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!