2 1/2 Weeks Left

It has been a while since my last post for 2 reasons:

1) Not much has been going on around here since Jamie and I returned from Bali at the beginning of the month. We've been winding down the school year. The middle school and secondary joined together to put on a fantastic play of Peter Pan: A Funky Fairytale. Great stuff and the kids did a wonderful job. Last weekend, Jamie and I stayed up all night again for a middle school/secondary basketball/play-a-thon fundraiser for community service. It was a success, but we were exhausted. I have finished the first 3 chapters of my dissertation and my mentor should sign off on them in the next day or so. From there, it will be a long process of my committee members approving it and then constant revisions until I can begin my actual research sometime in September. Jamie is finishing her chapter 2 and should be finished with it by this weekend. We are moving apartments next year, which we are very excited about. We simply have a crappy apartment compared to others here, so it will be a nice change. It is actually only 2 buildings down from the one we have now, on a higher floor, will be quieter, and has much nicer furnishings. 11 days left for the students and we are ready to get them out of here and us to go home.

2) Blogspot/Blogger is down in China right now for some reason. I am actually using a p&&xy right now to type this. I'll post a few more times as things wind down here, but it'll be slow for a while.

I will post our schedule for the summer on here and maybe keep it near the top. For those regular on here to reading, you'll know when we'll be in Cartersville, Calhoun, or around Atlanta. So, maybe we can get together for lunch or dinner and do some catching up.

Hope all is well for everyone. I haven't received any emails, so I guess no news is good news. It certainly is for us.

Be Happy!

I love these polls. You can always cherry pick stats, but it goes for a nice read. Do the people in those Scandinavian countries and northern Europe not realize that it is too dang cold where they live? How can they be so happy? Anyway, check out Forbes' 2009 article on the World's Happiest Places.

Balinese Fire Dance - Amazing!

Jamie and I really enjoyed this one. It was the last of 3 dances performed with the accompaniment of the kecak chants. I hope you can see the video ok and hear Jamie's commentary. It is pretty long, so hang in there watching it. Pretty amazing stuff. Check out the picture of the guy with me HERE afterwards the dance.

Trying Kopi Luwak Coffee

As stated a few posts ago, Kopi Luwak coffee is the most expensive coffee in the world. Jamie and I certainly wouldn't even think to buy the $33 per cup in Australia or the $99 per cup in London, but here, we were treated to it for a mere fraction of that price. Great story and you can see it here.

Trying the Durian fruit in Bali

This is actually pretty funny. Jamie and I stopped at this roadside fruit stand and bought this fruit for 25,000 rupiah. As you can see they are quite large and actually out of season for Bali. The Durian fruit is a fruit which the natives say, "tastes like heaven, but smells like hell." We decided to try it out. I thought I handled it pretty well, but as you can see from Jamie later in the video, she didn't try and hide her disgust. Poor lady gave us a bunch of bananas instead.

Bali Bat Cave Temple Video

I'm playing around with some of the videos. This one is a combination of clips Jamie filmed as she walked through the bat cave temple. I lowered the quality to a 1/3 of what it was so it will upload faster. Let me know if it uploads ok and looks ok. Your internet connection will be faster than mine. It is a little over 2 minutes.

Kuta Beach, Bali

From Kuta Beach Bali

We slept in this morning but was our phone rang and it was a timeshare person promising us a free vacation to come and listen to a sales pitch and a free breakfast. We thought it might be nice, so we decided to take her up on the offer. The cool thing about it was that when we got there, we told the new lady that we already owned a timeshare and didn't want another one. She let us off the hook and let us go to eat and then we left with our free week within 45 minutes which we'll probably use for a free week on Boracey Island in the Philippines.

Jamie really likes to get a Hard Rock Cafe t-shirt from everywhere we go if they have one, so we headed over to the famous Kuta Beach for lunch. I ordered a good old American burger and Jamie had a fried chicken salad and we thoroughly enjoyed every bite. We each bought a couple of cool shirts and then headed right across the street to Kuta Beach. Check out the pictures HERE.

Afterward, our driver took us by where the terrorists attacks were on Kuta Beach back in 2002. 187 people from many different countries (mostly Australians) died that day. We also saw the spot of the bombing in 2005 in Jimbaran Beach. They say that tourism has just now started to get back to normal, but that many Australians still won't come to Bali.

Great day overall. Jamie is about to go to a 3 hour spa treatment. Great deals here and is getting a 3 hour massage, peppermint body scrub, and a creme hair bath treatment. I don't know what any of this really is, but it sounds nice for her. All that for only $73 plus they come and pick you up and take you back.

We leave tomorrow morning for our Noon flight back to Shenzhen via Bangkok. Has been a great trip.