I just looked at my pictures from Nepal for the fist time on the bigscreen of a computer and it made me really excited about Nepal again. I thought that I should post some more pictures from my trip, so I have decided to put up my favorites which are mostly of the artsy fartsy type, but I like them. All is well in Thailand, I just took my grammer and phonetics exam. In procrastination from studying over the weekend I spent hours reading Lonely Planet's Southest Asia on Shoestring getting really excited to hit the road again. As of Saturday morning I will be

free from school and out exploring again. Much love to everyone!!!!!

Happy Birthday to the King!!!

December 6th, the king's birthday...a very important holiday here in Thailand. Thai people love the king, and they show their love by wearing yellow shirts. Rach and I even bought some of the king's official yellow polos to teach in. Usually at any given time about 30-40% of people on the street are sporting the yellow shirts, but on the king's birthday it was a sea of yellow. We went to the celebration and saw lots of very interesting food, including crocodile and bugs. Crocodile I tried (it was a bit chewy) and I passed on the bugs. I have one week of school left. I am very ready to go travel. My sister will be here on the 20th of December, and my friend Germaine is popping over from Nepal on the 13th. I have had enough time in Phuket and am very ready to go see the rest of Thailand.

School is hard!!!
So I have not been in school in a while and seem to have forgotten that yes, indeed you do have to work. The classes are great and I am learning a lot, but we have a ton of projects and teaching to do outside of class, and it is a little overwhelming. We have been learning a lot about grammer which I love, and phonetics which I am not a fan of. We need to learn the phonetic alphabet, which is a bunch of crazy symbols that stand for different sounds. The problem is that our teacher is English, so the words she gave us as examples of each sound only work if you have an English accent, so I need to practice talking like a Brit before tackling the alphabet.
Rachel and took our clothes to the Laundermat today and the owner is one of our students, a favorite of both of ours. It was really neat to see one of the students out in the community using his English. The school we go to offers free English classes to the community, which we get to practice teaching. It is a really cool set up and seems to provide a good opportunity for people in the community to learn English.

Friday night I went to my first Thai boxing match. Rach and I decided it would be a good cultural experience, and was probobly one of those things we should see while we are here. We had a really great experience (contrary to what we expected) because we went with a guy who is in school with us who spent a year here Thai boxing. He was able to explain a lot of the cultural parts and point out the sportsmanship to us, which made it much more interesting then 2 guys beating the crap out of each other. Rachel and I bet a beer on one of the fights against the people we were with. We picked our man based on his really awesome tiger cape... we found out that a cool outfit does not always equal good fighter. He got wailed on by the other guy and we were out a beer.
We spent the weekend at the beach with some of the other students. It was so hot, and the ocean is so warm it is barely refreshing. It was very beautiful and felt awesome to get out of the city. I have loads of work to do this week, I think the course just gets harder from here on out.

My holidays abroad....

Sad to say, I have missed all three of my favorite holidays in the few months I have been away from home. October 31st,always a good time in the states...dressing up, eating lots of chocolate and celebrating with friends. Luckily, Nepalis are always happy to have reason to celebrate and they surely did use the excuse of our "festival" to drink until 3 in the morning. As for the Americans, we ate snicker momos (deep fried snickers) and drank Thumba (fermented barley in buckets which they pour hot water over). It was a good time, and wearing my pajamas which were doctor scrubs I almost felt dressed up. Next came my birthday, which is ofcourse the most important of all. Germaine and I celebrated with the Deedee of our tea house with an apple pie made specially for the occasion (I even blew out a candle). I think our Deedee found the whole thing entertaining, since they do not even know when their birthdays are, much less their exact age. I am now a quarter of a century old...wierd. And last but not least Thanksgiving. I must say my expectations for a Thanksgiving dinner in Thailand were not high...I figured curry would have to do. Rachel and I decided to go to the grocery store in hopes o finding something "Thanksgiving-like". We found chocolate ice cream...it doesn't scream Thanksgiving but was tasty non the less. We then came to find out that the Irish bar in town was hosting a turkey dinner. We arrived and sure enough, in came a turkey n a box, and all the fixings, including gravy and cranberry sauce. And for dessert....pecan pie. I was quite impressed. We felt very multi-cultural when we realized, we were eating Thanksgiving dinner in Thailand, listening to Latin music, at an Irish pub owned by a Brit and an American, managed by a Canadian. So that was our Turkey day.

School is going really well, I am finding it all very interesting and fun. I taught my first class the other day, all went smoothly. Going to the beach this weekend!!!

Well as promised, here are some pictures. I wish I could post more, but I not allowed to on the computers here at my school. The first three are from the Langtang Valley, which Germaine and I know refer to as "our" valley since we fell so much in love with it. The last 2 are from the Annapurna circuit. The one of my mom and I is on the highest pass in the world, Thorong La (17,600ft).

I am now in Thailand as you all know. It is hot as can be, but life is good. School is pretty intense, lots of hours every day. I am teaching my first lesson to Thai students tonight. My lesson is on Auxilary verbs...do you know what those are??? I just learned a couple hours ago. I am really enjoying the classes and am looking foward to teaching. Oh and he food here is amazing and cheap. I get plates of yummy stir fried vegetables or curries for under a dollar for every meal. OK off to class!

Hello Everyone!!!

Wow, I have spent the last 7 weeks walking through the mountains...I feel really good. I am back from my second trek, which was INCREDIBLE. My friend Germaine and I went to an area called Langtang...we felt pretty lucky because we started our trek the day before a new law went into effect saying that everyone must have a guide in order to trek. The Langtang area is not quite as popular as the other regions because it does not have the enormous 8,000 meter peaks, but it was one of the most incredible places I have ever been in my life. The Langtang Valley felt so magical. It was a beautiful valley with a glacial river running down it, littered with huge boulders (we were really mad we decided against bringing our climbing shoes) and surrounded with both jagged and snowy mountains. I felt so at peace there. We hiked up to Kanging Gompa which is the village farthest up the valley, and spent about 4 days there exploring. We hiked up to the bases of some glaciers, went up the valley further, and climbed a "peak" (more like a hill among the huge mountains) where we had a really cool view. From there we went back down in elevation only to climb back up to Gossinkunda at 14,500 feet. This is a really sacred place for many Nepali people. It is located in the head of a valley alongside alpine lakes. It was really really cold there (Germaine's contact solution froze during the day in our room). We spent about three days there. We hiked up to the ridge of the valley which was really cool. The two sides of the ridge were like day and night, the other side was covered with snow and clouds and our side was clear and dry....but not for long. When we got down it began to snow, and snow. It felt so nice to be in a snow storm (other then missing skiing). About 4 inches of snow later we went out and had a snowball fight. Germaine and I got our butts kicked by 40 year old men, it was pretty pathetic.
Unfortunatly, the most epic day we had was not on the mountains, but on the bus ride home. We ended up on a bus whose steering went out about a half an hour in. All I remeber is suddenly flying through the air, my head barely missing a metal pole. When I picked myself off the floor, I saw panic in everyones eyes. I knew something was very wrong when the Nepali man next to us was trying to jump out the window. Germaine and I were the last ones off the bus. We were shocked to see that the bus was feet from driving off a sheer drop into the valley below...luckily the brakes didn't go out as well!!! It took a little while to process everything, but when I did, the tears started rolling. That was a really intense experience. Now I am back in Kathmandu enjoying showers, coffee, beer and all that good stuff. I am hoping to do some rafting before leaving. Once again this computer is not cooperating, it won't let me put pictures on. I will try again soon though. Hope you are all well, Much love!!!!

Alrighty, well I am trying my best here to post some pictures, but the slow internet is not cooperating and I am really hungry and want to go eat dal bhat. So life has been good. My mom, Del and I went back up onto the trek after a quick trip to the dentist. The dentist was actually quite good in comparison to the guy in the village I saw who picked up a tool and wiped it on a table cloth before putting it in my mouth. Anyways, we went back up with the hopes of seeing the sunrise at poon hill which is a highlight of the trek. Unfortunatly the day we were there it was so cloudy we could not see anything...asi es la vida. We did have many other good views though. Coming back to the city is rough, it is so loud and busy compared to the mountains. We have been back a couple days which is enough for me. Tomorrow my friend Germaine and I head off to the Langtang region for some more trekking, and my mom and Del fly home. When I get back to Kathmandu I promise some pictures. Much love to you all!!!

Dental Dilemma......
I am back in the land of computers. The trekking has been amazing, I can not even put into words how beautiful the mountains and people are. Unfortunatly, after 16 days of trekking we had to leave the trail earlier then planned because I got an infection where my wisdom tooth was removed. I went to the dentist today and she fixed me up, so the plan is to get back out there and spend about 5 more days of hiking. We did walk over the highest pass in the world(about 17,500ish) which was exciting. My mom was pretty sick, but she pushed through and did a great job. I will write more and add some photos when I get back to Kathmandu.

We have arrived safely in Kathmandu after 32 hours of traveling. The movies and free wine on the flight made it quite enjoyable though. We are taking off to the Annapurna region tomorow and starting our trek the following day. I was ready to get out of the city pretty much right when we got here...I am such a small town kinda gal. Being in the city has been interesting along with overwhelming. Last night we went to dinner at Germaine's host family's house. The food was delicious and it was very nice eat with local people. Not understanding the langauge has been a challenge for me, it makes me feel like a real tourist. I came down with a cold yesterday so I am going to go back to my room and rest up for tomorrow.

One of the joys of being a Taoseña....our favorite teachers in highschool are now some of our favorite people to go have pizza a beer with.

I have less than a week left before leaving to Asia for a year and a half-ish...wow that is a strange thought. I just got my wisdom teeth out which has forced me to stay home, allowing me to deal with of all those "gotta take care of that" things. So for once in my life I am not freaking out about trying to take care of everything last minute. This summer has been really great: I made some much needed money, spent a ton of time on my bike, did some hiking, a little climbing and spent some quality time with my family. I had a few vistors along the way which was really nice. Rachel finally got to experience NM in all it's "third-world" wonder. We did some hiking, a little bouldering and ate lots of green chile. This is us at Tent Rocks, a pretty cool hike a couple hours south of Taos.
Desiree came all the way from Montana to bike in the enchanted circle century race with me. 5000 ft of elevation gain and 100 miles later we realized that we did much better then expected, in our dorky homemade "Fermentation Bitch" jersies and all.



We also spent some time in Colorado during her stay. We went to The Great Sand Dunes National Park and hiked Blanca Peak, one of the 14ers. Unfortunatly we were lead astray by our 14er guide and what was supposed to be a 9 mile round trip hike turned into an adventure almost twice that long. We also went on a sweet bike ride near Pagosa Springs.

Right now I am really excited to embark on the adventure ahead of me, but at the same time I cannot help feeling a little sad about leaving a lot behind. I feel so lucky to be part of two beautiful communities filled with incredible people, (Corvallis, OR and Taos, NM) and I will miss them both very much. I wish you all the best and hope you know that you will be in my thoughts. If you have an inkering to go to South Korea (who knows, it could happen) please come visit.

My sister and I mushroom hunting. It has been super wet in NM this summer and there are tons of mushrooms to be found.
Below: Rob and I bouldering at our campsite in Durango, Colorado.

Bouldering in Taos...