First Day in Thailand

So there are a million fun summer activities that I need to report on, but haven't had time. I'm going to get back to these later.

At the moment I'm in Chiang Mai, Thailand, visiting Nikki while she completes her 3 month foreign service internship here. Idea is that she does an internship (which is going really well so far) here at the consulate, then we move to DC in the fall, then she finds out where her first real posting will be, then we ship out 6 months to a year later (depending on how much language training she needs). The consulate hooked Nikki up with a great apartment here with a fantastic view of the city and surrounding mountains (first picture below). She's pretty well settled after over a month in Chiang Mai and seems to feel pretty comfortable. The city is pretty safe and she's got all of her little favorite stores/local gems. Nikki is getting to work on all kinds of interesting stuff for her internship and has made some good friends in the little community of people working at the consulate. Looks like she will have Thursday - Sunday off work, so we're figuring out what kinds of adventures to plan. Until then, I've got a couple of days to tool around by myself (at least until she gets done with work at 4:30 - gotta love the gov't job).

I got here Monday morning after 23 hours of sitting on airplanes (and another few hours in airports). Needless to say I was fresh as a daisy. The trip was actually not so painful and I got to watch all those bad movies I'm been missing out on (including hotel for dogs, yikes). China Airways is really good and I ordered all kinds of random stuff I didn't recognize on the flight and on my layover in Taipei. I jumped right to it after finding Nikki's apartment and we went out for the first of what I think will be many delicious meals. The steet food here is amazing, so we sampled fried coconut patties, blended fruit shakes, banana-chocolate roti, etc - I'm leaving the chicken heads and grasshoppers for later in the week when I'm better primed with some local EColi. When NIkki went back to work, I wandered the city, checking out the many wats/temples (second pic below) and crazy markets. Old Chiang Mai is built within a 2k square moat/wall (3rd pic below), so I cruised the perimeter and made friends with about 100 shop owners.

After work, Nikki and I hit up a fabric center/tailor to get a couple suits made for me. Picking the first one up today, so I can be Nikki's arm candy at some consulate event tomorrow. We had an early dinner, where I tried "frog in chilli sauce" (4th pic below). Cruised over to the night market afterwards for some shopping/more street food (5th pic), and took a break for an hour-long thai massage (I think it cost 2 dollars each). Yeah, it's a tough life. On the way home, we stopped into a bar/restaurant on the Mae Ping river where we had drinks and listened to a couple of great musicians play guitar and sing (mostly covers of American songs. They were really talented! Didn't speak English, but could mimic the words pretty well and got it right about 90% of the time). It was a perfect scene, with paper lanterns and live music next to the river (last pic below, pretty blurry but you get the idea).

Pretty good first day. I'm off now to do some single-track downhill mountain biking (down the mountain in the first pic below). It's going to be an exciting week and I'll try to be good about updating the blog with stories/pictures.

Six Month Update

Hello all!
Well, you know that we are busy when it takes six months to update our blog!! So what have we been doing anyway? Here's a basic run down and a couple pictures that should give you an idea.

Let's start at Christmas. We didn't want to board Hina for a month while we visited family for the holidays, so the logical conclusion was to bring to bring her with us. We piled up old boxberry and headed west into a huge snowstorm enroute to San Diego. Hina got to meet my family, including the grandparents, and didn't destroy all the presents under the tree. Hooray! We left Hina in San Diego and gave Jesse some strict instructions to teach her to skateboard while Nikki and I went to see her folks on Maui for New Years. I had to work a lot of the week, but Nikki got to get a lot of beach time in. We got to do some paddleboarding and I took a couple days to learn how to kite surf. Our friends Jeff and Chad happened to be in town too, so we got to hang out with them and talk super esoteric subjects. We also nailed down our wedding location for August, which was key. Nikki had to go straight back to Boston to get back to classes after Maui, so it was up to me and my brother Jesse to get Hina and the car back to the east coast. We cranked out the drive in a couple days along the southern route and even made time to buy a ton of fireworks in Texas and set them off, to Hina's delight! We got a chance to have dinner with my buddy Mahoney in Atlanta, and had an awesome night of randomness that involved chicken and waffles, crackheads, chilli-cheese-coleslaw dogs, and the most shady "bar" you can imagine.

Since we were in the neighborhood, Jesse and I stopped in to see my sister Darcy in DC on the way home. It just so happens that some guy's inauguration was happening, so we headed down to the mall to see what was up with 2 million of our closest friends. Nikki drove down from Boston for the event (in another huge snowstorm). It was freeze-ass cold that morning, and Jesse and I used our collective keen intelligence to devise a newspaper-warmth-system since neither of us had suitable jackets or footwear (idiots!). It was totally worth it and one of the most incredible things I've ever been present for.

After dropping Jesse off in Baltimore for his last semester of college, Nikki and I headed back to Boston for the dreaded winter-spring transition period. We made the most of it and made a couple trips to Vermont for some snowboarding, snowshoeing, cross-country skiing, etc. We found an awesome BnB near Mt. Snow called the "Paw House" that is set up for obsessive dog owners such as ourselves. They've got a kennel next door where you can keep your dog during the day and special dog beds in the rooms (Hina, or course, only wanted our bed and would prefer that I take the doggy one). We also made it up to the Adirondacks to meet my family at Lapland Lake for a little nordic cross-country ski fun. We had most of the Grubschmidt clan up there (my mom's family) and had a blast eating, drinking and being merry in the warm little "tupa" we rented (and did a little skiing too).

One of my favorite winter activities has been beer making. Jeff and I have become quite the brewmasters (we have made two 5 gallon batches). The first brew, "Hina's Hoppy Ale," was an india pale ale with plenty of kick. The second, more recent batch was "Hina's Snout Stout" (there's a theme here), which has a chocolate stout. The snout stout is probably the best beer that I have ever tasted; no bias here. I should also mention that the bottle artwork has gotten progressively better as time goes on (all props to Jeff). We are currently getting ready for our third batch and thinking about a red or heff - we will see!!

Nikki had a week of for spring break and wasn't about to spend it in rainy, cold Boston. Luckily, I had gotten suckered into a time-share pitch in Orlando, so we hopped on a plane to Florida. We did the touristy thing at Epcot (I'd never been) and cruised around the Disney stuff, but one of the best things we did was go out to Canaveral to watch a space shuttle launch (I had always wanted to be astronaut, but then I took Math 51 in college....). We had a nice little picnic at the event and saw what they called one of the most beautiful recent launches. We also went to the gulf coast and snorkeled with Manatees. Though I'm pretty sure it has to be some violation of the marine mammal protection act, it was really fun and we got to see a mother and her calf. For the second half of the week we went south to hang out with our friends Amy and Anthony, who live in Ft. Lauderdale. I know what you're thinking - spring break in Ft. Lauderdale - but it wasn't like that! We were way classier and drove to Key West. Did some diving on the way down and spent Saturday on an all-inclusive on the water fun boat thing. There was water skiing, kayaking, a windsurfer, a water mountain climbing thing...you get the picture. We almost died on on of those banana-boat things towed by a certifiably crazy boat captain. My organs still hurt. The only thing that wasn't "inclusive" was the booze, except for 30 min at the end when there was an open bar. You can imagine how that turned out! We hit the town afterwards and hit all the seedy spots, including the garden of eden. Go there sometime and tell me what you think! We got to continue our spring break fun a few weeks later when Darcy got a week off. She came up to see us in Boston and we had a blast! Aside from visiting all of our favorite eateries, we did some hiking with the dog and visited the Harpoon Brewery - definitely one of the highlights!

Amidst all this fun stuff, I've been working my butt off and going to California for meetings every couple weeks. On a few occasions, Nikki came out with me to make the most of it. She came out to Dana Point one week and Oxnard another. We had fun exploring Laguna/OC a bit and took some time to head up to the Santa Barbara wine country. Nikki was really excited to go to Solvang and we stuffed ourselves with various Danish delicacies. We visited a few wineries and came back with plenty of wine for the next couple months.

Back in Boston, it is finally warming up, so we've been outside more often. We've been taking Hina on walks in a bunch of different regional parks in the area. She is a trooper!!! She will definitely walk for 4 hours no problem. She's even been running along while I mountain bike. The only thing is that we worry about her overheating, so we bring plenty of water. Also, she's not a very good breather, so we don't push her too much. We took her down to the Charles a few weeks ago to go canoeing, which she totally loved. It was a warm, beautiful afternoon. Perfect time for enjoying the water! Hoping to take her to the beach a couple times in the next few months.

So, bringing you up to date...Nikki graduated from Fletcher two weeks ago - woo!! This is her second masters and I think she learned a lot. Chuck and Jacqui came out for the ceremony and we had a great time going to various events - a clam bake, BBQs with friends, etc. We had great food (of course) and made time to go to the Boston art museum. This was their first time meeting Hina too (got to bring the dog back into it). After the festivities, I jumped on a plane to California and then DC, and Nikki took off for Thailand. She will be working at the consulate in Chiang Mai for the next 10 weeks and is focusing on statelessness and refugee issues (I think!). It sounds really great so far and I hope to make a visit in a few weeks. Next big event is our wedding in August. Nikki is flying straight to Maui and I'm coming from Boston. Should be fun!

That's it for now. Enjoy the pictures below!