Getting Zumba Certified in Bangkok!

Little Katak, Gigi, Oat, Ali, Julie, Rosemary, Sarah, Kate, Ata, Fred

Marsha, Art, Madalene Aponte, Sharon, Johanna

We are ZIN! Certified Zumba Instructors! I flew to Bangkok, Thailand JUST so I could become a certified Zumba instructor. It was two days of training with ZES, Madalene Aponte, from Puerto Rico residing in Hawaii. It was a really great training with a fabulous group of people from all over the world! Malaysia, Guam, England, Russia, Germany, Philippines, France, Maldives, USA (me) and Thailand. What an incredibly international group! Most of them are living in Bangkok. A couple came from Malaysia, a couple from Cambodia and I came from China. 

I love fitness, working out and pretty much all forms of exercise. It's just something I do everyday, six times a week, because I absolutely love it. It makes me feel good, healthy, strong and happy.  I typically do Insanity work outs a couple times a week, the elliptical sometimes, and go running. But I had a small running injury where my arch was hurting. Plantar Faciatus. I had to chill out on running so I got a little creative. I even started biking and swimming. I still did the elliptical and Insanity workouts. But I think it made me a little more open to doing something else like Zumba. 

I didn't have a lot of experience with Zumba classes or anything. But combining fitness with dance is pretty awesome. It's so fun! And people love it. Dancing is a huge part of the Chinese and Indian culture and those people are a big part of my community. They can't wait for me to start teaching classes! Zumba is like exercise in disguise. It's international music and has a Latin, Indian and African influence. I've been busy learning choreo! Each class is about 15 songs. I have 9 down so far. I'm having a lot of fun learning them. It's really pushing me and I'm doing something I've just never done before. It was on a whim and I just went for it. Registered for the training and bought a flight! 

Thailand is a very Buddhist country. They buy some of these things to make offerings. It's vibrant and fresh!

Street food right outside my boutique hotel. Phad Tai! It was SOOOO good. Loved it so much I had it three nights in a row. 

I flew in on a Wednesday and got there in the afternoon. It was SOOOO much fun being in Bangkok. I was wondering why we don't have an LDS temple in Bangkok but do in places like the Philippines and Taiwan when the church has been in Thailand I think as long as it has been in Taiwan. Not certain. But I was so excited to hear that Bangkok will be getting a temple! An LDS one. Woowoo! 

China time is one hour later than Thailand so I was outside running on Thursday morning by 5:15am. And this is how happening the city is at that early hour! Unbelievable. (You can see the busy street behind me!) And it was a fun run. I went down a ways to a park where people do laps around it. I found it the day before exploring Sukumvit Soi.

From what I've learned in the past, monks go out in the mornings and collect food to put in their container. People donate food to the monks and that is pretty much the only thing they eat for the day. I was surprised to see these guys barefoot. Some wear sandals. Sometimes poor family's will give one of their children to the monastery to become a monk. It's kind of like they are offering their child to God and they feel it will bring their family blessings. Some young single adults will become a temporary monk and do it for several weeks or months. It's kind of like tithing or how some of our LDS single adults go on missions.

Sacha's Hotel! $50/night and a great location! 

I went alone and it really was a vacation. I was able to do whatever I wanted whenever I wanted to. I found a used book store and could take as long as I wanted finding books! And I of course could take as long as I wanted strolling the main street and shopping, working out, studying... You get the idea. 

I ate some really good Indian food, Thail food and amazing fresh fruit. It's sold every where along the street. Guava, Green mango, mango, water melon, papaya, pineapple. Fried bananas and deep-fried bananas. Fresh fruit juices and more fruit. I love Thai food and I love Indian food. This place is a little piece of heaven! I even found Frozen Yogurt. I also love the Indian tailors for men's suits. 

The street right outside my hotel. Sukumvit Soi 19! The taxi driver taught me how to say it. It was weird not being able to speak the native language.

Platinum Market, Bangkok.

You can take the girl out of China... And she will find a whole sale market!!! Of course I just want to know where the whole sale markets are. And I found a great one. I found skirts, parachute pants (for Zumba!), jewelry, ties!, shirts and some cute clothes for the kids. 

I love Bangkok! I will be back! (Family in tow...)

March Birthdays!

The birthday kids!

Dash's birthday is March 24th. He turned 6! And Callie's is March 26th. She turned 11! 

We celebrated with Grandpa, Grandma, Uncle Steve, Aunt Rachelle and cousins Sophie and Shya too. Texas Sheet Cake fed the crowd. 

Guardians of the Galaxy lego guys! And cool T-shirts from Uncle Steve!

Books from Aunt Rachelle! She's a total book worm! Thank you Aunt Rachelle! And new clothes from Grandma!

Callie and Sophie, one of her best friends, before a Chinese New Year performance.

Sweat Pea! CJ! Callie Jin Phillips! She sure is catching up to me in height! She's about 5'2.5 now? And she can fit into lots of my clothes! And we where the same shoe size. She's just getting so tall. She had an experience MC'ing a pep rally at school in March where she forgot what she was suppose to say! She said it was like her mind went blank! She knew what she was suppose to do but the words wouldn't formulate and come out! So after standing there a few LONG seconds. She walked off and handed the microphone to Jun, the VP. I was really proud of her when she told me about it! It was really embarrassing of course but she just pulled it together, got back out there to hand out certificates and was telling me, at the dinner table that evening, "It's okay," and had a slight smile on her face. Way to be resilient! And, even though it was quite a horrible experience for her, she still decided she would like to MC the talent show in April. Not being afraid to fail is something we hope our children learn and learn at a young age. 

CALLIE

Favorite books: Eragon, Harry Potter, Heros of Olympus, Anne Frank, King Solomon's Mines, Joey Pigza and Matilda by Ronald Dahl.

Favorite food: Calzones and Indian food. 

Favorite dessert: Cindy Greenland's Banana Cream Pie, and mom's apple cobbler and Angel Food cake.

Favorite color: Green, Orange, Blue.

Favorite song: Immortals by Fallout Boys

Favorite sport: soccer, swimming, basketball and football.

Favorite friends: Sophie and Kashvi

Favorite t-shirt: Boise State one

Favorite thing to say: Boom and booya.

Favorite TV show: Mr. Bean and iCarly

Dash lost his first tooth! And then the second one right next to it a few days later at school. He loves to spend time drawing. I think his drawings are super fun. Down below is a fire truck, super heroes and an alligator. He sings, "Row row row your boat gently up the stream. When you see a crocodile, don't forget to scream!" He's having a blast playing soccer on Thursdays after school with friends. And watch out if he finds a notebook. He will fill it with his drawings! He also spends a lot of time playing with legos and builds really cool forts and space ships. 

DASH

Favorite toys: legos and lego guys

Favorite food: Pizza, chips and salsa, hummus. 

Favorite dessert: vanilla ice cream.  

Favorite vegetable: Asparagus

Favorite color: green and blue.

Favorite Super Hero: Green Lantern.

Favorite movie: The Lego Movie. And Mr. Bean! 

He loves Minecraft on the iPad! 

Favorite shirt: his skeleton one, the jaws one and the Darth Vader one. 

Favorite song: Rob Zombie and Follow the Prophet. 

Favorite friends: Camryn, Olliver and Jet. 

Favorite thing to say: Totally.

Favorite things to play: Memory, Minecraft, and ride his scooter

Favorite sport: soccer

Brian representin'! Go USA! haha!

Saturday Soccer with friends! Bowen, Howard, Callie, Brock, Brian, Dash, Enrique, Alvaro, Matteo, Ron and Chael.

Bamboo Forrest and Lunch at the Tea Fields--March 2015

Rachelle, Sarah, Sophie and Shya.

Going to the Bamboo Forrest is one of our favorite little hikes to do with the kids. And others! The kids get to run around and climb a bit but this particular day was a bit muddy! So of course that showed up on the kids. It's really gorgeous with walls of bamboo on either side of the trail. It reminds me of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. Wish I could run on the tops of bamboo too!

Rachelle, Steve, Sophie and Shya.

Brian with Dad and Mom.

我们的家庭！

These two brothers! Good friends. Brian's lucky to have five of them. Steve's the one right above him and Brian's the youngest brother.

Tea Farm Restaurant.

This is a quaint little restaurant in the tea villages. It was his family's favorite place we ate it. There's a mountain side of terraced tea plants behind the photographer. The kids get to run around and play hide n go seek. This is where they got really muddy! The food is fresh and really good. And it's a beautiful setting!

Making Dumplings, Hiking and the Tian Zhu (Fa Xi) Temple

Making Chinese dumplings! Jian Jiao. 监交

Ayi makes the best dumplings! She use to have her own little business where she made Chinese dumplings. We helped and the family learned how to fill shells with filling. She was so happy that we loved them so much and she wanted to treat everyone to them. She said, if they're happy it makes me so happy! And boy were we happy! They were so good. We cook and fry them up and eat them with dumpling vinegar and soy sauce. 

Isn't he cute! He's playing an instrument called, er hu. 

I took Deann, Sophie and Shya across the street to buy some produce at the wet market. It's a fun little local community and local shopping right across the street from us. The wet market was something Deann just loved experiencing! She is a true Idaho-farm girl and knows her plants and crops and vegetables! She had a ball checking out all the different kinds of vegetables for sale and available here. The girls did too and they picked out vegetables for our stir fry and fried rice we ate for lunch that day. 

View at the highest point we hiked to where there's a view of the West Lake and tea farms.

Brian, Steve, Rachelle, Sophie, Callie and I went on the crazy stairs hike near the Six Harmonies Pagoda that evidently covers 132 flights of stairs and comes out at Tiger Springs. It was something Brian hasn't done before! I like to run it but hiking it is fun too. Especially with friends! I tried to tell them that there was a lot of stairs. Not sure if they listened because Sophie said, "Aunt Sarah! You didn't say there was going to be so many stairs!" haha! I pointed to a little pavilion on a ridge of a mountain and said we were going to it. And everyone said, "No. We can't possibly be going there. That's way too far away." I didn't say much more. After all, I could be wrong. haha! But of course that's where we went! It just looked really far away. It's maybe 2.5 miles of stairs all together. And beautiful of course! These guys came at the best time of year for sure!

Tiger Springs! Rachelle, Steve, Sophie, Callie, Sarah, Brain.

Tian Zhu Temple

This is my new favorite Buddhist temple! The Tian Zhu (Fa Xi) Temple, Hangzhou. I had never been here before! It's in a beautiful setting, there's hardly any people there and it's especially gorgeous this time of year! We went on March 27th. Everything is in bloom and it's really the prettiest time of year in Hangzhou.

 

Family Visiting Us! March 2015

Grabbing a quick bite in PuDong, Shanghai after shopping hard at the knock off market.

Grandma and Grandpa Phillips, Uncle Steve, Aunt Rachelle and Sophie and Shya came to play in China with us. It was a fabulous time with them! They arrived on Friday evening, March 21st. Brian and I (and the kids!) took them first thing Saturday morning to a great knock off market. We had to run off at noon to get to our leadership training meeting at 1pm. I was in charge of the training for primary presidencies during that second hour. And the adult session was at 3:30. They shopped and we met up for dinner at Element Fresh. On of my favorite restaurants in Shanghai! 

We stayed at the Crown Plaza which had a great pool, hot tub and breakfast buffet! After church on Sunday we checked out Yu Yuan Gardens. Monday we went back to the knock off market! Had some snacks and some trained to Hangzhou with me. Russ, Chael and Brian drove back with all the luggage.

Yu Yuan Gardens, Shanghai

We took a day trip to Wuzhen which is a beautiful "water town" a couple hours away from us in Hangzhou. Water town's are old towns where the canal through the town was used for transporting goods and people. It's a little piece of old China and very photogenic with it's bridges over the canal, small alleys with shops and buildings made out of wood, and local Chinese snacks and handcrafted goods. 

This girl knows how to take a selfie! She wanted a pic with these cute foreigners I know.

Checking out Wuzhen!

Dash eating our favorite fruit leather snacks from China made of crab apple.