The infamous "ball"

Here's a funny video of Huey and his favorite ball that my mom gave him when she was here. He won't let this ball out of his sight...it has become sort of a problem ; ) 

Spring Break

Ah, spring break. You may be thinking..."What? Adults don't have spring break! That's only for people in school." Well my friends, I technically still am in school and therefore am entitled to a spring break just like everyone else. And when my time came for a spring break, you better believe I had plans for what we would do. Actually, all I had were hotel reservations. That's right, no plane tickets were booked. But the cool thing about living on base with an AMC terminal is you can take the risk and catch a hop to cool and foreign places. And that's exactly what we did. 

Usually hops are big cargo planes that have extra seats in the back. You are lucky enough to get picked for a seat and provided a "box nasty" to sustain you through the flight. My first experience on a hop was pleasantly different. There are hops that go all around the Pacific and one in particular to Singapore. It has been my goal since Mike and I got married to go on a honeymoon and after hearing such fun things about this place, I made the decision that we would take a hop to Singapore for our spring break. To get on a hop, you have to have all this paperwork that I won't go into for security reasons. You are grouped into a certain category and then your name is called in order of groups. Fortunately (ugh), we were lumped with lots of other people in the same group so were basically all in competition for the select few seats that were available on the hop. Gosh, waiting for our name to get called was like waiting to hear if we were picked on the cool team or if we got a part in a play. It was nerve-racking! Fortunately, God was on our side and we were the LAST people to get called for the plane! My heart was beating 100 times a minute I was so nervous. 

So for five days, we ventured around the great country of Singapore. It was so refreshing because EVERYONE spoke English. The weather was wonderful, the stores were expensive, the attractions were rememberable and the sites were fantastic! We had an amazing time and I'm so glad that we were able to pull this off with a free flight to boot! 

Here are some of many pictures that we took on our trip. I'll try to narrate my way through most of them. 

Here I am laughing and squirming hysterically because little fishies are biting at my feet. 

And here's a close-up of my feet. I know, super gross right? It actually didn't feel that bad and my feet were seriously nice and smooth following this procedure. Would I do it again? Probably not. Once was enough to last a lifetime thank you!

At the entrance of Singapore Zoo. Absolutely the best zoo on earth. Beautiful with tons of exotic animals. Just amazing!

I was trying to get a cool Clemson shot to submit to the Clemson World magazine. 

Me and a baby pineapple. 

Don't worry. This isn't a real alligator!

On the second part of our zoo excursion called the Night Safari. It seriously felt like we were in Jurassic Park. We were on a trolley, it was raining outside, it was dark and all the animals were behind electric fences and that was pretty much it! Great fun ; ) 

This was the second day when we went to Sentosa Island. 

Hello Mars Bar! It has been FOREVER since we've seen you! You sure tasted good by the way!

Getting ready to go down a zip line from the top of a mountain to a small little island. It was really fun!

Mike and I are both going down the zip line at this point. I tried to get a close-up picture of him but he just zoomed past me and I wasn't quick enough! 

On the third day we just walked around and took pictures of the sites around Singapore.

Beautiful Indian Temple in downtown Singapore.

All the windows had these cute shutters on them. This building happened to be rainbow colored which I especially liked. 

Well, that's our trip in a blog-filled nutshell! 

Our First Guests

What a wonderful visit! My mom and Paul flew in on the 17th and left on the 30th so we had two glorious weeks of fun and frolicking around the Kanto Plains. Pictures say a thousand words so instead of going through our trip step by step, I will highlight some of my favorites:

-Eating Shabu-Shabu in Tachikawa

-Eating Indian Food at the "Grate" Taj Mahal

-Eating Yakaniku here in Fussa

-Eating a wonderful meal at Wellingtons

(wow, there's a lot of eating that we did I guess)

-Going to the Seibu Dome and watching the season opener of a Japanese baseball game (oh and soaking our feet in a mini-onsen while watching the game)

-Staying in the cabin at Tama Hills

-Viewing the blooming cherry blossoms at Ueno Park in Tokyo

-Staying in the General's Suite at The New Sanno

-Planting flowers in our front yard

-Having my mama in my classroom with me

and

-Walking around Showa Park on a brisk and chilly afternoon

Although I was sad to see them go, I'm so happy that they came and am grateful for the many memories we've made. 

Unlike Shabu-Shabu where you boil your meat, this is Yakaniku where you grill it. 

This picture was merely taken for my sister-in-law who ONLY eats meat and literally nothing else. There's some interesting stuff on there like cow tongue and stomach.

Don't worry, I just grilled veggies. 

Mike came to my classroom on Career day and he was SO fun to watch! I've never really seen him around kids before and it was really great ; ) I seriously think he should be a teacher. 

This explains a lot.

Mom and Paul standing next to some fish organs.

You can tell who the Americans are in this picture...

What an interesting Hot Dog right?

Can you see us on the bottom of the screen? I'm wearing the red and blue striped shirt, Mike is to my left and my mom is to my right. 

There are all these crazy flags and balloons and bats that they swing, blow up or slap throughout the game. It makes watching baseball quite entertaining ; ) 

Enjoying some Shabu-Shabu. The steam is from the sukiyaki that is bubbling in front of my camera. 

Look at Ma holding those chopsticks! 

Baby Hu-Hu and Grandma chilaxin in the back of the rav 4. 

It is quite common to come into a public bathroom and find the toilet paper neatly folded for you to by the previous user. 

Huey likes to point his butt toward the camera instead of his face. It must be a dog thing.

Grandma and Huey having a talk.

This was called the "Cherry Blossom Trio" and gosh was it heaven! I ate this whole thing to myself!

This is Tokyo Tower, kind of like the Eiffel Tower...but it Tokyo and its red!

Oh what an interesting place...we almost got off at this exit!

Below are some of my favorite photos that I took and spruced up a bit. I love real photographs and plan to frame some of these for our house. 

 

Happy Spring!