New Pictures Posted. . . . .


Our often lousy, dreadfully slow internet connection and lack of free time as of late have been preventing us from posting pictures and news here on a frequent basis. Therefore, we've posted some new pictures, but they are not here on blogspot. We were introduced to http://www.facebook.com/ by several friends, and at the present time it seems to be working much better for sharing photos and information about our current activities - takes a ton less time from our end. I plan on posting a new photo "album" there about once a month showing all the things we have done in that month. We're still trying to figure it out, but you should be able to go to the website and register as a user, search for me under "Kelli Allen" (my picture is by my name) and if I actually know who you are I will approve you as a friend in order for you to be able to see the pictures. If you're having difficulty being approved, just e-mail me and explain who you are since my brain is not what it used to be! Thanks a bunch for keeping up with our family adventures - We miss you very much and can't wait to see you when we get home!

Sorry for the delay in posting new pictures - blame it on living life at a million miles an hour and a cruddy internet connection! We've been to so many interesting new places to deal with medical issues and have some plain old vacation from studying that I don't know where to begin. Hope you enjoy these - I'm trying to post additional pictures as I write this, but the computer has decided enough is enough!

Our trip to Singapore was so interesting. It is a truly multicultural city, where you can meet different people, eat different food, and everyone seems to live together in harmony. It's clean and fun and beautiful - a wonderful example of "peace on earth". Here's one of the famous "Merlion" statues (taken from a sky ride between the main island and the small island of Sentosa - the southernmost point of continental Asia) and the Raffles Hotel, where movie stars and dignitaries have apparently stayed for many years.

Before and after Singapore, we spent some days in Bangkok, Thailand. Here we are at their top notch aquarium - it was a super homeschool field trip. The fish and sea turtles seemed to like having their pictures taken with all the kids, but it was Kendall who made a special new friend with several rows of teeth. Here she is giving him a good bye kiss . . . .

Just threw this picture in here for those who were concerned that Albert was missing his desk job (even though being a student again is keeping him behind a desk a lot too!). Here he is helping a friend's family harvest their rice.

And here are (finally) a few snapshots from our new apartment. The one with the oval mirror is the sink we had installed at the end of the hallway so we could fit the bathtub in the bathroom. It's worked out pretty well that way, and gives a lot more privacy in the bathroom (the door on the left in the picture).

These two with muscles are showing off our little office / school room. I have finally acquired what I consider a substantial enough number of books to be able to enjoy teaching again. That was one of the hardest things to sell when moving over here - all of my rectangular bound friends.






And these girls are just plain silly. This gives you a little bit of a picture of our new den, and also the toll that moving to the other side of the planet has finally taken on the kids - just kidding on that.

Trying to get more pictures on for you to see soon!

What a BRAVE girl!

Here's Whitney getting her IV antibiotics while experiencing her brush with "almost appendicitis." She was such a trooper and a really brave little girl. Even though this picture was taken at close to 2:00 AM, she was still cracking jokes and making funny faces!

Just a Bunch of Crazy Stuff . . . . .


Here is a sampling of some crazy things that are now "normal" to us. This first picture is how we spend most of our quiet evenings at home in the new apartment. Just another night at the old Allen homestead. . . . . .






When we decide that we need our only local version of some semi "Western" food, we head to the chicken restaurant that you see in this picture. They have this hilarious ritual of wanting all the kids to dance to these songs that we've now heard close to 69,402 times. Most of the kids are small, but it's always a treat for the management, and a draw for customers, if the local red headed foreigner joins in the fun. Kendall knows all the dance moves by heart! Our favorite (I guess that's a stretch) song is the one about someone eating and then burping. . . . . really odd.

Here are my two little helpers, who love to wash dishes in our new kitchen!

















These are some pictures from the main market street in our city, close to the square at the center of town. People line up for blocks and blocks to sell fabric, shoes, "designer watches" (haha), underwear, handknitted hats, and all kinds of other strange items. Folks walk around looking for recyclables in the trash cans and putting them in the baskets that they carry on their backs.

Other folks sell eggs, vegetables, steamed bread, and other local foods from baskets or buckets. Our least favorite is the stinky tofu man, whom you can smell for several blocks before he gets to you - No lie, we thought the smell was the sewer until we found out that people really did eat the stuff. Guess how they make it stinky? They let it mold ON PURPOSE. Some things I will never understand. . . . .

Believe me, I am quite aware that this picture is disgusting, but it is just part of what is now a "normal" day for us. This is the meat counter in our local supermarket. We affectionately call this place "The Dog Head Store" and you can see why. Fido looks pretty mad that he was going to be someone's dinner.

When we moved into our new apartment, we realized right away that we were hearing loud music until midnight every night coming in through our back windows. We immediately guessed that we had moved into the dreaded "disco district" and were going to have to listen to that junk for as long as we lived here.
Come to find out it was simply the Chinese version of a skating rink - concrete floor and walls with steel beams to hold onto :)
And of course lots of flashing disco lights. Not the safest place in the world, which can present somewhat of a problem since hospitals here are much different than in America (that's the understatement of the new millennium).
By the grace of up above, the kids have not been injured there (yet) and Whitney and Sidney have really caught on quite well to being on 8 little wheels. It's nice to have a little place for recreation just across the street from our apartment building. And you, too, can come visit us and have that much excitement for only 50 cents per person!!!

Many thanks to our friends R & M for the great pictures when I was too lazy to get out my camera!!!!

Vacation Pictures!

Since our new apartment is not exactly clean at the moment, I thought I'd finally update our blog with pictures of our wonderful vacation in the south instead. It is the rainy season in our part of the world, so it wasn't the sunniest vacation we've ever had, but we also didn't get FRIED with sunburn, so that was nice.

Here is a picture of someone's version of the Black Pearl - they have obviously not seen the movie.

We learned from our experience of third degree sunburn on our February vacation that we needed massive sunscreen, especially for the kids. So we had Aunt Lee Ann send us some Coppertone, plus we ordered these 50 SPF swim suits from Land's End, and that did the trick! Everyone had a great time and sunburn didn't rear it's ugly head. Here are Brooks and Whitney soaking up some rays while taking a break from swimming in the pool -











Here's Sidney, trying to sit still long enough to have her picture taken before hurling herself back into the pool - and I mean HURLING. . . . She does an amazing belly flop!















And here is Kendall, pretty as a picture, enjoying her time gazing at the Andaman Sea. Here also is a picture from the balcony of a hotel we stayed in while we were traveling - It was totally demolished by the tsunami a few years ago because it is on the west side of the island and took the brunt of the huge wave. We think this is where some of the amateur footage that you may have seen on the news was taken. We requested to be on an UPPER floor!






And finally, thanks to Meg and Naomi Van Horn's mom sending us these very appropriate t-shirts, we have the twins in all their glory, passing the blame for whatever it is we happen to be accusing them of at the moment . . . .

Stay tuned, because you know the adventure never ends in our house on the other side of the planet!

Long Overdue Allen Family Update -
Two More Lost Teeth:
Now Sidney has lost 4 and Whitney has lost 3, and they are SO proud (and cute, according to Mom and Dad of course). Also notice the new haircuts - Sidney's is 10 inches shorter, and it sits on her shoulders instead of getting in the ketchup at dinner!







Here's Brooks running the mile for Homeschool Field Day - All four kids did the 5 events for the Presidential Physical Fitness Award along with around 50 other homeschoolers in the provincial capital of the next province to the west of us. We had a great day, though the events were more strenuous than usual because they were completed at 6,000 feet above sea level!






Kendall stretches to get prepared for field day - She earned the National Award for Physical Fitness! Hooray!


















Whitney, Sidney and two of their cute little buddies from the apartments here on campus












This is for your funny bone - Albert and I saw this man one day when we were walking to get a taxi after leaving our new apartment. We can't believe some of the loads the folks here can carry without tipping over, either walking, on a bicycle or motorcycle, or riding some beast of burden. It's really amazing!


More pictures soon - We're in the process of renovating apartment number two and should be moving in the next couple of weeks! Fun, fun. . . . .

We spent the Chinese May Day holiday (May 1st) with our neighbors and their friends at a beautiful park just a few miles from our college. Albert has no classes for over a week, so we've been glad to be able to have some fun family time, as well as spend time with some of our new friends here. This is a view from the entrance to the park. It really was breath-taking.





These are some of the great kids we spent the day with. The fellow in the striped shirt in the back row lives just across the little driveway from us in apartment building 4 (we live in building 5). He is a little older than Brooks and they like to spend time together, but he goes away to school during the week so they aren't able to spend much time playing. When this photo was taken, Brooks was off skating on the concrete (not particularly safe, unfortunately!), or playing on the playground, or eating watermelon, or doing something else fun -







The twins had a great time on the playground at the park with some of the older girls. It was warm outside so we all enjoyed the sunshine and mild breeze.













Here's Albert eyeing the food that was being cooked. In this particular park, you rent little grills and stools for the day and then bring lots of good things to cook - kind of like July 4th in some places in America. We had potatoes, zucchini, green onions, cabbage, pork and beef pieces, Chinese "hot dogs" (kind of like vienna sausages), and a few things we didn't recognize. It was delicious (for the most part), and a good time was had by all! We felt so honored to be invited to spend this special holiday with these families -


















Just in case you couldn't see Albert very well in the last picture, here's a close up of the latest beard. He decided that since he has the freedom to grow something on his face without having to go through the "ugly" phase while still working his desk job, he wanted to give it a good old college try. I've compared him to Grizzly Adams and Santa Claus, while Nikki Jones thinks he's turned into the Wrangler man! Here comes Wrangler, He's one tough customer . . . .
When he's wearing earth tones, I think he really does look nice and sophisticated. BUT it's beginning to get a little too itchy, he says, so before it goes away for good I thought you'd want to see it.


















We'll give you another update on our adventure soon - Take care in the meantime! We miss you!

We had a fun Easter weekend, preparing for our special day of celebration by boiling and dyeing eggs. Thanks, friends, for sending us some coloring tablets - Our eggs were the talk of the house! The colors were deep and rich, and each egg turned out beautiful! Joe can be seen here enjoying the egg festivities as well -














The kids took turns dipping the eggs in the colors, sometimes mixing a few for a special effect. We added a little vinegar to the cups and it made a huge difference in the colors that became the end result.








After the eggs were dyed and dried, we decorated them with anything we could find that you have sent us in the past 8 months - glitter glue, googly eyes, stickers, pipe cleaners for legs, etc. It was a ton of fun for the kids as they created their little masterpieces. They were so proud!
















Whitney is one of the budding artists in the family, and she took great care to decorate her egg exactly right.












Easter morning arrived, and we feasted on muffins, the 100% juice that just arrived in some of the supermarkets here 2 weeks ago (hooray!!!!) and our pretty eggs. They were almost too beautiful to crack open and eat, but we got over that fairly quickly and chowed down!







The following weekend I took my first trip with only Brooks and Kendall - 6 1/2 hours on the train to the big city we like to visit in order to shop and eat Western food. My fun purchase while there was a 4 cup coffee maker! Now I can get my newly-acquired morning caffiene fix with a little less hassle, except that I have to ration the ground coffee and filters because we can only get them elsewhere. Anyway, I am proud of myself because I was forced (notice I say forced, because I don't think I would have had the determination otherwise) to get train tickets, our hotel room, the taxis and to order our meals all by myself in Chinese! I was nervous as all get-out, but it ended up OK, and I came back a little more confident in my language. All that tutoring is finally paying off! We took the trip to participate in a competition for homeschool kids of all ages in the areas of writing and art. Lots of kids from many different countries entered short stories and artwork, and Kendall came home with the 1st place trophy for the painting of a flower she submitted in the 7 to 9 year old category! Way to go Kendall!!!!