Adventures with Skyler and Rinah

After reading Joaquin's blog

2008-08-11T08:32:00.000-07:00

Whoa! Talk about near life experience.
My job is sooo much more dull.

I've made promisses to put up pictures for weeks and weeks now. Sorry for being a jerk.
I have some from cowichan lake that are up on facebook, but I'll post them here too, if I can remember to do so.
Grandma Dodo arrives today.. Can't wait!!

Spring Time for Rinah

2008-06-04T09:01:00.000-07:00

Hello friends and family

Why not catch up and do some sharing -

I've been back to work sometime now, back into the ol' groove of early mornings and long days. It's good though, makes me feel important.
Sky has been loving working outside this season with his brother. I wish he would put on more sun screen. I never cease to nag ~
We moved into our new apartment this week. We are soooo happy in James Bay. Quiet street, Dallas road, lots of space, all our old junk. We're still unpacking.. a process that we're not too keen on.
Nod is working a few jobs now and looking to take on more.. I guess the service industry agrees with her.
I've been doing some catalog shopping that seems to agree with me.

We're looking forward to the big GK visit this month and the couple of days that we'll see Jesse and Yavone.

Keep up the communication folks. I'll have a new phone number on Thursday, and I guess I should post my new address too...

xoxox

Rinah

New Plan

2008-04-14T09:25:00.000-07:00

So.. I woke up on Sat morning and decided that I'd like to work and live in another country. Sky and I have both been considering this for the last few years. Given that our last few trips have no exactly been short I think it's safe to say that we've been preparing ourselves for something like this for awhile.
Now, where are we going?
I've tentatively picked the date of 2010. Now this is based on the fact that we did just get home and that we have no idea where we want to go or what we want to do.
I've just had a quick look at this page http://www.voyage.gc.ca/main/pubs/working_abroad-en.asp and a good read threw http://www.destineducation.ca/pdfs/witwigo_e.pdf and once we decide where we want to go we should have lots of time for the red tape and eliminating the majority of our belongings, visas etc.
I'd like to work in an office, bookkeeping would be nice, and I think Sky would be fine with pretty much anything. He'd be happy with a construction or labour job.
Soooo.. if anyone has any suggestions.. or if you know a country or a town that is nice and would recommend living there that'd be great.
Right now I'm thinking strictly english speaking nations. England or Australia... but any suggestions are good ones. Once we pick our destination we can start looking for a neighborhood and a job.
So thats that.
Hope to hear from you soon
Rinah

I'm a Liar

2008-03-31T13:17:00.001-07:00

Sorry guys. No pictures, no news.
The weather has been shit these last few weeks. Snow everyday, then sun, then more snow.
Not the best weather for camping. We're still gonna go, just not yet. Hopefully we'll hit some golf islands or head up tward tofino and ucluelet.
It will be all the better when it's sunny and warm.
Dad left today for California. We will watch the house for April and find our own appartment for May.

I won't make anymore promises.. ha ha

Rinah ~

Hello

2008-03-19T22:33:00.000-07:00

check out this link...

We're going away for the long weekend.. I'll put up some pictures when we get home.

Love ya.

Rinah and|Sky

Get Back to Work !!!

2008-02-19T15:43:00.000-08:00

Yeah.. I'm back to work. Sort of.
I'm writing this from my new office !!! I'm assistent to the controller. I've been working at the same company for a long time now.. I guess persistence pays off.
That is until they catch you updating your blog at work. Ha ha.

The latest is...... we had a nice valentines day. Nothing too crazy cuz it was a work day, but alittle noodle box with a nice view is ok with me.

The spring weather is here and we've been doing a bit of hiking. Well.. this last weekend anyway. The sky is so clear and blue, but there is still a bit of chill in the air. It is perfect for hiking. Nadia on the other hand has ordered "turbo jam" and swears it's better then going hiking outside. I haven't tried it yet but the woman on the tape is completly insaine.
I guess I should register for school again. I've been out so long that I need to register again. Kind of a bummer.
Ooh! I go get contacts today after work. My very first pair. I hope they work out ok... my perscription is alot stronger now.
Nadia called me "Mr Rushton" becuase of the thickness of my glasses. Nothing hurts more then words.
Sky is going to be working with his bro outside this season, building decks. I wish I was outside.
I'll be off work in 10 min. Can't wait for dallas road.. We will probably make it for sunset, if I get those contacts quickly.

Love and Hugs
Keep in touch
Rinah.

Back by popular demand

2008-01-05T22:47:00.001-08:00

Hello family and loved ones.

Yes.. it is 2008! It has been an unexpected couple of days. My mother has been in central america, my sister at mt. washington and skyler is making the trip up north to visit family.

Yes I was left home, but its for the best.

I wanted to fill in some of the blanks from our photo's online.

These are from the last days on the kibbutz and our stay in Jerusalem.

The gang

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday.

Keep in touch.

Rinah and Skyler.

Happy Holidays

2007-12-18T22:43:00.000-08:00

Hello Ya'll
Hope you all have a great holiday and that you're with people you love. Sky and I are enjoying some down time in Victoria.
We are going to be up in northern BC in Sky's hometown Kitimat after the holidays visiting his Pa and Grandparents. Then when we get back we will take a drive down to california to visit grandma and Sam's new baby. Hopefully we will have a chance to see Uncle Mikes new house aswel.
It is great to see our parents and we both love victoria... even if it's wet and horrible this time of year.

xoxox
Rinah and Sky

The home coming

2007-11-30T00:55:00.000-08:00

Well, unfortunately we were unable to keep up our blog while on the kibbutz. The internet connection was complete garbage and would cut out all the time,right as we were about to post something. We will be home on December 5 like originally planned. We were going to extend our tickets till the 17th but it turns out that would have costed $5000.00 each, or just get new tickets for $1500.00. We figured it wasnt worth it for a couple weeks extra.
Nadia has her tickets home for December 9 at 3am out of Jordan. She is going down to see Egypt and Jordan with a few of our swedish friends that we have been living with for a few months.
Time went by waaaay too fast at the end of the trip. It was a sad departure from the kibbutz. We have plans to meet up with some of the people we met there in the next year in a place called Eos, Greece. One of the guys sisters runs a resteraunt and a tattoo parlor and we have been offered jobs! Who knows what the future holds though, we can only hope we get to meet up with them again.

See you all soon, sorry for not updating the blog.
Love Rinah, Sky, Nadia

Nod is here !!!

2007-10-19T08:19:00.001-07:00

soon as Nadia got here we went off on a trip to the Dead Sea.. It was so cool to float in that salt water and cover ourselves in the healing mud.
We climbed masada for sun rise.. It was soo beautiful from the top.. but a heck of a climb to get up there. Our guide brought us to the West Bank and we saw Jericho and the Monastry of St. George and we had lunch in Bethanie.
We saw the Dead Sea scrolls and the holocost memorial.
The Nod is working hard in the sprinkler factory... and we´re having a good time on the Kibbutz making friends and having parties.
Hope all is well and that you´re not missing us too much..
Take care.. write to us.

Love Rinah.. Skyler.. and Nadia

So as

NEWS

2007-10-05T10:53:00.000-07:00

Nadia will be here next week to volunteer on the kibbutz and travel around Israel, Cyprus and Turkey.

Stay tuned for more..

The Kibbutz, a short summary

2007-09-22T02:19:00.000-07:00

Well, its been a while since we sent a blog, so here is a little update! A couple pictures of the little kitchen we cook in. We often get together and make pizzas or some other kind of pastry. We had an 80´s night at the volunteers pub the other night which was lots of fun. We all looked a bit crazy as you can see. We are having lots of fun, working hard, and meeting a ton of great people from every area of the world. We have a french friend here name Mathew who has a lap top with internet, so we will be able to post a few more pictures of the actual kibbutz, where we are working, and the orchards soon. Just need to get out and take some pictures.

We are off to pick some nectarines, peaches, apples, and grapes from the orchards! (unlimited supply for us until the season is over)
Love you all lots, and sorry its been so long for a post.
Skyler and Rinah

From the Kibbutz!

2007-08-24T13:16:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone. We are sorry if anyone got a bit worried about no contact for the last little while. The Kibbutz is wonderful but internet access can be a bit troublesome to get to. We are working every day but saturday, from either 6 am or 7am till about 3. Its been really great fun so far, we get to have a fire every night if we want to. Lots of great food, we have a volunteers pub if we want to have a drink or two. Everyone here drinks vodka like a fish. Havent quite gotten drunk yet but i'm sure it will happen soon. People here have been great, the work is fun.
We have been doing all kinds of different jobs, from washing giant pots, to loading containers with giant pipes, to cutting vegetables. We each get a night of the week to cook for everyone. Rinahs first night was a bit hectic, but we made it work. Lots of spaghetti ect. We have a TV and DVD player which is pretty nice too... Lots of movies to watch. The kibbutz has about 450 people on it. Most of which we will probably never get to know. So many volunteers over the years makes the locals not really care to meet you.
Fridays are cake days! All kinds of cakes, cookies, goodies. Lots of really fun things going on. Ages so far range from 19 to 31 at our spot we stay. There are 15 volunteers on this kibbutz so it is very tight nit. Other kibbutz we had a choice to join had up to 50 which wouldnt be so personnal. There are a couple Irish guys, couple Germans, Argentina, Italians, English, Dutch, Columbians, Swedish, all kinds.
We will be able to get to the internet at least once a week or so hopefully, so we will keep in touch. We will put a phone number up next time we get a chance, so if anyone actually wants to talk to us you can phone the number at any time and someone will come to get us. Time zone is still the same, we are 10 hours ahead of everyone in the pacific time zone, 7 for eastern. The kibbutz is called Yiftach. We are in the north, lots of trees and green! We are so sick of the desert that this is quite heavenly. We get 3 days off per month to have a long weekend, so we are planning a trip down to Jerusalem soon with some friends.
We went on our first kibbutz trip down the Jordon river. We used 2 person kayaks, 2 hours or so down the river. It was amazing. We will try to get pictures of our miniature volunteer town soon.
Hope everyone is well back home, we love you lots and will hopefully talk to you soon when we put that phone number up! We cant make out going calls so incoming is all we can do.

Luxor, Dahab and Jordan (Petra)

2007-08-12T05:13:00.000-07:00

Greetings friends and family.
We are very tired from all the mountains we have been climbing these days. Among them have been Mt. Sinai (the burning bush) and many mountains here in Petra. We got to the top of the sacrificial mountain and the monastary mountain as well as a secret mountain where we had a birds eye view of the tresury building where you see Sky and I in front of it. Petra has been amazing. It is indeed one of the most beautiful and amazing things we have seen in our young lives (with the exception of ourselves of course, haha!).
We are heading to Israel in the next few days. We are all signed up for the Kibbutz for when we arrive. It should be a nice way to wrap up the duration of our trip.
We hope everyone is well back home.
Lots of Love
Rinah and Skyler.

Update soon!

2007-08-09T00:05:00.000-07:00

Well for everyone still interested in our trip we will be putting an update soon with some more pictures of what we have been up to. We will refrain from posting so many pictures of temples ect. and start putting up pictures of everyday life and what we actually do during the day we we are not site seeing. Tonight we get to take a camel ride for sunset. It will be pretty amazing I am sure riding a camel on the beach for sunset. We are still in Dahab in the Sinai Pennisula. We have been snorkling and seeing some AMAZING fish and the coral has been alright too. We have met quite a few more friends along the way and plan to travel with a couple of them over to Jordon when we eventually get our stuff together and go. We are very excited to get to Israel and start the Kibbutz. We are slowly approaching the midway mark of our trip, and thats when it starts to fly by so we are trying to take our time with everything now.

Pictures soon.
Lots of love from Skyler and Rinah.

Update of the trip!

2007-07-28T09:10:00.000-07:00

So at first Egypt was quite hellish! Cairo wasnt so much fun because of all the people and the other reasons we had listed. Getting down to Aswan was the perfect change. The train ride down was very nice with some excellent air conditioning. It was 23degrees inside the train, and turned out to be 45 Degrees in Aswan when we got out. The biggest difference was having air conditioning in our room. When you have somewhere that is 10x cooler as an escape it makes things much, much better. We woke up at 3am and had a hugh trip that started. We had breakfast packed up and some crackers and stuff from the night before. We got to see Abu Simbel which was a 3 hour drive from our hotel. We drove straight through the desert towards the Sadan border. There is 1 trip a day that goes so there were about 20 buses/mini buses that all had an escort from the police down to the sites. Terrorist attacks from some years ago made the security measures go up ten fold here. Police are everywhere with their AK-47's dangling from their necks. More guns in a stretch of 20 feet then i'm sure we have in all of Canada put together. We continued to an Island called Philae which has the Temple of Isis and was one of our favorites of the trip so far. The next day we started our Felucca ride up towards Luxor. We expected the heat to get very high again , but also though the nile would keep us cool. Between the hours of 1-4 pm the heat was extremely taxing. The sun rises, the food the captain cooked, and the sun sets were incredible. We paid $20.00 Canadian for 2.5 days of relaxing and sleeping on the boat. We stopped on certain islands and slept for the night, and got to explore a little. The Nile's water was quite cool and refreshing, and was cleaner then the majority of water we had seen (though we would never , ever , drink it). We saw some more temples once we got off the felucca ride. One is the Temple of Edfu which is dedicated to the old god Horus. It was preserved extremely well.

In Luxor we are staying in a hotel called Nefertiti. It seems ok so far, pool table up stairs, internet access. We will be starting some site seeing tomorrow, Luxor musuem, Valley of the Kings, and many tombs. We will be happy to stop with the moving around so much. After Luxor we will head to Dahab and see if we can find a comfortable spot for a week or so, then off to Jordon to see Petra. We are both very excited to see Petra as it is supposed to be one of the best spots in the middle east, site wise.

We will update again soon!

Love Skyler and Rinah

Egypt, Cairo. The good, the bad, the ugly.

2007-07-18T08:08:00.000-07:00

Where to begin...
First impressions of Cairo are that it is dirty, stinky, crowded, hot, and terrible to visit. That is basically all true!! From 40 Degree + days to getting lost in the madness that is Cairo, to more stares then anywhere else in the world, to foul smells and tastes in the air that you never thought could exist, to accidents on every corner of the city guarenteed, to more mosquitos than ANYWHERE else in the world, to having between 12 000 000 people in the early morning to having up to 21 000 000 in the afternoon. Indeed we look at the bright side! We dont live here and wont have to deal with it for all that long. We get to see all the best Cairo has to offer over the week and never have to see it again if we choose. We will be heading down towards a city called Aswan soon once we visit a few more sites, see spot called Abu Simbel which is supposed to be quite amazing. From Aswan we will take a 2 day felucca ride (boat on the nile river) up to a small place called Edfu. From Edfu we will make our way up to Luxor which is where the Valley of the Kings, among thousands of other places we will see. Luxor will be amazing but possibly worse conditions then Cairo, rocketing up to 45 Degrees. After that bit of the trip is done we will get to try and find our paradice in Egypt in a small beach town called Dahab. It looks very promising. Above is just a taste of what we got to do today. Incredible that we actually got to see these immense and amazing ancient structures.

We will keep in touch and try to post more photos. We will probably have waaaay to many to post them all but we will do what we can!

Lots of Love from Skyler and Rinah

Cairo

2007-07-16T09:53:00.000-07:00

We made it here safley and we are staying right downtown in the mess of it all. Thankfully we have the best guesthouse in the world. The staff have really helped us out to figure out Egypt.
I will post more when we go to a cafe in the next few days.
But so far... It is very hot.. and there is alot of sand.
Hopefully we can get some photos up soon..
Love
Rinah and Skyler

Black Sea

2007-07-06T07:59:00.000-07:00

Here are some photos of what we've been enjoying latley.
The first few are where we've been swimming near this castle at Sinop.
The next few are at the rock castle in Unye and the last few are from Sinop (the election flags and dinner)
I hope everyone is enjoying the summer, I hear the weather has been nice.

P.S. We like to see comments and get emails.. heh.. We check both regularly.

XOXO
Skyler and Rinah

Sumela Monastary

2007-06-27T08:19:00.000-07:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Trabzon_4.jpg

Well here is a bit of what we have done in the farther east of Turkey. Sumela Monastary is waaaay up in the Mountains of Trabzon valley. The majority of the visitors here are actually Turkish. It was a walk basically straight up hill for a couple kılometers to get to the actual monastary. There was a lot of Skyler pulling Rinah up to the top!! The view from there was almost as amazing as the monastary itself. There is quite a long story to the monastary, but its definatly got some info online. Would type more about it if we had some time! Take some time and read a bit from google ect if you are able.

Love Rinah and Sky

Trabzon

2007-06-26T06:39:00.000-07:00

Ok, so to bring you all up to speed.

We landed in Istanbul, made friends and smoked hookah, saw some amazing things.
We took a bus to Sulçuk and made some friends and saw some amazing things.
We took a bus to Cappadocia with a friend and saw some amazing things.

Now we have arrived in Trabzon. There was a bit of debate about whether to come here or not becuase it was a 15hr bus ride and no one we knew had been or was going to go here. And alas there are no Caucasian to speak of. We were unable to make arrangements for a hotel online and no one here speaks english.
But we did it. Its a pretty big culture shock over here compared to the west coast. Our main reason for heading over this way is to see the Sumela Monastery.. you can see why from this link. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SumelaWe will take a bus up to see it this afternoon. There is alot of hiking and the weather is much much cooler here.... it is an extremely crowded city so we will probably not stay too long.
There are rumors of a boat that goes from Trabzon to Istanbul. It is a two day trip that will cost $20.00 each for a private sleeper. I'm hoping this will be our method of travel back before we take a plane to Tel Aviv.
Güle Güle (good bye)

Rinah and Skyler

Cappadoçia

2007-06-24T10:16:00.000-07:00

Here are some pics of Cappadoçıa and other caves ın the area. We went to an underground city here wıth about 8 floors. Very, VERY cool place. One of our amerıcan frıends came down to hang out wıth us. Some kıds on donkeys... otherwise us havıng fun!

Ephesus

2007-06-24T09:51:00.000-07:00

Here are some pıctures of Ephesus and some other stuff we dıd whıle ın the town of Selçuk. Skydiving, Museum, many ruins. Lots and LOTS of hıstory here. Plenty to read about

Cistern, Mary House, Ruins(Prıene, Mıleto)

2007-06-15T00:35:00.000-07:00

Friends and Entertainment

2007-06-15T00:19:00.000-07:00

Hagıa and Chora

2007-06-15T00:05:00.000-07:00

Blue Mosque ( Bıg Blue )

2007-06-14T23:49:00.000-07:00

Sulçuk

2007-06-14T04:04:00.000-07:00

So typing on a turkish keyboard is very difficult, please bear with me.

Sulçuk is a small town 10 hrs from Istanbul, not far from the Agean Sea. We are stayıng ın a budget hotel ın the mıddle of town. The people here are takıng really good care of us. Our fırst day here we met, yet another amerıcan who'd been travelıng wıth an austraılıan. We all rented a car and went around to see local ruıns ( Pıera, Mıleto) and a small wıne town ( Söke). We went to Pamukac beach and swam ın the Aegean Sea and then drove to another beach ın tıme to catch the sunset. We baught some wıne ın Söke and drank ıt on the terrace of our hotel wıth our fellow travellers.
Thıs mornıng we had a few hours before the car had to be returned so we drove up a mountaın to the 'House of the Vırgın Mary'. It ıs belıeved to be the fınal restıng place of Mary the mother of Jesus. We were lucky we beat all the tour buses as thıs ıs a major sıte of pılgrımage for many chrıstıans. The house was very modest, but we all agreed we felt somthıng specıal whıle enterıng ıt and enjoyed a few mınutes of quıte befor the crowds swept ın. We fılled up our water bottle wıth water from the healıng sprıng and all had a drınk.
We wıll be stayıng ın sulçuk to enjoy the peace and quıte for a few more days and then we wıll head farther down the coast to Cache on the Medıterranean.

We hope everyone ıs well.

Thanks for the comments from everyone
Rınah and Skyler

Oiy

2007-06-10T00:08:00.000-07:00

Everything is going great over here now. We met a couple really good americans named Dave and Lissa. I'd post some pictures but cant quite do it at this computer. We found a good cheap hostel to stay at for a few more nights in Istanbul, then we are going to buy our bus tickets down to Euphesus. When we get there, there are some nice beaches, and we get to stay in some treehouse hostels. There are a whole ton of ancient roman ruins there also.
So far we have seen some amazing mosques. The Hagea Sophia is on our list today, we are excited. We have some many pictures to add on here which we will try to do asap. We saw an underground chamber called the "Cistern Basilisca" which has been so far the most amazing. It has a lot to do with the Medusa legends.
Yesterday we travelled over to the asian side of Istanbul, super cheap, and super crowded with locals. We got lost in a massive market, which was pretty fun. There are a LOT of very short people. Even being 5"11 ish I feel like a giant.

Pictures will follow as soon as we can get them up!

Turkey ?

2007-06-07T00:17:00.000-07:00

We're here.. the trip was longer then we could have ever imagined.

We're really tired and dazed.. and paying way too much for this hostel..
We're going to sleep and then explore and see if we can find somthing better...
Istanbul is crazy and amazing

Love and hugs

Rinah and Skyler

An exciting discovery!

2007-06-05T10:20:00.000-07:00

So, it turns out we leave at 6:55pm from the Vancouver airport instead of 6:00pm! Not a big difference, but saves us an hour of waiting at the airport.

On a lighter note, if you ever travel with the very lovely Rinah, make sure to check your possible carry on baggage TWICE!!!!

Looking through our little yellow bag I found this! All it really is, is a skateboard ball bering holder. Would have been quite the scene if we found out that was in there during the security check, eh? We all had a laugh, and disposed of it, dumped out the bags, and packed them back up!

7-8 hour wait in Amsterdam means we have time to head into the city since it only takes 20 minutes, have some dinner, relax a bit, then take the final flight to Istanbul. Total flight time is only around 12-13 hours compared to the 20+ hour flight we had over to Thailand so it should be a breeze.

Kitimat trip

2007-06-02T21:00:00.000-07:00

Picture 4: Skyler and his Dad burning an old well that is rotting. Picture 5: Skylers step mom Karen, Skylers Dad , Josh (sky's bro), Justyne (Josh's Girlfriend), Step brothers and sisters Jeff, Stephanie, and Stacey on the right. Picture 6: Mount Elizabeth as seen from Kitimat, the whole town is surrounded by mountains like this. Picture 7: Yams and Steaks that we cooked down at the river, made a fire, set up a tarp to stay out of the rain.

Final Day in Victoria

2007-05-16T08:37:00.000-07:00

Last day in Victoria. Saying we wont miss people at work would be a horrible lie, we made some really good friends there over the last couple years. The ones who keep in touch we'll see again most definatly. Would be nice to convince a couple of them to take a few weeks and fly over for a visit during the trip, but that damned thing we call money always gets in the way.

Not looking forward to the drive from the Vancouver side of the ferries to where ever my moms place is there. Takes a little getting use to driving a big truck in the city... Though once we're out of Vancouver and on our way to Prince George its going to be amazing like always. Its an awesome drive up there. If you havent done it, do it once at least some time in your life, the true beauty of BC during parts of the trip.

After a week in Prince George on my "Oma and Opa's" camp site we'll be driving up to Kitimat to visit a bit more of the family and hopefully do a bunch of fishing out in my dads boat, and on the river.

Then its off to Vancouver again, flying out on June 5.

Rinah's Celebrity Look alikes

2007-05-08T18:21:00.000-07:00

Sturdee Livin'

2007-04-30T17:31:00.000-07:00

Hello loyal blog enthusiasts,

I wanted to post a quick update so that you don't get discouraged and stop reading our page.

We're staying at my Dad's place until we leave Victoria, the number is 381-6464. Please call and say good bye.. Or hello.. ha ha
Skyler and I are finally ready to start thinking about the trip. Moving is over and we can just relax, work these last few weeks, then hit the road.
The road is a little confusing right now because our plans keep changing but that's half the fun. I'm not sure what the other half is.
Anyway. I have no photos to share because we've been to busy.
If you have some old photo's of sky and myself, take sometime and look at them.
Remember the good times?
CALL BEFORE WE LEAVE !!!

THE 411

2007-04-11T16:34:00.000-07:00

Hey Ya'll (thats how people talk in cook st vill)

We're packing.. we're planning. .. we're soo sooo close

We leave Canada on June 5th !! mark your calendars. We will be in Vancouver, Prince George and Kitimat from May 17th - June 2 and then in Vancouver until we leave.

We're getting all our Kibbutz plans figured out. I'll be in touch with the Jewish community here in Vic to make sure we get set up with the right one. We are both really excited about that part of out trip. Skyler especially, he wants to do some hard work in a field.

Finals are next week, we haven't started packing.. everyone wants to go out one last time before we go... $$$$

Anyway. I hope everyone calls us before we leave. I'll probably post a few more times while we're in Canada.

Its confirmed

2007-03-31T11:32:00.000-07:00

Step 1 is complete! We baught our tickets. We'll be away from June 5, till December 5. We gave our notice at our apartment, and now all that is left is to pack it up and get ready for the date. We'll be staying with Rinahs dad for 2 weeks which gives us a big chance to save a bunch of money on our last months rent.

Rinah and Nadia went to a ballet last night called "Dracula". They dressed up all pretty and say it was quite an amazing show. Afterwards I was forced to take them to Dairy Queen.

More from Rinah

2007-03-21T20:48:00.000-07:00

Hello again,

For all you Skyler fans, hang in there, he will be posting. I promise. Especially when we take this show on the road.

Still no tickets. Well, we've been busy. I don't think we've had a proper weekend to ourselves in ages. And during the week, forget about it.

As for news. Karina came to visit last weekend and she rented a hotel room at the swans hotel for my belated birthday. What a friend eh? It was a hell of a night and we got to do some serious overdue catching up. The hotel was beautiful.

Here's a picture

Not my most glamorous moment but it does describe what exactly happened that night.

I hope everyone is doing great.

By the by, I rocked my finance midterm.

YEAH!!!

Tickets

2007-03-04T08:52:00.000-08:00

We've got it all figured out!!!!

Well, most of it anyway. We will be leaving for Istanbul on June 1st, and coming home on Nov 1st. Or somthing close to that anyway. We will buy our tickets this week as long as nothing else comes up.

Now the reality sets in... that is six months, do we really have the money? Do we really have the time? who cares... hahaha... Money and time are renewable resources.... we can deal with that when we get back.

I'm alittle upset I won't have money or time to see my Dad's side before we leave. I really wanted to go to Florida while Joaquin was visiting in May. But I guess it will have to wait until next time.

Fondu party last week. The nod and her boyfriend showed up and a few friends from work. Sky and I are "wine-o's" now.... it's are new life and I'm looking forward to it.

He's a picture before things turned ugly. .. Oh this is our Appartment too, incase you haven't see it. We'll be giving our notice at the end of April and moving everything into storage in May.

Hope everyone is happy and healthy.

Hugs and Kisses

Rinah

Rinah's two cents

2007-02-24T08:59:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone and welcome,

Why not use this blog and save your computers the hassle of trying to view emails and the guilt of deleting our wonderful stories. Well now you can read them again and again, forever and ever.

We are still in discussion regarding our departure date for the next trip. I will be finished my semester at the end of April and then we will be in Prince George for Skyler's cousin's (Chelsey) wedding. We will probably be leaving the beginning of June out of Vancouver. I would love to be home by the end of August, but it's hard to decide. If I can enrol in September semester that would be wonderful, but who knows how much I'll want to stay in Turkey. We will buy our tickets in the next few weeks. Between finals, moving and packing, weddings, birthdays, organizing the trip, accommodations, passports and visas, we're really busy just trying to coordinate everything. It sure does get more complicated as you get older. I still haven't told my boss that I'm leaving. We'll see if I can keep it a secret until May. I'm so excited.

We have added Egypt to the list of places we might go. It all depends on how long we take to get around and how far our $$ takes us.

Hugs and kisses.

Check this site out for more news about our trip.