Mo and To

What a Difference a Year Makes

2011-01-31T17:57:00.000-08:00

Last December we spent 2 weeks in Cairo. We enjoyed our time there, even though (because?) we quit being tourists and just tried to live in the city. Of course we went to Giza, the Egyptian museum and some other key tourists attractions. We've talked since about how we enjoyed our stay and remember the time fondly. But that's about it.

The events of the last week in Egypt have made me realize how travelling has opened my eyes to the greater global community. Hmm, let me unpack that claim. When I read something in the newspaper, whether it be war, genocide, natural disaster, there is an immense disconnect between myself and those being reported on. Only with great difficulty can I muster empathy for the situation.

The protests in Cairo have made me realize that I feel deeply connected to the places we traveled to. It may seem strange that it would take an event like the Cairo protests to wake me up to this fact, but its not as if we spent a long period of time in Cairo, or made local friends, or learned the language. Every interaction we had with an Egyptian involved the exchange of money. Even so, it feels like I am in some way part of the community there. Just saying that makes me feel like a poser. In no way am I saying I am part of the Cairo community, just that it feels that way.

Here's an image of protest spots in Cairo. We lived in Zamalek (the island in the middle of the Nile) just north of the 15 May Bridge. We drove through and walked around the places you can see in the images daily. It's just crazy to think about.

Saturday morning we just sat watching an al-jazeera collection of amateur video from Cairo (scroll down a little). We could recognize the landmarks and districts, and some of the images are just chilling (the third video, for example).

The good news is that with the army stepping in to replace the police, things seem to have gotten better for the protesters. Friday was scary business: the video of crowds of praying Egyptians being sprayed with a water cannon did not boost Mubarak in the opinion polls.

I won't try to replace all the quality news service out there, but if you haven't read up or been following what's happening, I suggest you do. It is truly incredible. It makes me want to travel more so that when things happen, I will have a context for which to understand it.

Prunus persica, or how I acquired and used 40 pounds of peaches

2010-08-16T16:49:00.000-07:00

While Tommy had his heart set on biking all the way to Wilbur over Washington Pass, my one desire was to buy peaches (prunus persica) during our Eastern Washington Excursion. Before leaving home, I researched all of the little orchards and farmstands from Twisp to Omak. I took orders from family and friends, promising a box of joy on my return.

After stopping at 4 roadside stands, we learned that freestone peaches were not ready yet and that the early redhaven variety was not as prized for canning. Oh well, I had my heart set on peaches and if I needed to freeze them all then I would!

Hoping that Wenatchee might be just far enough south to have the freestone peaches in season, we took Hwy 2 home instead of Hwy 20. At the Wenatchee farmer's market, we scored. A very friendly lady was selling 20 pounds of organic peaches for $1/lb. Good price. The question was, did I want one box or two? I ended up buying 5 boxes of peaches: 2.25 boxes for me, 1 box for Alex, 1 box for Beth, .5 box for Shari, .25 box for Jessica. I also bought 10 pounds of cherries because they were so good.

What did I do with my treasures?

Rum Soaked Cherries - 16, 4 oz jars

Amaretto Soaked Cherries - 5, 4 oz jars

Amaretto Soaked Cherries and Peaches - 6, 8oz jars

Boozy Cherry Molasses with Rum & Kirsch (3), with Amaretto (4) - 7, 4 oz jars

Sweetheart Cherry Peach Jam - 5, 8 oz jars

Rainier Cherry Peach Jam - 6, 16 oz jars

Hibiscus Peaches - 16, 16 oz jars

Frozen Peaches - 10 lbs

Peach Cherry Rustic Rye Tart - 1, 9-in tart; 8, 3-in tartlettes

Crunchy Top Peach Pie - 1, 9-in pie (Received Honorable Mention at my Neighborhood Association Picnic Dessert Competition!)

Eating - 6 peaches (If I were Lynn, this number would be much higher - to the tune of at least one full box of peaches just for eating.); 3 pounds cherries - Tommy ate about 2 pounds on the way home from Wenatchee.

Could I have used more? Of course! I have already got my eye on this Peach Butter and this Peach Chocolate Dessert Sauce. Next year.

Swawilla-what?

2010-08-03T06:00:00.000-07:00

After a couple days of recuperation at Roger and Ellen's, I was ready to try my legs again. The blazing hot finish to my adventure on Tuesday had convinced me that riding in Eastern Washington in July was insane. Nevertheless, as I sat looked out over Lake Roosevelt and contemplated riding over the mountainous Manila Creek road, I became more and more restless. I had my bike in a place I've never been able to ride in, and the riding should be excellent. The plan was to catch the first ferry (a free state ferry connects WA-21) across the lake at 6am. Then I would stand a good chance of getting the biggest climb of the day done before the sun hit me.

As it turned out, my plan worked pretty good at first. Thin morning clouds kept me out of direct sunlight all the way to the summit, 2000 feet up from where I began. From the top I could look down over the Swawilla Basin, the southernmost portion of Lake Roosevelt that ends with the Grand Coulee Dam.

The descent was fast and furious. I was averaging somewhere between 30-35 mph, just flying along, when I saw road construction up ahead. I forced to wait... for 45 minutes. To be honest I really wasn't that frustrated. The clouds were still blocking the sun and I had no agenda for the rest of the day. When we did get going again, I was thankful to be paced. The last few miles of the road, before it hit highway 15, were one of the most ridiculous descents I have ever seen. Sharp corners at a 10% grade with enormous cliffs and no guardrails. The flagger actually told me that there was a pile of cars at the bottom of one cliff, and there was no way to get them up. The construction job was to widen the road so that rails could be put in.

I got going again and cruised through Elmer City. Then it was a short steep climb past the dam itself to the town of Grand Coulee. Time for significant climb #2. I learned that in Eastern Washington, long straight hills are simply referred to as "grades." I was to ride up Coulee Grade and then down Wilbur Grade on WA-174. These grades are my kind of climb. I'm not much of a climber, but because of my build, I really prefer a long, consistent climb to short steep stuff mixed with flat stuff. Above a certain grade and I am in big trouble. Anyway, I found a good steady pace at about 9 mph, and climbed up to the top of Coulee Grade. Near the top, a strong north wind picked up and I finished the climb at 18-20 mph. You can see that I was happy!

The ride down Wilbur Grade is awesome. You can see Wilbur itself 10 miles down the road, 1000 feet lower, and you just go. Even though it was a highway, cars can't pass you very quick when you're going 40!

The 5th and final left turn of the day brough me back to highway 21 and I made the final short climb to what Morgan's family refers to as "The Curves": my reward for the day. Here's a photo from the top of The Curves.

The long, sandy driveway made a fun but challenging finale to a great ride. I made it back to find out that Ellen (Morgan's great aunt) had called people along the road to let them know when I road by. I'll probably be in the Wilbur newspaper... again.

As always, click on any photo to see the rest of them on our flickr page. Click here for my ride details.

No Longer a Proponent of 80 Mile Warmups

2010-08-01T12:10:00.000-07:00

It's been a wasteland here since March, but I'm going to dive in headlong with the latest Lingbloom summer adventure.

On Tuesday I left Bellingham at precisely 5am. There was just enough light that I only needed a tail light. The goal was to ride over the Cascades via Washington Pass to Winthrop. In one day. The early start was great. I made it to Alger by 6am, and Concrete (49 miles into my ride) by 8am. There I stopped at a road side diner for some breakfast sandwiches, and was whistled at by a couple of country bumpkins. In Bellingham, my response to this kind of behavior would be to wink or blow a kiss in return, but I've seen the movie Deliverance, and decided it was high time to get on with my ride.

When I got to Marblemount a little after 10 am, I had ridden 80 miles. I was pretty tired, and I hadn't even started climbing yet. The highest elevation I had reached on my ride was only about 700 feet, on Lake Samish Drive. Marblemount is at about 300 feet above sea level. Over the next 42 miles, I would gain 5,200 more feet!

I took a break at Colonial Creek, slammed a cliff bar (I was eating constantly all day) and began the 32 mile ride to the summit. Looking down at my speedometer, I was barely able to maintain 8 mph up the steep incline. When I did the math, it was pretty disheartening.

An hour later, I was slogging along when a car came flying by me honking like crazy. It was my only road rage instance of the day... or was it? In fact, it was just a pleasant surprise from three friends returning from Chelan. I talked their ears off for a few minutes and then continued on my way.

As I continued up the pass, I became more and more drained. By 2pm I was stopping every 30 minutes to take a quick break. A little after 3pm the broom wagon caught me (driven by Morgan), and though it sounds ridiculous, I was so tired that I briefly considered catching a lift and skipping the last 2 miles.

Even though it was smoking hot, and even though I was dead tired, and even though 8 mph is not fast enough to ride away from flies, I sucked it up and powered to the finish. I was exhausted, and my knee was killing me. But I made it.

After a nice little photo shoot (you can go to all the photos from this ride on our flickr account by clicking on one of the above photos) I mounted my bike to attempt the descent down to Winthrop. I made it Mazama, and that was it. The 10 minute break, combined with 20 minutes of not pedaling while flying down Washington Pass, had convinced my knee it was finished. Every pedal stroke was agony. It was disappointing not to make it at least to Winthrop, but the hot wind in my face put me over the edge. I called it a day.

If I ever do this ride again (and I would love to), I will drive to Marblemount and start from there. Riding 80 miles before a challenging climb is stupid.

If you want to see the route I took, you can click here. Click on the "Summary" tab for the elevation profile (Which I think is always the most interesting part).

King Konglor

2010-03-18T12:31:00.000-07:00

We have been busy busy busy since getting home a week ago, but today I find myself temporarily unemployed. A good time to update, and share about one of the most spectacular places we went in all of our travels.

In going to Laos, I told Morgan that there was only one place on my "must see" list. Konglor Cave (Tham Kong Lo) promised to provide something relatively off the beaten track, yet still well worth the trip.

Seeing the cave is a several day affair. Only local buses make the trip to the nearest village of any size, Ban Khun Kham (Na Hin), on Route 8. It was about a 5 hour trip from Vientiane, and we were the only foreigners on the bus. We left the bus unloading and walked into the town.

The town was basically a single road running parallel to the highway, with a smattering of guest houses, a couple restaurants, and a small local market. We saw a tourist every now and then, but they were few and far between. Because of this people were very friendly and happy to converse if they spoke English.

We found a great restaurant where the locals ate, and our 16 year old waiter was very happy to practice his English with us. We ate their three times in two days! Luckily, we spotted a couple that we had eaten with in Nong Khiaw, and made plans to hire a songthaew and go to the cave the following day (50 km away).

At the end of the road is a large hut full of local boatmen. Each boat carries two boatmen and up to three passengers. Any more will make the boat bottom out too much, and make it too unstable. As it was, we still had to get out and wade several times while the boatmen rug the canoe (sound familiar). One boatmen was in the back of the boat manning the prop, and the other was in the front scouting the river bed. He would signal spots to avoid and where to turn. They both had powerful halogen headlamps.

The cave, 7 km long, was absolutely amazing. It was impossible to take pictures in the dark, so you'll just have to pretend. The river was between 20-50 m wide, and usually very shallow. We could see the cave walls and ceiling from the lights of the boatman, but most of the space in our peripheral vision stayed in the dark. The most incredible part of the experience was emerging into the daylight on the far side. Click to watch.

Need I say more? And that after half an hour in the dark cave. We were very pleased.

On the far side was a group of a dozen plus kids around a couple of small cafes. We sat down at one of the tables and beckoned the children to come over. Warily, but quickly, they came closer. I took off my backpack and we pulled out a special purchase we had made in Luang Prabang: Lao children's books from the organization Big Brother Mouse. Considering how little volunteer we had done in our travels, compared to what our plans had been, this was a great opportunity for us to o something small but significant. The excitement of these kids conveyed the great need of local language reading materials in Laos, and as a bonus, made us feel great. One of our boatmen was very excited and asked us if he could have one for his child. We gave him our extras. Spirits were high as we made our way back own the river for the return trip through the cave!

All Good Things

2010-03-07T21:40:00.000-08:00

Well, I finally found a computer that I'm able to blog from! The flow of information in Vietnam is not quite as free as in other countries, we've found...

So for those of you who haven't already heard, the rumors are true. We're throwing in the towel, and flying home Wednesday. There are many interesting things that have happened to us over past couple of weeks, and I do intend to blog about them. In other words, just because we are coming home does not mean the highly informative travel blogging will stop. Morgan and I both have some mental debriefing to do, and thoughts we'd love to share about our year of travel as a whole. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, let me give you the scoop on how we were pushed over the edge. From Luang Prabang we headed south to Vang Vieng, a backpacker party town that we would normaly have no interest in, but for an organic farm and school we had been hoping to volunteer at. The farm was 4km from town, so we were looking forward to some isolated peace and quiet.

It was not meant to be. 50m down stream from the farm were half a dozen catering to drunk 19 year olds who were tubing down the river. The bars competed to play the loudest music, so we heard three songs at once, so loud you couldn't think, all afternoon and evening.

On top of this, enough English teachers had been procured for the week, and there was very little to make ourselves useful on the farm. Then Morgan came down with some dreadful stomach disease, and I soon followed after. This is not good when you are sleeping in a bamboo hut/furnace with unsantitary bathrooms outside.

We decided to pack up, slam to lopramide, go south to Vientiane, get a room with AC and cable, and not leave until we were better. 150km on a local bus took 5 terrible hours. Running a fever, I could not lean back because the bench seated ended at my mid-back. Despite my repeaed attempts to crush her fingers with my shoulder blades, the woman behind me seemed to think it was ok to use my seat as a headrest, her knuckles digging into my ribs.

We finally got to Vientiane, found a hotel, and collapsed at noon. Three hours later we awoke to bed bugs feasting on us. We left in a hurry, fortunately not having paid yet, and found a nicer hotel. Alas, history was doomed to repeat itself, and Morgan discoverd a second infestation at 1:30 am the next night. Clearly these bugs had been living in the bed frame for quite some time, yet the hotel had the gall to blame us. They also had no other rooms, so Morgan slept the rest of the night on the floor and I just read in a chair. The next morning we booked into the most expensive hotel of our SE Asia trip, following a thorough, headlamp-aided bug sweep.

Eventually we recovered from our stomach ailments (thank you, Ciprofloxacin), but we were at the end of our rope. Both of us had been reduced to tears, and it was clearly time to go home. The reality was, it had been time to go home for some time. When we got to a new place, we were no longer motivated to explore, see the sights, or interact with the people. That being the case, it was ridiculous to continue with the trip. We called United, paid an exhorbitant amont of money, and moved our flight up three weeks. It was the right decision.

It was the worst week of our entire trip, the only positive being that we got to watch some of the Olympics. When watching the winter Olympics from a sub-tropicalcountry is the highlight of your week, you know its bad. That was 10 days ago, and much has hapened since, but we are still ready to be home.

Like I said, I promise to blog about the good stuff too!

North?

2010-02-20T19:49:00.000-08:00

Our plans to volunteer in Vieng Vian, 6 hours south of Luang Prabang, were falling apart. Having no reply from our destination, an organic mulerry farm and school, we decided to scrap our plans to spend two weeks there and head north. But how far? For two days in Luang Prabang, our plans changed constantly.

One hour north on the Mekong is joined by the Nam Ou river. This river flows from the northern most reaches of Laos, and is (usually) passable by boat most of the year. We decided to head up the river, and turn around when we felt like it. Some may think us crazy to get on another boat, but don't worry: this one was smaller and less comfortable!

With 8 other travelers on board, we headed back up the Mekong, turning onto the Nam Ou. 30 more minutes upstream we head our first problem. The river was two shallow, so we had to get out and push! Most of you will not be surprised to hear that I was the first one out of the boat, extremely excited at the prospect of using a little manpower.

The rest of our day was long, and uneventful, but incredibly beauftiful. Packs of naked 3-5 year old boys would run to the riverside and dance, wave, or throw thmselves into the river to say hello! It was quite the spectacle. The mountains began to narrow at several points, and the limestone cliffs were spectacular. We weaved through the rapids and spotted encampments of people fishing, washing, harvesting riverweed, or panning for gold. People would smile and wave, especially children, who would shout "SABAI-DEE!" and wave with both hands.

We arrived in Nong Khiaw and were astounded by the beauty as we walked over the bridge. The "highway" that cuts through town is barely a two lane road, but continues 16 hours (I don't know the conversion in km or miles) to the Vietnamese border. Cars, buses or motorbikes only roll by every 5 or 10 minutes during daylight, then stop altogether when it gets dark. We ate a ig meal, and crwaled into our bungalow wearing all of our clothes to endure a cold night.

In the morning we went to check out the Pathok caves, where the local Lao lived for 6 years during the Vietnam war. Vietnamese soldiers traveled to the south on the Lao side of the border, so the United States basically bombed the country the pieces. Some cities were completely and utterly destroyed. Caves like these exist all over the country, as they provided the only hope of safety for villagers.

At the ticket hut three boys were playing soccer, so I stepped into the goal with a "bring it on" pose, and the kids took shots at me for a while. Then, with a well timed "made you look" ploy, I stole the ball and a game broke out. It was great fun, and we learned how to count to ten in Lao. When we finally walked up to the caves, Morgan noticed a group of 3-5 year olds walking down the path towards us. They walked straight into the fields and started working! It was shocking to us, but in small Lao villages children begin to contribute as soon as they are old enough to swing a machete. Of course, they were not bent over and slaving away, they combined play with their gathering of veggies and fruit, but it was still a crazy site for us.

That afternoon we walked up a bath to a minority village. There are hill tribe villages all over Lao, many of them Hmong, a minority group that helped the Americans during the war, and in turn was greatly persecuted. Things seem to be ok now, though. It was great just to walk around a part of the country that was both beautiful and not overrun with falang (foreigners), though there were still a few of us around.

We had a decsion to make. Continue upstream all the way to Phongsali, taking two more days of boats, or head back down and continue on our path? In the end two factors made up our mind. First we would leave Nong Khiaw with a great memories, not disapointed a bit. Secondly, it was quite cold. We grabbed a bus back to Luang Prabang yesterday.

Tomorrow we head south, but I am on a mission to get off the beaten track again before we leave this country!

The Slow Boat to Somewhere

2010-02-16T01:23:00.000-08:00

It took us three days to get to Luang Prabang, just as we had planned. The getting there, however was nothing like we had planned. As we sat at the bus station after being told the next 3 hourly buses to Chiang Rai were sold out, I reflected on how quickly plans can go awry. If we didn't get to the border by 6:00 pm, we would trapped on the Thai side and be fined $30 for overstaying our visa. Not the end of the world, but not a good start.

Thanks to the help of a monk we met on our eventual bus, we made a speedy trip across Chiang Rai to the other bus station, and immediately found a bus leaving for Chiang Khong. Three hours more and it was another touk touk ride to the river crossing, where we hopped in a boat to Huay Xai and made it to Laos immigration at 5:30. Whew!

The question Morgan and I had been wrestling with was whether to take a 10 hour bus to Luang Prabang or a two day, 6 hour per day slow boat. There was also a fast boat that made the trip in a single day, but it was basically a soapbox derby car with a car engine strapped to the back, so we passed. We had heard that the boats can be pretty packed, and the overnight town is pretty shady, but we hate arriving in a new town late at night, and who can pass up a boat trip on the Mekong? Boat it is.

The boat was scheduled to leave at 11:00am, so we got down there at 9:30 and bought tickets. We bought sandwiches for the ride and $1 pillows to sit on (knowing we would leave them on the boat in the end). We got on the boat at 10:30 to find a seat, but we didn't start moving for another 2 hours! This was a good indicator of how the boat ride would go.

The bench seats on the boat were completely unsittable; the backs seemed to be at about a 60 degree angle from the seat, thus dissuading any attempt at comfort. Fortunately we found a stack of plastic lawn chairs in the back, and settled right in.

The Mekong followed the Thai-Laos border for the first hour of our trip, and we saw lots of signs of development: barges, dump trucks of coal on sand bars, logging, etc. Then the river meanders back in between the mountains and most signs of human activity disappear. Every so often we would see a Buddhist wat (temple), a few people fishing, or groups of people that appeared to be panning for gold. Otherwise it was just water, sand, rock and jungle. Naturally speaking, it was much more interesting then our Mekong trip 1000 km downstream in Cambodia.

It's impossible to share such cramped quarters with other tourists and not get to know them. Behind us sat 4 older Canadians from Prince George, all teachers or retired teachers. With us sat Chris, a 28 year old Australian living in London (who had been with us since the Chiang Mai bus), and across from us sat some younger folks from Holland and England. It amused me to realize that we seem to relate better to people 30 years older than us than we do to people 3 years younger than us. Another sign I am turning into Calvin's dad, I suppose.

Around 4pm we stopped at a small fishing village while locals poured onto the boat to sell us sandwiches, fruit and Beerlao. As quickly as they came, they went, and we were on our way to Pakbeng. I was not looking forward to Pakbeng, as positive attributes were hard to come by in the descriptions. People said to keep valuables close, and one traveler on the Lonely Planet forums described it as "kind of a wild west town." I wasn't keen on getting into it with anyone at the local saloon.

Fortunately it wasn't a problem at all. About 5:30 the boat pulled up to a beach and we were told we would have to walk 10 minutes around a shallow section of the river, where we would then re-embark. Then it became clear that we needed to take our bags as well, because we were actually getting onto a new boat. With one gang plank for us and our sister ship (about 150 people in all), you can imagine how efficient it was to get off all the passengers and luggage, when much of the luggage had been placed underneath the floorboards with benches on top. I got off and started waiting for my bag to turn up. A few of us realized that the boatman were going to be no help in this process, and so took it upon ourselves to unload. I stood at the edge of the water while another traveler tossed backpacks to me. Once I had unloaded the packs of Morgan, Chris, and myself, I waved goodbye. "You're on your own now!" The first signs of savagery were starting to set in.

Based on the general rule of calculating travel times outside of western society, I figured our "ten minute walk" would take us between 20-25 minutes. It took 40, and it was no walk. It was a hike over sand and rock, and it included one creek crossing. Granted, Morgan and I would've been much faster if we were not waiting in a line for people to get past the tricky parts. We're fast walkers. Not Isaac Hurst fast, but pretty fast. I also had the mystique of the hippy backpacker destroyed in my mind. I always thought that they were in-shape outdoors types, but this is not necessarily true. Just because they are dirty, skinny, and trendy (we only have the first 2) does not mean they are capable of walking on uneven surfaces. To the Dutch and English guys who had been drinking heavily, they must have seemed even more uneven!

As you can see from the pictures, the sun was quickly setting, and though we weren't even close to Pakbeng, the rumor began to circulate that we would be sleeping on the boat. After we got into the boat of our choosing and secured a spot next to the Canadians, I went out to look around. We were moored downhill from a very small village, and it seemed the entire community of 40 men women and children had come down to meet us and sell us foodstuffs. The sun dropped down for good, the sand began to feel cool against my feet, and it became clear that the rumors were true. I had read previously that the boats could not safely travel in the dark.

As I walked across the gangplanks back to our boat (the last of four), I caught the end of a conversation between a large young Englishman and a boatman. "We have to stay the night on the boat? Oh, you're just joking. I should push you in the river for that!" The boatman then exhibited one of the greatest nervous laughs I have ever seen.

On the boat we had fried rice and Beerlao for dinner, and Chris and I played Euchre against the Canadian men. Around 10pm we made space to sleep sardine style, and we eventually drifted off as Dutch techno drove out my last remnants of compassion for my fellow man.

We got going again at first light, and this is where things got ugly. Chris, Morgan and myself created a nice personal area on our clean beach mat, with room for people to walk around to the bathroom. When the party crew returned from the beach in the morning, they sat across from us, slowly creeping into our personal space. My passive aggressive side was about to burst as their garbage and clothes spilled over into our area, where we had neatly tucked everything out of the way under some benches. Since we weren't swimming in our own filth, the spaces between out legs became the path to the bathroom, and we were forced into less and less comfortable positions as the hangovers set in and the party animals crashed. This was or territory, and they were invading it!

I know this is a long post, probably my longest ever, but I must diverge on a point of historical and cultural differences. A thousand years ago, the culture in SE Asia was quite advanced. In Europe, we were digging in the mud and dying of the plague. There are many reasons for this, hygiene not the least among them. As is the custom in many SE Asian homes, we removed our shoes on the boat, shook the sand off, and wiped our legs off. When going to the bathroom, we carried our sandals to the door, wore them inside, and again removed them after finishing our business. This was important because a thin pool of water was a constant presence in the bathroom.

In this manner, had others followed suit (and some did), the boat would have remained a very clean and habitable environment. In reality, people trudged wet sand in their nasty Tevas, sweaty socks rubbed against my ankles, and on the return trip from the bathroom what toilet juice that didn't get dripped on my exposed legs was stamped into the floor between them. It took about 5 minutes for us to realize that if we wanted our beach mat to make it to Vietnam in any kind of sanitary condition, it needed to go away immediately.

Clearly savagery had fully set in, but it was ok because we arrived in Luang Prabang a mere 11 hours later. We passed the time with reading, talking, playing cards, napping in the fetal position, and passive aggressively vying for square footage. The last two hours were the best. As the sun set people began to move around, snap photos, and converse with the anticipation of arrival. It was a beautiful evening, and the approach to the city was spectacular. No out of control development, no sky scrapers, no billboards. From the river you can't even see the buildings!

Today Morgan and I were discussing whether or not we would take the slow boat again. It would be a tough call, but if we had any of you with us, the answer would definitely be yes!

Travel Weary

2010-02-12T00:59:00.000-08:00

"I want to call United."

"Seriously?"

Morgan had trouble believing me because the roles are usually reversed, but I meant it this time. We are not even halfway through this part of our trip, and I am very, very tired. Being at the Williams house has been an incredible blessing, but home cooked meals, family time, and a daily routine have a price: Homesickness.

The fact of the matter is that we've been "playing life" for the past 16 days. Our minds and bodies feel like we're done traveling. Not so. Tomorrow we are off to Laos, and the grind continues. I am hoping that a kickstart of three travel days will get us back in the saddle, but at the moment heading back home sounds very nice.

Pray for us to be tough as we head off once again! We have a day of bus and two days of boat before we reach Luang Prabang on Monday evening. Then we head to Vang Vien on Wednesday, where we plan to spend 10-11 days. Me miss you all and are thinking of you!

Grace for the Moment

2010-02-03T23:38:00.000-08:00

Last week Mitch went home. It was weird after he left, a major transition in our trip. An hour after his flight left it started pouring rain (sorry you missed it Mitch!), and Mo and I took a walk in the downpour.

The next day we flew to Chiang Mai with vague plans to volunteer at Grace International School. Tad Williams' family attends/administers/teaches at Grace, and so we have been staying at their house and helping out in small ways at the school. Morgan is in the science department and I am in P.E. Woohoo!

The Williams are awesome. It is so great to be in a home for (to us) an extended period of time. They are fun, welcoming, and kind. On Sunday night I went with Seth (Tad's older brother) to an Irish pub to watch premier league soccer. We were joined by two student teachers from Norway and a guy from the Faeroe Islands. we got cussed out by a crazy British woman for cheering for Manchester United, who was destroying Arsenal. It was great fun.

Chiang Mai also has the best market/bazaar we have been to in all our travels. They are selling cool, local stuff, and vendors let you look at their stuff without bothering you. It takes place on Sunday nights when they shut down an entire city street for people to walk down.

A special surprise happened at the market, when I saw towering over the rest of the populous one Steven Shetterly! It was easy to find him in a crowd; I must be the same way! The next day we went hiking with him up to some waterfalls outside of town where there were absolutely no tourists at all.

We'll keep you posted oon the rest of our trip, but I will leave you with our general plan, cut and pasted from a Morgan e-mail:

We have a basic plan for the next 2 months:
- 2 weeks in Chiang Mai
- travel a few days in Laos
- 1.5 weeks in Vang Vieng Laos teaching English and working on an organic mulberry farm
- 2 weeks traveling in North Vietnam
- 1.5 weeks in Quy Nohn with Steven and Joelle
- fly home March 29!

Pictures to come.

Down for the Count

2010-01-24T01:55:00.000-08:00

We don't have malaria, or dengue, or TB, but we have something.

It started a few days ago with fatigue and nausea. The next thing we knew, Mitch was becoming an expert in projectile vomit. Apparently, it feels a lot better if you just drank a cold bottle of water.

The worst seems to be over, but both Mitch and I are having trouble forcing down food, and neither of us can garner the energy to leave the hotel room here in Ao Nang. Given our current miserable circumstances (Morgan is fine, albeit bored), I will tell you about how amazing Ton Sai was.

We came to the Railay peninsula on the reccomendation of both the Allynes and Tad Williams. We are so glad we did. Railay consists of 4 primary beaches with a clear price scale. We stayed at Ton Sai, the backpacker/rockclimber beach, in a nice little bungalow. The picture below should give you an idea of what the area is like. We are facing the mainland, with Railay East directly below us, Railay West across the isthmus on the left, and Tonsai across the bay beyond Railay West.

Mitch went rock climbing one day, as this is the biggest attraction at Railay. I can see why Justin and Tad are so fond of it! I also went kayaking with Mitch one afternoon, but for the most part we just hiked around and hung out on the beach.

The coolest place we went was the lagoon, in the center of the peninsulas head. We climbed up to the viewpoint where your orientation photo was snapped, and then back down into a hole in the limestone: a lagoon that connects underground to the sea. It was a climb up and down to get there!

In the end, even after four nights it was difficult to climb in our longtail and head back to civilization.

Mitch is flying home in a few more days, and we are flying to Chiang Mai to investigate a service opportunity we have there (more details to come when they are firm). Our trip has really been coming off the hinges lately, and with the recent illnesses we could definitely use some prayer. Pray for Mitch, that he would be healthy before he climbs onto the first of 4 planes that will take him back to Seattle. Pray for Morgan and I, that we can arrive in Chiang Mai healthy in mind and body, ready to serve. We could also use prayer that we can balance trying to be budget minded with enjoying ourselves and also knowing that God is in control.

Bye for now!

Rubber Sandals

2010-01-16T02:12:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I tried to plug our camera in to the computer at our guesthouse to upload more photos. As I was holding the camera, I felt an unpleasant sensation work it's way up my arm to the rest of body. Dropping the camera to the floor, I realized that I had been electrocuted! The USB port on the pc was not exactly legitimate technology.

The guesthouse owner, who is extremely kind, helpful and welcoming, ran to my aid. "It's ok, just wear the rubber sandals," he offered while pointing out the crocs next to the computer.

You can guess how I felt about that, so I tried another internet source, where it took about 10 minutes to upload one photo.

Internet cafe #3 got me electrocuted again, but I have finally found a good source at "Siem Reap Fast Internet," which also happens to be the name of the other cafes...

Anyway, I've uploaded pictures from Angor Wat for you to check out, and here are a couple more good ones from last week:

I was amazed by the sheer number of local people who were involved with the tour in some way:

Happy sailors:

Riverside homes are built on stilts for the flood season:

Tour People

2010-01-15T01:23:00.000-08:00

"I think we all need to not see each other for the next5 hours."

Morgan is probably right, so I came to the internet while the Luce gang naps in hammocks. We are in Cambodia, but I want to write about Vietnam. A lot has happened in our first week, and the brief time we spent in Vietnam (though fortunately not as brief as our first attempt) is worth sharing about.

We became tour people on the first day in Saigon, and haven't looked back. The one thing we wanted to see in Saigon was the Cu Chi tunnels; the huge underground network where the Viet Cong entrenched itself just outside Saigon. There was actually an American base only 5 kms away!

We completely lucked out on our tour guide: He was a war veteran who fought for the south ("that's why I have no pension"), so his stories were great and his perspective priceless. You could really tell that he wasn't worried about saying something that would get him into trouble. In the above picture he is showing us sandals made from tire and tubes.

After the war his family was moved out of the city and forced to farm rice for ten years or so. When the Cold War melted under the new glasnost policies in the USSR, Vietnam followed suit, and our guide returned to Saigon and eventually became a tour guide. That English came in quite handy after all! Economically, I honestly can't tell what about Vietnam is actually socialist. Unless socialist simply means that there is only one party and you can't vote. Anyway...

The tunnels themselves were quite interesting. My favorite part was actually going in the tunnels, which have been widened to let western tourists through. It's still quite a squeeze though, at one point it was a downhill belly crawl! I'm pretty sure the original idea was that you would have to be Vietnamese to squeeze into those tunnels.

There was also a display of booby traps, an American tank (can you see Mitchell?), and a shooting range where you could fire anything from an AK47 to an M80. $1 per bullet. Sidenote: Here in Cambodia you can chuck a live grenade for $30, and while it's tempting, I'm not trusting my life to Pol Pot's 30 year old leftovers.

Let's move on to the next day. Mitch was excited to boat on the Mekong, so we booked a three day, 2 night tour that started in Saigon and ended in Phnom Penh. Under $50. Booyah. It was a great trip. I felt that we really got to see what the life of people in the Mekong Delta was like, from rice factories to floating markets to coconut candy to tropical orchards. On the last day we spent about 7 hours in a small boat heading up river into Cambodia. We stayed close to the banks and just observed. It was a wonderfully relaxing birthday. The best way for me to express how great it was it to show you the pictures. Here are a few of my favorites, there are many more on our flickr site (just click on a photo and it will take you there):

Rice paper drying in the sun

Loading melons to sell in Can Tho

Climbing on a "monkey bridge"in a fruit orchard

Huge spider

I'll post more pictures when I get them uploaded, and fill you in on Angkor Wat in the next couple days. Peace!

79 Hours to Saigon

2010-01-09T03:03:00.000-08:00

00:00 We leave Redmond at 3:00am to head to SeaTac. After being lectured about having a different name on my plane tickets then I have on my passport (thanks Mom and Dad), United finally gets it fixed and we fly to San Fran.

08:00 We are asleep in the terminal of the San Francisco airport.

10:00 On the plane to Hong Kong!

22:00 Still on the plane to Hong Kong...

30:00 Our third flight, from Hong Kong to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon). arrives at last.

31:00 There is some confusion with immigration; it seems that you need to procure a visa before arriving in Vietnam.

32:00 We are escorted by guards to a room labeled "Deportees."

35:00 Sleep is intermittent at best.

40:00 We board a flight back to Hong Kong ($800 down the tubes for three round trip tickets)

47:00 We find the Vietnamese consulate in Hong Kong, and fill out the forms to apply for a visa.

47:08 Our visas are ready.

47:15 Rice and a fried egg, the first food I have eaten that was not provided by United Airlines.

49:00 I catch Mitch updating his facebook status to "I feel like I am traveling with the Gooftroop."

52:00 We check into the "Safari Guesthouse" in the Chungking Mansions. Population density of Hong Kong: 100,000 per square kilometer. I think they were all in our building.

53:00 At 6pm local time, we are all asleep.

63:00 At 4am local time, we are all awake.

66:00 Macaroni and ham soup for breakfast.

68:00 A walk in the park. We are approached by enthusiastic birdwatchers, and briefly join their ranks. Mitch works it.

73:00 Wait, where are we?

79:00 We get off the plane in Saigon, and ease our way through immigration. At least I can finally cross "Get deported from a foreign country" off of my list of lifetime goals!

Hope you are all having a less expensive, less stressful, but probably less adventurous time at home. We love you!

The Answers are In!

2010-01-04T20:35:00.001-08:00

Q: Tommy, what is your sense about how Americas are received abroad at this point in history?

A: As far as an overall trend is concerned, things are definitely better that when I traveled 5 years ago. I think that people's perception of a country is largely based on its leadership. Given the popularity of Obama on the international scene, especially compared to GW, people seem to be warming up to Americans once again.

That being said, it varies a great deal based on what part of the world you are in. In Kosovo, Americans are beloved and Bill Clinton is a hero. In Serbia, it's the opposite. Recent international policy has a huge effect on these attitudes. In Jordan and Egypt, the fact that we were Americans would elicit standoffish responses. The exception was when somebody was trying to sell us something: "USA number one!"

Q: Morgan, what is your impression about how women are treated abroad, by both nationals and visitors? You have traveled in areas that historically don't treat women so well. I hope that is changing...

A: I can't really answer this question because I didn't personally witness or have many interactions with women, especially in the Middle Eastern countries we visited. I did notice two major differences though: 1) Clothing - obviously, women in Turkey, Jordan and Egypt wear a hijab (headcovering) and wear very modest clothing. 2) Visibility in society - in Dahab, on the Sinai Peninsula, I saw three local women in 5 days. Two of these women were walking down the street with their children and one was working in a shop. In Siwa, Egypt, we counted about ten women during our 2 day stay. The women in Siwa were usually sitting in the back of a donkey cart with their children while their husband or oldest son drove the cart. Even in Cairo, we interacted mainly with men in taxis, restaurants, and tourist attractions.

Q: Both of you: Where did you encounter the best chocolate?

A: We ate a lot of Snickers bars during long bus rides and hike. They were passable, not great. We tried some Salt Chocolate that was made in Slovenia. It was not my favorite. The winner in the chocolate category was a dessert Tommy had in Istanbul. He saw it in a shop window as we passed by so we made a date to stop by there later in the week to try it. It was full of raspberries and chocolate mousse.

Q: Okay, which clothes do you absolutely want to burn? What items are your picking up for leg 2 (things you forgot, or things you used a lot)? New clothing items?

A: (Morgan) I got a little sick of my purple-pink-teal selection of tops. I often felt like a 14-year old. For leg 2 I am taking more black! Also I am leaving behind my shorts and jeans. Shorts - I never wore them, my skirt and dress were much more fun to wear. Jeans - essential on the first half, as it was quite cold and dress was more modest, but SE Asia is too hot for jeans.

A: (Tommy) The varying climates made packing a challenge. We had to contend with hot weather and snow in the same trip. For SE Asia it will only be warm and humid, so we are bringing a lot less! I brought 4 pairs of shoes - running shoes, goretex hiking shoes, flip flops, and chacos. I was glad to have them all. Now I am only taking chacos and running shoes. I had a pair of jeans and dress pants, both of which had "structural failures." Yikes. I am leaving behind my fleece and a few shirts as well, so I have about half the clothes (by volume) that I had before. I am bringing a new round of t-shirts that I am not sick of yet.

Thanks to Sarah and Emily who posted questions about our trip. Nicole, Brian and Bob thanks for the silly ones.

Our flight leaves in 9 hours!

Click on any photo to view our flickr photostream. We love comments.

Home

2010-01-03T15:36:00.000-08:00

We've been:

making surprises
unpacking
listening to NPR
sleeping in cozy beds
having dinner with friends
playing video games
reading mail
exchanging gifts
eating too much food
visiting family
celebrating the birth of Christ
romping through closets
playing disc golf
packing

We have been blessed by our time at home! Now we are ready to tackle the second half of our trip. Stay tuned!

View photos on our Flickr Photostream. We love comments!

Q & A

2009-12-18T09:23:00.001-08:00

We know that people have all kinds of questions about our trip, so we want to put up a post answering those questions. Now that we have finished our surprises, and we have a couple weeks before we leave again, it seems an appropriate time.

If you have a question for us, leave it as a comment on this post, or e-mail it to us (Tommy dot Lingbloom at gmail dot com, Morgan dot Lingbloom at gmail dot com). Just specify if it is for Morgan, Tommy or both of us. We'll post the responses next week sometime!

Psych!

2009-12-12T08:26:00.000-08:00

We fooled you! Mwahahahaha! For those of you who don't know, we are back in Bellingham, and have just completed our whirlwind surprise tour of family and friends.

Here are the answers to some of the questions you might have:

We are home for 3 and a half weeks, leaving again for SE Asia on January 5

We have had our tickets from Cairo for over a month; everything about India was a lie

Two people were in on the surprise: Mitch and Cody. They kept us in the loop of family events, and helped plan the surprises

Even if it had not been part of the plan since September, we would have come home. We miss our family and friends, and are very travel weary.

We will be in Bellingham and Redmond during our time home, trying to spend as much time with people as we can. Please let us know if you want to hang out! I want to meet people downtown at coffee shops to chat and play chess, and I want to play soccer, ultimate or any sport I can. Morgan wants to cook, wrap presents, make fun things and hold babies. Call us!

In the meantime, let me share with you the joys of flying to Seattle from Cairo. Getting on the plane (which was scheduled to leave for JFK 30 minutes after mignight) was a surreal experience. The flight attendants all spoke English! I understood what they said! USA! USA! Then we were held at the gate for close to 2 hours because they "had to check whether the flight plan was legal." How does this happen? I didn't know, but my mood was too good to care very much. We took off after 2 am and got off the plane at JFK 12 hours later, at 7 am. What?

Because of the delay, we only had 1:25 to catch our next flight. In that time, we had to go through immigration and customs. Our first stop was immigration. The Homeland Security officer asked us some questions, and then checked our passports. "You look exactly the same," he said to Morgan. "Are you sure this is you?" he asked me. I explained to him that my passport was issued when I was 17, and I was now 25. "Ok, looks fine. By the way," he added casually, "we have random checks every 30 or so people, and you have been chosen. Follow me." Great. Understanding that they have to throw a token white guy in their every so often, I followed him to another room while Morgan went to see about our bags.

Above you can see on the right a picture of me 3 months ago. Imagine that, but 8 years younger. I looked more like Eminem. On the left is terrorist Tommy, taken 3 weeks ago.

Sitting in the next Homeland Security room, waiting for my opportunity to have a more thorough interview, I reflected on the above images. I looked around and saw a few other white folks from our flight. The vast majority of the people who had been "randomly selected" were arab men and some women who happened to wear headscarves. I found it funny to think that racial profiling was not the official policy. It was clear as day sitting in that room. As I became conscious of my appearance, I realized that I was not a token white person. I was being racially profiled! The beard has got to go.

After getting grilled by another officer for 5-10 minutes, he had me take my glasses off and began a close cross examination between my face and my passport. Eventually I got through, but that beard has got to go!

Meanwhile, Morgan had retrieved all of our bags (almost 40 kilos!) and met me outside. We ran to customs and made it though ok, dropping off our bags and heading to security for the next flight. Tick tock tick tock...

At security, they pulled us aside and searched our bags for drugs. Random again, I'm sure. After testing our bags for drug residue, we eventually were able to grab our things and run to the gate on the far side of the terminal. We had made! Wait, what? The gate has been switched? To the far side of the terminal? Awesome.

More running, but we made it just in time to catch the plane to Seattle. USA! USA! USA!

Mitch got us at the airport and the rest is history! Ah, home for the holidays...

Cairo in a Nutshell

2009-12-10T01:41:00.001-08:00

Day 101
We will probably not be posting again for a little while, so if this post is still on top in a couple of days, scroll down and check to see the other ones! This is the third in three days...

I've been saving our post about Cairo for a couple of weeks, because we always seem to notice new and different things. We've stayed here a total of 12 nights, but more days because that doesn't taken into account night buses and trains. Now we are leaving for India, so it is time to share a bit about our experience here (aside from the greatness of staying with our friends).

Morgan has compiled a Cairo list of... observations/themes/memories. Check it out:

Boys riding bikes with huge crates of pita on their head
Buses bursting with people

Babies wrapped in full-sized blankets
Confidently crossing the street one lane at a time
Meat hanging in the street
Lazy mornings at Cilantro reading the New York Times

Waiting for white checkered taxis and insisting on the meter
Getting piles of small change at HSBC
Men sitting in plastic chairs on the sidewalk
Sampling streetside bakeries

Cars concluding that repeated honking of their horn is an acceptable alternative to having lights on at night (we've had some close calls with this one)
Watering the dirt to keep down dust
Squeegies everywhere
Headaches and stuffy noses from smog
Rare glimpses of the Nile that aren't filled with trash

My personal favorite experience was walking through Khan al-Khalili, the Islamic district of town. We got off the beaten track and wound our way through the old backstreets to al-Azhar Park, a beautiful community place located on top of what was formally a garbage dump, and watched the day fade away over the whole city. It was our first day in Cairo, and a wonderful introduction to the laid back approach we were to take for the following two and a half weeks.

Thanks for continuing to follow our travels. It means a lot to us that people at home care to hear what's happening. We have a lot of pictures on flickr that don't make the cut to the blog, so check out our flickr site by clicking on any of the pictures here. See you in India!

Paradise Found

2009-12-09T00:00:00.000-08:00

Day 98

We've been in Bohinj, we've been to the Island of Miljet, and we've been to Cappadocia, but this past weekend we traveled to what may be my favorite place of the whole trip. Get ready for pictures...

Siwa Oasis is 10-12 hours from Cairo, depending on how long it takes to change buses. After arriving in Marsa Matruh, the last town on the coast before Libya, a four hour drive across the desert is needed before reaching the Oasis. In the desert, there is almost nothing to see except the occasional radio tower, a scattered building here or there, and (once) a herd of camels.

Of course, we only were able to get the true feeling of the desert on the return trip, because the four of us (Kathy Ann, Max, Morgan and myself) took the dreaded night bus from Cairo. Nevertheless, we were treated to a brilliant morning in the oasis, and Max and I acquired some fresh "bred" and falafel while we waited for our hotel to open up.

After we got settled and had taken a nap, we went out to explore. We rented bikes for the second half of the day (less than $2 each), and headed into the palm groves. Here is where I started to fall in love with the place. The oasis is almost entirely lakes and palm trees, with space for a town carved out of the middle. Slowly riding down the winding roads, in and out of the shade of lush palm trees, was a serene experience.

When we reached the Oracle of Amun, and climbed to the top for a panoramic view, the effect was complete. We could see both salt lakes, the town, and any other piece of land that had chosen to separate itself from the oasis and jut out of the groves towards the sky.

The oracle itself was pretty impressive as well. Physically, its in pretty rough shape. But when you stop and think about Alexander the Great crossing the desert and climbing up the same hill, it's pretty cool. I was unable to content myself with simply climbing the hill.

We spent the rest of the afternoon cruising along one of the salt lakes, and then making our way back to a local swimming hole, Cleopatra Spring. These springs are the lifeblood of the oasis, and simple irrigation canals keep the date palms in good shape. The warm, clear water is also a great way to beat the heat! The following day, Max and I rode to the more remote Fatnas Spring on the other side of the oasis. We were ready to take a dip, but were a little sketched out by the lack of exit flow and the algae on the surface. You could still see straight through the clear water to the bottom, but we decided to pass.

The joy was in the ride anyway. We grabbed a seat at the nearby cafe and enjoyed the view over one of the lakes. It was straight out of a Corona commercial.

I was sad to leave a place where cars take third place to donkey carts and bikes; a place where children shout "Hello!" and wave at you as if a tourist is something special and unique. In the evening, Max and I played chess at a coffee shop on the square while the ladies shopped around. Everything was low key and relaxed in my mind, and it was nice to have that matched by the nature of our environment (a big change from Cairo!). Outside of the main square in town, the entire oasis is still operating as an oasis. It has not converted itself into a tourist destination, and one would hope that due to its remoteness it will stay that way. I don't know if I'll ever return, but I am very thankful for those two days.

2 Days and 3 Nights

2009-12-07T11:05:00.000-08:00

We bid farewell to our friends this past Saturday, and headed south to Luxor. Besides being the name of a casino in Vegas, Luxor is home to some of the best preserved temples and tombs in the country. A must for any tourist. Unlike the casino in Vegas, it has no pyramids.

We opted to take the 10 hour night train, and because $60 per person is far too much for a cabin and two beds, we paid $30 per person for a first class berth. Let's just say that I don't want to know what 2nd or third class is like. Gross. Fortunately for us, there were few people on the train. For a little baksheesh money (about $4) the steward let us change seats to a cabin with no other people, and we were able to lay down and sleep.

Even though it was only 7am, we were swarmed by people outside the train trying to get us to sign up for tours or go to their hotel. We quickly walked to our hotel, got settled, and prepared for our first day out. We headed across the river to see some of the most famous sights in Egypt. By bike. For the equivalent of $5, we acquired two not so trusty steeds and headed to Hatshepsut's Temple. Hatshepsut was one of the only women to become a Pharoah, and certainly the most famous. Because only men could be pharoahs, she is portrayed as a man.

The place was pretty crowded, but in retrospect that was not a bad thing. It was the only site we went to where we didn't have to talk to anybody. No hassle, no baksheesh. Next we headed around and up into the hills to the Valley of the Kings. It was good that Morgan had gears on her bike!

The Valley of the Kings was interesting, but disappointing in that it was the most expensive and least spectacular. No photos! We checked out our allotted three tombs, and headed to a place where we hoped to find seclusion to contemplate some ruins in peace; the Temple of Seti I. Begin rant: Unfortunately, a man following us around drove us away. In retrospect, I wish I had offered him 5 pounds to leave us alone. There are guys like this at every site, who come up to you and try to point out scarabs and khartoushes, then think you should tip them for it. If you let them start pointing things out to you, you've got to pay up. It really ruins the experience. Some of them are employed by the state, but they get paid so little that they need the baksheesh. On the other hand, it's hard to enjoy the sites when you have to babysit an untrained Egyptian tour guide. I wish they would double the price to all the sites, pay the employees a decent wage, and leave us alone once we get inside. End rant.

We made our way back to the river, stopping at a cafe by the Colosi of Memnon for dinner. It was excellent, but we still had the bad taste of hassle in our mouths, and decided that we would go back to Cairo the following night. Additionally, we planned to wake up at 5am to get to Karnak before the tourists and the touts. Arriving at 6am, it was worth it:

The most amazing part of the complex was the Hippostyle Hall, a hall of giant pillars designed to look like papyrus, I think.

All in all, my favorite thing about Egyptian sites is the heiroglyph carvings on the walls. The combination of words and pictures is really quite beautiful. Honestly, I used to wonder why people made such a big deal about ancient Egypt. Now I have no trouble seeing what has captivated the imaginations of travelers over the centuries. To be frank, these places beat the pants off Greek or Roman ruins.

If not for the hassle, we would've loved to stay in Luxor for a while. As it was, we spent most of our second afternoon at an outdoor cafe reading the New York Times. Then we spent 3 hours at POWERHOUSE internet cafe, with about 20 teenage boys. At 11pm, we fled like the cowards we are on a train back to Cairo.

Packed into a cabin with 3 other travellers, we secured a seperate room from the steward. "Tonight sleep," he said. "Tomorrow baksheesh." No problem.

A Cairo Thanksgiving

2009-11-30T09:50:00.000-08:00

Let's start with dessert...and work backwards from there!

Our main objective for Thanksgiving was to have a pumpkin pie. For the three days leading up to Thanksgiving, we peeked in every coffee and sweet shop to see if they had pumpkin desserts. No luck. We went to the Marriott Hotel, who advertised a Thanksgiving Dinner that you could order, complete with pie. No luck. We scoured the shelves of the supermarket in one of the wealthier neighborhoods for pumpkin puree. No luck. We went to the shop around the corner from Max and Kathy-Ann's apartment and there was a lonely little can of Libby's. Such Luck!

In addition to the pumpkin pie, I made Muhallabia Massawa (cardamom pudding) and Max bought Kathy-Ann a special birthday cake.

For dinner we enjoyed:

Garlic mashed potatoes
Sauteed peppers and zucchinis
Stuffing
Cranberry sauce - made out of $7 reconstituted Craisins

I got to set the table with the pretty handmade napkins we gave to Kathy-Ann and Max for their generosity.

Appetizers: Cheese, Craisins, and Crackers

Preparations: Kathy-Ann experimenting with the Craisins

We were so thankful to be safe and comfortable for Thanksgiving away from home. We truly missed our families and traditions but had a great time celebrating with our new friends.

Remember that you can click on any photo to get to our flickr photostream and that we love comments! Love you!

How Max and Kathy Ann Saved Us

2009-11-29T10:11:00.000-08:00

Dahab was a wonderful break, but something was still missing when we hopped on the bus for Cairo. It had been a restful 5 days, but it had not been regenerative as we had hoped. It was as if we pushed pause on the stress, but we were just as close to the breaking point when we left Dahab as when we arrived.

After 9 hours in a bus that smelled like the rest stop between Olympia and Tacoma, it was wonderful to meet Max and Kathy Ann in the lobby of the Cairo Marriott! We walked to their apartment and made ourselves at home in their spare bedroom. The whole week we hung out together and explored Cairo in a very relaxed, low-key manner. On Thursday, I really didn't do much of anything at all (This is my personal Thanksgiving tradition). I read about 200 pages of a Michael Crichton book, and watched half a dozen episodes of 30 Rock. It was great! Morgan can fill you in on the Thanksgiving details later...

We met Kathy Ann and Max in Goreme (Cappadocia), Turkey. We arrived at 6am from a night bus and by chance had breakfast with them and another couple from our hostel. They left on a bus that very night, but were living in Istanbul and seemed like cool folk, so we got their info. Two weeks later we were dining out in Istanbul, and they invited us to stay with them in Cairo. Um, yes.

Our new friends have a very different travel philosophy. This fall, their travel consisted of renting an apartment in Istanbul for a month, exploring the city and taking a couple short trips, then going to Cairo and doing the same thing. It is definitely the way to travel. We are already in the process ofminimizing our destinations in SE Asia to try to emulate this laidback method of traveling. "Traveling" is almost the wrong word. "Living abroad" may be more appropriate.

We've since talked about how our trip has changed because of that one chance meeting. If we had stayed at a different hostel, or come to Goreme one day later, we wouldn't have these great new friends. Considering how beat we are, we'd probably be wishing we were home instead of in Egypt!

The apartment in the Zamalek neighborhood of Cairo feels more like a home to us than any place we've been since August. It's a feeling we missed, and needed dearly. It is no exaggeration to say that Max and Kathy Ann have saved this trip for us.

Now we are in Luxor, the hassle capital of Egypt, and we can't wait to get back to Cairo! In a few days we are all traveling to Siwa Oasis together, so we are looking forward to the next couple of weeks. By the time we hop on that plane for Delhi, it will be like leaving home all over again.

So, someday when you meet our new Canadian friends (yep, right there in Vancouver), you can greet them warmly as people who were wonderful to us duirng a tough spot in our year.

The Power of Washington

2009-11-28T23:50:00.000-08:00

It is official folks, we have been rained on in every country we have traveled to. Two nights ago we awoke to lightning and thunder as Cairo got poured on for a good portion of the night. Cairo has an annual rainfall of about an inch. The power of Washington has followed us, with a little thunder and lightning mixed in for affect.

Prague: A flash downpour begins while we are inquiring about a soccer game in the tourist office. We decide to venture into the storm and are quickly soaked. Searching for cover, we ran into a cafe. Dripping like wet dogs, we gazed at the menu featuring $10 cappuccinos. The suited waiters and posh clientele looked at us as if to say "you don't really think you're going to be served here, do you?" We didn't, and quickly decided we'd rather freeze to death (our gouge our own eyes out) than drop $10 on a cup of coffee.

Innsbruck: 4 days of rain culminates with an epic hike that almost ends in disaster. We flee for warmer weather.

Dubrovnik: We awaken to the loudest clap of thunder I have ever heard. I have never been fully awake quicker in my life. When I sit up in bed, the flash from the lightning is still happening. Both ofus feel the electricity in the air, and we came to the conclusion that our hilltop hostel has been struck. Minutes later I am outside with the "mom" of the house, pulling laundry under cover as the downpour begins.

Montenegro: We hire a cab to take us to the top of a mountain to view the mausoleum of a national hero. Freezing and oaked, we discover the monument is closed due to weather.

Albania: Morgan and I were killing time while waiting to meet with some Albanian students when this storm hit. We hid in the bazaar until we were running dangerously late, and then ran from awning to awning in the back alleys to make it back in time.

Turkey: Our Nemrut tour gets off to a bang with the "sunrise tour" mimicking our other mountaintop experiences.

Jordan: After soaking in the Dead Sea, the rain clouds rolled in and drove us back to the hotel.Wasn't this supposed to be a desert?

We have had good weather for the most part, at least in the second half of our trip, but it is pretty crazy how the rain seems to find us no matter where we go.

The Walking Wallet

2009-11-26T08:58:00.000-08:00

Throughout this post, it will be useful to know that 1 Jordanian Dinar = $1.50 and 5 Egyptian Pounds = $1

Arriving in a new country can be very difficult from a financial perspective. When we arrived in Jordan, and needed to find a taxi to our hotel, we had no idea what was an appropriate fare We ended up settling on 5 Jordanian Dinar ($7.50) for a 10-15 minute ride. I thought this was high, but what argument could I make? Within two hours of being in Amman we had learned from our long lost relative that upon entering a cab, you need to insist that the driver use his meter. Otherwise they will see your white skin and jack up the price. The next 10 minute ride cost about a ten times less.

Through much of our time in Jordan, I felt like a walking wallet. To the majority of people we interacted with, I was not a person, but a prospective profit. This was especially true in heavily touristic areas. In Madaba, a less touristy town, we found a friendly falafal restaurant that sold us four sandwiches for a dollar, and made us feel very welcome.

Compare that to Wadi Musa, home of Petra, where I felt extremely uncomfortable walking into Al-Arabi, the Lonely Planet recommended joint. When I asked how much a falafal sandwich would cost me, the cashier snarled "One Dinar." Then he began making jokes to the locals waiting for their food, of which I was clearly the punchline. At restaurants throughout the country, their were no prices on the menu. This allows them to charge foreigners 3-4 times the going rate, and their is nothing we can do about it. At least in Cairo, if the sweet-potato-engine guys charge you double, you (a) know they need it and (b) are only paying 20 cents more.

I've already mentioned the flock of touts at Petra tryng to get us to ride camels or donkeys, or buy postcards and jewelry. We were expecting to be absolutely swarmed at Giza a few days ago in a similar manner. We had some friends who were there 2 weeks ago, and they were dropped off by their cab driver at an alternate entrance. He told them that the road to the other entrance was closed, and they needed a horse or a camel to go the rest of the way. Of course, there was a man with to horses who was happy to help. Only 250 pounds each for a ride to the pyramids! They went for it, and were out $100. Of course, upon approaching the Great Pyramid, they also approached the parking lot below it and saw that they had been tricked. I'm sure the driver had a a nice piece of the pie as well.

However, we were surprised to find that there were less tourists and less touts than in Petra. The difference was that the touts were more devious. Here are some more examples:

The minute we stepped out of the cab a man approached asking us if we had tickets. We ignored him. "I am trying to help you," he insisted. We ignored him. "I need to help you with your tickets," he pressed. We ignored him. "Stop, I work for the government. Just ask those policemen over there." He did not look anything like an official, and the guards did not seem interested (though I'm sure they would've loved a cut). We kept walking. "Come back if you want a camel or horse ride!" he shouted at us a final act of desperation. Gotcha.

After we bought our tickets and were walking towards the Great Pyramid, a man standing next to some officers (for effect only) asked to see our tickets. I'm not sure why we pulled them out, but you have to understand that many of these con-artists have a way of catching you of guard and surprising you, even if you know it's coming. "These tickets allow you to walk to all of the pyramids," he explained (duh), "but they don't pay for a horse or camel ride." I quickly snatched the tickets back and we began to walk away. "Wait, did you want a camel ride? I can arrange it for you, but it costs extra!" They've really had a lot of practice in fine tuning their approach.

Overall, however, Egypt has been much better than Turkey and Jordan as far as harrsment is concerned. At first I thought we had just become desensitized by it, but Turkey truly was much worse. Egypt also trumps Jordan in that it's prices are actually printed at the restaurants. No rip offs there.

Taxis in Cairo are also very easy, and cheap. There are basically two options. You can hop in a newer white checkered cab and the meter will run. Anywhere in the city for under $5, usually under $3. Or, you can hop in one of the older black and white cabs that are meterless You end up paying a little less, or a whole lot more. The entire sytem is based on the passenger knowing what the appropriate fare is and paying accordingly. As soon as the words "How much?" come out of your mouth, you become fair game.

We usually take the checkered cabs for simplicities sake, but coming back from Giza (basically a Cairo suburb) we negotiated a fare. Of course the driver told me "60 pounds," when I knew 25 was fair. We negotiated to 35 (with Morgan and I beginning to walk away at least twice). This is what I love about the taxis. I can pay more than the going rate, and not be out a lot of money. In most cabs, I just tip big, or round up to the nearest 5 pounds. The reality is that a lot of these drivers are just scraping by, and a good fare for them is not that much more for us. Everybody wins, everybody is happy.

If we really wanted to go cheap, there are public buses. Neither of us have a death wish though...

In retrospect, I imagine that a lot of the restaurant owners and camel herders are just scraping by as well, but their approach is all wrong. When we have the feeling that somebody is trying to take advantage of us, deceive us, or crack jokes at our expense, they are not going to get any of our money.

This post has been a long time in coming, because it something that is a frequent topic of conversation for Morgan and I. Money changes hands in our daily lives so much, and it gets wearisome when we have to be on our guard at all times. Do we tip here? How much? How long have we been in the cab? Was this cheaper at the other place? Is it worth it? Or the all-time classic budget reference: How'd we do today? Even when things are cheap, the feeling of being ripped off just isn't fun.

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody, we have much more to share in the next day or two!

Penguins Far From Home

2009-11-24T05:21:00.000-08:00

Day 82:

Being in Dahab was the perfect remedy for our travels. After two and a half months of mad-dash travel (never more than 5 days in one location), we arrived in Egypt knowing that we had 24 days for just 4 locations. A mental burden was lifted off of our shoulders, and we responded by doing very little for 5 days.

Our lodging was the Penguin Hostel, which Mosleh from the Cleopetra had reccomended. He also gave me a name and a password. We arrived with half a dozen other travelers, and I asked "Is Emad here?"

A friendly guy who seemd to be in charge responded, "I am Emad."

"Hallah wallah!"

"Mosleh my friend, hallah wallah! You get the special deal from Mosleh!"

Another traveler inquired if he would be recieiving the special as well.

"No, only these two. But everybody gets a free drink at the restaurant!"

With a start like that, you know its going to be good. As the waves splashed on the rocks beside us, Morgan and I sipped our hibscus cocktails and chatted with the international contingent of friends we had made on the minibus. Our brains slipped into autopilot knowing that there would be very little decision making in the next few days.

Decision making is one of the root causes of a infirmity I will call "Traveler's Stress." Even though we are vacation, many days are more stressful and tiring than a day of work at home. Morgan dreads getting off the bus in a new town, because it means more decisions while dealing with a mass of taxi drivers and hotel touts. The cure? Other than a trip to Mt. Sinai, and one afternoon snorkeling, we wiled our days away reading and playing backgammon on the terrace of the Penguin Restaurant.

Though most tour companies push for the sunrise tour of Mt. Sinai we opted for the sunset tour based on a fellow traveler's reccomendation. It is a two hour drive and a 2-3 hour hike, depending on the speed of your tour group, so sunrise tours depart at 11pm each night. They hike in the dark after no sleep, and then wait atop the freezing summit for two hours on the small piece of land they have secured from the other several hundred tourists. We have it on authority from a group of very tired and disshevelled Aussies. Fortunately, we laid in relative warmth napping and chatting for a few hours until he 5pm sunset. Then we descended as the sky drew dark and the stars came out. A really nice day.

On our last full day in Dahab, we decided to finally get out and do something. We headed for the Blue Hole, a legendary snorkeling and diving spot. It is basically a ring of coral a hundred meters or so in diameter, with the center dropping down goodness know how deep. The coral is close to the surface, and then continues as a living wall down into the depths on all sides of the hole. Once in the water, you basically feel like a charcter from Finding Nemo. It's like the fish tank at On-Rice, but we were swimming with all of them. I can only say that I wish we had done more of it. At one point I was swimming with a group of half a dozen lionfish (picture to come, maybe), thinking "Oh, I thought these were poisonous. I guess there would be signs if that were the case." Turns out they are poisonous, but they just cause high levels of pain, not death. At any rate, I think my only regret about Dahab is not snorkeling more.

What was the best thing about Dahab? Not Mt. Sinai. Not the snorkeling. No, the best thing about Dahab (and I imagine all of Egypt), is the price. Falafel sandwiches for $0.60. Chicken, rice, soup, vegetables, salad, pita, and tahini dinner for two? $4 US. Boo. Yah.

I will write more about adventured in Cairo and crossing the border into Egypt in the next few days. For now, give each other a Hallah Wallah for us this week!

Egypt vs. Algeria, Pts. I and II

2009-11-20T09:37:00.000-08:00

Part One: Wadi Musa

On our arrival to Wadi Musa, one of the first questions I asked at the Cleopetra Hotel was where I could watch football (soccer) that night. It was the penultimate night for most of the qualifiers for the World Cup, and I've become a much greater fan over the past three months.

Mohammad, one of the guys working at the hostel, asked "Which game?" I could see excitement in his eyes. With the wryest grin I could muster I responded, "the European qualifiers... and Egypt vs. Algeria." Mohammad was quick to answer, "We are watching it here, I am Egyptian!"

It was a big game. To qualify for the World Cup, Egypt needed to win by 3 goals. a tall order indeed. If they lost, tied, or won by one, Algeria would go instead. If they won by 2 goals, a final winner-take-all match would be played in Sudan.

Throughout the evening local Jordanians stopped by the hotel, harassing Mohammad by declaring their allegiance to Algeria. Nevertheless, by the time the game started it was clear that everybody in the room was pulling for Egypt.

When Egypt scored in the second minute, we waited in hopeful anticipation for the rout to continue. As the game wore on, the mood deadened and Mohammad's nervous mutterings increased. A 1-0 victory was not going to cut it. Then, in the 4th minute of stoppage time, Egypt drilled a header into the corner for a second goal. Mohammad jumped screaming into the air, and the next thing we knew he was on the ground yelling, next to the overturned coffee table and lots of broken glass. It was awesome.

-Break for Unrelated Mt. Sinai Photo-

Part II: Dahab

I was very excited to be in Dahab for the playoff game. Seeing the way one Egyptian had reacted to his team's victory, the prospect of being in Egypt was almost too much to take. Five hours before the game, as we sat in an internet cafe, people cycled in to get the red, white and black painted on their faces. A few men gathered around as one held his crying 3-month old baby still to receive the forehead flag. "He is hungry," he explained. My suggestion that perhaps the baby supported Algeria was quickly and loudly (but with good humor) refuted.

We showed up to the Penguin Restaurant an hour early to order dinner and secure a seat in front of the giant sheet that was to be the projector screen. At first we were told that the front seats were taken, but when the Egyptian men realized we were there to watch, not just eat, they quickly and warmly welcomed us to join them.

This was going to be great. A party in the streets that would hopefully turn borderline riotous, and a party in the restaurant that I would remember forever. Unfortunately, someone forgot to tell the Egyptian football team my travel plans, and they were unable to find an answer to Algeria's first half goal. As the clock wound down, we all waited expectantly; the miracle finish to the game four nights prior was still fresh in everybody's memory. But the whistle abruptly blew, the projector was abruptly turned off, and the fans abruptly went home.

Sometimes you have an idea of how something will be in your travels, but it never turns out the way you expect. My only solace was to see that Slovenia, our new second-favorite country, had knocked of Russia to secure a bid. I can't wait for this summer. Tour de France AND World Cup. I will probably walk from the Mt. Bakery to the Copper Hog every morning!

"X Never Marks the Spot"

2009-11-20T01:06:00.000-08:00

We are relaxing in Dahab, Egypt, for a few more days, and I am going to try mt darndest to get caught anybody who cares caught up on our adventure. Get ready for a slurry of blog posts!

We spent 6 nights hopping around Jordan, and came to the conclusion that we are very worn out. Over the next 3-4 weeks we are only going to visit 4 destinations in Egypt. Dahab, Cairo, Luxor and Siwa. I'll dedicate at least one blog post to each stop. For now, let me share about the most enjoyable portion of our Jordan trip, Petra.

When most folks think of Petra, one of two things pops into their head. One is a terrible Christian band from 20 years ago. The more popular recollection is of the famous arrival of Indiana Jones and the Nazis to the secret hiding place of the Holy Grail. In reality, it is the Treasury of the ancient Nabataean city of Petra:

You walk through a narrow deep gorge called the "Siq" for about a mile before you get to the Treasury, and the effect is breathtaking. The gorge itself was not caused by erosion, but was rent apart in an earthquake, leaving towering, sheer walls on both sides. The open space containing the Treasury (which is carved in one single piece out of the cliff itself) is the first opening at the other end of the Siq. I have to admit, I thought this would pretty much be it. Not that I would have been disappointed.

In reality, the ruins are spread out over a huge mountainous area, and we took three full days to explore. Each day we hiked up to a hard to reach destination and spent some time in the easier to access ruins. The most incredible ruin of all, in my opinion, is the Monastery. On the one hand, it is high up in the mountains, away from the rest of Petra. On the other hand, it is absolutely massive. Can you see me?

Another hike took us to "The High Place of Sacrifice," but he best part was coming down the back way and seeing the incredible geology. The rocks looked as if somebody had literally taken a paintbrush to them.

We spent a fair amount of time lounging in the sun as well, usually from high places to avoid the bus below. The sights were incredible, but let me reassure you that we certainly did not have a tranquil experience exploring them on our own. Unfortunately for us, Petra was recently declared one of "The New Seven Wonders of the World." Of course, none of these new wonders are actually new, and it is essentially a ploy to invigorate tourism. It worked. The place was absolutely packed with tour groups, as well as locals selling postcards, jewelry, rocks, and camel and donkey rides. Nothing brings out the PETA in me like seeing a 250 lb German man breaking the back of some poor beast of burden is it struggles to carry him up to the Monastery.

At the same time, children as young as 4 years old are accosting you to try to sell a pack of postcards pr colorful rocks. A lot of them have little tricks to engage you in conversation and we saw many tourists buying junk simply because the kids were cute. One woman asked to take a picture of some little boys, and they demanded payment before posing for her. Quite sad really.

I tried to get in the habit of acting insulted at the offers for camel or donkey rides. "I'm young and fit! Do I look like I need a ride?" The most common answers were "For fun!" and "For the woman, she will love you more!" Thanks for the marital advice, pal. The thick skin we've developed from dealing with touts in Istabul helped.

We still had a great time, and would recommend the trip to anyone. More to come...

Mt. Nemrut

2009-11-13T07:57:00.000-08:00

OK, I lied. Couldn't help myself. I was updating the map on the right, and I realized there is quite a bit to tell from the three day tour we went on to Eastern Turkey, so I will divulge.

We are not "tour people," but we had to make an exception for Mt. Nemrut. After Morgan had planned out a list of places in Southeastern Turkey to visit, which would have taken at least a week, with lots of buses and taxis, we discovered there was a whirlwind tour from Goreme that took us to most of those places. We signed up.

We hopped into our tour van, a 15 seat VW, though only 5 tourists were on the trip. This proved to be nice, because we could spread out all over the van and be comfortable. An hour in wqe stopped at a... shoot, I can't rember the word. Anyway, it was a caravan fortress of sorts. Along the silk road, these walled hotels provided shelter every 40km for caravans. It was really cool inside, and something I'd never really thought much about.

10 hours of driving across the Taurus Mountains got us up to Mt. Nemrut just in time for dinner. In the morning the fun would begin...

Mt. Nemrut is on the tip of the Taurus range, and as such has a beautiful view of the Euphrates, as well as clear views to the east and the west. The Assyrians built altars facing both directions, so that they could make sacrifices at sunrise and sunset. Our tour was designed so that we could wake up early, drive to the summit for the sunrise, and enjoy the view. Unfortunately for us, it was pouring rain (how many mountaintop rainstorms do we have to endure?), and we were essentially inside a cloud. This diminished the experience somewhat. "Look at the bright side," I said, "at least we will have unique photographs!"

The headless statues were pretty cool. Apparantly the Romans decided to lop off all the heads to show the Asyrians who was in charge now. Nevermind that the Assyrians had been gone for centuries... Anyway, we headed on towards Urfa, while our wet layers hung about the van in a vain attempt to dry. We stopped at an awesome Roman bridge that spanned the mouth of a gorge, and some pillar that was of importance for some reason or other. Obviously not that much importance, or I would remember.

Urfa, the birthplace of Abraham, excellent. There was a huge park that contained a lot of beautiful and historic sights, as well as just being a really nice park. It was raining still, putting a damper on things. "Look at the bright side," I said, "there will be less tourists."

The first thing we checked out was Abraham's Cave. I didn't even know what it was as we went in, I must have been picking my nose when the tour guide explained it. It was absically an ordinary mosque, witha a glass viewing box that peeked into a cave. Big whoop. Then there was an old Muslim guy who got mad at me for some reason, even though I had remembered to take my shoes off. The guide then got in an argument with him, and kept telling me to go in. So I did. My first time in a mosque, and I get yelled at. Not exactly a good start.

Anyway, the best was yet to come. I always figured that Jews, Christians, and Muslims shared the same stories about Abraham, because we all share him as a forefather of the respective relhions. Wrong. Islam has an awesome Abraham story. Apparantly there was a prophecy that Kinf Nemrut of the Assyrians would be usurped by a baby or something, so he decided to kill all the newborns in the vacinity (one of those kings). Abraham's mother hid him in the cave from the last paragraph, but eventually, when he was the last kiddo left, he was found out. The Assyrians took him to the hilltop fortress overlooking Urfa, built a giant bonfire down in the city below, and catapulted him into it. I love this. They could've catapulted the baby, or barbeque the baby, but instead they had to go for the catapult-barbeque combo kill. FINISH HIM!

Of course we know that Abraham doesn't die, and indeed God saves him... by turning the fire into water and the sticks into fish! Take that Nemrut! To this day there is a giant pool of carp in the city park, supposedly the ancestors of Abraham's fish.

Sidenote: At first I missed the part abou this happening when Abraham was a baby, and I was picturing a long-bearded-old-man-Abraham character being catapulted across town. Even more amusing, in my opinion.

That evening we drove to Harran, which is supposedly one of the oldest continually inhabited places on earth. They are famous for several ancient sites, including an Assyrian Observatory, but it was dark when we got there. We could just barely make out its outline as we tried not to step in cow poo. "Look at the bright side..."

We checked out some reconstructed houses that Harran is famous for, and joked around with the brothers who ran the place. One insisted that if I could not produce 100 camels to Morgan's father, than she had to stay in Harran with him. We agreed that I would get the camals when we wnt home, and if not, Morgan always has the option of coming back to Harran. We got all dressed up in traditional clothes (don't ask me why), and another brother said I looked like Yasser Arafat. He called me Yasser the rest of the evening.

The rest of ourtrip was rather uneventful. It mostly involves us driving for hours on end, and when we got back to Goreme we were exhausted. Too exhausted to share about our tour for at least a couple weeks.

Where are we now? Madaba, Jordan. We are heading to Petra tomorrow. Also, we just bought 3 falafel sandwiches for 1$. Booyah.

Plans Change

2009-11-12T07:00:00.000-08:00

One thing we have learned while on this trip is that plans change.

The first major change happened on September 15 when we took a train to Ljubljana, thus entirely skipping Switzerland and Italy. Next, instead of traveling from Croatia to Greece, we decided to visit every country in the former Yugoslavia plus Albania. Prior to the train to Ljubljana, we made a huge change to our well thought out itinerary: we wouldn't be spending Christmas in the Alps!

I had a romantic vision of drinking hot chocolate by a cozy warm fire all bundled up singing Christmas hymns in a quiant little village in the hills with snow all around. But where would we find the village? And who would play the piano? When I paid 3.40 Euro for 4 ounces of luke warm hot chocolate in Innsbruck, I started having second thoughts about our plans. Central Europe is just too darn expensive!

The day we decided to cancel our Christmas-in-the-Alps plan was the same day that Jessica and Mitch sent us an itinerary of all of the things they wanted to do and see when they spent Christmas-in-the-Alps with us. Sorry guys!

Also, we have realized that we hate to backtrack, even if just to go back to get our coat or bottle of water. Cairo to Vienna to Delhi wasn't the smartest idea. We had three ideas by the time we got to Turkey:

1) Spend Christmas in Greece. This was a good idea because we didn't go to Greece and it was in the original plan. Alas, Greece is also expensive and it is not in the direction of India. Also, the islands are basically closed down during the winter and we would have to be cold on the mainland. When I go to Greece I want to be warm. Maybe next time.

2) Spend Christmas in Israel and the Palestinian Territories. Here we would get a feel for how Christmas really was so long ago. This was a good idea because we didn't go to Israel and it was in the original plan. Alas, we just aren't feeling it. We are now in Jordan instead of Israel because we wanted to clambor around in Petra and hike through the desert. We'll come back to Jerusalem when all we want to do is walk through the holy sites.

3) Spend Christmas in India. This is a good idea because India is big and beautiful and cheap and it is on the way to places like Thailand and Cambodia and Vietnam. The best time to visit India is not during monsoon time, Christmas just happens to not be during monsoon season. I know that India does not typically remind people of Christmas or hot chocolate or singing hymns by the fire, but where ever we are we will be missing home like crazy so we might as well be in a place that doesn't even compare to home. And while you are all eating Sally-Jesse-Raphael-Cream-Cheese-Stuffed-French-Toast and Pigs-in-a-Blanket, we will be eating too-spicy-curry and drinking our 7th cup of chai. Mmm, Indian chai.

Another cool thing is that Mitchell is going to come to SE Asia with us for a month! He has some time in January to travel, so if we go to India earlier, then we have more time to hang around the beaches of Vietnam with Mitch. And he and Tommy can do all of the boy things they want and I can learn how to cook yummy food and go shopping.

So that's the plan. What do you think?

Reflections on Turkey

2009-11-10T06:59:00.000-08:00

Ouch, nine days without a peep. We have a good excuse: The Turkish laptops at our hostel make typing ridiculously slow. We are at an internet cafe now. Time has really flown the last two weeks, and I'm not going to even attempt to blog about everywhere we've gone. I will update the map on the sidebar and you can take a look.

Tonight is our last night in Istanbul, and our last night in Turkey. We have spent more time in Istanbul (8 days total) than in any other place on our trip. "Best Island Hostel" holds the record for most continous nights in one place (6), which is a shame because it is a total dive.

Turkey has been a very interesting place to travel, but also very strange and difficult at times. Rather than tell you all about Ephesus, our tour to Mt. Nemrut, or the churches we've seen in Istanbul, I just want to tell you more about what it is like for a westerner to travel here. Especially since the "Istanblues" post was such a hit (we have been to Starbucks two more times)!

The food has been good, although it has been hard for Morgan to find good vegetarian fare. She has eaten a lot of lentil soup, bean salad, and eggplant cooked in a variety of ways. Outside of Goreme, we have not found a restaurant we really like. There is no cheap, healthy, good food, and I can only eat so many meatball sandwiches and kebabs. At one restaurant, you may be pleasantly surprised to be served this (thank you Homeros Pension):

While at another, you may be shocked to be served this:

The hardest thing to get used to, however, is people trying to sell you stuff. For your first 15 minutes in Istanbul, you think that Turkish people are incredibly friendly. But 95% of the conversations begin with "Excuse me sir, where are you from?" and end with "Please come into my shop for tea/kebabs/carpets." If you respond to every person who politely greets you on the street, you will never make it 100 yards from your hostel, and your time will be spent explaining that you don't want what they're selling.

The first day, I was drawn into a lot of conversations. The tenth day, I shouted at someone "I don't want to but anything!" With that out of my system, I have been able to completely ignore people without the slightest trace of guilt. Avoiding eye contact is the best strategy. Though I have learned to handle it, I still do not understand the mentality behind waiters who stand in your way on the sidewalk telling you to come into their restaurant. (a) If I wanted to go to a restaurant, I would find one and sit myself down. (b) Even if I had intended to eat in your restaurant, I certainly don't want to now. I think it is fun to walk down streets with lots of restaurants, pause to look at each menu, and move on to the next one as soon as the waiter opens his mouth.

I should add here that Istanbul is an incredible city. In other cities, we were bored and ready to move on a matter of 2 days. Here, it would be easy to spend a month. In fact, we have some new friends from Vancouver (Canada) who have been here 6 weeks, and are still finding all kinds of interesting sights.

So now it is on to Jordan. We fly to Amman tomorrow, and will spend 7-8 days in Madaba, Petra, and Wadi Rum (the desert from Lawrence of Arabia). Then we head to Egypt, and another month of adventures. Yikes!

Troglodyte

2009-11-01T01:19:00.000-07:00

That is your word of the day, and it was what I have been aspiring to be over the last week. Get ready for pictures!

Cappadocia trumps Kotor. The place is absolutely amazing. You could spend a lifetime in the little town of Göreme (a tourist town that manages to not feel like a trap), and still never explore all the nooks and crannies in the surrounding valleys. Think Arches National Park in Utah, with a awesome ancient cave houses thrown in. We've also decided it is one of the best places in the world to travel with kids (thinking of you, LSCCers!).

I'll give you the (very) remedial history of the area. A few thousand years ago, the Hittites started making caves to store fruit and grain; the rock is so soft that carving out a piece is no big thing. Christians arrived seeking peace from various oppressors (Romans, etc.) and learned how to make cave houses from the locals. What followed was an explosion of dwellings hidden away in a maze of valleys. Dwellings range from beautiful churches with frescoes and carvings chipped out of the cliffside...

...to underground cities 8 floors deep. These were great, with some floors connected by a single, narrowing passage. These passages end with a guard room that features a giant stone to roll in front of the door. There is a small hole in the stone to shoot arrows or thrust spears at any would be attackers (who barely have space to move).

Our first day in Göreme, fresh off the night bus from Istanbul, we headed for Sword Valley. We walked the road for about 30 minutes before taking a steep path down into the valley (Göreme is surrounded by these valleys, but they are really more like canyons). As soon as we were down, we started seeing cave dwellings. Of course, I wanted to climb to every last one of them, and it was slow going while Morgan waited for me to tromp repeatedly through the underbrush to get to each one. We quickly realized that the seemingly infinite number of caves meant that we would have to pick and choose. Further down the trail I made my first great discovery. By walking under an overhang in the cliff and looking up, I found a vertical tunnel, with hand an foot holds chipped out on either side. At the top was a trap door that was thankfully open. I hoisted myself into the dark room (headlamp again) and looked around at the ancient abode. In the top corner was another tunnel, so of course, I was obligated to climb through again. This room had a window, and I was able to wave to Morgan below. It was awesome to see how defensible the position was. Nobody was getting in unless the current resident invited them.

We explored caves to the end of the valley, ending with a church inside a stand alone rock. Note the worn footholds leading up to the entrance.

My personal favorite was the Selime Monastary, which featured a tower that our tour guide said was too dangerous to climb. Bah! I grabbed my head lamp and coerced my new German friend, Jan, to follow me to the top.

Basically, this is boy heaven. We spent about five days here total, 3 of which were exclusively spent wandering through the different valleys exploring. It was awesome!

We've uploaded a couple hundred photos and a few videos dating back as far as Macedonia- I encourage you to check them out on our flickr page! We can't comment on all of them, but ask a question about a picture and we'll be sure to slap a good description on.

Istanblues

2009-10-26T12:29:00.001-07:00

I'm not going to write anything about Albania. Deal with it.

OK, I'll give you one sentence. In Albania there are no car lanes and everybody drives like a maniac and the capital city of Tirana is full of smog but that's ok because we couchsurfed with Christoph and the restaurants are really good and I got an awesome haircut for 3$.

There, now let's just move on.

I wanted to post about one average day in the mentality of a globetrotter. Sometimes I have to laugh at myself for having an inexplicably bad attitude, or being way to pleased by something very simple. None of these events are really worth conveying to anybody (except Morgan, who is forced to listen to my stream of concioussness on a daily basis), but you can't understand what it's like just hearing about the sights.

We had 3 hours until our shuttle to the bus station left, so we decided to wander back through the Beyoglu district of Istanbul, and get some coffee and dinner. As a nature of my substance addiction I start to get headaches at precisely 4pm every day that I do not get my coffee. Sure enough, as Morgan was examining some jewelrya shirt at a nice little shop, I felt my energy go and my head get foggy. It was time to power through to our destination.

We came to the main street down to Taxim Square, which is basically a giant outdoor shopping mall packed with people. I will admit that the first two times we had to walk down this street I was enamored by the shops selling Turkish delight, kebabs, and even some neat handmade stuff that girls like. In my present countenance, however, I was just irritated. The Starbucks' and Burger Kings put me over the edge.

One thing I can't stand is people walking slowly, treating the walking path as their own personal slalom. Usually these people are arm in arm or carrying lots of shopping bags. When they are in groups they like to stop and fan out to have a conversation, instantly causing a traffic jam. On this particular evening, they seemed to beout in greater numbers. I don't know any dirty words in Turkish, so I had to content myself with shouldering past with an exaggerated contortion of my body, and then briskly walking away.

We came to the restaurant of our choice before finding any decent coffe shops, so the fix would have to wait. After ordering our far to expensive meals, I was more than a little irked to see the size of my entree, accompanied by the miniscule amount of bread that they failed to refill and, at the meals end, they had the had the audacity to charge extra for. There was no way we were getting coffee here.

Upon reaching Taxim Square, we began to bop in and out of cafes to check the prices of coffee. 6 lira, 7 lira, 8 lira (1 dollar = 1.5 lira)- I was not about to drop 4 bucks on a cup of coffee. On second thought, I was not about drop 4 bucks on a 3 ounces of coffee, from some tourist trap whose probably using Nescafe instant coffee mix they get for $0.02 a pack. If I was going to drop 4 bucks on a cup of coffee, it was going to be from the US of A. We walked into Starbucks, and I ordered a tall cappucino for 4.50 lira.

I paused for a moment to reflect that only a small portion of my 4.5 lira would re-enter the local economy, while the lion's share would be shipped back to Washington State. A smile formed on my lips.

The tall cup of coffee, as we all know, is the smallest size Starbucks offers. However, it is approximately 4 times larger than anything you can by this side of the Atlantic. God bless America! It felt so wrong, but it felt so very right. We huddles in the corner for the next hour. Starbucks was my sanctuary, I couldn't have felt better had I been sitting in the United States embassy. But let's be honest for a minute, I was sitting in the United States embassy. U.S.A! U.S.A!

Anyway, a fully caffeinated Tommy made it though the next few hours quite well. We settled into our night bus to Cappadocia, and as we pulled out a movie came on. Rush Hour 3 in Turkish. It was great. The recipe is quite simple: Jackie Chan does his thing, then Chris Tucker tries to kick somebody and gets beat up, but it's ok because either Jackie saves him or Chris just shoots the bad guy. My eyes greedily drank in the film in its entirety, and somehow I left Istanbul completely contented.

Vino Skop

2009-10-18T07:31:00.000-07:00

Amazingly, we were in Skopje, Macedonia for their annual Wine Festival. It is held in the main city square near the river and a beautiful stone bridge.

Remember when we blogged about the Kravji Bal in Bohinj, Slovenia? This is the exact opposite except that people drink alcohol at both. Think: Deming Log Show vs. Taste of Kirkland for an idea of the type of people at these events.

Here's how it works: upon entering the festival, you buy a wine glass and tokens (in 50MKD increments). Then you wander around the winery booths and they will give you a glass FULL of wine. We bought 200MKD worth of tokens and by the time I had 1.25 glasses I knew that was enough. We'll go back for a second night to try more.

We messed up at the first booth because we both got the same type of wine. It was very good but we wanted to try a bunch instead of the same. Now we know!

There was also a stage set up for various performances throughout the festival. We watched Chikibum, an a capella women's swing group, and a traditional Macedonian group sing. I liked listening to the new music and watching all of the pretty people. The women in the Balkans are very beautiful and they dress very well.

The best part of the Vino Skop were the booths of handmade treasures. In all of our travels the only stuff for sale anywhere has been cheap junk made in China. My idea of buying treasures during our travels did not include things made in China. You'll have to wait and see what I found at the booths, because something might be for you!

Untouched by Tourism? Found it.

2009-10-18T01:26:00.000-07:00

The last few posts got scrambled, scroll down if you want to make sure you didn't miss anything...

Day 46:

Two days in Kosovo was enough to rock our worlds. Everywhere we had been provided tourist information centers, shops selling worthless trinkets, and a wealth of travelers sifting through to see the sites. Not so in Kosovo. We had started to get that "Not in Kansas anymore" vibe in Montenegro, but here is completely hit home.

We stayed at the only cheap place in Pristina, Guesthouse Velania. It is basically a cross between a youth hostel, a retirement home, and an M. C. Escher painting. There are seriously staircases everywhere. After we arrived there (that's a story for another day), and after the heat got turned on, it was all right. Snow a week after swimming in the ocean was a surprising and not exactly welcome change.

Pristina was not what we expected, but then again that may be because we didn't know what to expect! With the exception of the main arteries, there are no sidewalks or crosswalks. People just walk off to the side in the streets and cars drive around them. At first this was terrifying (especially crossing streets), but we got used to it surprisingly fast.

The people are incredibly friendly and nice. Whenever somebody I've talked to has come back from a place as troubled as Kosovo and said "the people there re the nicest I've met," the cynic in me has written it off as that person subconsciously trying to sound cool or justify their going to such a place. The cynic in me has been humbled. I think the reason for everyone's kindness is that it's not overrun by tourists. Internationals are few and far between, especially Americans, and Kosovars are excited to see the international community taking an interest in their little country.

The food is amazing. We had ethnically Albanian dishes that consisted of meat, egg and cheese baked in a bowl and flat bread baked alongside. It's amazing. I am excited that while we may have left Kosovo, there is more of this quality food ahead of us in Albania.

We had a hard time figuring out the attitude towards Americans here. People always gave us a surprised look when they learned we were Americans, but we couldn't tell if it was a positive or negative reaction. With the number of American flags, and the attitude towards Bill Clinton, we figure it was positive. Bill is so popular here that people started naming there kids "Klinton." Check out this picture taken near the intersection of Bulevard Nena Tereze and, yep, you guessed it... Bulevard Bil Klinton:

Let me steal a paragraph here to plug in an ever so brief history of Kosovo. This is leaving out a LOT of details. Kosovo was the heart of Serbia until the Ottoman Empire took control in the late 14th century. For 500 years, Sebrs (Orthodox Christians) moved out and Albanians and Turks (Muslim) moved in. In 1912, Serbia took Kosovo back from the Turks, and settled where there was room. In WWII Albania took control. Kosovo was then incorporated into Yugoslavia (though Albania wsa not), and remained with Serbia after the breakup. Serbs complained of ill-treatment at the hands of ethnic Albanians, tensions heated up, and ethnic Albanians declared independence from Serbia in 1990. This was a problem because Kosovo was not divided into Serbian and Albanian sections, the two groups lived together.

War broke out in 1992 and in 1999 the genocide began. If genocide is to ugly a word for you, you can use ethnic-cleansing instead. Serbia started bombing the heck out of Kosovo, so after a few verbal shots across the bow, NATO bombed the crap out of Serbia. Kosovo has been a UN Protectorate since 1999, and Kosovo declared itself independant in 2008 (yes, again). In the last decade, reprisals against Serbians have been more common than violence directed at Albanians. Serbian Kosovars boycotted the election and established their own council in the town of Mitrovica.

As you can see, it's complicated. We spent most of our time in the Albanian region of Kosovo, where the Orthodox churches that haven't been destroyed are protected by KFOR armed guards. KFOR is Kosovo Force, the NATO troops that are keeping the peace. Most Serbs, but not all, have fled to the north, and most Albanians to the south.

Here's the little bit that we have learned first hand from being here. For one, most Kosovars do not harbor feelings of hate for other people groups. One police officer spoke with pride of the diversity in his town, Prizren. "Where else in Europe can you find a Mosque, an Orthodox church, and a Catholic church all in the city center?" he asked. He very much wanted to impart everyone's desire to move on and get along.

The other main observation is that Kosovo is ready to move on. Construction is happening everywhere, the economy is starting to get rolling, and EU membership is the hot topic of conversation. People are not sitting around feeling sorry for themselves. It is very cool to see.

Lastly, it has been awesome to feel like we are walking through history in the making. The hilltop park near our guesthouse had a war memorial and memorial to the late President, who just died in 2006. Roadside memorials flying the Albanian flag abound. It is very different than seeing a memorial from the French Revoultion or something like that. It is fresh and real, and that made it somewhat emotional in a vague way for me.

Things Fall Apart

2009-10-17T01:36:00.000-07:00

This continues from the same day we went to Kotor. We took an afternoon bus to Podgorica, the capital of Montenegro, to catch the night bus to Pristina. I want our family to know that we thought long and hard about posting this (I typed it out 3 days ago), or just keeping it to ourselves, but we are out of Kosovo now and it is in the past. Besides, it seems even less scary having spent time in the country. In other words, don't worry about us!

6pm - The Lonely Planet guide to Podgorica helpfully provides the names and addresses of some important locations, like an internet cafe and some good restaurants. However, they fail to provide a map, any hint as to where these locations may be, and for that manner, the direction of the city center when you get off the bus.

8pm - After wandering around the town for an hour, which is constrcuted 99.3% of cement, we stumbled into an internet cafe and found a decent place to eat. No couches, so our plans were unchanged. We enjoyed our pizza and risotto while listening to Soft Rock Hits from 1991 and prepared for the long haul to Pristina.

10pm: "No bus to Pristina. No bus tonight." This was one of those rare instances where I've seen Morgan aghast. Aghast is something some people are more than others, but Morgan- she's a cool cucumber. But tonight? She had "Whaaaa?" written all over her face. I probably did too, as we had purchased our tickets to Pristina just 3 hours earlier from the very same ticket agent now telling us there was no bus. Apparently the pass was closed due to snow, so there would be no bus that night.

"Bus to Raska, then bus to Pristina!" offered the suddenly helpful ticket agent. It involved crossing into Serbia, and then south to Kosovo, but it might just work. Allegedly a bus to Pristina rolled through Raska 20 minutes after we would be dropped off. It sounded good, but I had to make sure of one thing.

"Station? Not stop? Not just road?" I asked, waving my arms larger and smaller. This was an effort to communicate our desire to avoid standing on a curb in the middle of some unknown part of Serbia at 4am.

"Yes, big bus station," she reassured me.

4am - As we stood on the curb in the middle of some unknown part of Serbia, I felt like a fool. After taking every precaution to be safe, the trip had somehow gotten away from me. We didn't feel unsafe, because their were a few people around (cab drivers and the like), but it was frigid. We had on all the layers we possessed, and it was not enough. On top of that, Americans are not reputed to be the most popular of people in southern Serbia, from which Kosovo only seperated with help from NATO. A bus came by, but it was going to Mitrovica, not Pristina. We let it go. 30 minutes later another bus came, also for Mitrovica. I checked the map, and Mitrovica was halfway between Pristina and wherever the heck we were now, so we got on. Not dying of exposure was an added bonus.

5:30am: The bus arrived in Mitrovica, and people got off. The driver indicated to us in Serbian that we needed to go down to the bridge and go across to catch a bus to Pristina. Actually, the only word I understood was "bridge" (most), but we figured it out. Two other guys got off the bus with us, and the bus driver told them we were trying to get Pristina. So was one of them.

As we walked across the bridge they communicated that Mirovica was the border between Albanian and Serbian Kosovo. Their were police officers and KFOR (Kosovo Force) officers all over the place, so that made we feel better about being in a place that had been the center of the unrest. We left the Serbian side of town and entered the Albaninan side. It was very reassuring to know that we had left the an area were Americans are as unpopular as anywhere in the Balkans, and entered into a place where Bill Clinton was honored as a war hero. All separated by just one bridge. Crazy.

In an effort to communicate, the guys asked us if we spoke French. Nope, only English. Then they asked if we spoke German. I felt so stupid. Here are these guys living in a worn torn country, who probably speak 4 languages, and yet we come there with nada (ok, I guess I know some espanol).

6am: We got to the bus stop at the first crack of dawn. "Chai?" The guys took us across the street to a 24 hour coffee shop and we sipped tea with a half a dozen other Albanian Kosovars while we waited for the bus. I tried to pay, because they had been so helpful to us, but they were having none of it. One of them threw down a euro to cover the four of us. Then one of the guys had the idea that we could share a taxi and not have to wait. This seemed like a good idea to us, and at this point we were fairly tired of being cold, so that's exactly what we did.

7:30am - After switching taxis and driving to our hotel, we collapsed onto our bed, curled up, and went to sleep.

Note 1: I looked at our guidebook in the taxi, and it said something along the lines of "Don't go to Mitrovica." It was the site of serious ethnic conflict in 2006, the worst since 1999. However, the State Department has, as of January 2009, taken down any travel advisories for the region.

Note 2: We have a rule that in any situation, our safety is more important than the feelings of anyone with us, no matter how nice they seem to be. A few days before this, we parted with a guy offering us a ride who seemed fine to me, but gave Morgan a weird vibe. In that case, we are always safety first. The entire night of these events, we never felt truly unsafe. I even pestered Morgan with questions about her comfort level, and she seemed as at peace with the turn of events as myself. Thanks to all of you who were praying for us.

The Bay of Kotor

2009-10-16T07:09:00.000-07:00

Day 43: We've got a whole lot to share about our last week. I'll spread it out over a few posts.

Tuesday, 8am -We awoke in our Budva Hostel (Montenegro) to cold, wind and rain. I got up, and pulled some clothes on, with a mind to see if we had couches in Pristina, Skopje, or Tirana. As luck would have it, the power was out. We had endured the miserable weather a day earlier and did not have a mind to do it again. We had gone to the top of Lovcen National Park, but couldn't see a thing, and had to head back down.

The weather had been so bad, that we had been forced to buy umbrellas, something I swore I would never do. "I will eat pizza with a fork and knife," I had spouted to Morgan back in Innsbruck, "but I will never use an umbrella." Well, this video might give you an idea of why it was necessary. Sorry, but you'll have to turn your head sideways:

9am - Morgan emerged from cocoon to come down and have breakfast with me, and fortunately, the skies cleared. We packed our bags and prepared to move out. Leaving the big packs at the hostel, we took on a day trip to Kotor, a walled city in the crevice of a mountain by the bay.

12am - Let me just say that Kotor is quite possibly the most beautiful place I have ever been. It was windy as heck, but we climbed the ancient fortifications to the fortress above town. No gift shop, no cafe, no audio guide, no funicular shuttling up tourists who are incapable of climbing up themselves. The fortress and walls were in a state unchanged except by time itself. This was the way historical monuments should be.

I strongly recommend clicking on the picture above to go to our flickr site, and taking 5 minutes to look at the photos from this place. It was amazing.

In Search of the Untouched

2009-10-10T08:17:00.000-07:00

A constant tension throughout our trip has been the draw to see beautiful, interesting things contrasting with our desire to get off the beaten track. Some places, however cool they might be, are a little less cool when there are more tourists than locals.

Yesterday we were talking to a man who lives inside the Old City of Dubrovnik. The old city seems to consist of only tourists and services that cater to tourists, which is really rather depressing. The man told us that nobody who actually lives inside the old city can use any of the services provided inside the old city. They have to go outside to find anything that isn't tourist rubbish.

Today we went on a day trip with two Aussies and a Croat whose family runs our hostel. The destination? Bosnia-Herzegovina and the city of Mostar. It certainly felt more off the beaten track; I mean, we're talking about Bosnia, right? The town was really cool, with mosques on one side and churches on the other, a beautiful bridge connecting the two. Local young men jump off the bridge into the river for cash from tourists. I felt that as we were walking down the streets trying to get a glimpse of the East, Turkish tourists were walking by on their vacations trying to get a glimpse of the west. Kind of eerie, but also very cool.

On the way there, our guide told us all about the history of the area, with the bias that is essential to this region that was rocked by the war with Serbia. It's hard to blame someone for resentment when just 15 years ago his family was huddled in a hotel with the rest of the town while their home was shelled by the Serbs. It was really a good illustration of how complicated the history and relations of the region are. When I asked him about the destruction of Stari Most (the Old Bridge, which has since been rebuilt), he mumbled something about a conspiracy that blamed the Croats. I stuck to the policy of ask, but don't argue.

We also learned the jokes about each of the ethnic groups in the area. Something like, "A Serb, a Croat, a Herzegovina, a Montenegrin and a Bosnian walk into a bar...." Each one has it's own stereotype and punchline. Yikes. One joke that I will share reflects a little bit of recent history. "Serbia is now like Nokia. Every year is a different, smaller model." It has been a tough 15 years for the Serbs, shedding one country after another in the Yugoslav wars, then losing Montenegro and, most recently, Europe's newest country Kosovo.

So, the big change in plans for our trip. Tomorrow we are heading to Montenegro, and in a few more days to Albania! We will still go to Greece, just not for as long. The way we figure it, Albania and Montenegro are going to be completely different in 5 or 10 years. They are already vastly changed from 5 years ago. It was clear even in Mostar that things had changed dramatically in the last few years (there was some awesome war memorabilia that I'm sure was half the asking price a few years back). The Greek islands, on the other hand, are not going to change much. We have an opportunity to explore relatively unspoilt countries, and it would be a shame to pass that up.

Vacancy at the Shangri-La

2009-10-06T08:27:00.000-07:00

"Hey Tommy, did you know this place is owned by the Chinese mafia?"

"Really? I thought you were in the Croatian mafia"

"HAHAHA! You are a funny guy, Tommy!"

The Shangri-La Hostel in Supetar, Croatia has several difference's from the Shangri-La Motel in Bellingham, WA

It is not a pay by the hour establishment.
It is located on a beautiful island.
It is owned and operated in part by Vinko, a Croatian law student with a very positive demeanor and great sense of humor.

"Hey Tommy, I have special deal for you. Pomegranate for one euro each. HAHAHA!"
(After bringing home a bag of pomegranates to share from his parents ouse, Vinko had learned the price in the US).

For two days the entire hostel consisted of to Croatians, an Aussie, a Canadian, and two Americans (us). Considering that three of these people were workng at the hostel, things were just the way we like it. Slow.

O the third day, however, over 25 people were there. Hostel owners from around the former Yugoslavia (Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Montenegro, etc.) had come to Supetar for an end of the year celebration. It was a blast, but we were happy to move on to Korcula the following day.

"Tommy, I will give you the information for all of my friends. You will have place to stay in Hvar, Korcula, Dubrovnik, Mostar-"

I cut in before Vinko had a chance to send us to Sarajevo or Belgrade. Maybe next time.

Here in Korcula we are planning the next leg of our trip. It looks like Bosnia, Montenegro and Albania are all on the plate for next week before we get ourselves into Greece! Yesterday we went to the beach and cliff jumping with a few other travelers and Dragan, the owner of our hostel, "Dragan's Den." Morgan did a backflip from 20 meters!

Ok, Morgan didn't jump, but she did oblige the vanity of everyone else by being the photographer!

Peace out, we'll write again before we head into new territory- countries that we had no intention of visiting until we saw how much ferry tickets to Athens cost!

Oh, almost forgot. We got to ride a LASER BOAT!

Two Stories

2009-10-03T23:52:00.000-07:00

Well, we're not going to wait forever! Here are two stories from the above list...

Cheese: This one is pretty straightforward. For lunch one day I ordered a pizza and Morgan ordered four cheese lasagna. Her dish was basically a bowl of cheese with one flat noodle in it. Having eaten bread and cheese almost exclusively for a week, eating an entire pizza and then half a bowl of cheese plugged me up pretty good. Yikes!

Now for the aquatic hitchhiking. Morgan and I took a car ferry to Sali, a town on Dugi Otok (otok is Croatian for "island"). It was then 12km to our destination, a salt water lake an cliffs in a National Park on the south tip of the island. We stuck our thumbs out (all part of the plan), and after 20 minutes and 2 cars we secured a ride.

As amazing the ride was in the back of the convertible, winding up and down hills under the blazing sun, we couldn't help but think of the return trip. Based on the fact that we passed no other cars, we were pretty sure we'd be walking.

The park was beautiful!

As we prepared ourselves for the long walk back to Sali, Morgan had a brilliant idea. Why not ask one of the boats parked for a day excursion how much they would charge to take us back to mainland. We sidled up to one boat, talked to a girl working on board, and she told us to hop on, free of charge! Booyah. Instead of a 12k walk and a$10 car ferry, we had half an excursion through the islands for free.

Burpee Count: 132

If the past week of our trip was a book by A.A. Milne*

2009-10-01T22:38:00.000-07:00

These would be some of the chapter titles:

In which aliens speak Croatian
In which a 2 hour swimming trip involves 5 hours of buses and 5 hours of waiting for buses
In which Mo and To succeed at the market
In which Mo and To discover the secret of the supermarket sandwich
In which Mo and To add an aquatic dimension to hitch hiking
In which Mo orders a bowl of cheese and To has a dam in his colon

The title that receives the most queries will be expounded upon in its own post. Use the comment section to vote!

*Go to your bookshelf or nearest neighborhood library for a reference.

Check out the name of this cafe!

The Edge of Croatia

2009-09-30T07:48:00.000-07:00

Day 26:

On the last day of the Creation, God desired to crown His work, and thus created the Kornati Islands out of tears, stars and breath -George Bernard Shaw

We've been in Croatia a week now, sans communication with the motherland. Morgan and I will give you a bigger update in the next day or two, but I wanted to share some photos now.

On Saturday we went on an excursion to the Kornati Islands, the most tightly packed archipelago in the Mediterranean, that is also a national park. The only access is by private boat, so this all inclusive day trip was our first big splurge.

It took a while to get away from Zadar, where we stayed for five nights, but once we got out to the islands it was really pretty cool. Most of the islands are rocky, cone-like lumps that stick out of the sea, or a chain of these hills strung together.

We weaved through these islands until we didn't know which way was which, an then emerged on the Western edge. The islands out here seem to be of the same stuff, but it is easy to see that the Adriatic has beat them to pieces over time, and the series of jagged cliffs left behind is something to behold.

After stopping for a couple of hours to swim and sunbathe, we went to the Captain's house on one of the islands for a meal of salad, pork, and lots of incredibly good fish. In all, it was a great day, though I think Shaw is a little over the top. Maybe I should create some quote about how amazing Ferndale is, so that my name can be slapped on tourist information for eternity...

Burpee Count: 67

Bohinj Stands Alone!

2009-09-23T09:59:00.000-07:00

Day 23

Today we went on a walk and discovered a beautiful, hidden spot. I told Morgan it was on my "have to come back to someday" list. As we continued to talk, I realized it was the only place that had truly secured itself that spot.

Everything about Bohinj, the lake, the mountains, the rivers and the people, make it amazing. That being said, the water takes the cake. The lake is crystal clear and teeming with fish. We walked around it on Monday and couldn't believe the beauty.

Today, hiking up a gorge from Stara Fuzina towards Voje, the water was even more magnificent. I couldn't resist, but made a quick exit when my body was shocked by the glacial melt.

Tomorrow we head to Croatia, but we both agree that returning to Slovenia someday is a must!

The Story Behind the Ride

2009-09-23T09:44:00.000-07:00

Last Wednesday we were walking through Ljubljana and I saw a poster. It seemed to be advertising some kind of bike race, so of course I went inside the store to inquire. A race up Slovenia's highest mountain pass- I had to see this.

I asked Tone about it back at the house, and he immediatly called the organizer, essentially ordering him to find me a bike and get me in. 36 hours later we were on a bus to Kranjska Gora. I was especially motivated when I heard the Justin was a full 15 minutes faster than me up to Artist Point a few days earlier!

I got to ride up on an old Univega mountain bike- and I used all the gears! Still, I managed to beat a fair number of roadies to the top, and I kind of enjoyed the plushness on the cobblestones. The rest is in the pictures...

Kravji Bal (Cows Ball)

2009-09-23T05:28:00.000-07:00

We were lucky enough to be in Bohinj for the annual Kravji Bal celebration in which the farmers bring their cows down from the summer pastures. Think Deming Log Show in terms of the folks present. We entered in to the grounds with hundreds of other people coming and going. In the main area there were about 30 vendors of food and trinkets surrounding many picnic tables. It seems that most people come to eat. To the back, towards the lake, were the cows. There was a milking competition and judging events.

We were taken to Kravji Bal by Maia, whose apartment we are renting here. She got us in for free! We met up with some of her friends for some homemade blueberry liquor...

then strolled around looking for some cheese to buy...

Traditional dancing...

Boy dressed as a cow...

Cutest old lady...

Great day, great place to be. We will definitely be coming back to Bohinj!

Odds and Ends

2009-09-22T10:38:00.000-07:00

Isaac is right, the z's and v's are switched on these keyboards, and though I've finally got the hang of it, sometimes I let loose a tzpo. Oh well. There are lots of other letters too, and Morgan and I are getting better at pronouncing them. For example, our current location, Bohinj Bistrica, is pronounced Boheen Beestreetsa, Not Bohinge Bistrika. The one thing I can't figure out is when to pronounce a v "vuh" and when to pronounce it "ooh," and whenever I ask, Slovenians look at me like I'm crazy. Usually it lands somewhere between those two sounds.

c's and ć's make a "ts"
If a letter has a hat, like č, š or ž, just imagine there is an h after it.

Take a look at the event I rode in, Vršič na Jurič. "Vrishich na Yurich." Oh yeah, j's are like y's... most of the time.

Anyway, the original intent of this post was to make a few things clear, especially for the less internet saavy.

First, you can click on any photo in a blog post and it wil take you to our flickr account, where you can peruse, at your leisure, all of our photos. That's right folks, ALL of them! TRY IT NOW!!!

Second, register to blogger so you can leave coments! It's nice to hear from those of you at home. It's easy. Do it.

1000 Slovenian, 2 Croatians, 1 American

2009-09-21T10:38:00.000-07:00

Day 19: Jurič na Vršič

Introduced to my trusty steed:

26 numbered cobblestoned switchbacks (plus many unmarked):

The finish, over 800m up:

Doing my best to bring it:

First Place, North American division:

Always supportive:

Welcome to Slovenia!

2009-09-18T00:15:00.000-07:00

Day 15

Why are we so stupid? This is the question Morgan and I asked each other, as we sat in the tourist office in Ljubljana.

Two days prior we had received confirmation that we had a host for two nights, along with instructions for meeting them and two cell phone numbers. One day prior we had received a preliminary invitation to staz with a different host for a week. We had promptly cancelled with our first host, banking on the second, and had never heard back.

Now we were in Ljubljana, with nowhere to go, having squandered a perfectly good opportunity to couchsurf with a great family.

What should we do? I guess we'll call Tone (like Tony), and see if he'll still take us. Humbly, I dialed the phone. "Tone? Hi, this is Tommy from couchsurfing..." Embarrassed, I explained the situation. Graciously, he responded. "Of course you can stay with us! I'll pick you up at the Dragon Bridge in 10 minutes."

10 minutes later we were in his car, learning about Slovenia, and completely excited to be staying with Tone.

"When we get home you and I will go cycling, but we need to leave right away!"

No arguments from me!

After borrowing pair of shorts and quickly changing, I left Morgan in the care of Tone's wife and daughter, Ksenija and Hana, we were on the road. The rain had been swept away and the roads and trails were beautiful. As we climbed, Tone told me about the history of the land, and his desire to have a house in the beautiful countryside we rode through.

"Are you doing ok?" he asked.
"I have to much pride to tell you if I wasn't!" I huffed back.

We joked our way up a road deserted from cars but saw many other bikers. The destination? A hilltop pub with a view of the entire valley. We could see Ljubljana to the west, and the mountains near the Austrian border to the north. Sitting at the tables outside were a dozen roadies, drinking a beer together before heading back home. Tone bought us each a Radler (also known as a "cyclist," light beer and lemonade) and we sat and talked while enjoying the view. I thought I was in cycling heaven.

When we finally got home after a wicked trail descent, it was getting dark. I took a shower, got some fresh clothes on, and we all sat down to a meal of pumpkin soup, delicious pasta, and community salad (we shared one big bowl). Ksenija is an amazing cook. For a third time, we were completely blown away by the hospitality of complete strangers.

Couchsurfing strikes again!

Burpee count: 17

Nordketten

2009-09-17T23:44:00.000-07:00

Day 13 (out of order, I know)

After waiting and waiting for the skies to clear up in Innsbruck, Morgan and I finally used our Innsbruck card for one free Gondola round trip, despite the top of the cable being immersed in clouds. At the top (which was actually a funicular ride and two cable cars), we walked around a beautiful landscape while catching brief glimpses of the town thousands of meters below.

It was bitterly cold, but we walked up to the nearby summit, and then I scrambled up another while Morgan indulged my vanity...

At this point I had a decision to make: Go for the hike I had long desired, or throw in the towel due to bad weather. Those of you reading this probably know me well enough to guess what I decided. The last gondola would descend in two hours, so I decided to hike for 45 minutes and then come back, just to be safe.

Now my personal stayle of solo hiking is to pack late and go fast. I like to jog part of the time, and hike quickly the rest. Unfortunately, the sheer cliffs on either side of me (one up, one down), made this a rather unsafe thing to do. The clouds I was caught in didn't help my equilibrium one bit, and I often lost my balance when I got scooting along to quickly.

After 45 minutes, a pulled a U and headed back. There was one signpost I had passed that indicated a trail to the next Gondola down, but I wasn't able to find the trail. I passed a man headed in the oposite direction, and 5 minutes later saw him heading the same direction as me, on a trail two hundred meters lower. Thinking he was on the trail I had looked for in vain, I resolved to go back and look again. Mistake #1.

As I examined the lone signpost (more to the left in the above picture), I realized it was not firm in the ground, and could turn. Great. I found a sketchy trail that seemed to lead over the edge of the cliff (also on the left above), and decided to follow it. Mistake #2. It was steep, slippery, and overall sketchy. On top of that, 15 minutes later it began to absolutely pour. By now ill timed flash rain storms are becoming a theme of our trip.

I opted to continue down, hoping to catch the last gondola. As I got lower a was walking on grassy slopes, even more slippery. The locals did not seem the least concerned with my plight...

I made it the gondola safe and sound (thank goodness). Wet and disshevelled, I climbed onto the gondola and relayed my story to a Candian couple we had met earlier. A group of Indian tourists also took advantage of the opportunity to make me the subject of their home movies. Booyah.

I am ready to go where it's warm.

Burpee count: 11

Rained Inn

2009-09-17T22:34:00.000-07:00

Day 15

Cycling, hiking, whatever, Innsbruck is an outdoor paradise. We couldnćt wait to get there and see the legendary mountains. I was hoping to rent a bike and get some riding in, as well as go on a massive hike.

Unfortunately for us, we didn't get achance to see those legendary mountains until we were standing right on top of them! We spent 4 nights in Innsbruck, and it rained (almost) the entire time. It certainly was cloudy, and we couldn't see the mountains that we knew were right there next to us.

We did enjoy exploring the town, and were extremelz glad we bought the Innsbruck Card, which gave us free public transportation and access to most museums. This was good because we couldn't really go to the mountains. The bus system is great, thoughI have to admit I was momentarilz terrified when we crossed the bridge and went straight into the alley you see in the picture below (between the pink and yellow houses).

That picture also gives you an idea of where we were staying' at an apartment near the top center of the picture, right in the foothills. Our host, Christoph (and his flatmate Kritstina), were gracious enough to let us have our own room in there flat. Christoph takes a utilitarian approach to couchsurfing, so aside from a few kitchen conversations we didn't see much of him. We were a little surprised by this, but still very grateful. I can imagine burning out very quickly as a host if I felt I needed to be holding my guests hand all the time.

Almost immeditaly after arriving in Innsbruck, Morgan and I checked the weather for our next destination, Appenzell. 2 degrees C during the day, and snowing overnight. At that point we decided to scrap Switzerland, and consequently, Italy, heading directly for Slovenia and warmer climates. On our last day we got on a 6 hour train to Ljubljana, still not having clear directions from our prospective hosts. Yikes!

Burpee count: 7

Things in our packs that we have yet to use...

2009-09-14T07:56:00.000-07:00

Day 14

Tommy:

running shoes
long sleeve shirt
dress shirt
dress pants
disc
scrabble tiles
mini cribbage board
spoon
pacsafe (bag lock)

Morgan:

swimsuit
headband
sunscreen
bugspray
purple pens
sharpie
spoon
pacsafe

Burpee Count: 5

The Braunshmid Family

2009-09-14T07:35:00.000-07:00

Day 11

What do Morgan and I like to dowith friends? Talk, play games, and share meals. Lucky us, because with the Braunschmid family that is exactly what we did!

When we arrived in Salzburg and (eventually) found our way to their house, we were greeted by sisters Verena and Olivia, along with Olivia's boyfriend Michel, who brought us upstairs and welcomed us with great (and impressively fluent) conversation. When Ansuela arrived, we were served with a platter of sandwiches and veggies. Before we went to bed that night we rodeinto town with Verena, I had gone mountain biking with Herbert, Morgan had gone for a walk and baked apfelstrudel with Ansuela, and we had all eaten together and learned to play a new game!

The next two days in Salzburg were great; the family let us use their bikes to explore the city. Still, I always had the feeling that I would rather be spending time with the Braunschmids then wandering about Salzburg. For that reason, we usually made it home by 4, and passed the time drinking coffee while chatting on the terrace or playing games in the wintergarden- the dining room surrounded by windows and filled with plants.

We made frittatas for the whole gang on our last night, a small token of our thanks. That will be a memory that sticks with me for quite some time. Filling myself with food, having yet another great conversation, listening to Arcade Fire (Herbert has great taste in music). To end the night, we learned to play dopple deutsch, and they even gave us an extra set of cards to play with!

We are probably ruined for all future hosts at this point, because I don't see how the Braunschmids can be topped. Today again Morgan and I were discussing how amazing couchsurfing is.

Burpee count: 3

You get what you pay for...

2009-09-10T08:24:00.000-07:00

... in most cases.

As we crossed the border into Austria on Tuesday, Morgan commented on the change in the roads. We had gone from the ever present 1.5 lane strips in the Czech Republic to a beautiful highway with (gasp!) a line down the center. When we stepped off the shuttle and on to a Salzburg city bus, however, we were in for a rude awakening. 2 euros (3 dollars) each for a 10 minute bus ride! Suddenly we had the realization that we were going to be paying through the nose. Tomorrow we hop on a train to Innsbruck, at 32 euros a person. A train across the Czech Republic cost about a quarter of that.

That being said, we have done pretty well for ourselves. The Braunschmid family has allowed us to use their extra bikes, and we have ridden around Salzburg every day here. We bought yogurt and Muesli for breakfast, and the Braunschmids have fed us dinner (we are making fritatas for them tonight). For lunch...

... the Bosna Grill! Once you take a bite, all concerns about what it's made of fly out the window. Justin, you would be in heaven. Under 3 euros a pop, just over what El Capitan would charge. Of course the most base purpose of couchsurfing has also helped us, and tomorrow night we are dropping 75 Euros for one night in a hotel. Bummer, but then we will have 5 straight days of free room.

Obligatory Salzburg photo:

Burpee count: 2

Apfelstrudel for Dinner?

2009-09-09T12:52:00.000-07:00

Ansuela is the mother in the family we are currently couchsurfing with. Yesterday she taught me how to make Apfelstrudel. I am amazed when tasty treats can be made without a recipe. She just threw together some flour, salt, oil, and water until it looked like a good dough. Meanwhile, I used the apple cutter/corer for the filling.

Step 1. Make the dough into a large rectangle.

Step 2. Spread out apples, sugar, raisins and some cream.

Step 3. (The best part!) Using a tablecloth, roll up the strudel into a log.

Step 4. Gently place it on the baking pan.

Step 5. Bake until it looks good! (Sorry no photo, we ate it too fast!)

As the strudel was baking we asked if we could use the kitchen to make our dinner. Herbert (the father) looked at us quizzically and said, "This is our dinner." So, we had apfelstrudel with vanilla pudding for dinner. I could eat that every night!

We have learned 4 new games here that are very fun to play: Make n´ break, Ubango, Hive & Saboteur. We might make you play these with us when we return home.

A Day Apart

2009-09-07T22:46:00.000-07:00

5 hours is a fast time to hike/run 32+ km, but that doesn't mean it's fast enough. This is especially true when you're bus leaves after 4 hours and 55 minutes, and though my legs protested, I hurried down the trail from Kravi Hora wondering if I would need to hitchhike.

Morgan and I set aside yesterday as a day to do our own things, and I chose to take a bus an hour south to Vissy Brod, a town near the Austrian border, and get some hiking in the foothills. It was a very nice day, and I was ready to get cranking. I left the town and headed up, expecting to be alone in the woods. While I didn't see any people, I was surprised to see a lot of religious artifacts during the course of my hike. In the first 2 km, a relatively steep uphill trail to an ancient monastary and chapel, there where markers indicating the stations of the cross. There's no time like the present, so I took the chance to have some quiet prayer and reflection (something I don't do nearly enough these days).

On the map the different trails are indicated by different colors, and I switched from the green path over to the yellow, with a mind to find some good viewpoints and head down the red trail. Even though trails are marked with a colored symbol to let you know you're on the right rack, it is easy to get lost. Sometimes trails intersect with other trails or primitive logging roads, and sometimes they are the roads themselves. If you're not careful, you can be walking down a road and miss a hidden little path that you are supposed to spur off onto.

Sure enough, this happened to me on the way down, and by the time I made it back to Vissy Brod I only had two hours to hike the 12k up and over to Rozmberk before the bus left. Legs already aching, I tackled the hike. After tempting fate by taking the spur to Kravi Hora (Devil's Rock) I emerged onto a public road and followed it to town. After quickly checking the bus schedules, my bus rolled in ready to take me back to Cesky Krumlov in time to keep Morgan from worrying. Whew!

God Save the Queen

2009-09-06T08:31:00.000-07:00

We are in the presence of royalty, and boy is it entertaining!

Morgan and I met Jana, our first couch surfing host, at her work place in Prague. She struck me as a kind, mild mannered girl, and to be honest I was wondering if we would be able to find much to talk about. Jana, however, is a perfect example of why you should not judge a book by its cover. Once we settled onto our train to Kladno that evening, we had a great conversation about Czech life, and immediately I felt I had an inside look at Czech politics and social issues. Did you know that the Communist Party still receives 15% of the vote in the Czech Republic? Jana pointed out a poster depicting a happy family akin to an L.L.Bean magazine, it was an campaign sign for the party. As she translated the list of campaign promises and passionately explained why, frankly, it was a load of crap. When the conversation moved to the strain that the country's gypsy population was putting on the state welfare system, another passenger joined the conversation as well.

From Czech Republic

We were learning so much, so fast, but we were just beginning to learn about Jana. When we reached her flat in Kladno, a suburb of Prague, she revaled to us her secret life as a hardcore music fanatic. Jana travels around Europe to dance parties that last an entire weekend, goes absolutely bonkers, than flies home to her routine life in the Czech Republic. On weekends when she is not traveling, she is resting up for her next big shindig. Hardcore is not so big in the Czech Republic, and only one or two other Czechs attend these parties. Jana puts it best: "I am the Czech Queen of Hardcore!"

By our last night, I'm pretty sure we've got Jana pegged. Quiet by day, crazy by night, the Queen lives her simple Czech life, and her crazy Hardcore life. Then she pulled out the jars of mushrooms. Jars upon jars of these live mushrooms, growing in a pool of what smelled like sweet vinegar. Drink the stuff for good health, or put it on a rash to help it heal. She even had a batch of "retarded" mushrooms she was planning to use for a facial! I think she needs to go into business: Jana's Magic Mushrooms!

Of course, I am leaving out the part about how Jana is a great host, helpful and hospitable. That was the icing on the cake. Because of Jana, our first couchsurfing experience was incredible. If we have the opportunity to meet more people like her, we will be very blessed indeed.

Here's a little something special for those of you reading...

Czech Czech Czech it out!

2009-09-05T13:26:00.001-07:00

Day 5/212 (composed over two days, sorry for the broken train of thought)

Just got back from watching a Czech-Slovak soccer match, and got my first taste of Czech beer. I am basically a master of the Czech language, at his point... ok that was a complete lie. The waitress at the pub just mocked me for using a cheat sheet to ask for the bill. Earlier today, I spent 5 minutes trying to find our tram station on the map before realizing that the sign I was using was not our location, but simply said "No Smoking."

Let me give you the run down of our trip up to this point.

Day 1- After 26 hours of traveling from Seattle to Reykjavik...

...to Frankfurt to Nurmberg...

...we found ourselves in Prague, at night, with no place to stay. Thanks to quick thinking, helpful fellow travelers, and dumb luck, we got a room and conked out.

Day 2- Morgan and I saw the sights in Prague, wrestled with how to eat and not get ripped off, and met our amazing host Jana. We stayed with Jana for 3 nights.

Day 3- We took to the woods and tackled a 22k hike to a castle called Krivoklat. The bus ride to our start was interesting, because most tourists are usually on transport in and out of Prague. It was great to be out in a place where people actually live. Our jet-lag induced sleeping gave us a let start, however, and in the interest of time we cut the hike short. With 7k to go we stuck our thumbs out, and it was about 0.03 seconds before the blinker came on and the first car pulled over. Our Italian driver zipped us to Krivoklat, where we discovered we could catch a train in 15 minutes, or 2 hours and 15 minutes. Not wanting to return to Jana's at 9pm, we opted for the whirlwind tour. The hike was the highlight, at any rate.

Day 4- Another day of Prague, including the Mucha museum. On our way back to Kladno Morgan asked "What did we even do today?" It was a good question.

And you can see by the length of my descriptions the type of traveling I value. From now on, less time wandering around the cities and more times exploring places that are not filled with tourists. I hate wading through throngs of tourists, and I love when a local asks me "why on earth would you come to (insert insignificant town here)?" As Morgan said, it is great to see where people actually live, and what there lives are like. Therein lies the greatness of couch surfing, and I am convinced that Jana deserves an entire post to that effect.

Hope everyone is enjoying their time in Cube land and the start of school... suckers!

Up, Up and Away

2009-09-01T09:43:00.000-07:00

Flight leaves in 7 hours! Here are a few things to watch for in our coming posts:

Hucklebuckle: When Morgan and I see something that is out of place or interesting, we say "Hucklebuckle," and he other person starts looking to see what it is the first person saw. We'll put down "Huckles Buckled" from time to time.

Lost and Found: We'll record what we've picked up and what we've ditched (intentionally or otherwise).

Burpee count: I'm going to try to do 5,000 burpees over the course of our trip. Do you think I can do it?

We'll also put down some running lists of top meals, hikes, sights etc.

Hit us with you other ideas!

What's New

2009-08-28T20:09:00.000-07:00

We leave in four days and I swear we will begin to blog profusely... starting now. Here is a synopsis of what is going on:

Today is RYD. It was glorious.

On Wednesday I dropped a giant bag of water balloons off at Whatcom Falls and watched a group of high school boys turn on each other. Also glorious.

Mitch got a tooth stuck in his head playing bucketball. Again, glorious.

We moved out of the apartment and into my parents. It was great to get packing out of the way.

This week we began to have success with couchsurfing. We have places in Prague, Appenzell, and Bern so far.

We sold the tandem back to the original owners for the original price. We loved it, but the cash is going to help make our trip happen.

We held a pantry auction and sold off all our extra food. We made $30. The most expensive item was some saffron (2$) and the least expensive was beef base (negative two British pence).

It's crazy, but I think we're ready. I really think we're ready!

The Wild Things!

2009-08-05T10:45:00.000-07:00

A new movie is coming out that I simply cannot wait to see! Sure, we'll probably be in Greece when it is released, but we will have to go see it anyway! Here's the trailer:

And after you watch that, check out the next children's book slated for Hollywood...

Celebration of Light

2009-07-28T11:53:00.000-07:00

Every year Morgan and I go to Vancouver to watch the Celebration of Light, an international fireworks competition that brings out the masses surrounding English Bay. Due to our less than stellar record of having enough time, we headed up their quite early, with a mind of securing parking and a beach spot hours in advance. We were joined by our exceelent friends Mark, Jessica, and Charlotte.

After raw oysters, lots of salmon, and a some kind of tentacle at Aoki Sushi, we made our way down to Kitsalano beach. About 6:45 it started to rain, and before long we were running for cover. None of us had even considered the possibility of getting wet, so we hunkered down under a tree while Mark schooled us at Skipbo. Then the thunder and lightning began, and before long the scientists in our group urged us to move away from the trees. The display that followed was an indescribable.

Lightning was blasting multiple times a minute, whether it be across the sky from cloud to cloud, bolts shot to the rods on top of the downtown buildings, or nothing more than an enormous flash behind the clouds. For the next 3 hours, the storm moved slowly over the top of us and out towards north Vancouver. We got soaked, but it didn't matter. When the lighning storm merged with the sunset, painting gold across the water, sky, andrain-soaked cement. I think it is safe to say it was the most beautiful weather I have ever seen.

The fireworks were incredible, but they could hardly compete with the storm, as it moved north across the mountains. We left Canada tired and drenched, but knowing it had most definitely been worth it.

The Whomping Willow

2009-07-16T22:07:00.000-07:00

It has been an interesting couple of weeks, what with planning our upcoming trip, watching Le Tour at the Mount Bakery at 5am, and adventures such as we found Tuesday night.

Jamie Paxton is a Harry Potter fanatic. It is really rather scary. As part of her Harry Potter support group, we decided to go to the midnight opening of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Tuesday night... in costume. Jessica Luce suggested that I go as the Whomping Willow, which really isn't a character, just a tree that whomps anything that comes to close. I don't think the suggestion was an insult, but it was a good reminder to everyone of my tree-like nature.

So there we were, at the Burlington Mall, my costume consisting of a branch taped to my head and one in each hand for which to whomp any Harry Potter character that might cross my path. As we entered the cinema, I whomped all the people waiting in line for the 12:30 showing. We made our way to our theater, and I promptly whomped any muggle that commented on my appearance.

When we entered the theater, shouts of "It's the Whomping Willow!" were heard between the roar of applause I received while walking down the aisle to the front row, whomping everyone I passed of course. I then stationed myself in the front corner of the theater and whomped any and all passersby.

Much to my surprise (and delight) a costume contest was announced. 30 people lined up in front, including Jamie in her Ginny Weasley outfit that she already owned, and Kristen in an amazing homemade Hedwig (owl) costume. As a worn out movie theater manager explained the rules of the contest, he slowly backed closer to me. I inched towards him, and to the immense pleasure of the audience, gave him a prompt whmoping. I don't think he liked it very much.

The contest consisted of polite clapping and whoops from friends for the first few competitors, and when it came to my turn, the crowd burst anto an uproar for a good 10-15 seconds. During this time, I managed to give the theater guy another solid whomp or two, as well as the entire front row. By some jdging shenanigans, it was announced that there were three finalists, myself, a creepy guy dressed up as Severus Snape, and a genuine 10 year old Harry Potter. The movie theater manager kept saying it was a tie, and I had to win the overwhelming support of the audience 2 more times before he said "Unfortunately.... I think we have a winner..... The Tree." And there was much whomping among the people.

The grand prize was a 5 by 10 foot banner advertising the movie. Creepy Snape sidled up to me and told me he would give me 50 bucks if I chose the one with Hermione on it and gave it to him. Alas, I had already promised Jamie Paxton the Harry poster. Anyway, as Mark later pointed out, anybody willing to pay $50 for a larger the life poster of an 18 year old wizard girl is probably better off without it.

I did kind of feel bad that the kid didnt get it, but any kid who's parents buy him a full wizard outfit and take him toa movie at midnight is doing pretty well for himself.

Happy Birthday Jessica Cake

2009-07-02T14:14:00.000-07:00

I like to bake cakes. Jessica is particularly lucky because her birthday falls at the right time for me to spend a day or two baking her a cake.

This year's cake - Peanut Butter Chocolate Cake

Last year's cake - Pistacio Petit-Four Cake

Both from Smittenkitchen.com

Garage Sale

2009-06-30T07:34:00.001-07:00

On Saturday Tommy and I had a garage sale to purge and make some cash for our trip. We each made a guess of how much money we would make: Tommy ($135), Morgan ($125). As you can see, we did not have high hopes.

It turns out that we made quite a bit - double our guesses! It makes me tempted to have another garage sale - although Tommy would oppose.

Some sale highlights:

Marrionette puppet I made in 1998: $1

Van Gogh painting I made in 2000: $1

God Bless America hair clips: 25 cents

Beanie Babies: 50 cents each

The Full House Game: $1

Dream Phone (the game): free!

As the day progressed the free pile got larger and larger - until everything was free! We set the rest of the items closer to the road (about 6 boxes) and when we came home from dinner everything was gone except for 3 dirty teddy bears. Success!

Middle School Challenge

2009-06-13T12:30:00.000-07:00

Today I experienced the most fun five minutes I have ever had with middle school students. It was the Middle School Challenge Run, a competition between Shuksan, Whatcom, Kulshan and Fairhaven to see who can get the most participants at a 2.3 mile fun run in Whatcom Falls Park.

A little background: Shuksan always gets last place. The highest number of students we have had particpate is 55. Respectable, but not enough to compete with Whatcom or Fairhaven. Those other schools have such a higher level of parent involvement, and their students are, in general, so much more involved with school activities that it is hard to compete against them in anything. Their track teams are three times the size of ours, if that's any indicator. When Whatcom or Fairhaven wins an event like this, it is just an ordinary day. It is expected. If Shuksan could win in event that is all about participation it would be HUGE.

This year, a supermom with girls on the track team headed up the promotion, and I was led to get behind the event as well. 3 weeks ago, with about 50 kids signed up, a teacher announced that he would run laps for any student that beat him at the event. I got on the intercom and announced to the school that I would let the students shave my head if we got 75 students. A few other teachers made friendly wagers, and the student body got on board.

Today at the event, we had a lot of kids come out. The run/walk came and went. I was awarded "Most Glory-Hungry Teacher" by my colleagues for being the first adult to finish. My pride would not allow me to let a Shuksan student beat me!

An hour later, we gathered around for the announcement of which school had the most participants cross the finish line. 4th place with 90 odd students: Kulshan. 3rd place with 119: Fairhaven. This meant that we had eclipsed the Shuksan record and set a new standard simply by not being last! With a lot of buldup, they made the announcement...

"This years Challenge Run winner, setting a new city record with 166 particpants... Shuksan!"

And there was much rejoicing among the people. They called for a school administrator to come up, but I couldn't see one, and a fellow teacher started pushing me toward the stage. I pushed through the crowd of kids, grabbed the massive trophy, and hoisted it above my head. Then I faced the crowd and started screaming. The kids started freaking out too, and as the announcer continued to say things about how well Shuksan had done, I just kept screaming and shaking the trophy in the air.

Some kids standing in front of me wanted to touch the trophy, so I started walking through the crowd, yelling for all of the Shuksan students to reach out and touch the trophy. It was hilarious and awesome. Some moms yelled at me to pull all the kids aside for a photo, so I led them with the trophy and we gathered into a huge excited mass and took pictures. Then we screamed some more.

Seattle to Frankfurt

2009-05-30T11:28:00.000-07:00

Last Monday we bought one-way tickets to Frankfurt, Germany. We depart September 1st.

This will start our 7-month trip through Eastern Europe, India, & SE Asia.

What I am most excited to see/do:

Beaches in Croatia
Pyramids in Egypt
Jerusalem
Christmas in Austria
Camel Festival in Bikaner, India
Kite Festival in Jaipur, India
Biking around Angkor Wat in Cambodia
Eating in Thailand
Limestone Karsts in China

TB from the ER

2009-04-23T16:20:00.000-07:00

Tommy woke up this morning with chest pains so we drove all over town looking for open walk-in clinics in an effort to avoid the ER. Our efforts failed and we spent a few hours (and probably quite a few hundred dollars) in the ER.

In the ER room next to ours (the same room with a curtain in between) was an Indian family with a sick and crying baby. After a few rounds of questioning the family about the baby's condition, they mentioned that when they were in India last month the baby had pneumonia and spent 7 days in the hospital. After thinking for a while, the doctors thought the baby might have gotten TB in the Indian hospital. They quickly transferred the family to a quarantine room and disinfected the entire area. This left us a little unnerved because there was only a sheet separating us from TB Baby and they didn't think to clean our area or move us. So watch out, we might have TB. We'll try not to breathe when you are around.

The doctors said Tommy wasn't having a heart attack and he didn't have a collapsed lung so they sent him home. He decided to spend his day off in luxury at his parents house and I went to school.

I had called for a sub to cover the first two hours, which was WASL proctoring and that I wasn't sure when I would make it back to school. So after I dropped Tommy off at the lake, I drove out to Deming. The secretary told me to go home because the sub was counting on a full day. So I turned around and came home and enjoyed an unexpected day to myself!

One Month Later

2009-04-21T19:16:00.000-07:00

Tommy hasn't posted since March - he has been waiting for me to post something becuase some people are calling Tommy a blog-hog. The truth is, I am blog deficient.

Here are some highlights from our lives:

- President's Day Snowshoeing with Justin & Alex.

- My dad sent us a box of citrus fruits from Arizona. I made citrus sorbet with my fantastic kitchenaid ice cream maker.

- I helped my mom clean out her attic. Many of the items were placed there circa 1980. Jessica, Andrea and I put on a fashion show. Morgan in a rouched green hippie dress. Jessica in a tailored blue striped bell-bottomed suit with red floral collar and matching red halter top. Andrea in a green flannel "lounge" outfit that my mom made (notice that it is one piece!). There was also a large box full of baby shoes.

- For Andrea's birthday gift I taught her how to make homemade pizza. Yum.

My Faithful Steed

2009-03-19T17:24:00.000-07:00

WARNING: This post may be incredibly boring for some of you- Just look at the pictures.

My faithful steeds are being passed on. My Trek 1500, which has served me well for the last year and a half (an estimated 2,000-3,000 miles) was given to my brother on Sunday.

My single speed Apollo, which has provided many harsh commuting miles in all the weather conditions, is also soon to be retired/sold.

This is because my new custom Curtlo has finally arrived! Cody and I drove to Winthrop on Saturday to get it, an epic trip that included two snowy mountain passes, 16 hours of driving, the 2A high school basketball state championship, and several near death experiences.

While the trip itself could provide enough info for multiple blog posts, let me tell you about my new bike. It was made by Doug Curtiss of Curtlo Cycles in Winthrop, WA. I ordered from him because he is a pretty tall guy, so I figured he would have insight to building a frame specifically for a taller guy. He also had a really good price point; a much better price for the frame then most of the folks out there. His relatively local location was the final key.

The first thing Doug reccomended was that I get longer cranks then are generally available. Most cranks range between 170mm and 175mm in length. I had some 180mm cranks on my Trek that I definitely liked. Doug suggested 200mm cranks for me, he has the same length on his bike and loves them. He said this was going by the conservative crank length calculator, and while the number didn't seem very conservative to me, I decided to trust him on it.

So far, I really like the cranks. It is definitely a big change, and I can feel my knees start to strain when my cadence dips down to 60 or 70. The good thing is that I can spin at the same cadence comfortably on these cranks, but in a slightly more difficult gear.

Otherwise, it's just your general road bike with Ultegra SL, with a few adjustments:

Extra long top tube to adapt for my giant torso
Carbon Fork with clearance for fenders and a mount for fenders
Long reach Ultegra breaks for fender clearance
Mounts for a rear rack
Mounts for 4 (yes 4!) water bottle cages
I even added tires with reflective striping on the edges!

I've only been able to take it out a couple times, and not more than 25 miles, so Saturday's 200k is going to be a serious trial by fire! I plan to get by painfully: adjusting my seat and handlebars as I limp along getting used to the bike. In the rain.

Pwned!

2009-03-08T13:54:00.001-07:00

"We were winning until Mr. Lingbloom started to play, and then Mr. Lingbloom pwned us!"

That is what one of my 12 year old students said in regards to the previous day's game of floor hockey. I was fortunate enough to land a sub job; an afternoon of floor hockey filling in for a P.E. teacher. So much fun! Especially when after the first 15 minutes I found the team that was getting stomped and joined them.

It was pretty hilarious to hear one of my students claiming the next day that I had "pwned" him. Not something that normally happens in my math class.

From Wikipedia: The term implies domination or humiliation of a rival, used primarily in the Internet gaming culture to taunt an opponent who has just been soundly defeated (e.g. "You just got pwned!").

My favorite part of teaching is pwning 6th graders.

Future Patent Attorney?

2009-02-28T08:30:00.001-08:00

Caleb Visser has been telling me for years that I am Calvin's dad. Yes, the infamous sarcastic patent attorney who commutes to work by bike. While I'm not a patent attorney, I do ride my bike, and I do like to lie to children (why else would I be a teacher?).

What I've come to realize is that Caleb only has part of the story right. MY dad is Calvin's dad, and I am turning into my dad. It's a more indirect relationship than meets the eye.

Here a few gems, you be the judge:

The first three panels sum this one up best for me.

What's so bad about being compared to Calvin's Dad? Well, obviously I wouldn't go and show you THOSE comic strips. You'll have to do your own research. And if you haven't picked up an old Calvin and Hobbes book in a while, that might not be a bad idea.

Catching Up

2009-01-19T18:03:00.000-08:00

Here is what we have been up to the past few weeks...

New Years: Dress as your middle school self. Tommy circa 1996, Morgan circa 1998.

Lettered Streets Covenant Church:

We are part of the Launch Team for a new church in the Lettered Streets neighborhood. We have been meeting for a couple of months with a growing number of people to start to fulfill the vision of the Church. Tommy and I are especially excited to see how God will be working in our lives as we help and serve others in the community.

One of our projects has been to create a Sustainability board to display information on where people can recycle, reuse and shop locally. Here it is in the beginning stages as Tommy is lining up the handles that will hold the fliers (all of the supplies came from the ReStore!).

Bike Crash! Tandem + Ice = Ouch

We were riding our tandem bicycle on Old Lake Samish Road early Saturday morning and on our descent when we hit a patch of black ice. Tommy was able to straighten us out the first time we slipped but then as we rounded a corner, the tires flew out to the left and we toppled over to the right. I hit my head pretty hard (as evidenced by my smashed and cracked helmet) and Tommy did a bit of a roll while scraping up all of the surfaces of his body that hit the road. After walking our bike a little ways, we got back on for a slow ride home.

Lesson: do not ride your bike in January on roads that never see the light of day.

Sledding in Carnation

2008-12-26T09:00:00.000-08:00

We went sledding with Morgan's siblings on Monday and Tuesday. There is a great hill near their house. What did I learn? Pavement covered with one or two inches of snow, in many regards, isn't all that different from regular pavement.

Mitch looked stellar in his Viking attire for the festivities.

What I Learned Last Night (A Lesson in Stupidity)

2008-12-22T13:11:00.000-08:00

As Mitch and I were driving home from the Seahawks game last night, we witnessed a pretty bad wreck on the Redmond-Fall City Highway. In fact, we narrowly missed being in the accident ourselves (I'm talking a matter of feet and milliseconds here). Mitch called in the accident, and we ended up out in the snow for a couple hours directing traffic, waiting for the State Patrol, and filing witness reports. Fortunately nobody was seriously hurt. I will sum up the story with a list of things I learned, in chronological order, thanks to the "driver at fault":

1. If it is snowing, don't drive.

2. If you do choose to drive in the snow, make sure you're sober.

3. If you choose to drive in the snow drunk, make sure you're not driving a VW Rabbit.

4. If you choose to drive your VW Rabbit in the snow drunk, make sure you don't get into an accident. You will lose to a Ford Explorer.

5. If you get hit by a Ford Explorer in your VW Rabbit while driving in the snow drunk, make sure you don't leave the scene of the accident.

6. If you leave the scene of the accident (which you lost after driving your VW in the snow drunk), and you choose to dive into the bushes to hide, make sure they're not blackberry bushes.

7. If you drive your VW Rabbit in the snow drunk, get destroyed by a Ford Explorer, and leave the scene of the accident by running down a private drive and jumping into the blackberry bushes, make sure you're wearing more than a sweatshirt and jeans.

Let it Snow...

2008-12-18T10:34:00.000-08:00

Bellingham was re-blanketed in snow yesterday, this time more than just a dusting. School is cancelled, and Morgan and I are mustering our courage to go out and play, despite high winds and low temperatures.

Yesterday there was less wind, and when I left Shuksan Middle School at 2:00, I went straight home to rig together a way to pull sleds behind my bike. I wiped out before I even left the parking lot, much to the excitement of the Life Skills students playing outside! It was a shaky ride home, but with my cross tires on it was better than it could've been.

I met Mark at Woburn and Sunset, and we made our way to Woodside. The roads weren't as fast as we had hoped, because there was not yet a layer of compact ice under the snow. Instead, we went to the short but steep hill across the street, alongside a set of stairs. A few runs there was enough to give us our kicks. I wish I had a photo of Mark with the icicle eyebrows he developed on one of his runs!

Jamie showed up just as we were leaving, and demanded that I pull her behind my bike. I did feel a little bad, so I obliged. To be honest, I did not thnk a bent coat hanger would work to pull the sleds, let alone with her in them, but they held up.

The bike was an adventure to be sure! Two wipeouts and a dozen or so close calls kept my heart racing at all times. I would definitely try it again in the snow, but I may want to look into some studded tires...

Holiday Decorations

2008-12-13T18:28:00.000-08:00

Tommy didn't go out into the woods this year to cut down the "perfect" Christmas tree. Instead, we walked to Broadway Park and ripped a smallish branch off an evergreen tree. Also, Shari cleaned out her Christmas ornaments to reflect her more sophisticated decorations - so we decorated our branch with the fragile Swedish snowflakes she bestowed upon us.

Our other decorations:

Christophersoned!

2008-12-08T10:22:00.000-08:00

I used to be pretty good at ultimate (frisbee), playing 5 years for WWU. I wasn't the best player on my team, but we had a darn good team; in 2006 we were ranked 12th in the nation, and that among Division I schools. It was fun to be good.

A few of my closer friends dabbled in the ultimate world for a year or two, and got pretty good also. Still, I played for 5, and it was fun to play a sport with all my friends where I knew I was the best player on the field.

All that changed yesterday. I went out to play a little bit of pickup, and was utterly destroyed on numerous occasions by my friend Mark. This was not a situation where he got the best of me on one or two plays; I'm talking about the entire game. I won't go into the details, because that would be boring for anyone not familiar with the game. It also should not have come as a surprise, Mark has been playing ultimate as of late, and I have been out riding my bike. But regardless the reasons, I had to come to grips with a good friend of mine surpassing me in a sport that had been "my thing" for so long.

I read an article by Mike McQuaide in AdventuresNW on the topic of competition (if you're interested, the magazine is free on stands around downtown). It basically spoke to the notion that competition is about you and your friends pushing each other to do better, not about being a testosterone-overloaded jerk.

I'm glad that I have friends with whom I can compete, however informally, and remain just as good of friends with after facing off on the field/track/whatever.

Advent Conspiracy

2008-12-02T16:51:00.000-08:00

I like this.

Christmas can [still] change the world.

I also like: Moooo

Buy Local Week 2008

2008-11-30T11:56:00.000-08:00

Buy Local in Bellingham!

Dec 1-7 is Buy Local Week. I am going to get a passport, go to local businesses, have them stamp my passport, and then turn it in for the chance to win prizes. Yay! I love prizes.

Team Dejong

2008-11-11T15:20:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, three packages showed up on our front door. After two hours of figuring things out, we had a brand new bike! This bike is super cool. We bought it used, but it was custom built for people of similar proportions to Morgan and myself. This is something we were unable to find in an off-the-shelf tandem. It comes apart via six couplers, allowing us to package the bike up into two airline sized cases and take them anywhere!

It has a lot of time saving features, like mini-couplers for the cables that allow for dismantling the bike without disonnecting brakes and derailluers all the way. My favorite part is that we were able to assemble the entire bike with 3 allen wrenches, a spanner, and a pair of pliers. The pliers may not even be necessary in the future.

It may be because of the steeply sloped top tube, but I look like a giant next to this bike. You can easily see why it was tough for Morgan and I to find a bike that fit us! After our first test-ride with the new bike, the smoothness really stood out to us. Cruising through the Lettered Streets on one of my bikes I usually am getting rattled all over the place. This frame absorbs and dampens road vibrations incredibly well. I was also shocked at how light the frame is. It can't be more than 30 pounds.

Morgan's favorite part about the bike (other than things I've already mentioned) is the awesome stars on the paint job.

We're officially accepting name suggestions for our new baby!

Love him or hate him...

2008-10-27T13:53:00.000-07:00

..Tim Eyman is an interesting character. I thought I'd share a good story about him that aired on NPR this morning:

Washington State Man Doesn't Lack Initiative

2008-10-25T09:38:00.000-07:00

I read an article yesterday that got me thinking about the different ways Americans think about educational policy. To be honest, the article really ticked me off. Here's thee link:

Report: Kids less likely to graduate than parents

The article focuses on the ever present issue of school accountability. It seems that ever since No Child Left Behind was implemented, the focus has been on "hold(ing) schools accountable" for test scores and graduation rates. Obviously it is important for us to have standards for quality schools, and I don't mean for this to be a rant about the backwards policies NCLB; that topic would be better addressed in a book than a blog post. The issue I take is with media and political perspectives on why our education system is failing so many children, and what needs to happen to fix the problems. When politicans or the press talk about education, the focus is always on school accountability. If students are not succeeding, then the schools are failing.

In reality, this is only part of the big picture. Society is failing them. Their communities are failing them. Their families are failing them. Their parents are failing them.

Schools have more resources and teachers are better educated than in the past. Why then, are more students dropping out of the system? Because schools are now expected to take more responsibility for a childs development than is reasonable. The attitude of many is that schools are the sole party responsible for a students educational success. Unfortunately for children who live in a society with this perspective, schools have no control over what students are doing in the 17 hours from 3pm to 8am.

I could say more, and I was going to talk about the fuzzy (at best) math that Libby Quaid cites in her article, but I imagine that would just bore anybody who has read this far.

There are only two ways I can see the situation for many of these children improving. The first, better, and completely unrealistic idea is that parents turn off the tv and take responsibility for raising their kids. The second, more realistic, idea is to provide more opportunities for students outside of school hours. Support for homework, mentoring, and community engagement through extra curricular activities are going to be necessary if today's student is going to have a chance.

8th Grade Science: Fruit Voltage

2008-10-24T19:53:00.001-07:00

In my science class we studied batteries.

Batteries can be made out of fruit. So each group of students brought in a different fruit to test its voltage. By connecting many fruites together, we could increase the voltage: all the way up to 4.09 volts!

Unfortunately, I forgot that to make a lightbulb light there also needs to be a significant amperage, which our fruits did not supply. Our batteries were worthless, but proved to be a fun diversion from writing hypotheses and making data tables.

I would have included pictures of my pubescent students, but it is against the law to post photos of students without permission.

Globe-Trotting

2008-10-22T14:36:00.000-07:00

Morgan and I have talked about taking time off to travel the world since before we were married or even had jobs. Well, a couple of months ago we picked a year, and have since made and discarded multiple itineraries.

I thought it would be fun to post a list of the places we are going so that our friends and families can share about the best place they ever travelled to, the place they always wanted to go, or any other suggestions for us as we dive into trip planning. The goal is June 2011 to June 2012. Here is our current list of destinations, in very hypothetical chronological order:

The Netherlands, Belgium, France (Paris),
Germany, Switzerland,Austria,
Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia,
Hungary, Croatia, Slovenia,
Turkey (Istanbul), Greece, Italy,
India, Singapore, Taiwan
Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam
China, Mongolia, Russia (Trans-Siberian Railroad)
Ukraine, Estonia, Finland (Helsinki)
Sweden, Norway, Denmark
Home!

We're hoping to do much of Europe by bike, but I'm guessing our plans will change about 500 times between now and next week, so we'll see.

Let us know you're thoughts!

Unexpected Fractions Lesson

2008-10-17T17:47:00.000-07:00

"What's wrong with your tie, Mr. Lingbloom?"

Class had only just begun, and as I looked down at my favorite light blue necktie several thoughts rushed through my head:

1. "How on earth did the bottom of my tie get snipped off?"
2. "How can I catch the punk that took a pair of scissors to my wardrobe?"
3. "I just spent twenty minutes slicing strips of paper with a giant cutting board, and apparently I am an idiot."

I imagine I had a very entertaining look of confusion on my face as I mulled these things over, because the entire class waited for a response expectantly. "Well, I already told you I wasn't feeling well, so maybe its just going to be one of those days." I promptly hung the tie up on the bulletin board, and began the lesson I had prepared, ironically, on fractions.

I went home immediately after class on Wednesday, but apparently the story was a big hit at the staff meeting, because all I heard on Thursday from fellow teacherswas "Why aren't you wearing a tie today?" and "What was your lesson on yesterday? Fractions?"

Today I moved the tie to a more permanent location on the wall, partnered with a sign that reads "It's ok to make mistakes!"

Learning to Swim

2008-10-13T16:57:00.000-07:00

Obviously we'll need to suck our friends in with flashy use of technology. It will be sink or swim for our blog, so this will be my first attempt at imbedding video in a blog post. Drum roll please!

The movie is of my brother and I tossing our cousin Noah into Lake Whatcom. I'm sure he had it coming, but that does not look like a pleasant landing!

Morgan and Tommy are Nerds

2008-10-13T15:55:00.000-07:00

Morgan and I are thinking about starting a...

...blog. Despite an inability to create interesting writing, we do like the idea of having a medium to force our own ideas upon others. Kind of kidding, but there are times when I think "I'd really like to go home and blog about X... oh wait, we don't have a blog." We also figure it will be handy down the road, especially when we're travelling in a couple of years.

So here's where you come in. We need to think of a name more creative than "Morgan and Tommy's Blog." Lynn, we're counting on you. Caleb, now's your chance to make up for being topped by Lynn at our wedding. Everybody else, our expectations are low, so try and prove us wrong (I'll work on the internet sarcasm when the blogging begins)! Give us your best shot, it may go down in history!