The journey continues...

Dear friends,
We have truly loved maintaining this blog and sharing all the remarkable (and unremarkable!) things we experienced while living in Kinmen. Now that we're back in America, this phase of our journey is sadly coming to an end.

But! We have decided to continue blogging, just not at this location. If you wish to follow the next phase of our journey, as we make a life for ourselves back in the states, we welcome you to visit our new blog, www.westofthewind.blogspot.com. We are excited to be blogging again, and hope you will come check it out!

Many thanks to all of you who read and enjoyed our blog about Kinmen. You have encouraged us more than we can ever express, and it is for you that we have decided to continue blogging.

Love,
Ben and Steph

Read more...

KTV

In the last month before we left Kinmen, naturally we wanted to see all our friends and hang out "one last time." What better way to do that than in a small padded room with couches and a karaoke machine? Which is just what we did. This particular KTV session was our last time to see our dear friend Karen, who was among our very first friends in Kinmen. We had a great time together!

Ben shows off his skills

Jim, Karen, Jane, and Carol

Karen and Jane, my first 2 friends in Kinmen

I am well-suited to the role of tambourineist

Jim and Ben, getting crazy

I love these people.

And now, be amazed as Ben performs a segment from "Qi Li Xiang," by our favorite pop star, Jay Chou.

Read more...

Revisit

So...it's been FOREVER since we've done anything with our blog. But there is still stuff to share from our time overseas, and we promised we'd share it. I'm determined not going to leave y'all hanging. To get myself back into the blogging spirit, I put together a little slideshow highlighting just a FEW of the thousands of memories we have from our time in Kinmen. I couldn't stop crying when I watched it back; I don't expect anybody else to have the same reaction, but making it did help me remember all the amazing things we experienced in our last month there, that we still have yet to share with the rest of the world.

Anyways, enough of my jabbering - enjoy!

This free picture slideshow personalized with Smilebox

Read more...

New Update!

We recovered the hard drive! And I didn't even have to get in a plane crash or be the subject of an FBI investigation. So there is still more to come...

Read more...

Update

Hey everyone this is Ben. I'm just signing on real quick to let you know we are back in America now. The last week in Kinmen was incredibly busy, so we didn't really have time to post anything.

Good news is everything seems to be going reasonably well back here in the US. Our flights were as painless as possible, considering we had five 50+ pound bags. We visited Chicago and Wheaton to check out a grad school I'm interested in. Got back to Florida and saw some Pensacola friends and met with my family. We've gotten everythig settled for our car, a 2001 red Subaru forrester (we love it!). We also found out we are working in Yellowstone national park this fall! So praise God for all those things.

Bad news is that our computer's hard drive seems to have gotten frizziled on our flight over. It is entirely possible that our three years of photos and videos of Kinmen are gone! Unfortunantely, we still had a lot of stuff, especially videos that needed editing, that we wanted to share with you. It's a real punch in the stomach to think all of our photos and memories of our beloved Kinmen might be gone for good if we can't get the hard drive recovered. So pray for that if you can remember it.

Other bad news is I ate something called "the Ultimate Falafel." Now I can become instantly nauseous with just one moment of harkening. I guess that's why they call it ultimate...

Read more...

Ostrich Meat!

Oh what a treat! This past Sunday someone had the bright idea to have church service at the "zoo," which is more technically a livestock research facility. They make quite delicious fresh milk and ice-cream. However, their slaughtered ostriches leave something to be desired. That's right they had some spare ostriches they didn't want so they gave 'em the ole hack and we meat loving church folks grilled 'em up. Like any red blooded American it was only a matter of time before I was behind one of the grills:



What you don't see is the thousands of flies that took a break from nibbling dairy cows to come over and join our smorgasbord. Anyways, it was a unique experience and we all had a good time.

Read more...

Hell Spawn Cockroach from Hell!

What does it take to kill the most horrid hellish hideous beast birthed from the darkest machinations of Satan himself? I found out the other night when the hugest roach ever FLEW into our living room. At first I mistook him for a giant majestic moth, but nyet comrade! Twas the biggest roach I ever seen, I discovered upon his landing on the doorframe! "Oh Lord No!" I yelled (seriously I did, infact this whole story is serious, except for the "Satans machinations" thing that's not serious. Okay back to the true story). I won't go into detail but I grabbed my roach slaying gear and the battle was on. Here is the aftermath:

Shattered electric Zapper

Normal Bug Whacker torn asunder

Blood stained bug spray can

Like all good monster stories there is no picture of the body. I was so freaked out by the thing I just got rid of it as soon as I could. Anyways, if you don't believe me you can...having trouble thinking of anything; YOU CAN GO STUB YOUR TOE ON SOMETHING!

okay peace out.

Read more...