Snow in the desert

Because of strange flight arrangements and connections (we'll spare you the details ) we had a 29 hour layover in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. The richest city in the world. Basically we walked around and saw what a city with too much money can do.

This is an indoor ski hill. It was even validated by a real live Santa.


This is the Burj Dubai. At roughly a half a mile high, it's the tallest building in the world. (Mark you would really appreciate this :) )
Even though you can't tell, the buildings next to it are actually huge also!














Here's Mr. Koslowsky in front of what would fit into a picture of the Burj.
Despite Stuart's insistence that we really should be allowed to go to the top, the security guards thought it was best to refuse us entrance at all.













And here's Haylie's most favored stop in Dubai. A basket full of $500 worth of
CHOCOLATE.

Merry Christmas!

We hope you all had a Merry Christmas! We had a great day. Here's how it started.



We opened some pretty interesting presents from our Thai students. Stu will be sunbathing with this towel very soon!










Haylie's sporting her beautiful new scarf!









Later in the evening, we took our Christmas spirit to the streets of Bangkok and introduced caroling to Thailand.

Asia's Got Talent

Part of going to China is going to a tea house. That's just how it is. We decided to have our tea house experience in Beijing. The entrance ticket includes what some might think of as tasty little treats, a montage of traditional Chinese performances, including but not limited to singing, dancing, magic tricks, kung fu, opera, acrobatics, and, of course, all the fresh tea you can down.
Words fall short of any explanation of the spectacle that we witnessed. We will let you be the judge of the talent level found in the Far East.

The Yellow Mountains

We spent the second part of our 2 weeks in Southern China bumming around the Yellow Mountains. This is the boat ride down the Li River.





















We hiked up "Moon Hill" just outside of a town called Yanshuo.
The moon shape in the mountain is all that remains of a limestone cave.







This is the view from the top of the moon :) Seems like the Yellow Mountains are misty all the time, so the picture doesn't really capture how far off they go into the distance.






We went on a self-directed tour of the farm lands in the area, and this was the local wild life/ very friendly bit of China we met on the way.

Beijing Night Market

We've really enjoyed all of the readily available meat-on-a-stick in Thailand, but China is much more open minded to what "meat-on-a-stick" is ...









For the most part Haylie was able to keep Stu away from trying too much of the local cuisine ( at the threat of no kisses for a week for every food he ate that was deemed "disgusting" ).
There was a momentary slip up where, despite strong opposition, he somehow found lamb testicles to eat.








We found an actual delicacy! Venison :) Very spendy, but a good reminder of growing up in Montana :)









Strangely, this was one of the few places we found with an excellent translation to English.

Terracotta Warriors

You might recognize these from "Mummy III" :) It's the terracotta warriors from the first Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang. He was thirteen when he got on the throne and started building his tomb with all the clay men. He specifically said that no two soldiers were to be made alike. This is also the guy that had the Great Wall made.


You wouldn't think it, but they're actually really friendly!














There's about 3,000 army men with some chariots, cavalry, archers, and everything all lined up in battle formation to guard his tomb.







Some farmer found the army about 35 years ago when he was digging for a well. And guess what! The farmer guy was there the day we went to see them. We could "shake his hand to get some lucky." :)








All the warriors were holding weapons that still had poison on them when they were discovered, but some overzealous archeologists took off with them right away. So all of the army guys have their hands holding onto imaginary spears and swords.

Lost in Translation

Of course there were tons of things translated into English with great intentions of helping out the tourists.
If anything, it provided a bit of confusion and a lot of entertainment.

Hope you have as much fun reading these things from signs, menus, and whatnot as we did!

Tiananmen Square and Forbidden City

Here we are in one of the most identifiable spots in Beijing, right between Tiananmen Square and The Forbidden City under the HUGE portrait of Chairman Mao. China actually has his body preserved and on display in a mausoleum in the center of Tiananmen Square. Does it get any stranger than that? We stood in line for about an hour as they ushered thousands of Chinese people who came to give an offering and their respects to his body through the mausoleum.


The Forbidden City was where all the Royal People lived and did business.

Looks just like the movies about Chinese Emerors, huh?








The throne room! Yellow is the color of power and influence and red is the collor of good luck, actually we found out that almost everything in China means "good luck", " lots of luck", or " get some lucky".





Mostly we found out that the most exciting thing about The Forbidden City was its name, but this room was interesting. We learned that back in the day all the pretty ladies would use bronze mirrors like this one to get the perfect look. We couldn't quit figure out how they got thier reflections very clearly.

The Great Wall of China!

We found a "tour" thing that dropped us off at one point on the Great Wall and picked us up 10 Km down.





















We started at a point called "Jinshanling". It was built during the Ming Dynasty, and it's about 3 hours outside of Beijing. We walked/stair-climbed 30 some watch towers down to the "Simatai" section.
It was for sure not made for hiking! The Wall goes up and down ALL of the highest points on the mountains.





















Here is a fine example of what might be the world's most random "Great Wall" video. We were hiking with a couple of our teacher friends from Thailand. The novelty of where we were had worn off a little.

Back to Bangkok

Hi Everyone! Guess what we found out once we were in China...The Chinese government blocks out websites like blogspot, facebook, and YouTube. So, we're a little behind on the blog after 2 very exciting, very packed weeks in China.
Here's a couple highlight pics and we'll be putting up tons more in the next few days.

"Sports Days" at Lertlah

Yup, this is exactly how we felt when we saw what "Sports Days" means in Thailand.

All the schools in Thailand have Sports Week. Despite what the title eludes to, this does not mean that all the students put on their sneakers and get sweaty. No, no, no. Sports days clearly means that the girls put on as much shinny frill and lace as possible and perform dances/cheers.

All the school is divided up into different colored "teams". Stu was on the red team. The part that really confused us was that the "teams" cheered for their color of cheer leaders to win the dance/cheer contests.




These are the representatives of the purple team.
















This is Miss Haylie and a few of her students on the purple team. Faithful fans of their cheerleading representatives.

MBMSI

That means "Mennonite Brethren Missions Service International"...we think. It also means that we know missionaries in Thailand! A couple of weeks ago 2 friends form here and us went to visit (help out if we could) some missionaries you might recognize from "Team 2000". They have a few church plants and an orphanage for children with AIDS about an hour and a half from Bangkok.

This is the worship band at the Saturday evening service they held. It has most of the older boys from the orphanage and some other members of the church playing traditional Thai instruments. Very fun to hear!
They even played some worship songs that we recognized translated into Thai.

We had the BEST timing in the world and showed up for a baptism service. All of the seven Thais that were baptized gave their personal testimonies of how they decided to follow Jesus in spite of very intense "social pressures" and rejection from family and friends. It was an amazing thing to witness.



We asked what we could do to help out for the weekend, and they said we should take the kids from the orphanage on an outing. So we rented this Sawng Taew and went to the zoo with 17 kids!





The elephants, like always, were a big hit! Apparently tourist aren't the only people that LOVE hanging out with pachyderms.

Little Munchkins

Sorry it's been so long since our last blog...It's the end of the first term, and we've been up to our necks in marking, assessing, giving exams, and making tiny, little check marks in tiny, little boxes on report cards. So we thought we should let you see a little of what/who we're so busy assessing!





















This is from "Miss Haylie's" circle time in the morning with one of her 2 Kindergarten classes. One of the most important lessons to learn about teaching in Thailand is the power of the sticker in a 5-year-old's life!



This is the class conquering some of the essential phrases to learning a second language. Such as"My favorite animal is..." :)

Fire Show at Kho Samed

Stu's fire show!
WooHoo!














Haylie's fire show!
YEAH! Alright!











Their fire show! Woooooo.

Aphawa

The floating market! Literally :) Anything you could think of to eat (and a lot that you wouldn't think of) is for sale here.



Cool lady cruisin' down the river, doing her thing.
















We ended up taking a boat tour with some Thai friends. It was all about looking at as many fireflies as possible in one night.
It's a good thing we got this smiley pic before we actually started to realize how much of our lives would be spent in this boat. I think we saw every firefly in Thailand though....twice.







A fine example of things Stu might try, but Haylie wouldn't kiss him for at least a week.







ummmm...?????...yeah