Rarotonga

Here are some details on my vacations. Michelle couldn't make it due to classes so this year we are vacationing seperately. She was in Oaxaca for a class when I left. The first stop is Tahiti. 8) only 90 minutes tho. Anyway, I heard it was not that good. Everything is very expensive and they didn't have any good beaches. My first real stop was Rarotonga, Cook Island. Rarotonga is about 30km in diameter. I rented a scooter and had a blast riding it around. The food on the Island was pretty pricey. Good thing the backpacker place had a kitchen, there are only expensive restaurants near Muri beach. I had mostly ramen and tomato sandwich. I call it the Rarotonga diet.
My room is right on the beach - 20 bucks. There were 5 bed in that room though. A lot of people were from the U.K. Mostly starting off or ending their year long trip, nice...
Anyway, I spend a nice relaxing 5 days relaxing and snorkeling. It was great, I'll definitely bring Michelle next time. This Island is pretty relaxing, not a lot of tourists.

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summer garden

Hola,
Here are some shots of our garden. We had a very good crop this year on pretty much everything except Blue berries. Blue berries did not have any fruit this year again, I don't know why, probably something to do with the soil. Here we have Grapes, Asian Pears, Figs and Kiwi. The Kiwi does not have fruit yet, maybe next year. It is still growing, hopefully next year it will cover more of the porch. Most of the Figs are not ripe for some reason. We ate a few ripe ones and they were really yummy.
We had really good apple crop this year too, but we don't eat them much so they just fall to the ground.
That's it. Pretty slow week. I'm looking forward to seeing mom and dad soon.

wine tasting and Eugene visit

Hi everyone,
Michelle came back from training in Denver and have two weeks at home before going off to Oaxaca for a two weeks class. There are some problems in Oaxaca right now, teacher protests and some other things are combining into a big anti-government protest. Hopefully there are no problems for Michelle. Anyway, we went wine tasting at the Kings Estate winery near Eugene. I went with Nok last year when Michelle was at a conference in Eugene so this year I'm taking Michelle. Now they have a big tasting room and a restaurant. They don't want you to bring your own food anymore, we had to go down to the picnic area to have a little picnic. Anyway, Michelle had a chance to take a winery tour and looked at the cellar and the old tasting room.
















































After the winery tasting, we went to visit Jesse and Co. Meagan and Ryan are quite enegetic and both are very talkative. It was great to see them again. Hopefully they can come to visit us in Portland sometime soon.