My Life

Well I’m back to Thailand and very jet legged apparently. I keep waking up at like 4am and get super tired around 7. Anyways I thought I would write a little about my month long trip back to America.

My Agenda that I had from my last post

So, onto the agenda for my time back

1. Bucking Horse Sale
2. Visit Glendive and eat a bunch
3. Move stuff out of apartment in Bozeman
4. Visit Glendive more and eat more
5. Bozofest
6. Work week @ MSU
7. Fly back

So after the BHS I drove back to Glendive on that Sunday and stayed there for the better part of two weeks. I’m sure I gained at least 10 pounds thanks to mom(See picture below of her freezer and you will understand slightly how the feeding process works)

I spent some days working at the kitchen table on my laptop for MSU while being constantly reminded that the treats that were on the table were for Wilbur, aka Grunt. Basically he sat on the floor for hours on end just staring at me and grunting until I gave him food. For the times he wasn’t doing that he was doing this

I’m sure glad I’m not a dog so I wouldn’t have to have such a rough life.

The first weekend after BHS we loaded up the van and drove up to Bozeman where we met my brother Greg and sassy sister Nikki. We spent the next few days moving my stuff out of my apartment and into a trailer to haul back to Glendive. The weekend went by so fast I couldn’t believe it. We also celebrated my Dad’s birthday while everybody was together.

Back to Glendive to eat more or less I’m not sure it was basically a blur of eating constantly. It’s too good not to.

That Wednesday Nate drove down from Miles City and picked me up and we headed back to Bozeman for Bozofest. The weather was suppose to be rainy and cold just like every year. Well it was..sorta. Saturday we woke up to snow. Once we got to the fields it had stopped snowing and was fairly decent. About half way through our first game the sun popped out and it started to get very warm. Then a storm rolled in and rained and the wind kicked up. This repeated all day. We ended up only winning 1 game that day, but still had a blast.

Day 2 was windy but very sunny. It wasn’t very warm so I didn’t realize that it was so sunny until I got home and took a shower. Of course then I realized that it was sunny out as the hot water ran over all of my sunburns.

Tue, Wed, Thur I spent working on Campus just like old times and it was really fun. Jade and I haven’t had the chance to work together in a long time so it was a lot of fun. We didn’t exactly get everything done that we wanted to, but we did get a lot done

On Friday William drove me to the airport. The flights all went really well. I had no layovers at all anywhere which was fun. I got off the plane in SLC and walked almost directly onto the next flight to Tokyo. I got off at Tokyo and was escorted by Delta representative all the way to my JAL flight where I basically walked right on that one too. Somehow they gave me a Business class seat on the JAL flight which was awesome.

Now, I’m back and I’ve been working on straightening away my new teaching position which I will post on soon.

The guys from where Mel works have a basketball team that plays at the US Embassy twice a week. On Tuesday we went to watch them play and they invited me to play on Friday(today) so I took them up on their offer. Its an outdoor court with 9′ rims which was super fun.

Here are the pictures

We ended up winning 40-35. The end of the game was pretty intense as with only 20 seconds left and we were only up 38-35 and they had been making quite a few 3-Point shots. We got the ball back and made a layup and then the game ended.

The weather was super nice as it was only 80 degrees instead of 100 like it was on Tuesday with only 60% humidity.

Looks like Mel and I will finally venture across that large body of blue H20 in March. Mel is defending on the 4th of March which is only a week away! Its hard to believe, but we will be leaving in just under 3 weeks for Thailand. I just received my VISA back from the Thai embassy.

So for those curious readers out there here is the breakdown of how things are suppose to go:

• Mel defends on March 4th at 9am in the morning. After that there will be a get together somewhere in town until later in the evening where most likely we will make our way to Columbos. After that, specs?
• We fly out of Bozeman on the 15th of March in the morning to Hawaii
• Spend 2 days there getting Mel’s stuff shipped off to Thailand and going to the Dole plantation, shrimp stands and the Battleship Missouri museum
• Fly out of Hawaii to Bangkok on the 18th of March
• We have a Hostel booked for 14 days right now and will be apartment hunting during those 2 weeks. Mel already has some options for apartments, we just need to go see them
• I have a 60 day Tourist VISA right now, which I should be able to extend an additional 30 days. Hopefully by then we will have found me a job over there. I’m hoping to keep working for the University for these 3 months to transition myself out of my current role and get Google Apps in place for Faculty and Staff as well as some other big projects that will aid the university.
• At the end of my Tourist VISA I will most likely come back to the States and figure out my apartment situation as well as what I’m doing with my stuff(there is still stuff for sale by the way. Go here. Do note that there are tabs at the top for movies and games too!)
  • Options that I have for staying in Thailand longer include
    • Getting a job and getting a non-immigrant VISA which is a year long VISA that can be renewed
    • Applying to a Thai language school to learn Thai which should get me a 10 month VISA
    • Applying to teach English which should get me a 10 month VISA

So here is the most important info on the land that we will be exploring

• Spiders
• Its warm

I guess that is pretty much the gist of things to come for now. I will make sure to post pictures and videos here as our journey proceeds.

If you have questions please feel free to ask.

The world must know!

I took a bit of a snooze this afternoon and I had a dream that I remember quite well and I feel that the world must know about this.

Bare with me, this is a dream so things obviously will not make sense and characters and places will change instantaneously without notice.

continue reading…

I didn’t manage to get this video uploaded for the Maui post but here is how they open coconuts when you buy them at the fruit stands next to the road

After Maui we spent the next week back on Oahu with Mel’s family. Tuesday we took as a bit of a rest day and didn’t really go out and do anything really except we walked down to the theater to go see Avatar. That was a pretty fantastic movie.

Wednesday night Mel and I had planned a dinner cruise. One of Mel’s aunties had a hook up for us so we got a really good deal to go on this cruise. FYI, in Hawaii Auntie is pretty much any women older than you that is in good relations or whatever. We got down to Aloha Towers fairly early so we poked around the shops just to see what was down there and then walked over to our boat. The dinner area was all enclosed on both the bottom and top floor with windows on both sides. You could go outside of the dinner area on either the front or back of the boat which was super nice. They even had a way to the roof of the ship so you could look all around you. Mel and I went up there when nobody else was around which was really nice. While we were up on the top of the boat the humpback whales were out, which was very cool. I managed to barely see one jump out of the water. Mel missed it, which is sad because she has never seen that. I didn’t bring my camera this night so I only have pictures from my blackberry that didn’t turn out at all. I guess I’ll keep those images in my head . The views were pretty stunning after dark with Honolulu in the background. Honolulu is a very pretty city at night as it is right on the beach with lots of lights.

Thursday we rented a car and Mel’s mom drove Mel, Julia and I up to the North shore near sunset beach. This was an awesome day. It turned out to be really nice and sunny and I took a ton of pictures of different things, especially when we got to sunset beach. The waves were just huge and loud.

Here is a short video of the waves

This was at one of the shops along the way

Here you can see some of the mountain range on one of the beaches

Fisherman’s Hat

This is one of the many beaches on the East side of the island

The North shore waves

Attempt at being artistic

Another place on the North shore

Sunset behind the mountains. I took it right after we fixed our flat tire so its a bit blurry

At the end of the night we drove to one of the malls to look for some stuff and I ended up doing this

Here is the link to the entire Hawaii pictures album. There are some pictures in there that I have not put into any of the posts so make sure to check that out.
Hawaii Pictures Album

So that is pretty much it. Between these three posts you now know what we did in Hawaii for the most part. Hawaii is pretty much the place that is always nice all the time. If it is raining, it is warm rain. If it is cloudy, it is still warm and nice. The only problem is there are lots of bugs. Ants, Centipedes, wicked spiders, all sorts of stuff, so if you are afraid of bugs, be warned.

Well I finally made my way to a coffee house so I could hop online to do a little work and post on the blog and get the pictures uploaded that I have taken. Instead of tossing the pictures in the middle of the post I’m just going to post them at the end.

Our first day we basically crashed at Mel’s parent’s house all day as we were a bit tired from the previous day’s traveling. The day after that was a Saturday and it was absolutely gorgeous out. 85 and sunny with few clouds, so we headed decided to hit up a beach nearby. Just down the road from the house is a Marriott resort and because Hawaii has state laws about private beaches we could go on their really super nice beaches. There are some pictures below from that.

Sunday was a church day so we spent most of the day tootling around with the family. On Monday Julia, Mel and I decided that we were going to make our way down to Pearl Harbor and visit the USS Arizona memorial. When we arrived there we were met with massive fail. First we found out that you have to pay $3 a bag to store bags(you can’t bring in anything that can contain other items like purses and such). Then we found that they were completely out of tickets for the Memorial. Then we found that they were doing renovation on pretty much everything so we couldn’t even buy tickets to go see the USS Missouri either. So we decided that we were going to go to the Koko Marina Shopping center. We had found out a day or so before that the Kona brewery was also down there so we looked for that as well. We eventually found the Brewery and they have some very great beers there. Mel took a fantastic picture of me that you can see below as well. That night we decided that we were going to wake up early and make it back down to Pearl Harbor early enough to get a ticket to see the Arizona at least. They told us that they were giving out 4500 tickets in the first hour that the gates opened!

We got up early and Mel’s dad dropped us off at 6:30 at the gate. The line wasn’t too long but we found out that the bus tours were going in and grabbing hundreds of tickets at a time and then coming back later with bus loads of people and giving them the tickets. Apparently you can grab as many tickets as you want for the memorial. We scored the first tour and managed to weasel our way to the front of the tour so we were the first off the shuttle boat on the memorial which was awesome. After the memorial we headed to the biggest mall in Hawaii to nab some food and do some souvenir shopping and to meet Mel’s older sister. After all of that we took the bus home.

Today we woke up early and decided to head down to Waikiki so we could hit up a coffee shop and do a little work and push some stuff up to the Internet so that is where we are at right now in the trip.

Tomorrow Mel and I take a plane to Maui for the New Year which should be fantasticly awesome. If you are ever curious as to where we are you can check our location using Google Latitude

More pictures and videos to come.

My room mate Nate had a good point the other day when we were talking about how the Summer in Montana sucks really bad.

So if you are not an avid skier or snowboarder winters suck really bad and you probably turn into a hermit like I do. I just really don’t want to go outside when its cold out. Basically because I like doing outdoor activities, yet I really really hate having to wear warm clothes as they prohibit easy movement and you get sweaty and such inside them and it just sucks.

So what happens is you get hermitized in the winter and when the first nice weather comes around you start getting excited that you can actually start going outside. The problem, in Montana is that when the weather starts to get nice it doesn’t mean that the weather is going to stay nice. No, that is your first mistake. You must realize that you now have 2-3 months of off and on, play with your heart, weather. It could be sunny and 65 – 75 degrees on Tuesday and snow 12 inches on Wednesday(This will happen I promise you).

Now, you have about 1-2.5 months of actual nice weather ahead of you. So naturally you start to make plans on the weekends to go hiking, biking, climbing…whatever it is that you do in the summer. Before you realize that you actually only have about 6-8 weekends to do stuff you have booked them all solid. Which of course is kind of a good thing, but really it sucks because everybody else has done the same and trying to do anything with friends is like trying to solve a 4-dimensional rubix cube(I suggest Google Calendar to solve this problem).

Anyway, it feels like this spring has been completely thrown away due to weather, but in reality I’ve actually been out quite a bit on my Bike or off playing Ultimate so I really shouldn’t be complaining. In closing I guess the thing I’m really trying to get across here is, I completely love Montana summer’s when the weather stabilizes and it is super nice out. It just feels like we get a bit ripped off and it is way to short. That is one of the reasons that I am considering moving somewhere else that has longer summers. The only place that I can really think of though is Colorado that would come close to the Montana outdoors. The problem is, more people, and not Montana people.

That is all

With the weather finally making a change for the better, except today, I’ve been out and about a lot. Ultimate, Road Biking, and …other stuff so not much computer time other than at work which I’m usually busy working on various projects.

This weekend I went on my first official Road Race. Here is a Google Map of the race, it was about 50 miles even though Google Maps says 53. Also, ignore that weird loop in the top right corner of the route, it shouldn’t be there.

View Cow Country Classic in a larger map

The race was basically fighting a headwind every direction you went and pushing up lots of hills so was super tiring. For most of the hills I basically stared at my speedometer repeating to myself, “Don’t go below 11.5 mph.” That actually works really well I found out. I managed to not take last for my first race which was cool. I ended up 23 / 27 so not great, but an achievement for sure.

Tonight is the first night of Summer League Ultimate and it is 54 degrees, windy, rainy and not going to get any better.

Pictures are here

http://picasaweb.google.com/vallardt/OnionFest

Went there. Played. Won some games, lost some. Came back

The trip there was full of switching between snow, rain and nice weather. It was a pretty good drive with lots of car conversation that made it go fast. The drive back wasn’t too bad until about 40 miles out of Bozeman. It was about 1:50 in the morning and my co-pilot Logan was doing his darndest to keep me a wake. Good thing he was there.

I got some sun burns to prove the weather was super nice too.

Highlights of the weekend:

• Onion Eating Contest
• Burritos(They were so good, OMG)
• Not getting hurt and my body feeling good for once
• The bathroom break between Colfax and Spokan(it really was the most amazing feeling leaving that bathroom)

Lowlights of the weekend:

• Losing to that yellow team on Sunday morning
• Forgetting a white jersey
• having to go to that other field on campus and then having to come back only to find out the team had left that we were suppose to play
• Driving 9 hours both ways(I just hate driving, but don’t really care that I did it)

Well looks like I’m going to Onionfest this year in Walla Walla, WA.

According to Google its 578 mi or about 8 hours 37 mins. In the past its apparently been either really nice or really crappy. The weather is predicted to be in the 50′s and decent. Lets hope that the forecast stays that way. I’ll make sure to bring my photographing device to document the trip and post the pics here.

Edit:
So this is for an Ultimate Frisbee tournament
http://www.whitman.edu/ultimate/onionfest.html