Vietnam Part 11: Ha Long Bay

Going to see Ha Long Bay

So pretty

On our junk boat

Up high

Can't really see me

In the "Surprising Cave"

Cave dwelling

Monkeys!

Stopping on a beach

Dinner with the Dutch

Sunset

Ending the night with Karaoke ("Like a Virgin")

"Final Countdown"

This could be any number of songs...

Breakfast on the boat with the Aussies

Crammed on a bus back to Hanoi

Spring Break 2012

It was a good Spring Break, though I can barely tell you what all I did!  Here's some snapshots!

BFFs forreal

Riverwalk!

Luke snapped this shot!

Chamberlains hanging out at the Alamo

Shelby was in town so natch, we went karaoke-ing!

So great to see her! :)

Hot Ashlee: The Newest Cast Member of the Summer of Pham

Me & Hot Ashlee on one of her last nights in Austin... naturally we karaoked.

July 23rd: That Night (Pictured Above) - After the Prayer & Worship for Tony & Sarah's wedding, Thomas and I went out to see a few people. The first of the night was the lovely Miss Ashlee. I'm actually slightly appalled at myself for not having mentioned her in my blog sooner. I don't think I have, have I? Let's start slightly from the beginning...

Early early June, after a night hanging downtown for Bobby's bday (have I even written a blog about Bobby yet????), I went over to Hannah's to hang out. It was me, Hannah, Johnny, and Ashlee. I had met Ashlee over at Hannah's before, and I remembered her as the awesome white girl who sang "Say My Name" at an LHS show. Anyway, that night, I spent a good chunk of time retelling a story. A story of one of the weddings I went to this summer. :) It was a good story. Not to toot my own horn, but I think I tell that story (and most stories) decently well, so I think Ashlee had a good time listening to it. Johnny and I had some awesome witty banter going back and forth all night. It's just what we do. We're a good team together.

That night, when I was walking back to my car with Ashlee (we parked near each other) she made a couple mentions of going home to watch Avatar (the cartoon). I immediately said, "Oh my GOD JOHNNY NEEDS TO KNOW THIS ABOUT YOU." Long story short, Johnny and I eventually got home and started squealing at each other about how much we like Ashlee. (Is this something I shouldn't be blogging about Johnny? Part of me thinks no, but the other part of me doesn't really care... because I don't think it's a secret...) ANYWAY...

Long story short, I hung out with Ashlee a bit one night (when Johnny wasn't even around) and we watched... what did we watch? I think it was Goblet of Fire... but I could be wrong? Anyway, point is, I fell in love with her even more. And that just kind of kept happening all summer. Then the girl had to go and get a job (yay!) in Houston (nay!) I'm still super into her though. She was even in town this weekend. She's just too fun. She's going to read this... is this weird? Nah... anyway, here's just a couple of photos from the Summer of Pham (or the Nguyenning Summer)...

Our two last nights together were spent karaokeing... so... she's obviously perfect.

She says she looked like a soccer mom, I said... the hottest soccer mom EVER.

Celebrating the Summer of Pham (The Night of Johnny's 1/2 Birthday)

One of our first nights downtown together... so close to the beginning :)

I Know Eventually We'll Be Together One Sweet Day

July 20th - It was to be my last day with Rachel. I started off the day doing a whole lot of nothing at home... and then Thomas, Johnny, and I met Rachel up at Counter Cafe. Then I went with Sarah Bowers to get our nails done, a little shopping and girl talk. It was, after all, only a couple days before her big day (her wedding day, that is).

Rachel was moving out the next day. So Thomas and I spent a good chunk of our afternoon being sweethearts (more Thomas than me) and we helped her clean her apartment. I painted some stuff, Thomas cleaned out her fridge and we just helped out where we could.

I may or may not have put on some ladybug wings to vacuum her cabinets

Afterwards we headed out to Blues on the Green... no I don't know who was playing... I never know who is playing... I am barely conscious of the fact that music is being played...

Eventually Thomas and I found Rachel, Ashley & Najia (and Fay and a few others)

The girls had some Four Loko.... apparently it was really really good

After sitting around in the hot hot heat, we finally left Zilker and headed towards Highball for a raucous night of awesome karaoke. I spent a lot of the night serenading Rachel with love songs... probably one of the best was me and Ashley singing "Does He Love You?" It was pretty badass...

Just singing to my girl Rachel

We even got Bobby Creeding out with Johnny and Thomas

We had a really great last night with Rachel... I've missed her a lot, but she seems to be having a good time in Lubbock (whether you believe that or not...)

Knuckle Puck/Singers-filled Weekend

Friday:

Thomas had an interview at Baylor on Friday. He thinks it went fairly well so I hope everyone is sending him happy thoughts! Then he came up to work and ran some errands and then we ended up at my place, with some F3 and watched some "Bored to Death." We took a short nap, woke up, and watched some MORE "Bored to Death" until Mr. came. Then we watched more "Bored to Death." Ironically, we were not bored to death. I think it was Thomas and Mr.'s first time to ever watch it, and I think they liked it, so... yay!

Finally, we got the text from Sarah that let us know they had arrived at the Austin Karaoke! It was so fun! WHY we've all been obsessed with karaoke lately is beyond me, but I'm not complaining! Attendees were: Sarah, Tony, Jack, Cale, two of their friends who's names unfortunately escape me, Thomas, Johnny, Mr., Buddy, Maggie, Chris Cable, and... I'm pretty sure that's it. Anyway, I somehow found a way to search the songs by artist and not just by title (completely by accident) and we found a shit-ton of more songs! PITUSA was a great hit. :)

Afterwards we did the usual Whataburger. Despite my many attempts, no missed connections were made.

Saturday:

This was a great day! Stephen's site, collegemoviereview.com was hosting an AMAZING RACE event! There were really only 4 teams, and... let's face it, Team AWESOME (me and LC) and Team Almost As Good As Team AWESOME (Buddy, Johnny & Mr.) were really the only two teams worthy of being in the race. LC's driving was terrifying, but it made a difference in the end. There were 2 bad things about the race. 1, LC and I left my iphone in the car when we should've taken it with us. 2, I had to run--boo! It was literally a race to the finish line (i.e., Stephen). Technically, Johnny ran (yes, RAN) out of the car and touched Stephen before me (I did not realize this was a requirement)... but LC and I both got to Stephen and were the first FULL TEAM. Point is, win or no win, it was pretty fun! Thank you Stephen for a great morning!

Afterwards, the starving/thirsty group of contestants went to grab some refreshments and head to Zilker for volleyball. For the first 30 minutes or so, it was just Thomas, Johnny, Stephen, and I hitting the ball around. I believe the phrase "Knuckle puck" was used over and over again. Eventually Mr. & Bud came and we started to hit the ball around. LC finally got back from her run/jog (despite the fact that we kept seeing her run around us--and by her, I mean this old man with long hair/beard and shirt that showed his belly) and joined us. Me, Stephen (the two former members of Team Good, the Fall 2007 UT Water Volleyball IM Champions), Buddy & LC were on one team and Johnny, Mr. & Thomas were on the other. Eshe came with baby Nia and they sat and watched us play. They often clapped... but usually when someone did something wrong. :) It finally became 5 and time to leave. We stopped by Daily Jews Juice to get cool refreshing libations.

Thomas, Johnny and I went back to the apartment to shower and get ourselves dolled up for the Singers show.

What can I say about the Singers show? I definitely felt that it was better than last semester's. Almost every specialty act was deserving of its specialty spot--which I don't think could necessarily be said of some previous shows (including some I've been in). The solos in the group numbers were all pretty solid and the costumes were adorable--namely the girls in the Enchanted song and the boys in Celebration.

Afterwards the Alums went to eat at Santa Rita. This was pretty fun... we were loud, and our server McQueen was entertaining. Our drinks (and Eshe with her drinks) were also entertaining. We did our usual critique of the show, which was less fun to do this semester than semesters before. :) We did more raving than ranting I think. And that's saying a lot, cause you know how we love a good rant--especially Johnny. Though I'm sure he did his share.

Then me, Thomas, Mr., Buddy & Johnny went to the after show party. We got there entirely too early (maybe the rest of us are running on real people time, while Singers is still running on Singers time) but were able to enjoy our keg foam just as well. Here are some highlights of the party:

- Me pulling a MAJOR LC moment.

- Sitting and chatting (i.e., commiserating) with Hailey (the other 'outsider').

- Heard some good in the halls verses.

- Heard some BAD in the halls verses (which on occasion can be just as good as hearing the good ones).

- Sat some more with Hailey and observed the intense things that were happening ALL around us.

- Ended the night singing "Somebody to Love" with Tony :)

Sunday:

Thomas and I grabbed some Madams and headed to Lisa & Mike's to get some Chamberlain family time in. We hung out with baby Luke and Lisa. We napped while watching Order of the Phoenix (this is actually a very frequent occurrence in that household). Then he headed back to Dallas and I vegged out for a bit. Went to 8 o clock mass (took me FOR-EV-ER to find parking) and called it a night. I'm pretty sure. I can't really remember what all I did that night. Either way, it was a great weekend. :)