Buddy Nam

This is Maelyn's friend Nam from next door. She has affectionately tagged him, "Buddy Nam." They play together regularly and he seems to be a good playmate cause he does everything she tells him! Here they are riding her "motorbike."

Pa and Maelyn, on the beach

Kim's parents came to visit and we really enjoyed their visit, especially Maelyn!

Mastering Chopsticks!

So far we have dropped at least one set of chopst

icks at every meal, but it is starting to come along. Maelyn loves pho! She even chose it over pizza in this picture!

Faces

We also thought you might enjoy seeing the faces of our country.

Landscapes

We realized that a lot of what we include in our blog is Maelyn! The grandparents of course are thinking - is there anything better!! But we realized that you need to see a little more of what it is like here. So... we have included some of the beautiful landscapes. Hope you enjoy them. (The big pile of white in one picture is salt being harvested from the ocean. )

Our First House Helper

We know you like to see pics of people we have told you about... so here is Thao, our first house helper. She got a new job as an accountant so had to quit working for us but a great friendship was formed.

Fellow Wynners!!

We had an awesome time with all of our friends. What an encouragement they were! They helped Kim by being English partners at the school and got to meet all of our new friends. It was fun getting to share our life here in PR with people from home!

Happy Easter!

Easter was a little unconventional here but still memorable. We had a nice family worship service over breakfast. Then we attended the wedding of a friend. We even colored eggs - real ones - and hid them. The only problem was that Maelyn got hungry after the first round and ate several of them so that cut down on how many we could hide and seek! The day was topped off with a visit from friends from our home town - they showered us with gifts...including Easter candy and chips and salsa!!

Disco Ball put to use...

We had a few students over for dinner one night. After the meal we enjoyed dessert under a spinning disco ball! Maelyn loved all the attention and even learned a few new dance moves!!

A girly girl

One of our best friends here is a manicurist and spoils Kim and Maelyn each week with beautiful art on their fingers and toes (usually all for free!) Maelyn loves it as you can see in the pictures. I'm not sure we'll be able to afford this new hobby once we return to America! We joke about Maelyn being the only kid who asks for a manicure gift certificate for her third Birthday!
She also loves to pretend to do Mama's nails at night! It's a fun game till she pokes her with that pencil!! Ouch!

Mmmm...yummy!

One of the new foods we've tried is squid. Maelyn actually really likes it, mama can tolerate it, and daddy detests it!! In America, kids play with plastic hotdogs and hamburgers, here they pretend to cook plastic squid! Maelyn loves to put plastic squid in a pan and get dinner ready!

Beach Bums

As you know, our town is actually near a nice and quiet beach. It is beautiful with mountains on the horizon. There is also a resort in town that has come to know us by name since they have a great pool and serve pizzas - the only western food in town. Maelyn loves the beach as well! Our only regret is that we run out of time to go and enjoy it as often as we should!! The people here tell us we don't go to the beach enough. They go almost every morning at around 5:00 am to exercise. By the way, the guy with all the muscles with Maelyn is Jeff, hard to recognize with his shirt off. And that is the whole fam in the fishing boat. In the morning there are dozens of these little boats scattered in the ocean spreading their nets.

Our first restaurant in PR

Here are some pics of our first try at a restaurant in PR... It was high on ambiance. You know it is time to get concerned when the waiter tells you that the specialty of the day (meaning that's all they have) is forest animals. What is a forest animal anyways???? Actually it turned out really good and while you are waiting for your food they give you a fishing pole!

Trip to the market

We shop for just about everything in the open market. It is the hub of social life in town. Everyone eats fresh - women go to the market every morning! Kim is using this time as a chance to learn language, while Maelyn goes around and collects oranges. The woman in the picture is named Xin (pronounced "sin".)

The Train Ride

In-country luggage alotment was less than international, meaning we had too much stuff to take the plane to our new town... so... we took the train. Maelyn thought it was the infamous Thomas since it was blue!

The little boy with Maelyn is a friend we met on the train. You are looking at a very talented young man. Whenever he needed to go to the bathroom he just stood up in the aisle next to us and went in a coke bottle (at least 4 times!)

Rides in our new town!

Maelyn was definately pleased when she found out there were rides in our new town. Our town isn't very big but there are several "parks" with carnival-type rides. It is a great place to meet people. You can ride about 4 of them for less than 50 cents. I think it will be a big adjustment when we get home and she realizes that we can't ride rides every night in Wynne!