Merry Christmas

We are happy to be back in the U.S.A!! Thanks to my mom and niece and nephew for picking us up at the airport. We have had a great time being back home! It was great seeing my sisters ( can't wait to see you Katie ) and our nieces and nephews! It was my birthday on the 24th and had a great time at Simple Simon's and the Mission Inn. I love having my birthday with my family, thankyou! We had a great time with family on Christmas Eve and Christmas and loved seeing all the family. We have finally adjusted to California time and have enjoyed seeing how much things have changed here. We don't have a wireless connection so our pictures will have to wait. We leave for Utah on the 3rd and will try to upload more after that! We love being home and look forward to working with honest, educated, trained people ( if you heard about the school we were at than you understand)! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!

Goodbye my love

We are so sad to say we are waiting in the Taipei airport to go home!! We had a great time in Thailand, crazy as ever and will have tons of stories and pictures to share. We spent our last days getting everything ready and organized and will board the plane in about an hour. We have had such an amazing time here and have really grown to love it. We are excited to come home and see our friends and family, especially my brand new beautiful nephew Quinn! We will be glad to be home and are ready to start the Christmas season ( they have NO idea how to do it here)! Goodbye Taiwan!! ( But not forever)

We are OFF!!!

So we left our school and with some help from wonderful friends in Taipei ( letting us leave our luggage ) we are in the International airport with one hour counting. THAILAND! This has been one of my top three places to see and I can't wait. We are staying in Bangkok for a few days and then going down south to the most amazing beaches known! Our trip is economical, meaning we are backpacking and sleeping in a hammock on the roof. It should be awesome. We are so sad to see our stay here in the Far East come to a temporary end. It has been an amazing experience and we have really loved it. Saying goodbye was pretty hard and we are still in a state of denial about our departure. Don't get us wrong we will be happy to see family and friends and brand new nephew and nieces! We are already planning our trip back here. When we get back to the Sates we will be sure to update the rest of our pictures and our trip to Thailand. Mom/Sisters don't worry we wont take any packages from friends/strangers (thanks to the movie Broke Down Palace)

Temple Trip

We had talked about going to this temple ever since we came here and it took a few months but we made it. It turned out to be a good thing we waited because it was a special worshiping day her. We were able to walk all around the temple ( temples it turned out to be a lot) and see the people worshiping. It was a big celebration and there were lights and every time a group comes into worship the band outside plays the drums and they set off fireworks. It was really neat. The temple was really old and had amazing detail in every section. The people were really nice and let us have free access to pictures and video which is great for a foreigner. The temples were more than a block long and we couldn't tell how wide they went. Each room had their Gods in them. They worship ( from what Caleb knows, I can see and what we have asked) by giving gifts, this includes food, fruit, soda, chickens, by burning fake money, incense, and their own prayers or worship. It was really beautiful temple with all the detail and made for a really fun show!

We MADE it

So we made it. After the little training I did and the zero training Caleb did we accomplished the 21 km. It was in the Toroko Gordge which is beautiful and amazing as well as unforgiving. The course was brutal and is known for its killer hills ( however we did not know this until right before the race). It was a lot of fun with thousands of people and 163 foreigners including ourselves. We went with the English ward in Taipei. Caleb and I were able to run/crawl uphill most of the way which was nice and encouraging. I finished at 2 hr and 11 mins and Caleb finished about 6 mins after me. If you know me you know I love running and accomplishing this with Caleb was a blast. We were dead after that and Caleb could hardly walk but were ready for more!!