Jenny's wedding: Better late than never!

No, Jenny, that is NOT in reference to the fact that you were engaged so long before you got married.  Sheesh!  Don't be so sensitive!  Good thing Jenny doesn't read this blog or she might be pissed about that.  whew!

The title of this blog is referring to the fact that Jenny Chen got married on July 3rd and I am writing about it here in India about a month late.  Whoopsidasies.  You know how I do.  Actually, I'm usually ridiculously nerdy about getting things done on time/REALLY early.  For some reason blog writing doesn't fit the same pattern.

This story begins about 4 1/2 years ago when Jenny Chen got engaged.  We were all uber excited to find out that Jenny had found true love and were ready to see her get hitched.  Some of us were not prepared for Jenny to "settle down"so soon (*cough cough JUJ).  We all know how much of a player participator Jenny is and if you DON'T know Jenny Chen, see picture below as photo evidence:

Yes, Jenny likesa the twins!  ooooh daaaaaaaaaaaaaaang!

Jenny ain't cheap! 

I was very honored that Jenny chose to have me as a part of her big day.  I was one of her 3 bridesmaids.  The others were Juj and Lexi.

For some reason this is the only pic I have of me with Juj and Lexi.  They're on the left of me.

I found one!  Yeah!

Ok enough background!  On to the story.  The fun started when Juj and I met up in NYC for a bit to buy her shoes.  I guess that wasn't that fun but we also went out for Tex Mex the same day and THAT was where the real fun began.  I miss Tex Mex almost as much as I miss Juj.  :(  Unfortunately, I'm so used to Isaac taking pictures, I didn't even bring a camera to take pictures of this encounter but you can imagine what it was like.

This is NOT us in NY but someone at this club actually had a camera (thanks kath!) so here's a pic of me and Juj.

For Jenny's bachelorette party Lexi graciously offered to let us destroy, I mean stay in, her house. We had a great time eating cake and chatting about things like tea.

mmm cake!

Jenny truly was a "survivor" of her bachelorette party.  I wasn't sure if she would make it all the way through but I got her this Reba McEntire cd which really helped.

 After the party I was in one of my moods to make an ass out of myself so we hit the clubs:

Everyone should stretch if they aren't used to bustin' a move.  You could really pull a muscle.  Here's the proper form.  

Here's me clearing the dance floor with my Hammer Time move.  Oh wait, did I say clearing the dance floor?  I meant here's me GETTING THIS PARTY STAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARTEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEED!

Katie and Rose!  Gorgeous!

Lexi and Rose love to take boob to boob pictures

extreme closeups are awesome.

After the bachelorette party we all managed to recover nicely and Lexi was even able to make my hair look halfway decent.  Here are some more pics of Jenny looking gorgeous on her big day.

We clean up nice......sometimes......

Double wedding?  Yes please!

Hooray for old married people!  

Yay!  I have friends!

And they lived happily ever after..........................

The End

India Loves Me and Texas A&M

I was already pretty sold on India, but something happened today that made our love affair official. Our grocery store bill came out to be 2004 rupees. After getting my 1 rupee change, I realized just how awesome this country is.

Gig 'em Aggies!

For non-Aggies, my class year is 2004 (a big deal in Aggieland); and the thumbs up (aka 'Gig 'em) that you see on that coin is the official hand sign of Texas A&M.

Thank you India, you made my day.

Our Humble Abode

As promised, here is our home.  Lets start with the door.

In English and Sanskrit...very cool.

When we walked in the door, there was a welcome mat for us.  Except, it wasn't a welcome mat at all.  This is actually colored rice that has been placed into a design.  India is a colorful country! We are told that this is often done for parties as well.

"Ooohhh, I wonder if this welcome mat is soft....ahhhhhh"

 It took me about 48 seconds to ruin this beautiful display.  Isaac the destroyer. The top of the picture is more rice floor art.

From the entry way, above, here is the living room.

Looking out towards the front of the apartment.

Looking back towards the rest of the apartment. 

Next to the living room is the kitchen.  I wish it was more open, but this is still a major step up from our kitchen in Thailand.

The best part is we actually have hot water from the faucet!

...and a full size oven.

The dining room.

 The office

The guest bedroom

You could stay here!  Bathroom attached!

Master bedroom or as our friends Mike and Erin like to call it, the boom boom room.

And the master bath.

Pre-equipped with Axe.

Basically, this place is gigantic and much bigger than we probably need. I really like the high 10ft ceilings.  The pictures really don't do it justice, so we might have to post a cribs-style video at some point.  Although, this is probably a little boring, so maybe we wont.

iBeck

India: The first 24 hours

We made it.  16+ hours on a plane, but we are here.  We arrived at our apartment about 9pm and marveled at how big this place it.  (Pictures tomorrow)

Becky, being Becky, started unpacking in the van between the airport and our apartment.  I like to take a little more deliberate approach.  I am finding however, that the deliberateness of a husband is greatly influenced by the will of his spouse.  I am happy to report that as of now, less than 24 hours of being in country, all of my bags are completely unpacked. Thank you Becky!

We tried to get some sleep around midnight, but that only lasted until about 4am when we both realized we were awake.  I told Becky about a nightmare I had...I dreamed that we had three sets of identical twins, one set were girls, and in my dream, I couldn't remember the first three years of their lives.  I felt like Harrison Ford in regarding Henry.  At one point in the dream, I was weeping while Becky told me, "Do you know how many people have been in this situation before us?"  Thanks Dream Becky for the words of encouragement!

After getting that off my chest, I went back to sleep whilst Becky laid restlessly next to me. She got up to workout while I mounted an offensive on my jet-lag.

At 7:45, we got picked up and headed to the school for our first day of 'work'. We started with an awesome breakfast at our Director's house.  The energy in the room was wonderful and we can already tell that the community at AES is going to be fantastic.

After breakfast, we had a few meetings.  One to get laptops and a tech introduction.  Then on to our section meetings.  I went with middle school while Becky headed off with the high school.  It is almost hard to contain our giddiness when we talk to each other about work. It is that good.

After lunch, we walked around the campus for a bit.  The campus has an incredibly natural feel.  The buildings really blend with the landscape.  It is a gorgeous school.

To finish off the day, we went on a shopping tour to Khan Market. Of course, it is monsoon season in Delhi, so the skies opened up as we arrived.  First stop, get an umbrella.  The rain made things considerably more difficult, but we grabbed a few needed items and returned home.

Some initial thoughts:

Delhi has a lot of green space.  We have a park across the street from our apartment and there is a huge park area just down the road from us.

The park view from our balcony.

The holy cows are definitely out and about.  I went onto our balcony to take a picture of the park across the street when I saw this guy.

Our school is awesome.  Our fridge was stocked with brownies, lasagna and beer (among other things).

Very nice to walk into the apartment and find some food.

That is all for now.  We will post some apartment pictures tomorrow and hopefully share a few funny stories and less boring blog summaries.

Love,

iBeck

The Texas Friends Shout-out Blog

Texas, our Texas, all hail the mighty state.

Texas, our Texas, so wonderful so great.

We leave for India tomorrow, but I wanted to get one final blog in before we leave the good 'ol US of A.

The last two and a half weeks were spent in the great state of Texas.  The 2011 Tour de Texas took us to Austin and Houston.  Our schedule was full of family and friends.

I started the Texas Summer off right by heading over to Sauced Wings to meet with college roomies Adam and Phillip, and (non-roommate but friend and new dad) Jordan.

Adam is the owner of Sauced.  If you live in Plano and haven't made it there, you are really missing out.  Easily the best wings in DFW.  My second favorite part of eating there is the roommate discount (favorite part is the boneless wings).  Phillip made a seven hour round trip just to see us, and Jordan left his uber-pregnant wife for a few minutes.  She gave birth to a Larkin Brazeal a few days later.  I would post a picture, but all babies look the same to me...is that racist?

Becky arrived a few days after me (from a wedding in Michigan).  For the second year, we stayed in the Chateau de Adam y Kimber.  (If you are counting, that is second and third different language word used in this blog...uber, chateau and y).

Becky and Kimber.

No trip to Texas would be complete without taking in some American League champion Texas Rangers baseball.  Thanks to Justin Strickland for the use of his season tickets. If you are a blog follower, you might have noticed that we used Justin's Yankee season tickets as well.  Conflict of interests...absolutely.

My brother Joel is living in College Station while going to school, but he made the drive to DFW to see us.

 Becky celebrated her first ever 'over 100' game!  I celebrated victory with three games in the 140's.  Mostly, we had a great time with Joel and my mom.


     

No time for rest when you are only in the state for two weeks.  We met our friends Tim and Mary Katherine for a delicious home cooked meal and then the next day at Lone Star Park for the last day of live horse racing.

Heck yeah that is a cowboy hat.  This comment was only for non-Texans.

Don Juan's, local Grand Prairie cuisine.

We left right after the races for Austin.  We stayed with our friend Ben and met another friend Kristin downtown to watch her boyfriends band play.

We planned to float the Comal River the next day, but as soon as we got out of the car and sun-screened up, it started to rain.  We made do though and headed to the world famous Salt Lick barbeque restaurant.

Here is Josh (drummer), Kristin, Colin (lead guitar and boyfriend), Me, Becky, and Ben.  Dressed for the river.

Mmmmmm - open pit.

That night, we saw our friends Mike and Erin, who helped me to get involved with overseas teaching.  Sadly, no picture.

After playing disc golf with semi-pro Ben in the morning, we made our way towards Houston to meet up with my Uncle Larry, Aunt Belinda, Cousin Jonathan and his wife Theresa.

We hung out in Houston the next day where we met our friend Aubre for lunch at Pappasito's for some Tex-Mex.

Texas is a big state.  I don't really know much about Houston, so we made our way to the only place I know: the water wall.

Thanks P90x.  This is easily the most 'air' Becky has ever gotten!  The top left picture is here because she loves the way her hair is blowin' in the wind.

We had dinner with some more college friends.  What should we eat?  How bout some more Tex-Mex. Although it is impossible to get a years worth or Tex-Mex and BBQ in a two-week period, it didn't stop us from trying.

Me, Becky, Phil, William, and Lauren.  Lauren is a master toddler interpreter!

My brother Matt and his wife, the other Rebecca Currey, just moved to Arizona (presumably because they love the forward thinking immigration reform policy - read sarcasm).  He is a golf teaching pro and is heading up a center near Phoenix.  They were awesome enough to make a weekend trip to Dallas to hang out.

Me, Becky, Rebecca, Matt, Adam, Mom, Skye (Adam's son/Nephew), and Dad

One of the best parts of the summer was getting to see my bro Adam, his wife Tiffany and their awesome kid, Skye.

Becky and I really got into US Womens soccer this summer with the World Cup, so we made sure to head to a sports bar down.  I took the picture so I could post us celebrating...and then moments later Japan tied things up.  I may have jinxed us. Sorry.

After the devastating penalty kick loss, we headed over to a high school friends house for a mini reunion.  I had my 10 year reunion earlier this year but didn't go since I was in Asia and they selfishly didn't hold it there.

Marcos, Anamaria (and their kids), Becky, Me, Rachel and her husband Craig, Jeff and Blake.  It had been years since seeing these crazy kids.

Our time in Texas was drawing to a close, but we still had people to see.  Our friend Katy drove out to meet us for lunch.

 Melanie White also was awesome enough to drive out to have some lunch.

And we had just a couple of days of overlap on time we were in Texas and our friends the Martinez' were in the State.  They were cool enough to join us about the same time that Melanie needed to leave from lunch. I worked with Todd and Jill at GSIS in Korea.  Todd and I were neighbors and collaborated to keep order on the 4th floor.

Becky, Me, Jill, Helena, Ian and Todd.  Good to see that Todd is teaching Ian how to pose for photos.

We also got to meet up with our friends Jeff and Melissa who got married last year.  Naturally, we went out for BBQ at Hard Eight.  We had a good time hanging out. Becky and Melissa had a booty contest.  No winner was decided, so leave your choice for winner in the comments section please.

                

 

Once again, don't forget to choose a winner in the comments section.

We made ourselves at home.  Thanks Mel and Jeff.

 Our last night was spent with family.  My mom, dad, brother Adam and nephew Skye met us at El Ranchito for one last Tex-Mex experience.  This is the same restaurant where we had our rehearsal dinner two years ago.

That's it from summer.  We leave tomorrow afternoon.  We are on the Wisconsin/Minnesota border near Minneapolis for Becky's cousin Mandy's wedding.  So party hard tonight and get in the car at 4am in order to make our long flight to New Delhi.

Thanks to all our friends and family for making Summer 2011 a great one.  We hope that many of you will want to come and visit us in India soon.

Love,

iBeck