All the paperwork hasn’t gone through yet, but I’m so excited by the idea that I thought I’d share. I’ve been given the rare opportunity to do some study and service abroad this August in Vietnam–exciting! I knew about it earlier this year, but wasn’t sure if I’d be able to go, but I just found out last week there’s still space available, so I figured I’d go for it! It looks like everything has been approved for me to go so far. I especially want to do this before Chris and I get busy with starting a family. Chris’s response was “But the kitties will miss you!”

Here’s an excerpt from the invitation to participate letter:

“The group is comprised of volunteer American college students and community

American health professionals who will be joined by a Vietnamese team of doctors,

nurses, interpreters and guides to share work and experience…After orientation and

preparation in Hanoi we will spend a week in the field, including three days of clinical

care at two villages.”

In front of the Bellagio Fountains…and condo construction!

Chris is in his “I’m on vacation shirt” ;) …

BTW, if anyone is interested, the score for Carmel vs. Vegas (for winning money) within last year is:

Carmel - 2 , Vegas – BIG FAT ZERO!

Ok, so it’s not a secret that we haven’t been keeping this site very up-to-date. Here are some pictures from our Honeymoon in Hawaii from last fall. We stayed at the JW Marriot Ihilani Resort in the Ko Olina area of Oahu. A very luxurious yet fun resort. They don’t let you lift a finger–not even to get a bucket of ice. We had a great time there and going around the island doing typical tourist things: snorkeling; going to Waikiki, North Shore and the Polynesian Cultural Center, etc.

Views from our hotel room:

There were sting rays, little sharks and koi in pools and ponds all around the resort.

Waimea Falls, due to the time of year it was just down to a trickle

Fancy grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup at Alan Wong’s in Honolulu

Awesome sunset at the resort, Chris is out in the distance.

We just attended my cousin Marie and her new husband Eugene’s wedding in October. Everything was wonderful and it was apparent how much work they put in to the wedding. The flowers were beautiful (everyone loved Marie’s bouquet!) and everyone had fun with the Polaroid photos used for their photo guest book. I was also a bridesmaid(!), I’m in the ceremony photo second from the left.

Chris, Carla and I also went around and did touristy things like Disneyland and managed to squeeze in Hannah’s birthday before we left.

Professional pictures are now online! Thank you to Jen and Jody Photography for the fabulous–and numerous–pictures. Really, there are over 1,700. Hope you have a free afternoon to look through them! Click here to view the photos on Pictage.

I was looking at some of the wedding photos online and got a chuckle out of this one taken on the day of the rehearsal. I remember was talking with our day-of wedding coordinator Jody from Bridezilla Events (on the left) about our very detailed timeline and Cousin Dan came up to talk to me after everyone in the wedding party was given a copy:

Dan: “Hey, you know what this is missing?

Me: “No, what?” 

Dan: “A contingency plan.” 

Me [panicking]: “What?! Do you think I need one?”

Dan: [Something to the effect of] “No…I was just kidding.”

He was just joking because it was so thorough which, I admit, did not register with me at first. Thanks to Cousin Ed for taking a picture of it.

Here is a video of Angelo Pizarro, the amazing guitarist that we had play at the cocktail hour for our wedding. We had him play some traditional Filipino music (like kundiman and harana).

To answer the most frequent question I get: no, he and I are not related :( . You can also listen this NPR podcast that features him.

Check out this video: Performance @ the Seattle Art Museum

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We met Andy Samberg (a la “Saturday Night Live” fame) recently at a preview for his new movie “Hot Rod” (which was pretty funny). So at the risk of embarrassing myself, I am going ahead and posting this picture that Chris took of Shannon and I with him.

The mustache is compliments of the movie preview–they gave them out to the audience. In the movie Andy Samberg wears one when he does his stunts. Please no comments on how real the ‘stache looks since I know it matches my actual hair color pretty closely. By the way, doesn’t all our hair look messy? I guess I really should have looked in a mirror before we took this pic. Andy was really nice by the way and put up with the pleas for a “Laser Cats 3″. 

Here are just a few pictures from the wedding. Thanks to cousin Edzel for posting several of the pictures on Snapfish. We are trying to steadily add photos to the Snapfish site. Please e-mail us (wedding@chrisandcarmel.com) if you would like access to the website to view the pictures, or if you have pictures of your own to add.

Thanks to everyone who was able to come to our wedding, it sounded like everyone had a great time and it really meant a lot to us having friends and family there. Special thanks to those who were in the wedding party, and the readers at the ceremony, as well as the sponsors. For those that could not make it to the wedding, we had you in our thoughts, and we know that all of you were wishing us well. We’re still kind of in recuperation mode from the wedding, but we’re slowly adjusting.

One more wedding-related link, we offer you the Game Console Wedding Cake. I’m a little worried about having the Xbox 360 as the bottom layer — it seems like this would only increase the chance of console failure.