Comments (12)

By Neil, 24 June 2008

Does anyone else remember that just three weeks ago Utah was a chilly wintry wonderland, snow was still falling in the mountains and my apartment was the loveliest of temperatures and then all of a sudden as if over night it’s 92° outside and my apartment feels like the impact zone of a nuclear blast? Well it’s strange, and now I can’t sleep very well because our windowless apartment is just too dang hot. For the last two weeks Kate and I have been battling it out each night over whether to sleep with our tiny street-side bedroom window open or closed. Kate sleeps best when she’s wrapped in quilted blanked and the room temperature is right around fresh magma. I, on the other hand, can only sleep when naked in a bath of liquid nitrogen. Needless to say, this has been a source of contention in our family resulting in sleepless nights, me on the couch, late night showers and early morning runs. I’m just hoping I will get used to this because if we end up moving to Arizona I will perish.

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By Neil, 25 May 2008

What can I say more than the wedding was fabulous. Chrizelle, our new sister-in-law is from South Africa and it has been about a year since she and Peter decided to get married. What they thought would be a 6 month processes to get her finance visa turned out to take about a year. Luckily it came through and Chrizelle came over without a hitch. She has only been here for about a month and in that time Peter and Chrizelle have had to work extra hard planning, preparing, and baking for their wedding. Even with such short notice it was the loveliest of occasions.

The wedding ceremony was just beautiful and the reception, while almost immediately after the ceremony, was great as well. Everyone had a lot of fun, we were able to visit with old friends and family we hadn’t seen in years and the best part of the whole thing is that Peter and Chrizelle looked as happy as I have ever seen them. Congratulations guys!

Comments (3)

By Kate, 23 December 2007

Hello all friends, family and internet wanderers. Feliz Navidad to all.

2007 has been filled with happiness & wonderful adventures for the Kelly/Ransom family. We started off 2007 being married, which was a first for both of us. So far, so good. We worked and lived in Provo, Utah until April. We then headed off to Guatemala & Southern Mexico for a belated honeymoon tour. We lived on an archeology compound, which looks pretty much exactly what you imagine in your mind when you hear the two words “archeology” and “compound” together. It was AMAZINGLY, INDESCRIBABLY, INCREDIBLY FUN. The foundation was located in San Cristobal de Las Casas in the Central highlands of Chiapas, Mexico. Neil got to organize artifacts, help digitize them and practice his Spanish. Kate got to work very intensively with the young Mormon girls in the area as a youth leader & volunteer with different agencies, including Habitat for Humanity. We made it to several surrounding indigenous villages, and up to Mexico City. We tasted delicious food, met wonderful people & bought a lot of tacky Mexican handicrafts.

Upon returning to the U.S. we crossed the border in Tijuana by foot & met up with Kate’s family in San Diego. It was a fun trip that involved Sea World.

Since September we have been living in Salt Lake City, smack-dab in the middle of downtown. We are a few blocks from the Temple & from the City library. Neil is working for the International Rescue Committee as a refugee caseworker. Last year 950 refugees were relocated to Salt Lake from nations like Burma, Somalia, Iraq, Burundi, Eritrea etc. He helps them transition to life in America from the airport to getting a new job to enrolling their children in school. While it has been interesting & rewarding, case work has made him realize that he wants to continue his schooling. He plans on going to grad school in the Fall, possibly in sustainable development & conservation biology.

Kate works with refugees & also immigrants at the English Skills Learning Center, a non-profit that trains volunteer tutors to help people learn English. She is in a 10 month Americorps position developing a program where elementary schools provide English classes to the parents at the schools. So far she has got 5 Salt Lake schools up and running and the program is very popular with the parents, who so desperately need English skills. She is applying to law schools to enter in September of 2008 (please cross your fingers).

We love living in Salt Lake & are learning all of the interesting & unique places to shop, eat and visit in the valley. We find that most of them are on the west side where all of the refugees live.

We are so grateful to all who have supported us in our endeavors. We have learned much & have much yet to learn. We hope 2008 brings challenges, blessings & new adventures.

May the best times you’ve ever had be the worst you’ll every see!

Love,

Kate and Neil

Comments (1)

By Neil, 29 October 2007

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ut6LPvSr8Cc[/youtube]

Comments (1)

By Kate, 31 August 2007

Hello my fellow US Americans. We have learned from Miss Teen South Carolina that there is a dire map-shortage here in the good ol’ USA… but, if you are so privileged to have access to maps, we are back in Utah. It’s a mountain-west region state known for its Jello dishes. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4Khx0D9Vxg[/youtube]Here’s a pretty funny break-down of the poor Miss Teen’s blunder.

Neil and I are happy to be home. We miss Mexico, but we’re excited for the big city living. Since Tuesday we have seen pretty near every sketchy basement apartment & rat-hole in Salt Lake and have narrowed it down to a few delightfully moldy favs. We have pretty low standards, so sopefully we will have a place by next week. I start my new job at the English Language Skills Center on Tuesday. Wish me luck!

Comments (3)

By Neil, 11 July 2007

I guess there are about 40+ types of yoga and after two months of searching Kate and I finally found 1 yoga shop that does 1 type of yoga. Hatha Yoga is, according to the above linked site, “The discipline of the force exercised by asanas (poses), the physiological activity and pranayama, the breath control.” Unfortunately I know little more about yoga then it makes me feel good when I do it, and so I don’t know if Hatha type is different from the yoga we did in Utah. All names aside, and this is my point, the yoga was very different: it was in Spanish (duh), we did violent leg flopping for warm up which about killed the old man in the class with bad knees (a first for me), we only held three poses one of which I recognized, she made us get energy form the stars, and we ended by kneeling (for me the most painful posture of all) and stare at a candle for 5 full minutes. Although nice to stretch and breath again, the instructor was not very helpful in correcting postures or breathing, the routine was strange, and in the end my back hurt so from now on I think I will just do yoga with a video (any recommendations?).

Afterward for dinner we made, what turned out to be a delightful pizza, and then watched the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, TMNT, which turned out to be not so delightful. Mostly because it was a pirated copy filmed in the movie theater so the sound quality was bad including 10 minutes without sound, the footage dark, and for some reason our tv doesn’t handle crappy dvds very well and spits static across the screen. I didn’t have high hopes for the movie or anything like that, it was just such a chore to watch I was almost manically depressed by the end.

So that’s my amazing yesterday. Crappy yoga and a movie.

Comments (2)

By Kate, 1 July 2007

Mexico City is called D.F. by Mexicans because it is the Federal District (Distrito Federal). You may have heard bad things about Mexico City. But, you probably heard those things from people who are fools or liars. Or lying fools.

Mexico city has a marvelous bit of everything. It’s got oodles of interesting museums, fantastic cuisine, parks, tons of public art & incredible murals, interesting & friendly people, quick-cheap-reliable public transportation, striking architecture, alluring & rich history, tons of events and most importantly… vegetarian restaurants.

We have thoroughly enjoyed our stays there. This past week’s highlights included a visit to the Chapultapec Castle.

A turn steering our boat in the river-canal city of Xochomilco.

And Neil enjoying the superb, & what he claims to be distinct, taste of chipped ice.

Comments (3)

By Neil, 26 June 2007

We made it to Mexico City this afternoon and hit the sites right out of the airport. We are staying in an old favorite hotel. After we checked in we went downtown to see a few Diego Rivera murals in a government building and then to a luchador wrestling resturant, owned by a former wrestler. It was great. The food kind of sucked by the decore, atmospher, and manger were great. The manajor rattled of the names of all the original luchador masks on display. Afterward we went to China town and then home. Traveling sure is hard and walking around all day can really take it out of you.

Comments (5)

By Kate, 23 June 2007

Last night as we were getting ready to go to bed Neil and I discussed the critical topic of “What would we name our kid(s)?” if we were to some day procreate. Baby names, like many other normal topics this one quickly turned into a marketing scheme. We have narrowed it around to a few unisex options.

1. Of course is the .com option. Joseph Neil Ransom II.com
2. Popular search engines. Google Kelly-Ransom, Yahoo Kelly-Ransom. (This option may have better luck if we end up living in Nigeria where it is common practice to name your child Monday, Forgiveness, Honest, Winter, Orangello, Limegello [these are real examples from people we have met] or really any other word you like.)
3. Sell the child’s name to a corporate sponsor. REI Kelly-Ransom. McDonald’s Kelly-Ransom. Albertson’s Kelly-Ransom. (I’m surprised this option isn’t more popular. I feel certain that there are a lot of young couples that would be willing to give their offspring appellations of their favorite brand names. Just imagine all of the Roxys, Abercrombies, & Hollisters we would have running around if corporations picked up this brilliant marketing tactic.)
4. The ultimate success, we feel, though lies in naming the baby what you want it to turn out to be. For example: I would name one child Chiropractor & Neil will probably name one Web Master. Success is almost guaranteed, I mean, who’s ever heard of a dentist named Chiropractor? That’d just be silly.

And of course, let us not rule out the possibility of the glorious combination of them all.

Millionaire Subway Google Kelly-Ransom.com

Leave a comment if you have an idea for our future (inevitably very disturbed) child. If you come up with a good one we may give you a cut of the corporate take. If we get one million comments, Kate has sworn to let Neil name the (poor) child The Incredible Hulk irrespective of gender.