International Cinema to DA MAX!!

I've been frustrated that Facebook doesn't have an application where you can list all the movies you've seen. Sort of like how in Visual bookshelf you can list all the books you've read....anyway...

Movie: Jodhaa Akbar
Language: Hindi
2008

My co-worker is from Nepal and she knows I'm a Bollywood fan so she passed this recommendation along, I'm so glad she did! In addition to being a visual spectacle this movie has a cute love story, an interesting plot and enough fighting and blood to satisfy the menfolk. I really loved this movie and the music was good in it too! For those of you who are unfamilar with Bollywood films, this one would be a good one to start with. Make sure you have enough time to enjoy all four hours of it. Also, most people aren't used to the musical structure of dancing and singing in all Indian movies but in this one it fits well with the overall tone of the film. It won the Audience award at the 32nd film festival in Sao Paulo.

Stars: Aishwarya Rai & Hrithik Roshan

Halloween Pumpkins

This year we carved pumpkins that Chris grew out of his garden. I have to brag that he's a pretty good gardener! He ended up with about 169 total pounds of pumpkins. He had a couple of giant ones and then about 29 small sugar pumpkins.

Chris also went all out with his carving skills! He took lots of time and care to do this one. His pumpkin inspiration is Ichigo, a character from the anime Bleach. As much as it is cool looking I think it's rather scary.

This is my pumpkin. It is much simpler in design and carving requirements, but I think it's just as twisted. My pumpkin inspiration came from my brain.

Katrina's Recommendations for November

Movie: Persepolis

It has already gathered a lot of attention since being released last year 2007. It was the official jury selection at the Cannes Festival and was nominated for an Oscar. It is a French film animated in primarily black and white. It follows the life of a young girl growing up during the Iranian Revolution. She travels abroad to France but is trying to make sense of her life and identity. It's is based on the life of one of the directors. It does deal with more adult themes of war, rebellion and the people she interacts with. It is funny as it is poignant.

Book: The Year of the Dog by Grace Lin

I picked this one up at a school book fair I was volunteering at. (I'm such a sucker for book fairs!) I wish I had this book while growing up. Pacy or better known by her American name Grace, is an Asian American growing up being the only Asian in her school of New Hartford, NY until Melody moves in. They quickly become friends and together try to figure out how they are so Chinese at school but then are so Americanized with family. It also has neat tidbits of culture in there. I related to many situations in there and I think everyone will appreciate the charm of it all. It's for 5th-6th graders and up.

Movie: On a Clear Day 

Jury prize winner at the Sundance film festival in 2005. It's a Scottish film about Frank, who after decades of dedicated work is laid off. He finds himself unhappy with not only dealing with unemployment but his estrangement to his son and distance between him and his wife. With nothing left he decides he wants to swim the English Channel with the help of his off beat friends. This film was just plain funny. Chris and I enjoyed the quirky humor and Scottish accents.

2nd Anniversary: We're still in love

We celebrated our anniversary a little early since it actually fell on a weekday. The weekend before we stayed at Embassy Suites in Bellevue. We enjoyed swimming (their pool had a small waterfall in it!) They also upgraded us to an executive suite for free when they found out the occasion.

Chris is enjoying the free drinks at the hotel. 

This is me enjoying the free breakfast at the hotel. (We like free things)

So our day of celebration was this: we got to the hotel, swam, then dressed up and went out at a nice Italian dinner. We also went shopping at the nearby mall and we ended up getting held up at Banana Republic because a seller there decided she wanted to dress me up in all the dresses in the store to see how they look. Finally, we grabbed some dessert at the Cheesecake Factory, their cheesecake is crazy rich man! It was a great anniversary. Chris and I enjoyed just being able to spend time together. I can't believe it has already been two years! Love you honey!

SALMON DAYS IN ISSAQUAH!!

It has been a while. I think I still need to do a post on our anniversary which was... two months ago. Anyway, ignore the lack of chronological order and enjoy! I finally was able to experience Salmon Days. Every year on the first weekend of October the whole town of Issaquah celebrates the salmon's heroic struggle returning to their place of origin to spawn.... and die. Kind of depressing come to think of it, makes for an awesome two day celebration of food and crafts though.

This is one of the most delicious desserts I've ever had. It is an apple dumpling, which is a very warm whole apple baked in a cover of fluffy pastry covered with a special cinnamon sauce and served with vanilla ice cream. It was yum.

This is one of the hundreds of salmon that could be found swimming in creek nearby. They are HUGE! And it was fun to see so many of them.

The entire downtown of Issaquah was converted into a huge open market. They also had this ridiculous food court complete with huge desserts and international food!

So my verdict of my first Salmon Days: It's GOOD! I guess the rain just comes with the package.

Aki Matsuri (Fall Festival)

Time to party like it's fall.  Oh yeah.  Well, not so much in the way of party.  But it was fun.  We went to the Eastside Nihon Matsuri Association's Aki Matusri (visit them at enma.org).  It was pretty cool.  Lots of demonstrations and displays of traditional Japanese crafts and arts.  Everything from Ikebana to taiko to sumie.  It was fun to look through it all.  We even bought some art to decorate our humble abode.  Here's some pictures to look at.

Myself and my masterful brush strokes.

I thought this bonsai was pretty amazing.  It's growing around the rock!

And what festival would be complete without Kitty-chan?  

And kendo.  I really want to try it sometime.  Whacking someone with a bamboo sword just seems so much fun.  There were many martial arts demonstrations like aikido, kenjutsu, judo, karate, kyudo, ect.

The Joys and Woes of Gardening

One of the things I was most excited about when we moved back to Washington was the prospect of growing a big garden full of delicious things.  I guess I forgot about all of my natural enemies that exist here in the Great Northwest.  It was all worth it.  I tried growing a Japanese variety of corn called Mirai, it is really sweet.  Doesn't need any salt or butter, just pure deliciousness.  So here are some pictures of the Sunflowers, pumpkins, corn, birdhouse gourds, and everything else I got growing.  Enjoy.

Huge sunflowers (they must be 12 feet tall)

My hyotan (birdhouse gourd)

Big pumpkins

Watermelon

Strawberries and tomatoes

Monstrous zucchini ( I didn't even get pictures of the really big ones)

And of course damage due to my enemies.  Deer and chickens.  I'm thinking about putting a bounty on their heads.  This was a 24.6 pound pumpkin, and it would have kept growing.  I'm still mourning.

Diverse Washington

I've only worked at Target for barely a week and a half now. And here are the languages I've heard being spoken while I cashier:

Russian
Indian (I'm guessing Hindi)
Japanese
Mandarin
Vietnamese
Spanish
Korean
Italian
French

Oh, the other day I was able to practice my sign language when I found some co-workers signing. They were patient with my awkward signs since it has been a while!

So if you ever want to have an international experience, just apply to the Target store in Issaquah.

We're Employed!!

Finally the both of us have jobs!! 

Chris is working at the Children's Hospital in Seattle. I just got a job with Target down the street. We're both very thankful that we got these positions. It will give us a chance to save up for graduate school hopefully in the future. Until then...yay! we're employed!!

Summertime 2008

Here we are halfway through summer.  To entertain ourselves we have engaged in a myriad of activities.  We went gold panning a couple times over on the the raging river.  While we didn't strike it rich, we did find a couple specks of gold.  Katrina and my younger sister, Hayley, had lots of fun in the water trying to catch fish in the river.

Other days have been spent looking after my garden (including corn, pumpkins, zucchini, nappa cabbage, bok choy, beans, peas, peppers, onions, cucumber, ect.), playing with Hayley's chickens, ducks, and goats and going on walks.

Eric, Sharn, and Sharn's sister Sarah came up for the Fourth of July and we ended up hanging out with them and the Wan's going around Seattle and eating.  We had lots of fun.  We also celebrated my birthday, a little late, with mint chip ice cream cake.  Yum.

And just this weekend we went to the Bon Odori in the International District.  We got in and did a couple dances with fans, ate some yummy food and took in the atmosphere.  This was our second year attending and we hope to continue making it our tradition.

Oh Woe is our car!

It's time to get a new car I've decided. I am very grateful for the car that we had for the first year and nine months of our marriage, but lately its been acting weird. Last September, right after we arrived in Utah for school it died and cost about 650 to fix. Now just recently (and within a year), we've had to have it towed twice in one week and the mechanics are estimating about 500 for this repair. I don't really trust it anymore and it seems to be very pricey to fix it whenever there's a problem.

Chris and I are already researching for a good car to have. With gas prices going insane we are thinking about getting a car with better mileage. So far we're thinking either a Toyota Corolla or Honda Fit. We need to go test drive them first though!

Denise and Tyler

On June 7th 2008 Denise, Chris' sister, married Tyler Folkman in the Seattle LDS Temple. It had been raining really hard all week, but luckily it was just cloudy that day. It was a very beautiful wedding and a fun reception!

It was my second time as bridesmaid. The colors were pink, orange and red. I was the red bridesmaid and had a really cute dress made by my mother in law! My hair was also funky!

Even though it wasn't raining, it was still pretty dang cold! Especially since it's suppose to be summer already!! Here's Hayley trying to stay warm. She was a flower girl.

Denise and Tyler were super cute and super happy together!

This is the dollar dance (where you pay to dance with the bride to help pay off their honeymoon). Chris was only able to dance with her for a couple seconds.

Garter toss!!

Trying to stay warm while waiting for our photo ops!

Since both the Nye and Folkman family have been in the Issaquah area for years, it was a very popular and crowded reception! There wasn't enough seating for everyone. The food was catered and was great. Chris and I were assigned to pick and be in charge of music for the reception. Besides trying to keep the music going we still had time to let loose and dance the night away! Everyone said they liked the music selection but I think that's probably the last time we want to DJ. The whole wedding was very beautiful and elegant, mad props to my mother in law and the Folkmans! We are really excited for the newlyweds and wish them every happiness!

Japan! へようこそ

After two weeks and vast amounts of money we have returned from Japan.  Not only did we go lots of places and eat lots of delicious food, we saw cool places and bought lots of stuff.  We had our Japan Rail passes which allowed us to take the shinkansen anywhere, which we did (Tokyo, Hiroshima, Kyoto, and Nagoya).

We made trips to the Nagoya aquarium, (hence the penguin topiaries), Miyajima (one of the most scenic places in Japan), and Kinosaki-cho (home of seven famous hot spring baths).  

This is the Nagoya Bento which Katrina had for dinner one evening.  Inside was unagi, black miso cutlets, onigiri with shrimp inside, and several other tidbits of Nagoya specialties.

This is Gosho-no-yu, one of the bathhouses we went to.  It had an outdoor section where you can view the surrounding nature and waterfalls.

This is the entrance to Fushimi Inari Taisha (the place with all the red gates lined up in a row).

Katrina next to a ginormous wooden paddle found on Miyajima.

We're in Seattle!

We were going to leave for Seattle originally May 15th. Since then new developments popped up so that we were very fortunate to be able to leave for Seattle May 6th (Tuesday morning). However, Monday evening, Chris and I found ourselves desperate to get a head start to Seattle and decided to leave at 7:30 o' clock at night. After hanging out with Maria and Liz and having them help out clean while chatting we said out goodbye's and headed on the road.

Chris was insane energetic (I guess the Mountain Dew helped) and drove until three in the morning. By that time we had barely made it into the Oregon border. We found a rest stop and slept there for three hours and then headed back on the road by 5 in the morning.

We still pretended that we left Tuesday morning. We were only twenty minutes away from Chris' hometown when we called his mom and said that we barely got into Idaho. She got a big surprise when we showed up 10 in the morning in the parking lot of her work.

Now we've taken naps and are feeling a lot better. We're sooo happy we're here safely!

Japan ikimasho!

Exciting news everyone!! Chris' dad has to go to Japan (more specifically Nagoya) for a business trip and offered to share his hotel with us if we can afford the air plane tickets. Luckily, despite the last minute notice, we were able to find a good deal with round trip tickets and WE ARE BOOKED AND GOING TO JAPAN!!! YAY!!!

I guess this is our graduation gift to ourselves instead of getting a Wii. But I think we're both much much happier with this alternative!!

Now I have to brush up on my basic Japanese and start looking up all sorts of awesome Japanese stuff to do when we get there!! YAY!!

COLLEGE GRADUATES OF 2008!!

Here we are! Finally done! After all that work and studying we've finally received our Bachelors of Science Degree at BYU! A lot of our family came including my family, Chris' family and some family friends.

We decided to graduate together with Chris' school of Life Sciences. The ceremony started at 11 which was better than mine starting at 7:00 in the morning!

We are sooo relieved and happy we're done!

They didn't throw hats in the ceremony so we decided to do it ourselves.

We were the VERY last row to be called up to have our names read! But we're so excited to be done! Only two more weeks then we we come to Washington to continue job searching!

MAKEOVER!!

For those of you who know me since I was a teen, I didn't particularly care what I looked like or what I wore. Usually this resulted in an occasionally frumpy look. Chris told me I could spend a little more money on clothes and such, since I felt bad spending money on fancy clothes. With the money we got back on textbooks we went to the Gap and Banana Republic Outlet in Park City and got a new wardrobe. I also cut my hair short again, but this time I know how to style it! What do you think?