Thailand Day 2

We went down to breakfast and while we were eating a baby elephant came by. They bring it down every morning and you can feed it bananas. He was just the cutest little thing. He would do handstands and give hugs.

Vika has always been a little leary about animals but she warmed up to this little guy. She finally gave it a banana giggled the whole time.

Just hanging out by the pool all day. This pool has an upper and lower level with a huge kid slide down at the bottom. This level has water polo and basketball standards set up to play in the water. Water and sun are always a good thing.

Vika and her princess floaties. She is quite the princess herself.

Nikki just floating around.

We are here with two other families from our branch in Shekou and we wanted to go into town for dinner. Of course we always are looking for a good deal and fortunately one of our friends here is from Laos and speaks Thai. Her husband served a mission in Thailand so with the two of them speaking the language we can get some pretty good deals. We went out in front of the resort to get a taxi and she was able to talk a guy into taking us into town for half the cost of us getting taxis for all of us. The only glitch to it was that we had to all pile into his small seven passenger van. There were 14 of us going. It was quite the cozy fit but we did it. It was like those clowns at the circus who all pile into the small car but it was for real. Without seatbelt laws we can do anything.

Thailand Day 1

After 24 hours or traveling (with an overnight stay in Bangkok) we finally made it to Phuket. We were quite the bunch of weary travelers.

This is a shot of the lobby of the resort. Quite the tropical setting.

This is right out the glass door of our room. Lots of space to run and play. We are really looking forward to this week. The weather is a little questionable this week with wind and storms rolling in but we will make the best of it. The resort has plenty of things for us to do. They have a private lagoon where we can take sailboats and kayaks out. They also offer windsurfing lessons. Most of the activities are free for guests. We are a little secluded from the town though so things are pretty expensive around us. We will be renting scooters though and we can explore the town more then.

We walked down to the beach and were greeted by an elephant. He was just strolling along. They aren't as big as the ones we rode on last year in Koh Chang, but they sure are cute.

This one would give you hugs and kisses. It would actually pucker up and kiss your cheek.

It felt a little creepy to have this long warm trunk wrap around your neck. His breath didn't smell too good either.

Of course our animal lover Rachel wasn't bothered at all. She gave a hug right back.

Jonny and Nicole posing with the elephant.

The elephants walk around the resort all day. They are quite the attraction when they are out and about.

This is the view from our room. It's so humid here that my camera fogged up so it looks a little hazy but it's a great view to wake up to each morning.

Right now the surf is really strong so we can't go out in the water but it makes a beautiful walk. There are little hut like restaurants all along the beach. For about $30.00 we can feed our whole family and have the ocean just a few feet away from us. Pretty cool.

Our Journey to Thailand

We are on our way to Thailand. We tried to pack light so that we don't have to carry so much stuff around. It started by us leaving our house around noon on Saturday. We had to walk out to the street to catch a taxi to the ferry terminal.

We are on the ferry to Zhuhai. We are flying out of Macau to Bangkok because the flights are really cheap. Macau is the Vegas of Asia so the airfares in and out of the city are really inexpensive. We decided to go a little early so that we could see a little bit of Macau. We had to take a ferry to Zhuhai which is on Mainland China and then walk across the border into Macau. Then we took a taxi to see some of the sites.

Macau is a very interesting place. It was once under Portugal rule until 1999 when it was given back to China. This was two years after Hong Kong was given back. As you go around Macau you can still see the Portuguese influence here. It's pretty cool. Makes me want to go to Portugal some day.

This is part of a cathedral that was built in the 1600's and then burned in the 1800's. All that is left now is the front wall of the church. I'm sure it was a very beautiful place when it was all intact.

The statues and gargoyles around the the front are pretty impressive. A little scary looking but the details that was put into this is amazing.

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Looking down from the cathedral you can see some of the casino buildings in the background. This leads to lots of little shops and markets.

Very festive area. Didn't even feel like we were in a Chinese area except for the signs being in Chinese.

Since Macau was once under Portugal rule, they have most of the signs in Chinese, English, and Portuguese. Where in the world will be able to see those three languages all together on one sign.

The architecture was beautiful. Makes me want to go to Portugal if it's all like this.

Once again Chinese, English, and Portuguese. These egg tarts are sooooooo good. It's just a little pie shell filled with a sweet egg custard. They have them in China as well, but these were the best ones I've ever had.

The money in Macau is so cool. I'm curious how many people really need it printed in Portuguese still.

Finally...News from China

We made it to China to find that our Ayi did a great job in moving us to a new house. We love our new place because it is in the same complex as our kids friends. Our place is very open and bright which makes it nice to just relax and hang out at home. We never felt that way last year and seemed to always be looking for someplace else to go which in China is never an easy task. This year we just like staying home as much as possible.

Our new place has a patio on the roof. Right now it is a little hot to be up there but it'll be nice in the winter time.

I know this is nothing like the kitchens back home but this is luxery here. I finally have space to move around and actually cook. I've shown my Ayi how to make flour tortillas, fajitas, calzones, and cookies. She's gotten pretty good at it and I actually am spending more time in the kitchen this year.

Our living/family room is large and open. We have great views of the bay. We are right next to Sea World Plaza and the ship in the background is an old ship they have changed into a hotel and restaurants. At night it's all lit up and looks really cool.

We also have a golf course and driving range right behind us. I love the views we have.

Ni Hao from behind the wall...the iron wall that is.

Well, after a long week of meetings and our first two days of school, I can finally have time to update everyone on our "new" life here in China. We moved into an awesome new place that we just love. It really feels like home to us now. I never thought I would say that.

The most frustrating thing is that we have been blocked from many of our favorite "social" sites...facebook and our blog. As you can see we can type posts on our blog through a proxy but I still haven't been able to find a way to upload pictures. We also can get on facebook and spy on everyone but again aren't able to post anything so nobody knows we are there.

I have searched and found several software programs that we could download that would allow us access to these things but of course the websites to download the programs are blocked. If we leave the country then we will be able to get these things which will be in about a month unless we find a place in Hong Kong where we can sit and use the internet. Starbuck's is calling our name right now but it's just finding the time to go over.

We are planning our first trip for the year to Phuket, Thailand. We have a week break the end of September. It is way cheaper to go now then to wait until Christmas time. The prices are at least double during that time so we have decided to just stay around here at Christmas and do things locally. That way we can go on two major trips this year for the same cost as one during Christmas. We loved Thailand last year and now we will go see a different part of the country. Our next trip we are looking at Bali, Philipines, or somewhere in Malaysia. The beach is the way to go for our vacations. If only we could find some decent surfing spots for Gavin.

School started on Thursday and we are excited to start this year. Gavin is still in Secondary teaching Physical Science, Geometry, Physics, and the IB CAS coordinator. He is the Science Department Head and will be coaching the Girls Secondary Basketball team, as well as, the Middle School Boys Basketball. I'm in Middle School teaching mostly the 13's Reading, Language Arts, Algebra I, Math 12 and Cultural Studies. I'm the 13 Year Old Team Leader and I have also been asked to be the Secondary Girls Volleyball Assistant Coach, and the Math Olympia Coach for the Middle School. It'll be a busy first few months for me since volleyball and the Math Olympia are starting right now. Our first volleyball tournament is next Saturday. I'm really rusty on playing volleyball and am a little nervous about coaching but the boy's head coach is awesome and will be a great support.

The kids are doing great. Rachel turned sixteen last week and will be going on her first date today...scary!!!!!! She is a really good kid and this boy in our branch here has been waiting for her to turn sixteen so they could start dating. She will be playing on the volleyball team to start and with the IB program at school, will be very busy this year.

Jonny is playing Soccer right now and is really enjoying our new place here because it is closer to the "girls". Mainly, Miranda. He always has this group of three girls that are always hanging around. He also is closer this year to his basketball and skateboard buddies so he has plenty of things to do regarding his social life.

Nikki is always on the go as well, she will be playing soccer starting in a few weeks and is our little social butterfly.

Of course Vika is as cute as ever. She was a little reluctant to be coming back to China but once we got here she was fine and ready for school to start. The modeling agency contacted us again to see if our kids would still be interested in modeling so I had to send new pictures to them. We will see. Jonny is probably a little too tall now, although he isn't very tall for his age. They usually just use the little kids. Vika loves being the center of attention and wants to be a "top model" as she calls it, again.

Really wish we could post pictures. Our new place is awesome with a cool view of the bay. I'll try to get them up on a web album. That way people can at least have access to them. I'll post another post if that happens.

Made it back to China

Well we made it back to China to only find that our blog is still blocked. Again I can access it through a proxy but can't upload any pictures. Another teacher here has been posting pictures on his blog but I haven't seen him yet to find out how he is doing that. I will have to check into other proxies or ways around it but for now we just wanted everyone to know that we did make it back. We also learned that facebook is blocked so there goes all our main communication with the outside world. I guess we have to resort back to the old email. Funny to think that we would consider that an old source of communication. Hopefully, things will change or we can find a way around this. Some governments still feel like they have to control what people view and say. It's a little irritating and just another thing that people take for granted back home.

We moved into a new home and just love it. We have a great view of the Shenzhen bay and everything is great right now.

Our email address is rundells@netzero.net. For now that is our only way of communicating.

We had a great summer. I didn't get to post our pictures from all our adventures. Love and miss you all.

Gavin's New Toy

Gavin felt like we needed another form of transportation while we are here in Utah and this was his solution. It's fun but can't really transport our family so....it has become Gavin's form of transportation.

He had a conference in Tahoe last weekend for the IB program at our school in China. He decided to ride his bike there, which is about a nine hour drive in a car. He took two days going out so he was able to take his time. He finished the conference at noon on Tuesday and I was planning on him taking another two days to get back so I wasn't expecting him until sometime on Wednesday. About 11:30 Tuesday night I got a call from him that he was about an hour away from Salt Lake but the bike had stalled. It started back up but he wanted me to know where he was just in case he got stranded without any cell service. He said that if he wasn't home within an hour or if I hadn't heard from him, to head out on I-80 to find him. Let me tell you, the next hour was very stressful for me. At 12:40 I hadn't heard anything yet and stared out the front window wondering if I should start the search. Five minutes passed....then ten...I was just about to get my shoes on and head out when I heard his bike coming around the corner. I was very relieved to hear that loud bike.

He had fun on his bike and maybe I'll take after my sisters footsteps and get my own motorcycle license next year. I just don't see me as a biker babe but hey life is for living right?