I'm leaving for Asia tomorrow!

Well hello there! That's right, the countdown on the right will probably self-destruct sometime soon because my visit to see Taylor in Indonesia starts TOMORROW!!! I seriously doubt I'm going to be able to blog while I'm there (more because Taylor will mock me mercilessly if I try to use any of our precious online time blogging than because of lack of internet access....), but I promise to give a good recap when I get back, complete with photos. Before I go though, I thought I'd give you an idea of what I plan to be up to.

I'll be overseas for a total of about 3 weeks. Here's the breakdown:

I leave tomorrow at 12:30pm from Detroit on Northwest. My first leg is 13 hours and lands in Tokyo at about 3:30pm local time (that includes the 14 hours time difference). Then, I have a 2 hour layover in Tokyo before I fly to Singapore. That flight is about 8 hours and lands in Singapore at 12:35am local time on January 1 (35 minutes after they ring in the New Year in Singapore). If you're sitting in the U.S., think of be and Taylor being reunited after 5 months at 11:30am on Wednesday (2 days from now!!!!!!)! I can't wait!

So, after a very exciting reunion (my fiance has requested it not be tearful, but I cannot make any promises!), we're heading to a hotel called the Far East Hotel: Chiang Village. It's just a few miles from the airport in Singapore. Taylor will have arrived and checked in already, so we should be able to just head to our room for a nice shower (I'll be feeling pretty icky after 24 hours traveling!). We decided we should try to celebrate the New Year a little, so we're going to go out somewhere at like 2am just to hang out for a couple hours :)

On Thursday (January 1), we're going to get up and check out of the hotel and find our way to the bus station to get a bus to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. See, we wanted to go somewhere else in Asia, and KL (as they call it) is only about a 5 hour bus ride. We have a hotel reserved for the nights of Jan 1 and Jan 2 in KL and then we're planning on staying in Malaysia 2 more nights, though we haven't decided if we want to stay in KL or go somewhere else. I have some recommendations from friends and I'm going to call another friend who lived there for a year today to see what they think we should do!

On January 5, we're heading back to Singapore where we'll stay for 2 nights with our friend Wayne from Vanderbilt. We don't have too much planned for these two days but I know we'll find PLENTY to do in Singapore.

After we finish our visits to Singapore and Malaysia, we'll head to Indonesia for the rest of the trip. We will arrive in Surabaya, Indonesia on January 7th and spend a week in and around Taylor's home in the mountains outside Indonesia. I think we have plans to climb a volcano and go to some hindu temples. Should be fun! Plus, I'll get to see where Taylor has been living for the past 5 months!

The last week, I think we will be splitting our time between Taylor's village, Bali, and a quick trip to Jakarta for a gathering Taylor has to attend.

Well, folks, you won't be hearing from me for a while, but never fear, I will return with plenty of stories!!

Happy New Year,
Carissa

Merry Christmas!

Hello there! It's CHRISTMAS!! I just wanted to post a Merry Christmas blog to all my friends and family who read this. I am still home in Ohio celebrating with family. It feels like I've celebrated Christmas about 8 times this year because we have so many family and friends!

The past week has been pretty fun. Last Friday we had a Christmas party with my parents' small group from church. I went along and participated in some lively conversation and the white elephant gift exchange. It was a good time.

Last weekend I can honestly say I don't remember a single thing I did! Oops! This week was fun though. On Monday I went up to Ann Arbor with my little sister to stay the night and hang out with her on Tuesday. Monday night, I dropped her off at class and proceeded to sit in traffic for about 2 hours trying to get to her apartment. Ann Arbor Michigan has THE WORST traffic ever! It didn't help that it was snowing and there was too much traffic to clear the roads, but STILL.

I picked Taryn up from work at 10pm and we watched some friends before we went to bed. On Tuesday we got up and took our time before we headed out to do some shopping. I was in search of some shoes for my trip to Indonesia. I needed a pair of black closed-toe flats and then a pair of flip-flops. Well, I didn't have too much trouble with the flats, but seeing as it was snowing buckets on Tuesday, I had a bit of a tough time finding a store that was carrying flip flops (don't they realize that people go on Vacation!) . Luckily, I remembered a fantastic web site called www.endless.com. It's a shoe and handbag store that offers free, overnight shipping on everything if you order by 5:15pm PST. So...on Tuesday night at 8pm, I ordered a pair of Havaiana sandals and they arrived Wednesday by 5pm. Pretty amazing and it only cost me $20! They're really nice flip flops, i swear :)

Yesterday (Wednesday), we went to my Aunt Shari and Uncle Jeff's house to see all the Lucyks (except the ones who live in Whyoming). We had a great time and I got some fun gifts. I got wine glasses for when Taylor and I have a place and two bottles of my favorite red wine from Northern Michigan. I also got a jewelry box, which is nice since I've been using a tupperware to organize my jewelry since high school!

So here I sit after Christmas morning celebrating with family :) I will be posting this weekend with a sneak preview of my trip to Indonesia! I can't wait to go. I leave on Tuesday so don't worry, you'll hear all about our plans before I leave!

Adventures perhaps not so exciting....

So my friend Eric has reminded me that I have a blog! You know, NYC was so random and interesting that I never really lacked for things to update. Now that I'm back in Ohio (on sabbatical, in hibernation, whatever you want to call it), I find that I am less exciting on my own than I thought! But, I think it's only fair that I post upon request and also that I make a vow to post at least twice a week from now on. Does that work?

So, as I mentioned in the title, Adventures in Ohio was the overwhelming winner in my very successful voting (sarcasm intended, I think I got like 10 votes!) endeavor. So here goes!

I arrived home last Tuesday (has it REALLY been 9 days?). My grandma picked me up at the airport and we went to lunch at Applebees. My "you're not in Kansas anymore" moment (New York City being Kansas in this analogy) happened as soon as we walked through the door and I was hit by a wave of cigarette smoke. Yes, that's right, in Michigan they still ask you "smoking or non?" when you arrive at a restaurant....ugh. Thankfully the great state of Ohio has banned smoking in restaurants (and that's about the only thing I like more about Ohio than Michigan, but I won't get in to that ;-). Anyway, I headed home right after lunch with grams and got to my house at around 3:30pm.

I have made a commitment to go to the gym every day in the three weeks between when I got home and when I go visit Taylor. So I hit the gym right away when I got home and ran 5 miles. Not bad, right? My mom and I went out to dinner that night at P.F. Changs and just relaxed.

A lot of the other days since I got home are sort of a blur of going to the gym (I've missed a couple days due to a cold and a stomach virus one day!), showering at about 4pm, and eating dinner with my family.

Highlights include:

• I picked up my wedding dress last Thursday!
• My mom and I gave blood at the Red Cross (0-, so popular right now)
• I went with my mom to an ornament exchange with my mom. Think 30 or so midwestern middle-aged women, CHRISTMAS SWEATERS that light up, play music, and jingle (no, not as a joke, for real), sexual innuendo in amounts you would expect at an 8th grade boys' get-together, and some really tasty snacks. It was a good time.
  
• We had Christmas with my Grandpa and Grandma Hooper and I got some sweet gifts including a medal plaque from the NYC Marathon! Isn't it cool?!
  

• 
• Headed up to Dearborn, MI (it's basically like New Delhi, MI, tons of Indians) for the Shinske family Christmas, which is basically my dad's mom and all her siblings and their kids and grandkids and greatgrandkids (those are the ones I'll be having one day....). There's about 100 people there and about 20 kids. This year, no one volunteered to be Santa so - being the resourceful midwesterners that we are - we hired one off Craigslist! Nice.
• Went to my OTHER grandparents church for their annual Christmas play. My grandpa has been raving about it for years and I've never been home soon enough to see it (Dec. 14 was the last show), so I really wanted to go. It was pretty amazing, but not surprising considering it's a church of 30,000 people!
• Oops, I may or may not have burnt my butt by going tanning apparently for the first time without underwear....
• Some drama with the boy which has subsequently made me even more desperate to go visit him. I leave in 12 days and even though I love Christmas and don't want it to be over, I'm DESPERATE for Dec. 30 to get here.
• Today I found out that the job I had before I left NYC which now has me working from home (oops, forgot to mention that....I'm doing that too about 25 hours a week) wants me to stick around after I get back from Indonesia. That's pretty exciting!

Alright, Eric (and my 3 or 4 other loyal readers), I hope that this is a worthy update!