Susie comes to visit!! (August 2011)

My cuz is here!!! Yay!!! Work consumed a lot of our time, but then we got out to play for a day in the woods. Here are some pics from our awesome hiking day:

Susie

Dragonflies were everywhere! Suz and I had a special name for them...it was one of those funny cousin moments :)

MFs

The tarzan ropes!

Strange tree bark

 The crazy section of the hike...

Vending machines!!!

Good times :)

Thailand Buy Trip with Diana! (August 2011)

For about 6 months of 2011, I was working part-time at the Navy Fleet Gift Shop. About once a month, one person from the store and a volunteer go on a buy trip to make purchases for the shop...and no, this is not like pick out sweatshirts and coffee mugs...this is real shopping! :) I was asked to go to Thailand with Diana for a double buy trip...which meant that we would be picking out items for the store that would arrive in both November 2011 and January 2012. The whole process is VERY cool and a lot of work! If you haven't seen the website for the store, check it out on facebook. (You just have to 'Like' the page Navy Fleet Gift Shop.) Anywho, we picked out TONS of stuff, like furniture, clothing, dishes, artwork, mirrors, lanterns and kids stuff! We worked about 11 hours a day...and it was hot!! We visited both Chiang Mai and Bangkok. In Bangkok, we shopped at the Chatuchak Weekend Market, which is of one the biggest markets in the world! It was pretty crazy because we had to carry everything with us all day, and then back to our hotel on a packed subway ride home...I'm pretty sure people thought we were a little nuts :) 

Khao Soi

The food in Chiang Mai: Amazing!! And one of the best things about Thailand. :) Our consolidators often took us to lunch at "Mama's", where we ate Khao Soi for 3 days in a row! It's soooo good! 

Rice fields

We had a half day off on one of the days that we were in Chiang Mai, so we decided to take advantage of our time and go a cooking class! We were able to each make 3 dishes, a soup, a curry and a noodle dish. I made Tom Kha soup, green curry and pad thai. Sooo so delicious!

First we went to the market to learn about the ingredients...

Limes

Eggplants and peppers for curry paste

Diana and I

Diana making red curry paste

The eggplant for green curry

Diana and her new friend :)

Cooking class was awesome!! 

Most of our shopping in Chiang Mai was done with different vendors (indoor and outdoor), and also in the night markets. We also got a lot of our products from a special Sunday night market...but this year it was more like a floating market. Diana and I were drenched!!

The Sunday night market

One of my favorite vendors...Lotus leaf artwork!

I was REALLY excited to send this box to Laura...it was special Lotus artwork for her baby girl :)

A vendor

Bottoms of a coffee table

Here are some more pics from around Chiang Mai...

Attack Bug!!

So this bug landed on me...I mean, attacked me...when we were walking on the street. When I realized it was on my back, our consolidator calmly tried to get the bug off of me, and while speaking to another woman in Thai, she soon hurriedly got the bug off of me because it bites!!! Yikes :) Glad I didn't know that beforehand. Shortly after I took this picture, I think it got ran over by a car. Sorry attack bug.

The "mall"

After the buy trip, our products get to our store via ship, and then by semi. We spend hours unpacking and pricing all of the fun stuff!! Here are a few pics of our Thailand shipment after about 30 hours of unpacking...

Sunsets

Chris LOVES the sunsets. He says that we won't see these like this forever, so he tries to snap pics whenever he sees a great sunset!

Moon

Walking on the back roads & fancy construction signs (August 2011)

Chris and I had a nice weekend and decided to go out for a walk on some back roads up north. Here are some pics from the walk...

Cool plant

Monkeytail Tree

Banana Spider

Banana spiders are pretty sweet looking, but we definitely didn't get too close!

Along our walk was also some construction. Have I said yet how much I love Japanese signs?!?! Well, I love them! Here are some of the construction signs...

Festival (July 2011)

Before Haruka headed out to the US, we had one last night to hang out. Jill and I drove down to her house in Urasoe and her aunt dressed us in Kimonos before we hit the streets of the festival. 

Haruka and Jill

The festival

The street was filled with Okinawan drummers, dancers and of course food!

Swim Meet & Triathalon (July 2011)

Ya, shocking... I know. Kelly and swimming don't really mix...especially those of you who know me from high school haha. Well, since I can't run anymore, I decided to take up swimming. I mean, we live in a warm place, the pool's only a mile away, and I have to try to stay in shape somehow!!! It was pretty rough at first...I could hardly swim 50m when I started a couple months after arriving in Oki. But eventually it got easier and I roped 3 friends into doing a relay race!!! They are all good swimmers...so I had to prepare them for my slowness :)

The race was a 2 hr relay where each person swims 400m and you just keep rotating until 2 hrs is up! Naturally, I went last because I was the slowest swimmer...we figured the first 3 swimmers would go 4 times, and maybe I would go 3 or 4 times. We had a blast...and I swam faster than I thought!!! Great team support, and I got to swim a 4th time as time ran out, so I really tried to sprint a little. Fun times :)

Our relay team: Eric, Chrissy, me and Luke

Chrissy waiting

Me coming in, Eric waiting

1st place for our age group; 3rd place overall...we got beat by Okinawa Dolphins Swim Team Teams :)

One weekend, 2 races... Chris signed up for a triathalon the next day. Actually, our friends Chrissy and Eric that swam with me the day before did the triathalon the next day too!! Triathalons here are run, bike, swim in Oki.

Run

C'mon pace car! Keep up! :)

Bike

Swim

Second place finish!!! Chris did awesome!