All About US

Being back in the States

2011-05-17T08:50:00.000-07:00

Since we came back to the US, our blog has been neglected as usual when we are here. I gues life isn't as exciting as when we are overseas. Anyway, on our way back from Nigeria in April, we flew to Seattle for Joel's (Sarah's younger brother) wedding.

We arrived in Seattle and immediately noticed how cold and wet it was. It was a big contrast to the sunny warm weather in Nigeria.

The next day, Friday, was the wedding rehearsal and dinner.

This is Joel and his beautiful bride, Elizabeth

On our way back to Redding we stopped in the town where one of Sarah's sister's lives. She works at a tulip farm so Sarah, her mom and sisters went to go see the fields.

We did let one cute little guy join our Slagle girls outing.

The fields were beatiful, and we found out that the next week when the sun came out they were even more tulips blooming.

Sarah's braided hair never made it to Redding.

How's that for a hairdo?!?!

Leaving Jos

2011-04-18T22:41:00.000-07:00

Our last week in Jos was busy spent wrapping things up, saying goodbye, and packing. It's a lot of work to travel, and I often wonder why we do it so much! I have a feeling that our life will include lots of traveling, so it's good that we're becoming experts!

The youth gave Uche a thank you present. He was really touched by this because these kids sacrificed the little they had to purchase a beautiful watch for him.

Taking pictures with new friends. Nigerians don't smile for pictures. Which one has spent years outside of Nigeria???

I always get my hair braided before we leave. It's fun to come home with an exotic hairdo. For about $10 this girl came to our house and spent a few hours braiding.

You can see the attachments in the hands of one of the girls. They added this to my own hair to make it hold. I thought about adding some purple but didn't, maybe next time!

Here's the final product. We'll see how long I can keep it. Women here can carry it for months, but for me two weeks is about as much as I can handle. I'm usually desperate to wash my hair and my head itches, so it comes out!

Airport

2011-04-16T22:36:00.000-07:00

A couple days before we left Jos we joined the kids for a field trip to the airport. This is something we had wanted to do with the children because a few had expressed an interest in going there because they had never seen an airplane. We got to go all over the airport and even stood on the tarmac as the one flight that comes in each day to Jos landed and took off again. The kids had a great time. For many of them they had never travelled a few miles from their home, so they 45 minute trip was an experience all its own.

The group.

Learning about the departure hall.

Here's the little kids tired of standing, taking a break.

We went everywhere around the airport.

There was an old plane parked close to the airport and the kids wanted to go see it since we wouldn't be able to go on the plane that flew in.

They all went inside. None of them had ever been on a plane and they enjoyed seeing it up close.

The inside had been stripped, but it was still pretty cool to be able to look around.

Baking

2011-04-14T22:31:00.000-07:00

The younger kids at the ministry had been reminding me and Uche that we hadn't brought them over to our house to bake cookies, so we made sure to do that before we left. Unlike the other groups who started very quiet and calm, this group went from crazy to crazier! We did a have a good time with them, and we were glad we got to spend this extra time with all the kids.

I started by explaining how to bake cookies and they all took turns pouring in the ingredients.

I told them they must make a design with a fork on peanut butter cookies, so here they are with their forks in hand.

Some of the cookies weren't quite perfect, but they all tasted good!

At one point the littlest girls had had enough of baking and were ready to play, so Uche took them out to the swings while I stayed with the older ones and made play dough.

Here we're trying to get them all together for a group picture. Can you see the one who wasn't ready to join in??

The choice was to join in and smile or leave the area so we could take the picture. She wasn't ready to smile....

Retreat

2011-04-09T22:26:00.001-07:00

A couple weeks ago we joined a mission organization for their annual retreat. We had been asked to come and hang out with a couple boys and entertain them while the adults had their meetings. We said yes because we knew we'd have a great time hanging out with everyone and getting away for a few days.

This is the retreat center. They displayed pictures of how the center started in the early 1900s and its progression to today. It's getting close to its 100th birthday.

One morning we took the boys hiking. It was just a small hill so it didn't take long, and the view at the top was great!

I took this picture from the top of the hill, zooming as much as my camera would let me. It shows a traditional village compound for this area of Nigeria.

One afternoon local dancers came and did a show for us. All the different tribes have different cultural dances and they're beautiful to watch.

Drumming + dancing= good times!

Uche joining in! At any time any one can jump in and join the dancing or sometimes the women would pull people from the crowd to join in. Did I join???

Nope! See me hiding there on the outside of the circle! I don't dance cause I know my limitations, and Uche said he was gonna pay the women to make sure they didn't ask me to come dance.

Graduation

2011-03-27T12:12:00.000-07:00

The ministry we are working with has a few different ministries and one of them is the youth ministry. I (Uche) have spent most of my time working with this ministry. They are working on empowering the youth through providing them with job skills and training them in HIV prevention. Right now they have a computer school for the youth. I was privileged to attend a graduation ceremony for the passing out students who had finished the three month course. It was a colorful occasion. The graduates didn't just march in but they danced their way in. Too bad I didn't have my video camera.
In the picture above is the director of the youth program. He is a wonderful man of God and has a big heart for the youth of Nigeria.

The ceremony was a big deal, with family and friends attending to celebrate the young peoples' accomplishment. The prayer of the ministry is that these young people will now go out and find jobs using their newly acquired skills.

The graduates are receiving prayers from any and all the ministers in attendance. Sarah is fascinated with women's hair here, with gorgeous braids or fabulous wigs it's fun to sit behind them.

One of the reasons this graduation is important to these students is because this may be the only graduation some of them will ever participate in.

These are just some of the people who have devoted their lives, time and talents to training the students. These teachers were honored during the ceremony for their contribution to the ministry.

Hanging out with the kids

2011-03-24T11:46:00.000-07:00

When we came in January we weren't quite sure what we would do during our time with the ministry here. Some of the most enjoyable times has been spent hanging with the kids who are helped by the ministry. Most of the kids live on the ministry compound and few others are neighborhood kids who attend the school that was started by the ministry this school year.

We had the boys over to decorate cookies, since it wouldn't have been fair to invite the girls and leave the boys out! Even though there were more boys who came, they were so much quieter than the few girls who had been over a couple weeks before. They quietly decorated and ate cookies, and finished with an hour left to go. So, we watched an episode of America's Funniest Home Videos which was a hit. AFV crosses all cultural boundaries and is just plain funny!

We joined the kids for a school field trip. They went to a power station and learned where our electricity comes from. They were great and all took notes diligently. Uche joined the older group, and I stayed with the younger kids. The young kids weren't able to go inside this area because the electrical current would be too much for their little bodies. While the younger kids quickly lost interest, Uche said the older kids bombarded the tour guide with questions. The man was gentle and patient with all their questions, and I'm sure the kids learned a lot and enjoyed getting out. Uche also learned a lot!

On the back of the kids school uniforms (every school here has a uniform) it says, "We are Building on the Rock. Matt 7:25" Though this speaks to Jesus as the foundation of the school it's also a bit of a play on words since the property that the ministry compound sits on is full of big rocks, so literally and spiritually this school is built on the Rock!

The next couple pictures were just too cute not to include. Sometimes Uche has come in the afternoon and has found the kids hanging out doing homework and just enjoying down time after a busy day at school. They love to come hang out with Uche and LOVE having their pictures taken!

LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this picture!! This little girl is something else, and has already endured quite a lot for such a little thing. Her life has been changed, and her future has been dramatically altered because this ministry has taken her and her mother in. Her name is Happy.

The sights

2011-03-22T11:27:00.000-07:00

For this post, I thought I should just post some random pictures of life here in Nigeria. I've been told to take lots of pictures when I first arrive in a country because pretty soon you get so used to everything around you that you don't take pictures anymore. So, here's the sights that have struck us the past couple months.

I don't even know what to say about this, but this sight is more common than you can imagine!

If you're squeamish, don't look too closely... I like to tell people here that I prefer not to know where my meat comes from. Going to the market here can make one consider going vegetarian!

Do you recognize the seed hanging off the end of that fruit?? It's a cashew! When I first saw this, I realized why cashews are so expensive, one nut for each piece of fruit. I haven't actually tried the fruit (Uche loves them), and when Uche bought these the smell filled our whole house. It's a really sweet smell, very distinct, and it didn't appeal to me... maybe next time!

We see people carrying things on their heads all the time. This woman is selling yams. She walks around hoping someone will call her and buy some yam for dinner. I once saw a woman carrying a baby on her back, a tray of bananas on her head and knitting while she walked around town. Now that's some serious talent!

If you look closely in the center of the picture you can see an armored vehicle. The military has had a very strong and visible presence in the city to keep violence from breaking out. They recently began to pull back and again violence flared, so I guess they're gonna have to be around for a while.

Who is that African woman??

This gorgeous tree is called a flame tree. Right now during dry season the flowers are out in full bloom. I wish you could all see them in person, pictures can't do it justice!

Here's a closeup on the flame tree. Underneath the tree are the fallen petals, so walking underneath one is like walking on red carpet.

I've been home for two months

2011-03-18T09:33:00.000-07:00

Now that we have been here more than two months, my taste buds have finally adjusted to taste of the food here (isn''t that funny?). Earlier on I noticed that some of the food I used to enjoy and I was looking forward to eating, didn't taste as I expected. It's either that my expectation was too high or that my taste buds had changed. I chose the latter because I've noticed my taste buds have gradually adjusted to the taste of some of the food here.

I'm also glad that coke here isn't as sweet as they are in other places I've been to, including the USA. I know Americans will be surprised to hear this because they also noticed that coke is sweeter in Mexico than in the States. I have concluded that coke is sweet in the USA. But it is sweeter in Mexico. However, it's the sweetest in the Philippines (what happened to "coke is coke everywhere?).

Also I've gotten over the initial shock of eating bread and thinking how weired it taste. It seems like the bakeries here make an extra effort to try to eliminate sugar in their bread. I like that.

I think I'm getting better at speaking or trying to speak the local language here without mixing the words with Tagalog (a Filipino language). Sarah and I have also realized that certain words sound better in Tagalog than in English or Hausa (the language here). The few Hausa language I used to know are gradually coming back and I remember them at random.

I never gave much thought to all these things before, till recently I realized that for the past 14 years, I have spent only one year total in Nigeria! The rest were split between the Philippines and the USA.

Hiking in Nigeria

2011-03-11T22:33:00.000-08:00

Our host here invited me to go on a hiking trip with him and his son's science class. They needed more adults to accompany them because of the security issues in Jos. I was excited to go because I had never hiked in Nigeria before. In fact, most people here don't even know the concept of hiking maybe because everyday they hike... to the river, to the market, to the school etc. Those of us who drive ourselves everywhere are the ones who walk for fun!

We got there only to discover that it wasn't just a normal hike on a trail. People were crawling on all fours just to make it up the hill.

Here's a view from the top of the mountain.

I learned something interested with these fourth graders; that there was a volcanic eruption on the mountain we were on and the next one were going to climb. I never heard there was any volcanic activity in anywhere in Nigeria before. There were the rocks to prove it.

This is the second mountain we climbed.

This is my nephiew, Michael (he came and spent a week with us in Jos) and one of the teachers
celebrating our victory to the top of the two mountains.

I also joined in the celebration.

We later treated ourselves to a suger cane party. I hadn't had a suger cane in a long time so eating this sweet cane was awesome.

A Sunday Afternoon Program

2011-03-09T12:44:00.000-08:00

The kids at the school connected to the minsitry we're working with here put on a program last Sunday afternoon. So, we got to enjoy an afternoon of entertainment put on by some really great kids. The program included...

Singing...

scripture reading...

Sword drills...

Adults sword drills- it had been years since I had done one of those!!

Musical chairs...
and it all finished up with some traditional dancing.

Random pictures

2011-03-03T10:21:00.000-08:00

These kids at a vulcanizing (tire repair) shop caught my attention. I'm trying to believe that they are just playing with the vulcanizer's tools. I don't think that they are doing an apprenticeship this early, because they are the future of this great nation, and I hope they'd be in school rather than working at this age.

I got to my sister's house one day and found people shooting a movie in her living room.

While waiting for my flight at the Owerri airport I realized that the passengers weren't the only ones there. There were some sheep/goats going about their business at the car park.

Trip to Abuja

2011-03-01T11:13:00.000-08:00

Last week we headed down to Abuja, the capital of Nigeria, to meet with some people as well as to have fun. Abuja is a unique city, especially in Africa, because it started out as a planned city. A couple decades ago they decided to move the capital to Abuja from Lagos, so they planned it and built and are still building it according to a plan. We had a great time, enjoyed the sights and pretended to be tourists for a couple days.

We had dinner with some friends who are a UK/Nigerian couple. We met and hung out with them when we first arrived, and we had such a great time from the moment we met! We went over to their house the night we arrived and the wife was making Nigerian food. This was me trying my hand at pounding the yam to go with our soup. First she boiled the yam (it's different from American type of yam, but essentially it's a big tuber) and then she took that big stick and began beating it. The pounding mixes and softens the yam to where it becomes the consistency of mashed potatoes. She is quite good at it, but I still have a long way to go!

We visited the Arts and Crafts Village to look at local art, clothes and crafts. This area is where the artists are located. Each hut has a different artist selling their work. I bought a cute little picture, and we will definitely be visiting again to buy some more paintings. These huts are built like some traditional huts that you see in the countryside here. In the background you see a large brand new building. That's a beautiful mall, so in this picture you see the reality of life here. The traditional contrasting with the modern.

We hung out at the mall a little bit. We checked the movie theater schedule, browsed a bookstore and watched people bowling. Even when we were here seven years ago, we never dreamed we would do those things here. Abuja is really changing and new things are popping up everywhere.

On Friday evening we joined up with some new friends to hang out at an outdoor restaurant. Uche was super excited to go there because they're known for their grilled fish. Not being a fish person, I had eaten a burger (my first burger since we came) at another place. Uche also ordered this dish, it's a stew like dish made of goat head. Yes, you read that correctly, goat head. Uche would pull out pieces and identify the piece he was eating, such as an ear or the tongue. Needless to say, I didn't even get close to it!! He said it was delicious, and I guess I'll just take his word for it, cause I don't plan on ever trying it!

During dinner this guy came by to show off his skills. We were impressed! I kept telling Uche not to use the flash on the camera cause he might cause the guy to drop everything, but the guy was a pro and performed his juggling/balancing tricks without incidence!

Having fun

2011-02-27T10:28:00.000-08:00

Last week we had some of the older girls over to our place to do some baking. I had mixed up some sugar cookies, made frosting, and colored some sugar. So, when the girls came over they rolled out cookies and then decorated them. It was a fun afternoon, and we were happy to have a couple of our neighbors come over for the fun. It started out pretty quiet with the girls very seriously decorating their cookies, but as you'll see by the last picture taken at the end of the afternoon they had loosened up and our house was filled with lots of joyful noise! We want to have all the kids over at some point, so you'll probably see their pictures showing up here in the next couple weeks.

Object of Curiosity

2011-02-19T01:31:00.000-08:00

I am an object of curiousity here in Nigeria. The kids aren't ashamed to show it, and adults try to hide it, playing cool. They're fascinated with my skin, my freckles and my hair. It's all so different from what they're used to, and to be honest, I'm just as fascinated by them! I love that God's creativity is shown in his colorful people, all of whom bear His image.

When I told them they could touch my hair, they were all for it.

Freckles are fascinating. My paleness has never been appreciated in Cali, here my glow in the dark white skin is cool!

Having my hair plaited (braided); only my hair doesn't cooperate in the same way a Nigerian woman's would.

How does she look as a blonde?!?! I think she looks fabulous, and you can tell she thinks so too from the look on her face!!

Come visit...

2011-02-16T11:10:00.000-08:00

So, basically I thought I should start now inviting, or maybe even coercing, you to come visit us when we move to Nigeria. I thought the best way to do this was to show you pictures of cute kids we'd let you visit if you come... so, start saving your pennies now for your trip sometime in the next couple years!!

They're pretty cute, huh?? There's more where these came from. We took these pictures the other day with these kids who were hanging around. Kids all over the world love to have pictures taken of themselves and then see them right away. Digital cameras have changed missions forever, because there's no quicker way to get a kid to be your friend than to take their picture and then show it to them!!

Life is good

2011-02-07T08:21:00.001-08:00

One of my favorite things to eat in Nigeria is suya. It's grilled meat with a wonderful combination of spices. We've actually made it before in the States, but it's better here. Last Friday we were finally able to go to our favorite suya place here in Jos. It's located on the international school's compound, and it's the same guy making and selling it that was here seven years ago. When we buy suya we also go to another lady who sells food on the same compound. This woman (also the same from before) fries different things. She fries potatoes, sweet potatoes, plantains and other local foods. She was a big black cauldron filled with oil that sits over an open fire. Fried stuff is always tasty, but I think she makes the best fried stuff!

Here's our first suya lunch. They wrap all the food in newspaper. The suya comes with raw onions, and while I taste onion for the next couple days, I can't resist the onion suya combo!

When we got home from picking up our lunch that first suya day, we decided that a coke would make it a perfect meal. Just across from our compound is a little store that sells sodas (or as Nigerians call them, minerals) in bottles. So, when you buy the soda, you drink it and then bring back your bottle for the bottlers to recycle. We had seen a crate of empty bottles in our house, so we decided to go get another crate of soda for the house. Here in Nigeria when someone comes to your house you always offer them something to drink, so a lot of people keep crates of soda on hand for the visitors that drop by. So we thought we should have a crate soda in the house... within a few days in became apparent that we better not keep soda in the house. Pretty much we have a soda everyday- it's been years since we drank this much soda! But cold soda in a bottle just tastes better!!

Here's our almost empty crate. I think it's been in the house for about ten days... no more soda in the house, we just can't resist it!

Another addition to the house we've made recently has been a mosquito net. When we first arrived we talked about putting one up, but just never got around to it. Finally, one night after Uche had been woken up many times by mosquitos buzzing in his ear, and he had woken me up by jumping up and trying to kill them.... we decided to concede to the mosquitos and put up a net. Now we're sleeping peacefully and the mosquitos have to wait till morning to eat us.

While I appreciate the net's ability to help me avoid malaria, it's a bit hard to make the bed now and crawling out in the middle of the night is quite a feat, but I hear malaria is no fun, so I deal with the wahala*!

*Wahala may be the greatest word I've learned in Nigeria. It means trouble, but it encompasses any kind of problem, frustration or annoyance, as in "dealing with the DMV is a big wahala". We probably use that word every day as do all the Nigerians and the foreigners alike.

God hears us!

2011-02-07T08:11:00.001-08:00

Our trip to Lagos was a bit crazy, but we were happy it was successful! On Wednesday morning we got on a plane and flew to the capital. We had planned to travel with some friends to see their ministry projects in a nearby state on Thursday, but for a variety of reasons we cancelled that trip and decided to come back home to Jos.

We were exhausted after running around Abuja and from having to get up at 4:00 am to catch our flight, so we just wanted to be home. We knew there was a shuttle bus to Jos that would leave the station at 1:00, and this company is known for its promptness. It was already 1:15 when we began to make our way to the station. Though we knew we would probably missi the bus, we knew we had to take a chance because our other option would have been to try to catch a later ride with another company whose cars are not air conditioned and are packed full, which would've made for a very long and uncomfortable ride. So, on our way there Uche and I were both praying that God would delay that bus, and we would be able to catch it.

We had been dealing with some major disappointments that day, and my heart was just crying out to God with all the frustrations that we had been experiencing. I prayed that He would delay that bus just so I could know He's listening to our cries and prayers. While theologically, I know He does listen, my heart needed reassuring.

When we got to the bus station Uche ran inside to see if the bus was still there while I waited in the car. He came back a minute later to say it was still there, and we'd be able to travel on it! I was so happy, relieved and comforted that God had answered our prayer so obviously. There had been only one seat left on the bus, but they said they would sell us the seat next to the drive that they usually leave empty. We didn't care if we sat on the roof; all we wanted was to get home that day! We even had time to buy some food and go to the bathroom while they continued to repair a mechanical problem. When we were finally called to load up into the bus, the other passengers were quite frustrated with the delay. We felt sorry that God had made them delay for our sake, but not too sorry!

This is Lagos!

2011-02-07T07:56:00.000-08:00

Uche and I traveled last Monday to Lagos, the most populated city in Nigeria. We were grateful that we were able to catch a flight from our town instead of having to travedl tot he capital first. Our flight first went to the city of Kano, where we stayed ont he plane while some people got off and others got on for the final leg to Lagos.
As we were descending into Kano we began to hear an older woman praying, not under her breath or quistly so only close by could hear, but she was alomst shouting as she prayed us down to the ground. As we were starting to take off for the next leg of our journey and we were at the point where we felt ourselves pushed back into our seat, we heard a yell/moan/shout- it was a combination of all those sounds- "ooooohhhhhhhh!!!!" from the old woman. She again began to yell her prayers for God to take us safely to Lagos in Jesus name! We had to laugh, along with others, though we felt sorry for this woman who was obviously terrified of flying. Her yell was something else, and if you want me to demonstrate it for you once we get home, just ask! I wonder how many people would like to yell out at that moment of a flight, but are too embarrased to even try!
Once we arrived in Lagos we were happy to see and stay with Uche's sister. A niece and nephew also live in the house, so it was nice for Uche to catch with these family members.
We had traveled to Lagos to get some papers from the American embassy, and we weren't looking forward to the journey across the traffic filled city. When we arrived at the embassy we were a bit early for our 1:00 appointment, so we decided to drive down to a fast food restaurant that was about a mile away. We were super hot and thirsty because Lagos is hot and humid and there was no have air conditioning in the car we had hired. It was nice to sit in the restaurant and have a coke for a few minutes before heading back out into the madness. We could see that traffice was building up outside, so we left at 12:20 to go back to the embassy. As we were sitting in traffic that wasn't moving at all, Uche and I started to get anxious that we wouldn't make our appoinment on time, and we definitely didn't want to mess with our hard fought embassy appointment. Finally, at 12:35 we decided we would just walk to the embassy and the car would follow and wait for us. We arrived at the embassy about ten minutes before 1:00 and were dircted to the line we were supposed to wait. At 1:20 we saw our hired car and drive go by, so it took an HOUR for him to go about a mile.
We got inside the embassy and waited for our number to be called and around 3:00 we were just waiting for the papers we needed to take with us, when we were informed that there would be a security drill. We would have to evacuate the building with the other embassy personnel. We got quite a kick out of milling around and chatting with the embassy people. Finally, we got the papers we needed, and we began the long journey back to Uche's sister's house.

Birthday Party

2011-01-30T22:48:00.000-08:00

Sunday afternoon we went to a home run by the ministry we're volunteering with. It's for women and children, and right now I can't remember how many people live there, but it's around 20 or so. We went with the founders of the minsitry and their children and their friends to celebrate all the January birthdays. After eating birthday cake we all trooped up to the area where the kids play soccer. A water balloon launcher was brought out and the kids had a great time launching balloons and trying to catch them.

Family

2011-01-30T06:06:00.000-08:00

Before we came up to the town of Jos where we'll be living during our time in Nigeria, we spent sometime in Abuja, the capital. Uche's brother's family and his sister and her family live in Abuja, so first on the agenda was to visit family. It was amazing to see how all the kids have grown- why does this surprise us... that kids grow and change through out the years?!?! Here's some pictures from an afternoon spent with family.

This was the little neighbor boy who kept wandering over to where we were sitting. He was thrilled with the puppy, but I don't think the puppy was thrilled with him!This is Uche's niece with her husband and baby boy. I think this is a great picture Uche took!

Me with my grand nephew... I realized that day Uche and I are a great uncle and a great aunt. What in the world?? How is that possible, I'm not that old!! :)

Uche with his sister in law and surrounded by nieces and nephews.

Our new home

2011-01-23T07:49:00.000-08:00

Our friends here had made arrangements for us to live in a home on a missionary compound for our time in Nigeria. This compound is pretty big with six homes as well as offices located in it. There is a wall completely surrounding the whole compound and there's two gates for people to enter into the compound. Guards are there twenty-four hours a day to make sure that only those who should come in are allowed inside. Our house sits near one of the gates, so from our living room we can see everyone coming and going. The house is a real blessing to us because it's fully furnished with everything we could need while we're here, and one of our friends whom we used to hang out with before lives on the same compound.

This is our cute little blue home.

Here is the fireplace in our living room. We want to use it sometime- maybe just to roast some marshmellows... The red box sitting on the hearth is a stabilizer for electricity. The electricity comes and goes here and at times it'll surge, so you buy this sort of thing to plug your valuable electronics into, so when a surge happens your computer doesn't get fried.

This is the whole of the living room. You can see the light from the open front door to the left. I was standing in the dining room/kitchen entry to take this picture.

Here is the dining room. It's nice to have the two windows there for light and breeze.

Uche was cooking some Nigerian food while I snapped this. He's happy to be back to using local ingredients and the fresh produce here. Our refrigerator is small, but it works so we're happy- you can see it on the left side. To the left side of the stove is a storage room. It has shelves to store all kinds of things and our water heater sits in there which is used to heat water in the bathroom and kitchen. In the Philippines hot water heaters are a luxury, but here it's more normal even in Nigerian homes. We also use the storage room to keep some produce like tomatoes, potatoes and peppers. The floor is cement and it stays very cool, so the produce will last well there.

And finally our bathroom. The shower is great and the hot water is plentiful, so we're happy.

We also have two bedrooms one with a king size bed for us, and the spare room has its own bed as well. The house has a lot of storage, so it's been great to put away all our things and hide the suitcases, so we don't have clutter all around us. We're happy in our little home and are well settled.

Welcome to Nigeria!

2011-01-21T10:45:00.000-08:00

Greetings are very important in Nigeria, so we've been welcomed to Nigeria many times over the past week. Tomorrow will be one week since we touched down in Abuja, the capital. We'll be working on catching up the past week in the next few days since we haven't been able to be online until this time.

Some initial thoughts about being here from Sarah:

It's so nice to be in warm weather again! The cold was too much for me- I'm a wimp now!! This is the coolest time of year here, so it will warm up which is okay with me.
Even though I've been gone for over six years, it's nice to come back to a place I've lived before. The adjustment period is so much easier- though I'll probably be in an adjustment stage our whole time here.
Our nieces and nephews here have gotten so big, and while I've been gone I've always pictured them as the little kids they were before. I think only one is shorter than me!
I always enjoy watching Uche interact with Nigerians because he adapts himself to Nigerian mannerisms and words. He's so amazing at adapting to wherever he's at, so when we're around Filipinos, he acts Filipino, and when we're with Americans, well, American Uche shows up! Now that we're surrounded by Nigerians, he's relearning how to be a real Nigerian!

And from Uche:

I can't believe how much Abuja (the capital of Nigeria) has changed. Big beautiful houses are being constructed everywhere. There are new and expensive cars everywhere. There seems to be a disconnect between the poverty around me and the riches I see here. I even saw a brand new Porsche the other day!
We've made it to Jos and I am starting to pick up my Hausa language. I am also glad that the town of Jos is calm and the people are still as friendly as ever. The city is divided into two sides, the different warring tribes are occupying each side respectively. The division breaks my heart.

Packing up and heading out

2011-01-12T22:26:00.000-08:00

After months of planning, we're ready to go to Nigeria tomorrow morning. At this point of any trip I always wonder why on earth we would ever travel anywhere when it's so much work, but whenever we stay somewhere for too long I get itchy feet and want to travel. In spite of the craziness, we're ready to go and really looking forward to the next three months in Nigeria.

Once we spread out all the stuff we planned to take with us I thought there was no way it would all fit! But it did. Four bags stuffed full. I didn't get a picture of everything spread out all over, but here's just small bits and pieces that had to be fit together.

Here's the four bags fifty pounds each all ready to go.

Pictures from our trip to New Orleans

2010-11-25T11:19:00.000-08:00

St. Louis Cathedral.
This is the oldest cathedral in North America, founded in 1720.

The inside of this cathedral is beautifully decorated.

Bourbon Street, the French Quarter is alive at night with street dancers and night clubs.

Two blocks from Bourbon Street with its notorious night life is this beautiful statue of the risen Christ and it's shadow, with hands spread wide apart, inviting night crawlers to come to him and find rest.

CAFE DA MONDE!

This was perhaps the highlight of our trip. The beignet and coffee in this cafe was worth our trip to New Orleans. We literally went there everyday and we even brought some back to California.

Uche is a happy boy. He couldn't get over how good their beignets and coffee were.

You really don't need to rent a car to move around New Orleans. With a three day bus pass you can ride both buses and cable cars, and it's affordable.

Apples!

2010-10-21T17:31:00.000-07:00

Fall is apple season, and we've had apples coming out of our ears around here this fall. A family in our church has quite a few apple trees, so we've been grateful beneficiaries of their apples. One day we went out to their place with a few others to make some apple cider.

Sarah is cutting apples that will be sent through the cider press. We worked a little, had some cider, worked a little more and drank some more. It was a delicious afternoon!

The trees were loaded down.

It's amazing what you can make with apples. It's seems like there is apple in everything I (Uche) eat now. The good thing is that I'm enjoying it. We drink lots of apple juice, eat all kinds of apple cakes and even have apple butter. Just this morning Sarah made pancakes with applesauce and that's when I realized that apple is more useful than I thought. Last night She made chopped apple with green onions on pork chops, boy was it good! I like everything about apples.

Black Berries

2010-09-28T15:03:00.000-07:00

Another thing I like about summer is the many different fruit, with different shapes and colors I get to eat. This summer, we rented a house that a many blackberry bushes covered with sweet, wild blackberries growing over the fence. So we made all kinds of blackberry pastries and shakes. The blackberries were so sweet that Sarah made a blackberry pie without adding sugar to it.

This is Uche's favorite of all the blackberry recipes. This is blackberry scones. The best tasty scones ever.

After living here for a long time I'm beginning to realize that the fruits we buy in the shops don't have the best taste. If you want to enjoy good tasty fruits, you have to go to the farmers market. We are regulars at the Saturday morning farmers market. I guess if you can't beat them, you have to join them!

Vanilla lattes, fresh fruit and blackberry scones.... perfect Saturday morning breakfast!

Blackberries, yogurt and granola... this is the life!

Climbing the mountain

2010-08-20T15:50:00.000-07:00

How wonderful is your creation Oh Lord. Yet people believe in the big bang theory.

The last hurdle to get to the top. There was still a pile of snow up there

We had company up there. This little squirrel was friendly and so we shared our lunch with her

One good thing about Redding is that you don't have to go too far to be out on the mountain, lake, river, trail, out door shooting range or to go camping in the woods.

We enjoy a little hiking every once in a while. So a few weeks ago I had the opportunity to hike to the top of Mt. Lassen. I had wanted to do this for a while now, so when the opportunity presented itself, I couldn't miss it.

It was a great hike. my other two companions, whose names I wont mention (even though they are in the picture above) were physically fit, which was good as I tagged along behind them.

From the top of Mount Lassen (10462 ft.) I saw the other famous mountain, Shasta (14, 179 ft.) sitting majestically as if it was beconing me to try it. Well, I accepted the challenge and hope to hike it some day before I grow too old to walk. I heard that people die while trying to hike on it. Well better die trying...

Living near the river trial

2010-08-15T13:17:00.000-07:00

Uche was trying out his picture taking skills here. This is the tip of the Sundial bridge.

A beautiful sculpture under the bridge.

Sarah and her friend

Right now we live near the river trial and we love the area because it's cooler than most places in the northstate. We also have access to the aquatic center, for swimming, and the river trial where we bike and run. We are trying to be healthy.

On this particular day we went to hang out by the bridge, it's a major tourist attraction here cause it's a glass bridge. Across from where we are in this photo is a cafe and a live band was playing jazz. We totally enjoyed the music even though we didn't go into the cafe. Who said you must spend money to enjoy good music?

Do we all look alike?

2010-06-12T06:38:00.000-07:00

The other day I met two Latino gentlemen in town. The older one asked me if I was rooting for South Africa in the world cup? Do I look like I'm from SA? I didn't ask him that, but I just smiled and told him that I'm rooting for Nigeria cause I'm originally from Nigeria. The guy told me he was rooting for the USA team. I began to wonder why he said that since his own country made it to the World Cup. I didn't waste time in pointing that out to him. I said, "Well, it's good that Mexico made it". The guy smiled and said, "We're not from Mexico, we are from Nicaragua"
Anyway, I guess we all look alike. When it comes to World Cup, we identify ourselves not just by country, but by continent.

Napa Valley

2010-05-23T18:32:00.000-07:00

I'm California born and raised, but there are still so many places I've never seen, and Napa Valley is one of them. We were really excited to spend a weekend there with some great friends of ours. The valley definitely didn't disappoint. It was gorgeous! The weather was cool and it even sprinkled the second day, but we had a lot of fun. A major highlight of the trip was that I had the best maple bar I've ever had- sorry, no pictures of that- I was too busy enjoying it!

Right as I took this picture, Uche made this gesture. Doesn't he look like he's giving a tour?

Our friends had brought food for a picnic- salami, lots of cheese and we bought a baguette and a bottle of sparkling juice to enjoy. None of us are wine drinkers, and obviously the main attraction of Napa is wine, but there's still a lot to enjoy without being a wine drinker.

We always like to throw in a self portrait. How do you like our fancy sunglasses we bought in Manila right before we left?

One of the must see places we heard about was this castle. I should start telling people we went to Europe- it's hard to believe this was taken in Northern California!

Here's my tour guide picture. The building in the back is part of the winery featured in the movie Bottle Shock. We had watched the movie the night before, so it was fun to see it in real life.

This was taken in the garden at the same winery. Most of the places we visited had gorgeous grounds like this.

We did take a tour. This was taken in the caves of a winery. The caves were pretty cool- literally- they stay at a temperature of 60 degrees year round no matter the weather outside.

We pulled over at the side of the road for a picnic on the second day. Here's what we looked at while we ate. The whole area was unbelievably beautiful, and I'm so glad we were able to enjoy it.

Uche learns to hug

2010-05-08T08:45:00.000-07:00

There are two things that remind me that we are back in California. The first one is the allergies I get from pollen that turn my eyes red and watery. I also sneeze a lot which causes my nose to run, and I get a headache afterwards. I can sneeze up to six times in one long sneeze. I'm glad there are allergy pills that work for me.

The other reminder is the number of hugs I recieve from our church family and friends. Their hugs are quite infectious and it shows how much the people here love. Each time Sarah and I return back to Redding, our home in the States, we always recieve a tremendous amount of warm hugs from almost everyone in our church, that's a lot of hugs. It sure blows my socks off how much the people here are able to show love in different ways including hugging. I've been infected and I don't think twice before I hug people back. I also initiate hugs sometimes! I remember when we first arrived in Manila and I ran into a Filipino friend. Out of excitement I reached out and gave him a warm bear hug but afterwards I realized that he wasn't too excited about it and I told myself that this guy would be hugging every one of his friends too if he spends only one year in Oak Grove (our church in Redding), that is unless he is my father in law who is probably the only one in our church who doesn't hug (but he doesn't love any less either).

Every hug I recieve here reminds me how warm and loving and accepting the people here are and I love them all a lot. I aslo love the way they hug.

Festivities

2010-04-19T00:54:00.001-07:00

So, it's been a long time since we updated the blog, and that's because we've been very busy- having a lot of fun! We got some work done too... We were excited to participate in graduation even though we are technically summer graduates. It was fun pretending to graduate, and we were able to finish our thesis a few days after graduation, which left us with a couple weeks free to have fun and spend time with our friends. This will be a picture heavy post as we walk you through our last days in the Philippines. We're sitting in the airport getting ready to board our flight to Taiwan and then onto California, and it was fun to look through these pictures- they made us smile!

This was taken after the Baccalaureate chapel. This is group are all Community Development students. They're a great group of people, and we have thoroughly enjoyed learning together with these people.

The evening after chapel we went out with our friends who live in our building. We were all graduating, so it was a real celebration! Taco Bell!

This was at the banquet they had before graduation. It was fun to see everyone dressed up. Sitting next to Sarah is a great friend of ours. It's not fun to leave these great people who we have gotten to know the past year and a half.

The big day! This was taken as we lined up to walk into the church.

The graduates! We were hooded by our program director (the hood sits on top of the robe) as they read a short biography about us.

The day after graduation we had a party up on our roof to spend some time with our friends who were graduating and leaving Manila in the days following graduation. No party in the Philippines is complete without some karaoke- so we gave the neighborhood a nice concert! :)

The week after graduation was Holy Week, and because this is a Catholic country this is a very special week. The Thursday and Friday before Easter everything shuts down- the malls close, the roads are empty and people head out of Manila. We joined some friends from church and spent a couple days at the ocean. We did a little snorkeling as you can see from this picture!

The tide was low the first evening we headed to the beach. Here's a couple starfish doing something... get a room already!

Uche with a totally different starfish than the loving couple seen above!

The next week we were taken on a short trip to a place in the mountains outside of Manila. It's much cooler in this area, so it's a popular place to visit. Our friend took us to a wonderful hotel for an evening. It was a great place! If you look closely, you can see Sarah in the background. She's actually in the bathroom! There's a window above the jacuzzi tub, so you can sit in the tub and watch tv! The bed had a down comforter and feather pillows- luxury!!

This is the front of the hotel. It was so beautiful.

Here's our group in the lobby. It's kind of weird to see a fireplace in the Philippines, but it's much much cooler here than Manila, so it may even be used during the cooler months! If nothing else it makes a nice place to take a picture.

This was the view from our room! It looked very European to us with the pine trees, mountains and hotel in the background. It was a very refreshing trip, and we enjoyed the company of our great friends!

Happy Birthday Uche!

2010-03-16T05:06:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was Uche's birthday, but the festivities started Sundayt night. We invited some people from church over for some pizza and cake. We had a nice time visiting with everyone and we had two cakes. The one above was brought by our friend, and I made one that tasted good, but looked a little weird, so no pictures to protect the creator of the tasty but crazy looking cake.

Here's the whole group. Do I stand out or what??? I need to start tanning or something... I'm glowing! :) This group of people are dear friends who we will miss when we leave...

The next day we spent the morning in the library as papers don't write themselves. But I convinced Uche that he had to give me the afternoon and evening for a surprise outing. So after lunch we headed to Megamall about 1/2 hour taxi ride away. We took taxis to and from the mall because it was Uche's birthday, and we were celebrating, so no public transportation for us! We spent sometime walking around the mall and enjoying the fact that it was air conditioned and pretty empty as it was Monday afternoon. We looked for a couple things Uche has been wanting to buy, but didn't find exactly what he wanted. We spent about an hour at a coffee shop relaxing and talking. I ordered Uche's favorite green tea latte, and he was nice enough to share it with me.

Here I am tasting the green tea latte.... hmmmm... not my favorite, but the birthday boy enjoyed it!

Afterwards we went to watch Green Zone. Uche enjoys movies with car chases and explosions, and this movie had both! After the movie we walked over to a fancy hotel to eat dinner at their buffet. This was the main surprise of the day. I did a little research and found out that they're considered one of the best, if not the best, buffet in town, and Uche enjoys buffets, so perfect birthday dinner.

The buffet did not disappoint! They had all kinds of Asian food as well as continental favorites. They even had a cheese tray! Cheese is a luxury in the Philippines. The dessert section was incredible, and I wished I hadn't gone for seconds on the roast beef with all the choices! Uche enjoyed halo halo, his favorite Filipino dessert. The whole atmosphere was very luxurious and we felt super spoiled during our time there. After dinner we walked back to the mall to catch a taxi home. We were so stuffed! Uche couldn't stand up straight until we had walked a block... so we got our money's worth!! It was a nice day we spent together and it was really nice to spoil ourselves a little bit. I suppose I shouldn't have gotten to enjoy it as much as I did because it wasn't my birthday.... We don't have any pictures from the buffet we were too busy eating!!

Here he is the birthday boy! My handsome wonderful husband. His birthday is also the anniversary of the day Uche proposed to me. Seven years ago he asked will you and I said yes, of course! He's the best husband I could've imagined, and I'm so blessed to be able to spend my life with him! Wow! That's a lot of exclamation points in one paragraph, but that's how great my husband is! He's a million billion exclamation points! :)

Motivation

2010-02-08T02:21:00.000-08:00

I've posted a couple times here about visiting a poor community and conducting interviews there. We're doing it as research for our thesis, which we'll write together in the next few months. As an aside, it's such a fun blessing to be able to do school and ministry together with my husband. So, I was talking to my parents a few days ago, and they both asked what exactly we are doing, and I thought it would be good to explain exactly what we're doing for this internship/research for the long dreaded :) thesis!

Because we're followers of Christ, we want to make sure that whatever we do we're acting as Christ did and would do if he were still on earth now. So, when we think about doing community development we can't separate our understanding of Christ's work from our theory that motivates our actions in the community. We'll continue to explain what we're doing, but thought we should start with just a small piece of our whole theological framework regarding work in the community.

Whatever views one has regarding poverty and the causes of it, we can't ignore the many verses in scripture regarding the poor (don't just take our word for it, look yourself!). We're taking a class on the Prophets right now and there's soooo much there about God's views on how we should treat the poor in this section of the Bible.. The people of God were punished by the Assyrians and Babylonians because (1) they had been unfaithful to their God and (2) how they were treating each other, especially the poor and oppressed among them. Here's just one passage in Isaiah 58 (Uche is doing a paper on a part of Isaiah 58)

Isaiah 58:6-10
"Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:

to loose the chains of injustice

and untie the cords of the yoke,

to set the oppressed free

and break every yoke?

Is it not to share your food with the hungry

and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter-

when you see the naked, to clothe him,

and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?

Then you light will break forth like the dawn,

and your healing will quickly appear;

then your righteousness will go before you,

and the glory of the LORD will be your rear guard.

Then you will call, and the LORD will answer;

you will cry for help, and he will say: Here I am

"If you do away with the yoke of oppression,

with the pointing finger and malicious talk,

and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry

and satisfy the needs of the oppressed,

then your light will rise in the darkness,

and your night will become like the noonday.

And because every post should have some pictures...

The river surrounding the community is going down as dry season continues. When we first visited we had to ride a boat across the river, now we're able to drive across. I wonder if it'll dry up completely. If you don't have a car (like pretty much everyone who lives there) you can walk across this walkway for 1 peso ($.02)

Sports Festival

2010-02-03T04:33:00.001-08:00

Last Saturday was the Inter Seminary Sports Festival. Four different seminaries in town got together to play against each other. It was a pretty fun day, and we were exhausted and sore when we got home!

These kids are the children of students (maybe staff and faculty as well, not sure) of the Nazarene seminary and they sang a welcome song for all of us.

Here's some of our students underneath our tent. Our school color was that yellow you see there. I don't own anything yellow cause it looks bad on me, so I came in my white Tshirt.

So, I played volleyball. Apparently, I can play volleyball- didn't know that. I guess it's more accurate to say I can serve- scored 11 points in a row during one set! I'm not sure if I just hit the ball in this picture or if I'm getting ready to... if I'm getting ready to hit it I'm probably screaming in terror that it's coming towards me- I usually try to avoid the ball...

Here's our team. We did win one game. This is a great group of girls, so it was fun playing with them. I was roped into playing because they needed a sixth player. We decided that in order to motivate ourselves we'd pretend the ball was our assignments. So, that ball became an OT midterm, an exegetical paper and Hebrew in general! Just a little seminary humor for you!!

Uche played one game of soccer. Our school didn't have a soccer team, so he joined another. Most of the pictures I got were like this- of Uche running away. I would try to get a picture of him doing something but by the time the picture would be taken he I'd get this.

Ok, here's a good one.

So, I didn't think I'd be playing anything. I was planning on finding a tree and I brought some homework to work on... so no sunscreen. I totally didn't even think about it till the end of our last game, and I saw my arms were a little pink. If you look closely you can see the outline of white skin from my sunglasses on my face. My arms look worse in this picture than they were. No need to lecture- I KNOW I need to wear sunscreen.

When we're not doing homework...

2010-01-27T04:30:00.001-08:00

Lately I've been trying to figure out what I could share on our blog. I don't know how many more pictures I can post of us sitting in front of our computers with books piled all around us in the library! That's where we spend a large amount of our day. The library is air conditioned, has wifi and lots of books, so it's a good place to hang out! Sometimes we get to have a little fun...

Awwww... Starbucks... It's my happy place....

But even time at Starbucks must not be wasted. Some light reading... The Law and its Fulfillment A Pauline Theology of the Law- actually it was pretty interesting and quite helpful for my paper on Romans 7. Uche was reading about Old Testament prophecy. Actually, we went to Starbucks during a recent trip to immigration- Starbucks is making a killing being located right across from a place that requires you to wait for anything and everything.

So, this outing was purely fun (though we did go grocery shopping afterwards). We went and saw Avatar. Fortunately, the mall closest to us has an IMAX 3D screen, so we got to really enjoy all the effects.

Had to add a picture of Uche with his glasses, just to be fair. He insisted on wearing them walking into the theater and walking out. Maybe I can find this style in pair of sunglasses for him.

In all seriousness, we have been super busy this month. Fun outings do not write papers! We have been spending time in a poor community for our internship. We've been meeting with people there, and that has added to our already loaded schedule, but we're enjoying it and learning a lot. It's been exciting to put into use the great stuff we've learned over the last year.

We were joking while taking this picture that it was going to look like a class picture, and it kind of does. These are just some of the people we'll be working with in the community. They're all community leaders in some way, and their input is invaluable. Without their help we couldn't hope to accomplish anything.

We interviewed this woman about community issues. She was very brave to speak in English with us. I really respect any person who can even function in another language, and she was great! She did a great job of explaining things to us.

We'll be working with a church planter in the community to see how the church plant can be involved in community development. We're hoping to be able to work with the community to come up with a plan for some sort of project that could be a blessing to the whole community. We also talked about this community before, click here if you want to read about it.

Christmas trip 2009 part 2- Malaysia and Singapore

2010-01-06T04:24:00.000-08:00

We were so sad to leave Hua Hin and the beautiful beach, but we wanted to see as much as possible on our trip, so we headed out of town. We had hoped to make arrangements in Bangkok to take a train from Hua Hin to Penang, Malaysia. The train was sold out! So, we headed down to Hua Hin and hoped we could make arrangements from there. We went into a travel agent near our hotel right after we checked in and were able to make arrangements to take a bus. We were happy just to be able to get to Penang as we had a schedule of reservations ahead of us. We left Hua Hin at 9:30 at night and arrived in Penang the next day around 6 pm. It was a very very long trip. We first rode on a nice sleeper bus, but early the next morning we were transferred to mini bus (vans) for the rest of the trip.
Once in Penang we were able to meet up with a friend of mine from college who lives there with his family, and he was able to set us up to stay in a guest room in their office. It was located in a nice quiet neighborhood close to cheap, but tasty, restaurants. In fact, Penang is known for good cheap food. We found it to be true! We went to church the next morning and spent the afternoon at the Penang Botanical gardens and wandering around town a bit. We left early the next morning for Kuala Lumpur. Our camera battery was getting low after Thailand, so we didn't get as many pictures of the rest of our trip as we'd like, but we did get a few good shots.

At the entrance to the gardens there were a couple carts selling snack food. I got some watermelon and Uche got peanuts. The lady who sold it to him asked if it was for feeding to the monkeys. I told her that he doesn't share his peanuts! Uche is serious about peanuts. :)

In the end, Uche did share a few with the monkeys.

The gardens were really beautiful and we enjoyed the quietness and the lush greenness. Because we live in the middle of a huge city we appreciate any chance to spend time in nature. We hadn't seen that many trees in one place for a while.

Inside the city we saw this street market and went looking for something to eat. It was super busy, as you can see, and we finally decided to head to the market closer to where we were staying. For most of our meals on our trip we just found a local market like this to eat in. Usually they're cheap and the food is good. At one point we did have dinner at KFC- I couldn't bear anymore rice and noodles.

It seemed like all along the coast of Penang (at least the areas we saw) there were high rises like these. They must have fantastic views.

Early Monday morning we flew to Kuala Lumpur. The must see place there is the Petronas Towers. Not sure what the banner says above Uche, but that's one of the entrances to the towers.

See we did travel together. We always joke that most of our pictures look like we went by ourselves since we spend our time taking each other's pictures. Fortunately, we can usually find some friendly person to take one of us together.

There is a park on one side of the towers and they have a shallow lake with a bunch of water fountains. Right after we took this picture it started pouring and we had to run for cover. We shared a gazebo with a bunch of people until it was safe to go out.

We didn't really do much in KL. We were exhausted and low on money. We had had a stressful morning and after days of being on the move we both kind of pooped out. We had been excited to fly to KL from Penang because it was a cheap short flight and then we'd get to spend the whole day in KL before taking a sleeper train to Singapore. In Penang, my friend had made arrangements for a taxi to pick us up at 5:00 am to take us to the airport. At 4 that morning I was woken up by the doorbell; I woke Uche up so he could go see what was going on. The taxi driver said he was ready to take us to the airport. Uche told him it was only 4, but the taxi driver corrected him saying it was 5! Well, the clock we were using as our alarm had been set on Thailand time which is an hour behind, so we were an hour behind. AUGH! We rushed to get ready and prayed we'd make it to the airport on time. We did make it, obviously, but I think I used all my adrenaline getting ready, so I was not in the mood to wander around a new city. We spent a lot of time just sitting at different places watching people. At one point we sat in an entrance of a large mall with these fantastic Christmas decorations (sorry no pictures of it) watching people take their pictures next to the decorations. It was a little weird to see M*slims taking pictures with Christmas decorations with songs about baby Jesus in the background. It's a crazy world we live in! Anyhow, at the end of the day we were happy to get on the train and head down to Singapore.

Singapore is something else. When we were walking around I felt like I was in Manhattan- it was so clean and beautiful! I haven't seen that many new luxury cars in a long time!

We spent a lot of time walking on Orchard Rd. which was super decorated for Christmas. The street is lined with malls. We even did a little shopping ourselves buying me a pair of shoes.

At the end of our day as we were riding the bus back to our hotel I spotted a Borders! A Borders!! I LOVE bookstores and I miss Borders/Barnes & Noble stores so much while I'm overseas. I almost yelled, "STOP THE BUS", but I really needed a shower and I had to go to the hotel to do that.... but if it hadn't been 36+ hours since I had showered (while walking miles in the tropic heat) I totally would've given up the money set aside for eating for the rest of the trip to go relax in Borders with a cup of coffee for a few hours!

This is the visitor center in Singapore, on Orchard Rd. They have FREE foot and leg massage machines. It's right next to the FREE chilled water cooler with cone shaped cups. If I didn't already love Singapore- I would've at that moment! After our refreshing time in the visitor center we were ready to hit the road and check out some more sights.

This is a well known hotel, Raffles Hotel. I still need to google it to see why. :) We didn't go inside because of the afore mentioned lack of showers!

This was a cool side street in Singapore. The street looks old and quaint which is contrasted with the modern skyscrapers in the background.

We were sad we only had one day in Singapore. It seems the theme of this trip was too many cool things to see, so little time!

Christmas trip Part 1- Thailand

2010-01-03T05:02:00.001-08:00

It's hard to be away from home for Christmas, so for the three Christmases I've spent away from home I've traveled. My poor husband, has spent many more Christmases away from home, but he handles it better than I do- he handles most of life better than me as well! :) This year we decided to travel around another part of Asia we'd never been. We found some good priced tickets going to Singapore, so we bought them and started planning. We found out it's pretty easy to travel through Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore, so we decided to head straight to Bangkok from Singapore and then work our way back down to Singapore over the next week. Over the next couple days we'll put up pictures to show what we saw. It was a once in a lifetime trip, and we won't bore you with all the stories, but if you have an extra 4 hours on your hands, give us a call, and we'll give you the long story! :)

Sitting in the tuk tuk in Bangkok. We only got to ride it once, but it's a fun way to travel. We were all about public transportation on this trip!

Uche enjoying the river taxi. Another great way to get around Bangkok. Sometimes we weren't sure what stop to get off at, but we just figured we'd follow the other foreigners since they hopefully knew where to go. The strategy worked pretty well actually.

View from river taxi. Not a sight you see everyday... unless, of course, you live in Bangkok. We really enjoyed seeing sights from the river. You can see how big these river taxis are.

This was outside the Grand Palace- not bad for a self portrait. This was before we decided to pay the admission to go inside. We debated whether to spend the money since admission was over $10 a person, and we were budget traveling.

We were glad we paid to go inside or we couldn't have gotten a picture like this! We have a lot of pictures from inside, but we'll only post a few here. Everytime we turned a corner we'd see another amazing building.

We had to wear long pants inside. In fact, they wouldn't let you enter in shorts. So, outside the palace there were quite a few small shops renting sarongs and pants to people who weren't in dress code. We had our handy dandy zip off pants to wear, so we didn't look ridiculous wearing the rented clothes. I tried to get a picture of a guy wearing purple pants he had rented, but couldn't manage it!

Isn't this building gorgeous? The colors were fantastic! Towards the end of our time there we were just overwhelmed with the beauty of the place and it was hard to get excited for another fantastic building.

The shapes of the buildings were so different from anything we'd seen before. There were lots of people taking pictures, so sometimes it was a bit of a juggling act to get a picture without other people in it.

The buildings were huge, as you can see in relation to me. The Grand Palace was totally worth the entrance fee, so if you get a chance to go see it- do!

On Christmas Eve we traveled from Bangkok to Hua Hin which is a beach town about 3 hours from Bangkok. We only had one night there, but once we arrived we wished we could stay much longer. It was great!

After we arrived in town we wandered around checking out the beach, restaurants, markets, etc. I had seen on the internet that there was an international church that met at the Hilton, and we had talked about seeing if they were doing any special services while we were there, but we didn't know where the Hilton was. As we were walking along the beach we looked up, and there was the Hilton! So, we went inside to see what we could find out. At the time we were both in our bathing suits- totally not dressed for the Hilton! They told us the church would be having a Christmas Eve service in 30 minutes. We rushed down the road to a restaurant for dinner since we hadn't eaten in a long time and scarfed down some fabulous food and went to the service bathing suits and all! It was a wonderful service and we met some neat people and it was soooo nice to fellowship with brothers and sisters during this special holiday service. After the service we headed back to the hotel, but were distracted by a night market on the way where we spent a couple hours eating fun stuff and just hanging out there.

Christmas morning breakfast- mocha, vanilla latte, chocolate croissant and almond croissant! :) For most the trip we ate street food- lots of rice and noodles, but for Christmas morning I forced Uche to go to this coffee shop because I just couldn't do rice on Christmas morning!

This was our spot for Christmas Day. We sat here, swam, sat some more, ate, sat some more and swam again. It was super relaxing!

This was the first Christmas I'd spent at the beach. It's a great way to spend Christmas if you can't be home with family. There were lots of people to watch and the sand and breeze felt great!

The Hilton is the large hotel in the background. We didn't take too many pictures at the beach because we were too busy relaxing and enjoying it! :)

Unfortunately we had to leave Hua Hin Christmas night. We took a bus from there to Penang, Malaysia. I'm looking a little red as I wait for the bus...

Stay tuned for more trip pictures....

Happy New Year!

2009-12-31T19:04:00.000-08:00

We got back from our Christmas trip the evening of Dec. 30, and we're still trying to organize our thoughts and pictures, so before I share about that, let's talk about New Year's Eve here in Manila. This was the first year I'd been in the Philippines for New Years (Uche's spent a few here) because I had always been visiting outside the country for Christmas when we lived here before. I've heard alot about the noise, partying, fireworks etc that happen here, so I wanted to experience it at least once. I have to say it was something else!

I've spent New Years with large crowds before, 50,000 for the year 2000 in Portland, OR, and 20,000+ at two different Urbana conferences, but last night was the noisiest ever! We got together with our neighbors for dinner, watched a movie and around 11:30 we went up to the roof to watch fireworks. People have been setting off fireworks here for weeks. All through the Christmas season you can hear and see them; the two big malls near us had a big fireworks show every Saturday throughout December, but the climax was last night. It was pretty noisy during dinner, but we could still carry on a normal conversation with each other. When we went up to our rooftop at 11:30 the noise of the fireworks and firecrackers was deafening. We had to shout in each other's ear to be heard! It went on like this for at least an hour before it settled down a little. I have no idea when it stopped because it was still pretty noisy when we went to sleep around 1:00 am.

I'm glad I was able to experience New Year's Eve here. I've never seen anything like it before, and I'm not sure where else I celebrate quite like that. According to our friends this year's celebration was a little subdued because people aren't doing as well financially as in years past, plus there were major national tragedies that occurred here during 2009. BUT if that was subdued.... I can't imagine what normal is like....

This is the group we had dinner with. We enjoyed tasty food and lots of laughs.

This scene was repeated on thousands of streets throughout the Philippines. So the noise was coming from the street and from the sky.

During the height of the fireworks. From every angle on our roof this is what we saw. It was pretty amazing.

Two worlds

2009-12-14T03:32:00.000-08:00

Within the last week we went from one side of the metro area to the other. It began with a trip to Manila to go to immigration. We actually live in Quezon City which is bigger and more populated than Manila, but is part of metro Manila. When we have to go to Manila we always combine as much as possible in the trip. Immigration trips are often paired with trips to the barber for Uche. There's one guy in the city that cuts most of the black men's hair here- they've trained him! Then we usually head to a Middle Eastern restaurant for lunch. I LOVE hummus and we tried a new place last week, and it was fantastic. We then headed to a Christmas bazaar at the World Trade Center where I was hoping to find Filipino handicrafts- I'll tell you about my disappointment in a bit.

You can see the hookahs behind me. While we were there a few different men came in to chat and have a smoke. They're really cool looking I think.

I was excited when we walked into the Christmas bazaar and saw this display. I saw the traditional Filipino huts with the poinsettas and I thought how the whole place must be full of local handicrafts. I was specifically looking for a very Filipino looking nativity. Then we walked into the hall, and I was soooooo disappointed. It was full of stuff you can find at any market- cheap t-shirts, cheap plastic toys and no Filipino crafts to be found. I was bummed, but glad I hadn't made a special trip for it!

A few days later we headed to the total opposite end of the metro area to a place called San Mateo. During the floods this area was hit really hard. A pastor who has been planting churches in a couple different communities there has been working to help people to rebuild their homes that were destroyed in the flood. We went to go see what has been done in the recovery and try to see if there's the possibility of us doing our internship in one of the communities.

The last community we visited is really on the edge of town, and the name of the community translates as edge of the town. It's hard to believe we were still in the metro Manila limits, because it felt like it was worlds away. The people have to cross this rive to get from the town of San Mateo to their homes. Many people living there have carabaos (like these in the picture above) which are water buffalos that they use in farming.

There're also cows. We had to keep reminding ourselves we weren't out in the province (rural areas).

We took a boat ride across the river. I was ready to wade, but the boat ride was nice. This little guy was helping his dad transport people back and forth.

I was a little concerned how low the boat sat in the water with all of us, but no worries, the driver was very good and we made it safely across without a drop of water getting in.

In the community there some homes like this one. With the second story the husband of this family was able to stay on the roof during the flood to watch their home while the rest of his family fled, with many others from the community, to a nearby hill when the waters rose. This family was fortunate to have that second story and a house built with cement blocks.

This is an abandoned home that a woman in the church plant is considering buying because her home was totally destroyed during the flood. It was in pretty bad shape. It's hard to imagine a family living here.

This little girl was too cute not to photograph. Her family lives on the edge of the community and their living conditions are horrible. It's hard to see people living in such dehumanizing conditions.

Here's her little brother retrieving the tire he was playing with. I kept trying to get him to smile for me, so I could take his picture. He never did. He did smile when I showed him the pictures I took of him and his sister- he got quite a kick out of that.

All in all this week was kind of normal for us. There's such a contrast of wealth and poverty in this city. We have our feet in both worlds. We hang out in restaurants and enjoy fun activities around the city, but we also visit with people who live in conditions that depress you. This is how we see our future- being a part of these two worlds.

Taal

2009-12-08T00:02:00.000-08:00

Last Saturday Uche and I joined our friend Holly for a day trip a couple hours outside the city. We didn't know exactly how it would all work out, but we just decided to head down and try to hike the volcano Taal. It ended up being a super fun stress free trip. Sometimes it's crazy traveling in foreign countries when you don't know exactly what you're doing. But with help from a lot of friendly people we met along the way we got to hike the volcano and enjoy a day in a beautiful place. Holly was super fun to hang out with; we were sad to say goodbye as she headed back to Nor Cal a couple days after our trip, but maybe we can hike another volcano with her in California!

We had to take a banca (boat) across the lake to the volcano. Taal is a volcano that sits in the middle of Lake Taal.

This was the last picture we took on the boat ride as soon after this was taken we were getting soaked from waves of water hitting us. The lake was really choppy and water would just fly in, fortunately the water was warm!

The hike wasn't too long, 4 km or almost 2.5 miles up. It had some pretty steep parts, but it wasn't bad. You could rent a horse if you wanted to so they would have to do all the hard work. This guy on the horse kept riding by us trying to convince us to rent the horse. We kept assuring him we were fine and wanted to walk. I noticed he always showed up on the steep parts! I guess he was hoping we'd see the lunacy of walking ourselves up the steep path, come to our senses and rent his horse. The lady up ahead of us did succomb to the temptation of sitting on the horse and enjoying a ride to the top.
Part of the way up. The views were fabulous. We had to keep stopping to take it all in.

The three of us. See we're still smiling, so the hiking must not have been to hard! :)

View from the top.

Once you're on top of the volcano you can see another lake inside the crater. So, we were by a lake which is inside a volcano which is in a lake. Did you follow all that?

Yay! We're at the top. There was a fabulous breeze blowing and it was just a perfect place to relax after the hike and enjoy the beauty around us.

Uche took this cool picture. I just love it.

Fore!

2009-11-30T23:55:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was a holiday, so our landlord invited us to join him and two of his kids to go hit some golf balls at a driving range near our house. We enjoy doing this at home, so we were excited to join him. Uche has gone once before, but this was my first time going to the driving range here. I'm not sure I'll want to do it again in the States.
At home I have to haul my own bucket of balls to the area where I will hit. I also have to set up each ball I want to hit- not so here. See the girl in the picture below. She not only arranged to have bucket of balls delivered there, but she also set up each and every ball I hit. She would set up a ball on a tee, or if no tee was needed, she would set the ball on a little mound of packed dirt. Pretty much I just hit balls over and over. No bending over for me! I was a little scared at first that I would hit her, but she was unfazed. I guess she's gotten used to it since she does it all day, six days a week! Oh, she also cleaned the clubs when we were done and hauled them out to the car. Seriously, golf courses in the States have a long way to go....

I'm quite proud of this picture I took of Uche during his follow through. I used the sport setting and I like how it turned out!

I hope this picture was captured when I hit a ball, and not one of many swings and misses! You're not allowed to make fun of my form.

Can you see a spot of green past the 75 yard sign and a little to the right? This was one of my favorite things at the driving range. That's the guy who has the unfortunate job of collecting all the golf balls. He has a shield (the green thing) he holds while he does his job. I managed to hit him once when he was a little closer- it cracked me up. He probably didn't think it was as funny as I did. It was great to have something to aim for!

Fiesta!

2009-11-23T04:46:00.001-08:00

This past weekend was fiesta time in our barangay (neighborhood). I'm not quite sure what the celebration is for, but it has something to do with the Spanish culture that was brought to the Philippines during their colozination of the islands. It is also related somehow to the Catholic church down the street. I should google it! Anyhow, fiesta is party time. The week leading up to the fiesta had many groups like the one below going up and down the streets. They're loud so you hear them long before you can see them. They dance some dance routines and bang on drums, making a big ole ruckus. They also hand out envelopes so people can make donations to their group. They tried to hand us one, but we put on our dumb foreigner face (sometimes we manage this look without trying) and they moved on.

On Sunday evening the parties were in full swing. The streets were closed to traffic and people were out in the streets eating and enjoying hanging out. There was a live band playing on the street behind our place. At one point we could hear the band playing and two different karaoke songs going on in two different places. It was worse than it sounds!

The owners of our building had a nice party up on our rooftop (we have a great covered rooftop garden on our building) so we went up to join the merriment. The karaoke was going strong and the lechon baboy (a whole pig roasted) was ready.

Up close and personal with the baboy.

Karaoke provides many hours of entertainment in the Philippines. Filipinos love to sing and perform, so a karaoke machine is a must have.

We had a good time eating good food and visiting with our neighbors and listening to people butcher songs.

I suppose that's an appropriate picture to finish off this post.

Time in CA

2009-11-19T14:43:00.000-08:00

We're back in Manila and excited to be starting our last semester of school. We arrived late Monday night and started classes on Tuesday. We're still trying to adjust to the time, and are way too acquainted with 2:00 am! We had a great month long visit at home, and we enjoyed surprising people. Here's some highlights from our time in Nor Cal. Sorry, they're out of chronological order, but I can't be bothered with moving them around... I got to get ready for class!

Celebrating my birthday a few days early with a German chocolate cake with two cans of frosting- my favorite! It looks like it's on fire! :)

Slagle family get together. A little pre-Thanksgiving dinner. We'll enjoy another Thanksgiving here, but one can never eat too much turkey and stuffing.

Uche on the river trail. We enjoyed being outside in the cool air and exercising without sweating profusely. Of course, in Manila we sweat without exercising....

Trick or treating with my niece and nephews. They're too cute.

Uche and I got to work together washing windows. It was pretty fun and we enjoyed the time we got to do this, and we were so blessed to see God provide work for us. I have decided that manual labor is not for me, and look forward to many happy years working in an office! :)

Because I am my mother's daughter I enjoyed the fall colors. Sometimes fall doesn't happen in our area- summer just suddenly turns to winter, but our month there was perfect fall weather. We enjoyed every second of it!!

Uche's grandma

2009-10-31T09:49:00.000-07:00

Today, my grandma is being laid to rest. She sojourned in this world for one hundred and six years! She lived a great and successful life and was loved by almost every one in the village. She was strong and lived by herself till about a year ago. She was one of the strongest and most hardworking women I have ever seen. I lived with her till I was twelve. She loved me as every loving grandma could love their grand kids, but unlike most grandmas, she was a disciplinarian too. I'm glad she was firm with me that's why I turned out the way I am.

She lost her husband many years ago but refused to remarry, instead chose to stay and raise up her only daughter, my mom. She was devoted Chatholic and we used to go to early morning masses together. Till she died, I called her mma (mother), and called my mom Nda (auntie), or ate in Tagalog (Philippines language).

My grandma was the best grandma in the world and I love her dearly. I'm looking forward to seeing her in heaven someday.

Adieu Mma Anna! We your 6 grand children, 24 great grand children and your 2 great great grand children love you.

Our first meal

2009-10-25T12:20:00.000-07:00

We arrived in the States last Saturday to surprise Sarah's family for a month long visit. We flew into San Francisco and rented a car and headed north. On our way we stopped in Williams and had a little lunch. While overseas we always talk about how much we miss Mexican food, so we were really looking forward to a burrito. The tacqueria did not disappoint- the burrito was fantastic!!

Enjoying the beautiful fall weather while I anticipate the carne asada burrito... My mouth was watering before it showed up!

Our burrito. It was huge. It's like the size of Uche's head. We cut it in half and gobbled it down. In Manila we have Mexican restaurants, but they're not as good, and the burritos are not this humungous. This was the first of three Mexican meals we've had this week!

Uche lived to tell....

2009-10-12T16:26:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I went to the dentist for the first time in my life! I never had any reason to go to the dentist before because I never had a toothache or hole or whatever. It's not that the thought of going for a dental check up (is there anything like that?) or the popular teeth cleanning has never crossed my mind. But there is a saying that who ever goes to the witch doctor must come back with some kind of news, good or bad, but mostly bad news. Same also with the dentist; once you visit them, you have started a long journey that you don't know where it will take you. You will have no choice than to keep going back again and again. You can't quit going once you start.

Anyway, being a brave man, I decided to take advantage of the affordable dentists here in the Philippines. There are Dental Clinics on almost every street in Metro Manila. All I can say is that I enjoyed my first trip to the dentist. The lady was friendly and knows her job. I was sure there would be an accident or something that would result to me getting a surgery, but thank God she was under the power of the Holy Spirit.

The only weird experience was the dentist yanking on my teeth. I thought she would pull my entire teeth out but sure she knew what she was doing. I was also disgusted to see what she was scraping off my teeth (yucky!), I won't offend you with the details. If you have never been to dentist, let me encourage you to visit one soon. You got stuff in your mouth.

My entire jaw was frazzled after the trip, but then I had to sit in a four hour class afterward and I even had to give a report in the class. Like I said, once you go there, you will keep going back; she asked me to come back in a month! for another cleanning!! Others see their dentist once or twice a year, but mine will be monthly!

Aftermath

2009-09-29T05:59:00.000-07:00

Ondoy left a mess that is now being cleaned up. The past couple days we've been able to go to parts of the city badly affected by the flooding. Yesterday we were able to help clean inside houses that are covered in the mud now that the water has gone down. Today we visited some pastors and their families whose homes were completely destroyed in twenty minutes from flooding and they escaped with their lives and the clothes on their back. The water came in and covered the first floor completely and up to their knees on the second floor. They managed to swim out by holding onto rope to get to higher ground, to safety. They're now trying to move into new homes and starting all over as they've lost everything they've owned. The vast majority of people here do not have insurance, so within a few hours everything they owned is destroyed and now they're starting over with nothing but the clothes on their backs. We've only seen a few homes, but the loss of life and possessions is staggering.

These pictures are taken from inside the van we were riding in, so they're a little blurry. We spent hours on the road because of traffic. Many people are trying to get in and out of the affected places, and some of the roads aren't the best.

These pictures are from the compound of the two pastors' homes. There's no water or electricity there right now, so clean up is not going to be able happen anytime soon. Cleaning up all the mud with water would be challenging, but without water, not possible. The first picture is from inside one of the pastors' homes.

Ondoy

2009-09-26T17:58:00.000-07:00

If you haven't heard yet, a tropical storm, Ondoy, moved over the Philippines yesterday. It really affected Metro Manila badly. We were safe, warm and dry in our lovely apartment, but many many others were not. We especially thought of our classmates and the people we've been visiting in the informal settlement (squatter) areas who are not so unaffected. More than 50 people have died as a result of the storm and flooding. Thousands of families are living in the communities pictured below, and life is precarious for these people on the best of days, but yesterday... I can't even imagine. Please pray for them.

Retreat

2009-09-21T17:49:00.000-07:00

We joined nine other couples from our church for an overnight marriage encounter. We got to stay at a very nice hotel which was fun, and enjoyed getting to know other couples from our church.

Below are pictures taken from the vow renewal ceremony at our church, including a foot washing. This is the church we were married in six years ago, so it was fun to do this ceremony there.

Our favorite snack currently

2009-09-01T22:49:00.000-07:00

That is what a kilo of rambutans look like. They're crazy looking fruit. They're currently in season, so we've been eating them quite frequently.

The picture's a little blurry, but you can see the "hair" that shoots out the sides. The seed is about the size of an almond, so the fruit inside is just a small amount.

Uche is the official breaker open of the rambutans in our family; I can't seem to get them to open. He twists, squeezes and tears it open, and I just take out the tasty fruit inside. The texture of the white part that has the seed in the center is like the inside of a grape, but the taste is not really comparable to something we eat in the States. So, I'll just say that they're very tasty, and you'll have to come visit us to taste one!

That is what a kilo of rambutans look like when the Ajeros are done with them!

Visiting

2009-08-31T05:39:00.001-07:00

For the past few weeks we've been spending half a day in a poor community with a couple classmates for our community organizing class. It's been an amazing learning experience. It would be hard to describe to you what we experience there; it's something that must be experienced to be understood. We're so grateful for our time here in school where we get to learn about different ways to work with the poor and get to know people in some very poor communities.

The pictures below were taken in a community that's been built above a canal. We've spent hours here drinking soda and talking with the locals. Quite eye opening.

Where are we??

2009-08-24T18:12:00.001-07:00

China??

Nope, we're still in Manila. These pictures were taken in Chinatown. We love Chinatown here and in San Francisco. It's fun to "travel" and experience China without leaving the country. I love this picture of McDonald's with the Filipino flag. Uche's quite the photographer. We ate some great food the day we hung out there. There are no pictures of the food cause we were too busy eating!!

What we've been up to...

2009-08-16T03:03:00.000-07:00

If you were to ask me how we're doing here in the Philippines I would tell you we're good, but so busy. Our school load is quite heavy this semester and we're enjoying every minute of it. There's so much to learn! We've also been kept busy with different things outside of the classroom. I'll try to show a few pictures of things we've been up to.

One of our Korean classmates had a team from his home church visiting, so he invited me and Uche to come do a short lesson on English pronunciation. As a thank you they sent us home with t-shirts and kimchi!

For our intro to community development class we had a retreat at our professor's house. She lives outside of the metro area where life is cooler, calmer and less polluted than our place. We were able to enjoy good discussions about the role of the church in the world and relax in that restful place.

One of the things we enjoy here is different kinds of fruit. We miss things like peaches and nectarines which are not to be found here. But we get to enjoy things like mangos, sweet pineapple, and pomelos. You can see what pomelos are like in the picture above. They are bigger than grapefruits and sweeter. When we purchased our pomelo we asked the lady to cut off the skin which took a good inch off the diameter. Later that evening we enjoyed this sweet fruit in one sitting.

Mostly we've been studying. We have been reading and writing and reading some more. We've been spending lots of time in the library which is air conditioned. We especially like these seats as they are just a few feet away from the air conditioner! So, if you ever want to know what we're doing, it's probably a pretty accurate guess that we're sitting in those two chairs with a book and/or computer in front of us.

BBQ and some rain

2009-07-26T17:15:00.000-07:00

Last night we got to barbeque some baby back ribs. We were excited to see the ribs, and they were on sale so we bought some asparagus and corn to go with them and got ready to party. It started to rain when we were trying to get the coals going, but we were in a covered area so it didn't affect our plans. Then the wind started blowing and it began to rain a little harder. We just moved the grill further under the covering and cooked away. Then the wind started howling and the raining was pouring as it only can in the tropics. We ran for safety because we were getting soaked! We stood in the doorway that leads to the covered patio and watched the ribs cook, which we had fortunately covered with tinfoil so the rain didn't douse our fire and delicious smelling food. I decided that this meal was the best meal we've cooked in this country. Sometimes it's hard to find food that tastes like what you're used to while living overseas. You may be able to find all the ingredients but they don't taste like what you're expecting it to. Fortunately, we still have another rack of ribs, so the fun will continue!

Uche working hard on the grill.

The coals are getting hot...

Rain! I wish you could see, hear and feel the force of the rain storm. It's pretty cool.

Well, it was cool until we got back to the apartment and noticed watering running down out of our cabinet. We had had problems with this before but last week a guy came and "fixed" it. There was an open hole that had been cut out to put a fan in, but someone ended up building a cabinet over it, so they covered the hole with a board. Well, boards on outside walls don't hold it up so well in this climate, especially rainy season, so it was rotting and leaking on the food in the cabinet. So, the landlady arranged to have someone come fill it with cement. He came and whipped it up in a few minutes. We were a little suspicious since it didn't seem like the guy had totally sealed the hole up. We were right! So, water was pretty much coming in at a steady stream, so we cleared out all the food (fortunately we had everything sealed up so it wasn't ruined) and tried to clean up the water all over the cabinet, counter and floor. We have food and everything from the counter spread out on the floor of the living room, and hopefully the hole will be well sealed today. Sorry, no pictures of that excitement we were scrambling to soak up water and rescue everything from the cupboard!

Silver lining

2009-07-13T16:11:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning around 4:30, which is not unusual for me, because since we moved back to the Philippines I have been waking up too early. 4:30am is a little too early for me, even though I am an early riser. By the way, Sarah is a late riser.
This morning I wasn't sure I would go jogging because of the rain. I hate to jog in the rain and it's been raining rats and cockroaches since we came back from summer break. So, I was still contemplating about the rain when I looked outside our window and guess what I saw, a silver lining in the sky. I couldn't hold my excitement as I went jogging. I wasn't the only one excited about the weather. I think school kids were probably most excited about it as they walked druggedly to school. I always pity the kids that have to be in school at the crack of dawn (5.15 - 5.20am). Can you believe that? No matter what time I go jogging, I always meet kids, first grade to high school, heading to school.
I like to go jogging early because that's when the weather is cooler, and there are also fewer people outside especially at the mall where I jog. I jog around the mall in our neighborhood. I basically circle round the mall a few times. It's one of the biggest malls in the Philippines and one lap is probably about one mile.
On my way back from jogging I started thinking about the implication of the silver lining. To me it signifies the end of the rain at the moment. I thought about its application in my life at this moment and I came up with the fact that no matter how gloomy or even rainy life may be today, there will be a silver lining in my sky. Challenges and trials will come but the Lord will always give us the strength to overcome (Psalm. 91:9).
May we see our silver lining as we face the challenges of today.

This Semester

2009-07-08T04:48:00.000-07:00

I thought you may want to know what classes we are taking this semester, and I guess if you don't want to know, you can scroll down to see pictures of Krispy Kreme!

Introduction to Community Development- pretty self explanatory, but it's a little interesting to take this class after having other CD subjects last semester. We're looking forward to getting a good overivew of what CD is and maybe more importantly what it isn't.

Being a Servant Leader- Seminaries train leaders, so we're going to learn how to serve like Christ, with a towel and basin instead of a crown and sword. For this class we're going to start and lead a young professionals group at our church.

Community Organizing- This class takes on a new meaning for us Americans who experienced last year's election... We established last night in class that if we're a community organizer we should be prepared to become President or martyred (like the greatest community organizer, Jesus) and maybe everything in between!

New Testament I- This class will focus on the synoptic gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke.

Theology I- This class studies systematic theology, theology proper (study of God), revelation and bibliology.

I (Sarah) am also taking Doing Theology in Asia- Most of theology has been done from a Western perspective, but the church has grown and is growing more so in the 2/3rds world and the way they do theology is different, so I'm going to learn about the Asian perspective. Though we don't plan to live and work in Asia, I think African theology will probably be more similiar to Asian than to Western thought.

Uche is taking Transformational Learning and Teaching- We learn how to teach in a way that will change the lives and thinking of the people we are teaching. This is different from giving out or downloading information to learners.

So, there you have it our 18 units for this semester. This is how we'll spend our Monday-Thursday. Friday will become a day we spend in poor communities getting to know people there and see what kind of work is being done in these communities. We're super excited about the semester and after all our different first classes we decided that class was going to be a good class. We're so grateful that we have the opportunity to be here and study.

6 years and counting...

2009-06-30T20:31:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday we celebrated our 6th anniversary. It's kind of fun to be back in the country where we met, fell in love and married. While we would've loved to go back to the island (Boracay) where we spent our honeymoon we had class all afternoon and evening, so we had to just have fun at the mall before going to class. We went to one Sarah's favorite places for our date.

Sarah got the chocolate custard filled and Uche got the lemon cheesecake. It's dangerous how close Krispy Kreme is to our house. Of course, we have to walk in the blazing heat to get there, so it's probably a good thing we don't have a car....

Malling

2009-06-28T16:52:00.000-07:00

Did you know that "malling" is a word? It's a verb, meaning to go hang out at the mall, as in, "When my sister came to town we went malling." I think it's fair to say it's the Filipino national past time. Of course, the malls are huge, air conditioned and fantastic here, so why not.

Last week we went to the mall to pick up a couple things at the hardware store and a birthday present. We went into Mi to look for the present. All the sudden a song came on in the store and the employees started singing and dancing. We'd never seen such a thing. But if you're familiar with the Philippines you're not surprised that such a thing exists. They all did the choreographed dance moves through out the song and once it ended went back to what they were doing before.

Can you see what the sign says on the far right? Happy Shopping indeed.

I love that the security guard isn't even watching them. I wonder how many times he's witnessed the show....

While purchasing our items at the hardware store Uche saw something behind my shoulder. Can you guess what it was??

What hardware store doesn't have a karaoke machine that the employees practice on??

Some of our Favorite Things

2009-04-27T10:58:00.000-07:00

Just thought I'd share some photos of what we've been enjoying being back in the States.

We love to ride our bikes, so we've managed to do it a couple times. Of course, our bodies aren't used to it yet, so we're always a little sore... There are crazy people who actually ride in Manila, we know some, but we're not them!! We'll stay on the back country roads thank you very much.

Kool April Nites cruise, a classic car cruise. This is annual event in Redding, and we've done with our great friends the past few years. We were excited to be back in the country for this event.

Fresh air, mountains, clean beautiful water, not always something we get to enjoy in Manila, so we're soaking it up as much as possible.

This is me cutting some lettuce out of my mom's garden. We've been eating salad a lot here. We can get lettuce in Manila, but it's a little spendy and not fabulous. It's been great to walk outside and cut lunch!

Tea Party

2009-04-15T21:09:00.000-07:00

Tonight Uche and I headed down with friends and family to the local Tea Party here in Redding. The tea parties were held all over the country to protest wasteful spending by the federal government in Washington. It was a beautiful evening and fun to be part of. It was held at the Sundial Bridge along the Sacramento River.

Here's everybody gathering to cross the bridge. There were many homemade signs and flags being displayed.

Here's everyone crossing the bridge. The bridge started shaking because of all the people on it so we stumbled more than walked across the bridge.

I just like this picture with the people lined up on the bridge. As we walked along the path people were reading quotes about taxation from our founding fathers.

The crowd gathered under the bridge to put their tea bags in cases that were thrown in the river.

Taipei

2009-04-13T13:18:00.000-07:00

On our way back to the States we purposefully scheduled a long lay over in Taipei, Taiwan. Neither of us had been to this city, so we were excited to check it out. We took a bus from the airport to downtown and cruised around to see what we could see. We had a fantastic day and we're super impressed with Taipei and the unbelievably friendly people we met there.

The picture is too small for you to see the temperature on the Panasonic sign behind Uche, but it says that it's 16 Celsius, which is 60 Fahrenheit. That's pretty 30+ degrees colder than where we had been in Manila. We enjoyed spending a day walking around without sweating.

This is Taipei 101. It's currently the world's tallest building, but will be eclipsed by a building in Dubai this fall. It's really a pretty building and definitely dominates the Taipei skyline.

Uche's almost as tall as 101....

You could buy tickets to go to an observation deck, but it was kind of cloudy so we didn't know if we would see anything if we went up, so we just took our picture next to this mural.

Inside 101 there's a fancy mall. We did a little window shopping, but were afraid to go in the stores. What if we broke something and we had to pay for it?? And those bright pink flowers in the big pots are orchids. There were tons of orchids through out the mall and they were gorgeous.

These motorbikes seem to be the transportation choice of many Taiwanese. They had little parking lots cut out of the wide sidewalks all over the place and they were all full. Uche was checking them out.

This is me in front of the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall. We had no idea what it was commemorating as all the signs were in Chinese. But I found out later it's a memorial to Dr. Sun Yat-sen founding father of the Republic of China.

This was taken from the memorial stairs looking out to 101.

There's park surrounding the memorial with a little lake where we had to take a self portrait.

We walked down to a night market with a side trip to eat some dumplings from a roadside stall. The night market was super fun to look around. I found some great shoes. We had to buy an umbrella because it started raining. The rain limited our time there, but we did manage to buy some tea and dinner.

Here's my dinner. I went with the recognizable since I'm a wimpy eater. The food was laid out like a buffet and we'd just point to what we wanted or use tongs to pick up what we wanted. They'd charge you by the number of food items you chose. It came with rice and soup. It was cheap and delicious!

Here's Uche's meal. He enjoyed his fish and tofu and other veggies. We're not the greatest with chopsticks, so at one point, Uche took one chopstick and just started stabbing at his eggplant. It was more effectice than trying to pick it up.

After a full day of walking around the city we rode a bus back to the airport and availed of the free massage chairs. Uche looks like he's pretty excited about the next 10 minutes. You can see me below mid massage. These chairs may be the reason we think Taipei airport is fantastic!!

Last Days in Manila

2009-04-04T15:35:00.000-07:00

We're now hanging out in Northern California, but I thought I could share some pictures of Manila. Things we love and things we hate. I'll start with the good stuff.

Halo halo, if you ask me this is a bad thing, but Uche loves it. So, the day before we left we went over to the fast food restaurant Chow King for some halo halo.

This dessert is popular in the Philippines. The bottom is shaved ice mixed with a sweet milk. On top is where things get crazy. There is ube (a purple yam), beans, buko (young coconut), rice crisps, corn, gelatin, and ice cream (vanilla and ube)

Uche was excited to eat it, but I just can't handle all the different things in it. A dessert shouldn't have beans.

This is Uche getting the last drop out.

Finshed! Uche was a happy man!

Now you get to see the thing I think that I may hate the most in Manila.

The following pictures require a bit of explanation. A few years ago the mayor of Quezon City (part of metro Manila) put up fences to block people from crossing Edsa, a major road in QC. He also added walk ways that cross over the road at regular intervals. Then more recently he put up fences along the sidewalk to stop the busses from pulling over and picking people up at any old place since it makes traffic even worse than it is already. Of course, if there's any kind of space people gather and public vehicles stop to pick them up.

At this particular cross over there's very little space between the fence and the stairs, so only one person can pass through at a time. This would be fine except for thousands upon thousands pass through here everyday. Here I am about to pass through the space on my way up the stairs. By the way, the mayor of QC loves the colors pink and blue, so everything is painted those colors. All over the city you'll see these colors.

Here's a wider view of this area. Unfortunately, there's something else on the sidewalk at this point that makes walking here even less fun. When it's hot, as it always is, and there's a line to get through the space, as there usually is, I hate going this way. Unfortunately I have to pass it to get to the mall where we do all our grocery shopping, eating out and movie watching. Can you see what's under the stairs with the green leaves painted on it??

Yes, that is a urinal. The mayor put these up around the city to stop men from peeing along the walls on the roads all over the place. Unfortunately, these urinals just drain on the ground, so there are now these areas that are no fun to be anywhere near. It's a real bummer to stand in line to wait to get through the space.

Delirious!

2009-03-17T22:52:00.000-07:00

I've always wanted to see the band Delirious in concert and last night I got to! When we heard back in January they would be coming to Manila we knew we had to go. We bought our tickets a couple weeks ago, and we were prepared to skip or Tuesday evening class to go, but it ended up being cancelled, so with a clear conscience we set out to take the light rail down to the Araneta Coliseum. Incidentally, the Araneta Coliseum is where the famous boxing match, "The Thrilla in Manila" took place and there's a mall across from the center named Ali Mall after Muhammed Ali. We stopped at DQ for a blizzard snack and went inside to enjoy the show. It was a fantastic concert. We had a fabulous time, and we're lucky we got to see Delirious as this concert was a part of The Farewell Tour, so it was now or never I guess.

View from our seats, you can see we had a good view of the stage.

The only picture we have of the two of us there. That's the problem with going to things with just each other. The level of picture quality goes down!

The show! We also got some cool video that we will enjoy for a long time to come!

Birthday and Polo

2009-03-15T20:21:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was Uche's birthday, so we started the day with chocolate croissants, coffe and fruit. We had plans for most of the day, so we didn't get to celebrate his birthday as much as I would've liked for him. Our friend Ate Evelyn had invited us to a polo match at the Manila Polo Club and our church had it's 15th anniversary celebration in the evening.

We really enjoyed our time at the polo club. It's quite an exclusive place and you can only enter if a member invites you. Our friend's doctor is a member, so we got to enjoy the benefits without the pricetag! I had never seen a polo match before, so it was fun to watch and seems like it's pretty exciting. The horses were quite amazing, and it was fun just to watch them run. They had waitors constantly bringing drinks, so Uche and I started with mango shakes, and I then moved on Coke Zeros. After the match they had a cocktail hour with lots of food. They had roasted on a spit a whole cow, plus they had three small whole roasted pigs (it's called lechon here in PI), lots of chickens, huge platters of salmon, mini cupcakes and lots of other food. My favorite part was CHEESE!! Cheese is not common here, and it's way too expensive to buy in the grocery stores, so I wanted to go wild. Unfortunately, the cheese table was popular, so I didn't get to eat my fill, but I managed a couple bites of blue cheese, brie, and gouda. I could've taken the whole trays and finished them, but I don't think the other people there would've appreciated that. I don't have any pictures of the cocktail hours, as I was too busy enjoying cheese and free soda, just trust me when I say it was amazing.

Afterwards, we headed over to our church for the anniversary celebration. It was fun seeing some old friends, and celebrating with our church family here. We got home late and fell into bed exhausted, but happy to have had such a fun day!

The polo club is located pretty much in the middle of the city, and it feels like an oasis amidst the craziness. We sat in the front row, so we had a pretty good view of the action.

This is our friend, Ate Evelyn. There were lots of people there, and it was a very international. I enjoyed just watching all the people there. It was a pretty exlusive crowd, safe to say we were one of the few seminary students there!

Uche and I trying to look like we do this every weekend! See the waitor behind Uche's shoulder, we probably motioned him over right after this picture for another drink.

Our pastor speaking at the church anniversary.

Manila Malls

2009-03-14T05:43:00.000-07:00

Earlier this evening I was at Trinoma mall. Usually we avoid malls on weekends here because it's wall to wall people and we just can't take constantly running into people, and trying to manuver around people, and the crowds of people all around. Can you guess there's lots of people that go malling here, yes they do use the word malling as a verb?? The first time we went into a mall on a weekend when we arrived last November, we vowed never again. You see, when we lived here before we spent our weekend at the malls, like every weekend. They were air conditioned and they had movie theaters, food and grocery stores, all one needed in life. But something happened in the years since we've returned. More people seem to be at the malls. But I braved the crowds today for a couple reasons, one Uche was going to be gone all afternoon and evening and I would be too bored at home by myself, and two, tomorrow is Uche's birthday, so I needed to buy a few things. So, I built up my courage and found an empty table at a coffee shop (not an easy task), wrote a six page paper, had an iced tea, then went and bought something Uche was eyeing the other day. I survived a Saturday afternoon/evening in the mall.

This picture was taken on Valentine's Day at Trinoma Mall. They were doing a concert in the center so a large part of the massive crowd was focused on that. But it pretty much sums up a typical crowd at Trinoma. It's a huge mall that I've yet to explore completely.

Beach weekend

2009-03-09T03:46:00.000-07:00

This past weekend Uche and I headed out of town to an island just south of Luzon (where Manila is located). We weren't there long, but we enjoyed every minute. We spent our time relaxing on the beach, swimming, eating, reading (for fun, not school work!), and sleeping. We took a ton of pictures, some of which I'll post below. It was great to get out of Manila and enjoy the beach. Since we live in the middle of the city we forget we live on an island, and because there are over 7,000 islands in the Philippines it wouldn't be right to spend all our time on only one of them!

Outings

2009-03-03T22:12:00.001-08:00

I've been lazy about posting pictures from a couple outings so here they are now. We had a family day with our school at a local park. It was a fun day to hang out with our classmates and enjoy some fun activities. Our favorite thing there was a fabulous swimming pool, but we have no pictures of that because we were enjoying the pool too much.

The second outing was a silent retreat for our spiritual formation class. We had to be silent for six hours and we worked through different prayer exercises. We did it at a retreat center in Manila. The grounds were very nice and peaceful; a good setting for a silent retreat. We were amazed there was such a beautiful and peaceful place as this in the middle of crazy Manila.

The Ajeros enjoying family day.

We enjoyed a little time rowing around the little lake with some friends.

These ducks were following us around. You can see our classmates also out on the lake which resulted in a little bumper boats and a few races.

Working hard to take us around the lake.

Cool tree from the retreat center. It was huge. You can see a person on a bench to the right of the tree.

Below is the bench I spent my morning. It was really nice.

Praise the Lord for Burger King

2009-02-24T20:37:00.000-08:00

Right now Uche and I are sitting in Burger King. Why am I telling you this?? I just had to share how cool Burger King is here. First, you can get whoppers (or in our case, whopper jr.s). Second, you can get free internet, and it's fast. Third, there's a movie playing on the tv hanging from the ceiling. Fourth, they have a woman who walks around and offeres massages while you sit and eat, surf the web, or watch a movie. Seriously, why wouldn't we be at Burger King?!?!

Mostly we're at Burger King cause I'm suffering from an awful case of heat rash and I'm supposed to not sweat for it to get better. Uh, I live in Manila, sweating is the most popular past time here. So, I can't stay home cause I sweat too much there, plus the internet wasn't working. I wanted to go to the school but the internet is having issues there too. SO, we are in a very cool, well air conditioned place enjoying ourselves. Please pray this heat rash goes away soon, it's not fun, and I can't eat Burger King three meals a day....

Missions Fest

2009-02-17T22:40:00.000-08:00

Last week our school had our missions fest. We were encouraged to dress in traditional or native clothes during the 3 day event. Being that I dress traditionally American everyday, jeans, T-shirt and flip flops, I decided to wear my Nigerian clothes.

Here's the Nigerian couple. Fortunately we live close to the school because we sure caused more a riot than normal walking down the street in these duds.

I don't know what we're laughing about, but I loved this girl's wig. It's hard to tell from the picture but it's a wig of small braided hair. I need one.

Quite the international group here. The girl in the middle in the purple clothes is our Mongolian neighbor. Her outfit was beautiful. The girl standing next to me is from the southern Philippines and has a heart to reach out to Muslims. You can't see her very well but the green outfit is an Indian sari. I was jealous of her outfit and have decided I must have a sari.

The Community Development department set up a table educating people about the moringa tree. Here in the Philippines it's called mallungay. It's quite an amazing tree; it's even called the miracle tree because of all it's nutrients and uses. We gave out cups of mallungay tea and I made some mallugay bread.

I used a recipe for spinach bread and then cut it into bite size pieces for everybody to try. It turned out pretty well and people enjoyed tasting it.

Happy things

2009-02-05T21:55:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks ago we bought a little electric oven. We went back and forth on the necessity of an oven, but our desire for pot pie and granola won out. Today I made granola again because we gobbled up the first batch. We've loved having the oven and I'm glad we bought it!

One thing I love about Manila is the availibility of American food. There's tons of restaurants from home and the grocery store carries many American products. I'm enjoying this luxury because I know Africa will be much different. Trying to find American products in Nigeria was not easy, and once you did find something it cost an arm and a leg. I once paid over $5 for a generic bottle of syrup. Fortunately I was able to bring back maple flavoring after my visit home and we were able to enjoy homemade syrup for a fraction of the cost. So, as you can see below I had some good food the other day!! I even shared with Uche because that's what a nice wife I am.

Lots and lots of homework!

2009-01-27T05:12:00.000-08:00

We have been pretty busy lately with classes and our assignments. During the month of January we added another class that met all day on Saturdays. So, not only have we lost an extra day to do work, but now we have more to do. Fortunately it's a great class and it's been very interesting. Actually, we love all of our classes. We're so grateful for the opportunity we have to be here and learn valuable information from great people. Though assignments can be overwhelming, we're enjoying every minute!

This is Uche's area of homeworking. It also doubles as our dining table. On average I think we have read over a couple hundred pages a week, plus papers, interviews, research, presentations... I need to stop now I'm stressing!!

This is my work area the desk. The laptop you see there doubles as our tv/movie center as well. We've got a lending library exchange thingy happening with our next door neighbor. But have I mentioned we've had a lot to do, so no movies lately!

During our health and development class we learned how to take each other's blood pressure. Learning these kind of skills is not the point of our class, but it was a fun activity. In the class we've been focusing on the concept of wellness in a community. So, we're thinking of the whole person and what it means for them to be healthy in all areas of life. Uche and I will be doing a presentation in this class on HIV/AIDS and how it affects relationships and communities and how it impacts the poor.

After taking each other's blood pressure we worked together to create meals that high nutrition, but are affordable for a low income family. Thinking through this process was pretty interesting. What if you only had a couple dollars a day to feed your entire family, how would you spend it so you can get the most nutrition possible? This is a problem that the people we hope to work with have to deal with on a daily basis.

This was taken during our Saturday class, Intercultural Communication. We had different glasses on and we were talking about how our culture determines how we see things. Just like the differences in the lenses of each pair of glasses affected how we saw things in the room. These glasses were crazy. The "lenses" are just plastic lines. It was so hard to see out of, and they would've given me a headache if I had to wear them for any amount of time!

We decided as a class the only possible function for these glasses would be to help you keep your eyes on the line you're reading and not lose your place.

Around the town

2009-01-17T04:05:00.000-08:00

My brother Gus came to visit us this past week and schools started again after the Christmas break, so it was a bit of a crazy week. Here's some highlights from Gus' visit.

The main reason for the visit was dental work. There are some really good dentists here and they are much more affordable than in the States. Here Gus displays the pieces of a tooth he had to have pulled. There's a closeup picture of the teeth that I will save you from having to view.

Here's Gus trying on some jeans at Greenhills. This mall has a bunch of stalls where you can buy a variety of items from purses to sunglasses to jewelry. This booth sold jeans and when it came time to try them on they whipped out the dressing room curtain.

Here's Gus enjoying some tropical fruits, papaya, mango and pineapple with pandesal (delicious Filipino rolls).

At Powerplant mall in Makati. I love this mall because it's beautiful and quiet. Most of the malls here are loud and crowded, but this place is just relaxing. There are lots of designer stores here, and of course, I can't afford to buy anything here, so I just enjoy it.

This is at the American cemetery in Manila. There are thousands of graves here for men who lost their lives during World War 2. It's a beautiful and serene place.

The landscaping at the cemetery is beautiful and well maintained which makes for a nice background for a picture of us.

We also spent some time in Intramuros (inside the walls). The walls were built by the Spanish hundreds of years ago and we wandered around for a little bit.

We enjoyed a Middle Eastern lunch complete with Lebanese music videos.

Awww, Starbucks. Did we really live before Starbucks...

Happy New Year!

2009-01-04T21:04:00.000-08:00

On New Year's Eve we travelled to Tokyo so my sister in law could spend New Year with her parents there. It's a big family holiday for Japanese people. It was fun to see a bit of Tokyo. We didn't get any pictures cause we were in the van the whole time, but it seems to be a pretty cool city. It was really fun to look out the window and watch the crowds.

My sister in law's parents bought some noodles for us to eat. It's a traditional New Year's Eve food, and it was quite tasty!

Fortuantely noodles are easy to eat with chopsticks! I think I got every last one.

Group shot. Nigerians really have far reaching extended families. So, Uche says that my sister in law's parents are his in laws as well as my parents. I guess now I'm related to people from 3 different continents!

This is the area where we rang in 2009. It's kind of hard to see, but there's a ferris wheel in the background that had a clock in the middle. The white dashes in the middle counted the seconds. So, we counted down and rang in the new year in Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan, 17 hours ahead of all you west coast Americans.

It was a little brisk, ok, honestly it was freezing!! I borrowed a coat from my sister in law or I would never have ventured out of the car!

Uche sporting a borrowed coat as well.

The group (minus the guy taking the picture).

On New Year's day we went out visiting. We stopped to see a friend who was dressed in traditional Japanese clothing for work. We got some pictures with her; it was a pretty complex outfit.

How boring do my clothes looked compared to her outfit??

Day trip

2008-12-30T18:38:00.000-08:00

The other day we all loaded into the van to take a little road day trip. We left the city and headed for the mountains. We drove along the coast for a while and then started climbing and climbing. We arrived at a summit and pulled over at lookout area to take pictures and see the sights. The views were amazing. We got to see Mt. Fuji and the mountains surrounding it. We also could see Lake Ashi. We then drove down to the town of Hakone and did a short cruise on the lake. It was a gorgeous day with lots of sunshine, but it was COLD, especially on the mountain. We took lots of pictures and they all turned out great, so I will try to post a few to give you an idea of our day out.

View from the lookout point.

Uche holding up the post.

I have no idea what this post says, but the numbers say we are 1011 meters above sea level. I looked up online and that's 3600+ feet. We started at sea level and climbed all the way up in a matter of minutes. It was quite a drive with some great views of the sea.

Welcome! Sarah as tour guide.

During our boat cruise we saw this pirate ship on the lake as well. It was pretty cool looking.

It was a very pretty cruise with lots of photo oppurtunities.

The whole crew. U&S with Uche's brother and his family and a guy from Nigeria with his girlfriend.

Christmas 2008 in Japan

2008-12-28T18:30:00.000-08:00

On Christmas evening Uche's brother invited a few Nigerian guys over to eat Nigerian food to celebrate Christmas. In Japan, Christmas day is not a holiday, so it's a normal day that people work and do life as usual. So after everyone got off work they came over to celebrate Christmas and welcome us to Japan.

Uche with his nephew and their matching Santa hats.

My sister in law bought a cake for the celebration. She loves cake, another reason why she and I get along very well! I've been told that pretty much all the Japanese cakes come with fresh strawberries, there's also strawberries in the filling between the cake layers.

Candles came with the cake so the kids got to blow them out. I don't know if this was the first or second time they were lit. The little one didn't get to help the first time, so they were relit for her to help blow them out. Kids are the same all over the world!

Our niece doesn't like the cake, just the frosting, so she picked all the frosting off her piece. I think she probably got some frosting from her mom's piece as well!

The guys enjoying their Nigerian food. In my opinion Nigerians are the loudest people in the world, these guys didn't disprove my theory!

The international Ajero family.

Eating out Japan style

2008-12-24T23:20:00.000-08:00

My Japanese is not so great, so I can't tell you what this is, but we ate at this restaurant.

Uche is pretty good with the chopsticks. He was showing off by picking up single grains of rice.

I might starve to death if I had to eat with chopsticks all the time. I finally gave up trying to pick up all the corn kernels from the salad.

They gave our nephew a fork and spoon to eat his meal. I would have asked a fork, but they were clearly for the children as it had Snoopy for a handle.

Guess where we are right now????

2008-12-23T21:35:00.000-08:00

Taiwan. On our way to Japan.

Christmas Party

2008-12-14T19:39:00.000-08:00

Last night we had our church's Christmas party. The leaders chose several symbols of Christmas, shepherds, tree, bells etc., that different families or groups could do some sort of presentation about that symbol. We chose candles and set up advent candles and talked about each candle and read scripture. Other groups did songs, skits and even some dancing. After the presentations we ate and chatted. It was a fun party!

Uche with our friend Ate Eveylyn. The kids loved Uche's hat. Ate Evelyn has a full Santa costume that she wants Uche to wear next year...

Here's some pictures of a couple different presentations.

Fashion Police

2008-12-10T01:09:00.000-08:00

Uche came out of the bedroom this morning dressed in an outfit I didn't approve of. I finally convinced him to change. What do you think??

Scenes from Manila

2008-12-07T07:03:00.000-08:00

Here's some pictures of life in Manila.

Here in the Philippines each barangay, small neighborhood area, has a fiesta one weekend out of the year. So that barangay decorates the streets and spends the weekend partying. A couple weekends ago Uche and I noticed that there were a lot of fireworks going off and there was lots of loud parties happening. Uche even saw at one house there was a live band playing in the courtyard. We thought at first it was early Christmas celebration as Filipinos start celebrating Christmas as soon as the "ber" months hit beginning in September. A day or later we realized that it was fiesta time. Next year we'll have to join in.

The first picture shows the whole street decorated and here's what they used. Spaghetti noodle wrappers. So when you're looking down a street it looks really cool and decorative. Then you get closer and see what they used. I think it's such a creative way to make inexpensive cool decorations. Of course, someone ate a lot of spaghetti as the decorations go on for blocks.

Here's the Catholic church down the street decorated. This is probably my favorite decorations in this area. You can't tell really well in the picture how shiny the plastic streamers are.

I couldn't tell what exactly was used to make these decorations. They're silver plastic and very shiny. All I know is that it looks cool especially when there's a breeze.

Part of adjusting back to life in Manila is getting used to crowds again. As it's Christmas time, the malls are ridiculously crowded. Uche tried to get a picture that would do the crowds justice, and this is as close as we got. We'll be working on getting more because it's really quite amazing. As far as you can see it's a sea of people...

This is the mall two streets from our house. It's huge, of course, and they've been working on a new addition to it. It's going to be the 2nd biggest mall in the Philippines when they're done with it. It may be hard to see, but there's quite a few guys working on the blue section.

Here's a close up of two guys working. Notice the lack of any kind of safety anything. It kind of freaks me out to watch them because they're working really high up and if something bad happened they would be dead.

Evening at Mall of Asia

2008-12-02T18:18:00.000-08:00

Monday evening Uche and I joined a couple from our church to go see SM Mall of Asia. Basically, if you haven't seen an Asian mall then you haven't seen a real mall! American malls are childs play compared to the ones here. Malls here have all the normal mall stores, food courts, restaurants, but they also have movie theaters and grocery stores. Mall of Asia has been built in the past few years since we were last here. We heard it was huge, and it was! It's the largest mall in the Philippines and the 3rd largest in the world. It sits right on the bay, so they've created an esplanade outside of the mall that borders the bay. It's quite an amazing place.

This in front of the only Olympic sized ice skating rink in the country. There's other malls with ice skating, but not this big. Every few minutes "snow" drops down from the ceiling onto the ice.

This is outside the mall on the esplanade.

This was taken from the skyway between the mall and the esplanade. It's hard for the picture to show how cool it is. The lighted Christmas tree changes color every few seconds.

Also taken from the skyway.

This is Uche in line for one of his favorite treats here in the Philippines. They are blended drinks with tapioca pearls in the bottom. So you get this really wide straw so you can suck up the pearls with your drink. I got mango and Uche got ube, a purple yam.

Chocolate Buffet

2008-11-21T17:47:00.000-08:00

Chocolate and buffet, two words that should always go together... The celebration of my birthday continued on Friday night as Uche and I went to a super fancy hotel, The Manila Peninsula, for a chocolate buffet. They only do this for a couple months out of the year, so lucky us we're here at the right time.

It was wonderful! Not just the delicious chocolate goodies, but the atmosphere as well. It's held in their huge lobby with a live jazz band playing. The service was fabulous and we stuffed ourselves with all different kinds of goodies. We ate a very light dinner, so we'd be able to go wild for dessert!

Uche's favorite was a chocolate, Bailey's cheesecake. I don't know what was my favorite... was it the chocolate panna cotta with brandied cherries or the chocolate fudge cake with a truffle on top or the pot of chocolate hazelnut cream or the chocolate cups with cream and fruit or the dark chocolate fondue and strawberries.... I can't decide!

Afterwards we walked around a little bit to try to work off some of the damage. We looked at some of the windows that are decorated for Christmas and then headed home. It was a wonderful end to my birthday.

Look!! There's chocolate!! Up on the top left in the brass colored pots is ice cream that is set in a block of ice.

Aren't those big blocks of chocolate with truffles scattered on them beautiful??

The presentation was gorgeous. On left you see a chocolate scuplture with gold leaf covering parts of it. The pictures don't do it justice.

Uche enjoying a chocolate dipped breadstick. They were surprisingly good.

Getting the last little bit of the chocolate/hazelnut mousse, I refrained from licking out the bowl... just barely.

A Christmas window at Rustan's department store. It's still bizarre to think Christmas while walking around in sleeveless and capris...

Uche in front of another window at Rustan's. The windows were quite beautiful and really well decorated.

Happy Birthday to me...

2008-11-20T23:34:00.000-08:00

Well, Wednesday (the 19th) was my 33rd birthday. I'm afraid I'm getting old... Anyhow, we used the birthday as an excuse to plan a party for our building. On the top of our building is a covered patio area. The owners have some plants up there and it's a great place to hang out.

We bought some Krispy Kreme donuts (yes, there's KK here!!) and made some popcorn and headed upstairs to get to know our neighbors better. I love donuts, so I didn't really miss birthday cake.

Our party had four different continents represented. There were 3 Americans, 2 Nigerians, 1 Mongolian, 2 Japanese, 1 Australian and 1 Chinese Filipino. Pretty cool, huh? That's one of the great things about living overseas, getting to know people from all over the world.

The other two Americans there were Simpson students, so we're able to discuss Redding versus Manila life. There are a lot of similiarities between the two cities, like they both have fast food restaurants and Starbucks and ... ... ...... ok, there's no more. Of course, even the fast food restauants are pretty different, unless you think you can order fried chicken with rice and gravy at the local McDonalds there...

Here's a picture from our party. The others didn't turn out so we'll have to introduce you to our neighbors another time.

Class Schedule

2008-11-19T21:32:00.000-08:00

On Tuesday, Uche and I enrolled for the next semester. We met with the head of the Commuinty Development department and set up our class schedule for our first semester. She also gave us an assignment due on the first day of classes, write a page on why we chose to study Com. Dev! So, here's the classes we will both be taking this next semester:

Gender & Development
Organizational Development
The Art of Dialogue
Personal & Spiritual Formation
Health & Development

Once we start classes we'll let you know what they're all about!

Bits and Pieces

2008-11-17T16:55:00.000-08:00

We’ve been pretty busy the past week setting up our home and getting things ready for school. Our house is almost complete; we just need some kind of table/desk and then we’re set. Our apartment building is full of international students going to our school, and they have been wonderful. I guess as people graduate and leave they start passing out their belongings, so we’ve been the recipient of these hand me downs. From our neighbors we got: a table, chairs, stools, dishes, silverware, gas tank, 2 burner stove, water containers, and a couch. These were all things we would’ve had to buy, but the Lord just provided them through our neighbors.

Yesterday we went and did our medical exams, blood test and chest x-ray for our school to complete our application. We chose to wait and do it here in order to save some money. By doing it here we saved around $475. Yay!

Today we’ll be registering for classes and next Monday we’ll start school. I can’t believe it’s all really happening. After years of planning and preparing, it’s good to see God has making our dream a reality.

Here’s some pictures of random things for you to enjoy:

This beauty is my pride and joy. It's a hot water heater. Apartments here come with just cold water. Even though it's blazing hot here a cold shower just hurts me, so I knew in order to live here for 2 years a hot water heater is a must. Now, I don't take hot showers cause I would die of heat stroke, but a lukewarm shower is a good thing!

This is my sweet husband sweeping the floor in our kitchen/dining room. It's a local broom, so it looks quite different then what I'm used to at home. Behind him you can see some our borrowed items.

This was taken just down the street from our place. Rooster fighting is a big time thing here with men pampering their roosters and gambling on fights. I won't go into what I think about that, but all I have to say about these roosters is they wake up early and let the world know they're awake for the day!

Our apartment

2008-11-12T15:50:00.000-08:00

Here's some pictures of our new place. Yesterday we shopped all day and today we start the cleaning organizing process. It's a lot of work to go from nothing to a home....

Here's Uche in front of our building.

The sign that greets you at the bottom of the stairs. Fortunately we're only on the 2nd floor, so not too many stairs to climb.

Looking into the apartment from the front door. The kitchen is to the right. The room on the left is our bathroom and the bedroom is on the right.

This the kitchen area.

Our bedroom. Notice the air conditioner under the window. Praise the Lord it came with the apartment, so we didn't have to buy one!

This the top of the building. It's covered, but open so everyone can enjoy the cool breeze (if there's one...). It's a common area for all the people in the building. We're looking forward to using it alot.

Round one of shopping.... There's more to come if my swollen feet and ankles can handle it!

God has done it!

2008-11-10T17:10:00.000-08:00

The other day Uche and I observed that we are currently unemployed and homeless. Well, we're not homeless anymore! God has provided a wonderful apartment for us. Here's the long version of how God provided... If you don't want to read the whole long story then just scroll down for some pictures.
Before leaving the States we made arrangements to stay at a missionary guest house from Friday till Monday morning. We were hoping to have an apartment rented by then and we'd be able to move in on Monday.
So, Friday we arrived at the guest house from the airport where we showered changed and hit the road. We first went to a mall, had lunch and changed some money. Then we met Uche's friend who lives in the neighborhood where we wanted to live. He had scouted some apartments and we headed out to find our apartment. We looked at one place which was very affordable, but was definitely less than what we hoped for. We pursued some other places but weren't able to see them. So, we decided to head back to the guest house and get some rest and start out again the next day.
Saturday we woke up early ready to go and find a home. We made some calls and realized that we weren't going to be able to do anything until Monday. So we made the most of the day by buying cell phones and seeing the new James Bond movie. No home in sight.
On Sunday we went to church and saw many of our friends and were able to reconnect with many people. During lunch it began to rain. No, not rain, pour! Tropical rain storm (can't remember the name of the storm) at its finest. Fortunately, our friends who took us to lunch were able to take us to the guest house so we didn't get totally soaked. We had been awake since 3 am trying to adjust to the time difference and we spent the day relaxing. Actually, Uche spent the day sleeping, trying to conquer the cold that had overtaken him. No home in sight, but the next day we planned to find our home! We sent out our prayer pleading (we were past requesting) to our friends here and at home.
Monday morning we checked out of the guest house and headed to our future neighborhood. We set out on foot in the heat and sun determined to find the place God had in store for us. I think I prayed with every footstep. We saw a couple places that were totally unsuitable for human inhabitation (ok, they weren't that bad, but they weren't good) and one place that was too expensive. We kept walking and looking for signs advertising an apartment for rent (did I mention it was hot!?!), and maybe an hour later we saw a sign on the gate advertising an apartment. So, we checked it out. It was beautiful. One bedroom, nice bathroom, well ventilated, secure, quiet, in other words exactly what we wanted. It was a little far from the school, but the 15 minute walk would be good for us.
We spoke to the owner/landlady and said we'd love to move in that day if possible. She reluctantly told us that another woman was interested and had asked her to hold the apartment until the weekend. We were 2 days too late. Bummer. We tried to convince her we were the better option. Uche was in full charm mode and the lady was so sad to have to ask us to wait. We couldn't wait, because we needed to have a place to stay immediately.
Discouraged, we set out again, and headed to Uche's friend's house for lunch. After lunch we had made arrangements to see another apartment. We met the lady at the apartment and checked it out. It was too big, too dark, not quiet and there were dead cockroaches on the floor. I don't do cockroaches. I really, really, really hate cockroaches. Because we were desperate we agreed to call the next day and make arrangements.
By this time we had been sweating for literally hours and I had blisters on both my feet, but we didn't have a place so we needed to keep walking and looking. We decided at this point to head over to our school to see if the dean of students was in (he'd been out at some classes for a couple weeks), and to see if he had any contacts for us to pursue. We asked in the office if he was in. He wasn't. We weren't sure what to do. Uche then thought we should talk to his secretary as she may be able to help us. We sat in the library, which was air conditioned, to give our poor feet a little rest. A guy came and say by us who had gone to college with Uche. After a few minutes of chatting a guy came by and greeted him and headed to an office. The office was in the general direction of the dean's office. Uche asked if that was in fact the dean, and it was him. We rushed over to his office to throw ourselves at his mercy.
We began to pour out our sad tale of woe. Did I mention we had been sweating alot??!! He said we needed to get some rest first, because we looked exhausted. We explained we didn't have anywhere to rest, which was why we looked a little crazy. He first told us about a place close to the school that a ministry owns and allows people in transit to stay at while they do things at the school. He called, and it was empty so we could stay there for a few days. Phew, immediate need taken care of! He then told us about an apartment building very close by that international students from the school often rented. So, we headed over there to check out if there was any open apartments.
The building is about a 1 minute walk from the school, so we were there in no time. He called out for the owner to see if she was home. She was. He began to speak Tagalog to ask her if anything was open. We hung on her words, that we semi-understood. YES!!! Yahoooooo! We charged upstairs to check it out.
On the second floor we met a German woman who had been teaching at the school and was moving out that day to go to Indonesia. Her next door neighbor from Mongolia, a student at the school, was going to move into her place because it was bigger. So, the smaller one would be empty. We were able to look into the windows of the larger apartment and liked what we saw, so we said yes we'll take it.
We then headed back to school to look for the Mongolian woman to see if she could show us the apartment as well as offer our help in moving her things out. We were anxious to move in. We couldn't find her, so we headed back to the apartment to sign the contract and pay the deposit. We really wanted to move in asap. We spoke with the owner and she said that some work needed to be done in the German woman's apartment before the other lady could move in, so it would be three days before we could move in. Uche started to cry, just kidding, we politely told the woman we were really anxious to move in now or the next day. She said she'd try to make it happen in one day.
So, we made arrangements at the transit house and headed to our church to get some of our things for the time we'd be staying there. We went to bed that night so excited to have seen how God provided the perfect place for us. The dean had told us after all the arrangements had been made that he hadn't planned to stop in at the school that day. In fact, he was going to take the week off before school started up again. But he felt the Lord nudging him to drop by the school, so he did. Hallelujah!
This morning (Tuesday) we woke up excited that we had a home and hopeful it would be soon. Uche headed out to go buy some breakfast. The transit house we're staying at is 2 doors down from our apartment, so he had to pass by there on his way to the store. As he went by he saw the owner of the apartment complex and talked with her. She said that the Mongolian lady was moving as they spoke and we could move in at 2 this afternoon. So, we're moving into our perfect apartment close to our school this afternoon.
Once we get in we'll post some pictures, but here's some others to hold you over.

Our room in the transit house.

View from transit house. You can see a corner of the roof of our school just to the right of the yellow house. We're going to be very close to school.

Breakfast of champions. Warm fresh pandesal, Filipino rolls that are delicious, with peanut butter and cheese whiz.

You should all be jealous...

2008-11-08T00:52:00.000-08:00

We just got back from seeing a movie, one of our favorite activities in the Philippines. What did we see?? Well, funny you should ask...

Yes, folks, it's in the theaters here right now. We enjoyed the movie, well worth the 321 pesos ($6.61) it cost. So, seriously you should all be jealous that we saw it and it was cheap!

We enjoyed the movie, but don't think it was as good as Casino Royale. I told Uche I think Daniel Craig only said 20 words in the whole movie. He was mostly chasing, being chased, beating up or being beat up through the whole thing, but who goes to a Bond movie for the dialogue anyhow. We do recommend it; go see it when it finally comes out in the States...

We're not in Kansas anymore!

2008-11-07T13:30:00.000-08:00

In fact, we are in Manila. We arrived safely Friday morning and hit the ground running. Pictures to come.

It's all got to go!

2008-10-13T15:40:00.000-07:00

We moved out of our house at the end of September and have been dealing with all our things since then. I don't know how we managed to collect so many things in just 4 years! So, we had to go through everything and decide what to take, what to pack away, and what to sell. Last Saturday we had our yard sale, and it went really well. We both prayed and prayed that God would bring lots of people and we'd not have very much left at the end of the day. We were able to sell a lot, and we sold all the large items. It's nice to have all that done. Now I have to do some serious packing!

Here's some pics from the yard sale.

This is everything set up ready to be sold.

This is at the end of the day. Not a lot left.

Now here's some pictures of my niece and nephews taken that day. How cute are they???

Santa Cruz Trip

2008-09-19T16:31:00.000-07:00

Every year we go camping with our friends Steve and Jen. We go different places every year, preferably near water of some sort. This year it was Santa Cruz. It was cool and windy, but super sunny. It was very beautiful and refreshing to get out of the heat of Redding. So, here's some pics of the weekend...

Slagles

2008-08-15T21:22:00.000-07:00

So, brother Joel left last weekend for a year in Russia teaching at an international school. Before he left we wanted to get a family pic with the newest addition since we're not sure when we all be together again. Here's the results. The last picture is the Slagles at their best!

So, I love that my niece is doing her silly face. She's too cute!

Bits & Pieces

2008-08-01T14:13:00.001-07:00

Just thought I'd share a few pictures to show what's been up with us the past few weeks.

With all the fires in the area, the sun has been red because of the smoke. This was the best picture we took of it, but it still doesn't show how thick the smoke has been, but it seems to be clearing a bit recently.

Uche looking good. This was our anniversary June 30th, right before we went out to dinner.

Our self-portrait. Ndiajero turns 5. I'm a little behind posting the pictures I know!

This was the piece of cake we ate to celebrate the anniversary. Uche let me choose it. It's chocolate with a fudge frosting. Delicious.

Here's the reason why I didn't bother planting a garden this year. A family seems to call ours and our neighbors backyard home.

They are running right where my garden has been. Last year they feasted on fresh vegetables, this year dry weeds.

Taken from our dining room window. Can't you hear it saying, what are you looking at??

And last, but definitely not least. This is our new nephew. He was born on July 26th. He's only a few hours old in this picture. He's a tiny sweet little man.

Thoughts from Uche on life after shooting league is finished

2008-07-04T06:30:00.000-07:00

Shooting is one of the things I've done here that I probably never would have ever dreamt of doing. In Nigeria, only a few have guns, the military, hunters and those super rich that are in constant fear for their lives. The people who own the most and highly sophisticated guns are the "bad guys". So it was a little weird for me to touch a gun much more shooting it. I shot a gun for the first time in my life at my father inlaw's place. We (Sarah's family) have this tradition that on Thanksgiving and Christmas the guys would all bring their guys and we do target shooting. Our targets are usually soda cans and all kinds of bottles.

Then I graduated to the league. Shooting in the league has been a great experience for me. It was frustrating and humiliating at the begining because here I was, shooting with these guys who have shot guns all there lives, some were even in the US Military. Whenever we get together and start talking about guns; I get lost. I don't even know the name of the gun I am using!

As the league progressed, I realized that I was doing better and becoming more confident. Also, I started correcting myself. I'm glad that I didn't quit at the initial stage due to frustration. I realized that I can accomplish whatever I want to accomplish if I put my mind into it and resolve to not quit. I also got a few tips from the guys there which helped me shoot better.

One of the valuable tips was to keep my eyes and the gun's barrel on the target and follow it through even after I pull the trigger. Imagine how much fun you can have with these weapons of death. The bottom line is that I had great fun going out there and shooting some clay pegeons.

A Golfer is Born!

Now that shooting season is over, I am back to playing golf. I always enjoy a good round of nine hole golf. Two Saturdays ago, Sarah played her first ever nine holes of golf. She had played miniature and aqua golf but never a real golf game. We decided to hit the golf course at noon when most folks are either taking lunch or taking siesta. It's kind of hard to play when you have a group of people lined up behind you. You will litterally be running the whole time. It's even worst when you tee off and your ball hardly goes where it supposed to go. It will probably end up on someone's roof or you spend a lot of time looking for your balls while the old men behind you shoot straight balls that even go further and acurately than yours. To make it worst, while you are dragging and pushing your golf cart, they are cruising around in their golf carts. You just have to keep running!

Anyway, Sarah and I went and totally enjoyed ourselves and she wants to play again with me, so I know she didn't hate it. I also play with the boys whenever time permits. Redding is a city of about one hundred thousand people with so many golf courses. There are more golf courses here than in there are many countries I've been to.

One thing golf had in common with shooting is that you must keep your eyes on the ball/target. you must also follow it through once you've pulled the trigger/teed off.

I'm always amused at the connection with Christian living. While you must keep your eyes on the target and ball, the Bible tells us to use our hearts and minds. Heb. 3:1 says "fix your thoughts on Jesus, the apostle and high priest whom we confess" So it's more of fixing our minds and thoughts on Christ than our eyes on the world. Col. 3:2 "Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things" 2Cor. 4:18 "So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal" and finally 2Cor. 5:7 "We live by faith, not by sight"

So the question is "What are we fixing our eyes, minds, thoughts on? is it on earthly superficial things that will not last forver? or is it on heavenly things that will stand the test of time?

Yosemite Trip

2008-06-22T12:38:00.000-07:00

We spent a weekend camping with friends at Yosemite National Park. It was super fun. We'd never been to Yosemite, and we were amazed at how gorgeous the whole place is. As you can see from the pictures below we had a great time and saw some God's amazing creation!

Kool April Nites

2008-04-19T18:49:00.000-07:00

Here in the Redding area they have an annual classic car show. Our favorite part is the Friday night cruise. They shut down a cruise route in the middle of the city for a few hours, and hundreds of cars cruise around for the audience of thousands. This year the weather was perfect to sit out in our lawn chairs and watch the show. Our good friends came up from Sacramento to watch the cruise and hang out for the weekend. It was just all super fun. So enjoy some pictures of some cool cars and cool people.

My Shooting Experience

2008-04-18T21:40:00.000-07:00

My first day of the shooting league was a disaster. Maybe because I was the newest rookie or something, but I did exceptionally poor. I shot twenty-five rounds of shells and hit only seven clay pigeons. I blamed it on the gun I used. I used my brother inlaw's gun cause I forgot the one I had used the previous Saturday at home.

The second week was better than the first week. "I had a better gun". I shot the first twenty five rounds and hit seventeen. That's a better score. We also moved further away from our former sport, about twenty-three feet away from the original spot for the second shot. Twenty-five more rounds of shells were dispensed and I managed to get six. It was my first time to shoot from that distance and I was impresed with my shots.

If I blame my dismal performance on the the gun I used the first day, then last Thursday's shooting is unexplainable. I can't find any thing to blame it on. I was just BAD!! It was frustrating to loose almost every shot while guys all around you continued to destroy the clay pigeons. It was too embarassing.

However, it was fun. I always enjoy shooting at the range. I also took it as a sportsman, losing is not the end of the road, rather it gives me an oportunity to improve. Being frustrated or whining doesn't help us that much. What are we going to do about our frustration? Quit? That's not an option.

I walked away with a few tips and the resolve to do better next thursday. I will let you guys know how it goes next Thursday.

Wild West

2008-04-02T17:14:00.001-07:00

Last Saturday we went to the Redding gun club to shoot clay pigeons. It was a fund raising event orgainized by guys in our community.

me and my friend Jim.

There were lots of prizes to be won but I didn't win anything. I came close to winning a prize but lost to him in a shoot out. I was impressed with my performance though cause I lost to an old timer. There were seven of us shooting and the guy and I made it to the shoot out.

The good news is that I'm gonna join the Redding gun club league sharting this Thursday April 3rd. It's a three month competition with lots of shells "bullets" to be wasted. We will be shooting average of 50 shells each time we meet. So the next time you see me please don't forget to talk louder.

I'm also playing in the Redding Adult Soccer League every Sunday. So I've got quite enough sports going this spring.