June 21, 2009
Happy Fathers Day Dad!

I am missing out on some very fun plans that my family has to spend time together on this special day. I can't wait to hear all about it, and of course, I wish I could be there with them, making memories together. I love you guys.

I want to share the highlights of the past few weeks with you. This past week was pretty uneventful for me, as I spent most of my time studying and getting together with local friends. It was a good week, but nothing to write about in a blog.

Last week, however, included a few fun and unique events. I made some new friends who were traveling around this country on vacation. Last year I met some of their friends and showed them some of the beautiful places I enjoy visiting in this part of the country. So this summer I had the pleasure of hosting a new group of traveling Texans and showing them the places that are most special to me. We spent nearly all of our time together out in my favorite small town. None of them got sick on the bus rides out there, so right away I knew I had a good group of adventurers with me!

It was pouring rain most of the time we traveled around, but they had great attitudes and it didn't stop us from getting out and seeing the sights. We met up with Lisa and she made special arrangements to show them the local museum for the minority people group represented in that area. Although I don't really care about going to the museum, I thought it was really sweet of Lisa to arrange this for our guests.

That night, after dinner, we walked around the town square, which was full of people. The square was PACKED that night, as the rain had let up for a few hours. Old women were doing various forms of aerobic line dancing and ballroom dancing. Old men were smoking and watching the old ladies dancing. Kids were running around with yelling parents chasing them. It was a fun scene to share with my new friends. They immediately wanted to join the action. Most of them tried out the women's line dancing and then my friends decided to share a little of their American culture with the local people.
The married couple starting by showing off their Texas two-step moves. I saw some pretty fast pretzel-ing going on there. These were no novices!

That inspired another of my new friends to show off his own style of moves; break dancing. When he started shuffling backwards in a circle I started laughing, thinking he had no idea what he was doing, and that he was just pretending to break dance. By the time he finished his short demonstration I was quite impressed and doubled over with laughter. All the local people rushed over to see what was happening and there was soon a huge crowd of people watching him, hoping he'd dance again.
He put on quite a show and all of the local people were loving it!
  

Shortly after that we decided to break up the crowd and move on. But it was a great night and Lisa and I were thrilled to get to know these new brothers and sisters.

I wanted to give my friends a taste of the true villages where many people live. I also wanted to show off the beautiful landscape this area has. I took them to one of my favorite places. We had great conversations with Lisa while we traveled around during the day.
        
  
In the afternoon, we split up to do some exploring around the village area in smaller numbers (hopefully attracting less attention). The girls checked out the local elementary school where Lisa knew some of the English teachers. The teachers were great, but the kids got way too excited and out of control very quickly, so we took off shortly after that.

    
A man fishing for snails (a local delicacy) in a very muddy river.
      
Check out the Americans in the rice paddy!   Dude, I'm not going in there.
     

You are missing some of the best stories about our fun week of exploring with these new friends from Texas. But some stories must remain untold.....

The Texan friends were so generous while we traveled together. One gift they gave me was a request that I pass on some of their generosity to my friends I meet with weekly at McDonalds to study. So last Sunday I treated the McDonalds group to lunch. Of course we went to Pizza Hut.... the best place in town!

Lucy was excited to build an architectural masterpiece with her salad bowl. I have mentioned this before, but at the salad bar in this country, you only get one trip, and have one small bowl which you fill with as much food as you possibly can. Lucy was very proud of herself after about 30 minutes of hard work on this project!
   
First she laid a bed of lettuce, added a little fruit, and then started building the walls of cucumber slices. This definitely took the most time to do. Then a nice row of carrots around the top, just for aesthetic value.
                   
Now it was time to fill the middle with goodies. Start with pineapple slices and peaches. Then, obviously the next ingredient should be corn. And, of course, next is raisons.
                  
Now it's time for two types of salad dressing (french and 1000 island) and mayonnaise. Then add some potato salad, topped with green peas and then start filling gaps with lettuce.
                  
Finally, add orange and tomato garnishes for color and you have a beautiful salad!
         

I didn't personally eat any of the salad, but we also enjoyed some other dishes, including my FAVORITE guilty pleasure; super supreme stuffed crust pizza covered in dried hot peppers! Man, oh man is that good! We had a wonderful time together and I was grateful to my Texan friends for instigating this special outing.


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