American Idol Crazy

It's true. I am now a weekly watcher. Aaron's family has sucked me right in--it's family bonding time!! But you really should check out the David Archuleta videos and song on the playlist to the right. He's pretty impressive.

A Surprise Belated Valentine's

I think I said in one of my last posts that we spent our first Valentine's Day as a married couple thousands of miles apart. Terrible, I know. To make up for it, Aaron planned us a surprise retreat to Salish Lodge, Seattle's Resort and Spa upon my return from my marathon trip. For those of you not from the area, it is actually just east of Seattle, sitting atop Snoqualmie Falls. You know we have a thing for waterfalls, so this was the perfect place to take a much needed break from work and just spend some time together. We had fantastic weather and the place was beautiful; I recommend it for all looking for a nice little getaway. The food was amazing, the service excellent, and we had our own wood-burning fireplace in our room. Just be careful when you go up to the spa--if you sit next to the mini-waterfall it just might put you in a near unconcious state and you could almost miss your dinner reservation!!

More About the Middle East

So even thought that post about Kuwait didn't have the nicest tone to it and everything in that country seemed to be the color of dirt and that all I wanted to do the minute I got there was leave, I would say the Middle East wasn't THAT bad. This tour started out in Dubai, which I had had a lot of anticipation for with all the hype it has been getting lately with their palm islands and seven star hotel and such. I think if I hadn't worked it up so much I would have been fine with it--I should have followed Aaron's advice--keep your expectations low and you'll always be happy! In general UAE was a lot more welcoming than Kuwait. The first day we arrived we had a FABULOUS lunch at the hotel NEXT to the seven star hotel, so we were almost really cool. It was a really nice resort itself--rooms and villas ranging from 1,000 to 10,000 USD per night and a cool canal running through it (we even got to take a little boat ride through it. I snuck onto the private beach and snapped a photo of the seven star hotel shooting out of my head (rooms from 6,000 to 28,000 per night!!).

It was crazy just how much building there is going on in Dubai. Every single road we drove on had something being built. The main street in Dubai had crane after crane after crane. According to the Gulf News, Dubai has about 30,000 or 24% of the world's cranes right now. But for all the progress and development and skyscrapers they have and all that, I would still have to say that I liked Istanbul a LOT more. It was by far my favorite part of the trip. It's quite the opposite of Dubai, an ancient city with buildings hundreds of years old--and no skyscrapers. The people were wonderful, the food delicious, the mosques incredible, the setting beautiful. The only problem was that we had a blizzard for 2.5 days and I was only there for 4. The other I guess being the fact that my shipment of school materials did not arrive until the second day of the education fair. I found this out when I was stranded in Kuwait and was so mad at DHL and couldn't do one single thing about it. I had lined up one of our alumni to come work at the fair the first day since I was still going to be in Bahrain and she showed up there all ready to help out, with no material and no way of contacting me. Bless her heart.

So if you add that to the blizzard, we had a little damper put on attendance at the fair as well as my plans for touristing on my last day there. I was so depressed when I woke up the last morning and it was still snowing--I had been so exciting to see the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque and there I was so close and I couldn't even see them. Schools were closed, government offices were closed, and all the taxis and even hotel cars were not driving. So I had no choice but to sit in the hotel room all morning (which did give me a little time to work on the blog though, definitely something you need to travel to Turkey to do). But around 2:00 my luck turned and it stopped snowing. Then the sun and blue skies even came out so I hopped in a taxi and took a quick tour of the city. The Blue Mosque was just as beautiful as I had imagined.

Then I went to the Topkapi Palace across the street and do you know what they have in their museum?!?! The Rod of Moses. How on earth?! They also have the cloak of Muhammed and the turban of Joseph. Having walked in not expecting to see anything, I was a little taken aback at how they could have such artifacts. The Rod of Moses?! But you know what, it did feel really spiritual in there, so who knows. Anyway, all in all it was quite an interesting trip, capped off by my luggage not making it back on the plane with me. It apparently really liked the Amsterdam airport so it had stayed there over night. After all the other lovely new experiences, I thought this was a nice way to end things. Luckily, it came the next day as promised. Let's just say I'm not too excited to get back on the road next Wednesday!!!

For more pics of the trip, check out my myspace (link in the right column, or www.myspace.com/taiwanbecca).

Stranded in Kuwait

Here is an email that I wrote home to my family while I was in Kuwait that I thought others might also find interesting:

Things here in the Middle East have been a little rockier than on my usual trips. The world is just a TAD bit different over here. I'm pretty sure I won't be able to describe it in my email, but it reached its climax in my experiences today at the Kuwait Airport. Even though I had my paper ticket from in my hand when I went to check in, the man at the counter said he didn't see my name in the system and I had to go talk to the reservation counter. So I proceeded to said counter and he looked it up and told me I didn't have a ticket. I showed him the ticket in my hand and asked wasn't it a ticket?? He said it had been "cancelled" because the agent that arranged the ticket didn't enter some kind of number. He said my ticket was void. He said I needed to go talk to the man at counter #16. So I did, falsely thinking he might offer some kind of hope for my flight. He said that standby was my only option and that I simply needed to sit there and wait for the next two hours we had until the takeoff.

Then I discovered that even though this was supposedly due to error of my travel agent, there were two other people from the fair that this happened to. One of those people happened to be traveling with someone else in his office and their reservations were made by the same people. Interesting. As time grew closer, more and more people (not part of our group) were likewise displaced. So we waited those two hours, only to be told that there was nothing they could do for us. Period. End of story. This was a paid for ticket, completely rejected. They only fly to Bahrain once per day, at 5 o'clock, and the fair was set to start at 5 the next day, so we couldn't wait that long. The three of us tried to get on another airline and the only other airline was flying out at 10 pm, but that was completely booked as well. So we are on the first flight out in the morning and found the last three rooms in a hotel close to the airport. All I can say is that as selfish as it may sound, I'm glad I wasn't the only one in our group that got bumped. At least we have each other in this crazy country!!

I haven't had the best impression of this place, starting with being bumped from our hotel before we even got there!! I know, it's like they don't want us here or something. We had all booked rooms at the Crowne Plaza through the fair organizer. Since the fair was going to be held there, they got us a group rate to all stay there. Again, we had RESERVATIONS. Well, apparently, the crowne prince or somebody special came into town and the needed the rooms. So...our entire group got the boot to the Holiday Inn across town the night before we got here. We had some more drama when we first landed and had to get our visas. What we all thought would be a simple process took two hours in total--longer than it took for us to fly here from Dubai. Once we finally got our visas and went back down and stood in line at immigration, this man came and snatched my passport out of my hand and said, "Not finished, not finished." Then he started snatching other peoples in our group and we were told we all had to leave the line to get one more stamp first at this other desk where there was no one sitting and no one seemed to care or want to help us, they just all kept telling us we weren't finished. Wow. We finally made it through and were welcomed at the hotel by a metal detector and having to put all our luggage through a screener. So inviting.

Back to Blogging

I have received some comments from folks that maybe I should add a little bit more to this blog of ours. It is pretty obvious that I haven't done anything with it since creating it back in November. Now it is February almost March and I think it's time for us to really get serious. We have been a little distracted by the busy-ness of the holidays, which were a lot of fun and Aaron starting up his own blog. He was inspired by Elder Ballard's talk at BYU-Hawaii encouraging people to start up blogs as a missionary tool. As Aaron is a ward missionary at our new ward in Bellevue, he liked the idea and took the challenge. Even though he has only had it for awhile, there are a lot of interesting posts on there with some interesting comments. If you haven't already, you should check it out at www.graceforgrace.com or by simply following the link on the right. My work has also been pretty busy lately--sending me to the Middle East and Turkey (which I plan on writing an earful about, so stay tuned for stories by far my most interesting trip ever) and then I will be leaving again for Taiwan this week. Too much travel for newylweds, I tell you what!!