Cupping

Cupping is something that I wanted to have done in Cambodia, but somehow never got around to. My host father was a nurse/x-ray technician, so they were much more into western medicine than traditional medicine.

Cupping is where they take little plastic shaped cups and create suction either with the use of fire or a mechanical device. They put the cups on your back and they suck up some of the skin. You leave them on there for say maybe 15 minutes....and then you release them from your back and you have nice purple poka dots on your back for a week or so.

It's traditional medicine that comes from China. They use it most often when someone has a cold. They believe, and there is some stuff to back it up, and it increases the circulation and releases toxins and gets your lymph nodes going. You can read more of the scientific stuff here.

Hal's mom is really into natural medicine and before she even knew that we were sad we never got cupped in Cambodia, she had bought a cupping set to try out. So what did they do after filling our bellies with pie on Thanksgiving? They decided to cup Hal.

I guess he did have a cold at the time and now he's all better, so perhaps it did help. Hal says he felt a lot better after this. Either way, it was a very cool thing to try.

There's been more talk recently of people using cupping for pain relief and to obtain relief for a number of problems. Such as this article from the Wall Street Journal says. So hey, maybe it's worth trying after all, and not just for the experience.

P.s. I linked up here

Turkey Shoot

Do y'all know what a turkey shoot is?

I had no idea what this was before I married Hal. I was really confused when he told me he was in a turkey shoot contest when he was 16, but didn't do too well because he had a broken leg at the time.

I was picturing horrible things done to turkeys.

It all made sense when he expalined it's a contest where you shoot clay pidgeons with shot guns, and whomever hits the most clays wins a turkey, and whomever hits the least gets a tiny baby game hen.

oooohhh, that made a lot more sense.

Last weekend Hal hosted a turkey shoot. He had big time prep for this. He made muffins from scratch for all the people who came.

I set out the camera for him so he could take lots of pictures. He didn't take a single one.

Good thing his dad took this one, because he sure looks handsome, doesn't he?

Well after doing all their boy stuff shooting clays a winner winner turkey dinner and a loser game hen were declared. Neither of which were Hal.

But Hal forgot both the turkey and the game hen in the freezer, so i guess we're the real winners in the end.

P.S. Happy December.

That time we tried Durien

Have you ever heard of durien?

It's supposed to be the world's stinkiest fruit. It's supposed to smell awful and taste awful, and the western world doesn't understand why Asia loves it so much. Well when you grow up eating it, why should it taste really disgusting to you?

Hal and I bought a durien for our host family. They're really big, and people love them, therefore they're expensive. We bought a small one to try and be nice and share with our family. Our host mom cut it open and everyone was excited. It was unripe and everyone was real disappointed. Fail.

We came home about a week later and Bookie had bought another one. This one, she said was ripe. We watched her cut into it and the look of delight on their faces at the ripeness. We prepared our selves for the awful smell everyone said would come. Either we've smelled awful things in Asia and gotten used to them, or it just smells a lot like jackfruit, which doesn't smell great, just kind of too sweet, like overripe.

So we tried it. I didn't love it, but it was edible. In fact...Hal kind of liked it.
Ruling: Eh, I've had worse.

First Taste of Cambodia

Hey guys, we've been here for a bit now so I thought I would share some scenes from our first few days in Cambodia.

It's funny the Peace Corps seems to slowly down grade the style of living that you're having. We started out at a nice hotel in San Fran for orientation, and then we flew like mad, and actually ended up skipping an entire day. We had a layover in Tokyo, so pretty much I've been to Japan... Then we had a little longer layover in Bangkok (We had one night in Bangkok!) We stayed at a super nice hotel right off of the airport. Even though we only had 2 1/2 hours of sleep there, it was still really nice and the breakfast in the morning was fantastic. The next morning we all cheered as we landed in Phnom Penh.

Phnom Penh was really overwhelming at first. It was not the Cambodia we expected to see. It was crowded, dirty, smelly, and everything you expect from the capital of a third world Asian country. We quickly learned how to ride in a tuk tuk, which are little carts on motorcycles "motos" By the morning of the third day we were ready to get out of there. Both of us were really glad to get to our last hotel in the area where we're doing training. This is the Cambodia we came to be in. I think we'll really like it here!

Easter Weekend pt 2

Here is part 2 of what we did over Easter weekend. On Saturday morning we had our traditional Easter Egg Hunt for the grandkids. I love playing with my nieces and nephews, so it was fun to hide the eggs and watch them find them. Crazy enough, they all found 13 eggs except for one of them. It worked out perfectly.

And yes, those are easter eggs in my nieces hair. My sister does her hair in the most creative ways all the time. I have no idea how she comes up with them.

After the hunt I was talking to my sister who recently got chickens about how Hal wouldn't let me get a duck. She saw the same problem I did. SO I did the craziest thing I've done in a while. I bought a baby duck. I told Hal I was doing it, he just didn't believe me, so that's his own fault, right? My sister told me I could keep it at her house, with her chickens. I think she might have loved him/her as much as I do. Her boys and her husband all wanted to get another one, but they're trying out my duck to see how much they like it, to see if they want to get another one. I think it's a she, but it's a boy in my mind, so I'm thinking of calling him Fitzwilliam. He just seems so regal. So please, without further ado, let me introduce Sir. Fitzwilliam Duck.

When we fist put him in the cage, they kind of ran away from him, so we took out two of the chickens and left him in there with just one of them, and soon enough they all got along swimmingly! Last night as he was falling asleep he tucked his arm under his wing, snuggled in the wood chips and made the cutest little noises with each breath. So cute. Are you ready to throw up because this is so cute?

It you look you can see his beak tucked into the cutest little tiny wings. I just can't get over this little guy, he's SO cute. I hope he doesn't go through that "awkward" phase that chickens do when they're getting their hard feathers.

Weekend Update

This weekend ended up being so much fun! And by weekend I mean Friday, because Hal worked all day Saturday so I spent the whole day messing around with my blog, which I'm much happier with, but it's not quite where I wanted it, but chances are it will stay like this for a little while since I'm not so savvy with design techy stuff.

This Friday was the opening of the art exhibit that had my picture in it! I was super excited for it. It opened as a part of Gallery Stroll. Gallery Stroll is amazing. A ton of art galleries around town open up and let people come see what exhibits they have going on. It's super low pressure since there are so many people in all of the galleries that you don't feel like they're staring at you, or that you have to buy something. Some of the galleries even serve hors d oeuvres.

It was the last day that my brother in law and sister in law were in town, so we had a yummy dinner with them, and then headed downtown for the gallery stroll. We went to Saans Photography studio, where Duston Todd's Sleep Is The Cousin To Death exhibit was hung. I'll share my picture with you when I have the approval, but in the meantime, here's a look.

The exhibit was beautiful. I thought it looked amazing in there, and it was so cool to see everyone else's picture. Duston was super nice and told me that he thought mine was the "prettiest" of all of them. And then he told me that the first picture that he took during our session was not so pretty. Well, thanks for not choosing that one! When I get the pictures from him I'll have to see just how awful sleepy it looks.

There were so many people in front of the studio! It was crazy town out there. There were other artists selling things on the street, and poets yelling their work. We ended up going into the antique shop just a few doors down. We walked in and Hal was with his mom and I, and his dad and his brother were around the other end of the counter. The guy that owned the shop asked if we were a family. When we told him yes he said that "they really favor each other" indicating Hal and someone else. My mother in law asked which guy he meant (his dad and his brother were standing together) The guy said "uh, the balding one" sad times, since he wasn't referring to Hal's Dad.

After looking all around the store we ended up at the front counter talking to the owner again. He was talking to Hal when Hal said "my wife and I' The guy stopped him short and said "You're Wife?! I thought you were 16!" Hahahah! How awesome is that? In Hal's defense, he had shaved that morning, and whenever he shaves he looks so much younger. But still, that was awesome. The guy then told me I was robbing the cradle.

After the antique shop we went into the shop next door. I wasn't really sure what was going on in there, but I saw this big dress form covered in these strips of cloth. It had a note on it that said something like "write three words to describe your life philosophy"

 

 Do you see that little girl in the corner of the picture? When I came in she was there with what I guessed were her parents, but after I was standing there a while they weren't there anymore and that little girl handed me a sharpie and helped me pick out which piece of cloth to write on. People kept coming up to me and commenting about her...like they thought she was mine.  I felt bad leaving her, but I assumed that her parents were in there somewhere. She didn't seem lost.

This is what I wrote. Explore. Find. Love. This is my I'm trying to be awesome and write in all caps, but it makes my handwriting look really ugly writing.

After the gallery stroll I went to a bar downtown with my mother in law. It's called Keys on Main. It's a piano bar. The funny thing is, of the 4 people who were going, 3 of us don't drink. I did enjoy myself a virgin strawberry daiquiri though. We had fun singing along to the songs and watching people get kicked off the stage for going up there and dancing too much. 

The best part of the night was this super drunk older lady who got kicked off the stage more than once walked over and handed this young guy a note. I watched him read it, and watched his face get more and more red and more embarrassed looking. It was awesome, because as everyone at his table red it, they all just started laughing. Not too much later his group left, and then the drunk old lady left. Maybe she chased him down. My mother in law's friend went over to the table after they left, but she couldn't find the note. I wanted to know what it said!

Trying new things: Sushi Edition

I've been pretty good about sticking to my goal of trying new things. In less than a week I tried something new twice. Do you hear that! twice. You know what I tried for the very first time in my life? Sushi.

I hate fish. The End. End of story, I hate fish. But everyone seemed to just rave about sushi, and I'm being open, so I thought I would give it a try. We gave my brother in law a groupon for a sushi place for his birthday, and since he was going away, and this was his last weekend to play, he was generous enough to take us out to sushi, so off to Park City we went. The wait was a while, so we went to a candy store up the street. Man was it amazing inside.

It was such a cute shop! I'm sorry, but I don't remember the name, because I'm dumb and think I will get the pictures off my phone before they go away, but I always forget, so I lost the picture of the sign, and all of the pictures of what rolls we ate, except for this one.

Yeah, that's right, we ordered fried shrimp heads. But there were only two, so I let the boys have them...either that or I had no intention of ever eating them. We got three different rolls, we ordered the Haloe roll, the Tempura Shrimp, and one called the Rob's Special. We also ordered some chicken in case I chickened out...pun not intended.

You know, I had had one piece of sushi before, and it had eel in it, because they told me eel wasn't fishy, but the texture of eel was awful. This time, I was much more impressed with the sushi. It was a cool restaurant too, it was called Flying Sumo. And you know, everything automatically fancy if it's in Park City. I didn't mind the shimp tempura, or the coconut shrimp, even though I hate shredded coconut, but I didn't enjoy the Rob's Special. It had raw tuna on top and that was just a little too much for me. But overall it was pretty good. Good enough to get me to agree to go to sushi a few days later.

At the request of my brother in law we went to Ichiban. Mon - Wed nights they do Happy Hour where their rolls are like $5-6, so off we went. Sadly, I lost the picture of the sushi rolls, but it was a sight to see, we ordered at least 10 plates. We did order a lot of the Vegas roll, which is my favorite sushi roll, at least from there. It's deep fried, and has creme cheese in it, so you can't even taste the salmon. We had our own little private Japanese style booth thing, and the restaurant was just beautiful.

I really liked both sushi places! Minus the roll I tried I think it was called the pink power....oh man, it didn't have fish on top, and the fish inside was cooked, so I thought I was safe until I started chewing and pop pop pop....fish eggs! EWWW! I gagged and almost spit it out, but I was trying new things, so I finished it and then didn't eat another one of those. Well, if you go to Ichiban, my two favorite were the fried ones, the vegas, and the x96 roll. Mmm, those were good, I even got my sister in law, who also hates fish to try those two!

Hal and I agreed, the best part about sushi, is how it leaves you feeling. You know how some types of food are just so heavy and so you feel heavy after eating? Well, sushi leaves you feeling satisfied, and I never seemed to get over-full, it was just content and comfortable after eating there, your body just feels good.

So I think it was a success, and I'd be willing to try more sushi in the future!

Adventures in Babysitting

I have some good news! I figured out one of the computers at work has a mini SD reader in it, I slipped in my SD card, and wallah, my pictures from my phone were still there, at least the ones that hadn't gone black yet. I was pretty excited about this. And luckily, because of this they figured out, the problem is with my phone and they're sending me a new one, yay!

Last weekend we had another first. We had our first babysitting sleepover at our house. It was my sister's birthday, so we took her youngest, and another sister took her older 2. I wasn't sure how it was going to go, considering this kid's nickname is "the destroyer" and he was on his 3rd week being potty trained. I think Hal and I were both surprised by how well things went. My sister dropped him off, and Hal decided to teach him how to play a wii game demo that he downloaded called "Max and the Magic Marker" He was able to get a hold of the holding the jump button and the joystick to the right, but it was a little rough to use both hands to do stuff. We asked if he wanted to play the dance game, since that's the first thing he asked when he came over, but apparently jumping and constantly falling in the water was more fun than that.

Then we played with the kitty for a while, with the toy she's obsessed with, which may have been a bad idea, seeing as the next day, he tried to play with the kitty and the toy by himself, and ended up getting a big scratch on his hand. But it wasn't anything a band-aid that he just took off 10 minutes later couldn't fix. I felt bad he got scratched, but my sister didn't care. She said he's used to it from their cat, and was just glad he was dressed when she came to pick him up. And seeing as my other nephew shoved her daughter into a fridge for "asking to borrow his stool," it wasn't the worst injury her kids endured that weekend

We took him over to my in-laws, because I haven't met a kid that doesn't love going over to their house. All of my nieces and nephews love to go over there. He was a little nervous at first and stayed by me, but he soon warmed up and spent a large part of the night, shutting himself in the toy cupboard under the TV and then kicking the doors open. I love it when kids entertain themselves.

That night he went to bed so well. He got up once to get his train, and knocked things over in the process, so we heard him. He jumped right back in bed, and 10 minutes later we heard a cupboard closing, and Hal went out there to check on him, but he was dead asleep. The next morning at 8 on the dot we heard him talking, so Hal went out there to have him go to the bathroom, and we accidentally ended up waking him up, because he had been talking in his sleep! Since I'm lazy in the mornings we had some fun times lying in our bed doing this:

 He didn't like the flash on my phone so he was making this face in every single picture. Then we lazed around the living room, and he spent an hour playing with his train on any flat surface he could find. Once i looked over and saw this:

How cute is this picture? I turned on Scooby Doo for him, and I think this might have been the only time he actually was watching it. Please excuse our messy house...we had a kid over, that's an excuse, right? It definitely wasn't as bad as I thought it might be! It's nice to just babysit one kid who can walk and talk, and tell you what he needs. Don't worry, this didn't make me baby hungry. I think for now I'll definitely just stick with babysitting!

After he left we both needed a little of this:

Weekend of Firsts

Hal and I had a crazy weekend. It was so jam packed, and so many crazy things happened that I have dubbed it our "Weekend of Firsts". We tried a lot of things for the first time. Remember how I wanted to branch out and do new things? Well, this weekend we definitely held up this new goal.

First time going to crab fest:

If you look in the mirror you can see how many lights away we are from the mirrors. I surprised Hal with lunch at MarketStreet for Crabfest. Sadly we were not impressed at all. It was overpriced and none of us loved our food, and the service was awful. But, they do have amazing desserts, so go there for dessert, not for lunch. We didn't let that get us down though, and went on to another first.

First time staying at a B&B

We had such a lovely time there, we stated at Wildflowers b&b It was the cutest old house, and the two women who run it were so nice. One of them is an artist, so there is original art all over the house. And they had two dogs that I got to pet! Our room was beautifully decorated, and they made such a lovely breakfast for us. Oh, and it was my first time in a claw footed bath tub. Heck Yes!

It was also our first time double dating with my dad. It definitely wasn't as weird as I thought it would be.

The next day, it was my first time snowboarding, and Hal's first time teaching someone to snowboard.

 

I'll admit, I was a wimp. I misunderstood something Hal said about getting off of the ski lift, I made it about 2 feet off of the ski lift and then biffed it, hard core, like landed with my face in the snow, and have a swollen bruised knee to prove it. It took me forever to make it down the bunny hill(which is way bigger than a hill). By then Hal said his feet hurt so he wanted to go inside for a bit. This is when I wimped out and didn't want to go back out. Hal went back out for a little while and then we both wimped out. What? We were tired! Check this out though, we borrowed some snowpants from a friend's family...they were children's size 12 and I fit in them with layers underneath! Haha, I guess that's why I still fit in the child seat of the grocery shopping cart.

And lastly, On the way home we had our First time driving home in an unexpected blizzard. We got stuck in the resort parking lot, and thought the drive down the mountain was bad. We thought we were safe when we got to the base of the mountain and it was only raining. Uhhh a mere 15 minutes later, and on a very dark freeway we realized we were in the midst of a blizzard. It was blowing so hard, and the snow was so wet, and it was so dark. Both of us were on an adrenaline rush pretty much until we got home.

All in all, we had a fabulous weekend, and did so many new things, that I felt very adventurous. Now we just need to keep coming up with new things for us to try. Any suggestions?

Sundance 2011

This weekend Hal and I did something that we've never done before. We went to Park City during the Sundance Film Festival. We're so lucky to live so close to something so amazing, and neither of us have ever been. I remember last year we went to the Broadway Theatre downtown, where they show a lot of Sundance movies and everyone was talking about how Spike Lee was going to be there that night. Neither of us knew who he was, and we weren't there to see a Sundance movie...so we weren't too excited.

We didn't have tickets to see anything, we just wanted to see what Park City was like during Sundance, so at like 9 at night we drove up there.A tip? They have little signs that say this, but they're hard to read everything they say when you're driving. If you're going to sight see, park in Deer Valley. We parked at Deer Valley Resort and a bus came and picked us up for free and dropped us off on Main Street. It was sweet, their buses, at least to Deer Valley were free.

We drove up the mountain to some of the resorts before we headed to Main Street. We brought my brother-in-law along with us, and I wanted to see what Stein Eriksen Lodge looked like in the winter, and Hal wanted to show his brother how fancy the place we go for our anniversary is. I told Hal not to turn up the drive to the Lodge, because they always have people waiting outside to grab your car the moment you pull up, but he thought he could turn around and he wanted to see the Lodge....so he pulled in and sure enough 2 guys rushed up and tried to take the car. It was worth it though, the Lodge looks so beautiful with the snow. Too bad I don't have $1,000 to stay there during the winter...per night, Yikes. I was too much of a wimp to try and take a picture after Hal told them we turned up there by "accident". So this was the only picture I got....it down the lane from the Lodge.

It was so beautiful up there, I'm so bummed this was the only picture I got of it, it was too dark to catch how beautiful it was. They have a ton of snow up in Deer Valley/Park City.

After lying to the Steins guys we went back down the mountain to Deer Valley and parked and took the bus to Main Street.

In Park City, Main Street is it. It's where all of their little shops/restaurants/boutiques are. Well, where a lot of them are anyway. It's where you hang out when you are visiting Park City. So we went there and walked up and down the street. We didn't see anyone famous, probably because it was like 10 by the time we got to Main Street, so all of the shops were closed and there were just lines to get into parties and restaurants. But it was still pretty.

We saw a ton of papperazzi around some guy with dark hair. We didn't see his face and then I heard a girl at the edge of the group say, "Oh my gosh, that's Dustin" But I didn't hear the last name. The only famous Dustin I can think of is Dustin Hoffman...so pretty much I saw Dustin Hoffman.

A local radio station is doing something called "Sundance Gawker" where people send in pictures of famous people they see up there. Man, we missed out! Maybe we'll have to go back during the day or something, because there are a lot of famous people up there. Paul Rudd, Zooey Deschanel, 50 cent, James Franco and tons more. I found out today that Elijah Wood is up there. How did I miss that? I was so obsessed with him in Middle School/High School. I'm so bummed I didn't know earlier! Oh well. This just makes me excited to actually get tickets and go to some movies next year! Thank goodness for locals discount tickets.

Firsts

Today is a day of firsts. Some big, and some small.

Today For the first time this happened to me. I didn't even really think this happened in real life. It's something that you see in the movies, right? Wrong.

via

There is a spot where I love to do this, but it's not a spot where people walk. And granted this picture may be a more dramatic version of what happened to me, but a car still splashed me and it was cold and wet. Boo. As I was backing up another car splashed me. Double boo.

It's snowing like mad outside. Yes, it is March 31st, the day before April begins. Yes, spring should be here, but alas it is snowing really hard, and has been all day. At least it isn't sticking like it does during the winter months. I guess I can't be too upset as this is Utah, and this is a part of living here. I wouldn't be surprised if it snowed again before May. I remember once it snowed in June.

Today for the first time that I can remember I slammed a drawer shut on my finger, but on the fingernail part. I can't remember ever hitting it quite like this. My thumb still hurts. What the heck, drawer?

Today for the first time I did something really cool. I know you're thinking 'today is the first time you've done something cool?' But this is cooler than cool, it's awesome. Today Hal and I submitted our Peace Corps applications. See, I told you it's cool. We're really excited, and we have no idea what exactly will come of this, if anything, but we're excited nonetheless. We applied to go anywhere, but if we had our choice we would go to Morocco.

Alright, those might be my only firsts that I can think of today.

Hal and I are home from Colorado, and we had a blast. I have some awesome pictures to share. Just think....giraffes.