Emily and I are a week into our summer job. This summer we have been fortunate to get jobs detasseling corn thanks to my dad who, in his words, “badgered” our new boss until he agreed to employ us. Thanks dad! Our new boss is an Amish gentleman named Levi Bontrager who runs a 200 person detasseling crew. Not only that but my little sister is doing it with us so we’re having lots of fun!

Unfortunately though the weather hasn’t cooperated. Normally the season starts around the beginning of July and goes really strong for 3-5 weeks and ends. This year the planting didn’t happen until later because its been such a cold summer and even now, towards the end of July, different fields are becoming ready to be detasseled at different times. Because of this we’ve only worked 4 days during the last week. Not only that but the four days have been half-days so its really more like two, short days of work. Its kind of a bummer because we could’ve used these days to visit more people but as it is we work from the early morning until around noon and then a trip up to Lansing or Milwaukee or Kalamazoo or (insert a place here) isn’t as justified. Oh well…we are very grateful to even have summer jobs to begin with.

I’ve been reading The Odyssey and it made me think how great adventure and travel narratives are. With this in mind I’ve created a category in the sidebar appropriately titled “travel.” All of our posts from our Philippines and Korea vacations are there along with posts about our travel back and forth between Taiwan and America. While they are adventure and travel narratives they probably won’t become quite the classic that Homer wrote though. I guess a lot of our posts about Taiwan would be considered of the adventure/travel variety as well but I just don’t think of Taiwan that way…it being my home and all. Maybe I should create an “exploring Taiwan” category for those or something.

Anyways its been fun reading The Odyssey. I feel like I understand a lot more than otherwise having taken that Classical Mythology class first semester of this past school year. It hasn’t been a page turner for me or anything but I’ve enjoyed it. Its crazy to think that the same story I’m reading was told at dinner parties before Jesus Christ even made his earthly appearance. Part of me thinks its still read only because its so old but then another part of me thinks there’s got to be more to it then that.

Thanks to Dan & Roberto (two friends) my computer is back on Windows XP and I’m able to use my video editing software again! I’ve already taken advantage and put up more Korea footage. While its not as flashy as the other “Michael and Emily go to Korea” videos its up and you can watch it here.

One more thing I must mention is food. The other day I had my first Qdoba burrito of the summer and LOVED it! This evening I had scrumtrulecent Chili made by my wife and my mom who followed a recipe from my sister-in-law…the double-F: Family & Food! Life is good!!!

Today at our wonderful and awesome church a friend of ours told me how she has really enjoyed reading this blog. This totally surprised me because I never really think anybody reads our posts except for my mom and maybe our other family members…..sometimes. Mrs. F’s comment made my day and this post is dedicated to her.

You know those pay phones at airports you can use your credit card in to make long-distance phone calls? Well we were delayed in Denver on our way from Los Angeles to Detroit on our way home for summer break so I used one of these pay phones to call my dad to let him know so that he could tell my sister not to go to pick us up at the Detroit airport until later. Today I looked at my credit card statement and found out that call cost me $16!!! Next time I’m going to walk up to a stranger and ask if they’d let me use their cell phone for five bucks. SHEEESH!!!

Home has been great! Work in the corn fields has been delayed thus far due to weather and we’ve taken advantage of the time. A few days ago we had a wonderful visit with my honorary grandma, Elenita. She seemed to be doing fantastic and it was so nice to feel her love and visit with her.

A definite highlight of our vacation to date was a joint family trip to Lake Michigan for a day on the beach. Emily and I invited both of our families to go and almost all of them were able to yesterday. We missed having my sister there but when you are a general manager of a business sometimes duty calls. My brother also had the swell idea of cooking out at a nearby park after we were done swimming which was “how bung” (chinese for great)! After parents and babies called it a day several of us stayed for the sunset. It was beautiful with lots of yellows, reds, purples, and couples sitting on the beach alternating between looking at each other and out over the water. It was fun to notice the differences in the beach compared with Taiwan. The sand was a lot softer and finer. The waves were almost non-existent, and I felt no under-tow whatsoever. I love the waves of Taiwan but it was nice to be able to swim without fearing death for a change. The sun was a lot less intense as well. It was comfortably sunny and warm but not the oven-baking feeling of the Taiwan beach experience! We’ve got it good here in Michigan.

Tomorrow we are very excited to spend some time with some of the best people in the world….you know who you are!!!

Well we made it home for summer break!

We said goodbye to our flat-mates last week and boarded our Malaysia Airlines flight to California. We sat next to this guy who told us story after story. He was born in Taiwan and had been visiting his mother for two months. However, for the past thirty years he has lived in the USA and currently lives in Lacuna Beach. He’s a millionaire who made his money in one-hour photo shops and real-estate. Paul was definitely an entertaining guy. I love the fact that he was sitting with us in straight-up Economy (not even business class) and talked about how he just bought his daughter a new BMW.

Let me take a minute here to give my full endorsement to Malaysia Airlines. The seats go way far back, lots of leg room (seriously I felt just as good as if I was sitting in an exit row), and….drum roll please….the food was not only edible it was good. Just to rub it in, the dinner they served me was Seafood Ragout! Boom shaka laka! The service was fantastic as well with very nice flight attendants who were always bringing stuff around without any call buttons being hit. Finally I must mention the fact that even though they made Emily check her carry-on because it was too heavy they didn’t charge extra. I’d definitely use their services again!

We landed at LAX in the middle of the day and decided to try our hands at American public transportation after all our experience overseas because the alternative: the shuttle service to Pasadena where we were headed, was $25 a-person. YUCK! Emily and I read up online and discovered we could take the free airport shuttle to Parking Lot C, get on the 439 LA city bus and ride it to Union Station where we could catch the metro to Pasadena. The ride to the parking lot was short but the 439 ride was like 2 and a half to 3 hours long. The metro ride was only about 20 minutes. The bus was like $1.60ish per person and the metro was $1.25 per person so what we might do next time if we are in more of a hurry is take the $5 shuttle from LAX straight to Union Station instead of the city bus. It did feel great to cheat LA out of its reputation for being un-navigable with public transportation…I’m becoming my dad.

Even though it was a long ride its good that we took the 439 this time. 1 because we had plenty of time to kill before our friends got off work and 2 because we had a very nice conversation with a movie star. Carey Westbrook got on the bus not long after we did, came straight to the back of the bus where we were sitting with our bags and before long we were chatting away. He told us all about the movie, Blue Valentine, he just got done shooting with Ryan Gosling which is scheduled for release in 2010 and how he’s juggling his movie career with his two part-time jobs, one at a cemetery and one as a night-watchmen at the newspaper. The newspaper bit launched us into a conversation about where to get real news with Carey advising us that www.democracynow.org is where its at. We found common ground learning that he spent a few weeks in South Korea teaching English but decided to cut it short and instead of sticking around asked his students how to say “I want to go to the airport” in Korean. Before he got off the bus I was also able to squeeze some marriage advice out of him. Even though he’s not married his relationship with his long-time girlfriend has taught him a few things he told me. Carey advised me to remember three things when the woman in my life is talking to me. Every once in a while I should say “ya gotta watch out for that” or “thats what they do” or….sadly it seems the third one has already left me. If my woman then questions me on whether I was really listening or not I should quickly respond “I said thats what they do.” Carey was a really cool guy and thankfully I got a picture with him before he got off so that when he makes it big I can say I knew him when.

After the metro ride from Union Station we walked the 5 or so blocks from the metro station in Pasadena to our friends’ house and had a great few days visiting with them. Afterwards they took us to the airport and we got on our Frontier Airlines flight to Detroit. Nothing that good to say about Frontier other than they are cheap and got us to where we were going. I’d compare them to Spirit Airlines. Basic, cheap travel. One thing to remember though is that Frontier charges $15 for even the first bag so factor that in when you are buying tickets.

It was great to be back in Detroit and see my sister who came and picked us up. I was so revved up we stayed up late eating Taco Bell and watching a movie!

Since then we’ve gone to a July 4th party with friends from church, gone to church, and spent lots of time with our families!

Work should start on Monday!