Margaret River Holidays

Our two weeks in Margaret River have been amazing - a perfect combination of relaxing and lazing around and also plenty of outdoor activities (hiking, surfing, canoeing and swimming). Everything is nearby and everyone is so friendly and helpful. The only problem is that now we feel like we could spend a few more easy weeks here except everything is filled up for the summer holidays. All of the kids will be on their summer holidays until February but apparently around Christmas and New Year’s are the busiest.

One of the first things we did was have a belated Thanksgiving dinner – actually we had a whole Thanksgiving day where we cooked, watched a movie, and remembered everything and everyone for whom we were thankful. It was pretty easy to find everything we needed – the one confusing thing was the turkey. They have the turkey by sizes, size 32, 34, 36, 38, etc., not by weight. I am sure that somewhere there is a Rosetta stone to translate the sizes but there was nothing helpful on the wrapper. I figured if we just cooked it until we could pull a leg off, it would probably be good enough. It was and we had just enough leftovers to be sick of turkey after a few days.

There are loads of hiking trails around Margaret River to explore. We took one through a eucalyptus forest and where an old train line had run. Along the trail, in a dead fallen tree was supposed to be a geocache. We hadn’t done any geocaching since we had been with Erica in Hong Kong and we still had a little surfboard key ring that we needed to drop off.

This was easily the toughest geocache yet. The GPS on Dylan’s phone didn’t work well because we had weak reception and then eventually died! All we knew was that when it died we had been about 200 feet away from it and that it was in a dead tree. We walked up and down the section of trail we thought it might be, crashing through brush to various dead trees all the while slightly freaked out by the prospect of deadly spiders and snakes. Finally, as we were about to give up, we decided to try an upright dead tree (rather than one lying on the ground) and… bull’s eye! We were pretty excited and would have stayed to read the logbook longer except that we were quickly being chomped by bugs of all sorts. We learned a whole new respect for navigating through the Australia bush – it is wild!

As a family Christmas present, we signed the whole family up for a three-day surf lesson. Emma and David have been on the surfboards before but haven’t really had a formal lesson. Also, up until we went to Hawaii, neither of them were particularly excited about getting washed around in the waves and didn’t like getting saltwater in their mouths or eyes.

After going to the surf shop to get kitted up (Aussie for getting your gear on), we met instructor, Jarrod, at Red Gate beach. The beach was absolutely beautiful with powdery white sands and clear turquoise water. The waves were pretty small. Jarrod took the kids and got started with them and Dylan and I played in the small surf and watched the lesson. We were so glad we didn’t try to teach them – they listened to everything Jarrod said, did it without any complaining and had a great time. It was also so fun to watch them get excited about catching the waves.

Jarrod invited us to come down the beach early the next day as he was going to be teaching a bunch of kids in a holiday camp. He thought it might be fun for Emma and David to join in the fun. It was madness! There were about 25 kids with their surfboards all in the water at once with about five instructors racing from one to the other.

Dylan and I were on the standup boards that day, so we paddled away from the chaos out to the quieter water. The wind had picked up and as soon as I stood up on the board I was blown nearly out of the bay. It was no comfort when Dylan yelled out to remind me that the next land was Antarctica over 1,000 miles away. I managed to get back in and was feeling pretty good on the board until we started trying catch a wave. I kept running right off the end of the board as soon as the wave started pushing it, which I am sure was entertaining to watch.

I never ended up catching a wave, but I got some good practice. Dylan rode a few and made it look easy. By the end of the three days, Emma caught a few waves on her own and rode them all the way into the beach. David could catch them but once he stood up he’d be so excited he’d jump off the board!

There is a beautiful river that runs through Margaret River to the ocean (big surprise). We took a guided canoe trip up it to learn about local history (aboriginal and settlers), the natural history, to eat Australia wild food (kangaroo, emu, grub hummus, berries and seeds), to explore caves and to swim in the river. Our guide was a big friendly Aussie guy who cracked jokes left and right throughout his stories and clearly really enjoyed what he did.

One of the highlights was paddling through the paper trees on Boonaloongar Island in the middle of the river. This island, also called Sorry Island, was a sacred place for the aborigines. Apparently they would come to the island to unload all of the mistakes they had made or things they were sorry for. They would hug one of the paper trees, the trees would absorb all of the mistakes and they would be unburdened. The water in the river would rise and the trees would be submerged and the water would “wash” all of the mistakes away into the ocean. Needless to say, we all took turns hugging and unloading.

Another highlight was exploring the limestone caves about the river. Huge rooms went back into the stone and had been lived in for an extended period of time by shipwreck survivors in the early 1900’s. There was graffiti on the cave walls with dates of 1920 and 1913 written by the survivors. There was also a tunnel that went back through the cave and came out near the entrance. Dylan, Emma and David explored the tunnel (the diameter ranged between 2-3 feet) while I waited with the camera at the end. I was glad I did. It was pitch black and probably would have taken about 3 minutes but took closer to 5-6 minutes waiting for the others to make it through. Too claustrophobic!! The kids loved it and did it twice.

Christmas was a huge success. Santa found us and managed to fit down the chimney of the wood-burning stove. The kids played with toys, ate Christmas cookies and read books for most of the day. We took a little break and went down to the beach for a Christmas swim. The currents at the first beach we went to were too strong and started pulling the kids out almost as soon as we got in. We were all a little spooked so we moved on to another where it was much more mellow. It was a great Christmas celebration - Happy Holidays to all!

Rice Bubbles and Budgie Smugglers*

We arrived in Perth after almost exactly five months in Asia (almost 1/12 of David’s life!). On the plane here it was strange to think we wouldn’t be getting off in another Asian country but in one with more familiar elements. Our first couple days were filled with culture shock going from Asian to Western but also trying to sort out the cultural differences between American and Australian/English ways. Everyone is so friendly and helpful but is frustrating when you know they are speaking English to you and you still can’t understand them!

The first biggest thing we noticed was how empty it seems here. Perth is the largest city in Western Australia (WA) with a booming population of 1.5 million (WA itself has only 2.2 of the total population of 21 million). Compared to the huge crowded cities we have been in (Shanghai, Singapore, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Bangkok), where hundreds of people are around 24/7, it seems like a ghost town! We were staying in the main downtown area which is busy during the day but completely clears out around 6pm as everyone heads back to the suburbs (kind of like downtown LA). Even during the day, we still have been walking down streets and been the only ones on the whole street.

As a treat for David especially, we decided to take a trip the Perth Mint, which is touted as a great tourist attraction (there isn’t THAT much in Perth). The Mint was founded in 1899 by the British to refine the gold discovered in WA during the 1890’s and send it back to the motherland. They don’t mint regularly circulated coins anymore, but they do still make all sorts of commemorative coins (apparently the Japanese love them – they had special Hello Kitty ones) and the silver medals for the Sydney Olympic Games. The big highlight of the Mint tour was watching them melt, pour and mould a 25-pound solid gold brick. You could also try to pick up a 25-pound gold brick that was housed in a big plexi-glass box. David was in seventh heaven.

There were also examples of gold bars from around the world. There was millions of dollars worth of gold with what seemed like relatively little security. I don’t know why I do it, but I started scheming how you could knock the place over. I would never do anything like that, but I seem to always gravitate to scheming it. I was just feeling guilty for my scheming when Dylan pointed out how it seemed an easy place for someone to rob. I felt so much better that it wasn’t just me!

As a treat for all of us, we decided to take a ferry down the Swan River and over to Rottnest Island. The island is about 10 miles off shore and is Dutch for “rat nest” island. There are these creatures called quokkas that are found all over the island and look a lot like HUGE rats. They are actually much cuter. Aside from looking for quokkas, which isn’t too challenging, we spent the day at a beautiful white sand beach. We tried some snorkeling but there wasn’t much to see where we were and the water was unexpectedly cold! We were feeling very spoiled from our Indonesian adventure. We still had fun splashing around.

After a few days in Perth, we finally got our bearings together and headed down the coast to Margaret River. We were really looking forward to it, not only because there is great wine and really good surfing, but also because we rented a vacation house for two weeks for Christmas! We have been staying in hotels and eating out since we were in Japan. Cooking our own food, doing our laundry and hanging out in the backyard all sound really good.

On our way out of Perth we stopped in Fremantle, a port town just across the river from Perth. While we wanted to go to Fremantle for it’s pretty downtown with Victorian buildings and the fish and chips shops on the harbor, we really wanted to see the statue of it’s most famous resident…. Bon Scott. I am sure there are a few non-Australian hard-core AC/DC fans that would have known this was his hometown, but we only found out when we arrived in Perth.

We stopped to have some fish and chips on the harbor before seeking out the statue when we looked just across the street and saw it there. I don’t know if the statue was life-size, but he sure looked small. It was funny to watch all sorts of people stopping to take their picture with the statue. The best were these two older Italian couples. I had to wonder if they knew who he was or just figured he must be someone important if there was a statue of him and might as well take a picture with it. Apparently they also offer a special Bon Scott tour of Fremantle, which we would have done if we had time, that included his boyhood home, his school, the jail where he was incarcerated, and his grave.

A few hours after leaving Fremantle and being in the car for the first time in five months, we headed southwest and arrived in at our hotel in Bunbury. We had decided to spend the night here because it was home to the Dolphin Discover Centre that offers boat trips out to swim with wild dolphins. The town is on a protected bay and a river runs into the bay. The dolphins come in the bay to feed, rest and play.

The early the next morning we headed over to the Centre. They suited us up with wetsuits (Emma and David each wore two) and snorkel gear and then loaded us up on a small pontoon boat. There were about ten other people onboard with us. We saw the dolphins swimming all around and our guide, a marine biologist, talked to us about their behavior and identified a few of the dolphins. When we saw 5-6 playing in the water, they stopped the boat and we quietly slipped into the water. Our guide told us not to swim towards the dolphins, as that would scare them, but to make them interested in us by singing and duck-diving down underwater. We did this for about a half-hour and while they circled nearby, they never got very close.

We got back the boat to warm up and head towards another spot when they came back. Our guide told us we could quickly and quietly get back in the water. Most people were still warming up (including David wrapped in blankets) so Dylan, Emma and I got back in. I saw a dorsal fin in the distance but figured it was pretty far off when all of a sudden I was face-to-face with a dolphin!! He came within a foot of me, just checking me out. Emma and Dylan were right behind me and also got a close-up view too. I had an underwater camera but I think I was too dazzled to even get my wits about me enough to take a picture. As quickly as he appeared, he was gone, but it made the whole excursion worth it.

After the dolphin experience we got back on the road and headed south for Margaret River and our house. The drive was beautiful and took us from dry desert scrub to rolling fields, vineyards and huge eucalyptus forests. We were a little nervous about the house at first, but it has ended up being all that we were hoping. It has nice big kitchen and living room area with huge windows that look out into the yard, which is filled with tall eucalyptus trees. The town is nearby and consists of about three blocks of shops and restaurants.

There are about 70 wineries in the Margaret River area. We have made it to two so far. They are particularly famous for their cabernet sauvignon and chardonnay. We haven’t had any cabs we were crazy about but had a very good chardonnay, Evoi 2008 reserve Margaret River chardonnay (in case you can track it down at home).

The chardonnay was enjoyed last night with our belated Thanksgiving dinner. We put together quite a feast with turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy and green beans. We even set the whole day aside to pretend it was Thanksgiving and spent the day hanging out around the house - Dylan played his guitar, David played chess and Emma made Christmas ornaments. We were all very thankful for our special meal together and thankful that next year we’ll get to have Thanksgiving with our family and friends.

Emma and David have been working very hard to get the house ready for Christmas. We made a cardboard tree and have decorated it with candy canes and origami balloons and cranes. We are gearing up for Christmas cookies and even have most of the presents wrapped – I am more on the ball here for Christmas than I ever have been at home when I am furiously wrapping all my presents on Christmas eve!

*Rice Bubbles=Rice Krispies, Budgie Smugglers=Togs=Bathers=Swimsuit

Beijing adventures

Beijing is almost nothing like I remember! While there are small alleys and traditional neighborhoods that detour off from the main, wide boulevards, there are with huge modern apartment buildings and malls everywhere. When we were here, I remember that I needed as sweater because it was cold. We had one option – the government friendship store – where to buy it. Now there are clothing stores (including fancy ones like Gucci and Prada) all over the place, car dealerships and fast-food restaurants galore.

We celebrated our arrival with a big Peking duck feast. In fact, we decided to make it our goal to find the best Peking duck in Beijing while we were here. We managed to eat duck for three of the five nights we were here – all different presentations and all delicious. We probably ate more duck here than the kids have eaten in their whole lives!

Our first day out was rainy and cold. We bundled up and headed out for the Forbidden City. It was huge and impressive and definitely consistent with everything we had read about it. We went through building after building and the complex just went on and on. When we were up on the higher buildings it seemed all we could see in the distance were more of the iconic peaked yellow roofs of the palace buildings. While we weren’t quite up on all of our Chinese dynasties, we had recently watched “The Last Emperor,” which was filmed at the Forbidden City and was about the last Qing emperor whose reign ended in 1911 when he was just a boy. It made it even more exciting to recognize the different parts of the palace from the movie and give them little more context, as the whole complex is giant and a little overwhelming.

One night we arranged to go to a Chinese acrobat show. We weren’t really sure whether we had truly arranged it or not as the concierge didn’t speak English very well but he assured us there were tickets waiting for us at the theater. He wrote the name and address of the theater on a card for us to give to the taxi driver who took us to the other side of town (past Tiananmen square) and dropped us in front of one of several acrobat theaters on a small square and directed us to walk down a small alley. We did as we were told (actually were pantomimed to do) and ended it making it to our seats.

The theater was nearly empty when the show started – only about 15 seats filled out of about 100. Despite this, all of the acrobats put on an amazing show and seemed to be really enjoying themselves. The show consisted of about 10 different acts from contortionists to jugglers to girls hanging from wires. All four of us were ooing, aahing and clapping for each act until our hands were sore. Dylan managed to click a few pictures before we were told it was not allowed. Emma and David both now want to be Chinese acrobats.

We had our first Geocaching experience at the Temple of Heaven – it was a blast. I didn’t know anything about it until we met some people on the Great Wall who were really into it. It is basically a treasure hunt using GPS to find the location. When you find the location you log your information and if the cache is large enough, you can leave a little treasure behind. It is a great thing to do with the kids especially. Our school theme this year is navigation and they have learned about latitude and longitude so they can understand how the GPS works to help us find our location.

The cache we found was located right outside of the Temple of Heaven in the fork of a tree. It was hard to be quiet or subtle as we weaved through the trees counting down the distance to the cache on the GPS. This was a very popular cache as we were the fourth group to find it that day! We added our name to the list, GeoGarlands, and then quickly put it back in it’s hiding place and went on our way to the Temple of Heaven. The temple was beautiful but was a little overshadowed from the excitement of our geocache adventure. The kids were already begging to find another.

The afternoon before we left for Xian, we headed for the back lakes area, a part of Beijing located northwest of the Forbidden City. It was very different than the other parts of Beijing we had been in where we had been surrounded by skyscrapers and big busy streets. This area has a few small lakes surrounded by walking paths and bridges. All around the lakes were small restaurants and bars that would have been great in warmer weather. We watched the sun go down and the moon rise as we walked around the lake.

We were surprised to be sad to be leaving Beijing. We hadn’t planned on spending more than about a week here as we thought it would just be crowded and polluted and that week would be more than enough. After a few days however, it had really grown on us. It just felt like a very exciting place to be – it had a energy to it – kind of like Washington DC, where you realize you are in the heart of everything.

The cold weather has certainly been a change for us – it is freezing compared to where we have been – in the low 40s. We are wearing everything warm that we own and are seriously rethinking our plan to spend winter in Europe…Australia and New Zealand might be more our speed.

Hiking and Sleeping on the Great Wall

We had packed up, cleared out of the room and breakfasted all by 8am, and Gary and Lara were waiting for us, on time, in the lobby. It was Gary's (the owner) day off, so Lara, a recent Tourism grad from university in her home province of Sichuan, would be our guide. We learned that ours would be a private group (just the four of us and the guide) which suited us fine. We piled into the van and the driver headed north. Lara decided we should stop and see the Bird's Nest (olympic stadium) on the way out of town rather than the way back, as she knew we would be tired the next day. She was right.

The Bird's Nest was very cool to see in person, much bigger than we realized from seeing it on TV. We didn't get to go inside, but it was still neat to see it, as well as the Water Cube where Michael Phelps made history. 

It was very cold in Beijing, and since arriving we had been a little apprehensive about hiking and sleeping on the Great Wall. As far as we understood, we would sleep in one of the many watchtowers which dotted the wall. We would have sleeping bags and mats provided, and we would be inside a room with a roof above us, but with no heat or fires. The website had mentioned something about a nearby hotel which was used as a backup in the event of inclement weather, and I think we were secretly hoping for that - we could have the best of both worlds: hiking on the wall all day, and sleeping in a bed in a heated room all night! But Lara soon dispelled us of that notion; she had led a group the previous weekend, which had been just as cold, and they slept in the tower, and it was cold (she didn't sugarcoat that) but they survived. So at least we could now resign ourselves to our fate and get on with enjoying it.

We drove for about 2 hours to our starting point, while I napped in the back of the van most of the way. And then, on the outskirts of a small village, we stopped suddenly, the doors opened, and a warmly dressed woman in a red wool jacket climbed in. We were told nothing about who this person was or why we had stopped to pick her up. We had become accustomed to this in China: it was partly due to language challenges, but also partly cultural, but we often felt that we were on a "need to know basis".  It seems that you are often expected to follow along, with no questions asked or instructions offered, and anything you need to know will be made clear when and if you need to know it. This happens at restaurants, hotels, museums, and even private tour groups. 

We exited the main rode and drove along a smaller road for another 15 minutes or so, with some dialogue between the driver and the woman we had picked up. We had our first glimpses of the wall, with towers perched on hill crests stretching off to the distance. Then we stopped abruptly, all eyes turned to look at us, and Lara (who spoke decent English) asked if we wanted to do a 6-hour hike or 4-hour hike. All the information we'd been given said that we would do a 6-hour hike on day 1, it was what we had signed up for, so Wendy and I looked at each other and replied "6-hour hike" in unison. This having been decided, we then made a U-turn, and drove for 15 minutes back the way we had just come. No questions asked, no explanations offered, though at some point towards the end of the hike the next day I managed to glean from Lara that the normal "6-hour hike" usually only takes about 4 hours, so we actually ended up doing a few miles more than planned...which was fine with us.

Back on the main road we stopped outside a toll station to make a last public bathroom break before starting out. Walking back across the road, under a cold and gray sky, on the desolate outskirts of a small village somewhere in northern China, with a dozen or so locals milling about, waiting for a bus, staring at us (something else we have become accustomed to in China) I had a lonely, apprehensive feeling. WTF were we doing here? Lara finally introduced the woman to us as "a local farmer" (and she was thereafter referred to by the children as "The Farmer") and explained that she would be accompanying us on the first leg of the hike because "it could be dangerous" without her. No questions as to what exactly this meant, no explanation offered. This didn't help to put my mind at ease.

Back in the van, we drove into the village, and turned onto a small lane. Walking down the lane was the most iconic old Chinese man I've seen here, hunched over his walking stick, wearing his blue-gray Chinese-pajamas suit, chin jutting and lips sucked in over his toothless gums. He didn't seem to notice us driving past.

And then we stopped, got out of the van, put on our backpacks, and headed out. The driver would meet us at our destination. We walked up into the hills above the village, and quickly passed a number of dilapidated old brick buildings, which Lara told us was an old army barracks. We hiked up and up and we could see the wall above us, snaking along the ridge as far as we could see, demarcating our trail. And then we reached it. It was very deteriorated where we started out and we had to follow a trail next to it for a while, but soon we were able to scramble up and begin walking along the top of the wall. 

The hike was amazing. One vista after another opened up, each more amazing than the last, with always the wall snaking out along the ridge top as far as we could see behind us and ahead of us. The kids were in heaven, and though we ended up hiking over 8 miles that day (seeing only a handful of other people the entire time) they never tired or complained. The wall was unrestored, but in most places it was in good enough condition for us to walk along the top of it. One area was impassable and we had to divert down a trail into a narrow valley, and hike back up another valley to rejoin it. The valleys were all farmed, mostly with corn, which had been recently harvested. We saw old people working in the fields, and we were struck by how things had probably changed very little in that valley over the last few millennia or so. There were piles of corn stalks everywhere, all of which had been gathered by hand, some of which had been partially burned for reasons I'm not sure, and the smell of burnt corn combined with that of the tilled red earth. 

At one point later we passed an abandoned farm house, and we couldn't resist going in to take a peek. It was a low-slung mud-walled dwelling set against one side of a very narrow valley. Just like Wang Lung's original house in The Good Earth, which Wendy and I had both just read, it consisted of three rooms: the main room, which was about 10 ft x 10 ft, with a brick-walled stove, and nothing else, and one bedroom off to each side, each smaller than the main room, each with a 3 ft or so high adobe platform which was the bed. The grass-thatched roof hung low, and was blackened from years of smoke. The walls were papered with newspapers, as had been the wood-latticed "windows". The floors were hardened dirt. There was a wooden outhouse and a rock-lined well outside. And that's about it. It was truly amazing to step into this ordinary peasant's home, and to imagine that not too many years ago an entire family would have lived and worked here, and to think that most Chinese people have lived in homes just like this for millennia, and many still do. 

On the last segment of that day we reached a fully restored section of the wall. The unrestored section had been very cool, but it was amazing to walk on this restored section and see how the wall would have looked when originally constructed hundreds of years ago. The towers were also restored, and David and Emma had fun running around them, climbing to the second level on the two story ones, and playing hide and seek between the pillars. In one of these towers we encountered a group of 4 Chinese, each armed with an enormous and expensive looking camera, and they pounced on Emma and David and proceeded to pose and photograph them for 20 minutes! At one point David was getting tired of it, and I snuck away with him to play Mongol-invader fighting in another part of the tower, leaving Emma to handle the photoshoot (she seemed to be enjoying it). A couple minutes later two of the women found us, literally shoved me aside, and began snapping away at David again. I've never seen anything like it. It literally went on for 20 minutes, and the four of them must have each taken several hundred photos of our children! The man gave me his card, which Lara said indicated that he was a professional photographer. I'm supposed to email him to get copies of the pictures, but I haven't yet.

Finally we were done, and we walked down into a small village and we were seated (outdoors) and quickly offered tea and beer. Once we stopped hiking it became very cold, so Wendy and I bundled up with everything we had, but Emma and David had already started playing with a few of the local children, so they didn't get cold at all (David was sweaty!). Another tour group joined us for dinner, and we had a great time getting to know all of them. There were two families from Australia, one with two boys and one with two girls, so Emma and David had a great time playing with all of them. It was surreal to be sitting out on the main street of this tiny village, illuminated by a single bulb hanging on a wire behind our table, eating the (mainly vegetarian) local feast which had been prepared for us, shivering as we drank our ice cold beers (which, by the way, the locals thought was crazy, as they prefer their beer hot!), but it wasn't the lonely, apprehensive feeling I'd had in the morning, it was the good kind of surreal. An old man shuffled up and sat down in a small room behind us to slurp his bowl of noodles. I took a small video of him as he posed for what he apparently thought was a photograph. He was very nice and complimented us on our children and then shuffled back off.

We made our way back up to the wall, and along to the tower where we would sleep. We were given two sleeping bags and two mats apiece, and managed to stay plenty warm and relatively comfortable during the night. Because our group was smaller (and our guide more assertive) we slept in the small wooden room which had been built on top of the tower, which was fully sealed off, while the larger group slept one floor below us, in the actual tower, which had windows open to the elements. They survived as well, though a few who slept under the windows got a bit wet when it rained during the night, and one guy had a rude awakening in the early morning hours when something scurried across his chest! 

We were all up early the next day, with hot coffee and cold cereal to revive us, and in good spirits all around after surviving our night on the wall. We only hiked a few miles that morning, but with some very steep up and down sections of the wall. It was very foggy and dramatic looking back down a steep section we had just summited, or looking up at the next one to come. Emma and David spent the whole morning walking and talking with their new friends, as did Wendy and I. Finally we came to the end of our hike, bought a celebratory beer from a vendor on the wall, took some group photos, and headed back to the van for more napping on the way back to Beijing.

Overnight Train to Beijing

We are on the train from Hong Kong to Beijing. The same landscape has been whizzing by since I woke up this morning to see the sun rising out of the haze over the fields. Tracks of open fields, mostly fallow, lined with tall, sparse trees that are occasionally interrupted by unknown, sprawling towns and sliced up by elevated, concrete roadways. There are big, tall , modern apartment buildings with piles of rubble around mixed with what look like abandoned Mao-era government buildings. On the outskirts of the towns are the old town remnants – one story brick compounds with flared Chinese roofs that look like they have been around since before Mao. They look just like something out of “The Good Earth”. Rice and ears of corn are spread out on tarps along the side of the roads, drying in the sun (just like in Bali).

Outside looks more like what I thought China was going to look like. On the train yesterday afternoon we kept wondering when we had passed from Hong Kong to the Mainland. The Chinese woman on the intercom system did not give us any indication - at least not in English. The first thing we noticed before we arrived at Guangzhou station, where we knew we were in mainland, was that cars were driving on the right side of the road and the drivers were back on the left side of the car.

I wish I could remember more of what China looked like when I came with my dad 30 years ago. I remember 1-2 story brick and cinderblock buildings, everyone being dressed in their grey, dark blue, or olive Mao suits, and bicycles everywhere. I remember seeing the occasional old lady hobbling along the sideway with her tiny bound feet (I am sure none of them are alive anymore). We were here in April, I think, and I remember that it was mostly cold and dreary every place we went (Guangzhou, Gulin, Beijing, Shanghai). It is cloudy out now and I am sure the coolness will be a pleasant change for us.

Golden Week in Hong Kong

We arrived in Hong Kong from Bali via Singapore just in time for the huge fireworks display for National Day to kick off Golden week. There are two Golden weeks celebrations in China where people travel home from big cities or as we discovered, travel to Hong Kong to shop! We were lucky enough to be able to watch the fireworks over Victoria Harbor from our hotel on Hong Kong Island. Seeing the harbor lit up on both sides from all of the high-rise buildings almost dwarfed the fireworks!

We have adventured out to find some famous Hong Kong dim sum. We found a place inside one of the big high-rises. It was a little intimidating as we were the only foreigners in the restaurant until we realized that it wasn’t really that different than venturing into a dim sum restaurant in Monterey Park! The only real confusion was trying to get some soy sauce (we didn’t know the word in Cantonese) and “soy sauce” seemed to translate as vinegar…

Other meals have been a little more challenging – with vague menus or descriptions that are only slightly more useful than just staring at the Chinese characters (eight delights with XO sauce). We have been trying to try something new each meal – something we would not be likely to order. Shredded jellyfish was our first challenge (I was holding a grudge against them every since snorkeling in Indonesia). It wasn’t much – more like really stiff Jell-O with sesame oil – we probably don’t need to get again. Another meal it was stir-fried eel. We actually weren’t that sure about it, but the “helpful” waitress wouldn’t really let us NOT order it. It came in a sizzling hot stone bowl, cut into delicate fillets and stir-fried with green onions and ginger…and yes, it was delicious! We also tried something called “mantis” prawns that ended up coming looking just like 2-inch lobster tails. I think they were actually langoustines. Hairy crabs are the big delicacy here. We haven’t tried that yet but are working our way up to it!

We have been getting to know our way around Hong Kong Island and Kowloon little by little. We took the Star Ferry across Victoria Harbor to Kowloon and wove our way through the crazy Chinese shoppers. People were actually lined up to get in to the Chanel and Prada shops! We found our way through the crowd to end up at Kowloon Park to let the kids run around and check out the bird aviary.

Another day, we took a double-decker hop-on, hop-off bus around town. We toured all through Hong Kong Island and Kowloon. We were blown away by the number of huge, high-rise buildings and how many people we saw in the streets. Singapore is also very densely populated, with most people living in apartments, but you never felt crowded. Here in Hong Kong, you are very aware of how many people are around. The parks are all full of people playing tennis, basketball, doing tai chi and just hanging out and the streets and metro are almost always full.

Yesterday, for a change of pace from Kowloon and Hong Kong Island, we took a ferryboat ride out to Lantau, one of the hundreds of outlying islands. It was so small and sweet! There was a small waterfront area with delicious seafood restaurants and pedestrian paths with almost no one around. We took a bus up to the top of the island where the largest outdoor Buddha is seated (he is 34 meters tall!). There were lots of people here, but still fewer than Hong Kong! It was drizzly and foggy, so Buddha looked very mysterious peering down on us through the wispy clouds.

For all of its modern and Western ways, Hong Kong is still very traditional. In the newspaper there was a story about people in the new territories being able to sue the government for public projects that impact the feng shui of their communities. In addition to this, the government has a fund to pay for the requisite rituals to be conducted before starting on new projects to appease the proper deities. We also heard about fortunetellers that you could go to (who many locals go to) to put curses on your enemies. Apparently there is a relationship between how long the curse lasts and how much it costs – you can chose for just a day or two or for eternity if you are a big spender!

We are really enjoying Hong Kong so far and still have much more to explore. We will be here for another week and then head off to Mainland China. We’ll spend a about a week in Beijing, a few days in Xian to see the terra cotta warriors, and then a few weeks to Shanghai (including the Expo before it closes!).

Cruising the Eastern Indonesian Islands

After Singapore we spent 4 amazing weeks in Indonesia, the first 3 in Bali and the 4th on a cruise through the islands east of Bali. Wendy is going to post about Bali, but below is my (admittedly lengthy) account of the cruise.

Also, we've reactivated an old Flickr account which we'll use to post photos going forward (it's a little cumbersome adding them one by one to the blog). We have a lot more photos to upload, but here's a start:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/garlandpix/

After 3 great weeks in Bali we signed up to join a small boat cruise through some of the eastern Indonesian islands. After some confusion over where exactly in the harbor the boat was moored, we finally found it and boarded on the morning of the 22nd. The boat is called Ombak Putih, which means white wave in Indonesian. It's a beautiful wooden ship, painted white with blue trim and huge blue sails (when they were somewhat infrequently raised) and a bow that sweeps upward in a seaworthy arc. We met our fellow cruisers, about 20 of us in all, who hailed from Holland, Germany, Switzerland, Australia, and America, all very friendly and we were happy to see two other small children in the group. We were welcomed on board with cold towels and fresh juice from the friendly and smiling crew, an auspicious beginning to our week. We motored east out of the harbor and settled into conversation with our fellow passengers for the next week.

After a very good lunch (another very auspicious sign) we disembarked in a small harbor in eastern Bali where we boarded awaiting cars and drove to a small Bali Aga village. The Bali Aga are the original inhabitants of Bali prior to mass migration from Java, and there are a number of villages where there culture and traditional ways are still preserved. They have been able to preserve their villages through strict rules regarding marriage: if you marry outside of the village you must leave the village. In this way the ownership of their land has remained in the village for hundreds of years. However, with only 600 or so people in the village we saw, intermarriage has caused some challenges genetically. Brothers and sisters do not marry, but first cousins do. But, if you marry outside of the village and are later divorced you can return to the village, with your children, and the gene pool is freshened somewhat in this way. The village we saw is also noted for double-ikat weaving, and incredibly complicated weaving process that I will not even begin to attempt to explain, as I don't understand it in the least. Maybe Wendy can take a crack at it in another posting...

After the Bali Aga village we drove to a temple, known colloquially as the Bat Temple because it fronts a teeming Bat Cave. There was a ceremony going on when we arrived, but everyone very friendly and welcoming and they ushered us around the worshippers to the mouth of the bat cave. Thousands upon thousands of large fruit bats, all hanging upside down, squeaking, flapping wings to find a better spot, guano-ing and stinking, and posing for endless pictures. An incredible sight, not for the squeamish or bat-phobic, and just one example of the teeming abundance of life in all forms that we encountered all over Bali.

Then back to the boat and motoring overnight east to Lombok island. In between Bali and Lombok lies the Wallace line, which roughly delineates Asia from Australia in terms of flora and fauna. West of the line all is lush, green, tropical, and teeming with bats and lizards and snakes and leeches (all of which we encountered first hand in Bali). East of the line the climate becomes drier, the vegetation becomes drier and more Australian - eucalyptus trees, more scrub, etc. The difference was noticeable in eastern Lombok, though we did still see lots of rice paddies and greenery. But the further east we went the more apparent it became, and we actually saw pampas grass and cactuses on some of the eastern islands.

We took a bus from the port in Lombok and headed to our first village where we were to see a traditional dancing performance. We exited the bus and were immediately overwhelmed by our greeting. A full gamelan (orchestra) broke into loud, clangy and drummy song in the middle of the street, and two villagers stood waiting to administer a flower lei greeting to two of us. Wendy and I were selected by our guide as it was the day of our anniversary so we proceeded to greet them, received our leis, and led the procession in a slow march down the street. Children and villagers gathered on all sides, the gamelan banged away, and 22 or so westerners marched down the street accompanies by several hundred Indonesians, with Wendy and I at the helm. Nobody had told us to expect this when we got off the bus!

We turned down an alley and entered a medium-sized courtyard, fully covered with a large cross-thatched awning that filtered the bright sunlight into a blanket of thousands of small diamond shapes that lay over everything. The westerners sat, the villagers and children poured in all around, tea was offered and drunk, and the gamelan clanged away. We were treated to several interesting dances, culminating in a ritualized stick fight dance between two men who were selected. They had large bamboo sticks, and rectangular wooden shields stretched with dried cow hide. They made a loud band when struck by one of the bamboo poles. The combatants each had a coach (who had selected them) and there was a referee. All was ritualized, all knew their parts well, and the actual fighting was continually interspersed with dancing, including the two combatants dancing together. But, ritualized though it was, it was still a fight between two testosterone-fueled men, and in between the dancing they did whale on each other with the bamboo sticks, with both men emerging with large welts on their backs and sides. There was a rumor that one of the men was later taken to the hospital, but I don't know if this is true. Finally the westerners were invited up to dance with the locals, and after a few thousand more photos were taken we marched back to the bus, waving and smiling, and entirely overwhelmed by this, the first of three villages we were to visit that day!

Next we visited a village known for pottery making, and the reception was significantly more low key. We watched the traditional pottery-making process, Emma and David were invited to help, and more photos were taken.

Then we went to a village known for weaving. The weaving was beautiful and I'm sure would be much more interesting to me if I had the slightest comprehension of how the process works. But to witness the weaving we wove ourselves through the narrow streets of this village, glimpsing into courtyards and returning the many friendly smiles that were offered. Our presence was noted more and more until we had a dozen or so local children following us around, smiling, saying "hello mister", high-fiving, mugging for photos, and herding younger siblings along. I said hello to one small boy standing with his sister. He boisterously yelled back something not understood by me, and his sister clapped her hand on his mouth and looked at me red-cheeked and bug-eyed. After a nice lunch at our guide's home in the village, and after Wendy bought a nice woven sarong, we found our way back to the bus and back to the ship.

After the amazing but overwhelming day in Lombok we had a nice down-time day of swimming and snorkeling on day 3. In the morning we visited Moyo island, which is known for an ultra-exclusive resort that caters to the rich and famous of the world, of the likes of Princess Diana, Mick Jagger, and a parade of Saudi royalty. But we steered clear of them and anchored off a beautiful, deserted, white sand beach. The water was littered with jellyfish which made us very nervous for snorkling. Our cruise director, Peter Dieman, a very talented Dutch artist who has resided in Bali for years, calmly plucked a jellyfish from the water with his palm flat. We thought perhaps he was immune to them, but he calmly said (everything Peter did was done calmly) "I have it's back". So apparently you can hold a jellyfish on its back in the flat of your hand without being stung, but none of us tried.

Despite the jellyfish the temptation to snorkel was too strong, and some of us waded in carefully. I spent as much time looking up and at the water around me as I did looking down, but I managed to avoid being stung. The snorkling was amazing, as was all of the snorkeling we did on the trip, with an incredible variety of coral such that I've never seen before. We saw amazing, bright tropical fish, and more exotic sea-life including moray eel, a sea-snake, giant purple sea-stars, bright blue-lipped clams, all "clamming up" as we passed by, and two large lion fish. But the coral itself was the star, more alive and unspoiled, and in more variety of colors and shapes than I've ever seen.

In the afternoon we visited tiny Satonda island, a small crater with a lake in the middle that was once fresh-water but is now brackish after being swept by a massive tidal wave in 1815 after the volcano on nearby Sumbawa island erupted in the largest volcanic explosion in recorded history, far larger than Krakatoa. The volcano lost 1200 meters of its 4000 in height and spewed 24 cubic kilometers of lava and debris into the air. Tens of thousands died instantly, hundreds of thousands more in the famines that followed, and world-wide weather was affected so that in Europe it was known as the year with no summer, and even Napoleon's troops were slowed as a result.

And on Satonda island we saw our first monkeys of the voyage!

The morning of day 4 found us in the harbor of Bima, in eastern Sumbawa. We watched the morning trading at the harbor, fisherman selling their catch to dozens of head-scarved women, all yelling at once. Mountains of bananas being unloaded onto the docks. And load after load of cement bags crane-lifted from the cargo holds of wooden ships like ours, and settled into the backs of trucks by men with rags over their mouths and cement dust covering their bodies. We loaded the bus and drove a few blocks to the market. We wandered threw the market, ducking under low-slung tarpaulins and stepping carefully over muddy puddles, and returning the smiles and greetings of stall after stall of what seemed to be the friendliest and happiest people on Earth. Every imaginable product and produce was for sale, but no one bothered to try to sell us anything. They were genuinely happy to see us, as we were them, but the stars were Emma and David, who had their legs grabbed, their noses plucked, and their cheeks pinched so many times they were sore when we finally stumbled back to the bus. It was just a half hour meander through a market in a small port town on an island most of us had ever heard of before, but it had quite an effect on us, as though our faith in humanity had been restored. I wished naively that Bima could always remain as it was then.

Then we went to a small village in the mountains above Bima where we were treated to more traditional dancing. Three women performed a dance which represented the various stages of planting and harvesting and processing in wet rice farming. Then, more ritualized combat, this time of the head-butting variety! Again there was a referee, and again the two men danced together while the band played, but then one lowered down, elbow on knee, head front, eyes down, while the other danced and waited for the referee's signal. It came, he charged, and foreheads collided with a loud thud directly in front of us. But both men, seemingly unfazed, immediately resumed dancing and eventually they traded places and thudded again, and then we were done, said our thank you's and goodbyes, waved to more friendly people, high-fived more children, and re-boarded our bus.

Day 5 found us anchored off of Komodo island, one of only two islands which contain the dragon population. We set off early, bought our tickets, and fell in line behind our guide for the walk, who carried a very large fork-pronged stick. We were surprised to learn that, in addition to the terrible dragons, the island was also home to vipers, pythons, and spitting cobras! Wow, dangerous place. Unfortunately we didn't get to see any snakes, but 15 minutes or so into our walk we came upon our first dragon. Like most of the dragons we saw that day and the next this one didn't do much, other than lay on it's belly with it's arms and legs splayed out, 5 long razor-sharp claws on each. There were 30 or so of us humans around it, within 10 feet or so, but the dragons are basically indifferent to humans. They have no natural predators when fully grown. (They do however eat each other and eat their young. Baby dragons, after hatching, will immediately climb up a tree and live in trees for the first few years of their life, eating bugs and lizards. Adult dragons are too heavy too climb trees, but even their own mothers will eat them on the ground.) Nor have they been targeted by humans: their loose skin is not good for clothing, and their meat is not good for eating. So they don't care much about us, but we were still wary. We were warned that, even when they are splayed out and look half-asleep they can jump up in an instant, and they can run faster than humans. Their tiny lizard brains operate on instinct, and when their forked tongues pick up an interesting smell they react, as we learned the next day...

On the evening of the fifth day we were treated by our amazing crew to a BBQ on the beach, a tiny spit of beach on a small island somewhere between Komodo and Rinca. We sat on bamboo mats on the sand and ate grilled fish, calamari, and kabobs by candle light, washed down by white wine. Emma and David borrowed flashlights and discovered that the small bait fish in the water were attracted to the light. Then they discovered that if Emma held the light in one spot and David bent down with hands poised he could reach down and scoop up a fish with his bare hands! After catching a few and throwing them back they found a half coconut, filled it with water, and began to populate it with fish. They were up to 5 or 6 fish in the coconut by the time we had to leave, all of whom we're set free, to the kids chagrin, though one or two hadn't taken too well to their new home and were floating a bit...

We woke up on day 6 in a small, swampy inlet of Rinca island. Peter had told us that Rinca was even better than Komodo island for seeing the dragons. We had only seen 4 dragons on Komodo, two of which were camped outside of the lodge having been attracted by the smell. A family of monkeys was playing in the mangrove near us as we set foot on the island. Two minutes later Peter was proved right. We were walking across a large dry river bed, heading towards the visitors center - we hadn't even bought our tickets or got our guides yet! - when to our left we spotted a large dragon, not laying down but purposefully walking towards us, head high and tongue actively flicking. We were out in the open, with nowhere to hide, and no guides with large forked sticks to protect us. Peter quickly rushed us along to the safety of the visitors center. We saw 15-20 more dragons on our walk that day, as well as the scant remains of a buffalo carcass that our guide told us had been devoured only 3 days earlier by 40-50 dragons! We also saw a wild boar, lots of buffalo, and megapods, which are basically a kind of wild chicken, but with a very cool name. At one point we were paused watching some megapods when two dragons came over a ridge towards us, tongues flicking. Our guide then noticed that one of us was bleeding from a small cut on his leg. The guide quickly cleaned off the blood and applied a local balm to it to mask the smell. If the dragons had picked up the smell of his blood they wouldn't have thought, they would have just reacted, but the guide seemed to have masked the smell just in time.

We had another fantastic beach and snorkeling session on our last afternoon, and then our last dinner on deck under the stars. We arrived in Labuan Bajo, Flores island the next morning, and caught our flight back to Bali. It was a great week of visiting villages, snorkling, seeing dragons, and getting to know our delightful fellow passengers, whom we hope to keep in touch with. We flew back to Singapore the next day, and as I type we are hurling through the air towards Hong Kong!

Singapura

So once again it seems that the longer we stay in one place, the more time seems to fly! Singapore was so great! There is so much to do with the kids, the people are nice, it is easy to get around and the food is AMAZING! The past few weeks have just flown by…. We have had the time to have some good down days but also completely full crazy days too. We even had a surprise visit from my step-mom, Ruth, on her way to India on a last minute trip to see our friend Khen Rinpoche and meet with the Dalai Lama. It was so fun to see her and the kids were especially excited to see family beside Dylan and me.

After arriving from India and the craziness of just getting onto our flight (apparently you aren’t allowed to have a rubber snake in your carry-on..who knew), we almost didn’t want to leave the Singapore airport! It looks a lot like Honolulu when you arrive – warm breezes and beautiful tropical plants everywhere. Lots of rules to be sure, but when the person explaining them to you is so nice, it feels less constraining. In fact, we didn’t have any run-ins with the law even though Dylan was chewing gum through passport control and we jaywalked multiple times.

We spent the first few days just walking around the city. It was hot and humid (not as bad as Kyoto) and there was some relief from the daily rain downpour. We stayed just a few blocks from the Singapore riverfront, which is loaded with outdoor restaurants and great people watching. In that sense it felt very European but when you turned the corner and found a long buffet table covered with food offerings and incense or a huge Buddhist or Hindu temple that changed. It was an amazing to be in pretty Western surroundings – people’s dress, their attitudes, etc.- and then also have these very traditional beliefs running parallel.

The kids especially loved it. We spent several days at the Singapore Zoo (we had to go back to show my stepmom, Ruth, the animals). The zoo is set in a huge jungle setting along a lake and is really nice – not creepy and depressing. They also have a Night Safari – like a nighttime zoo – that was also awesome. The best part of it was sitting by the tigers (just a few feet away- through glass) and watching them pace around, waiting to be fed. What amazing creatures! They are so much bigger than you would expect. We also went to the Bird Park, which was also very well done, but not as exciting to me as the other parks.

Our big crazy splurge was a day at Sentosa Island – kind of like Las Vegas but with fewer casinos. There are a million things to do, but we decided on the adventure section that included a street luge ride, a ropes course and a very long, very high zip line. We ended the day with dinner on the beach.

The food was definitely the highlight of the trip – it seemed like everything that we ate was incredible. We remembered when we were there that our friend Fabio had asked us to send him pictures of the food, so we think about him at every meal (unfortunately usually after we have eaten something and we realize we forgot to take a picture!) so we are trying to get better J The famous dish in Singapore is the chili crab, which is a huge, very hard shell crab cooked in a tomato-chili sauce that you eat with steamed buns. They also have a black pepper crab with is even spicier. We couldn’t decide which to get, so we got both. They were both very good, but maybe a little crab overload! Aside from the crab, all of the seafood was fabulous and super-fresh, cooked in Cantonese-style.

Two weeks in one place was definitely needed. We didn’t feel so much like we had to race from sight to sight and that we had time to just hang out and enjoy being where we were. Emma and David have been working their schoolwork little by little every day and both are proving to be avid readers. The Kindles are great for them because there is a built-in dictionary function so they can look up words as they go along. They both miss friends, especially Emma, but seem to be really enjoying themselves overall.

Passage to (and from) India

We had originally been planning on travelling to India in October or November when the monsoon has run it’s course and the weather has cooled down. Our friend Khen Rinpoche invited us, however, to come visit him in his village in Ladakh in August. Ladakh is in Northern India, high up in the mountains (12,000 feet above sea level) and is much cooler than the rest of India (and too cold to visit in November). Very sadly, however, about a week before we planned to go, huge flash floods hit Ladakh, a dry, high-desert area unaccustomed to so much rain. The main city, Leh, was terribly damaged, many people were killed and hundreds more are homeless. (http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gLb2kMuLUyJJ_gkmLQfqKyfvNDuA) . Khen Rinpoche and his village of Stok were reportedly okay as they were on higher ground. Given the situation, we decided to postpone our visit, but that wasn’t until we had already arrived in New Delhi.

Delhi was a major challenge for us. Maybe it was because we had just come from Japan, or that we had forgotten what living in Egypt was like, or that we had over-estimated the trickle down of economic growth of India, or the state department warnings about travel in India, but it was major culture shock! Our hotel was in the heart of New Delhi. In contrast to Old Delhi, New Delhi was a city planned out by the British in the early 20^th century and was completed only shortly before Indian independence. The hotel was actually part of the New Delhi city design. It was beautiful and had a colonial feel to it – white, opulent and palm trees everywhere. A high wall also surrounded it with armed guards at the entrance who inspected our car as we arrived (the kind of thing that both does and does not put you at ease).

Our first outing from the hotel was just a walk down to Connaught Place, a large roundabout with a shopping area around it only about a half-mile from the hotel. I thought it was strange as the concierge wished us good luck as we exited the hotel, but thought he was just being nice. We needed it!

Unbeknownst to us, all of Connaught Place was under construction for the upcoming Commonwealth Games (http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-industry/et-cetera/CWG-2010-Dug-up--delayed-CP-down-in-dumps/articleshow/6310025.cms) . The facades of the building were half chipped off and being repaired, the streets and sidewalks were dug up, and there were giant pits and holes everywhere (completely unmarked). On top of this was the insane traffic pouring through the now dirt streets, the street hawkers and beggars and sticky heat (about 90 degrees and 95% humidity). We lasted about an hour in the chaos.

The hot weather made sightseeing more challenging than it might have usually been. The heat just zapped our energy. We did manage to go out to see Humayan’s tomb (the inspiration for the Taj Mahal) and visit the Gandhi museum.

Emma and David At Humuyan's Tomb

Assending the stairs to the top of the tomb and inside in front of the carved windows

Walking in Gandhi's footsteps...

We also made the huge trek out to Agra to see the Taj Mahal – 8 hours of driving to travel about 70 miles each way – but we made it. It was Indian Independence day so it was pretty full, with tons of security, but it was spectacular nonetheless. It is situated on a hill with a big river behind it, so it always has that look of “floating”. We kept hoping a monsoon would hit to cool us down as we could hear the thunder booming in the distance but no such luck.

One of the nights we were in Delhi we were invited by a guy in the Delhi chapter of Dylan’s entrepreneur group to come to his son’s birthday party. Emma and David had a great time – they had ice cream and candy galore and a bouncer. Everyone we met was so nice and welcoming. Emma was especially excited because another guy and his wife were there with their 10-year old daughter and she and Emma really hit it off.

Off to Singapore!

What David learned about Japan...as told to Mommy

-Japan has lots of temples.

-Japan has lots of sushi. In Tokyo we went to this restaurant where they would put little plates of sushi on this thing that would circle them around and after it had circled them about a half an hour, they would take them off.

-On either side of the temple there would be big guardian deities.

Watching the puppet show...

-In Takayama we went to a puppet show and a puppet made me a scroll that said "dream" first in English and second in Japanese.

-"Arigato" means thank you. "Doy tashi ma-shi tea" means you are welcome. "Konichi-wa" means hello. "Hi" means yes. "Doe-zo" means go ahead.

In the cedars on the Tokkaido highway (samurai trail)

-We walked on a samurai trail when we were at the Fujiya hotel.

-Tokugawa Ieyasu was a very famous samurai and the first shogun on Japan. Samurai are special Japanese warriors.

Showing off their chopstick skills!

-I learned how to use chopsticks.

-Before we go in a jacuzzi or a bath, we usually have to wash off.

-They had vending machines all over the place.

-Whenever you wanted to go on a train, it was only a couple of blocks away. The trains are really, really fast.

-Mount Fuji is the biggest mountain in all of Japan.

-When we were walking down an alleyway towards our apartment, we ran into a geisha, a special kind of Japanese girl. Her housing mother was nice and let us take a picture with her. A housing mother is a person who helps take care of the geisha.

-We went to the Tokyo Disneyland on Emma's birthday.

-I wrote two haiku which are special Japanese poems.

Emma's report on Geishas

The Maiko that we met in Kyoto.

"A geisha is a type of woman in a kimono. A kimono is a type of robe with designs on it. In Tokyo they call them Geisha but in Kyoto they call them Maiko and Geiko. A Maiko is a Geiko in training. A Geiko is a Maiko that has completed her training. Maiko and Geiko both wear white face paint. I will tell you how to tell a Maiko from a Geiko. Maikos' kimonos have long sashes in the back of them and Geikos' kimonos had short sashes in the back of them. Maikos have higher shoes than Geikos do. Geikos wear wigs but Maikos do not. Maikos have lots of little ornaments [in their hair] but Geikos have only one or two ornaments. You say My-Ko, Guy-Ko, and Key-mono. I saw a Maiko and I got to take a picture with her. She was very beautiful."

Emma turns 8!

Emma's special birthday surprise was going to.....Tokyo Disneyland! It was crazy. It was almost like the California Disneyland with Pirates of the Caribbean, Space Mountain, the Haunted Mansion and the Teacups - but not. Maybe it was the soy sauce and butter popcorn, the hot dog that looked like a hot dog but was not, the Mickey Mouse head-shaped pork buns, or the polite and plentiful bowing before every ride began. It was still fun. I just hope that Japanese everywhere aren't learning all their American history from there (Davey Crockett's canoes, Tom Sawyer rides, etc.)!

Emma and David with their furry friends... David kept petting him!

Sleeping Beauty's castle - even bigger than in Anaheim!

We actually went to Disneyland the day before her birthday and then spent her birthday at the hotel swimming pool. The pool backed up to a big Buddhist shrine so there was incense wafting over the whole afternoon which made it seem even more exotic.

We went out for a special sushi dinner that night as requested by Emma. The place we went to had a sushi bar with a conveyor belt moving around it. The chefs would just keep putting fresh plates of sushi on the belt and you could grab off whatever looked good. They were priced by plate color. The fancy part was that each plate had a microchip in it so they could keep track of how long each plate had been in circulation and take them off after a half-hour. When you were done, the waiter just moved his wand over the plate stack, which read the microchips in the plates to total your bill! Emma ate tons of salmon while David was just preoccupied keeping a running tally of our bill based on our plates. :)