{"id":2991,"date":"2014-04-06T00:38:28","date_gmt":"2014-04-06T06:38:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/?p=2991"},"modified":"2014-12-29T20:35:52","modified_gmt":"2014-12-30T02:35:52","slug":"denial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/?p=2991","title":{"rendered":"Denial"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\"Spotted<\/a>

Spotted Shag in Marlborough Sound<\/p><\/div>\n

I’m in denial that this fabulous R&R is coming to an end and we’ll have to go back to work tomorrow. This vacation has been a milestone for me: I have not even once turned on my Blackberry. It’s an amazing feeling and the first time in years that I have not spent vacations checking email or doing some work. For the first time in ages, I feel relaxed! Part of that is due to knowing that my wonderful friend and co-worker Barbara can take \u00a0over for me in the office and I just don’t have to worry about it – thanks, Barb!<\/span><\/p>\n

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Our last day in Bangkok, we went to a cooking school, Bai Pai<\/a>, about 30 minutes outside of town. It was a lovely setting – big open kitchen with multiple cooking stations next to a lovely garden. It’s something we’ve always wanted to do and never made the time. We had a lot of fun and learned to cook stir-fried cashew chicken (that Saleem re-created beautifully for us at home this week), Thai beef salad, a dessert, and Phad Thai. There were seven of us in the class – in the small world category, one young man knew three of our co-workers here in Islamabad!<\/p>\n

\"John<\/a>

John and his Phad Thai<\/p><\/div>\n

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Click here to see all of our New Zealand photos<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Click here to see all of our Bangkok photos<\/a>.<\/p>\n

We returned to Islamabad late Monday night and spent the rest of the week at home on a staycation – more fun! I was happy to see Flavia again, and like always when we return, she wants to sit in my lap constantly. I was also glad to get back into my exercise routine. We watched Season Two of “House of Cards” and just generally relaxed even more, if that’s possible.<\/p>\n

Yesterday was the spring vendor bazaar at the Embassy, so I went to that for a while. It was fun to have lunch with Brad and Mike and get caught up on work news. And of course I found a few trinkets to buy.<\/p>\n

This was our last R&R, so it puts us in the home stretch of our time here. Hard to believe that this time next year, we’ll be living in Guadalajara!<\/p>\n

We loved this artwork at the cabin in New Zealand – it pretty well sums up how we felt about vacation!<\/p>\n

\"My<\/a>

My sentiments exactly!<\/p><\/div>\n

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  I’m in denial that this fabulous R&R is coming to an end and we’ll have to go back to work tomorrow. This vacation has been a milestone for me: I have not even once turned on my Blackberry. It’s an amazing feeling and the first time in years that I have not spent vacations […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2991"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2991"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2991\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3010,"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2991\/revisions\/3010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}