At the Garden of the Gods

At Korean BBQ

Hey hey!

So we're moving forward in Muth-land, as our departure from Denver this Saturday morning rapidly approaches! Today we actually just paid off the balance on our TEFL program, so in just five short days we'll be starting our free Spanish lessons, while in twelve days we will be beginning our TEFL certificate - should be a lot to learn, a good review of things we already know, plus a lot of in-class experience...
We are both done working now - Anderson finished up his job last Thursday, although Liz is still under the gun as she is wrapping up her Personal Trainer certification program before we depart.
We are still house-sitting, though we spent a decent chunk of time the past two days cleaning out Anderson's parents' storage center - good fun :-). That means we've got another two days of dog-sitting before we'll be pet-less for a good long while...

We just survived a busy-but-super-fun weekend, which started off with the Great American Beer Festival on Friday evening. Five hundred breweries, serving over 2000 beers... what more need be said? You should go next year if you can, impossible to regret it.
The GABF was actually only the first part of our evening, as we ended the night closing down a gay bar with all of our sweet dance moves :-)
Saturday was more insanity, in the form of roller derby thanks to the Denver Roller Dolls. It was also our 6th wedding anniversary, and you know how much we love fun! We'd gotten half-price tickets off of the internet beforehand, and once we'd figured out the sport we ended up having a great time cheering our favorite jammers on amidst big blocks and tough hip-checks. There's one more match in October, and our buddy Eric is for sure going since he won free tickets!
From there we checked out Denver's Oktoberfest, held in LoDo near Coors Field, which was a giant street party with over-priced beers and German polka-style music. No GABF, but still a good time...

Sunday we then went up to Mishawaka, an outdoor amphitheater near Fort Collins, to see JJ Grey & MOFRO - rocking southern funky soul music. The venue is beautiful, and might be closed for a while, so it seemed an appropriate moment to check it out - plus it was Joni's birthday so we had to celebrate in style! Style meant a mountain of Beau Jo's pizza afterward, which our bodies are still recovering from :-)
This week has been busy as well, doing chores/jobs for Anderson's parents (clearing out a storage center, gardening, etc.), packing up all of our stuff (OK, haven't really done much of that yet), plus hanging out with all of our friends while we still can. Went up to Boulder last night, fresh beer from Mountain Sun Brewery, and then this Friday we will be at our favorite/local brewery, Dry Dock in Aurora.

We're leaving for Mexico this coming Saturday, the 25th, though we'll spend most of the day enjoying a long layover in LA with Anderson's aunt and uncle - should be a fun final day in America before we fly to Mexico City around midnight... we'll spend Sunday morning riding the bus to Queretaro, meeting our host family, etc. Our free week of Spanish lessons begin on Monday, and then our TEFL course starts the next week, October 4th. Hopefully it will be an enjoyable ESL experience, but we shall see...

Here's your moment of zen, from the Great American Beer Festival:

Wondering about the GABF winners? Yeah, us too: RESULTS

More news soon, probably from south of the border,
Peace
Anderson & Liz

PS - Our cousin Reannon is writing a series of travel articles about her adventures with us in India a few years ago. She's doing a weekly column, of which there are three articles so far. Photos were all taken by Anderson, and she gives a great new perspective on our travels, so feel free to check them out - we'll post more links as she writes them:

#1 - Goodbye Big Apple, Hello Big Adventure
#2 - Overwhelmed and Overheated
#3 - Monkey Trouble

Why hello there!

Hope you've had a fantastic summer, ours has been busy but very enjoyable, but now the fall is arriving we've only got a few more weeks in the States. That's right, we've actually figured out our plans!
Liz's job at the Census ended last week, and Anderson will be working a few more weeks until the 16th. That will give us a week to wrap things up here, since September 25th is when we're flying out of Denver. We'll be landing in Mexico City, via LAX, but our end destination is actually Queretaro. That's where the Teacher Training Center is, the school through which we'll be taking our one-month TEFL certification program. Just this week we've put down our deposit, so things are finally becoming official and "real." We've had this plan for a while, but if feels great to finally get to put it into action!
So we'll be studying to become more effective (and better accredited) ESL teachers from October 4th through the 29th, but for the week beforehand we also get free Spanish lessons - which is a totally awesome freebie!
After that the plans call for a week at the beach with some friends, probably somewhere near Puerto Vallarta, and then we'll travel across Mexico and then south into Belize. Liz's aunt and uncle have a house there, so we'll stay with them for a bit, around which we'll also be meeting up with our old friend Alan (from Cornell) whom we'll be traveling with. From there the plan is to go to Peru to find ESL work, however a side-trip through Nicaragua will hopefully happen if Anderson's cousin Reannon gets a job there... we shall see :-)
So that's our semi-immediate future... as for current events, lately we've gone to a few concerts: Chromeo, J. Roddy Walston & The Business, and our buddy ScMcD. We've also caught a few more Colorado Rapids soccer games, including a sweet 3-0 victory last weekend (tickets were also free, which never hurts!).
We went for a fun couples camping trip with Scott and Joni a few weeks ago, down to Great Sand Dunes National Park, which is simply amazing. We had a lot of fun, snagged a great campsite, and even the dog we're watching - Cyrus, we're house sitting for his owners - had a great time. Check out the photos - thanks Joni - they're pretty sweet:

Speaking of photos, we've finally gotten a new camera, since our trusty Kodak v610 finally gave out after four years of rough love and global travel. We settled on the Panasonic DMC-ZS5, which we've just received in the mail but haven't gotten to try out yet. If it does as well as its predecessor then we will be happy camera owners for sure... and from the demos/reviews, and its specs, it should take better photos along with HD-video.

Here's your moment of zen - Scott and Joni sand-sledding:

More news to come soon, things will be getting a lot more regular as we get back out on the road again!

Hope all's well,
Peace and much love as always,
A&E

Alright, so we've been total slackers on the blog, and that basically means that Anderson's been being lazy - thankfully that will all be changing soon since there are going to be some major changes in the Land of The Muths. More details to come, but in the meantime here's a bit of an update:

We've both been keeping very busy with work, which at least partially explains the lack of posts. Liz's job with the US Census, doing admin work, has lasted much longer than initially anticipated - great for our upcoming travel plans! Anderson is still teaching tennis and golf to kids, and has also managed to survive three weeks of summer camp!
Otherwise we've been up to plenty! We've seen a few live shows lately (our friend Collin's band Lick It Ticket most recently, as well as Anderson's co-worker Matt's band The Saurus; we also went to a Brewgrass festival back in June. In the past few weeks we saw the Body Worlds exhibit at the Museum of Nature & Science, participated in a unusual cycling race - the Urban Assault Ride where we finished 21st in Co-Ed and 69th overall, and have been regularly participating in Tuesday night trivia at Legends - we win some sorta prize every third week so we are at least regular contenders!
Anderson has made two music mixes since May, first a reggae mix:

DJ Anderson - Stepping Between Reggae And Dub by DJ Anderson

and just this past week he finished an electro/French house mix:

DJ Anderson - Retro Electro by DJ Anderson

We've also participated in two surprise birthdays this summer: in June we traveled to Wisconsin for Liz's grandmother's 75th, and this past weekend we helped celebrate Anderson's mother's 65th at a local Italian restaurant. Both ladies were surprised, and both evenings were fantastic! While up in Wisconsin we managed to fit in some boating, which luckily also included some tubing:

Speaking of Wisconsin, here's your moment of zen, muskie-style, courtesy of Liz's father Brad:

More news soon, more regular posts, and once we've finalized them the info on our travel plans will be spilled as well... but we're thinking of leaving the US in mid/late September!

Peace
A&E