Sashimi, land crab & sea turtle

In the past 10 days, I've eaten all of the above ... all things I've never eaten before! Being a non-seafood eater is a challenge on an island and of course I always try everything.

After church last Sunday (our church has a congregation of 10 people, pretty fun), one of the deacons invited us over for sashimi ... I had to have Jason prep me for what to expect. Raw hunks of fish ... hmmmm, could be a challenge, but it was actually really good (something about the fish here & in Tonga ... they are REALLY good!).

Our island has thousands of land crabs and we stumbled across a few on the way home one night from town and decided to bag them. We threw them in a pot when we got home, having no idea how long you're supposed to cook something like this, but opted for 5 minutes. Seems to have been the right time as they turned our great! I only could handle a taste, but Jason said they were delicious.

And...this weekend we had the funeral of the high chief of our island to attend ... which ended up just being a huge day of food. They served us our meal in styrofoam to-go boxes which included: Fried fish, crab, chicken, pork and sea turtle...Turtle is not too bad (as long as I don't think about what I'm eating)!

Oh, sadly I won't be able to post photos until the next time we're in Koror (sometime next month) due to the terrible internet connection here :-( ... sorry, but trust me, it IS beautiful :)

Rustic?

We arrived to our new and very rustic home on Friday - we were SO happy to finally have gotten to our destination! It does feel as if it is at the edge of the world ... with the ocean before us and a dense jungle behind us. I love it though! It is an incredible, wonderful feeling!

Although that feeling hasn't worn off, it certainly gets tested :) ...

Our new home has canvas siding for walls, to get any light inside, they have to be rolled up which is a two person job (that we are slowly getting better at), whenever it rains or whenever we're going to leave or when it's time to go to bed, the sides need to be rolled down because it rains all the time and water will come into the house...we found out our very first night how important it is to be SURE the velcro is well-secured! After we'd been asleep for a couple hours, the wind was blowing so hard, that it blew one side open and then ripped the other side open as well. That was pretty startling!

It probably runs almost a tie with the fact that within 3 minutes of us turning out our solar powered lights that first night, we heard the rat trap/cage spring closed and then listened to a rat trying to gnaw its way out of the cage for the rest of the night!

Ahh...rustic living :)

The Rainbow's End

We have officially arrived in Palau! Woo-hoo! We departed Spokane Monday morning around 7 am and arrived here Wednesday at 3 pm. We even spend the night in Manila last night as our "connecting" flight didn't depart for over 12 hours!

Quite a journey, but most definitely worth it! Palau's tag line is "the rainbow's end," and that sums it up pretty good. It is beautiful here (as expected). Completely LUSH, with crazily shaped green hills everywhere and lots of beautiful water! It feels sort of like coming home in a way as the smells (burning trash and un-smogged cars) and sounds (roosters, honking horns) and the temperature (deliciously muggy) are very similar to Tonga. It is wonderful!

No pictures to go with this post, but I'm hoping to have some for you shortly ... we'll be in Koror, Palau for the next day or two, then taking the ferry to Angaur and our new home!

Cupcake Shop in Paso Robles

I was astounded this week to see a cupcake shop in Paso Robles - just 15 minutes from my parents house! What a treat!

We only found it because Trudy decided that she, my mom and I needed an afternoon treat time ... sounded great to me!

We stumbled upon a delicious bakery that had just opened its doors 3 days earlier! We felt a bit shamed to not get a cupcake, but there were so many other delicious looking treats to try ... cupcake on the next visit for sure!

The Dirty Thirty

Jason had the pleasure of turning 30 on August 7th - quite exciting for him ;-) ... It was a slightly different birthday than last year as we spent it with my sister and her family which includes my two very active nephews(aged 3 & 5) who completely adore Jason!They were very happy to be hosting his birthday this year and we made quite the day of it!

A Few Friends

At Montana de Oro with Randy & Sarah ... do you like how we are standing in descending height order?? Pretty awesome, right?













With Gladys in Azusa ... she was my discipleship leader my senior year at Azusa Pacific - in 1998! I have been blessed to continue a friendship / mentorship with her in the 10 years since then!









A mini-PCV (peace corps volunteer) re-union in Ontario ... with William, Jeff and Jamie. We realized what complete nerds we are when we found out that we are ALL still carrying around our Peace Corps ID cards in our wallets!










With Claudia and her family in Pasadena ... my co-worker from Unum, Masters classmate and very special friend!









And, with my older sister and her two boys - we stayed with them for our week in SoCal ... she is an incredible mom and her boys are quite a handful, but A LOT of fun!












Some of my favorite photos from our beach day with the boys...

Catching up!

After spending a week in L.A. and another week up at family camp near Santa Cruz, we've finally landed at my parents house for a few days. I should be able to catch up a bit over the next few days with what we've been up to in August so far ...

In the meantime, we had a great family dinner tonight! Probably the last time that we will all be together until Jason & I return from Palau next summer...