Summer in New York

Here are all of my favorite pictures from our summer in New York City. 

Riding the subway home from the airport after our winter and spring travels. We were away from mid January through the end of May. We had to make the trip home from Asia without John so Anna was happy to see him.

We lived around the corner from a collegiate church with a big grassy lawn and garden. Thanks to an invitation from our friend Bea (picture of her below), we joined their "little seeds" program for the summer so we got to spend time hanging out on the grass and watering the garden every week.

Helping me do the laundry. 

Another cherished grassy area in New York, Ft. Tryon Park.

And of course, the Bronx Zoo! We bought a membership!

In front of our building.

On several occasions I walked into the front room in the morning and saw Anna with the scriptures open, flipping through the pages. (Also, can you see the plastic bags on the couch behind her? We had to keep all of our clothes in plastic bags ALL summer while dealing with our building's bed bug infestation.) 

Clifford at the 42nd Street library, our favorite NY public library.

My favorite girl posing next to my favorite blossoms.

First time eating pizza! And do you recognize the others in the picture? John's Aunt Suzie and her family came to visit us.

Playing in the water fountain at the park on a really hot day. 

This picture shows one of Anna's favorite things about New York. DOGS! The first thing we did every morning was get up, get dressed, go to the park, visit the dogs. 

First time on a carousel. This was at the pier on 23rd St. She hated it.

In July Anna and I headed back out West for Music, Arts, and Technology Camp in Evanston. This year I wasn't teaching but it's such a big week for my family that I wanted to be there and I wanted to take Anna to the baby class. We spent some time in SLC with John's parents as well and all my pictures are from our visits with them. The picture above shows Anna taking one bite out of each apricot and then throwing it behind her. It was so cute I let her do it for a while. Then I realized that the apricots were probably needed for some homemade jam. Oops!

Eating watermelon with Grandma Linda at Bear Lake.

Grandma and her two favorite kids.

Back in New York. A rare photo capturing Anna's infectious smile. (She doesn't like to smile for cameras.)

Central Park 

My parents came to New York to visit for Anna's birthday. We were so excited when they arrived and really sad when they left.

I wish this pictures showed more faces but this was on the way home from a spontaneous trip to the Bryant Park carousel with our friend Bea and her girls June and Olive. We love them a lot.

We had a fun visit from John's brother and sister-in-law and their son Eli who is 10 weeks older than Anna.

Racing up the stairs to our apartment. Eli won.

Eating her all time favorite food.

This and the next two are from Bennett Park, which was across the street from our building. Most days Anna spent more waking hours there than in our apartment. She is a very early riser so there were never many kids there in the mornings but we made some good friends.

Our last picture in New York. This was the day before our flight to Cambodia and that is Anna's favorite dog, Mattie. Mattie loved Anna. She was gentle and kind, and was very protective of Anna around other dogs. I wonder if they would remember each other if we ever went back to visit.

Life in Cambodia

I just can't sit still long enough to write a blog post anymore! I think I'm just not introverted enough or something.

Anyway, I'll write a little about what our life is like here. One might think that the reason there haven't been any of "Michele's Occasional Updates" lately is because I don't have anything happy or exciting to write about. But it is just the opposite! We have been enjoying ourselves and having so much fun that I just haven't had time to think about my blog.

I am a volunteer music theory and piano teacher at the Royal University of Fine Arts. It's hard because most of the students don't understand English and I of course do not understand or speak Khmer. But I am using my education and I am excited about that. I'm also teaching piano lessons at a private music school in our neighborhood. I have never thought of myself as a piano teacher but there is a big demand for piano teachers here so I'm doing it!


We have a nanny/house helper. She helps take care of Anna, goes to the market, cooks dinner for us, and cleans. It is strange to think that in New York I was the babysitter and now we have our own. The best part about it is that I can spend so much more time on the floor playing with Anna because I don't have to make dinner, do the laundry, or scrub the bathtub. I love it!

Sometimes John and I reflect on the differences between living in New York and living here. In Cambodia, we get to go out to eat as often as we want. We get to go on trips. We have reliable transportation. John enjoys his job, I enjoy my job. We have money in the bank. In New York, I had to cook, clean, shop, do the laundry, take care of Anna, and deal with all kinds of other things (BED BUGS) that people who live in New York have to deal with. We realized that in New York, we just lived from one crisis to the next. In Cambodia, we look forward to each day as it comes.

But of course there were some up sides of living in New York: Broadway shows, good food, museums, parks, hanging out with some of the best people and best friends we have ever known.

And there are some down sides to living here. The biggest one is that we are so far away from our family. There's no substitute for family.

And now for some pictures I just pulled off my phone. The girl in the second picture is Alice, Anna's current best friend. She lives across the hall from us and they play together every day.

We are in Cambodia.

I know, it's crazy.

The last few months have gone by so fast.  I was planning on posting all about our summer and Anna's birthday, and some birth photos from a year ago, but I ran out of time.  Maybe later.  Anyway, so we are in Cambodia now.  We will be here for three months at least.  If everything goes ok (if I don't go crazy here) we will probably stay for another six months.

We are in the capitol, Phnom Penh.  We live in a really fancy apartment with TWO bedrooms!!!  Yay.  If you don't live in New York City you may not realize what a big deal this is.  And we have a lady who cleans our apartment three days a week.  She also does the laundry.  Score!

Anyway, we are still getting settled in and trying to overcome jet lag.  It has been rough.  Night is day and day is night.  I hope we can get through it.

I still haven't decided whether or not I like it here.  My thinking is a little out of wack from sleep deprivation.  Maybe after we're all sleeping better and I get a chance to learn my way around I'll decide.  But we have had some good food and been to a few cool places.  And today we went to church and had a great time learning the gospel and making new friends.  We are attending the international branch, which is English speaking.

So here are the first batch of pictures:

First day, first meal, accompanied by a tall glass of fresh watermelon juice.  I've been looking forward to this.

Our first ride in a tuk-tuk, our primary mode of transportation.

Tuk-tuks and their drivers waiting for passengers.  Tuk-tuks are like horse-drawn carriages, but they are pulled by a motorbike instead of a horse.

Our street.  Our apartment building is the tall white one on the right.

A fun place we found for Anna to hang out.  It is a play school for babies and toddlers.  We have to pay but it's worth the money because she loves it. 

 She's signed up for a class there three days a week.  This has been a good place for us to make friends with other English speaking foreigners who have kids her age. 

Yesterday we took Anna to her first swimming lesson. John's friend from work takes his kids to a swimming class where they are taught by members of Cambodia's olympic swim team! Anna had so much fun we signed her up for a 14-week term.

Ok, I hope to have more pictures and updates soon. 

Anna at 6 Months

Here are some of the photos that my cousin's wife, Samantha Comte, shot of Anna back in February.  It was hard to chose just one, so here are four.  She's also wearing a special dress that Samantha and (our other cousin) Jody bought for her.  So cute!

Java

After our trip to Bali we flew to Java, the next island over.  John's cousin Marc is a foreign service officer and was working at the consulate in the city of Surabaya.  We got to stay with his family for a few days and it was, seriously, so much fun.  By now they are already moving on to their next post in Russia.

The first night we were there their cook maid "flying fish" for us.  Yum!  Just kidding.  I didn't actually try any. 

The day after we arrived, Amy (Marc's wife) took us to Taman Safari.  It was probably the highlight of our entire trip to SE Asia.  It is a zoo that has a drive-through section and a petting zoo section.  We drove past all sorts of animals who came over to the car and took bananas from our hands.  When we drove through the sections that had predators in them, there would be a sign indicating that we should roll our windows up.  But we could have rolled them down if we wanted to, no one was checking on us.  So crazy. 

 Anna was asleep when we got there and she woke up with this llama's head a couple of inches from her face!  This picture is a few seconds after that.  I am so mad that I didn't have my camera ready when it happened.  She wasn't scarred, but she did have a really surprised and confused look on her face!

There were hundreds of deer that we drove past and after a while I was like, "why do they have so many deer at this place?" and then I realized that they were probably just food for the lions and tigers and bears.

I didn't get a good picture of them, but we drove past a lion and some lionesses.  One of them started chasing the car, and then its started attacking the bumper as we were driving away!  There were huge bite marks on the bumper!  That was one of the only times I've seen John get scared.  He had Anna on his lap and I think it scared him to think about what might have happened to her if we had had the window rolled down when that Lion came after us.

Hippo crossing.

This was awesome.  We got to go in and hold a baby Orangutan.  She was about the same age as Anna.  At first Anna was curious and wondering what it was.  We tried to switch and have John hold the Orangutan while I held Anna, but the Orangutan wouldn't go to John and only wanted me to hold her.  I couldn't hold both of them and suddenly Anna got frustrated and made a head dive toward the Orangutan, trying to attack it or something.  It was really cute.

Then she got to pet a baby tiger!  This was scary.  I mean, who has ever been to a place that lets children pet tigers.

And then she got to pet baby Simba!  We concluded that these guys must have been sedated because they were awake, but they just sat there and were so tame when we were hanging out with them.

We also saw a group of grown-up Orangutans.  We got to toss them some bananas and it was so weird to see how human-like they were.  Especially when they got up and walked on two legs.

We got to ride an elephant!  It was a little scary for me, because it was such a wobbly ride and Anna was also wiggling around.  But it was awesome.

We ate lunch at a restaurant that looked into a holding area for these white tigers.  One of the tigers came to see us and Anna was really excited about that.

This picture is an example of what happened to us everywhere we went with Anna.  Everywhere in Indonesia people wanted to take pictures of Anna.  They were just so fascinated with her.  

I am missing other pictures from our trip, including a visit to a cigarette factory where hundreds of female employees hand-roll cigarettes at lightning speed all day long.  The rest of the time we just relaxed and hung out with John's cousins.  They are one of the neatest families we have ever met. They have four kids who are all extremely smart, kind, and funny.  I hope we get to visit them again someday.