Christmas Program

Our school had its annual international school Christmas Program. Every student is pressured by the administrator to perform, although some people do it willingly. This year, we had square dancing, belly dancing, hip hop dancing, singing, Michael Jackson dancing, a guy bouncing a soccer ball on his head for 2 minutes. Very impressive.

Alvin has been learning the erhu, (he will blog more about this and hopefully include an audio clip), so he performed the erhu. I thought he did very well, but the sound system was terrible, so most people just saw him go through the actions, but couldn't hear.



A couple friends and I did a little dance, while Alvin sang a Chinese song.

Merry Belated Christmas!

Merry Christmas friends! I know we are a couple weeks old. We had a good time celebrating Christmas here, although we missed our family and friends back in the states.

We had a lot of activities:
Our school had a Christmas program that we participated in.
We went to a Christmas party on Christmas day with some ex-pats.
Went to a Christmas party hosted by an expat with some local friends.
Had a friend come over on Christmas day where I presented an interactive Harry Potter summary of the first five books in order to watch the sixth movie at home together.

What activities did you do for Christmas?

Mystery Plant

I planted some herbs back in the summer. I thought I planted basil, oregano, and mint. The basil I ended up killing because the fruit flies got a little too crazy in the house. I thought that the oregano never came up, and so I thought I only had the mint. Eventually the "mint" grew, and I gave one to my friend.

We eventually realized that it might not be mint, but tastes more like oregano. Although I don't think it looks like oregano.

Can anyone identify this plant? I used it for my roast chicken and herb croutons the other day so I know it is not poisonous.

Turkey Trot

Some foreigner friends put on a 5K Turkey Trot. We ran around the block and everyone who participated received a t-shirt. There were 17 runners (plus two babies in strollers).

My friend and I found out about the Trot and started training for it a month and a half ago. We really wanted to run the whole thing, so we trained three times a week either outside or at a gym. We were very proud to say that we ran pretty much the whole thing and had a time of 31 min. and 13 seconds.

Alvin didn't run, but he managed the only water station. He also was the race photographer.

This is at the water station. The weather was just a little above freezing temperatures. I made sure to stay warm and even ran in long underwear.


This is me at the finish line.


Here is the t-shirt that I received.

Ten Years After

December 1st is a special day for us. This year especially. It marks 10 years since our first date. Bethany and I are happy for the many years that we have had together... 4 of them dating and 6 of them married.

So, to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of our first date, we wanted to try to recreate the dinner that we had on our first date. But first... some juicy details about our first date, so many years ago...

December 1, 2000, was a Friday. About a week before that day, I asked Bethany if we could spend Friday afternoon together. I wanted to pick her up her class... then we would hang out and have dinner. Bethany's response at the time was, "That sounds fun. Can so-and-so come too?" (so-and-so was a friend of hers). Not wanting to put our friend into an awkward third-wheel position, I told Bethany, "Umm... on Friday, I'm going to ask you to be my girlfriend. Are you sure you still want so-and-so to come?" We agreed it would be best if so-and-so didn't come this time.

I picked Bethany up from class by meeting her nearby at the botanical gardens at UCLA. Another mutual friend of ours was in her class, and he came outside too. He said, "Hey, since you have your car... can you drop me off at my apartment?" Hmm. So many third wheels wanting to join the party. So I said ok. We walked to the car, where he saw a large stuffed animal (his name is "Sushi Lion") sitting in the shotgun seat. That's probably when he figured out that he was about to mess with another guy's flow. So he said, "Oh, umm... I'll just... take the bus. See you guys later..." Haha.

We went to the botanical gardens and hung out there for a bit. Then, we hopped in the car and headed out to the beaches at Malibu, to walk and then sit on the beach. While there, we saw a school of dolphins swim by. No joke. Dolphins. Come on, is that not perfect or what?

Then, to dinner. At the time, one of Bethany's favorite foods was shrimp... so I decided to take her to a restaurant in Marina Del Rey called Killer Shrimp. The restaurant is gone now. But it's a little hole in the wall restaurant that basically serves a huge bowl of spicy broth filled with shrimp. You just pull the shrimp out, peel... and eat. And you also get a large bowl of french bread pieces, for dipping into the broth and eating. That... was a yummy meal. The start of many yummy meals together to come.

So, to recreate the dinner, I went downtown to buy two pounds of the largest shrimp I could find (good seafood is hard to find when you live in a desert). And Bethany... she decided to make french bread from scratch. So, here's the result:





That was how we celebrated 10 years of being together.

Just for kicks, I dug up a picture of us from early in our dating years. Here we are, in our first year of dating, and ten years after:



To the astute readers, did you catch the "Ten Years After" reference? Do you know why "Ten Years After" is a significant phrase for me? Leave a comment if you have a guess!

Happy Thanksgiving!

How did you celebrate your Thanksgiving?

We had a celebration with some of our friends here.

We had roast chicken, mashed potatoes, stuffing, salad, rolls, sweet potatoes, corn, sticky rice, and apple and pumpkin pie.

I helped make one of the chickens and the a Caesar salad.

Goodbye Lucy

On Nov. 11th, Lucy, my bike, was stolen. Lucy would have been a year and a half tomorrow. My bike was stolen in our international building while a woman was supposed to be watching it. It was also amongst many of the foreigner bikes, but for some reason the thief decided to steal my bike.

I was pretty upset at first, but I got over it. I was actually going to write a blog about Lucy before she was stolen. She was a good bike. I did have to have some cosmetic repairs on her (new bell, new basket, patched tire, new lock) because a lot of the cosmetic items were broken, but the bike was running pretty well.

I looked back at the first post of Lucy, and Alvin's then bike, Yoshi. I said, "I hope they don't get stolen." Well, hopefully Lucy and Yoshi are now reunited in the thief's lot.

My friends have lent me their extra bike for now. Thank you guys!

Here are pictures we have of Lucy: