Japan

Nagoya is a very quiet and clean city. I imagine the rest of Japan is just as great. The people are very polite here and bow all the time as a form of respect. It's a bit funny to see, actually. I had to chuckle when we first arrived at the hotel and the lady helping us with our luggage kept bowing low. All the taxis are very clean and neat. All the taxi drivers wear suits. All the cars are waxed and shiny. All the cars stop when the light is red and people only cross the streets when the green man says 'GO'. Very orderly and refreshing.
TP had meetings the first part of our time here and then we were able to see a few sites, eat some great Japanese food, and do a little shopping. The guy who works with TP here in Japan took us to a historical castle--I imagined something like a castle in England, but of course, it was more like an Asian temple...and to his home. He lives up in the mountains of Japan and I kept forgetting we were in Asia while we were up there. It looked like good ol' C. County. His home is an actual tree house in the mountains that he designed himself, actually elevated off the ground.
In TP's meeting on Monday Gary Stevenson from the first quorum of the seventy was able to attend. Gary is one of the owners of TP's company and is now serving as the Asia Area President in Japan. It was very neat to meet him. If you all remember he spoke in General Conference 2008 about looking toward the temple and used the Logan Temple as his example. Will was very honored to meet him as well.


We return home this evening and get to put our house together since we moved the day before we came here. Yes, we will have to switch branches, unfortunately, but I am also looking forward to living closer to members. There are a few families that I have heard of that live in our same complex. We love being in our current branch and were going to keep our move a secret so we could continue to attend, but alas, our secret has leaked. We thought it would be easy to keep a secret since only a few friends of ours have actually been to the house (we live the farthest from anyone), and there were a few key people that we decided couldn't know because of their calling (Elders Quorum, clerk, and Branch President) since they might be obligated to tell us to switch. One of those key people was buying our treadmill from us and was coming to pick it up the day we were moving. The treadmill movers came and moved the Incline Trainer to our new location and moved the other to the lobby so this key person could pick it up easily, but it worked out that he came early and asked to come up to the apartment...Since all of our belongings were packed up I had to brief him in the elevator and he ends with "I'll keep your secret." ! Wow! Really?! Too cool, I thought. Since no one knew about the move we couldn't really ask for help so we did it all ourselves, and it took all day long. By nightfall we were in our new apartment and I get a phone call from my friend who is the Primary President and whose husband is in the branch presidency. "Did you move to Pudong?" She asks... and our secret is blown. :)

In WB news: He is running all over the place and getting into everything. While I was unpacking a few things the morning before we left WB was running all over and getting into everything. After a moment I couldn't hear him and found him in the storage room sitting amongst our vitamins and calcium pills with a multivitamin in his mouth, him in the middle trying to get all the caps off (he can now unscrew lids of things, like toothpaste, and vitamins). In our new apt. the landlord has a big statue of Buddha about the same size as WB that she hasn't removed yet and and W will often stand in front of this statue and have a conversation with it. He sure has a lot to say.

Japan, Moving

I'm making this post from my hotel room in Japan right now. Jen is asleep on the bed next to me and Will is asleep in his crib. Originally I wasn't supposed to come to Japan until the middle of September but I recieved a phone call just a couple of days ago saying that I needed to be here on Monday for an important meeting. Because I had just spent the previous week in South Africa and Thailand I felt bad coming home for just 24 hrs before jumping on a plane to Japan, so I booked three tickets instead of one and brought the whole family along. I however, am exhauseted. In the past four days I've been in four countries, South Africa, Thailand, China, and Japan - these places aren't exactly next door! But at least Jen and Will are with me now.  This is the 4th country Will has been to before turning 1 years old, little fella is starting to fill up his passport!

In the 24 hours that I was home this weekend we spent out weekend in true Price fashion, we moved!  We moved to the other side of the river in Shanghai.  The area where we live is called Pudong.  This is an exciting move for us because in this area of the city we will be able to run outside and we are close to big parks and fun areas for Will.  To put it in my sister's terms, this new area is much less 'Chinese-y' as it had sidewalks, trees, parks and much less traffic.  Our new compound is quite large with about 100 buildings in it that are all over 30 stories tall, so we probably have a couple hundred thousand people living in our compound alone.  But the compound is very kid friendly and very cool.  Moving by yourself makes for a very long day.  Jen kept Will entertained and cleaned the old place while me and the driver lifted boxes and made trips back and forth all day long.  We are looking forward to getting settled in the new place and will post pictures once we do.

This is a moving-truck-taxi that we called up.  These have pay meters just like a regular taxi.  In the end this truck cost me a whopping $16, not bad! 

These are the moving boxes that we bought online and had delivered to the house.  While I was traveling Jen packed up the whole place in these boxes and labeled everything so that when we moved into the new place we knew where every box needed to go.  Way to go Jen!

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This is Will at a Japanese restraunt in Japan last night.  He was really liking the miso soup and couldn't get enough of it.  He got tired of waiting for spoon fulls so he just dove right in and started drinking it up.

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I forgot to post this picture last time.  This is the view out my hotel room window in Cape Town, South Africa.  This is the Atlantic Ocean so it's very cold.

This is out the window of my hotel room in Durban, South Africa.  This is the India Ocean so it's very warm.  The warm ocean makes for nasty flights over it.  It sends up drafts of warm air which create a lot of turbulance for the plane.  The flight from SA to Thailand was 11 hours of the plane bouncing all over the place.  I hate this flight.

South Africa

I'm in Cape Town, South Africa right now.  It's nice to have access to blogs again.  Since I have the opportunity I thought I'd post real quick. Yesterday I was in Johannesburg and was able to attend a big rugby game.  The game was a lot of fun but I still don't completely understand all of the rules and strategies etc.  This picture below is of a percussion and dance group that was playing music outside of the stadium before the game.  They were play the world cup theme song, Waka Waka by Shakira (one of WB's new favorites)

I bought a South African Springbox jersey at the game.  It was only fitting since the other 95,000 people were ALL wearing jerseys.  Rugby is less of a game and more of a religion in SA and NZ.  During the game I was getting constant texts from my friend/colleuge in NZ who was awake watching the game with his 3 sons at 3am NZ time.  They are so passionate about this game.

Here is a picture during the game.  The New Zealand team (All Blacks) won the game.  I think most of the players on the team were cousins of the UofU and BYU football players. 

I had a bumpy flight from Joburg to Cape Town today.  It is winter here in South Africa right now.  But after landing I went to the hotel which is right on the ocean with an amazing ocean view.  The waves are crashing cloudly outside my window right now.  Then I went and had a great seafood dinner at a small restraunt accross the street from the beach.  Jen isn't a big seafood fan so I usually eat seafood when I travel.  The seafood in Cape Town is always sensational. Tomorrow I fly to Durban for a Tuesday meeting and then back up to Joburg for one final meeting before going to Thailand for a meeting then finally back home on Friday.  A flight per day for a week is not my idea of a good time.

This is the stadium where the world cup final was held. I'm here for the biggest rugby game of the year. South Africa vs new Zealand. Sold out crowd of 97,000. I'm on the 10th on the 50 yard line. Very cool.

The story behind the hair

For a while now TP has been telling me I need to cut WB's (Wild Bill) hair. It's an uneven length, and it's super hot and humid here, but I still haven't been able to do it. I was liking the mohawk look. Last week I went to the outdoor marktet and left Will with TP-- TP sitting on the chair, Wild B playing on the carpet. I told him I'd be quick but before I knew it I was gone 45 minutes. Upon my return I walked in with a grin on my face knowing I had taken my time and I said, "You're the greatest :) Thanks :)" He had an equally devlish grin on his face to which he replied, "Don't thank me till you look at Will."

I hit the ground laughing so hard. TP had taken the clippers to Wild B's hair and gave him a buzz. I couldn't believe he actually attempted it himself. I couldn't help but laugh because W. just looks so darn cute. He is so darling and so big. My little baby is growing up so fast.

Did I mention he has four teeth on top, and two below?

Did I mention that he is also walking right now? He tucks his little head into his neck and stretches his arms out wide and takes step after step and then throws himself onto the couch, or me, or the wall...

These past couple days he has been practicing a lot! We got together with our friends last week and I guess he took the lead from the older kids. Without even thinking he was chasing after them.

He loves dancing to Shakira these days. He loves her music videos and he'll bounce his bum. He's taken a liking to Beyonce as well.

Will likes doing this razzing sound with his tongue. We want to teach him different skills, and he catches on quick, as he did with this. Then I realized we might be teaching him to spit, so we started teaching him to click his tongue. He caught onto this well too. Tonight on the couch he was clicking his tongue and grinning at us, and we'd click our tongues back at him, and he'd reply to us, back and forth. He kept grinning and clicking. He is so interactive and loves when he makes people smile.

He also started sticking out his tongue. I'll make silly faces at him to make him laugh, and he stuck his tongue right back at me. It's more of an open-the-mouth-waggle-your-tongue kind of deal. He is so smart.

We just love our little boy.

TP is on a plane to S. Africa for a week. He is excited to eat all the sea food he desires in Capetown, and do a morning run on the beach. He just left and we are already counting down the days till his return.

Random Pics

In Malaysia. I'm not sure who is putting who to bed. . ..

This is how much Will loves his new carseat.

Tay and Ty and the little buddies this summer.

Beautiful sunny day. We discovered a man made beach.

From mohawk. . .
. .to buzz!

Malaysia

I'm in Malaysia right now and the best part is that Will and Jen are with me! We had decided that they weren't going to come here because I was going to be so busy with the conference that they wouldn't hardly see me anyway. But at the last minute I thought it would be fun to have them here so I called up Jen on Tuesday afternoon around 3pm and told her to leave to the airport at 4pm so she could catch the flight that day to come down to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. They got here really late, around 3am by the time they got to the hotel. Some of the other people involved with the conference also brought their families so Jen had some company during the long days that I was working and she was able to make some new friends. I had to work long hours but it was so much fun to come back to the hotel and have my family here! It was great. They also got to come along for some of the activities. Will was the star attraction at the conference. My customers loved playing with him and Will now has new friends from 11 different countries!

The meetings ended yesterday so today we got to take Will and go play a little bit. We went to a shopping mall and had a Cinnibon, awesome, and then went to a little zoo. Tomorrow we will also go play around before heading back to Shanghai on a late night flight. Below are a few pictures from my phone.

These are the twin towers in downtown KL. They were the tallest building in the world from 98-04'. They are 451 meters tall and remain to be the world's tallest twin buildings. Part of the Sean Connery movie, Entrapment, was filmed here.

We had dinner at the top of this building in a revolving restaurant that overlooked the whole city of KL. It was right next to the twin towers so we had an amazing view of the tall buildings.

Here is Will prarie dogging it at the zoo.

Here Will is thinking to himself, "Polly want a cracker?"

Anyone remember the cartoon called Ed Grimley from the 80's? Here is Will's best impression as he sports a great hair do and trying to show his new 6th tooth coming in. It is pretty hot and humid here and his hair has a little bit of curl to it.

Will is so excited to look at some of the animals. We've been reading an animal book with sounds to him recently so it was fun for him to go to the zoo and see the animals in person.

This zoo was just a small zoo. I think tomorrow we might go to the national zoo which is much larger. Hopefully we will get some good pictures.