Mysore Trip

We left Saturday morning which we were supposed to leave at 6am but Jacob (the man incharge of the usac students) came closer to 6:45. So we squooze nine people into an eight person car and took off for a three hour drive. We arrived into Mysore around ten and started looking for a hotel. After three stops we found one that would work, so we dropped off our stuff and headed out for lunch. We ate, talked and laughed and then went back to the hotel for a two hour gap (which turned into three) to do whatever we wanted... we all crashed. We then went through a Catholic church which was very different architecture than the Muslim Mosques or the Hindu Temples that we have seen. We went to dinner in which I learned a bit of information (which dad will love), Jacob said that we needed to have sweets (aka dessert) after every meal because of the spiciness. The sweets control the acid in your stomach... I thought this was a very welcoming piece of information! Anyway, we went back to the hotel and watched some tv before falling asleep. We woke up early because we were supposed to leave at 8am but Jacob didn't come until 9 (Indian standard time!). We got breakfast and then went for a drive. We drove up to the top of a mountain that looked over Mysore, it was very beautiful. It reminded me of Bangalore but it was smaller and cleaner, and it had mountains close by. We walked around the temple (it seems there is a temple on the top of every mountain) and then we left. We then went to the zoo! We saw lots of cool animals; lions and tigers and bears, oh my! Ok sorry, I now have seen the difference between Indian elephants and African elephants... african e's have very very big ears and are larger than the indian e's. I got to see a white tiger, which are way cooler than the regular ones. I saw lots of monkeys, including chimpanzees and a gorilla. Giraffs are way cool. After that we went to lunch and headed off to Mysore Palace. It is soooo beautiful, anika and I agreed that a mask ball should be held there and both of us should attend! We took a tour and saw and heard all the wonderful things about the palace. They had murals on the walls that are the '3D' ones... they look like regular paintings but their eyes/heads/bodies follow you when you walk by (like the ones in temples). There were lots of ornate ceilings and tiles, most of the palace was painted with 14k gold paint (didn't know that exsisted did you?!). Included in the tour was a camel ride! (yep thats right, I rode a camel!) It was fun... both ani and I got to be on the same camel, it was a short ride but well worth the ten rupees (25 cents)! There was also an elephant ride but we were running short on time. We hopped back in the car and drove home. All in all it was a great trip!

dress cute for work

i said to mom i look cute today so she took my pic on 82307
work at texas is good only 95 hours left but im going down to 2 days of work cause im taking 2 classes so i will be done with college in dec. yahoooooo!
ana i miss u
miss all sister
Eleesh

Pics of McKade and Amber

07 Summer Camp Trip

We had a fabulous family camping trip up to Tropic Reservore (other than we were missing Stacy!). The weather was perfect ... warm in the day and cool at night! We had plenty of good food and fun!

We left around noon on Saturday and got up there at dinner time. We set up camp, built a fire and had chili cheese dogs. Then went to bed early!

Sunday we woke up early and enjoyed the beautiful surroundings, we were just cleaning up breakfast when Kelly, Dar & Whitney came! We talked awhile, rode around a bit, had lunch, then sang "happy birthday" to Jim and he opened his gifts. Kali (our dog) started chocking and gagging for along time ... we tried to help her but she kept running off. So we left her alone for about 1/2 hour then went to look for her and couldn't find her. When we were finally giving up, Tori found her over by the restrooms acting weird. We brought her back to camp and tried to get her to drink water, but she wouldn't. We made her a bed and she just laid there starring and breathing half breaths! We left her alone for a little while but kept checking on her and nothing changed except her stomach kept getting bigger and bigger. So we took her down the mountain to find a vet. We talked to one from Cedar City that said it sounded like her stomach had been twisted and she needed surgery right away! He said the closest vacility was in St. George! So we drove over 100 miles to rush her in for surgery on a Sunday night!

Amber, McKade, Tori, Matt and Eleesha stayed at camp. They played, relaxed, talked, and ate foil dinners, then went to bed. Jim and Karen stayed at Kelly and Dar's house (friends).

Monday morning we picked Kali up at 7:30 and she looked MUCH better!! She was excited to get out of THERE!! He said there was no problem with taking her back up the canyon ... so we headed back up to the camp. That day we left the dogs in camp and went for a long quad ride and saw beautiful scenery and lots of wildlife. We came home and ate, took a short nap, then the guys took off for a more adventurous ride while the girls played battleship. We had a nice dinner around the campfire, and ended off with some-mores. It doesn't get any better than that!! :)

Tuesday we had a big breakfast, cleaned up camp and headed out! Lots of good memories made! And looking forward to the next time! (with Stacy there!)

Hampi Trip

So my trip to Hampi was amazing! So we took a night train this time (much smoother ride than the bus). The rickshaw dropped us off at the bus station and so we had to find the train station... thank goodness it was just down a little ways from the bus station. We went in and waited in line, we had already bought our tickets online but we wanted to make sure we didn't need anything else, which we didn't. Then we went to find our train... haha, that was fun. I didn't know exactly how train stations worked, so we knew we needed to be on platform 8 but we only knew where #1 was (good thing we got there early!) we decided to look around. We climbed some stairs and found that there were way more platforms than meets the eye! We finally found platform 8. We waited there till our train came, then finding our cabin became a problem... we didn't know where we were supposed to go and the train only stops for a few minutes. I resorted to asking a guard where to go, and he pointed us in the right direction. We made it to our cabin at the front of the train (not recommended if you ever take a train... they honk long loud blasts all night) we found are seats, and we're off! the seats turned into beds, so we secured our bags and tried to fall asleep. When I was asleep I would dream that we missed our stop, so I didn't sleep very much that night. We made it to Hopset at 7:45 and caught a rickshaw to Hampi. Right as we got in we checked into a guest house and put down our things, we were starving so we found a roof top restaurant to eat breakfast. While we ate our pancakes (which are crepes here) we planned out our day; we were going to do our own site seeing on friday and then plan to take a tour on saturday. The first temple (and the tallest temple in hampi at 55 meters, that you can see from the entire valley) we got a tour. It was fun to see all the monkeys (even though they weren't very nice), and we got a red dot on our foreheads and flowers in our hair, we also met Lakshmi the elephant. After that we roamed the country side and saw tons of ruins of temples and bazaars (ancient market places) and met lots of children (that love getting their picture taken). We went and ate at the Mango Tree which is a restaurant in the shade of a mango tree, which is between a banana plantation and a river. It was fun and we ate very good food. Then we went to the guest house and took rest. We got up the next day, did about the same but took a rickshaw tour in the afternoon to the ruins that we couldn't reach via walking. It was jolly good fun and we took approximately 500 pictures between anika and I. We made it back in time for church on sunday!

Pregnant Pics

This is me 7 months pregnant. Picture taken by Eleesha. Oh so cute!

Our House Finished

This is our house finished and lived in. :) (Sorry about the sidways pictures, i don't know how to turn them on this program yet)

Our First House

Even though we have been in our home for two years as of July 27th, we are still so greatfull for having such a cute home. I have had these pictures to share for a while and haven't really had the opportunity to share them until now, so here they are. These are pictures from when it was being built.

Baby's Room

I am so excited for our son to arrive, but all in due time. So in the mean time everyone gets to hear me go on and on about the preparations. So here is the Mural that Matt and a friend did on his wall, I Love it! Enjoy.

Pondicherry Trip

I had fun in Pondicherry. It was very interesting; the night bus was fun, we got on and there were travel style bunk beds along the sides and then there were reclining chairs in the middle. I slept on the bottom "bunk" under Anika, it was nice to have the curtains so people couldn't see in. It was nice to have a window that opened too because it got a bit toasty. I woke up several times because the ride was so bumpy, I looked out the window and we were on a dirt road (if you could call it that) it had so many pot holes I was wondering why they had taken such a huge bus through this route, but we survived! It was very jungle-like on the way, there were lots of trees as far as the eye could see (and nice fresh air). So we arrived there at 7am and we took a rickshaw to the beach and since nothing was open that early we just sat and decided out our day. We soon had to find a restroom (there was none provided on the bus) and found that a breakfast place had opened early. We sat and ate breakfast and talked and planned some more. We needed to find a hotel and we wanted to rent either a bicycle or a moped. Pondicherry was settled by the french, so there were a lot of french tourist (and many people thought that we were french too), but it was nice because the city had straight streets. We went looking for a hotel but many of them were full. We finally found one and put our stuff in and rested through the hottest part of the day, it was about 90 degrees with 90% humidity. We then went exploring, we found some cool churches and monuments, we found a market place and loads of street side vendors. We then went and rented a moped and drove around the french side of town. It was a bit nerve racking but fun at the same time. We found a nice restaurant to eat at and then we took a walk along the beach (there was no swimming at this beach because it was all rocks). We went back to our hotel and read till we fell asleep. We woke up early and went and got some breakfast. We then went to see if we could find a water sports complex, where we had hoped to go kayaking but we weren't able to find it. We asked for directions but it ended up leading us in a big circle, so we decided to go back. We then went to a place called Quiet beach, which was some kilometers outside of pondy (short for pondicherry). We had a nice day playing in the sand and surf (we didn't have swim wear and the women there were getting in fully clothed but we didn't want to be soggy all day so we just stuck our legs in). We came back to Pondy and had dinner, we found out that the buses back to b'lore were full so we went back to our hotel and got another night, we also kept the moped another day. We slept in and went and ate breakfast... since we were burnt crispy from the day before we stayed inside for most of the day. After it cooled a bit, we went shopping and bought some roommate gifts, etc. We drove around some and ate dinner, turned the bike in, relaxed on the beach and then went to the bus station. This time I had a top bunk and the ride seemed a little more shaky so I didn't get much sleep. We made it home this morning at 6am and we fell asleep. I had planned on going to my classes but when I got up to go, I knew I would fall asleep so I stayed home. It was a very fun adventure and I am glad we went. We have our next trip planned to a small village in the middle of no where, called Hampi, for the end of August.