Meeting Judson

We have just arrived in VA, and now have gotten to visit Beth and Judson! Of all of Shelley's friends from college, Judson is the first baby. Even though Tanner wasn't there, we had a great time seeing mom and baby. Judson has to be one of the easiest babies I've ever met. We went to lunch together and didn't hear a peep out of him. I have always heard that boys are easier than girls, but this little guy takes the cake! As you can see below, Shelley was smitten. It is amazing that we used to come back to America and go to our friends' weddings, but now we are visiting their children. It is great having such great friends to walk through life with. What a blessing!

Congrats Jeremy and Jada!

After 3 days of prep work, Jada and Jeremy were married yesterday at Ocean Isle Beach. The wedding on the beach was beautiful, the rain held off, and the reception afterwards was a party complete with an NC style BBQ dinner! We leave the beach tomorrow, but we have had an awesome time, and overall had a blast. To show you what a party we had, here is a conversation I had:

Really drunk guy with ponytail: Hey dude, that was the best $*%#ing speech I've ever heard!
Me to Shelley: Wow, that's a great compliment for a speech I never gave.
Shelley to me: I think he was talking about your closing prayer at the wedding.

Party on!

The beach where the wedding took place
Sunset over Ocean Isle Beach

Hanging out at the rehearsal dinner

The parents of the bride and groom with the bride and groom at the rehearsal dinner. My mom injured her hip before the wedding, so she was in a wheelchair to "save it for the walk down the aisle."

Father-daughter dance

Shelley's family came down for the wedding!

The bride and groom at the reception!

Shelley and I on the dance floor

The party at the reception!

A little break from the fun in the house. The house was huge, and a great place to hold a wedding.

culture shock

we landed in america and "coming home" has been the strangest time yet. in the last 36 hours i, operating on 3.5 hours of sleep our first night home due to jet lag, have accidentally tried to speak chinese to every salesperson/cashier, gotten completely overwhelmed standing in both the salad dressing aisle and the potato chip isle, and felt like i was going to pop after eating chick-fil-a and mexican food. this has by far been the most overwhelmed i have been coming back to the states. im not sure if it's bc this last stretch being in asia hasn't been new so i am not constantly remembering how everything is different than america or if bc asia is just really home now. whatever the reason, being in america is somewhat/completely overwhelming. just being on american soil has been lovely, however. so far i have had a 2 hour pre-dawn conversation with kat, stopped in charlotte to hang out with great friends, and surprised jarred's parents by showing up to the beach a day before they thought we even landed in the states. we are at the beach with wedding festivities about to begin!

Will Micoll Ohui please stand up?

So Shelley and I have been booking our plane tickets home for my sister's wedding, and tonight we finally booked the last leg of Shelley's flight. When we began the booking in February, we booked my flight because I'm flying on a free (well, almost free) ticket round trip due to frequent flyer miles. I am pretty sure you have to look hard to find an airline now that is not in the Star Alliance, which means that we have been racking up the miles.

Since my ticket was set by the airline, we have been shopping discount airline sites for months to purchase Shelley's ticket, leg by leg to match mine so we can be on the same flights for the cheapest price. It has been an exhausting process of shopping on many websites in both English and East Asian. We had her very last leg to book, and tonight as I was going to sleep at 10:30, Shelley said, "check the airline website to see if the price is down." We did check the airline website and the price was down, so we moved quickly to book.

We booked off of a 3 out of 5 star website, which means that directions are not very clear, and we're not sure if Shelley will actually have a seat on the flight. When i went to type in Shelley's name, I was looking to figure out which order they wanted her first and last name. Here in East Asia, the family name is the first name. It can be confusing, and the websites all have different directions. Some want the family name first, some want the given name first. Some want all caps, some want no caps. Usually, they are nice enough to give an example to follow. For example, it looks something like this:

(In characters) Please type your name like this: (In English) Jordan/Michael.

Very clearly, I know to first type in the family name, then the given name. So on this particular website, they also gave such an example. It said:

(In characters) Please type your name like this: (In English) Ohui/Micoll.

Of course. Just like that. Now I know in what order to type my wife's name. Except I've never met anyone named or surnamed Ohui or Micoll. Upon closer inspection of the characters, it appears that Ohui is the family name, and Micoll is the given name. I googled Micoll Ohui to make sure that I wasn't the only one who didn't know this famous character. Google asked me "did you mean Nicoll Ohio? No Google, I meant none other than my friend and yours, Micoll Ohui. It makes me wonder who came up with that name as an example. Many times in East Asia, people give themselves strange English names. Here are examples of students who have chosen their own English names:

My English name is Try, because if I try my hardest, I can do anything.

My English name is Bacteria. Very strange, but very lovely.

My English name is Alarm. I think it is great and interesting.

Apparently, Micoll Ohui, or Ohui Micoll* is a very lovely name as well. Either that or someone just switched their input on the keyboard from characters to english and started clicking keys.

Here's to hoping that my wife, who will show up on their screen last name first, will be able to board the flight. I figure if Micoll can get a flight, Shelley should be able to as well.

*If you have a relative, a friend, or if you are yourself are named Micoll Ohui or Ohui Micoll, please do not take offense to this. Your name is very strange, but very lovely.

the things we miss

i love living in east asia, and despite this place being super different than america it isn't really hard for me to live here. what is hard, however, is not being in america. mostly just for the really great things and the really bad things. but while we miss not getting to be there for the exciting events, we still celebrate along with our friends and family. and this past week there were 2 major events in some of our good friends' lives.

first, my best friend from college beth had her son judson. thankfully, our other best friend krista graciously sent me email update after email update as she got text messages from beth's husband tanner during the labor and birth. it was wonderful. the past few weeks of her pregnancy have been one answer to pra yer after another. i am especially excited that tanner was able to go home early from his deployment to be there for the birth. we are so excited for the 2 of them to be parents to this adorable little boy!

second, our sweet friend lyndsay got married. we just finished looking at pictures on facebook and it was so fun to see so many friends from the past few years here all together celebrating lyndsay and ryan joining their lives. we are excited for the 2 of them to embark on the wonderful journey of marriage. and also really excited for them to move back to asia. congratulations!

and i now realize how crazy it is that the things we miss are weddings and, now, babies, not graduations and such. we are super excited, though, that in the near future there is another special wedding that we won't have to miss. 12 days, jada!

weekend with friends

This past weekend, Shelley and I took a road trip to one of the more famous tourist towns in our province. It is nice that Josh can drive here, because rather than take the 8 hour train ride, or brave the bumpy 6 hour bus ride, we rented a van and made the trip in about 4 1/2 hours. Now a 4 1/2 trip sounds like we went a long way from home, but here in East Asia, the highways aren't quite as developed as in the states, and the place we went wasn't actually all that far distance wise. We probably could have made the trip in 3 hours in North Carolina. Either way, we had a great time. We stayed at a hostel with a good sized room for a very fair price (about 11 dollars a night), and got to spend time doing what Shelley and I do best, exploring. We rented bikes and took them to the lake nearby, we enjoyed tea and western food from great coffee shops and pizzerias, and we took walks through the quaint streets of the restored ancient town. All in all, it was a great weekend. Here are some pictures:

Sunrise over the old town

Breakfast at The Black Dragon, our favorite coffee shop. Waffles with homeade lemon curd and strawberry jam with fresh squeezed orange juice, coffee, and tea. This kind of thing is rare in these parts of the world.

Busy streets of the old town

After a bike ride out to the lake, beautiful scenery and farmland

Life Vicarious

There is something inside of me that wants to be this guy:

That is Bear Grylls. This past Summer while in Colorado, I happened to catch half an episode of Man Vs. Wild on Discovery Channel. It just so happened that it was in the middle of a Man Vs. Wild marathon, and so I stayed tuned for a few more episodes. I was able to purchase the first 3 seasons of this while in East Asia, and whenever I have free time and Shelley is preoccupied with something else, I take full advantage of watching.

Bear is a beast, hands down. As an Eagle Scout, I spent my adolescent summers sleeping overnight in shelters made from wood to earn my wilderness survival merit badge, lashing rafts to earn my pioneering merit badge, fishing, swimming in a lake, and learning how to identify whatever grows, walks, or slithers to determine whether it can be eaten or not. Bear does this at a level unlike any I have experienced. He gets to live every boy's dream for a profession. He also happens to be the Chief Scout (read: King of all Boy Scouts all over the world).

Enough of the Boy Scout talk. Bear has also summited Everest, circumnavigated the UK on a jet ski, crossed the Northern Atlantic in an inflatable raft, paraglided over the Himalayas, and served in the British SAS. I am pretty sure if you cut him he would spew testosterone. His TV show is everything a man could ask for minus a female: wild terrain, fire, and meat, lots of meat. I have watched him eat a salmon live, eat a trout raw, cook a rabbit over a fire made by rubbing 2 sticks together, bite the head off a snake, and eat ants... and that is only over 3 episodes.

Here is East Asia, there are very few places where you can actually get outdoors without trash and people close by. Nature hasn't survived very well. This show is how I get my fill! Some men love MMA fighting, some love poker, some love tech-toys. As for me, Bear Grylls is where its at.

highway backup

this post is a bit late, but in my opinion so worth it. better late than never, huh? check out this picture. it's a little fuzzy bc it was taken on danielle's phone, so in case you can't see, ill explain:

We were on our way to the international fellowship last Sunday when traffic came to a complete stop on the freeway. This usually isn't the case on a Sunday morning, so we were intrigued as to what it could be. As we drew closer, we saw a lady in high heels carrying a watermelon off the freeway, and Josh said half-joking "Maybe a watermelon truck spilled all his watermelons." A few more minutes down the road, and low and behold, a watermelon truck had spilled all its watermelons out on the freeway. More watermelons than I have ever seen before. As we drove by, the smell was amazing. However, the sad part is that some poor farmer lost a lot of money, and in the midst of a severe drought, the farmers need all they can get. We hope it was a huge farming corporation who could shoulder the loss and not an individual heading to the farmers' market with his own crop. Who knows. All we know is, you never know what you're going to see in this part of the world.

happy easter!

happy easter, everyone! jarred and i have had a great week getting ready for easter sunday. sweet times alone reading, with each other, and with great friends here. one of my favorite things was a few articles i read about what would not have been if easter had not been 2,000 years ago. and needless to say, i am very thankful for the events of easter.

not nearly as important, but another thing i love about easter is easter baskets. easter baskets were really big in my house growing up. every easter morning we woke up to clues leading us around the house and finally ending at our basket. I mean, my sisters and i even got easter baskets in college, along with any friends that came home with us for easter weekend.

jarred and i were talking about this a few weeks ago. and then low and behold, he woke me up yesterday morning with a clue to start my hunt for my easter basket. always on top of details, jarred enlisted aaron and stacy to bring over a real easter basket, grass, and tons of easter candy which we then munched on all day. (check out the card if you can see it- this is what happens when stacy sends aaron to get the card for jarred to give me)

after our international fellowship, we had a fun lunch with some old and new friends, later followed by a big gathering with a few families we know for an egg hunt and dinner. jarred threatened to try to beat all the kids at the egg hunt, but we got there a little late. and i'm not sure that breakfast-for-dinner is an appropriate easter dinner, but it was good. and by kids, i mean a lot of little kids, all of them very happy at this point because their arms are full of plastic eggs with jelly beans inside.

guests!

These are our really good friends Aaron and Stacy:

This is our guest bedroom here in Asia:

These are our really good friends Aaron and Stacy in our guest bedroom here in Asia this morning:

Yay! Our friends Aaron and Stacy lived with us here in Asia when we first moved here a couple years ago. Their plan is to move back here in the near future, so they came over for a week to check some things out. And a bonus for us is that they built in a day at the beginning of their trip to come see us. They were literally here in our city for 33 hours, but we loved getting to hang out with them and stay up talking so late it was like we were all in college again. We love you guys and hope the rest of the trip goes well!

easter tea party

grace, danielle, amy and i get together every couple weeks to talk about a book that we are all reading together. i love these times of hanging out and processing our thoughts about our book and our lives. this past week i made our time a little bit more of an adventure by planning an easter tea party. it was complete with english breakfast tea, mint cucumber sandwiches, chicken salad, fruit salad, and homemade lemon bars. and what tea party would be complete with out easter hats kentucky derby-style. aren't we cute?