Well......

Life is crazy.  I don't think people should make so much fun of Franck from Father of the Bride, because planning a wedding is VERY difficult :) 

Franck Eggelhoffer: Uh-oh, I bring the wrong color thread. I assumed you'd be wearing a black tuxado.
George: It IS a black "tuxado."
Franck Eggelhoffer: I don't think so, babe. This tux is "nuffy" blue. No doubt about it.
George: What're you talking about? Armani doesn't make a blue tuxedo.

I don't think we'll have any blue tuxado problems, but you never know.  I love Martin Short and Steve Martin, by the way.

45 days left until the wedding (January 21st, 2012).  Some cool things about this are: it is my parents' wedding anniversary, who also got married in the DC Temple, and.....the DC Temple was designed by Mike's grandfather.  How neat is that?

In the meantime, I am in full-time German training, preparing for my alleged onward assignment to Austria (which, by the way, will probably change after we get married, seeing as how Mike is assigned to go to Argentina next, and they aren't exactly next-door to each other).  So stay tuned to see what corner of the world we end up in next!

(We'll just be happy to be back together again. Going cold turkey -- from spending every day for a year together, to 3 months apart before your wedding and possibly three more months apart after -- is pretty tough.) 

Some news......

Well, now you will all finally discover why I have been such a slacker at blogging for nearly the past year......I was busy falling in love!

I met Michael Keith Ritchie (Mike) during training in July 2009 in DC. We had both been assigned to work at the U.S. Embassy in Caracas. We got to know each other a little bit during our first year in Venezuela (though not too much, because I decided my best course of action was ignoring him at work, so nobody could corner me and ask me if I liked him, which I did :) We started dating almost a year ago (so glad he had the gumption to ask me out), and tried to keep it on the down-low as best we could, though I think towards the end pretty much everyone at the embassy knew.

My 2 year tour in Venezuela ended on October 1st, and Mike took his R&R to coincide with my trip home. We visited New Mexico (the land of my birth!), and met up with his family in Albuquerque for the annual hot air balloon festival. We spent a day in Santa Fe, then flew to Phoenix (where Mike is from) to spend time with his family and see the sights! Mike is an ASU grad, so we spent some time in Tempe, ate way too much good American (and Mexican) food, saw downtown Phoenix, the Capitol, a desert botanical garden, and lots more. Then we drove up to Sedona and saw more beautiful desert scenery.

Then we headed to Utah. The original plan was to go to DC for him to be able to meet my family, but my parents were out in Utah for BYU's homecoming events (of course!). We went to the homecoming football game, and Mike pulled my Dad aside to ask his permission to marry me.......I think I was more nervous than Mike! But they had a good chat while Mom and I waited in the stands. Our schedule was so packed in Utah, meeting siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents on both sides, that the only time available for a proposal was Sunday morning (I told Mike I'd set aside a few hours for him).

So.......we were both so exhausted from all of our travels, that when Mike kept saying at the football game "I'm about ready to go," I didn't think anything of it (even though we were only up by 10 at that point, and I shouldn't have felt comfortable leaving with so small a difference in scores). Even though we left a little early, we got up to his brother's place in Salt Lake pretty late. I worked on getting my giant duffel bag out of the trunk while Mike was fumbling around in his backpack (he says he dropped the ring box, but luckily I was too tired to notice). We get to the front door, and he drops my bag and starts fumbling around in his jacket pocket. I think he's getting his phone out to call his brother, so as not to wake his niece up. But then he says "go ahead, I think it's open." So I open the door, knock a little, call out "hello?" Hm, no one's there. But there were candles lit on the table, and Frank Sinatra playing.....what a nice home! Haha, Mike calls out "turn around...." So I turn around, and there he is on one knee, and he proposed to me right there on the doorstep. I said yes! And then about passed out from the shock. Not from saying yes, that was a given. But I was SO SURE it was going to be the next day. There just wasn't any other time that would have worked! Mike's brother and sister in law had, under Mike's direction, set up this beautiful romantic scene that I only saw after saying yes (I was pretty oblivious). They made our favorite dessert from Venezuela, an amazing butterscotch pudding, and had out lots of other favorites of mine, like hot chocolate, and bread and cheese, and raspberries (and lots of flowers! And rose petals scattered all over the ground!). Amazing. Not to mention the ring, that's probably another reason why I almost passed out. The proof, below:


I love you Mike!

Wow, that was a long blog post. Just trying to catch up :) Will be back with more soon!

Oh, and we're getting married in January, in the Washington D.C. LDS Temple!

Ciao gente!

Well, today is my last day in Venezuela, and then I'll be off on a new adventure.



It has been an amazing experience for me -- very difficult at times, but I learned a lot, I loved my job (most days :), and I met some great people.



I have some pretty good stories.......especially from the last 6 months I spent in the immigrant visa section ("Why did you decide to marry her?" "Well, we got along, she was nice, and I thought 'Eh, why not try it out?'"). But there are too many for one blog post. I'll be in DC for the forseeable future, so look me up and we'll catch up!

But before I sign out (I had to do something to keep me occupied while interviewing those 15,000 visa applicants) here is a list of my favorite names I saw on people's applications:

Gloria America
Virginia America
Birginia
Diva
Missleaddy
July
Hilario

Ciao!

In order to activate your new debit card, please.........stand on your head.

Sometimes it's the little things that are good for a laugh. I almost laughed myself to tears after this latest episode of my life:

[Automated phone response] "To activate your new [Venezuelan] debit card, please enter your debit card number."

"Please enter the first 2 digits of your ID number."

"Please enter the security code on the back of your card."

"Please enter your PIN."

"Please enter your 18-digit checking account number."

"Please enter the last 4 digits of your phone number."

"Please enter the day of your birth."




Anyway, there may have been a couple more "Please enter's," but needless to say, this was not what I was expecting when I called. I actually had to call back a couple of times because I didn't have all the numbers I needed (yes, I do know my birthday, thank you), but then the questions would change each time I called back! It was a miracle I was able to activate it. Except I think it made me change my PIN somewhere in that sequence, and now I have no idea what numbers I used. So I haven't actually used my newly-miraculously-activated card. But I had a good laugh.

Panama Pic

My latest adventure was to Panama City, and I LOVED it!

Here you can see me at the Panama Canal. I know the canal looks kind of small, but it's not. We saw a giant oil tanker go through. Did you know that some of the biggest ships that pass through the canal pay upwards of $300,000 a trip? And did you know that the biggest container ships that can go through right now hold 5,000 containers, and that the 15,000-container ships have to park offshore, unload everything and send it via rail? But sometime in the foreseeable future, they are going to complete an expansion of the canal so those ships can go through. They are GIANT!!! Also, they can fill and drain the canal lock you see there in the time it takes to fill or drain a bathtub, about 8 minutes. But it holds a million bajillion times more water than a bathtub! (Sorry, can't remember that statistic exactly).

Why else you should visit Panama someday: It is amazing. It is up-and-coming, has a beautiful shoreline/skyline with fantastic skyscrapers, there are great day trips nearby, the city has a low crime rate, great restaurants, and their currency is the dollar, so you don't have to figure out exchange rates and such. Lots of history, lots of good food, lots of roads getting paved and skyscrapers being built, AND it's the only latin american country where you can drink the tap water. I'm telling you folks, you really should go.

Bogota Pic

This is the view after riding the tram up to "Monserratte" in Bogota. Wow! What a cool city.

Argentina Pic

Well, this is kind of ridiculous, but at this moment, I am only able to upload one photo, per one post, at a time. So. This is part of the the "necropolis," Recoleta, in Argentina. Eva Peron was buried in one of these "tombs," just around the corner. Sorry, don't have all the vocab right, probably, but it was a hauntingly beautiful place.

Hello, Buenos Aires! (And Bogota!)

So, as my time here in Venezuela is nearing an end (less than 4 months left, folks), I feel like I've been making a mad dash to try and get the last of my South American trips in -- FUN! Traveling around South America is great, I highly recommend it. Just please register with the Embassy wherever you visit, just in case.

Even though my April trip to Buenos Aires and May trip to Bogota only lasted a few days each, I don't even know where to start with talking about the trip! Food was definitely important. Let's see......

In Buenos Aires, I ate: Proveltta (grilled provolone), submarino hot chocolate (steamed milk with chocolote bars dumped into it), beef (of course), medialunas (croissants), and LOTS of ice cream.

In Bogota, I ate: a Curuba batido (Curuba juice, which I have no idea what kind of fruit that is, mixed with milk, it was AMAZING), a street hot dog with a million things on it, including pineapple (I forwent the Cornish hen egg that could have also gone on top), rhubarb creme brulee (I don't have words to describe its fantastical-ness), pan de bono, several typical Colombian dishes whose names I can't remember, LOTS of hot chocolate, oh -- and hot chocolate with cubes of CHEESE put into it! This is something I've been waiting to try my whole life, since I was 8 years old and would put a hershey bar and a piece of cheese into my mouth at the same time, heaven. Cheese and chocolate are meant to be eaten together. But I digress.

Music is also important, I love when my life has a soundtrack. I loved running around Buenos Aires with songs from Evita in my head. And nearly every restaurant and taxi in Bogota had some great song or another playing, you know, a little Avril Lavigne and Cat Stevens here and there.

Um, I can't get any photos to upload to this post. Let me try creating a new post......hold, please.

25 reasons why I love my mother

The Delta

Went to the Orinoco Delta a couple weeks ago (in the eastern part of the country), and got to experience yet another awesome part of Venezuela. I swear, the adventures never end here.

A lot of it reminded me of the Angel Falls area (which is further south -- here it was much more humid). Loved the windy rivers, that the guides know by heart, and every once in awhile they'll pull over to drop a bag of onions or something off at a neighbors. Lots of cool birds (this time, we saw egrets, kingfishers, flycatchers, and turpials). A few mosquitos (well, enough to make our guide cave and ask to borrow some insect repellant), but PLENTY of natural beauty. I swear, if it weren't for the mosquitos, I would pack up and move to a Venezuelan rain forest.

Turpial nests!

Look, I caught a PIRANHA!!!

And yes, we ate what we caught. Waste not, want not. They were actually pretty good, once you found the little bit of meat that was on them.

OK, so as not to leave you with visions of teethy, bony fish, I give you: "Cacao del agua." It looked like a bean pod our guide plucked off a tree, then he slapped it against his leg, and POOF! The coolest flower ever.

R&R

Funny how living in South America makes you wish with all your heart that it snows while you're on vacation.......and it did, in UT! Great place for a little R&R.

You will find little snippets of what I did below (if you read it like you're singing "We Didn't Start the Fire," I think you'll enjoy it more than just reading it like normal).

Cafe Rio, Krispy Kreme, Grandma's Cookies, Walgreens
Jimmer making lots of 3's, shoveling snow.
Apple Beer, Duck Ponds, brother's Cream Cheese Croissants
Heaps of Pizza, JDawgs, and trying to drive slow.


Cousin visits, sledding fast, 3.15 a tank of gas
Homemade food, and a scoop of (mmm) Graham Canyon.
Aunts and Uncles, Grandma too, (hey, sure do miss all of you)
Singing to the radio, and Ethiopian.

OK, that's all the rhymes I can come up with right now, but also want to say that I have the best little brother ever! He let me borrow his car (which is a big deal, considering I didn't exactly take the best care of my rental last time I was in Utah), and he made sure we hit all of my favorite places while I was there (as evidenced by the rhymings above).

Thanks Michael!

(You know, writing this was a lot of fun.......look for a Caracas version soon! I love rhyming!)

Random Thoughts

You know you're getting old(er) when: A) you eat Total, and you like it (Dad says "You're not getting older, they're making Total better now). Thanks Dad. And B) when you'd rather floss your teeth at night than not. I used to think: "eh, I'm not going to floss tonight, I just don't feel like it," and would enjoy going to bed a full 30 seconds earlier. Now.....can't do it, I have to floss. So weird.

Unrelated: I ask pretty much every visa applicant where they are planning to travel, and nearly every single one says either Miami or Orlando. That's cool, I could devote about 100 blog posts to 100 reasons you should visit other places in the U.S., but it's cool, I mean, Florida's close by and all that jazz. Well, I asked one lady today where she was traveling and she said "Exactamente..................a.......................Miami."

So, it was like her saying "To be honest........." or "I'm thinking........Miami." Whoa, no way! It was so funny to me. I didn't really put enough space in her sentence up there, she paused a R E A L L Y long time, and I was expecting her to say "the Badlands" or something random.

Another funny visa moment was a couple of weeks ago -- I was interviewing a family with some university age kids, so I asked them where they were studying........the younger son said "I'm studying at UofWhatever......no, I mean......UofTheother........no, I mean.......UofWhatever.......Argh!" And he kept smacking his head as he was saying this. He was so nervous, he just kept forgetting where he was studying (I think he had just changed schools). Anyway, I tried to keep going with the interview, but I kept thinking of him smacking his head like that, and I kept laughing. I had to stop the interview and say I was sorry, but that I had never seen anyone do that before. I told him not to worry about it, and to stop being nervous. You probably had to be there, but I swear that was one of the funniest things I've seen at the window.

Both of these stories remind me, though, of how nervous people are when they come to apply for a visa, even though they can always reapply, people get really worked up about it. I need to keep that in mind. I never had any nervous customers at the ice cream counter in college, it's a new experience for me :) Though I'm sure some people did smack their heads when we didn't have their favorite flavor.

Everything I've learned about running....

I learned from my Grandpa! My Grandpa Epps is great! He has run over 20 marathons, doing something well into his 80's that I can't even fathom attempting right now. I was going to launch into some good anecdotes, but I don't know how much he would love me bragging about him online......still, I have lots of great stories, if you've ever got a minute!

Anyway, every time I go jogging, I think of what I've learned from Grandpa, good jogging habits and such. And after years of doing this in my head, I finally decided to make him a photo collage with the bits of advice he's given me about running. And of course, not wanting to keep all the knowledge to myself, I thought I'd list these great tidbits on here. So here you have it:

Everything I've learned about running, I learned from my Grandpa:

• Jogging Juice: Equal parts water, vinegar, and apple juice.
• Slow and steady wins the race....and running fast doesn't burn that many more calories anyway.
• It's more important to stretch after your run than before, so if you forget to stretch beforehand, it's OK.
• Your metabolism kicks up a notch the hour after you run, so eat! As much as you want, whatever you want (right Grandpa? Within reason, I guess).
• Only buy Asics.
• You must do knee-ups after running to properly cool down.
• Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth.
  
• Always give a polite wave to cars if they let you cross, no matter how exhausted you are (like, in the middle of a marathon).

Thanks, Grandpa!