This summer was awesome. So much time with friends and family, and so much time enjoying Minnesota. We arrived MSP on a Saturday night (school ended Friday) with the intention of going straight to our hotel and going to bed. Well that didn’t happen. We really wanted Buffalo Wild Wings (don’t judge), so we went to Mall of America to get some. Very much under the impression that that was all we were going to do. Get some Asian zing wings and call it a night. But then we discovered that MOA has lots of bars with good beer. There was even an arcade with good beer! Brandon’s two favorite things: video games and beer. So we made a night of it and didn’t end up leaving until after midnight. So after being awake for almost 36 hours, we headed back to our hotel.
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The summer was spent mostly in Minnesota, trying to see as many of our family and friends as possible. Our first stop was Brainerd. We stayed with my parents and saw lots of my extended family from both sides. Luke was working in the Cities for the summer, so we got to see him. Pete was still in DC and wasn’t able to make it home at all, so we missed out on seeing him. We spent lots of time on the lake with friends and family.
So this is incredibly late, but I really want to try and get back into this (yes, yes, I know, I've said that numerous times). . . So I will try and remember the main things from August!
We arrived back in Hong Kong at the beginning of the month and started school. The first picture is our view. Love it! Nothing really note worthy, but looking through my iPhoto, we did spend an afternoon wandering one of the little islands in HK called Peng Chau. Such a cool little place! Well I'm not sure what's going on here.... I definitely posted about July when I posted about June, but for some reason it's not here any more, so here it goes again (luckily I saved it!)
The first few days in July were spent in Luverne. We went into Sioux Falls a couple times to go to Target (yay!) and Buffalo Wild Wings, two of the things that we really missed. We also went to the Fourth of July Parade there as well. We didn’t stay for fireworks though, because we were leaving for Florida for a cruise at 6am on July 5th. Other than those things, we just spent a few days relaxing and enjoying time with Nichols. Well I’m definitely failing on keeping up to date on this. It’s already the end of August and I haven’t written about June. So here’s the June post. Hopefully July will come soon too! For most of the month of June, we were in Hong Kong and working. Work was hectic, and I crammed an entire grad school class into the first three weeks of it. But now I’m over half way done with my masters, so yay! The first weekend in June, I went to Phuket, Thailand with 16 other female teachers from school. It was an awesome weekend. We stayed at a fancy resort right on the beach. We literally just laid in the sun, ate, drank, and got massages. It was such a good weekend. I didn’t realize that it would be so worth it to go away just for the weekend. But when I think about it, (besides cost), it’s pretty much the same thing as driving from Fargo to the cities for the weekend. We flew out on Friday night and came back Sunday night. It was an awesome weekend!
The last month has been crazy. I will do my best to summarize it on here without being too incredibly boring. The last couple weeks in MN were great (we're in HK now). Since my last post, we just spent time with family. My parents, Luke, Brandon and I took a trip to the Grand Marais, MN, which was great. It was so gorgeous. It's a tiny town that is right on Lake Superior. Their main industry is tourism, so everything is done very nicely. We stayed in a condo that was right on the Lake. Great to wake up and be 50ft from Lake Superior. Our main activity there was a kayaking day-trip. We left in the morning and it was incredibly foggy. About 20ft visibility. It was really neat kayaking through the fog and having absolute no idea where we were going. Luckily, we had a guide, or else it would have been quite scary. Besides kayaking, we just spent time wandering the quaint town and exploring the gorgeous surroundings.
Marissa was here for almost a week and I think we gave her a pretty good taste of Minnesota. We spent a few days in Brainerd and a few days in the cities. In Brainerd, we did the Turtle Races in Nisswa, biked on the Paul Bunyan Trail, ate at a few local restaurants, and, of course, spent some time on the lake.
The week with Nichols consisted of lots of sitting around, which was actually kinda nice because I hadn't had a lot of down time during the first couple weeks home. We did spend about 24 hours down in Omaha to go to the zoo and just to get out of town for a bit. I had never been to Nebraska, so I get to check another state off my list. That's 27 now!
After arriving in Sioux Falls and staying with Nichols for the night, I took the bus to Minneapolis. Side note about that: very interesting experience. I heard many conversations that we definitely a "welcome back to the US" moment. Football and smoking and their cool-ness definitely came up a lot. Also, how Bush was an awesome president, and a thinker none-the-less. How Obama sucks. And, my favorite, getting a high school diploma from prison. I'm just glad I made it. Four of my friends picked me up from the station in Minneapolis, so that was awesome. It was so great to see them! :) Then, the next day, our flight wasn't until late that night, so I spent the day with Suzy and Hugh, which was a fun. Bill and Mark stopped by for a bit, too. So nice to see family :)
We made it back! We've been here for a couple weeks, so there's a lot to write about, so I'll divide it into a few different posts.
The last week in Baguio was very hectic. We did tons of packing and organizing, and obviously getting all of our school stuff done. And I, of course, got in my last manicure/pedicure/massage before we left. Packing took a lot longer than we thought. We accumulated a lot over the course of two years there. But I think we whittled away at it pretty well. We ended up with 17 medium boxes that totaled 2.5 cubic meters (the only reason I know this is because that's how the shipping company charged us). Graduation went well and it was sad to say good-bye to all of our students. |
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