A day in Irvine....

Chan and I headed to my parents pulling our Yamaha Rhino for a fun day of trail riding and hanging out with my family. My dad, uncle, and some other guys from the area have a hobby of building old Suzuki Samarai's into rock crawlers and big four wheelers. They usually get together once or twice through the week and will occasionally take weekend trips together to rough it and try to out do one another in their modified jeeps.
My family has a lot of wooded land that hasn't been touched except for the small trails these guys have made while riding. So, Chan and I took off on the rhino and had been gone about 5 minutes when we could hear this roaring behind us. Yep, it was Dad and my sister. He had to show us up. He literally acts like a 16 yr old boy. While he was trying to catch up with us by going off trail he managed to climb his jeep halfway up a tree and bent his axle. Ha! Ha! That's what he gets for showing off. Don't worry, no big deal. They tear these up or break something at least once a month. I'm sure they will have a lot of fun standing around and working on it.

After the ride I took my nephews out in a field to get a little practice driving. That was interesting..... My oldest nephew listened intently while I explained to him how he should drive. Don't take corners too fast, if you hit a hole while going fast you'll be airborn, etc.... He took mental notes and drove like a pro. A little cautious but pretty good. My youngest nephew listened while I talked but was anxious to get moving. And move he did.... He floored it and I thought I was going to fly off the thing. He was a maniac. I had to stop him and give him a refresher course in safe driving. Wow, what an experience. Thank goodness he has a long time before he'll be out on the road....
It was a great weekend and I always love going home and hanging out with my family. Chan and I live in a subdivision now so I really miss my home in Irvine. I was thinking about all the fun Tisha and I had on the farm growing up. Tisha, if I can find that picture of you driving the tractor, I'm posting it so watch out. We need to take Kevo there one day so he can take a wild ride with Dad.

Visiting the Middle East

For those of you who don't know I recently traveled to Jordan for work. I was very excited when I was asked to attend the training. Of course, it was for finance so I knew it wasn't going to be extremely exciting but when I found out where it was I was definitely up for it. I'm guessing that opportunities to see this part of the world will be few and far between :) There were three people from the U.S. that attended and everyone else was from Save the Children offices all over the world. It was my first opportunity to meet my international co workers. The picture above was taken on the side of the road in Jordan. There were a lot of camels.... I was traveling with a co-worker that could speak Arabic so that helped out a lot. Otherwise I think I would have been lost. I woke up at 5am my first morning there by the call to prayer. I had no idea what it was at first but it didn't take long to learn and it rang out over the city 5 times a day. Even though I was working I did get to squeeze in some sightseeing. I had to get over the major jetlag and tough it out. The second day I was fighting to keep myself awake so I could get on schedule. The food was different than anything I'd eaten before but once I figured out what I liked and what I should stay away from, it was great. I had 2 days open to tour and the first day I went into downtown Amman. It was fun to shop around the market and I picked up some souvenirs for pretty reasonable prices (thanks to my co-worker who was bargaining for me). Then we went to the Roman Ampitheater (it's over 2000 years old). It was so cool to sit there and look around. You could see so far from the top.




The training wasn't bad at all and I actually had fun getting to meet everyone and learn how things work in their offices. There were people from the U.S., Guatamala, Mozambique, Lebanon, Pakistan, Mali, Gaza, Ethiopia, Turkey, Armenia, Indonesia, Sudan, Tanzania, and Bangladesh in my class. Luckily everyone could speak English. I think I was the only person there that wasn't at least bilingual. There was a conversation about what languages everyone could speak. I decided I need to change that and take up a foreign language. Haven't decided which one yet. Here are some of the people I met.







My last day in Jordan was my favorite. 15 of us loaded up in cars driven by our friends from the Jordan office of Save the Children and went to The Dead Sea. It was so beautiful. The temperature was perfect. There was this weird haze that made everything seem like you were looking through those weird sunglasses with the yellow lenses (some diehards wear them when they're fishing). I may have just lost everyone there but I know what I mean. Anyway, it was great. There were people bobbing around in the sea. If you didn't already know, you float in the Dead Sea without any effort besides picking your feet up because of the high salt content. I didn't float around because I didn't have my bathing suit but I did wade out in the water. It set me on fire. Evidently your not supposed to shave for a day or so before you get in the water. The salt will irritate your skin if you've just shaved or have any cuts. Ouch!



We stayed there for most of the night sitting at a little restaurant over the sea. We did enjoy a little "hubbly bubbly" that you can order off the menu (fruit flavored). It smelled sort of like pipe tobacco except with a fruity twist. You could actually order this at almost every restaurant and the locals usually sat at their table and smoked on this for a while after their meals. Don't worry, this was just flavored tobacco, none of that funny business going on.



We did get stopped at every security check point along the way to and from the Dead Sea. That was interesting. Armed men wave you over to the side of the road and look through your vehicle, inspect passports, and then look in the trunk. It was a little unnerving. They also did bomb checks on every vehicle that came in to our hotel. You couldn't get by without being checked because there were spikes across the entrances that would blow your tires. I did feel pretty safe once I was in the hotel though. They advised us not to go out at night unless we were in a large group. So, there were some nights that everyone stayed in and I felt a little stir crazy at those times. All in all, I had a great experience and met some really nice people. I was very happy to get back home and see Chan though.


I absolutely love my job and feel so blessed to have such great experiences since I've worked there.


No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow. ~Lin Yutang