Bon Voyage Zac!

So it's official...Zac is a'sail the deep blue Pacific. He's off to see the Asian world.

We celebrated his last day on land running some last minute errands, Dunkin Donuts, and our fave...Chili's. I hope that he gets to see some COOL places and things. I'm so excited to meet him at one of the ports!

Zac's new home.

I, on the other hand, have a long list of things to keep me busy. But after only one day, I can tell it's going to be a looong few months. [So if you have a few thousand airline points laying around, I have two empty rooms to fill with visitors :)]

I talked to him briefly before they left, and he said his room is about the size of our closet in NC. It was a walk-in closet, but I wouldn't count it as a bedroom. Oh, and he shares it with 5 other guys. Good thing he can sleep anytime/anywhere! It's character building, right Mom?

Bon Voyage!

We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming...

...for a little update on our lives right now.

Since we got back from Hong Kong, Zac has been working crazy hours. He literally has not had a day off since the trip and his average day going from 6-something to 8- or 9-something, although several days have been much later. He is preparing to deploy on a MEU (Marine Expeditionary Unit). You might have heard about Marine Expeditionary Units helping out in Haiti, as of late. He's going on one of those. To paraphrase (the omniscient) Wikipedia, it's basically a ship that floats around for a little while in case someone in the world needs Marines STAT (mostly humanitarian missions). And they stop along every once in a while to sharpen their marine skills. So if a typhoon or tsunami or some other t-word-that-only-happens-in-the-crazy-Pacific hits, they'll be ready to respond. Or if we happen to go to war with Laos all of a sudden, they'll be there.

Now for a little lesson on OPSEC:
OPSEC=operational security. It's a big deal around here. Basically, we have to watch what we say/write/post to the general public.There are some spies or terrorist or bored geeks out there collecting all these little tidbits of information and could possibly stage some kind of coup if I posted that "Boo hoo, I'm going to miss my Zacky-poo because he is leaving at [this time] on [this date]."

This is an actual poster they'd hang around during WWII.

Now you know why I'm paraphrasing Wikipedia. I figure the US Government woulda shut 'er down if there was super secret stuff there, so I can say it too. And I'm sure a few more people go to Wikipedia than this rinky dink blog. (Just a few.) And if I were still in college, I wouldn't be able to use Wikipedia as a reference. One of the benefits of being a college grad.

I always wondered why my sister was so vague when I would ask when her husband was coming home and she would respond "soon" or something. I thought, surely they would let their own wife know when they were coming home...and I'm sure they did. She just couldn't say. Sneaky girl. So I'm glad we've all been enlightened on the subject (not like Buddha).

SO, (point being) as much as I'd like to keep you up-to-date, I can't tell you anything that happens until after it happens. Keep me vigilant too, if you (whoever you are) think I let something slip that I shouldn't have, tell me to take it DOWN.

I'm sure I could write about 3902 more paragraphs, rambling about something silly, so I'll leave it at that.

Hong Kong Part II: Destination Buddha

After a fun flight over and a great night out, we woke up early, eager to see the sights of Hong Kong. Day 2 was packed to the top, and was perfect except for a little foggy weather. We made our way to Lantau Island, an eastern (?) island via the good ole MTR. On our way to the "train," we found a little bakery across the street from our hotel with delicious rolls, kolaches, etc...and we both ate breakfast for about $2.

[Let me take this opportunity for a little geography lesson. I'm sure very few of you know the exact geography of Asia, let alone Hong Kong. And neither did I until I was forced to study many-a-map on our trip. First, Hong Kong is on the southeast corner(ish) of China. There are several "sections" of Hong Kong: Kowloon, Hong Kong Island, Lantau Island, New Territories, and probably a few more, but that's all I know. (And for further information, you can always consult Google....that's where I'm getting my information as we speak.) Hong Kong Island is, I guess, the main island. Consider it Manhattan Island, if you will. Close to a lot, but an island nonetheless. To the west (checking my mental compass rose), yes west, is Lantau Island. That is where most of our adventure today takes place. Kowloon is right across the harbor from Hong Kong Island, and has a lot of the city. New Territories is northwest of the Kowloon area, although we didn't make it out there. I heard there's some great stuff there. (And, yes, if I were writing this for a grade I would get a D- because of how many times I am saying stuff and alot.) So now you can count this as an educational blog and not a total waste of your time.]

And back to the show...we took a long trip on the MTR to the very end and then took a cable car (what they call the Ngong Ping 360. I don't know what that means.)

This was in our first turning point. I think we had to make it to that distant mountain.

Same turning station...just looking behind. That's how far we'd already come. Quite the trek.

The trail below us that we COULD have taken. As seen above, that would've taken (me, at least) days. Also shows a little of how high we were. Not for the height-phobes.

I think we're getting closer...can you see the "thing" a little bit behind the first mountain?

Throughout the trip, it became more and more treacherous. Yes, treacherous. We could barely see where we were going. Thankfully no planes ran into the cables nor did our cable car dis-attach from the cable. A.H. (the female from our partner couple) would say "Don't look now, but....we are SWINGING" (as evidenced by the cable car pictured).

Just another cable car picture. We took several.

Yes, we were on there too. And notice the "Say Cheese" sticker next to me. They took pictures like on roller coasters when you pulled up to the final stop. 

Here, we finally reached the top of the cable car. But as you can see, we still had a trek up to the Buddha. There was no controlling the wind, so excuse the hair in the face. Zac doesn't have to worry about that. There was a little shopping village, obviously for the tourist. It had a Starbucks and several other cafe-y places and tons of places to buy souvenirs that were 1/100 the price in town. But it was fun. And you can bet your bottom dollar that we stopped at Starbucks on the way out. A little picture of the town:

The "shopping village"  looking onto Destination Buddha

We came across this: the Bodhi Tree. I believe it was the tree under which Buddha reached enlightenment. This exact one...right across the land from Starbucks. J/K. This one was made of rubber and plastic. 10 points to whoever knows where the real one is. Anyway, you can read about it below.

We kept walking and walking, passing this ^ and this v

And finally made it here:

Only a couple hundred more steps left. 268 to be exact. I wanted to stop halfway through and felt like a grandma (no offense, mom, I'm 35 years younger than you), but Zac, the Marine that he is, pushed me through it. I think I made my New Years Resolution there that I would get into shape.

What goes up must come down, so after touring the little museum inside the Buddha and fighting blustery winds (seriously, I could lean into the wind and not fall), we climbed down those 268 steps. We toured around the monastery right below the Buddha. Here it is from up top:

And we enjoyed a vegetarian lunch at the monastery. It was really interesting to experience that, although the slimy mushrooms and slippery plastic chopsticks were NOT a good combination.

We found all of the decor very interesting, and there were Buddhas everywhere! It was also very interesting to observe another religion...

Seeing all of the fruits and vegetables laid out for the Buddha and incense burning and bowing seemed so obscure. Until once I started thinking about it, I realized this would be no different than observing the extravagance of St. Peter's Basilica and watching people kneel, pray, and light candles there. I actually ran into this article after I got back, comparing the two religions. http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features2005/clarkolson_cathbuddh_feb05.asp

 Seems like we're not all that different after all.

Big pot of incense

We ended up catching "Prayer time" with the monks (here they are filing in), which was also very interesting. When we'd had our fill of blustery weather, we head back down to the village and back down to the loooong cable car. Not without stopping at Starbucks, of course.

This is an apartment building we passed by on the cable cars. There were probably thousands of buildings like this in the city, just to show HOW populated this little island is! 7,000,000 people!

We did more at the end of the day, but I'll leave it for the next chapter. I apologize that I've been horribly slow at telling our little Hong Kong adventure. But there's much more to come!

Hong Kong Part I

It's been about a week since we got back from our fabulous vacation in Hong Kong. So I guess it's finally time to share all about it! We took about 4893 pictures, so I'll try to share as many as I can without making it too boring.

We started out Monday afternoon with an exciting trip to the Naha airport (the airport in Okinawa). We had to go through several checkpoints, even though the airport was about the size of our apartment. Maybe a little bigger. Fortunately, I came prepared with every single document that identifies and legitimizes us. I still had my maiden name passport, which called for extra identification and paperwork, but thankfully created no problems. A tip to anyone traveling with their maiden-name passport: bring your wedding license...just in case. I probably would have been retained in some travelers jail if I didn't have it.

Here we are at the Naha airport, ready to take on Asia! Life would be so much easier if all airports were this small and navigatible (is that a word?). The Hong Kong airport, not so much. But I'll share about that in Hong Kong part 26. We loved our little flight on the Hong Kong Express. Most of the flight crew was Asian, but they spoke great English. With a British accent. Perfect! And the fed us...thank goodness! Dim Sum with noodles or pork with rice? I got dim sum (which are dumpling-type things) and Zac loved his pork with rice.

A picture of our meal. Because who doesn't love a picture of airline food?

It was good though! Or maybe we just didn't know it was bad because we are Asian food amateurs. Either way, it was about all the food we were going to get for few hours, so we ate it. Then they came around with coffee and tea. I loved the coffee. Even though it was probably instant. I'm becoming quite a coffee lover.

And it came in a cute little cup with a cute little spoon, as Vanna...er, Zac is showing us. The flight was short and sweet, about 2.5 hours. And we got to witness this:

Who doesn't love to watch the sun set from the sky. Always amazing.

We landed in Hong Kong about 6. By the time we made it through the (humongous) Hong Kong airport going through customs/immigration, grabbing luggage, changing money, and getting train tickets, it was getting late. We took the Airport Express to Hong Kong station, where our hotel was supposed to have a free shuttle. We arrived at 7:20; the last shuttle was at 7. Oh well. We got a cab, which ended up being like $5, to the hotel. I wish I had some hotel pictures. It felt swanky, even though we booked it on easyclicktravelcheaphotel.com (or something like that). We even got excited b/c our room was on the "executive level." Well, our room must have been the leftover 5x5 space they had after they made the executive suites, because it was tiny, bed and all.

And we're standing at the door to take this picture. All your missing is the tiny closet of a bathroom. No problem, because we weren't planning on spending much time there anyway. And it was clean. Although our long legs hung over the edge of the bed. We felt like Vince Vaughn in Fred Clause or Will Farrell in Elf in their tiny elf beds. Maybe not that bad, but almost. Needless to say, our queen sized bed back at home felt heavenly and spacious.

That night, we went to the "hip, bar area" Lan Kwai Fong (?) to grab a late dinner and a drink or two. After finally finding the subway, aka MTR, took it one stop down, and found the area, we found Al's Diner for some good food.

 {Side story: What we would call the subway or train in any other city is ONLY referred to as the MTR in Hong Kong. If you asked anyone where the subway/train station was, they would reply with a puzzled face, "You mean MTR?" And we didn't realize until about day 3 that some crazy symbol showed you where the MTR was. It looks like the lines on a basketball court. This particular expedition to the MTR station was particularly tricky, being our first time. We were slightly lost, so we finally asked a British couple where the station was.They were carrying bags of toilet paper, so I assume they lived there. And we finally found it. Knowing the symbol would've been very helpful at that point.}

Yes, we ate hamburgers in Hong Kong, but we don't get those here, so we got them when we could! And yes, the juicy burger and cajun fries (yes, cajun has made it all the way to Hong Kong), were heavenly.

Lan Kwai Fong is basically a street block lined with bars and is just a party in the street. Quite the social scene. We settled sitting in an empty bar right across the street from a very crowded bar with a cover band to listen to the cover band. With so many places to visit, we knew we'd have to come back!

The whole group

We figured out on the way home that our hotel was in walking distance (i.e. closer to walk to than walk to a from the MTR), so we went back to rest up for the week ahead of us!

Whew! And that was just the travel day. This will be quite the saga.

2009: The Year In Review

Looking back, I cannot believe all that has transpired in just a year. To think that I was still a college coed while Zac was living the bachelor life in Quantico just 12 short months ago is incredible. Given that this has been probably the most eventful year of our lives, I thought I'd take a look back to see all that's happened.

During the winter and spring months of 2009, I spent my days going to class, studying for the CPA (sometimes), doing Muster, and planning a wedding...

...while Zac spent his time learning how to be a marine officer.

Spring flew by and before I knew it, my 5 years of college (don't judge, I got an extra degree for my extra year) was over.

The next two weeks were a blur...Zac came down to drive all of our stuff half-cross country while I took a quick girl trip to San Antonio, we did all the last minute things you do before a wedding, and Zac made it (!) for the big day, May 30.

We said our "I do's," visited with family, and Zac whisked me away to the thriving metropolis of Jacksonville, NC. It was interesting and boring in so many ways. But we loved our summer full of sun, beaches, and many moons.

After Zac graduated from Combat Engineer School...

...we took the LONG drive back to the  homeland...Texas. We had about a month of vacation, which was amazing. We even squeezed in a honey(late)moon.

And after a tour of Texas visiting family and friends, we said our final "sayonaras" and had our last Taste of Texas (literally).

After what seemed like days, we finally made it to our new home in Okinawa. And now, 2 and a 1/2 months later, we finally seem to start settling in. Several sushi and soba outings, a couple of beach visits, and even more BX trips and our lives started to feel normal. We had two Thanksgivings...in the hallway and upstairs...with friends and neighbors.

And before we knew it, it was Christmas time, complete only with Santa, stockings and snow pants, cinnamon rolls, and some family Skyping.

And our big year closed with a bang in Hong Kong (about 14 hours before most of yours!)

Somewhere along the way, we picked up 2 new precious nephews, who will probably think we are a TV show or something, as they will get to know us over the computer!

And that's it, if you made it all the way through...12 months, 3 states, and 4 countries later, we gladly ring in the New Year excited for the many adventures to come with it! Thanks so much for being a part of our journey through the year!