Here We Are

Airbnb in Barcelona was lovely Jake and I had two weeks off for winter break and we decided to spend it in Spain, with a trip to the small neighboring country of Andorra. Spain was one of the few European countries Jake had never visited so he wanted to check it off his list. I went to Madrid in 2012 to visit my friend Courtney. It was a great trip, but not long enough, and as soon as you start looking into visiting Spain, you realize just how many cities there are to see. Even after our two week stint there, we are sure to return because we still haven't seen the southern half of the country. Barcelona seemed like the place to go, so we planned our trip around Barcelona and the Catalan region, which is in northeastern Spain. Jake is all about crossing countries off his list and visiting the world's tiniest countries, so he was insistent on a trip to Andorra. Brittany + Adam touring us around the city My friend Brittany and her husband Adam are currently living in Ge...

Hassan II Mosque in Casablanca Now for a quick review of our trip to Morocco last fall... We travelled with our friends, Rachael and Alex. They planned most of the trip, luckily, because we ended up being sick the entire vacation. Morocco will always be remembered as The Trip Spent on the Toilet.   Two days before we flew out to Casablanca, we had our friends Laura and Larisa over for dinner. The meal was a group effort: Larisa made soup, Laura brought salad, and I provided bread and drinks. There was nothing particularly memorable about the dinner at the time, but fast forward seven months and we are still joking about it. Two days after dinner (the night before our early morning flight) Jake was in bed with a fever all night, and making trips to the bathroom. I didn't think too much of it, besides that it was unfortunate timing, as we would spend the majority of the next day in the air. After hearing that Laura, her boyfriend, and Larisa, were all sick as well, we began t...

After fourteen months of silence on the blog front, I will open up now with a trip to the hospital. I spent two nights this week in Al Ahli Hospital, which is located about 2 minutes from my house. Let me rewind and explain how this came to be. We are currently halfway through our second year living in Doha. I had not had any sort of medical check up since moving here (besides dental), so I asked around for an OB-GYN and scheduled an appointment. This was in early February.  I went in fully expecting just to talk with the doctor, instead of actually receiving a check up. I had heard from other teachers here that insurance has to be approved first, so you cannot actually have anything done during the first visit. The doctor asked me a couple questions, and seemed very surprised to hear that I have an IUD (mirena) in place, even though I do not have any children. This was a concern I had two years ago when I had it put in, because I had heard that IUD's are for women who have ...

Well, folks. It is nearing the end of January and 2015 is off to a pretty incredible start. It has been busy, but more importantly, the last few weeks have just been so much fun. So fun that I have decided I need to make note of them, record the memories, keep them somewhere safe. However, I still have a lot of adventures from last year that I have yet to share or record.  So here are some thoughts on our trip to Singapore, which was last October. View from Robert and Paul's  First of all, we got to stay with Jake's mom's cousin-Robert, and his partner Paul. Robert and Paul were amazing hosts and we told them they should charge people for their tours. They showed us what we needed to see, taught us interesting facts about Singapore, cooked amazing food, took us to restaurants with delicious food, and provided such great conversation for an entire week! We were so lucky to be able to stay with family while visiting a new country, so far from home. Looking down f...