Graduate School Here I Come!!

I got in!

Starting in September, I will be studying International Community Economic Development at SNHU. I will be taking scary courses like Accounting, Economics, and Financial Management, and instead of writing a thesis, I have to implement a CED project. And one of the best parts is that I get to stay in Montreal! It is a weekend program; I go to the New Hampshire campus once a month for three days and do the bulk of my work from home.

You can check out more about the program here: http://www.snhu.edu/146.asp.

Charlie took me out for a celebratory dinner last week!

We're back!!

So, it's about time we start writing our blog again. If I wait until things settle down and get less stressful, I'll never blog again! I PROMISE one of us will write every week... if we don't, you have our permission to yell at us (or at Charlie, he can take it!)

We finished up our time in Thailand and left Phil in Bangkok the day before he headed back to Canada. We had such a great trip with him. Of course, the day we left him, he got robbed and missed his flight (Murphy's law, right?) But overall, the three of us had a blast together.

The night we left Chang Mai was my birthday, so we went out for
celebratory sushi just before catching our 10-hour bus ride back to Bangkok.

We then spent 10 days in Phnom Penh, seeing all our friends, saying goodbye again, wrapping things up at Chab Dai and meeting with Helen to discuss our first steps into starting Chab Dai Canada. We spent a lot of time with our very dear friends, Ray and Christine Cantwell, and Amie and Steve Gosselin. Both couples are also from Canada (Ontario and Alberta, respectively) and they became such good friends over our short months in Cambodia. We will miss them very much. They loved us and challenged us and had a big impact on our lives. Also, Ray and Christine introduced us to Settlers of Catan and Bohnanza, and we will be forever grateful!!

(From left to right: Amie, Christine, Steve, Ray and Charlie) After eating at our favourite Chinese Noddles place, we would sit at one the smoothie stands and have the most delicious milkshakes ever! If you're ever in the area, try the soursop!

Now we're home and busy as ever! As many of you know already, I was just accepted into the M.Sc. program at Southern New Hampshire University. I will be studying International Community Economic Development. It's a distance learning program so we will be able to stay in Montreal and I will travel down to campus once a month for three days. Charlie will be staying with his job at Backcheck and we will both be working on establishing Chab Dai Canada in the next couple years. It will be a busy time!

Sorry for the delay of this post, but we're back on now and planning to stay a while!

Flight of the Gibbon

This is our last week in Southeast Asia! We are back in Phnom Penh for a week before heading back to Montreal on April 30. Travelling was fun, and interesting, and exciting, and tiring all at once. We're glad to be back to familiarity and friends for a bit before coming home. One of the last things we did in Chiang Mai before coming back to Cambodia was Flight of the Gibbon. It was a morning of zip-lining through the Thai jungle!! It was amazing! There were a dozen zip lines, two sky bridges and three drops, one of at least 100 feet! It was definitely worth it, very exhilarating, and an experience to remember.

Ready to go!

The "honeymoon" zipline :)

Our group, coincidentally made up only of Canadians and Danes (or 'Danishes' as Charlie calls them)!

Are you sure about this?

Happy Birthday Julia

Today is Julia's 25th Birthday! She is now a quarter of a century old! Congrats Julia on the accomplishment! For her birthday we enjoyed a buffet breakfast, with amazing scrambled eggs, followed by a nice sit around the pool and a massage! We're going to top it off with a 10 hour overnight bus ride to Bangkok leaving at 8:00 tonight!

Happy Birthday Julia!

Happy Holidays!

Happy Easter to everyone back home!

We are celebrating a different holiday here - Happy Thai New Year! In Chiang Mai the festivities go on for 3-5 days and it's basically an extended city-wide water fight. The tradition started as a blessing of a sprinkle of holy water in the back of your neck and has escalated to epic proportions. And guess who's the most highly targetted? You got it - female foreigners!! We spent the good part of yesterday afternoon throwing buckets of water on anyone who drove, walked, biked, or motoed past our guesthouse. And of course being doused in return.

Today is when the holiday really starts, and the fun continues!

We found Nemo!

Well, not really... we did see a Dory fish though! We're not really sure what kind of fish that is, but we definitely recognize it from the t.v! We spent a good amount of time on Koh Tao snorkeling and enjoying ourselves on the beach. We took a one day snorkel trip around the island and saw some pretty amazing things like a shark (!) and at Mango Bay we fed watermelon to all the little fishies and they swam right up to us to eat it. We were practically bumper to bumper with cute little hungry fishies. Charlie was able to feed them by hand, but was unable to get a fish to kiss him (by swimming underwater with watermelon in his mouth).

We are now in Chiang Mai, the most relaxed and interesting place we've been to in Thailand yet. We definitely like the atmosphere, and everyone in town keeps telling us about Songkram, Thai New Year, which is coming up and is characterized by a 3 day long water fight throughout Chiang Mai. We are ready to pump those super soakers!

The time to head home is fast approaching, and we are feeling a mixture of excitement at what home holds for us, as well as sadness that this exciting adventure is coming to an end. At least, for now.

The heat that keeps on giving

We are currently enjoying ourselves in Bangkok. We have been joined by our younger brother Phil, who adds a new and exciting dimension to our travelteam. Since we met up we have felt like we have been going non-stop. This is because it is almost 40 degrees celsius every day and the sun robs us of all will to walk more than 30 feet between spaces of shade.

Here in Thailand, we have been learning quite a bit about Buddhism, and getting chances to see it first hand, even more than in Cambodia. Charlie has been reading about Buddhism in his new book A History of God, while Julia is filling in the two guys from what she remembers from her courses in University.

There are many things about Buddhist spirituality that are beautiful and uplifting, but other aspects will obviously take more cultural understanding to really understand and appreciate. We struggle with Buddhism's position on women; in order for a woman to be enlightened, she must first be reborn as a man, which strongly goes against our personal beliefs. Also, we have been hard pressed to find the good in the worship of idols and statues; there is a large number of resources that we see going to these shrines, which don't do much to further the country's development.

While we were here we visited two royal palaces: the royal palace in Bangkok, and the summer palace in the old capital of Ayuttayah. The palace in Bangkok was amazing. It was similar to the Phnom Penh palace, but about triple as nice. There was gold and diamonds on everything, but the part we all enjoyed the most was the ceramic tiles used to decorate the outsides of buildings. It was something we had never seen before, and it was very beautiful. The old palace was equally as amazing. It was started in the 17th century, and was a mix of European and Asian building styles. Which we felt went together very well. Judge for yourself...