The last month has been an incredible month- I've had 25 straight days of sunshine! I can't believe what I've been missing here. The sun feels so good on your face and it really does warm your heart. Not only does my skin look different, but I think my heart does as well. The last month has taken me to Malaysia, Cambodia, and Vietnam. All beautiful and unique countries in their own way. I have to say that Cambodia was my favorite. We spent about 4 days in Siem Reap, touring all the temples and seeing the country up close and personal. I love the transportation there- tuk tuks- little carts on the back of a motorcycle that take you everywhere. The hour long rides to and from our adventures were beautiful and somewhat educational. I was able to ride through a lot of villages and see what these people's daily lives look like from the outside. The houses in Cambodia were really neat- they are all raised on stilts for when the monsoons come in the rainy season. There were naked babies running around everywhere, along with dogs that looked like dingos. There were also a lot of land mine victims everywhere- alot of people with lost limbs and eyes- a very disheartening reality. I feel like I had a world history lesson traveling through these countries. It was easy to see the scars on the land and on the people as a result of all that has happened in the last 30 years or so. We definitely felt this trying to cross the border to Vietnam where we were detained for almost four hours. It was a close call, but we ended up making it through and on to the last leg of our vacation. The beach we went to in Vietnam was incredibly peaceful and restful. There wasn't much to do there except soak in the sun and enjoy a fresh fruit smoothie (which I did every day). The sunsets in Vietnam were the most beautiful that I have ever seen. I hope I can keep those logged in my memory as the smog has already started to weigh on me again.

I'm back at home, back to the "daily grind" as they say. I'm in awe of how much I needed a break, and in awe of how rested and ready I feel now to start life again in full force.

I know how long it's been since I last blogged- my apologies. Honestly, it is a job to stay connected to everything and everyone back home and it sometimes takes away from my time here (which I don't want!). But I will try to keep it up -I promise!

My life has been anything but ordinary over the past month....celebrating Christmas and New Year's in a country that doesn't really celebrate them in a "normal" way is challenging and exciting! But we did have an incredible holiday season- Christmas Day was filled with presents from families and friends and more sweet foods than anyone should or could possibly eat. The six of us spent the day together, having Christmas brunch in the morning, opening presents from each other and family back home, laying around watching movies, working out at the gym together, cooking a Christmas dinner feast, and just enjoying the down time together. We all spent a significant amount of time on the computer/phone talking and video chatting with our families. I was placed in the same place on the couch to open presents with the family, and later video chatted with my extended family who placed me on a podium at the dinner table so I could look on and attend Christmas dinner. As sad as it was to miss Christmas with my family, I did enjoy breaking with tradition and doing whatever I wanted on Christmas eve and day. I loved the low key, no stress, stay in your sweatpants type of holiday! Why can't it be like this in America every year? The day after Christmas, a bunch of us went into the city to go ice skating at this tiny ice skating rink in a big mall. It sounds random I know. It was pretty fun- although I forgot how hard and painful ice skating was!

We spent New Year's Eve in the city where we stayed in this incredible hotel for the night. It is just a haven for us over here. You forget what it's like to travel and stay in a nice hotel instead of one infested with roaches or one where your shower and toilet are one in the same. We went to eat dinner together, made some holiday beverages (what's a new year's eve without some champagne?) and ventured out to the "times square" of the city and waited to ring in the new year. There was a huge crowd of people of course, and we were all being pushed back by this line of police, who we tried to push through and almost started a riot. The tradition here on the stroke of midnight on new year's eve is to release balloons into the air- not scream and sing and make crazy commotion. We did not join with the culture- we kept to our American tradition and caused a scene and a billion camera flashes to go off. After this, we went back to our hotel to crash a formal new year's eve affair in the hotel bar. We took over on the dance floor, made them play our ipods, and put on a show for all the people with our crazy dance moves. It was amazing.

Class has been out for the winter holiday since the first week of January. So we've been doing some traveling and activities outside our home. In a few days we'll be leaving to go to some meetings for a few weeks, followed by some vacation time in Cambodia and Vietnam. There are some incredible opportunities here to travel to countries that would normally be too hard to get to or too expensive to travel to. But being close makes for easy and cheap travel- and since we're a bunch of youngsters, we can stay in hostels and spend the night in airports and such. I will definitely have stores to tell when I return, so I'll be sure to fill you in! I'll be away from my computer for a month, so I will definitely not be able to post for a while! So happy February to all!