Thailand, Thailand, Wonderful bhai and girl land.

In Bangkok, the Tuk-tuk is often the vehicle of choice. These little "taxi's" are everywhere and are a unique way to get around the city. Unfortunately, because they are open they are not good for long trips because you breath in too much exhaust.

The traffic in Bangkok is terrible - maybe the worst in the world. On an afternoon when I decided to leave the conference center to go back to the hotel, I tried in vain to flag down a taxi. Eventually, this man on a scooter (there are a lot) stopped and asked, "Where you going?" Me: "Nope. I'm going to wait for a taxi." Young Thai man: "No. Where you going?" Me: "Like I said, I'm going to wait for a taxi." The young man looks around, turns to me and gestures, "But... traffic!" He had a good point... so I hopped on the back of the scooter and we weaved in and out of the traffic and reached the hotel in five mintues. Maybe not the smartest thing to do, but I was glad to be at the hotel sooner, that's for sure. Strange enough, this is not the first time that I've hopped on the back of a Thai person's scooter. I'll save the other story for another blog.


I discovered this beautiful palace at the Royal Plaza by accident. One morning, while Luke was busy with the conference, I decided to go see parts of Bangkok on my own. I set out to find the Cloth Museum, which turned out to be right next to a number of really cool museums and this gorgeous building. I didn't actually get to go inside of this building, though because I couldn't figure out to get a ticket for it. As I was on my own, I took a few pictures like this to get it just right. A few guards were laughing at me and one eventually volunteered to take the picture for me.

On my morning out, I also saw the The Ananda Samakhom Throne Hall (pictured) and the Vimanmek Mansion Museum, the largest mansion made of teak wood. However, I soon realized that touring in a city where I don't know the language except to say "Hi" (which I can say very well, if I do say so) is not terribly fun. So I decided to return to the conference center and proceded to fall asleep on the couch.



For anyone interested, the book on the table is "Water for Elephants" by Sara Gruen. I thought it was a pretty interesting read. You might want to check it out on Amazon.
President and Laura Bush. Whoops I mean Luke and Amy Langford. All in all, the conference ran very well and the students and their faculty advisors were grateful that they came. I have to say that I was very impressed and proud of Luke for playing a big role in planning and running the conference. Job well done!

My Deloitte

Seeing as there are now three members of the extended family who work (or will be working soon, Steve) for Deloitte. I thought that I would shed some light on the fabulous company that is paying for so many Low bills. Over the summer, Deloitte sponsored a firm-wide film festival and asked Deloitte employees around the globe to answer the question, "What's your Deloitte?" The results: hundreds of hilarious short films and countless hours spent watching them in the office when there were certainly other things to do. Now you can check out some of the finalists on Youtube! I couldn't find the winner, Food for Thought, on Youtube, but that doesn't mean that it isn't there. My favorite: The Green Dot.

Check them out.

We are as ready as we are going to be!

Mom said I didn't sound any bigger on the phone, so I've decided to provide proof of my very pregnant status. My due date is now 8 days away. We've been busy preparing for the baby and feel like we've done everything we can (except make a bunch of freezer meals, but really, who does that?) It feels very different preparing for a second baby because we know what baby products are totally useless, and already had a lot of the necessary gear from Bennett. It also feels different waiting for her to come, as opposed to scrambling with how to deal with a baby that came a month earlier than expected.




















Here are pictures of the "nursery." For those of you who don't know the excuses for the angel room, can I just say that we did NOT paint the angels (or clouds) on the walls. We do not have crazy bad taste; we are just lazy and have not painted over these offensive walls in the 4 years that we have lived in this house (which is worse?)
Here is Vivian's crib, looking very cute thanks to the great quilt her Aunt Anna made for her.



We'll keep you all posted as to when she actually arrives. Wish us all luck!

Why Asia?

As a reminder, Luke and I were in Asia because Luke was co-director of the Harvard Model Congress Asia, which took place in Bangkok. To summarize the conference: 270 students from international high schools came to participate as active members in a simulation of Congress. Each student was assigned a specific role to play in the goverment simulation. Even Luke and I had roles: George and Laura Bush. I'm not kidding.

Our stint to Hong Kong was an intentional 1 1/2 day layover of sorts between LA and Bangkok.

Hong Kong - Part Last

Hong Kong at night - very cool. Every evening, there is a Spectacle of Lights where the buildings light up and blink in time with music that is blared on the streets. On our second day in Hong Kong, we decided to really emerse ourselves in the culture and went to.... Disneyland. Wait a second...
This is us on a ride inspired by Toy Story 2. We were given the charge, from Buzz Light Year himself, to find and entrap the infamous Zerg, while hitting as many targets as we could with our cool laser guns. Oh we were fierce. Zerg didn't have a chance.
Such a magical place. This was at the entrance of the park. The Mickey statue on the whales spout actually moved up and down.

We found that many things in Asia were shorter to accomodate the smaller population - even Sleeping Beauty's castle.

Hong Kong - Part 2

This is one of the lions outside of the HSBC buidling (supposedly a Feng Shui masterpiece). Our tour book said that it is good luck to touch the lion's fooe. As I have bouts of germaphobia, I decided to barely touch the foot. To show how different, and un-afraid Luke is of germs, he licked the foot.
Just kidding! He only posed to look like he was licking the foot.
Luke's ex-roommate, Darren, was traveling with us in Hong Kong because he was also participating in the conference. He served his mission in Korea and so took us to a Korean restaurant for lunch. This is me cutting my meat with an everyday pair of scissors, instead of a knife, which is pretty common in Korea because they usually eat with chopsticks, not knives.
We ventured out to find the Hong Kong temple. It looked different in person than we expected, but it was still beautiful.

Hong Kong - Part 1

These towers are called the Lippo Towers. They were, by far, my favorit buildings. It looks like a bunch of koala bears hugging two trees.





















This is a face of pain because I'm stepping on a "Foot Massage Trail" that was just a bunch of tiles with differing sized stones to massage your feet. This was in a public garden and as Luke and I were testing it out, an actual citizen came and used it. Crazy as it sounds, I would have probably enjoyed this at the end of a long day of walking, but early in the morning, it proved to be a bit too much.




Thanks to the sign that Luke posted about, we knew where to take this excellent picture. Wow! So photogenic.







Hong Kong is huge. This is the view from Victoria Peak after a neat tram ride up the steep slope.

A helpful sign

No particular story here. The picture comes from a park in Hong Kong. I found it a bit funny (at least for the fact that it plays into stereotypes about a particular focus of asian tourists) that a sign was built to point out where a photogenic spot was. As if the pond, trees and beautiful surroundings were insufficient.

Adventures in Recruiting

Which can sometimes feel like babysitting...

I just realized that I spend way too much time checking the blog to see if someone has posted and not posting myself, so here I go, even though I have no exciting pictures (Thailand pictures are still coming).

The month of September is a hectic one for campus recruiters. My team of three has at least one event everyday this week. It is like this for the whole month and for the first part of October.

Anywho, last Thursday, we had an Open Information Session at Boston College at 5:00 pm . It is my responsibility to make sure that the boxes with our giveaways get to the rooms where the info. sessions are so when my teammate called me at 4:25 pm that night saying, "Amy, are the boxes coming? They're not here yet" I was a little nervous. "They're on their way!" I say, seriously hoping that this is true but having a sinking feeling that somewhere along the line, I made a mistake.

I frantically flip through the pages of information that the college has sent me regarding info. sessions. And then I see it there: "Please arrange for pick up of your materials from the Career Center. The Career Center closes at 4:30 pm on Thursdays." Gulp. I never made arrangements for someone to pick up the boxes. I look at the clock -4:28! Maybe someone's staying late - I call our the career center. It rings. My heart is racing. Please pick up, please pick up. Shoot! I get the voice mail. Oh crap! My teammate calls again. "They're on their way!" I lie as I picture our 2 boxes tucked in a corner in a dark office, behind a locked door. Think, Amy. Think.

I start calling any Boston College number I can find hoping that someone will be able to help me get those boxes and I finally get forwarded to Facilities. Unfortunately, they can't just go into the career center and open every office to search for the boxes - well, maybe they could if I can get some one on my end to identify the boxes and take them over to the info. session. Uh... well, my teammate can't do that. 1st off, she's 5 months pregnant. 2nd-ly, she doesn't even know that there's a problem and I'm not about to tell her. Now, keep in mind that the clock has been ticking the whole time and I've got about 10 minutes before the meeting starts to pull a Houdini and magically recover these boxes.

So, I call one of our summer interns who is our student Deloitte ambassador at Boston College. Picture me sounding desperate: "Um... hi, it's Amy Langford from Deloitte. Are you available to help me out within the next 20 minutes or so?" Fortunately, he is willing to help out and I tell him that he needs to go down to the career center and grab the two boxes and bring them over to the info. session (I say this, of course, as fast as I can). As I put the phone down, I get a call from our contact at the career center - somehow, the facilities people were able to reach her - who says that she has a student who is on the way to pick the boxes and take them to the meeting. Huzzah! Phew! I call our summer intern to tell him he's off the hook, and, for the first time in 30 minutes breath easy knowing that I still have a job.

A few hours later, I get a text from my teammate: "Hi Amy, everything turned out GREAT. Nice job with your first open info." Little does she know...

Pictures from our trip to Asia are coming...

Lest you think that all we do is travel to interesting places, here are some pictures from our everyday "normal" life.

It occurs to me that I have never posted any pictures of our aparment. So, to sort of create the scene for our everyday life, here are a couple pictures.

This is our "great room" - our dining room table is right where the picture cuts off at the bottom and the kitchen is a little room just off of this main room. The building that you see out of our window is a Dunkin Donuts, which has proven to be rather convenient on the days when we find we don't have any breakfast food.




















Our bathroom, which I think is actually pretty cute.



















Wife in a bag. (actually, it's me wrapped up in a duvet cover)








Sleeping on the couch covered in pillows.






Luke had read somewhere that Sprite actually helped fresh flowers live longer, so we decided to do our own experiment to test this theory. The results - well, you can see the difference for yourself. The flowers with watered-down Sprite are on the left and the ones with just plain water are on the right.

Luke scrap-booking during the break between his graduation and starting at work.

Pictures from Hawaii

We went to Hawaii in June to see Luke's friend, Matt, get married. We thought it was a good excuse.

On our first full day in Honolulu, we saw advertisments for a sumo wrestling championship and decided that it would be fun to go. It really was amazing to see - gave me a whole new respect for the sumo wrestler in Street Fighter II.

Luke waited in line with the children to get the signature of this Georgian sumo wrestler, who was able to speak with Luke in Russian.

USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor

Luke hugging a large blow up macademia nut that was at the Mauna Loa nut factory.

World's largest Hawaiian shirt. Look closely.

More Pictures from Hawaii

Luke's friend, Matt, and his wife Allison.















We took a volcano day tour on the big island where we saw a large lava fields. Much to our chagrin, our tour didn't take us to see molten laval - it would've taken us 4 hours to hike to see it. Here's Luke walking along side a lava field.














A closer look at the dried lava. We could see this stuff for miles and miles.















What's a trip to Hawaii without a trip to the Polynesian Culture Center? Here we are with our new found Polynesian friends.














Before visiting the PCC, we stopped at the Dole pineapple plantation and worked our way through the largest permanent outdoor maze in the world. I don't know if we were supposed to climb through bushes like this, but we certainly did.

Shameful!

It's shameful that we continually have to rely on ME to post blogs on the site. I regret that our most faithful blogger (Anna) has her own site because that leaves us embarrasingly on our own. I know everyone is busy - Heather back in classes at BYU, sorting out a new social life and moving ahead (good for you girl), Amy just recently back from a whirlwind trip with Luke to Hong Kong and Bangkok (most travelled newlywed to date with trips to Mexico, Hawaii and now the Far East in the first year of marriage - we want to see pictures!!). Clarke is busy with medical school applications and a couple of clasess at MIT, Anna pregnant (due in Jan) and Beth getting ready to have a baby in about 3 weeks! All legitimate excuses, no? I'm back at Simmons College for my last year - I sit for my Senior pictures next month. I'm not really embarassed, but kinda sheepish (at my age) but am going for the photo op anyway. I'm taking a really tough neuroscience class (sheep brain dissection tomorrow - I can't wait!) that I know I will love and a couple of other classes (one heavy into research). So - the challenge goes out to Gordon Low family members - Blog up or I'll have to start posting my class notes!