Greetings from Pennsylvania!

The last few months have been busy yet again!  Rachel found out that she was accepted to Penn State, her top choice program, and we made the decision to move to the East Coast! This Spring Rachel was busy finishing up seeing clients as well as her final class.  She also finished her thesis and passed her defense in May! She graduated with her Master's degree on May 17th and a week later we loaded up the moving truck and Rachel's parents made the trip out to Pennsylvania with us.  Everything went well and we moved into our new townhome in Bellefonte on May 25th.  We are all settled in and enjoying our new surroundings.  We have already been on a hike in the mountains, and we have several more planned for this summer.  Rachel is working at the school this summer doing research for her new advisor, and Jonathan is busy looking for a job.  We are also only about 4 and a half hours away from Jonathan's family in New York now, and have already been able to visit them.  Overall, we are very excited to be out here and we're looking forward to everything that's ahead of us!

This picture is form Rachel's graduation. Her parents and Grandma and Grandpa Tysseling were able to come for the ceremony.

And Rachel and Jon:

Before we moved, Rachel was able to go home to Iowa for a short visit.  This picture is with her parents, Grandma Jane, Aunt Becky, and her brother, Ben, and his girlfriend, Michelle.  Ben and Michelle are moving to Arizona this summer for school, so this might be the last family photo for a while!

 

We loaded up the truck in Kansas, then traveled to Des Moines to stay with Rachel's parents for the first night:

The next day we drove from Des Moines, Iowa to Streetsboro, Ohio (a 13 hour drive with the time change). We of course were bringing our 2 cats, Sawyer and Hurley, and it was an experience moving with 2 cats!  This is Hurley making himself comfortable in our hotel room that night:

This is a picture of the view from the bike trail next to our townhome:

And here are a few pictures of our town home:

We were able to bring Rachel's piano, and she has enjoyed being able to play again after not having a piano for the past 3 years!

Jon built his own computer desk, which you can see in the picture below:

Sawyer and Hurley have also been enjoying our new place! It has more windows for them to look out and more birds to watch:

Here are a few pictures from our first hike on the Allegheny Front Trail:

Last weekend we had Jonathan's brother, Timothy, stay with us for the night (they enjoyed playing video games together!), and the next day we made the trip to New York to visit Jon's family.  Jon's sister, Sarah, graduated from Lake Erie College in May and will be going to vet school, and the get-together was part her graduation/birthday part, and part birthday party for Jon's sister, Rachel.

What's been going on the past 6 months?

We have definitely had a busy 6 months!  (Hence the reason we haven't been posting - oops!)

Jonathan went to live and work in western North Dakota in September and returned at the end of December.  He lived in Watford City and worked on a 100-mile section of the BakkenLink Oil Pipeline as an environmental Inspector. He is now back at his previous position at Bartlett and West.

Rachel used the time while he was gone to work on her thesis.  She also submitted applications of PhD programs in Sociology.  She is applying to University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, Penn State, and Bowling Green State University.  This semester she is working on finishing up her thesis, and is also finishing up her 500 hours of seeing clients!

We also adopted a new black kitten named Hurley! He loves to snuggle and be held, which Jonathan loves.  He and Sawyer are already close friends and both enjoy playing with one another.

Rachel recently found out that she was accepted to Penn State, her top choice! She will travel to visit the campus in March and will make her final decision in April.

Colorado Vacation

In August we took a week long vacation in Colorado!  We left Monday the 13th in the afternoon after Rachel had finished taking the comprehensive exams for her program.  We drove from Manhattan, KS to Longmont, CO.  The drive through western Kansas was probably one of the most boring drives we've ever experienced, and we narrowly missed some thunderstorms as we entered Colorado.

Day 1:
Our first official day of our vacation we began by going to Estes Park.  Once there we took the aerial tramway up to the top of a tall hill where we could look out over some of the mountains:

We then continued on into the Rocky Mountain National Park. We drove along the Trail Ridge Road and stopped quite often to take pictures. We stopped to do some hiking around the Alpine Ridge Visitor's Center.  We chose a trail that no one else was on and we hiked through the tundra out to the edge of the mountain where we could look into a valley where some elk were grazing:

After we had driven along the northern park of the road, we went along the western edge and started for the town we were staying in that night: Steamboat Springs.  We ate a great restaurant that night called Mahogany Ridge Grill and Brewing Company.  It was fantastic, and we recommend it to anyone that passes through Steamboat Springs!  Here is a picture of the beer flight we ordered:

Day 2:

We woke up early and drove the two and a half hours to Vernal, Utah, which is just over the Utah/Colorado border.  There we went to the Dinosaur National Monument park.  It had a large exhibit where instead of removing the fossils from the matrix, they just built the building right around the rock with the fossils!  It was very cool! We also did some hiking around that area too and saw some more fossils that hadn't been excavated. 

Next we went back to Dinosaur, CO, where an older man at the welcome center recommended we go down the scenic byway to Grand Junction.  Along the way we saw ancient American Indian cave paintings and we got to drive through some more mountains. We stopped at the Colorado National Monument in Fruita, CO and hiked around the interesting goelogical landscapes:

We then got on I-70 and drove through more mountains and national forests to reach our destination for the evening, Silverthorne.

Day 3:

We got up early again and drove another scenic byway through the Continental Divide over to Florissant, where we hiked in the Florissant National Fossil Beds. This national park has petrified redwood tree stumps, from an ancient forest that used to be in the area.  The forest had at one time been essentially a giant redwood forest.

We continued on to Colorado Springs where we went to the Garden of the Gods.  We hiked around the park quite a bit and saw some really cool geological formations:

We stayed in Colorado Springs that night and had the opportunity to eat at one of our favorite restaurants, The Melting Pot!!

Day 4: 

We got up very early and drove to Pike's Peak.  We drove up to the summit, where it was a cool 30 degrees (it felt great compared to the 110+ degree weather we've been having in Kansas this summer!)

We drove back down the mountain and stopped to hike a few different places.  The views were great, but unfortunately it was a little hazy due to the wildfires in Nevada and California.

We then left Colorado Springs and drove to Denver.  That evening we went to eat at the original location of another one of our favorite places to eat: Chipotle!

Day 5:

We drove to a suburb of Denver, Morrison, and went to a hiking area called Dinosaur Ridge, where fossilized dinosaur tracks and some bones have been found.  This was one of Jonathan's favorite spots, since he had always wanted to see natural dinosaur tracks (versus seeing them in a museum).  There were Ornithomimus, Triceratops, and other two legged dinosaur tracks. VERY COOL!  Later that day we headed to the Denver Botanical Garden to kill some time and enjoy the flowers. 

Rachel stayed in Denver while Jon returned to Manhattan for work.  Rachel attended the American Sociological Association conference.

Tomorrow (September 16th), Jonathan will head up to North Dakota, where he will stay until the end of the year.  He will be working as an "environmental inspector" as the Bekken company installs a new 100 mile oil pipeline that will transport the oil received from fracking south. 

Rachel will be using her extra free time to take the GRE for PhD programs, and work on her thesis!

A busy summer!

This summer has been busy for us!  We had the opportunity to travel around Kansas on some day trips on the weekends, and Rachel attended a conference in Chicago.

For our first day trip we took Hwy 24 south out of Manhattan, which forms the Flint Hills Scenic Byway.  We stopped at the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve to look around for a bit.  We then went on to Wichita where we saw the Star Wars Exhibit at the Exploration Place.  It had a massive amount of Star Wars props! Needless to say we were both excited!

The Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve

The Star Wars Exhibit at the Exploration Place in Wichita

The next week I (Rachel) went to a conference in Chicago.  The conference was for the International Association for Relationship Research, and one of my colleagues and I presented a poster titled "The Impact of Cyclicality on Cohabiting and Married Couples".  We stayed in the Palmer House (a beautiful old hotel a couple blocks away from Millennium Park) and we had the opportunity to go to the Taste of Chicago, a food festival, eat at Gino's Pizzeria, and see the Field Museum.  We also attended quite a few presentations about research that is going on in the area of romantic relationships.  Overall it was a great experience!

A view of the Chicago skyline at the Taste of Chicago food festival

Rachel and her colleague, Kale, presenting their poster

Our next day trip was to Hutchinson, Kansas.  On our way there we saw a sign for "Lindsborg" a small town touting Swedish roots, so we stopped to check it out.  It was similar to Pella, but instead of Dutch, everything was Swedish.  While we were there we bought a Dala sign with our last name on it.  We then went to the Cosmosphere in Hutchinson, which a air and space museum affiliated with the Smithsonian.  The outside seemed fairly small, but it was actually quite large! It has one of the largest collection of retired air and space craft in the United States.  We saw a ton of interesting things, but the highlight was seeing the Odyssey, the control module from the Apollo 13 mission.  We then went across town to the Salt Mine.  The location is used to store old documents and movie props because of its extremely low humidity.  It was carved out to be 9 feet tall and 2,500 square feet. So it was a lot different (and spacious!) from most caves!

Jonathan in front of the sign for Lindsborg, KS

The command module, Odyssey, from the Apollo 13 mission

Us at the Salt Mine

Our most recent day trip was to the Natural Stone Scenic Byway, which forms a loop south of I-70 between Manhattan and Topeka.  Our first stop was the Echo Cliffs Park, which was out in the middle of nowhere. It was a fantastic slab of different sedimentary rocks showing some beautiful layers. We then continued through the rest seeing some amazing sights.

Echo Cliffs Park

The 4-mile long stone fence that first separated land that was owned by ranchers from the open range where anyone could let their cattle graze

I (Jonathan) have accepted a temporary position in North Dakota.  I will be leaving for western North Dakota mid-September and hopefully arriving back home before the new year.  My job title will  be Environmental Inspector and I will be overseeing the environmental regulations of the oil pipes they will be installing along a 100 mile stretch of land.  That pipeline will be transporting the oil that was pumped from the fracking they have been doing in northwest North Dakota.  I really don't know much more about the position besides that.  I will be with two of my colleagues (and friends) and we will be living in a small home out there that has been fully furnished.  It should definitely be an adventure.


Finally, we have recently purchased a Digital SLR camera. This has come from a few months of saving and debating on a model but we finally decided on a Canon T3i. We both love it and have really enjoyed taking pictures with it.  There is just something very satisfying about hearing and feeling that "click."  We will be using it on our upcoming trip to Colorado!

It's been a while since our last post...

So it's been a while since our last blog post (obviously).  That is because Jonathan doesn't do posts on his own, and Rachel has been very busy the past several months.  So here's what's been going on:

Rachel

I had an incredibly busy Spring semester.  I took 5 courses over the course of the semester (which is a lot for grad school!) and starting in February I started seeing premarital couples at the Catholic Student Center.  I saw 12 premarital couples in addition to my clients at our regular clinic.  There were several weeks where I had over 10 client contact hours, in addition to my assistantship and coursework.  The last few weeks of the semester were busy with finals and final papers, but I was also preparing for my research trip to China, which was an adventure.

We flew out of Kansas City at 6:00am on Wednesday the 16th, so we drove to KC the night before.  The next day we flew from KC to Chicago, where we had an 8-hour layover.  We then had a 15 and a half hour flight to Hong Kong and made it to our hotel in the city by 1 in the morning (we lost a day in flight so this was the morning of the 18th).  We had to get up early that day because we were visiting the Hong Kong Family Therapy Institute.  It was great to visit with them and we were able to watch a session.  The next couple days we went sight-seeing in Hong Kong.  We saw the world's longest escalator, Victoria Peak, Aberdeen Fish Market, and the Symphony of Lights.  Hong Kong was fairly Westernized and I really enjoyed the city.

Our first official Chinese meal was traditional dim-sum for lunch!

The Hong Kong skyline at night

More of Hong Kong city

We left Hong Kong on Sunday and took a ferry up the river to Zhuhai, where we stayed at Beijing Normal University's satellite campus.  It was more rural than Beijing was. Here we visited the university and met several students.  We visited a class and talked about differences between romantic relationships in young adults in the US and China.  In the afternoon we also met with some Family Therapists from the surrounding area.

Our group with some of the Chinese students.  This was the view from a courtyard on their campus.

Next we took a bus to Guangzhou, which is the 3rd largest city in China.  Here we visited another university and met with some students.  We also did some more sight-seeing in Guangzhou.  We saw the Sun Yat-Sen Hall, which was built by the first democratic leader of China.  We also saw Shamian Island, which is where anyone who adopts a Chinese child must go to get some adoption papers.  We took a dinner cruise on the Pearl River where we saw many of the buildings that had been built when Guangzhou hosted the Chinese version of the Olympics.  While we were in Guangzhou we also visited a traditional food market with various items like dried seahorses, live geese, and live scorpions.  We also visited a Buddhist temple, and the statue of the Five Rams, which were the guardians of Guangzhou.

The Sun Yat-Sen Hall

The scorpions at the market.  People would just grab them with chopsticks and put them in a container.

The Buddhist temple

One of the buildings on the dinner cruise.  It was built for China's version of the olympics within their own country.

The statue of the Five Rams

We flew from Guangzhou to Beijing.  In Beijing we stayed at a bed & breakfast type hotel.  It was in an old hutong neighborhood in the city center and was in an old house with courtyards.  While we were in Guangzhou I acquired some nasty bug bites (I won't post the pictures because they were pretty gross), so while most everyone else went to do some service work at an orphanage, the professor leading our trip took me to a hospital in Bejing.  It turned out I had an allergic reaction to some mosquito bites, and we spent the rest of the day sight seeing.  I saw the Bell Tower which used to be the way time was kept when Beijing was a smaller city.  We also saw the Lama Temple, and the Olympic Park.

The Bell Tower

Part of the Lama Temple

The Bird's Nest at the Olympic Park

The other days we were in Beijing we saw the Temple of Heaven, which is the temple where only the Emperor was allowed to worship, Tianamen Square, the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace, and the Silk Market.  The silk market is kind of like a 7 story mall where you barter for cheap things.  I bought souvenirs and a suitcase there.

The Temple of Heaven

The memorial at Tianamen square

Mao Ze Dong Memorial

Forbidden City

The Summer Palace

On our last day we went to the Great Wall, which was probably my favorite thing that we saw.

All in all, it was a great experience and I'm very glad I went, but I'm not sure I will go back.  The cultural differences and the language barrier were quite extreme, so I think I will stick with more Western cultures for a while!

When I returned from China I was home for 4 days and then I went to Stats Camp for a week where I took an intensive course on Structural Equation Modeling.  A week and a half later Jon and I went to New York for his sister, Rachel's, graduation.  Now I am home, but I leave again next week to present at an International conference in Chicago.  This summer I am taking an online class, which is quite a bit of work.  I am also continuing to see premarital couples, as well as my individual clients.  I am also studying for the GRE, which I will take in September in preparation to apply to PhD programs this fall and winter.

Jonathan

I have been busy with work. Same old, same old I guess! Lots of map making! I've been enjoying hanging out with some of my coworkers, most of whom are from Lawrence. I was able to be there for the KU vs. Ohio State Final Four game when KU won and it was a great time! After the game, the whole street was a sea of people. 

During the summer and while Rachel was in China, I had a chance to check out the Batpod and Tumbler from Christopher Nolan's Batman films. It was really cool to see them up close! I even saw the Tumbler drive around a bit.

Rachel and I were able to attend Nick and Megan Butz's wedding. It was a lot of fun and we got to see our college friends, many of whom we haven't seen in almost a year.

I was also able to go on a 20 mile bikeride around Manhattan with our friends Chelsea and Daniel. I was sore afterwards, but it was definitely worth the ride.

A little bit after our "real" anniversary, Rachel and I were able to finally celebrate it! Rachel had not been feeling her best after getting back from China, so we waited a week or so. Champagne and a meat/cheese platter! Yum!

Now, Rachel and I are just trying to keep cool. With the weather easily hitting 105+ degrees, any chance to go to a mall or visit a museum, or somewhere with AC is always nice, so we don't have to run ours.