Pictures from our trip to New Orleans

St. Louis Cathedral.
This is the oldest cathedral in North America, founded in 1720.

The inside of this cathedral is beautifully decorated.

Bourbon Street, the French Quarter is alive at night with street dancers and night clubs.

Two blocks from Bourbon Street with its notorious night life is this beautiful statue of the risen Christ and it's shadow, with hands spread wide apart, inviting night crawlers to come to him and find rest.

CAFE DA MONDE!

This was perhaps the highlight of our trip. The beignet and coffee in this cafe was worth our trip to New Orleans. We literally went there everyday and we even brought some back to California.

Uche is a happy boy. He couldn't get over how good their beignets and coffee were.

You really don't need to rent a car to move around New Orleans. With a three day bus pass you can ride both buses and cable cars, and it's affordable.

Apples!

Fall is apple season, and we've had apples coming out of our ears around here this fall. A family in our church has quite a few apple trees, so we've been grateful beneficiaries of their apples. One day we went out to their place with a few others to make some apple cider.

Sarah is cutting apples that will be sent through the cider press. We worked a little, had some cider, worked a little more and drank some more. It was a delicious afternoon!

The trees were loaded down.

It's amazing what you can make with apples. It's seems like there is apple in everything I (Uche) eat now. The good thing is that I'm enjoying it. We drink lots of apple juice, eat all kinds of apple cakes and even have apple butter. Just this morning Sarah made pancakes with applesauce and that's when I realized that apple is more useful than I thought. Last night She made chopped apple with green onions on pork chops, boy was it good! I like everything about apples.

Black Berries

Another thing I like about summer is the many different fruit, with different shapes and colors I get to eat. This summer, we rented a house that a many blackberry bushes covered with sweet, wild blackberries growing over the fence. So we made all kinds of blackberry pastries and shakes. The blackberries were so sweet that Sarah made a blackberry pie without adding sugar to it.

This is Uche's favorite of all the blackberry recipes. This is blackberry scones. The best tasty scones ever.

After living here for a long time I'm beginning to realize that the fruits we buy in the shops don't have the best taste. If you want to enjoy good tasty fruits, you have to go to the farmers market. We are regulars at the Saturday morning farmers market. I guess if you can't beat them, you have to join them!

Vanilla lattes, fresh fruit and blackberry scones.... perfect Saturday morning breakfast!

Blackberries, yogurt and granola... this is the life!

Climbing the mountain

How wonderful is your creation Oh Lord. Yet people believe in the big bang theory.

The last hurdle to get to the top. There was still a pile of snow up there

We had company up there. This little squirrel was friendly and so we shared our lunch with her

One good thing about Redding is that you don't have to go too far to be out on the mountain, lake, river, trail, out door shooting range or to go camping in the woods.

We enjoy a little hiking every once in a while. So a few weeks ago I had the opportunity to hike to the top of Mt. Lassen. I had wanted to do this for a while now, so when the opportunity presented itself, I couldn't miss it.

It was a great hike. my other two companions, whose names I wont mention (even though they are in the picture above) were physically fit, which was good as I tagged along behind them.

From the top of Mount Lassen (10462 ft.) I saw the other famous mountain, Shasta (14, 179 ft.) sitting majestically as if it was beconing me to try it. Well, I accepted the challenge and hope to hike it some day before I grow too old to walk. I heard that people die while trying to hike on it. Well better die trying...

Living near the river trial

Uche was trying out his picture taking skills here. This is the tip of the Sundial bridge.

A beautiful sculpture under the bridge.

Sarah and her friend

Right now we live near the river trial and we love the area because it's cooler than most places in the northstate. We also have access to the aquatic center, for swimming, and the river trial where we bike and run. We are trying to be healthy.

On this particular day we went to hang out by the bridge, it's a major tourist attraction here cause it's a glass bridge. Across from where we are in this photo is a cafe and a live band was playing jazz. We totally enjoyed the music even though we didn't go into the cafe. Who said you must spend money to enjoy good music?

Do we all look alike?

The other day I met two Latino gentlemen in town. The older one asked me if I was rooting for South Africa in the world cup? Do I look like I'm from SA? I didn't ask him that, but I just smiled and told him that I'm rooting for Nigeria cause I'm originally from Nigeria. The guy told me he was rooting for the USA team. I began to wonder why he said that since his own country made it to the World Cup. I didn't waste time in pointing that out to him. I said, "Well, it's good that Mexico made it". The guy smiled and said, "We're not from Mexico, we are from Nicaragua"
Anyway, I guess we all look alike. When it comes to World Cup, we identify ourselves not just by country, but by continent.

Napa Valley

I'm California born and raised, but there are still so many places I've never seen, and Napa Valley is one of them. We were really excited to spend a weekend there with some great friends of ours. The valley definitely didn't disappoint. It was gorgeous! The weather was cool and it even sprinkled the second day, but we had a lot of fun. A major highlight of the trip was that I had the best maple bar I've ever had- sorry, no pictures of that- I was too busy enjoying it!

Right as I took this picture, Uche made this gesture. Doesn't he look like he's giving a tour?

Our friends had brought food for a picnic- salami, lots of cheese and we bought a baguette and a bottle of sparkling juice to enjoy. None of us are wine drinkers, and obviously the main attraction of Napa is wine, but there's still a lot to enjoy without being a wine drinker.

We always like to throw in a self portrait. How do you like our fancy sunglasses we bought in Manila right before we left?

One of the must see places we heard about was this castle. I should start telling people we went to Europe- it's hard to believe this was taken in Northern California!

Here's my tour guide picture. The building in the back is part of the winery featured in the movie Bottle Shock. We had watched the movie the night before, so it was fun to see it in real life.

This was taken in the garden at the same winery. Most of the places we visited had gorgeous grounds like this.

We did take a tour. This was taken in the caves of a winery. The caves were pretty cool- literally- they stay at a temperature of 60 degrees year round no matter the weather outside.

We pulled over at the side of the road for a picnic on the second day. Here's what we looked at while we ate. The whole area was unbelievably beautiful, and I'm so glad we were able to enjoy it.

Uche learns to hug

There are two things that remind me that we are back in California. The first one is the allergies I get from pollen that turn my eyes red and watery. I also sneeze a lot which causes my nose to run, and I get a headache afterwards. I can sneeze up to six times in one long sneeze. I'm glad there are allergy pills that work for me.

The other reminder is the number of hugs I recieve from our church family and friends. Their hugs are quite infectious and it shows how much the people here love. Each time Sarah and I return back to Redding, our home in the States, we always recieve a tremendous amount of warm hugs from almost everyone in our church, that's a lot of hugs. It sure blows my socks off how much the people here are able to show love in different ways including hugging. I've been infected and I don't think twice before I hug people back. I also initiate hugs sometimes! I remember when we first arrived in Manila and I ran into a Filipino friend. Out of excitement I reached out and gave him a warm bear hug but afterwards I realized that he wasn't too excited about it and I told myself that this guy would be hugging every one of his friends too if he spends only one year in Oak Grove (our church in Redding), that is unless he is my father in law who is probably the only one in our church who doesn't hug (but he doesn't love any less either).

Every hug I recieve here reminds me how warm and loving and accepting the people here are and I love them all a lot. I aslo love the way they hug.

Festivities

So, it's been a long time since we updated the blog, and that's because we've been very busy- having a lot of fun! We got some work done too... We were excited to participate in graduation even though we are technically summer graduates. It was fun pretending to graduate, and we were able to finish our thesis a few days after graduation, which left us with a couple weeks free to have fun and spend time with our friends. This will be a picture heavy post as we walk you through our last days in the Philippines. We're sitting in the airport getting ready to board our flight to Taiwan and then onto California, and it was fun to look through these pictures- they made us smile!

This was taken after the Baccalaureate chapel. This is group are all Community Development students. They're a great group of people, and we have thoroughly enjoyed learning together with these people.

The evening after chapel we went out with our friends who live in our building. We were all graduating, so it was a real celebration! Taco Bell!

This was at the banquet they had before graduation. It was fun to see everyone dressed up. Sitting next to Sarah is a great friend of ours. It's not fun to leave these great people who we have gotten to know the past year and a half.

The big day! This was taken as we lined up to walk into the church.

The graduates! We were hooded by our program director (the hood sits on top of the robe) as they read a short biography about us.

The day after graduation we had a party up on our roof to spend some time with our friends who were graduating and leaving Manila in the days following graduation. No party in the Philippines is complete without some karaoke- so we gave the neighborhood a nice concert! :)

The week after graduation was Holy Week, and because this is a Catholic country this is a very special week. The Thursday and Friday before Easter everything shuts down- the malls close, the roads are empty and people head out of Manila. We joined some friends from church and spent a couple days at the ocean. We did a little snorkeling as you can see from this picture!

The tide was low the first evening we headed to the beach. Here's a couple starfish doing something... get a room already!

Uche with a totally different starfish than the loving couple seen above!

The next week we were taken on a short trip to a place in the mountains outside of Manila. It's much cooler in this area, so it's a popular place to visit. Our friend took us to a wonderful hotel for an evening. It was a great place! If you look closely, you can see Sarah in the background. She's actually in the bathroom! There's a window above the jacuzzi tub, so you can sit in the tub and watch tv! The bed had a down comforter and feather pillows- luxury!!

This is the front of the hotel. It was so beautiful.

Here's our group in the lobby. It's kind of weird to see a fireplace in the Philippines, but it's much much cooler here than Manila, so it may even be used during the cooler months! If nothing else it makes a nice place to take a picture.

This was the view from our room! It looked very European to us with the pine trees, mountains and hotel in the background. It was a very refreshing trip, and we enjoyed the company of our great friends!

Happy Birthday Uche!

Yesterday was Uche's birthday, but the festivities started Sundayt night. We invited some people from church over for some pizza and cake. We had a nice time visiting with everyone and we had two cakes. The one above was brought by our friend, and I made one that tasted good, but looked a little weird, so no pictures to protect the creator of the tasty but crazy looking cake.

Here's the whole group. Do I stand out or what??? I need to start tanning or something... I'm glowing! :) This group of people are dear friends who we will miss when we leave...

The next day we spent the morning in the library as papers don't write themselves. But I convinced Uche that he had to give me the afternoon and evening for a surprise outing. So after lunch we headed to Megamall about 1/2 hour taxi ride away. We took taxis to and from the mall because it was Uche's birthday, and we were celebrating, so no public transportation for us! We spent sometime walking around the mall and enjoying the fact that it was air conditioned and pretty empty as it was Monday afternoon. We looked for a couple things Uche has been wanting to buy, but didn't find exactly what he wanted. We spent about an hour at a coffee shop relaxing and talking. I ordered Uche's favorite green tea latte, and he was nice enough to share it with me.

Here I am tasting the green tea latte.... hmmmm... not my favorite, but the birthday boy enjoyed it!

Afterwards we went to watch Green Zone. Uche enjoys movies with car chases and explosions, and this movie had both! After the movie we walked over to a fancy hotel to eat dinner at their buffet. This was the main surprise of the day. I did a little research and found out that they're considered one of the best, if not the best, buffet in town, and Uche enjoys buffets, so perfect birthday dinner.

The buffet did not disappoint! They had all kinds of Asian food as well as continental favorites. They even had a cheese tray! Cheese is a luxury in the Philippines. The dessert section was incredible, and I wished I hadn't gone for seconds on the roast beef with all the choices! Uche enjoyed halo halo, his favorite Filipino dessert. The whole atmosphere was very luxurious and we felt super spoiled during our time there. After dinner we walked back to the mall to catch a taxi home. We were so stuffed! Uche couldn't stand up straight until we had walked a block... so we got our money's worth!! It was a nice day we spent together and it was really nice to spoil ourselves a little bit. I suppose I shouldn't have gotten to enjoy it as much as I did because it wasn't my birthday.... We don't have any pictures from the buffet we were too busy eating!!

Here he is the birthday boy! My handsome wonderful husband. His birthday is also the anniversary of the day Uche proposed to me. Seven years ago he asked will you and I said yes, of course! He's the best husband I could've imagined, and I'm so blessed to be able to spend my life with him! Wow! That's a lot of exclamation points in one paragraph, but that's how great my husband is! He's a million billion exclamation points! :)