July 30, 2006

It's Ann and Michael's one year anniversary...Happy anniversary!! And tomorrow is Mary's birthday...Happy 24th Mary!! And yesterday Dalton and Michelle got hitched...Happy wedding!!!! YAY! How fun is all that. Much more fun than our day today. Dave totally won the bet...we had to move. It wasn't so bad but it's 11pm and we're just finishing. I think we started at 11am. So not bad for moving a whole apartment. Actually, it felt very therapeutic to move b/c it forced us to go through everything. As a result we ended up throwing away a lot. So I feel refreshed and organized from all that. Plus, my arms are going to be crazy strong! Oh yeah. Cheddar is taking it better than I thought but the poor little guy trys to take off out the door everytime we go near it. Ahhh.

Not much else to write about. Things here are toting right along. We have our wedding pictures up and I'm so excited that we can share all the pics with everyone. I love techmology..and a photographer that doesn't care about copyright. Oh yeah.

We have a busy week again...we're going to register our marriage with the US embassy tomorrow morning...oh yeah. Then I have 6-8pm rehearsals all week for my upcoming horn choir concert and rehearsals with my pianist for my recital that's coming up. Can't complain though. I love it all. Should be a fun week..the new apartment is soo nice. It's really the same layout only opposite but it feels better. I think since we spring-cleaned. Anyway, hope you all had a great weekend. Oh yeah.

July 22, 2006

It's Saturday the 22nd. That means we've been married for one month, today! I couldn't find any statistics on the number of married couples that divorce within their first month of marriage...probably a small percent. It's weird though. When you look up US divorce stats a lot of christian groups come up. Weird.

Seems like a lot has been going on this week. For example, I got a new basket for my bike and I raised up the seat so now it's almost for my height. That was so exciting. Dave and I were talking about getting some sick gold rims and extra wide tires. Oh yeah. They need to have a "pimp my bicycle" show out here. But then someone would steal my bike so I'm okay with the new basket for now. It's awesome though. It's super big so I can fit everything in it.

We haven't moved yet. We really need to make a bet for when we'll be asked to move. My guess is August 18th, Dave thinks July 29th. If anyone wants to go in on this hot bet, leave a comment. The winner will get 40 baht. Score! We actually had a really exciting morning...our water pressure in the shower as been sucking. Real bad. It's been a dribble for a few months now. Pretty pathetic but we didn't think to clean it. ha. So dave cleans the little holes on the shower head out and now our water pressure is amazing. It feels like a new shower. I can't believe we were living like that for so long.

Today was errands in Bangkok day. We took our Thai marriage license (so cute) to get translated, we went to super huge MBK mall to get new business cards with my married name (so cute too), and got some meds and had lunch with friends at a killer sushi place. The traffic was way bad all the way back to Salaya (1hr 30 min) today so we got off early and walked through campus at sunset. It's so peaceful on the weekends without all the crazy drivers. We found a new open air super rugged coffee shop on campus. The businesses come and go with the seasons so it's hard to stay up with all the little shops and restaruants. The Thai iced tea was super yummy!

So weird that it's been a month since everyone was here. Guess our schedules have pretty much returned to normal. The semester is going well for me. I'm doing lots of playing next month. Dave had 2 concerts last week, which went really well and I'm preparing for my horn choir concert coming up. Conducting hurts.

I think that's all for now....have a nice weekend. Dave and I have been looking for asia trips here. http://www.habitat.org/cd/gv/schedule.aspx We're going to try to go next spring if anyone is interested. Also check out hilareharts.com..for info on our latest expat adventures. ha!

July 15, 2006

Heya neighba! haha. Today was so fun...we finally got to see our wedding pics! They came out soo great. I wanted to take them then and there but we have to wait another week or two. I'll post them on my gallery as soon as I get them. We also saw snip-its of the video, which cracked us up and picked out our wedding album. YAY! All and all, a great day.

The week flew by real fast since we had another holiday week. That's right. We had last Monday and Tuesday off for a Buddhist holiday. I tried asking my students what that meant but no one could explain beyond something about some writings from Buddha. I don't know..lemme try to look that up right now..ahhh "Celebration to remind of the first sermon Lord Buddha gave to five disciples, introducing the middle way, the noble eight-fold path and the four noble truths. Celebrated with candle light processions." Ok..this website cracks me up. Look at how many flippin holidays they have here.:http://www.thai-experience.org/festival-calendar.html WOW!!!

I've been feeling crummy the past few days. It must be post-stress related. I'm surprised it's taking this long to get over..but oh well. I'm taking it easy. Dave's faculty recital is on Tuesday and he's playing in another faculty recital on Monday. Can't wait to hear that.

So I was right about the emergency condo moving situation. They're slow and delayed and we def did not move this weekend. They said July 29th but I bet it'll be September before we actually move. Weirdos.

Movies NOT to rent: She's the Man..we're very limited in what we can rent so don't judge. haha

July 8, 2006

Oh my gosh...we had such a reality check week. It was hard re-adjusting to normal life again but each day got progessively better. So we came home from work yesterday and realize we need more drinking water. It's easy to buy, but we get the big 20 L jugs, and we buy 2 at a time, so it takes both of us to get them. We get the jugs and are about to head back up to our condo when the office ladies come running over and say something in Thai and then tell us that we have to move!! Ummm.hi??They proceed to tell us that construction will be going on up above us (only one floor above us) and that we'll have to move to a different condo. HA! I took it much better than Dave but it's pretty hilarious that it was only until WE went downstairs did we find out that we have to move. AND we have less than 2 weeks!!! Oh my gosh..I was seriously in a good mood so it didn't fade me and I convinced Dave it'd be a good thing since our apartment sucks. Our place is really comfortable for us but our bathroom has always smelled, we've had a cockroach problem, we're facing so that the sun blares into our room at dusk making it HOT, and we're facing the street so it's loudy loud...but we do have a killer view. Anyway, since we were the first people to hear about the move on our floor, we got first pick of the condo of our choice! WAHOO! So we spent a few hours apartment hunting in our building. All the condos have the same floor plan but we got to pick a much better location so that it'll be more quiet and not stinky! It was hilare though b/c some of them have not been cleaned yet and were sooo nasty. When we got near one of the condos, we could smell it from the hallway! Grooosss!

Welcome back! HA!

July 3, 2006

We're back! YAY! I'm a married woman. Whoa..just kidding. It doesn't feel one bit different than being engaged or even seriously dating. I always thought that it wouldn't change a thing..guess I was right. Sweet. So I've been thinking about this blog entry and how I'd try and explain the past few weeks. Ahh..all I ever get to is WOW. Our familes and friends arrived the weekend before our Thursday wedding. We showed them all over Bangkok, took them on a tour..went to Thai, French and Chinese restaurants. We saw the slowly dying art of the monk's bowl village, the crazy huge weekend market, the coolest temples to see, the hippie hang at Kao San...the river..and all of it was amazing. I think the most baffling thing was that there was not just one great moment. It was all so freakin' fun. The next baffling thing was that we never got stuck in the rain. No joke. We're in the middle of the rainy season and it never poured until we were somewhere inside. What's up with that? Even on the honeymoon..no rain until 10 minutes after we checked out of the last hotel and we were on our way to go home. Soo weird.

The resort was incredible...www.rayavadee.com. Highly highly highly recommend it. We chilled there for 4 days..day three was the wedding. I can totally describe the wedding day. It started with Ann and Mary calling us early in the morning and singing a song..hilare. We had breakfast, went swimming all morning, then started getting ready. The pics were super fun since the resort is freakin' picture perfect and the monkeys even came out to hang for a while! I can't even describe the weather though. It was literally raining day one and two on and off all day. Even when we took pics we had to take a 20 minute rain break. Before the wedding it cleared up and the sunset was amazing. You'll see pics soon. I remember coming around the grotto to see where the ceremony would be....I had the biggest smile on my face. It was so beautiful. Ahh..so fun. I remember Dave and I hiding before the ceremony talking nervously, trying to distract eachother..haha. The ceremony was beautiful. Earl did an AWESOME job marrying us...we're totally married. We signed the papers as I sang "signed, sealed, delieverd" and walked to the cake cutting and champagne toast through a shower of orchids! We definitely smeared cake all over our faces and then headed over to dinner and dancing. Our first dance was to the live version of Stevie Wonder's "overjoyed" recorded from Saturday Night Live..soo fun. We didn't take lessons but had totally been practicing in our apartment! HA! The best part were the speeches. Joe's speech rocked..my sisters did a choreographed tap dancing number, and my dad sang a lullaby (with re-written words). We laughed, we cried and we got married. Kind of hard to screw that up. The party ended all too soon but we had a few more days with our families so it was still happy.

The honeymoon was great and relaxing. We went island hopping around Thailand. We started with the Racha islands south of Phuket, then moved to the Phi Phi islands near Krabi and ended with Koh Samui. Snorkeling was sooo sooo fun. I've never been able to snorkel in clear water..ahh..amazing. We saw a lot of the Tsunami damage too. That was really powerful. Especially on Phi Phi. You can see where the water went and the damage is still there. I saw aerial photos from before and after. I mean, they are still in the inital rebuilding stages. But it's thriving and still a popular destination. We stayed on a much quieter beach where the damage was even seen on the opposite side of the island. Anyway, we got spa treatments, ate amazing food, got lots of complimentary champagne and relaxed. Not my typical vacation but much needed after all that planning. Hopefully that sort of describes. It is really hard to explain the past few weeks..but I guess it's probably better left undescribed. I'll put up wedding pics as soon as we get them but for now you can see the pics we took.