All the Candy You Should be Eating

   

Babbles From my Relative

Marion:(Marion opens her gifts)Candy-hmmmm yummmmmm  Energy in the morning

Marion:I'll have candy instead of cereal tomorrow or candy instead of pop for breakfast

Marion:Reese's Pieces- Yay! Protein

Marion:Hmm what's in this gift?

Brother:Its sea salt

Marion:Oh No! Sea salt is not good for you

Brother:Its a gift card with an endless supply of sea salt in the box

Marion:Oh, that's Terrible!

 

 

 

 

  

Musings on Italy and Beyond

   

The ice is melting in Minnesota. I woke up this morning and instead of watching the parades that bombard the networks on December 24th  I decided to search very hard on finding posts on people's blogs that cater to their kids and the fabulous work by parents in nurturing them.  

Here's www.amommyabroad.com a woman writes about her life in Europe and she writes a post called Teaching my monster to read and below that is a post about bringing her kid to the circus.  I love the fact that in their is a stuffed angry bird in the background of her kid's stuffed animal collection.  Her post on taking her kid to the circus in Italy is very similar with my post about going to see Disney on Ice.  So I had to check out her pictures on a Circus overseas.  So here's what they seen at the circus according to her There were acrobats, roller skaters, horses, trapeze artists, a hula hoop girl.
Here is another blog, this family is actually visiting Minnesota currently but they have travelled throughout China. petersonchina.blogspot.co.uk/ They have four kids many of which are adopted.  Which I love because I myself was adopted and consider it a blessing to be adopted.   
 

Raining non stop in Minnesota

The sun sets amongst a cold dreary day.  Between two rows of rooftops slightly below their edge lies a circle the size of a tree stump.  Its outlined with  holiday lights enveloping a house like a looking glass.  Rows and rows of lights that mesmerize you and  for a second you don't think about the fact that its too cold, because there is absolutely no snow on the ground and its the 23rd of December in Minnesota which is unbelievable and you sit outside for a second, for two seconds for three and the scene is all too familiar.  Yes- its a reminder from the holiday you spent in Britain.  This place can't be Minnesota, you think.

Dancing in the Winter

Take me Home

Feeling Green in Roseville

Our Juicy Nukes and Crannies in Minneapolis

As I was travelling through south Minneapolis, I seen some fabulous businesses with even more bright colors than I ever thought possible.  
I was on my way to  drop off six bags of stuff from my house to Arc Value Village, a thrift store  There are hundreds of unique places to drop off used stuff and furniture items throughout Minnesota.  Those places include churches which will often go as far as picking up your old furniture.  craigslist  also allows you to post your used items online and you can leave the items near your garage and patrons with come and pick them up.  

Views as a Turbo-Body Pump Fashionista

View at Twin Lake in Robbinsdale, Minnesota










I was at the gym yesterday and I did a Body Pump class which is an aerobic strength training class.  It uses a platform, bar and weights.  We literally pumped it up to a song called What You Got by Colby O'Donis feat. Akon and another song called  Give Me love with LL Cool J feat. Seal. Our teacher challenged us to put more weights on our bars. I throught to myself I'll pass.... If I add any more weight to my bar so early in the game I'll probably wobble right over along with the bar.  

Today was even more work out with turbo class.  Turbo kick is a combination of cardio-kick boxing.  Basically jab punches, hook punches, upper cuts and shuffles.  The punching moves that can be done to the beat of the music, The song we kick-boxed to was quite invigorating, the hardest move of the body pump class was a move called burpee. The burpee is almost impossible as you get older but i have seen women as old as 50 do it.

I'm busy fighting off the calories lately from eating too many cookies some of which include ginger bread cookies, tea cakes, and lebkucken (german ginger cookies which are sold in a bag found at gingerdelights.com.)  

A Bit of Blog with my Tea

I'm reading more blogs.  Let's see this one caught my attention because it has a cartoon picture of a woman flying with an umbrella. How Mary-Poppins-like. its called quintessentially-English This writer has a blog post about reminiscing on the Friends show while she's in England. Obviously she's feeling a bit homesick but I give her credit she'd been in  England for Ten Years. 

Moving forward. Here's a blog from an expat in Norway called meganstarr.com she writes a post called 8 things to love about Minsk.  Here's a flashback from the blog listed above where the previous writer was talking about her love of the show Friends and I recall an episode in Friends where the character Phoebe was in love with a man who worked in Minsk. How coincidental! Anyway, this blog has many lovely pictures of Norway and great pictures of the people if I might add.      

Tiny Notes from Expat Blogs

More Expat blogs that I have viewed.  This one is from an Expat who has lived in India.  Her blog spot is at madamletmetellyouonething.com -Isn't that the greatest name for a blog! Well, I was intrigued right away just because I love the dialogue of a language and especially accents and this blog title was clearly the dialogue from India. I can picture the Panjabi behind it. I just finished watching the movie Fargo and I was so deeply moved by the movie and the depiction of the Minnesotan accent. (my accent)

Anyway madamletmetellyouonething.com  blog writer is currently back in the States but her post Blimey-that took long enough gives you a good indication of what her return trip from India was like not to mention that she is from Ireland but has a British accent, awesome!


I like to pick blogs to read based on whether or not they have a picture of the expat's city that they're currently residing somewhere in the cover page.  No pic of city, no visit to blog.  Well that's not always the case but here's a pretty good blog with a picture of Shanghai, China ephemeraanddetritus.com  She has a post called Tiny Notes from Hanoi.  I'm always looking for attention grabber titles in people's posts and this is definitely one of them.  Isn't the name Hanoi for a city just awesome?  It reminds me of different cities and names of people that my parents used to come tell me about as a kid after their military stay in the Philippines.


Here is another great blog from Shanghai huntingcheeseinchina.blogspot.com instead of lostincheeseland.com we've now got a blog about hunting for cheese.  Hmmm sounds great.  Well this blog has plenty of pictures. Fanstastic! I especially like the color in the pictures and specifically one that shows the outdoor market toys for children to buy in China-way cool, who doesn't love toys by the way. 

Serial Podcast made me feel despondent

 I finally finished Serial Podcast. First released in October 2014, it is a spinoff of the radio program This American Life.

 Season 1 is an investigation into a 1999 Baltimore murder.Hae Min Lee was an 18-year-old student at Woodlawn High School in Baltimore, Maryland. She was last seen at approximately 3:00 p.m. on January 13, 1999. Her corpse was discovered on February 9 in Leakin Park and identified two days later. The case was immediately treated as a homicide^. Lee's ex-boyfriend, Adnan Masud Syed, was arrested on February 28 at 6 a.m. and charged with first-degree murder 

 As the podcast drew to a close after I had been  listening to  it for the past six weeks, I was not pleasantly surprised at the ending.  Of course they wouldn't say that a couple journalists were able to find enough evidence to say that a man who was accused of murder 15 years ago was wrongfully committed.  Adnan Syed may or may not get out of prison but I  learned a few things about the case:

 1. Don't ever think that by speaking with someone whose loved one is in prison that there going to agree with you that another man is innocent.-

 (I learned this the hard way by speaking to a friend of mine about the case she ended up telling me that Adnan Syed probably did it and doesn't deserve freedom, and this accusation is based on what???)

 2. I learned that what a person does before they commit a so-called crime makes a bigger difference than what most people might think.

 3.I learned that audio podcast is a great genre and something I will definitely enjoy in the futurew

Snowmen and a tank?

       

If the above picture looks like a couple of snowmen with an elf sitting on top of a tank made out of a igloo than you, my friend, are right!  The ideas that people in Minneapolis have are so fantastic so innovative so creative.

Contest Continues on Victory Memorial Parkway

       More Lights remind me of a scene from Dr. Seuss The Grinch, when two characters Martha May Whovier and Betty Lou Who compete to see who will when the best decorated house contest.

A Competition on Victory Memorial Parkway

       Last night I was patrolling Minneapolis in search of the biggest and brightest houses.  There is a strip called Victory Memorial Parkway in North Minneapolis and its here that I've always wandered if there is a contest each year on which side of houses will be brighter.  I, myself tried to determine which side is more festive and I couldn't decide.

For more beautiful light displays in United States in general visit six-residential-streets-with-amazing-christmas

Dancing Around the Trees

What did I tell you people... a few days after all the snow melted in Minnesota there would be snow two days later.  It's all good. I'm glad the tall trees give us some shelter. Although the ordinances for having trees in your yard is unbelievable.  I was talking to a neighborhood who said that she had to chop down her lovely fern recently because parts of it had died and she said she was so disappointed because she had moved to that home particularly because she liked the tree, and then she had to pay $2000.00 US to chop it down as well! Chopping down the tree is a chore- I should know because my childhood friend's father chops down trees for a living and let me tell you that the only thing fun about it is hoisting yourself up in the tree by rope and being able to gaze at the streets below.

End of the Year Dancin'

We're wrapping up our Zumba dance year at the YMCA and these were just some of my favorite songs that we danced too....

Wake me up When It's All Over
Ont top of the World
Summer in the City
Addicted to You
Let it Go
We're in the Money
Roar
Eye of the Tiger
Stay Gold
Boom Clap
Ani Estagea
Rumor has it
Bad
Do you believe in Magic
Can't Touch This

Dancing with Penguins

Apparently even the penguins need ear muffs in this frigid environment.  No time to scope out Saint Paul Minnesota today, I'm afraid.  I am too busy shoveling snow and wiping off the car windshield.  That's fine though there is always something to look forward too and something to see.  The weather man said we got more cold in November than we did in all of December.  

Musings on Websites I follow

I'm taking some time to recognize some popular blogs that I frequently vist for inspiration and just because there great.
I enjoy travel blogs the most because I thought I would be traveling abroad and teaching in lands far and beyond but then I realized that I may or may not have the stomach to do such things (I've traveled- take my word for it).  So then I decided to focus on my everyday life in my blog writing.  I've changed the formatting of my blog added pictures, done some crazy features and now I'm settling in on the writings that I'm currently doing.  I've learned that its easier not to limit yourself in your blog writing. 

Here is a list of places I visit on google or blogs I recently found and like:

www.expatsblog.com     This literally has a list of more than a thousand blogs that a person can go to if they want to read about expats.  It has blogs from the most popular regions of the world, including the US which to me is not really expatriot lol.

www.amazingplacestosee.com  This site has tons of great pictures and fantastic musings, you can't help but like and comment on the pictures in this blog

www.lostincheeseland.com   This site I came to like and added to my blog roll just because its about an expatriot who is in France and blogs about her experience. I also been to France so I love to read about the hidden jems in this blog.  Also there is more than 165 expatriot blogs on the above listed expatsblog.com website listing France as the most common place to visit, or live (as an American) so I had to add it.

1952tang on google.  I follow this.  My dad's been to Vietnam and thought it would be a great place to learn more things about it

http://wnwlife.com/.

Dancing through the night with Snoopy and Friends

   

I went through the area of Shakopee today (921 Shakopee Ave) and they had this display with a ferris wheel and stuffed animals sitting on this lift. It was pretty adorable. The display also had a seasaw, merry-go-round, seesaw, swings and moving train set with guess what! Additional stuffed bears on each ride.








There was also a miniture hockey game going on with charcters like Charlie Brown, Patty, Shermy, Snoopy, Violet Gray, Schroeder, Lucy Van Pelt.( Score Snoopy 2, Woodstock 2) 

More lovely homes near South St. Paul

   

 

 

 

As I toured the neighborhood I notice caseline windows and red bordered shutters make these homes in South Saint Paul unique and homely

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Although when I see homes like the one below I think of more nuclear homes that remind me of a might be powered with generators.

Considering London Flats and American Apartments

 Otherwise after visiting London in 2011 I always wandered if we have the same compact housing and flats that are literally connected to one another in America and we do. All though these are more like apartments they are located in the city of Crystal. Some say that flats in London are one level abodes and that they tend are houses which are later split up into separate residences. Others say flats consist of one level, having no second or third floor by way of a staircase and are therefore flat!

 

 

 

 

 

It's actually in the 40's in Minnesota and I don't care what anyone says I'd rather take a rainy day than a drop in temperature. We've had three days of straight rain but at least I can go outside without scraping the ice off my windows or take a walk without falling on the ice or turn my steering wheel without feeling the gripping cold from my exposed hands. Much of the snow has melted in many of the residences near my home but watch for updates on my blog as its supposed to drop to twenty degrees Fahrenheit by Tuesday and snow is expected. 

Disney on Ice:Lets not forget the Green Soldiers from Toy Story 3

Its hard to believe that these Green Soldiers from Toy Story 3 have skates on while doing this performance. The Xcel Energy Disney on Ice performance was spectacular!

Disney on Ice Barbie and Ken

     

I absolutely loved this scene. Ken and Barbie's plastic hair is so flattering for their characters.

More Scenes of St. Paul

      

More of St. Paul on the way to the Xcel Energy Center, St.Paul.  I have to be careful while manuevering through this city.

A Piece of Cake in St. Paul

      

I took a break from going to the Disney on Ice yesterday at Xcel Energy center in St. Paul to go to Piece of Cake, a cafe in St. Paul. I chose a nice chocolate creme bar to eat from the bottom shelf in the picture on the right side.  Although the chocolate gonache cupcakes looked equally delicious.

Disney on Ice at Xcel Energy

The Disney on Ice experience set off on time at 10am at Xcel Energy in downtown St. Paul Minnesota.    Literal sized cars from the movie Cars transcended themselves on the ice and followed one another skiting on the slippery ice as it would allow giving new meaning to the word fishtail. 


Following that scene was the The Little Mermaid.  Any young girl would be able to connect with this movie and songs like A Whole New World and Under the Sea as the dancing crab Sebastian (seen in the picture above) located himself at the four corners of the Xcel center's stage and motivated the audience to clap along to the song.



 Following that skating performance was the  Tinkerbell movie where characters like fawn, Silvermist, Iridessa, Rosetta, Fairy Mary, Terence, Clark, Bobbie, Queen Clarion and all of the other characters from the movie eagerly introduced themselves to the audience.  How they managed to get themselves on a platform shaped like a four foot chopped down tree trunk is beyond me. But their skates dug in the platform and they eagerly climbed and stood center stage waiting for the  song to introduce each of them.



  The stage effects of the performance were unbelievable.  Tinker bell was hoisted fifty feet in the air so that that she could fly and spread her famous pixie dust on the audience below.  Fairy Godmothers in big  dresses were hoisted above as well.  While skaters below did their typical routines triple axels, toe loop jumps, triple loops, lots of camel spins where skaters' legs extended in beautiful arabesques.  The fairy costumes of these skaters fit perfectly with  what a natural figure skater would wear, although some of the skaters were as fortunate to have easily moving costumes like Ursella in Little Mermaid or Slinky from Toy Story who needed a  skater in front and back to function his moving slinky body








https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9MFJBUjHMk&feature=youtu.be.

Strolling Through St. Paul, Minnesota

Some Homes I viewed on my way through beautiful St. Paul, near Shelby Street.  This is like a miniture versian of the Iran palace.

Taking the snow in Minnesota to the Ice with the movie Frozen

I'm going to see Frozen at the Xcel, Downtown St. Paul today.  I'm hoping to walk away with a sense of dance on Ice.  I'll fill you in if about my experience and how it correlates with the same Disneyland experience I had as a kid.  Will Elsa be the same character as the movie suggests? Or will she be the same criticized character that people have been talking about?  Will the music  from the movie Frozen be as memorable as the famous youtube clips sang by kids who adore the movie Frozen.  

Zumba in Minnesota

When I'm not doing my writing, I'm at the gym doin my zumba.  Minnesota has countless gyms that cater to those who want to do fitness on the go.  Choose your time.  Mine is usually 9am not to early and not too late in the morning.  Although you can get a class as early as 5am, although those are usually work out classes that cater to lifting weights or work out in chair classes, yoga, etc.   Zumba is fast paced and usually combines mexican and hip hop music so its right up my alley.

Story #2, A story of Zombies: Five scares in December

The Zombies' quickened movements allow suspense in their dance. Their legs constantly fidget and move rapidly.  A scream
shrieks out at one point of the song and the sound is so loud that some of the audience screams in enjoyment matching the screamer's pitch.

There isn't for a moment a single dancer getting out of character, some of the looks on the dancers faces are so intense that they frighten the audience, their red lips reminiscent of blood of human they recently devoured.  A dancer bangs her head down, she's the obvious leader of the pack in an all-white tattered zombie dress. She dances in front of them.  The dancers are in four lines and each line slowly descends to the floor.  The front row is down first
till the very last row.  Each of the rows are crawling on the ground, and their newest captured human
emerges from a huddle that the dancers created to show that she's transitioned into a zombie herself.  Her first walks in front of the dancers show that she is staggering like a toddler taking its first steps.

Serialpodcast.org, A Podcast Writers are Loving

I'm listening to serial podcast. at serialpodcast.org and I'm on episode 10.  I'm enthralled with the series but more importantly this episode and how the journalist described Christina Guteriz as some who flew across the office, yelling orders, intimidating people right and left.  She was the defense lawyer in Adnan's murder conviction case and she just sounds like no one I never knew.  Especially when you hear her voice in the proceedings, it sounds like a cross between Fran from the Nanny and Joan Rivers.