Happy Birthday Stacey!

Happy Birthday to my baby sister. I'm sure you feel older than you really are!

Skittles!

We don't see Skittles everyday and so when we got some recently, everyone was pretty excited to taste the rainbow.

On an even more exciting note near our home a new shopping center opened last week and inside we found packs of sour Skittles. Pretty amazing and only around 50 cents a pack. Now whether we'll ever see them again remains to be seen. Finding things once and getting them regularly can be two different things (Can you hear me DORITOS?!?).

On a yucky note, did you know Skittles contain gelatin from animals (see the Wiki link above)? I thought they were just big balls of sugar...

Outside the meetings

While we were in-between meetings we did have a bit of down time for sitting by the pool...

Eating BACON!
Looking at incredible plants like this one that we think is a poinsettia tree!
We are, however, not botanists so we stand prepared to be corrected.
And plenty of time for hanging with American friends, too.

Prohibited = Whatever

If you look closely this flag seems to say, "Swimming Prohibited" but what it actually means is, "Do whatever you want, just don't blame us if you get sucked out to sea." You can tell how many people caught the subtle difference in this photo. What you can't see are the scores of surfers off to the right!

Genuine Fakes

If someone offers to sell you fake-fakes, don't bother. They'll just break on the way home. Genuine fakes should last long enough for the Ray-Ban logo to wear off.

Please Stop Sharing

Some things were meant to be kept private. The placenta is one of them. I'm sure there are tons of positive uses for afterbirth I'm just not sure I want to know what they are.

Our friends here joke that some people here will eat anything in the water except a boat, anything in the air except a plane, anything on land except a car. Now its mostly racism that would cause them to say that but if people are paying money for a placenta it reminds you that behind every cliche is a bit of truth. Yuck!

Bali '10

If you need to go to meetings Bali is a pretty darn nice place to do it! Before all the excitement kicked off, we got in a day at the waterpark again.

They are now featuring this new slide. You stand inside a tube and then after a countdown the floor falls out from under you and you rocket straight down, then up that loop. The nice thing is that its a water slide so when you wet your pants, no one knows.
Here we are after breakfast one morning. At these big meetings you have to wear your state (or, um, Commonwealth) stuff so all the people from Texas and Oklahoma are reminded there are other states as well.
Over almost every door in Bali, you'll find one of these scary demons popping out (see his face and hands?). The goal is for him to scare away any real demons that might try to enter. As Uncle Todd says though, if the demons are dumb enough to fall for that you probably shouldn't be afraid of them anyway.
And this beauty was at our hotel. Its name is GAUDY or something like that and it was either erected to block the view of the beach and ocean or for Chinese people to get married inside it depending on whom you ask. I can only imagine what the heat is like in that thing around midday!

We are out of town for a few days and so the blog will not be updated very often. We are hanging out and enjoying some beach time. Hope you are having a great summer!

This is Bethany's first attempt at doing a "professional" calligraphy certificate. Many thanks to Maria for teaching this fine art to Bethany.

First Camp Pics

Thanks to our friend Jonathan who snapped these pics and sent them to us.

Hudson's Graduation

We finally had our kindergarten graduation this evening. Here is our up-and-coming first grader receiving his diploma. Please hold all your applause til the end.

Our resident teacher, lunchroom lady, aide, vice-principal, and one of the parents with our entire third grade.
After a rousing speech by the teacher and a rather boring monologue from the principal, there was a reading by the Kindergartners ... but no photos were allowed. The event was capped with special IKEA-style cupcakes (decorate-it-yourself refreshments).
Special entertainment was provided by Spongebob Squarepants.
And Bethany had a hard time keeping the chocolate off stuff! But that is how delicious treats are to be enjoyed!

A Few Beach Pictures

The kids went out and found a bunch of sand dollars. Dad had to say that he had never before found a sand dollar, except maybe at a shop in Daytona Beach. Then he found all these in just a few minutes. As part of the catch and leave them where they were, they remained on the beach.

Guess it could lead to some interesting discussions about Intelligent Design. Find a design and postulate a Designer. Well, maybe only if Craig and Todd were on the beach.

Some random people pictrues

Take That Kobe

I know some people may be excited about the NBA Championships, even though everyone knows they are as fake as wrestling (sorry Pastor Randy). Lakers and Celtics? As scripted as one of my Granny's "programs".

Around here people could care less about the NBA because we have women's beach volleyball featuring my wife! She declined to play in the sharp-shooter dart competition claiming she had once hit (darted?) someone in the neck. She limped through the apple-eating competition but she went all out at volleyball, even hitting the dirt trying to return one.

This is what she was calling "the hammer" a.k.a. her serve! Serious power.
Notice how different the women here dress for beach volleyball than what you might see on ESPN2 or some other cut rate sports network.
In the end it went three games. A nail-biter! Believe it or not Angie woke the next morning trying to figure out why her arms hurt so bad...

You're Fired, Too!

One interesting thing multi-national companies do is to think glocally. You know, they are global companies but make local adjustments for local tastes. Its why Pizza Hut has a fish stick pizza and why you can get rice at McDonald's in Indonesia or a cabbage (not apple) pie in Russia. It makes sense because tastes vary. If you asked for mayo for your fries in Frankfort, KY they'd think you were crazy. Ask for them with ketchup in Frankfurt, Germany and they'll know you're American.

So in some cases I can get it. People here in SE Asia like different things. So when we found Pringles in various flavors, it seemed weird to us but understandable.

Seaweed flavor? Why not Auntie Ann's has a seaweed pretzel. Crab flavor? Well, people sell crab by the side of the road here like its silver queen corn.
Shrimp flavored? Of course, everyone here loves prawn crackers with their fried rice.
Some things are just weird, though. Lemon and sesame? That is odd enough that it might need to be tasted. But the employee who dreamed up this one needs to be let go:
Blueberry and hazelnut? What does that even mean? I can't think of anywhere that idea would seem like a good one. Probably the whole division responsible for "Fruit and Nut" chips needs to be made redundant as people here like to say.

**Special note: One day we found Jalapeno Pringles and I personally believe that person deserves a Nobel Prize!! Not too often we see those kinds of treats roll in from America. "What?" you ask. How did we know they were from America? Because the can had English and Spanish on it, thats how!

Not the Best Beach Ever

When you get to a seaside resort the first thing you want to do is go and see the beach and the beauty of the ocean beyond. Well, when we got to the beach last week we were greeted with a locked gate and this sign:

Of course the impact is greater if you can actually read the sign, so I'll help. It says something like* "Its forbidden to swim or walk in the beach area, beach is oily." One guy told me it was actually a vegetable oil spill but he was dead wrong. The beach smelled worse than a truck stop. It was oilier smelling than the "men's room" at a truck and tractor pull.

The next day while the tide was out, we did go out and walk a bit and saw this kind of stuff.
From a distance I thought it was a bunch of beer bottles washed ashore but they were mostly plastic bottles covered in oil. We've been a few places, especially mangrove swamps, that are just full of trash. For some reason lots of people still believe rivers and the sea clean themselves. I guess its because you throw your trash in the sea and the tide takes it away. What they don't see is the tide washing it back on land a few miles up the coast for their neighbors to deal with.

Now obviously this is not just an Asian problem. Heaven only knows how many beer bottles will be sunk to the bottom of US lakes by fishermen and skiers this weekend alone. But it feels a lot different when you see it all lined up at where the tide left it.
Sort of remind me of this from when I was a kid:

*A helpful note regarding translation or other things that require approximation: Say "it goes a little something like this" and then if anyone says you are wrong you can always fall back and reply, "I said it was something like that. Not exactly that. Lighten up!" Also that phrase is good if you are a Beastie Boy.

What is he eating??

Well, of course, he is eating scoops of ice cream on a hot dog bun. I think its ingenious that people here have discovered a way to take ice cream with them. No need for a bowl and spoon. Its like a bread bowl!! When the ice cream is done, you eat the bun!! Or throw it on the ground as "bird food" or something.

Until someone comes up with another way to transport scooped ice cream (preferably an edible container to help preserve the environment) we will just all have to get along with this tremendous idea.