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.

We've spent the last 2 weeks enjoying the outdoors in Colorado and enjoying the rest of our summer together. There's so much to do here and definitely can see why people love it here!

We went golfing with my Uncle Dan and cousin Chris and while the rest of the boys had been golfing before, Nick only twice, but it was my first time! For a first timer I didn't do half bad once I started making contact with the ball. It's definitely something I could get used to playing as long as we Always rent a golf cart, that makes it just that much more fun and so much easier to ride around and find my 'stray' ball :)





There's a huge reservoir and mountain (a small one) called Hoorsetooth in Fort Collins. We got a chance to hike up, only about 2 hours up and 1.5 down to the top to see an awesome view of Fort Collins below. I gotta get some new hiking boots as blisters quickly formed and nothing worse than starting a hike and getting them shortly after.



We're not very good golfer an we're not really good frisbee disc golfers either, but both are fun and lots of room for improvement. There was a guy what he had thrown on the course when disc golfing and he was like 1 under par...we all laughed as we didn't care to tell him that we were all in the 30 over par group...too funny...we suck


We loved our dinner at the Melting Pot...fondue..so good




Lastly, on Monday we went to Brekenridge for some Mountain Biking. So awesome....but hurt like heck the next day! We started off in the morning doing some trails just outside of town and there was noone on the trails which was great as we were getting used to rding up and down with pretty good size rocks sticking out on the trail, ridges to make sure not to fall off and some tight turns. After lunch we headed to Copper Mountain where we spent the rest of the day riding the chair lift up the mountain and riding down on the trails, that was tough and much more technical. Nick's okay, but he did take a wipe out after missing a switchback and going right over hte edge, unforutnatley I didn't get it on video as it was a pretty graceful wipeout!





Nick's scrapes and bruises..he went off the right behind him over the edge! It looks smaller than it actually was here in the photo :)

Some videos of the Mountains...perfect day!

This is our blog about Scotland. We were lucky enough to visit my sister Natasha and stay with her for 1 week and do a road trip around Scotland for another. Throughout this blog I will use "..." and you should think and read "...shame about the weather and the expensive prices".



We really liked Scotland... It was great to see Natasha and also my folks as we all traveled there for a Yates family reunion. All of us hadn't been together for 2.5 years. We arrived with no bags (see previous posting for that little one) and walked out to buy some spare clothes ...

The first night was the Edinburgh Military Tattoo. Dad is almost obsessed with this and each year he watches on Aussie TV so he was stoked to finally be able to attend a live performance. That night was a good night ... It rained all throughout the performance, not hard, but just enough to give your boots a good soaking.

We went during the month of August which is coincidentally the time of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. All five of us took in some shows, some were good, some were not... Our favorite was probably Jimeoin, an Irish-Australian comedian who makes statements about life. One of those guys but real funny. My personal favourite was the last performance we say. Two Irish guys were just standing at the front doing some improv. Their niche was to get information from the audience and then play a clip of a movie. For instance, Natasha yelled out that I was a lingerie salesman so they dimmed the lights and proceeded to do a voiceover for Braveheart, the rousing scene where William Wallace is riding his horse in front of his men, getting their hearts and minds stirred up for lingerie! This was typical of the night.
'
Edinburgh is a fantastic city ... My one grip, apart from the obvious weather and expensive nature, is the food. It is crap. The menu has a few local delicacies on it like Haggis, Nips, and Tatties (Haggis, Turnips and Potatoes) but is very similar to things you would find elsewhere. The price list is almost identical to a US price list. But the pound is twice as much so all food cost us twice the price. I know, I'm whinging now. Our favorite meal was definitely an Indian curry we had up in Nairn. Awesome...


We hired a car and did a road trip around Scotland. We stayed overnight in Stirling and Aberdeen as well as two nights in Nairn, a small town near Inverness. The weather in Stirling was beautiful and the castle was pretty darn cool as well. There are still many holes in the walls and statues from where mortars or bullets have hit during battles and sieges in the past.


Aberdeen was nice... We didn't see the sky whilst we were there and in the morning there was so much low fog that we couldn't see the tops of churches. We ended up at a vodka bar for dinner (because it was offering 2 for 1 drinks and meals!) and we sampled our first vodka salsa on a burger. Two thumbs up from me.


Inverness was also nice ... It didn't rain as much on one of the days so that was a good thing. Nairn, where we stayed was quiant and a nice country town. I watched Scotland and Northern Ireland duke it out in the soccer which was good. Nice to feel the local atmosphere in a pub with locals.



On the way down from Inverness to Stirling, we passed Loch Ness and crossed over the rolling highlands. Some mountains were covered in mist from the low lying clouds but as we drove further south, the weather started to clear up so we then got pockets of clouds only covering half a mountain range or we got the sun streaking through gaps of clouds into a valley. It was quite beautiful.


One of the highlights of the trip was seeing a genuine Scottish Highland COW! Jen was sooo excited when we finally found one. We got pretty darn close to it. It's name was Hamish.

So that's about it for our Scotland experience...