we just spent the week in Canada…Vancouver and Whistler…. It was my first time to those two places and only my second time to Canada… the last time was when i was in high school for a basketball tournament for like 4 days in December in Edmonton… brrrrrrrr… ANYWAY… the trip…..

Vancouver
we flew in Friday night…and with getting the luggage and then getting the rental car we didn’t make it to our hotel until 11ish… by then we were suuuuuuuuuper hungry… and looking out the window across the street was a korean bbq place… so we decided to walk around to see if we might find anything to eat… found a small japanese convenient store called konbiniya…. they had little bento boxes and got a mini katsu donburi and pat got a larger beef donburi… it was the perfect amount of food and sooooooo YUMMY

the next morning we woke up and headed over to this chinese restaurant that pat saw in the travel thing s you get at the hotels or from the rental companies… we had some REALLY good dim sum… maybe it’s b/c we haven’t had dim sum in awhile…but it was soooooooooooooooo GOOD!

after dim sum we tried to find some things to do indoors since it was raining…. first stop was the telus world of science….

this place was AWESOME!  they had all sorts of interactive things… puzzles…

pat on a bike, keeping the ball above the red line….this one you have to jump and hit the button… and pat hit the 270 cm…i think it was in cm.. and i got 240

 

of course there was area for rock samples… a whole section… and here’s a HUGE microcline they had there…  and they had a dinosaur puzzle that was pretty difficult b/c the freakin’ thing wouldn’t stay together….video isn’t very exciting…but didn’t have a picture of it… so this was the closest thing..

afterwards we headed over to the vancouver aquarium in stanley park…

the aquarium was really cool… like most aquariums are…but they had this one exhibit on the amazon… so we got to see these…..

 
they also had some whale exhibits… a dolphin show….

and more whales…

one of the cooler things we happened to see was feeding time for the octopus…

drove around stanley park and stopped off at prospect point and get a view for the lion’s gate bridge…had some maple syrup ice cream…

dried off at the hotel and met up with pat’s family friend for yummy hot pot….packed everything up to get ready to wake up early the next morning..

while watching the ucla v. wsu game on tv… we felt an eq…. 4.2

afterwards my grandma came out and grabbed her keys, her purse and started looking for her flashlight……  i my grandma….

went to the ucla v. cal game tonight…nice to see the bruins play this season!  we were down when we FINALLY got there! but it seirously seemed like the game was in slo-mo the first few minutes we were there… and then there were like a zillion fouls/time outs..ANYWAY… the second half was a bit more fast pace with some AWESOME plays….aboya SWATTED the ball… and you could totally hear it!  and we were WAY up high… and then THE highlight was josh shipp’s BEHIND the back BOUNCE pass to afflalo…. THAT WAS SOOOOOOOOO AWESOME! 

FINAL SCORE

Xmas

my mom took us to the airport….and right as we were passing into san jose there was FOG!  our flight was delayed for about an hour, luckily not cancelled like some others before us… we definitely lucked out….  had the usual xmas dinner at the twin dragon…and hung out with pat’s family….

after xmas was some after xmas shopping… no mall for me… b/c i think everyone in their mother went there!  more hanging out with the family and tried out ‘guitar hero 2′  (andy… this game IS awesome… we only played a few… but it was definitely FUN!) 

Twin Falls

woke up early the next morning to head over to twin falls… ate a yummy buffet lunch at the mandrian house… met up with some of pat’s hs friends… and headed out to the other side of the canyon… 

views up and down the canyon

the site of evel knievel’s jump

the other side of the falls…. and some shotgun shells left by someone…  there were more in various places we walked to…

the aftermath….

Tamarack

drove up to Tamarack and met up with pat’s uncle and snowboarded the two days… they were all staying at the lodge so we got to crash on the couch… the conditions were nice… but it was sooooooooooooo cooooooold…. and since the last time we were here last year so much has been built up… it’s pretty cool… seeing the development of the resort each year we come… more lifts opened…

view at sunrise from the lodge….

pat and i at the top of summit express…

the rest of the trip was pretty chill…pretty much just played mah jong, snowboarded, hung out…. it was a nice relaxing break…

FINALLY updated this!

trying to update my xanga… this happened like a 3 weeks ago….

we had a kimono show for a week….monday was pretty much an ALL-DAY set up… but in the end… the gallery looked awesome!  sooooooooooo many pretty kimono and obi and other kimono accessories….

my dad’s cousin, who’s a kimono stylist in japan, brought the different designs he made…. he’ll be back again in april showing at the asian art museum in sf!  the main reason for him doing the show is to expose people to kimono…. b/c in a few years kimono/obi making may be a dying art!  when we went to the different places to see only a few steps of the process…it’s just AMAZING…but it’s sad that many of the places where the did the work in this one special district has turned into ‘mansions’ (condos)…

so at the store there were kimono demonstrations, questions answered, he even got to dress some of the customers… it was pretty neat… can’t wait till april!

the pictures do NOT do justice to what was there… and when you heard about HOW they were made…. it’s just incredible!

AWESOME!  one of the best bowl games i’ve ever watched!  after being in idaho for a week…. everyone in their safety orange….. CRAZY!!!!  i could seriously watch it all over again!

xmas eve was fun as usual!  uncle gosei cooked up some filet mignon all the way from harris ranch…thanks to pat!  mmmm…. the meat was so tender you could have cut it with a fork!  soooooooo yummy… this xmas filet mignon is definitely up there with my steak/meat experiences….  my uncle even brought a special pan to grill shapes into the meat….

no ‘arts and crafts’ this year… everyone was busy with work and family matters…

anyway… lots of food and fun with the fam… and the usual grandkids pictures in front of the xmas tree….

on a side note… the tree fell over 3 times this year… the angel we always put on the top for years was damaged when we took it out… everything was okay… it’s face was intact but it was missing the rest of the head which we couldn’t find… so grandma went out and bought another…

uncle gosei sleeping…pat sleeping… my dad listening to music on his laptop…

thanks everyone who called, texted, e-mailed, commented, e-carded, sent birthday cards… it was a pretty low key birthday…ate take out baja fresh quickly and sped over to the theater to catch ‘casino royale’…. FINALLY…anyway… it was nice… i think we’re going out tomorrow with the fam for a joint birthday thing with my sister and cousin b/c we didn’t do anything and their’s were in november…

WOOHOO!!!!!!!!!!!  sadly i was unable to watch the game b/c i was at the store and forgot to bring my mini tv to watch the game…..   so pat had to update me on the game….. 7-0….7-2…..then i didn’t hear anything for awhile… and it was 7-9…. 10-9…. the next call i get… “aaaaaahhhhhhhhhh, ahhhhhhhhhhhh, ahhhhhhhhhhhhh, ahhhhhhhhh….” this probably goes on for a minute for me to guess that we’ve won?!?  but it was a minute or so left and we got the interception!!!!!!!!   i’m still waiting to watch a replay of the game… which i missed…but i’m hoping i can find it somewhere to watch it again… the last time we won i was sitting right up in the front at the rose bowl….1st YEAR!!!!!!!! the streak has been broken….. GO Bruins!!!!!!!!   and to honor the victory…. pat and i wore our ucla polos to his company party…..it was awesome!

P.S.   we’ll be playing in the emerald bowl… but we can’t go to the game… we’ll be out of town… *sigh*  we’ll just have to watch it on tv….

in HAWAII!

so we spent the past week, including the thanksgiving holiday, on the big island… my first thanksgiving away from home/family/friends… but it was nice to just relax and take it easy… especially for pat… a lot of the time was spent in front of the tv wat ching….(you can probably skip the next bit if you don’t like sports)

college basketball: ucla in the maui invitational…..pat tried getting tix but it was already sold out… and apparently we looked up later and found out there was a whole package for like 2000 something with flight and lodging and thanksgiving dinner with the team!  hah… anyway… we won!  beating kentucky and georgia tech... woohoo!  yeah for bruin basketball… pretty awesome… then watched the great alaskan shoot out and watched cal win that… and then one of the best games… florida (STUPID) v. kansas… at the las vegas tournament… went to OT.. which actually shouldn’t have been an overtime…but still… kansas won! muahahahahaha… stupid florida… i’m glad they lost!  on to college football… watched the usc v. game…despite being a ucla fan all the way i’m glad usc won… just to show the pac-10 is awesome… watched lots more… some that i remember (off the top of my head)… notre dameboise state v. nevada… asu v. arizona (glad asu won… otherwise az would move up in the pac-10 and pass us in the tie for i forgot what place)…. south florida v. west virginia.. ummm… that’s all i can think of for now… but there were a lot of upsets…. oh yeah.. we even watched women’s volleyball!  ucla v. usc… and we won!  woohoo… and part of the stanford  v. washington game…

anyway… we flew into kona and went straight to the costco for food… and this costco was AWESOME!  it had a lot of my favorite asian foods in bulk… such a pity they don’t have stuff like that here… stocked up on some food and checked in… i guess the highlight of the first day was COSTCO!

trip highlights:
-checked out the beaches near the waikaloa village….ooooooooo pretty olivine

-short hike to the puako petroglyphs…

-pololu valley


-turtles!

-end of chain of craters road

-thurston lava tube…the dark portion with headlamps… but still super dark!

-mauna kea visitor center…volcanic bomb…view of mauna loa…and mauna kea

-looking at the sun with a telescope…

-shave ice

-waipi’o valley

-malasadas from tex’s


-beautiful views driving

thanksgiving day… one that i will definitely remember… not b/c it was just the two of us.. .but b/c there was an earthquake!  i was walking into the kitchen and pat was taking a shower… and there was this jolt… although i guess the both of us first thought about the family staying above us… b/c you would hear constant stomping… or at least figure out where these people were!  but it was definitely too big for that!

 

we took guesses at how big it was… but it was bigger than we thought… it was a 5.0 with the epicenter near waikaloa… a aftershock from the october earthquakes they had last month… it took about 20 minutes later for anything to come on tv about it…

the week was definitely nice… despite being away from black friday shopping and best buy…. no crowds, not having to worry about parking… just awesome views everywhere and a relaxing time….