..SouthAsiaRocks..

Greetings from Thailand!! We got to Chiang Mai, Thailand a couple of days ago :) We're here for our bi-annual visa run and meetings! It's a great break and we're having fun :) Bangkok has a brand new airport and it's AWESOME! It has lots of food places and sleeping places! It's cool! When we were getting food at that airport, we saw this funny Christmas tree! I think they just stuck the top of the tree to the bottom of it, and just left out the middle of it! I thought it was funny! I saw this sign (below) at the hotel... and every time I see it, it cracks me up! There's a weekend market on the outside of the hotel/mall that we're staying at. At this weekend market, they have a lot of funny foods! It's awesome! Look closely at the funny foods below: Here's a close-up... yum! Fried crickets!! And Thai's love their seafood! Look at all that squid!! whoa! Anyone want me to ship some home to you? haha :) One of my favorite things about Thailand is ge...

CHRISTMAS EVE! Sometimes it seems like it takes forever for Christmas to come!! ... but it finally got here :) On Christmas Eve, we took a train to M-town to see all of our friends there :) (the pic below is from the M-town train station...it was about 8:00am and it was really foggy!) We got to M-town, and the first friends we went to see were the Kumars. They were the family we lived with while in M-town. The kids took us upstairs to the part of the house that we used to live in. It is now the kids area. They decorated a tree with cotton and we're really excited to show it off for us! The two youngest kids - Shakshi and UB performed a dance for us!! They sang Jingle Bells while dancing a choreographed dance! It was really cute! They even pulled out the tamborines for us and threw toffees at us :) hahaha - it was fun! We visited a few other friends too as well as going to a party :) We had a great time! It was really cool! As you can probably tell from the way I look in the pic b...

MerRy CHrisTmAs!! We've been gearing up for Christmas here! Today we did a lot of cooking and shopping to get ready for Christmas!! Tomorrow (Christmas Eve) we're taking the train to M-town for Christmas Eve! We're excited to see people that we haven't seen since moving to the capital! It will be fun :) Today I got henna done on my hands for Christmas :) I always like to get mehendi done :) There are definitely some scary Santas here. This is one we ran into today... What's funny about this one (besides the obvious) is that he's wearing stockings on his hands!! It's so funny because he was hired to stand out front of this little shop and hand out little toffees (candies)... the problem was, he had to reach his hand in this tiny bag and pull out one toffee for each child! ALL WITH THE STOCKINGS ON HIS HAND! Hahaha - it was hilarious! Here is is giving Adam a toffee :) MeRrY ChrIsTmAs everybody!! Hope you guys have Rockin' Christmases!! You guys ROCK!!

So last weekend, we heard that Santa was going to be in town... we decided that we definitely needed to check that out :) We went to this store called Westside... it's like an American department store! It's crazy! I forgot I was in South Asia when I went inside :) We walked in, and sure enough, there was Santa - equipped with his empty bag for toys and his balloon..? hmm.... He's a little different than I remembered him from before... Besides the obvious things, his belly seems a little high up... hmmm.... haha - it makes me laugh :) Now, in our area, most people don't celebrate Christmas - but that doesn't stop the guys on the street from trying to make a little money off of the season :) There are guys all over the street corners selling Santa hats... it makes me laugh :) Hope your Christmas ROCKS!!!

Yea!! It's actually starting to feel like Christmas time! whoo hoo!! Last night our fellowship group came over to our house and we had our fellowship time and a Christmas party! It was fun! We played foosball (which was pretty loud... we need to get a rug :)), Dance Dance Revolution and we sang songs on the Karaoke Machine! We had a lot of fun!

OK, so I played volleyball year round in high school, so when I see a volleyball game going, I get excited and I have to check it out... So, on our last day in B'lore, I was walking from the apartment I was staying in, and I saw a bunch of girls playing volleyball... I got closer thinking I was going to watch a serious match, but then noticed something different about this game... Nobody was hitting the ball... instead, they were throwing and catching it!!! In the picture below, you can see, one of the girls throwing... I mean, serving the ball :) It was awesome! They were "throw-spiking" the ball over the net! Now, the trick was, you could only hold the ball for a split-second... then you threw it over... there wasn't much of the good old "pass, set, hit" going on, but the game was quite exciting! You never know what you're going to see here in South Asia :)

Well, we're here in B'lore... but we've been in meetings most of the time that we've been here, so we don't have tons of pictures from this trip, BUT we have had a lot of fun and have seen some funny things :) One thing that is fun about being down south is that there are Coconut Trees!! Everyone has had fun trying to climb them :) Adam hasn't made it up to the coconuts yet... I think it's the "trying to figure out how to get down" thing that keeps him from going higher... for some reason, you can't go down the same way you go up... so he has a lot of "tree burns" from sliding down :) There is a LOT of traffic down here in B'lore... the other day we saw this funny little car driving in traffic... now, you may see these from time to time in America... but this is the first one we have seen here and it was sooo funny to see it in the traffic with the other cars :) It's amazing how many people they could put in that car!! If you...

Last night, Adam and I became the Wedding Crashers! Right now we are in the south of our country in a city called B'lore. On our way to dinner last night, we saw a HUGE wedding party on the palace grounds... it was a marriage between 2 families of our PG. So we thought... hmmm... Let's check it out! So, after we ate dinner, we went back to the place we are staying and changed clothes and went to the wedding. It was the biggest wedding I've seen in my life!! It was HUGE!!!! In the pic above you can sort-of see how huge it was just inside one of the tents! They had many different stations on the outside area... they had henna stations, magician stations for the kids, and even a hukka counter... hahaha There was sooooo much food! They had food lining the parimeter of the entire tent! Food from almost every part of the country!! It was crazy!! They had some great decorations for the food!! It was awesome! Look at all these carved watermellons below: They even had people servi...

So it seems that we always have to go to the market... so here's some fun pictures from our market experiences this week :) So, the other day, we bought some chai cups from the guy below... as we were about to leave, we noticed his display table that he has tons of class and ceramic things on.... are on a piece of plywood that is stacked on rocks and bricks... it really didn't look sturdy enough to stack glass things on, but it definitely worked... I thought it was funny... So then, in one of the markets was this guard... There are guards everywhere... but this guy was from a company that made me laugh... you can see it on his shirt... the "Decent Group"... no, not the Outstanding Group or Amazing Group, just the Decent Group :) Now, lots of crazy thing have been going on in our city with the government and the shops (closing the shops and things like that).... so this guy got creative :) He has all the shawls that he's selling draped all over his body... look...

So last year we went to the International Trade Fair (IIF) here in the capital. It was really cool. The only problem was, that last year we went on a weekend night... so it was extrememly busy... so busy that we could hardly move around.... SO.... this year we decided we'd go on Wednesday at 1:00 when it opened (that's around lunch time for most people here)... we thought that it wouldn't be so busy then... I mean really, what was I thinking... we live in a city of millions of people!! We got to one of the gates and this is what we saw.... So we thought, hmmm.... maybe all of these people are just hanging around and waiting for other people or something like that... so we decided to check out the lines.... hahaha... see below: Just a few people in line hunh? hahaha :) This is only one of the many entrances... I think there were about 12 gates!!! Hahaha... Adam and I figured out a quick way to get in :) and we were in in about 10 minutes :) Of course, there's always a ...

Happy Thanksgiving!!! Adam and I met up with a bunch of other American friends and had an awesome feast! Afterwards we got to play a little football and hang out! It was a lot of fun! Hope you guys all had a great Thanksgiving and had a great after-Thanksgiving nap :)

We got our Fooseball Table! Whoo hoo!! We got a phone call the day before yesterday from the store in M-town. They said that they were dispatching our fooseball table at that time and it should reach us in about 4 hours! Then they said something about it coming by rickshaw... Rickshaw? Adam asked to be sure, and the guy said, yes, he will be coming from M-town to Delhi via Bicycle Rickshaw!! That's at least 65 miles!!!!!!!! For those of you that can't picture what this rickshaw looks like, see the pic below: An old bicycle that has NO GEARS with a cart attached, used to manover through insane traffic on the road from M-town to the capital. Crazy!! Well, needless to say, it didn't take 4 hours... it takes us 3 hours to do that trip while in a car!! The guy left around 2:00pm and arrived at our house at 4:00am (14 hours later!!)!!! He was very nice though and waited until 6:30am to ring our doorbell... This guy wasn't a young wipper-snapper either! He looked pretty old! ...