 months, eh?

Bad Boy Blogger

Not a day has gone by recently that my dear wife hasn't asked me, "Did you put something on the blog?" And not a time has gone by that I haven't replied, "Nope." While we were traveling I didn't even do any Twitter updates since I didn't want to pay the international roaming charges on top of the international text charge I already pay (we can only update Twitter with text message by sending one to England ... boo, hiss).

All that to say we've been having a fine time the past couple of weeks. The kids got to hang around some friends and swim a few times. Plus they got to plant rice and milk a goat. Caleb was a dj, Hudson a fireman, and Bethany received an answer to prayer and got to be a cashier!

One reason that I was hesitant to write something is my lack of photos. I don't like photo-less posts for some reason. We went our whole trip without the ability to share any pix because though we are world travelers we cannot seem to remember to bring along the USB cord we need to connect the camera to our computer. Lame, right? Needing a cord I mean ... not forgetting one. Our camera needs Bluetooth!

The only interesting thing that happened was when we were trying to get on our plane to come home and we had paid for the privilege to board early. When they made the announcement to board they said, "Everyone who paid for early boarding and all the people in rows 15-30 can now board."

Which in Asia means, "Everyone go ahead and board and put all your stuff in the overhead bins at the front of the plane so anyone sitting up there will get yelled at by the stewardess or have to put their stuff in the rear and thus negate the whole sitting-up-front thing."

So I tried yelling at the airline guy in a foreign language which just made him laugh and made us later getting on board. Then when I turned to huff away I hit the NO ENTRY sign and almost knocked it off. It made me seem much madder than I was and I was lucky I didn't fall flat on my face and add injury to my immaturity.

The moral of the story? There isn't one...

Still OK

We're still hearing news about other earthquakes ... up to 3 now. But we haven't felt any and don't have any problems! That is all the news for now.

Thanks for lifting us and others in our area up!

Just to let all you know, we are fine. The funny thing is we did not even know there was an earthquake until we started getting some emails from friends and family checking on us!

Thanks for your love and concern.

Shopping!

Like some giddy kids we were pacing through the grocery tonight looking for supper. The place we're staying is a big 3 bedroom suite with a kitchenette, dining table, and everything.

So instead of trying to find a cab and search out a restaurant ... we went to the grocery and bought some HAM! Then we had sandwiches. Now I know you probably don't find that too exciting but the only thing that will get people more excited than ham sandwiches is when you start talking about BACON!! We already have a plan for bacon. Its on the menu for Thanksgiving.

Village Tour

Not too long ago we got to take a tour through a traditional village home with the senior adult lady that lives there.

She has the place set-up with some traditional scenes, like this one featuring a "wedding bed". She insisted we try a number of things, thankfully the bed was not one of them. No napping here.
This is the real-deal wedding pose. We messed it up though by smiling. For some reason people don't usually smile in these kind of photos. This was also after she was telling us to straighten our feet and get our hands laid out right on the pillows. Hard not to smile.
On the way out she had a gong and visitors ring it for good luck. Three times they ring it. Three times the visitors ring it for good luck. She said this a number of times and we said, "Wow, that's neat." To which she replied, "Ring it. All the visitors ring it three times for good luck." She also had to get on Angie a bit to hit it harder. She was a bit particular about the gong.
And she was adamant that both of us do it. We assume for twice the luck. Or for both of us to have luck. No use in only one of you having good luck!
All in all it was pretty neat and no one else was there so we got to hang around with the grandmother and talk. She was super sweet, which you can see when you go and meet her. Just make sure you ring the gong! Three times.

Confident!

When we saw this sign in a near-empty mall today we wanted to turn right around and hit the door ... and it wasn't even lunchtime. Way to inspire a feeling of security in your customers!!

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