Café Con Monica

New Design! Anniversary Giveaway!

Hey everyone! As promised I am showing off my new design and name change around here! So from today on this place will be called Curls & Cocktails! I am thinking I might move it over to a new place soon but I am not sure yet so for now it stays here! I had such a great time figuring out the plans for this one and finding the perfect name! Jenn over Munchkinland designs is seriously amazing and I highly recommend her!

Anyway! Its hard to come up with ideas of what to give away since I am not at home and its much harder to get things mailed. BUT I am throwing in an extra little prize to the winner that I hope to find on my travels this month. So here are the prizes:

I feel like a bit of Oprah’s favorite things going on here…except they are mine of course!

{1}
$15 Starbucks Gift Card
-because going to Starbucks seriously gives me a little taste of home and always makes my homesickness a little bit less sad! 
{2} 
$25 Gift card for Etsy. 
-For those of you who haven’t shopped on there you are missing out! For those of you that have you know how far $25 can take you! 
{3}
A guest post and your blog button at the top of the list! 
-I don’t do sponsers or ad space so this is as close as I can come to sharing my followers and hoping to introduce you to them! 
{4}
$15 Gift card to Amazon, Barnes and Noble or Itunes! 
-I suppose these can be used in different ways but the main point was for those with e-readers to be able to buy a book! Haha I live through mine 🙂 

I am so excited about this and I can’t wait to see the winner feel free to pass along the message!!!
Good Luck everyone!

Simply Positive Tuesdays-week 2

I realized I have been looking forward to this writing this post because I need a day where I have to sit and think of the positive in my life! 

The Dansha Diaries

1. I am one week away from laying on the beach in Thailand
2. One week and 2 days away from seeing K for the first time in over a year 
3. My students have made so much progress in the 4 1/2 months that I have been teaching them that they make me feel so lucky to be their teacher
4. I got an extra part-time job to add to the others and I literally get to sit around for an hour having conversation with a girl my age. (Seriously how is that not a positive) Did I mention…I get paid to do it. 
5. I added photos to my happy wall and it makes me happier to look at it! 
6. Randomly looked at the countdown on my phone and we have hit and passed the 180 mark folks!!! 
7. My sister sent me a video of my nephew today and I about died he is so cute! 

And just for fun…I love this song and it makes me smile and dance in my seat or wherever every time!

Ook so I could actually keep going with this! Looks like I have more to be happy about than I thought! 

Link up! What is positive in your life?? 

Dinner with a family?

OMG I couldn’t be happier that it is almost Friday. No seriously we wrapped up day 7 of 8 today and I honestly can’t tell you who is crazier anymore. Is it me or is it the kids? They couldn’t even be called children anymore they are little beast like creatures running around screaming and laughing hysterically. Wait…that might have been me. On to other things…


I got invited to dinner with a student’s family tonight. I may have mentioned before that sometimes they like to try and feed me weird shit and giggle when I say no or try it and look like I swallowed something deadly. I was lucky today….well kind of. But first let me share with you something I posted on FB after the last time I went to dinner with a family….

Everytime I go to dinner with a students parents the conversation starts like this:
Them: Do you eat snake?
Me: No
Them: how about dog?
Me: No, thank you.
Them: Hahahaha foreigners are so picky
Me: here is what I won’t eat…Snake, dog, cat, any animals neck or feet, any organs without prior discussion of what animal and organ, nothing with dairy.

Is that really so difficult?? Every single time…Don’t even get me started on table manners. No seriously its bad.



They love it. Think its hilarious. Me? Not so much. I am very adventurous when it comes to food I try not to say no unless it is something that really grosses me out. As mentioned above I said no to Snake…why? Because I had it with the last kids parents and its nothing fancy and didn’t taste like much. 

Anyway! Today I only managed to accidentally eat what I think might have been part of a pigs vein or intestine. I’m not 100 on that one yet and prefer not to know. It wasn’t awful just chewy. Other than that I had lots of seafood and then for some reason they wanted me to try this wine-like substance poured into half a crab shell…weird right? the wine was bitter and gross so I won’t be doing that again. 

Hot pot! 

right before I took a sip 

wine in a crab shell that came out of that pot from above ^^^

moving it around to get the meat from the sides (I was told to do this) 

Why are there tomatoes on her cake??? 

Happy Happy….

…I have no clue why my cheeks are so pink! 

rooftop garden! 

My students mom picking chives for me! 

Then we picked vegetables from their rooftop garden for me to take home and I was happy. OOh and there was cake, yummy cake with some kind of purple stuff on the inside. 




Such an adventure eating at someone’s house in China 🙂 

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