Paris

Well, here is Paris....FINALLY! There's a lot of stuff to cover, but I've tried to be brief. We covered a lot of ground in only about three and a half days. We saw all the big sites and had a wonderful time.

Arc de Triomphe

Notre Dame

Sainte Chapelle (our favorite cathedral. It's really small but the stained glass windows are amazing!)

Popidou Museum....modern art...I don't get it.

Chase at the Pompidou. The stairs and framing is on the outside...it's "modern."

Eiffel Tower at night=beautiful!

Eiffel Tower during the day=also beautiful.

At the Catacombs, which we thought were really cool. Here we are being ghosts. The catacombs are a place where they relocated 6 million bodies after they had been buried so they could use the land for other purposes. They were creative with their relocation and used the bones to decorate...

Nice decoration...notice the skull and crossbones.
Pierre & Claudette...RIP

I think the grave diggers got bored

Chase being cute

Versailles, qbout 45 minutes outside of Paris...where the old French royalty would go to relax. This is the mirror room.

The Louvre=cool=overwhelming

Me and Lisa, hangin out

Sacre-Coeur...a cathedral on the hill.

London & Oxford

And so Europe begins! We started in London, England and spent 2 full days there. Most of the time we just went around and hit the big sights, took some pictures, and moved on to the next sight. We didnt't have a lot of time to spend at any one place. Our favorites were Westminster Abbey (which we only have a picture of on the outside because you can't take pictures inside) and seeing Wicked. The best part of Oxford? Hanging out with our WONDERFUL friends, Scooter & Jessica. It was fun to see the little town of Oxford and to walk around and see the university, but we really just loved talking with them...and I gotta say that the chatter was pretty non-stop, late into the night. Thanks, Scooter & Jessica, for being such incredible hosts and for showing us a great time!

Scooter, Jessica, and I (this is the only picture we took with them) on the streets of Oxford.

Us at the Christ's College Dining Hall. This is where parts of Harry Potter were filmed. Cool!
Oxford

Us at the London Bridge

Going into Wicked. It was a lot of fun!

Buckingham Palace...yeah, we saw the Queen.

Westminster Abbey. This is where the kings and queens of England have been crowned. It's also where Princess Diana's funeral was held.

Big Ben (and Cheesy Chase) and the buildings of Parliament.

Thailand

How is it that Thailand has almost as many pictures as Xi'an and Beijing combined?? I don't know...maybe because we loved it!!

Chase and the tailor who sold him his suits, etc. He was a very nice man.

Our second bungalow in Ko Chang.
Me swinging in front of the beautiful ocean

Ko Wai--one of our snorkeling destinations.

Snorkeling...

Monkeys...one thing on Chase's wishlist.

Elephants....another thing on Chase's wishlist. We got to ride and bathe him=so cool!

Beautiful sunsets

Our beach

Chase swimming at sunset. Doesn't get much prettier than this!

On our snorkeling trip, pre-sunburns

Our first bungalow in Ko Chang

We loved the islands and want to go back. Anyone wanna come with??

Xi'an & Beijing

As always, I've put more pictures than I intended to, but oh well. These are all Xi'an and Beijing. (A few of them are out of order because this computer won't let me rearrange them...oh well.)

Water cube in Beijing...so cool!

All our currencies....Chinese Yuan, Thai Baht, British Pounds, U.S. Dollars, and Euros. Now we also have travelers checks. Yeah....it'll all be gone very quickly!

Peking Duck in Beijing=fancy

Chase flying his kite in Tiananmen Square

Walking on the frozen lake at the Summer Palace in Beijing...not so summery.

The Bird's Nest. It was HUGE!

Summer Palace

Terracotta Warriors in Xi'an. Truly amazing!

Terracotta Warriors

The Great Wall!! What an amazing feat. (Lots o stairs=tired legs)

Chase (blurry...sorry, I chose the wrong picture, but you get the idea) at the Temple of Heaven in Beijing.

Forbidden City in Beijing

Loving Thailand!

Right now we are in Ko Chang, Thailand and loving it! The weather is beautiful, especially after cold Beijing and before cold Europe! Sorry for the lack of posting, even though TONS of stuff is happening. I just don't trust internet cafe computers with our camera. But here is a sample of what we're experiencing in Thailand. Hope your winter is just as wonderful!

Orphanage

On Monday, Chase & I went to an orphanage here in Xiangtan with another American couple.  It was a lot of fun.  The orphanage had about 40 children as well as an old-folks home.  We were only able to play with the children for a few minutes, but what a precious time it was.  I loved making them laugh....they had the cutest little gigles.  In one room there were about 15 cribs for these little tikes.  The "Moms" of the orphanage love those kids very much, you could tell.  But I my heart still ached for them and I wanted to bring what happiness I could.  So we played peek-a-boo and tickled and laughed together.  They were so sweet.  We were only in that room less than a half hour and the kids had to stay in their cribs, but I think they had fun.  They were such sweet spirits (many of them had physical and/or mental handicaps) and it was evident to both Chase and me that Heavenly Father knows and loves these little ones.  He does not leave them alone; He blesses them with happiness and with a special knowledge that He lives.  How blessed we all are to have the same knowledge and comfort.

This little guy LOVED to be tickled!

When we first saw these, we didn't know what they were.  Why do you  need troughs next to the stairs in an elementary school?  But we learned that they are slides for the kids to go down...you know, stairs are too boring and difficult, so why not slide down?  I think Chase was a little bummed he was too big to fit.