Good morning! We arrived yesterday in LA and found our way to Santa Monica. The weather is warm and sunny! A great stepping stone into the heat of Fiji. We leave tonight on a 12 hr flight and will wake up submerged deep within the islands of the South Pacific! We should point out to you that you may be seeing a lot of pictures of a previously 'stuffed' animal Mr. Blue Frog. This is a special mascot for Nancy's grade 5/6 class. He will be traveling with us and will be sending numerous reports and postcards to her students. [View Full Entry]

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By Melisse. After Dave and I paid a surprise visit to our dear friend and African drum and dance teacher, Victoria, she arranged a reunion of our little group we drummed with for five years. We called ourselves "CaCaCaliente", meaning, either we were "hot shit" or we had a bit of a stutter. Dave and I fondly kept a photo of our beloved group on our photo bench in the dining room since we left California. Any way, with short notice, Victoria invited every one over and, thankfully, all managed to come. Having not drummed in the ten years since we [View Full Entry]

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Wishing one and all a Happy Christmas—Joyeux Noel-- and health and happiness in the New Year ! As I write, Christmas carols are playing on KDFC, the Bay Area’s local classical radio station. I look out the window of my apartment and see the lights of San Francisco Bay and the Golden Gate and Bay bridges in the distance, and in the foreground, Christmas lights on the houses in my tree-lined street. It’s gotten a bit colder, and the skies have been grey for the last week. Nevertheless, I’m still able to go swimming in the outdoor pool on campus and [View Full Entry]

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Couchsurfing. I totally never heard of that concept until just this year when a friend I met through one of my stays in the Chicago Hostels had told me about it. He's from Europe and was going to rent a car and drive down through the USA and couchsurf. It made me curious and I had recently joined the website: www.couchsurfing.org I haven't hosted or surfed yet, but I think it's a brilliant idea. Sure, it may be a very risky commitment to a lot of people especially the Americans who are very closed minded compared to such countries like Canada [View Full Entry]

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Hi There, Well, I´ve been here about 2 months & have learned lots of Spanish but make TONS of mistakes everytime I open my mouth and have a very hard time understanding locals, kids, well basically a lot of people that don´t speak as clearly as my teachers and as slowly as other students. To help solve this problem I have been listening to talk radio in Spanish and trying to watch Spanish movies when I get the chance. Willie will be here in just a few days. He will spend 15 glorious days with me. We will begin our adventure [View Full Entry]

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After another few hectic days, we desperately needed a sleep-in. It turns out that LA had a large storm move through, so it had rained most of the night and was still raining all morning. So it was a good morning to take it easy. Once the rain eased late morning, we headed down to Santa Monica. We checked out the huge pier (the official end of Route 66), before walking along the beach toward Venice Beach. We encountered some weird and wacky stuff along this walk - the only shops open were tattoo parlours and pipe shops (not your musical [View Full Entry]

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In transit on our way back from Brisbane sitting at LAX. Adrienne's graduation went smoothly yesterday and she will be home for Christmas. [View Full Entry]

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We are spending Christmas this year in LA at Russ' house. We hope to fly standby on Sunday 12/20. If you didn't know, Dave is a Pilot with Continental Airlines and we get FREE flying. Free flying sound great, but there has to be empty seats and we get in line with the other employees and their families. My place in line is based on Dave's seniority date. It is very hard to use standby for the holidays, but we are taking our chances and we don't mind getting stuck in warm and mostly sunny LA. It might take us 2 [View Full Entry]

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We are preparing to depart on an 86 day trip that will take us from Los Angeles to Ft Lauderdale aboard an old friend, The Regent Mariner. We lay over for five days in South Florida and then reboard the Mariner for the circumnavigation of South America. If you would like to view our detailed itinerary it is available on the Regent website. For the December 20 - January 5 trip from Los Angeles through the Panama canal it is http://www.rssc.com/cruises/MAR091220/Itinerary.aspx. For the 65 days around South America, the site is: http://www.rssc.com/cruises/MAR100110B/Itinerary.aspx. [View Full Entry]

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We spent Thursday night at Dos Reis County Park in San Joaquin County, CA. Ok, I didn’t get to see the Civil War on television, but I look forward to seeing the Ducks play in the Rose Bowl. Since there are no longer any college or pro football teams worth watching in Washington State, we must look southward to Oregon for caliber football. But I did get some nice photos at Dos Reis and the San Joaquin River. No, I’m not going to post a photo of the new dent I put in the right hip of The Beast, trying to [View Full Entry]

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