Merry Christmas to our family and friend near and far. Wishing you all a wonderful holiday and hoping that it is filled with joy and happiness.

Here we are in Colorado for the Holidays, but more importantly Nick's birthday. With a full house here at my Aunt's house, I surprised Nick with a quick little getaway. Yesterday we first headed to Black Hawk which is a small little city in Colorado about 1 hour 1/2 away in the mountains, an old mining town turned into a casino town. There are these little casinos (little compared with Las Vegas). It's like the wild west, saloons and all..sort of. I think we were the youngest of anyone playing at the casinos by at least 30 years. And since it was Nick's birthday, it was guaranteed we would win, right? Well, we did walk out up about $50 so we couldn't complain. Although we probably could've won more at our favorite slot machine if we weren't getting harassed by the mullet lady who continued to come over to us and say something each time we got the bonus....she was playing the same exact machine on the other side, but obvsiously wasn't winning at all.



After our quick little win, we headed to Boulder through the mountains where we checked into the very cute Boulder Bradley Inn. Thankfully the sky was blue and there was very little snow, so in our small little front wheel drive, we had no problem. The Bradley Inn is a bed and breakfast right near Pearl Street Mall in Boulder, a great place to stay if you are ever in the area. There was a wine and cheese hour we enjoyed and the breakfast was tasty with homemade granola, bread and a quiche.



For Nick's birthday dinner we went to a Japanese restaurant as if he can't get enough when he is in Japan. Although, really, it is nice to go to Japanese restaurants here in the US as we can order things we don't usually get in Japan because we don't know what they are and here everything is in English. The food was great and it was actually owned and run by Japanese, which is rare...really. Usually you'll find Japanese Restaurants or sushi bars run by Chinese or Korean which isn't always bad, but not authentic.

We couldn't finish off the night without dessert and that included Oreo chee secake from The Cheesecake Factory...yum.

This morning we got up early and headed to Eldora Mountain outside of Boulder to snowboard. It's the closest resort and usually the least busy. It doesn't even compare to the likes of Vail or Aspen, but it's one of the more affordableone and we got a great deal with this Boulder Ski and Stay escape.

Unfortunately, snowboarding today was like a tease...and we can't wait to get out to one of the bigger mountains. It's not that it was really small, etc. We were just pretty unlucky with the weather today. It was a gorgeous day except the wind! We made two runs early this morning on some of the more difficult runs and then they closed the lifts because they were clocking in 60 mph wind gusts at the top! Bummer! They closed all these lifts and left 3 green (easy) open to ride. So we did these for a while and then wind continued to pick up, it was harsh. There was only so many green runs we could do, especially when we spending more time on the lifts trying to block the wind then on the slopes. We left around 1, but are looking forward to doing some more before Nick leaves on the 4th.

Here's a video of me snowboarding. It's really not the exciting..watching me, but I do think Nick is did an excellent job recording me as I rode down the run.

Well it has taken about 3 months in total to get to this point and now we are both ready to let you all in on our future plans.

It has been a great 3 years for me teaching at the university here in Japan but it has come to an end. I have resigned and we will be moving on, together. As you all know, Jen and I have been doing the long distance thing, again, and it has become very difficult, again, and we have now promised each other never to do it, again.

During November, I interviewed with a university in Abu Dhabi, UAE, and found out last week that I have been successful. We will be moving there together in early February swapping the cold weather of our respective countries for warm...more like hot very hot sand beneath our feet.

We are extremely excited for the new opportunities and challenges that lie ahead and of course welcome you all to come and stay with us any time you are in the neighbourhood!

If your not sure where the Abu Dhabi is here is a map. It's in the UAE, Dubai is close by..between Saudi Arabia and Oman. And we assure you that this is a safe, international and modern place to live for those thinking what! You are moving to the Middle East?!

Living in the Middle East will give us new traveling opportunities which we are very much looking forward to which hopefully will include: Oman, Turkey, Egypt, India, Kenya, Morocco...we'll see

Doesn't look like Nick wants to put anything he's been up to in Japan on the blog.....perhaps I should be worried.

He'll arrive in the US soon enough and then we'll be busy updating the blog with our winter Adventures

While waiting for my flight I had the pleasure to sit next to the one and only Colonel Sanders!

There was a new KFC opening down in the Bahamas and he was there for the Grand Opening. He says once he retired, he got the gig and has been doing ever since flying around opening up new locations and doing promotions. It doesn't get any closer than this guy!

While I was down in the Bahamas I did get to swim with dolphins which was really awesome!

at Dolphin Encounters you get to jump in the water and get friendly with a few of the resident dolphins. We kissed them, danced with them, fed them....and the coolest part was when we laid flat in the water with our arms out to the side and two dolphins came behind and pushed the bottom of our feet so you go flying through the water for about 25 meters on the surface!

Here's a picture of me and the dolphin, I've forgotten her name.

Nick and I have been pretty poor the last month keeping this thing going, but I am sure that when we are back together we'll have much more fun and new adventures to report on.

I am still in the Bahamas, but barely breathing...more on that to come later. I leave on the 11th of December, thankfully. This is officially my final visit to the Bahamas.

Nick will fly into Denver on the 20th and I am really looking forward to Christmas this year. We are trying to make some decisions right now for the future and are thinking they may involve warm, really warm weather.

Hopefully this does not happen en route to the US on the 11th.

Last night my cousins fiance Christine and I went to see Missy Higgins in Boulder. She played at the Fox theater, a small little intimate venue and and awesome place to see a concert. When I studied abroad in Australia back in 2003 I started listening to her and while she's become top of the charts in Australia since then, she's still making her way here in the US. Which means playing in the US at small venues and a couple hundred people. We were right at the front of the stage and one of the best concerts I've been to. Joshua Raidin played before her and he's really good too! It makes it so much better when you can see performers live up close and at places where they actually play for much longer than an hour.

If you ever get a chance, definitely go and see either of them, they put on a great show!

I have spent some time updating rcent photos to our FLICKR account.

Those can be viewed at www.flickr.com/jenandnick/collections


Well, actually there isn't a ton to update you about...if you really care :) Nick spent the past weekend in South Korea and last weekend in Sapporo, Japan presenting at conferences for TESOL. I would've been jealous of him visiting a new country without me, but thankfully I got a chance to visit S. Korea without him back in 2006, so this was his chance.

I am on my way down to the Bahamas on Thursday, just could not miss the annual halloween party at Compass Point.....or perhaps due to the lack of finding a job here in Colorado I thought I'll head back down there and hopefully be more productive there than I have been here. Gotta find a Halloween Costume! Although it won't be the same wihthout Nick :(

While Nick has been working, I 've really been trying to find a job with no luck. I did do a personal training course so will be able to start working at a gym upon my return and get some people back in shape after the holidays. I am looking forward to trying that out. All the while I will continue looking for those marketing jobs somewhere out there.

I have also been coaching water polo at CSU for the club women's team. I've been enjoying that, but it's just not the same coaching as playing. I hurt my knee so I haven't been able to get in with them, but am hoping once I return from the Bahamas, to start getting in the water and playing a bit.

I'm looking forward for Nick arriving at the end of December and hitting the Rockies for some snowboarding!!

About 2 weeks ago, I got a chance to go with my friend Muffy to Mt. Evans, outside of Denver to hike to the summit! An absolutely awesome day, we started a bit too late, but still in time to make it down by sunset. We took the ridge trail up which was about 4 hours, pretty rocky terrain with snow as we got higher and higher. Mt. Evans is one of the 14ers in CO, that would be 14,000 feet high. Near the summit we saw all of these mountain goats which Muffy became obsessed with as we probably got a little too close to them. They are really quite large, but very cute. It was an awesome view from the top looking out over the other peaks and valleys. You could see down below the Aspen trees changing colors. The pictures just don't do it justice! On the way down we took the road, which was already closed for the season. Thankfully we were able to walk down the side and cut off some time instead of walking the whole way on the road.




Unfortunatley there will be no more hiking for a couple weeks as I partially tore my MCL playing kickball! Yes...kickball. I went to the park and joined in on a game, thought it would be a good way to meet people, halfway through the game I was in the outfield going to catch a ball when my leg slipped and bent inwards and pop, there went my knee! What bad timing as I was supposed to do a rock climbing course, was just getting in shape and was looking forward to some outdoor activities this fall. It's feeling better, but I am now in a brace for a total of at least 4 weeks...bummer!

Natasha, Jen and myself were walking around the Edinburgh Fringe Festival one luke warm summer's day when we were approached from a man with a microphone and video camera. He was a producer of an online visual dictionary website called Wordia. The idea is that people are filmed giving a definition of a word. Everyone is encouraged to say what the word means to them and so many words can have several meanings.
I was asked to say a meaning to a word when Natasha screamed out "You should do Lingerie". Not one from backing down from such a challenge, I present to you me on Wordia.

http://www.wordia.com/words/lingerie/videos

A quick little post from Japan. One of my office mates came in and said that there are two ladies pulling weeds out in the courtyard with hard hats on. I had to see this. So I went out and took these two photos. I took the first close-up to see the hard hats and the second to show there is no scaffolding or construction around them (i.e. there's no point to wearing one!). That's just how things are done here.