Happy Birthday Baby Jesus!

I hope everyone had a great Christmas. :) Now the new year is just a few days away. It should be interesting to see what the new year brings and where I'll be spending the majority of it. Anything could happen!
To explain the name of this post, a few years back on Christmas my Grandma Jean joined us for our traditional Christmas dinner. Usually she isn't feeling well enough to make the hour car ride and she stays at home. Some times she is on many different pain medications and because of old age and whatever other reasons she'll say some pretty funny things. One Christmas she even tried to pass off a Betty Crocker frozen pie as her own, even with the tin foil pan and the Betty Crocker stamp on the pie! LOL Anyway, this year was also the first time my sisters boyfriend was going to spend a holiday with our family. When it was time to say a prayer just before everyone ate, my Grandma decided to speak up and make a not so traditional suggestion. She requested that everyone sing Happy Birthday to Baby Jesus. It was actually really sweet of her but it's become a huge family joke. No one could bare to tell her that it was slightly ridiculous and absolutely hilarious. We all sat just looking around the table at each other, still holding hands from starting the prayer and began to sing. I seriously don't know how everyone got through the song with out bursting into laughter. My sisters boy friend was looking completely motified, however even more so, my sister being unbelievably embarrassed while also trying to get through the whole happy birthday song with out even a snicker. Now, it's a great family memory. So...Happy Birthday Baby Jesus (I know, it's a few days late).

Anyway, here are a few pictures of my Christmas. :)


All of us roommates made at least one dish for a party we had at our apartment on Christmas eve. We had lots of good food. :)


Thelma cooking!


The deviled eggs I made. Mmmm..delish!


Here are a few of us, before everyone else arrived to the apartment.



Getting ready to leave for dinner on Christmas day. I love this dress. <3


Us girls at Koi

Those are just a few pics, stole from friends and a few from my camera phone. FINALLY my camera is fixed! I paid about 100 dollars but it's worth it to have my trusty Cannon back. As long as I can manage to keep it away from hot tubs from now on! LOL

AND here is a picture of magazine that I will probably never get a copy of. Marc Sacro (the photographer for the shoot) took this from his camera phone. It's a magazine in the UK. I think I might order it online. Not sure that I would use it in my book though. I think it turned out nice either way. Gotta admit Terra and I make some pretty sexxi faeries! Ha! :)




More to come after the New Year!


Ciao! xoxo

Vegan Again!

While shopping at the supermarket yesterday, I picked up a Thai brand of instant cereal. After I got home I started to read the back of the box and noticed the Asian Food Pyramid. I was surprised to find that it was really different than the one that I've seen before. The major differences: Meat is at the tip of the pyramid, with a suggested serving of once a month! This made me really happy. Along with Dairy being placed somewhere near the middle, with a suggestion of a serving per week BUT as optional. :) Again this made me very happy. It also placed beans and nuts as something to be eaten daily.

And here it is!....




I feel like I'm kind of a freak because it made me so interested and sparked a whole new train of thought for me. I went online looked up the US food pyramid and they have made an improved version. Except they are suggesting that people consume 3 cups of dairy a day and 5.5 oz of meat or beans. The beans part is great, but really, no one needs that much meat or dairy.
Just after learning of the Asian Food Pyramid, I was bored and decided to surf the web, not looking for anything in particular. I ended up on msn and started reading an article on ways to prevent osteoporosis. It included a lot about how milk and other dairy products are not that great for the body. I've had this opinion for a long time (I've been vegeterian for about 12 years now), but I rarely come across articles like this unless I search for them myself. It's really nice to see that other people might be reading this and learn that milk and dairy products really aren't that healthy after all.

A few facts of the article that I found interesting:

*The high protein content in dairy acidifies the blood, which causes the body to take calcium from the bones in an effort to balance it out. This means the body loses more calcium than it gains!

*Protein molecules in milk are large (milk is meant for calves, who grow to be over 1,000 lbs! It seems obvious that human bodies might not be able to process milk). The human body isn't meant to handle the large protein molecules. Often the immune system will reject it foreign, or allergenic. This is why many people experience fatigue, lowered ability to concentrate, and overproduction of mucus when they eat dairy.

* For some people the consumption of dairy causes stomach pain, gas and diarrhea. This is because they lack the enzyme lactase, to properly digest dairy sugar.

*New studies show that the body is able to absorb just as much, or more calcium from orange juice as cows milk. Orange juice is high in vitamin C, which also aides in the absorption of calcium.

Here is the link to the article if anyone is interested:
http://health.msn.com/health-topics/osteoporosis/slideshow.aspx?cp-documentid=100250352&imageindex=1

I thought it might be better if I found a page or something explaining more reasons why milk is bad for the human body. It wasn't hard. I'll only post one web article I found online. Even this article is a bit overwhelming, because it's a bit long and has a lot of information in it. However it's expremely interesting and I hope everyone reads it! :)

THE MILK LETTER : A MESSAGE TO MY PATIENTS
by Robert M. Kradjian, MD
http://www.notmilk.com/kradjian.html

And here is a video I found. It's pretty old. I find it even more interesting because it's so old. This information must have been known for so long but for some reason people STILL think that milk and other dairy products are healthy. Sad.


Milk does a body bad

Seek Perfection | MySpace Video

So, after my discovering the Asian Food Pyramid and then doing so much thought about diary. I've decided to become vegan again. :) I'm really excited about it. I think eating vegan again will make me a lot more conscious of what I'm putting in my body. For about a year while I was in high school I was vegan, it ended when I was in Athens, Greece and fell in love with Feta. I've never gone back to drinking milk, it always upset my stomach after giving it up. I can't really say for how long I plan to be vegan because I do love me some cheese! Ha! But I know that if I do go back to eating dairy some time soon, it will be occasionally, just as the Asian Food Pyramid suggests. ;)

Elite-Surat Thani Calendar Press photos

Here are a few press photos from the calendar job. I hope some of the pictures turn out good. The make-up really wasn't that great and I'm not sure about the photographer. We'll see though. Here are my favorite images from thai-cat walk. :)







There ya go. :)


I still really need to get my camera fixed so I can take everyday pics of the city. I guess I do have three more months to do that though!

Ciao!

<3

One Month!

Wow, it's crazy but I've been in Bangkok for about a month now. I've had a few good jobs so far. One for Lolane hair color, I'll be on the boxes of hair color here. I'm excited for when it comes out. Here are a few pictures from the shoot :) The wig is really obviously a wig. But in the images, it's really close up and looks much less obvious than these pictures taken from my blackberry. :)










My second weekend I went and watched thai boxing.








Even with having only a few jobs, I've been really busy. Last weekend I took a trip with the owner of my agency to Surat Thani, a province in Thailand. There is really nothing of interest in Surat Thani, we went there to take a few press photos with the governor. After spending way too long traveling, about two hours in a van, an hour ferry ride and another hour in the van we arrive at World Resort in Koh Samui. I've never been to anywhere tropical where the beaches are really nice. So this was a great experience. The first day in Samui I just stayed at relaxed at the hotel, swam in the ocean, in the pool, got a massage and ate good food. :) On Sunday, our last day, we went with the owner of our agency to scout for locations to shoot the calendar that he puts on every year. We took a speed boat to a few of the different islands. It was amazing. Here are some of the pictures from the trip...
















This Wednesday I went to Laos to get my working visa. It was an interesting experience. The bus ride there was 10 hours! We left at 8pm and were planning to arrive in Laos in the morning, do all the visa stuff, spend the night, pick up our passports in the am, then head back to Bangkok. You would think a 10 hour bus ride would be bad enough but it turns out something was wrong with the engine of the bus and they had to keep the air conditioning on the whole time. Right now is winter in Laos, still not comparable to winter in Seattle but it wasn't warm. After freezing on the way there, we realized that like most countries, they don't have waiting areas inside. We had to wait outside in the cold until all the visas of everyone in our group had been processed. I was really happy to get back to the hotel, which was more like a hostel. I really didn't care, as long as it was warm! I went with a few of the people I met on the bus down to the river where we had dinner. After doing the 10 hour bus ride again, I got back to my apartment at 1am to find out I had a 9am flight to Surat Thani to shoot the Elite calendar the owner of my agency does. There was so much press for this calendar, it's crazy. When I was shooting, there were at least 10-15 cameras from different magazines, news chanels and fashion web sites also taking my photo. Fashion TV was also covering the shooting of the calendar. It should be interesting to see the press photos for it and the actual final calendar.


Friday I have a job for Priew Magazine. I'm hoping the images will turn out good and are something I can use for my book. After I finish with my job, there is this big party in Pattaya that all the models are going to. It sounds like it'll be a good time.

Thats it for now. <3

Saint Theresa's Prayer

Someone sent me this little prayer in a forward e-mail. But I love it, it helps to calm me when I'm stressed or anxious about anything in my life. It might be kind of corny and cheesy of me to post it on here but I figure I should pass it on too....

May today there be peace within.

May you trust God that you are exactly where you are meant to be.

May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith.

May you use those gifts that you have received, and pass on the love that has been given to you.

May you be confident knowing you are a child of God. Let this presence settle into your bones,

and allow your soul the freedom to sing, dance, praise and love.

It is there for each and every one of us.

:)

Sawatdee Kaa

Finally I made a blog! :)

I've been thinking about making a blog for a really long time and am really glad that I finally did.

I arrived to Bangkok about a week ago and signed a four month contract with Elite Models. So far I really love it here. Being here for all of the holidays might be kind of rough but they have some really amazing Islands and skype is going to be my savior. :)



The city is really busy and really dirty. It reminds me of China in a lot of ways but the people are a lot friendlier and so far it seems like there are a lot of things to do here that are foreigner friendly.

More to come after I upload my pictures........

Sawatdee Kaa (Hello and Goodbye in Thai)

:)