Bye Bye Beverly

Our beloved dog walker Beverly had her last day with us March 14th and she's off to Alberta Canada to be a domestic helper there. Many Filipina domestic helpers try to get jobs in Canada because after 2 years, they can establish residency, and as Beverly tells me often, life in the Philippines is very, very hard.

(Here's Bailey the moment Beverly came in for her last day. Bailey's yelling "please don't gooooo" or more likely "where's my foooooood")

Beverly has been working for us since January 2007 and she comes over for 1-hour each day to take Bailey for a walk and then do some light housework. Right now, we don't have a replacement for Beverly but since I work only a few blocks from our apartment, I'm going to try coming home on my lunch to walk Bailey to see if that works. Of course, then Mark can do the dishes and toilet cleaning. Riiiiight.

Trip to Korea
Other exciting news is we're trying to plan a weekend trip to Seoul Korea to see Mark's old Kelso buddy Bill Elliot. Bill moved to Korea to teach about 15 years ago I think, and he's stayed, married and they've had 2 babies already. We'll probably go the weekend of April 1st since that's a national holiday here and we already get the day off. Just need to buy the tickets and get it done.

Mark goes hiking
Other than those big newsworthy things, everything else is same old, same old. We went for a hike with Alexis and Rob 2 weeks ago and Mark actually decided to join us.

We capped off the walk with some Mexican food and 2 pitchers of Margarhita's so it wasn't exactly a 100% healthy day.

Hong Kongisms
This is a funny sign that always makes me giggle. It's so graphically accurate that no matter what language you speak, there's no missing the point. (Notice the fishball skewer on the ground in the bottom right corner, a very accurate thing to see on the ground here, much more common than a green snotty loogie)

Also funny is that this sign was at the top of the hike up a dirt trail. No spitting, even in the wilderness, and we mean it!

Another funny, what the heck, were these pretty water spillways that we saw throughout the hike, but they always had a broom hidden in the trees. Who, I wonder, goes up onto the dirt trail and sweeps the rocks?

Dinner at the Spicy Crab
Last weekend we went out with Alexis and Rob again, and some of their friends visiting from Australia. We went to a favorite restaurant of ours called the Spicy Crab. Here's the famous spicy crab covered in fried, garlic spicy crumbles. The restaurant is very local, and has very good seafood. I got a few pictures of some of our meal. Of course, they brought the live fish to our table before the meal so we could inspect it as it flopped in it's pitiful green tub. (so sad)

We also tried pigeon for the 1st time. Tasted like duck or really dark chicken meat.