travel – Life Off Headset

Welcome Home and to a New Year. Hello, 2026!

We got back from Taiwan yesterday morning, leaving Taipe at 11:45pm on Saturday night and pulling into our driveway in Maryland at 7:30am on Sunday morning. International travel across the date line is kind of a mind warp, right? On paper, it only took eight hours to get home from Taiwan, but really it was twenty hours of travel. I mean we landed in Seattle, our connecting city, at 6:00pm on Saturday, which is before we left in Taipei. It’s almost like getting time back. But those hours gained are jet-lagged discombobulated hours; I can’t say it did us much good or that any of us were at our best…

The journey home was full of mishaps – we lost a beloved teddy bear and a travel pillow, the last leg of our flight (SEA —> BWI) was delayed an hour, and one of our suitcases came off baggage claim with a wheel missing. We were too exhausted to deal with trying to find someone to file a claim or a lost item report. The cost of exhaustion seems to be apathy mixed with helpless despair, it seems. International travel does not bring out my best ability to deal with a crisis. (Unlike my cousin, who didn’t realize until he was checking in for his flight that he and his family needed Visas for Vietnam. It’s a wild story, but they ended up in Singapore instead. I admire their sense of calm and ability to pivot.)

Anyhow, we got home and, despite my best intentions to unpack and try to get us back on Eastern Time, we all fell asleep around 11am and slept for several hours. I did get up before the others and started unpacking the suitcases. The rest of the day, between us, the Husband and I did six loads of laundry (folding most of it!), I made waffles for dinner, the Husband did a quick essentials only grocery shop (did you know Lemon Oreos are essential?), we watched Indiana play basketball before pouring the kids back into bed. Despite having taken that enormous nap in the middle of the day, they were so very tired by 10pm. (Which was 11am Taiwan time).

Of course, not so very tired that they weren’t up at 3am, coming into our bedroom.

“I’m bored,” the six year old said.

“Go play in the toy room,” the Husband suggested groggily, half asleep.

She went away.

Around 5:15am, there was some kind of sibling squabble. One child wanted to play, one child wanted to read. (The 13 year old slept on… teenagers and their sleep…) I told the 6 year old she could come cuddle in our bed.

“How long?” She asks.

“Until six o’clock,” I say, snuggling her down and going back to sleep.

Then every five minutes she sat up to look at the clock. Until…

“It’s six o’clock!” And she springs out of bed.

“Go see if your brother wants to play,” I murmur sleepily.

Off she goes and I go back to sleep. In my dreams I hear them playing with the 8 year old’s new chess set – are they really playing? Who knows? And foot steps up and down stairs. And no more fighting.

Some indeterminate time later, I hear some one shout, “Bloody nose!!!”

Then the 8 year old: “Go to the bathroom! I’ll help you!”

And he did. When I woke up another indeterminate time later, there were bloody tissues in the trash can and on the floor in the bathroom and the Clorox wipes sitting open on the counter. I did step on a gob of blood, but you know… getting to sleep through a bloody nose is kind of a win in my book.

And then it was morning. Going to school 24.5 hours after getting off an international flight is hard, so I drove the 13 year old to school instead of having her walk. And 90 minutes later, I took the 6 year old and the 8 year old to school, though we were pretty late, squeaking in just as the doors were closing. The 8 year old has school testing this week, and we were a little concerned about him being able to stay awake and focus in class, so we wrote the teacher and she agreed to let him take the test on the make-up days. (Who schedules school testing for the week after vacation???).

I, on the other hand had grand plans of setting up my planners and journals, logging a few hours of work, picking up the house, and folding more laundry, and hanging out with the Husband since he had taken the day off. But… I got home, had breakfast and then ended up taking a three hour nap on the couch. I do feel a little guilty that I made my kids go to school while I came home and napped, but that’s a perk, of being a semi-employed adult. We’ll see how long it takes to get people back on schedule. We went out to an early dinner tonight since it was half price burger night, and the kids ate half their burgers then were like:

Trip Highlights
Here are some photo highlights of our time in Taiwan, in case I don’t get around to doing trip recaps (My track record for trip recaps is pretty paltry.)

*Sunset at Tamsui, a coastal suburb of Taipei. It’s at the end of the trainline, and where my cousin lives.

+So much food! Dumplings on Christmas Day:

*Visiting the cemetery where my grandmother’s ashes are buried.

Night Market – this one in Chia yi, where my family is originally from:

*View from our boat tour of the coastal waters off Tainan, where we learned about fishing, and spoonbills:

*Fish Market in Kaoshiong:

*Dragon Fruit at a produce vendor’s stall:

*More Night Market Food – this one also in Kaoshiong.

*Selfie with my grandfather – he is 100 years old and the reason for this family reunion:

*We took a two night trip to Bietou, where there are hot springs and hiking. (Though it ended up being to wet and windy to really hike.)

And on our last day, we followed a string of red lanterns and found a moment of calm in the gardens of a Buddhist Temple:

The photos don’t really capture how full each an every day was – full of family, full of new sights/smells/tastes, full of new discoveries of how life on this island nation work. Also, though, full of chaos and noise, full of long bus rides, full of feeling lost in a language that I don’t quite speak, a culture I don’t quite belong to. Yet ultimately, full of love and bonding, meories and conversations, and that kind of discomfort that opens my eyes to other ways lives can be lived.

Oh so fittingly of the universe, this poem by John Updike showed up in my apoemaday feed yesterday:

How beautifully Updike captures the return to the mundane – I, too, feel like I’ve put the yoke back on, even while knowing that the world is not so small as it once felt and sometimes still feels.

Return Trip Gratitudes:

-That the kids kind of slept on the flight home, and that they are pretty good travelers in general. I feel so lucky – they didn’t complain, went where we asked them too, didn’t get lost, carried their own backpacks, pulled their own suitcases.

-Airport play areas. I am so grateful for these areas for kids to run off some energy while waiting for flights. (The play area in Taiwan has a baby’s area attached that comes with a hot water dispenser, a fully stocked wipes warmer, and extra diapers!) I think the eight year old is technically too tall for the play area, but we let him play there until there were too many toddlers as well. And in SEA, they made some friends and played tag and said “Six seven” to each other.

-Wifi at the airport. The 13 year old definitely is not into airport play areas, but luckily in each airport she had wifi and a comfy seat so she was well occupied.

-That our fruit didn’t get taken away when we got home. Before we went to the airport, we bought a bunch of fruit and snacks for the trip home, remembering the time last year when we were stuck in Seattle for nine hours. Taiwan is super strict about letting fruit and vegetables into the couttry, so I half expected that the US would be the same. I declared them and everything, but no one took them from us. We came home with a bag of bananas, three passion fruits, and six or seven wax apples. Wax apples are one of my favorite Taiwanese fruits, and you can’t get them in the US. I cut them up for a late night snack last night, and the crisp juicy slices were a wonderful reminder of our trip. The 13 year old ate the rest of the passionfruit this morning. I’m a little annoyed I didn’t get one of the last two, but I reminded myself how much I love it for her that she easily slices and scoops out and eats this fruit that was so foreign to her a week ago.

-The Mobile Passport Control app, allowing for easy re-entry into the country. We don’t have TSA Pre-Check or Global entry or anything like that, but I found that airport security lines are pretty streamlined these days and moved pretty fast. The nice thing in Seattle, too, is that even though we submitted our info via the app, there was still an agent who directed us to the right line and scanned us through and said, “Welcome home.” Having someone say, “Welcome home” is one of my favorite parts of international travel.

-That the Qdoba in the Seattle airport is open 24 hours. After that nine hour at SEATAC episode last year, when were were in a tiny terminal without any food, I was really glad we decided to stay in Terminal B where there was a Qdoba and it was still open at 7:30pm. I don’t know if it was the two weeks away from America or what (seriously, I think we had cheese maybe twice the whole ten days), but the 13 year old declared Qdoba “even better than Chipotle.” This is quite a statement from her.

-That the Husband had the foresight to pack the kids’ winter coats in the car for the ride home. Also – he went to pick up the car while the kids and I tackled baggage claim, so that when we got in the car with our luggage, the car was toasty warm. In Taiwan, the 50 degree weather was considered frigid, so coming back to 30 degree weather in Baltimore was quite a shock.

-That it didn’t snow at home, so we didn’t have to shovel out the driveway or anything to get back in the house.

-That the house was clean and the fish were alive when we got home. Our cleaner was scheduled to come while we were away, and it was so nice to come home to a clean house – which admittedly was not the state it was left in when we departed two weeks ago. Also, our friends came over to feed our fish and also played Santa. The Husband, like he did last year, left our friends with a box of Christmas presents and some holiday decorations, and while we were gone, they decorated the little potted fir tree we keep in our living room, and put the presents out. The look of delight and wonder from the 6 and 8 year old when they realized that Santa still found a way to us was absolutely precious.

-That eggs and buttermilk keep for up to two weeks in the fridge. Before we left we had two dozen eggs and half a container of buttermilk in the fridge I contemplated throwing them out, not knowing if they would keep. I’m glad I didn’t throw them out. They did indeed keep and we had waffles for dinner. There is definitely stuff in the fridge that didn’t survive the two weeks, and throwing it out will be a project for tomorrow.

=That we even got to go on this trip at all (BIG thank you to my parents) and that we went to the other side of the globe and back safely. I mean I believe in science and physics and all that, but sometimes I look at air travel and think, “Oooooookay… I’m just going to have to really trust that this is huge hunk of metal is going to stay up in the air.”

Looking Forward To:

– All the planner, journalling, and 2026 goal setting that I meant to do today, but napped instead. I’ve started Susannah Conway’s Find Your Word 2026 workbook – I’ve never really been one about having a word for the year, but I see a lot of chaos and uncertainty coming up, so I do find my self drawn to creating grounding principal for myself. (Conaway also has a 2025 end of year/2026 monthly reflection workbook that I really enjoy working through – I discovered them last year, and they are free to download.)

– Firepit date with friends.

= Lenten Reading Group happy Hour.

-Cooking food, doing laundry (not in a laundromat), Taco Tuesday, Family movie night, Sunday night football… basically all the every day things that we didn’t get to do in Taiwan. I asked my cousin what she was most looking forward to when we got home and she said, “Doing laundry when I want and not having to drag my clothes five blocks.” So true

– enjoying all the snacks I brought home from Taiwan.

-A New Year! Yay 2026!

South Africa 2025 Part 2 – Days 3 and 4 – Kruger National Park

I think when people think of going to South Africa, the first travel activity they think of is going on a safari. It was certainly my first thought when the chance to go to South Africa came up. Along with going to Robben Island, the safari was one of the things I was most looking forward to doing. I will say the safari was magical. But first we had to get there….

Day Three – Toboggan and Gruskorp Gorge and arrival at Safari Lodge. After a filling breakfast buffet at our hotel in Johannesburg (there was an omlette bar!), we loaded into our bus and left Sandton (a suburb of Johannesburg) and started our trip to Kruger National Park. We departed at 8am, in order to beat the traffic. This turned out to be a day with lots of driving, but the itinerary had some fun stops along the way.

First up after a few hours was a rest stop. This was exciting for me because we got to check out all the fun snacks that were available at a rest stop. The snack shop at the rest stop was where I first came across Biltong. Biltong is a South African cured meat – it is air dried, so it is not as tough a jerky. It is also marinated in vinegar, so it’s taste profile is not smoky like jerky. I’ve read a description of it as a cross between jerky and prosciutto. The biltong stand was in the back corner of the convenience store – there were several trays of biltong one could choose from, and the attendant would scoop whatever you wanted into a paper bag for you. (I read later to never buy pre-packaged biltong.) I didn’t have the courage to try the biltong this first time that I saw it, but I love jerky so the idea intrigued me and I kept it in the back of my mind. We instead got some candy, including Peppermint Crisp, which our tour guide told us was his favorite South African candy. Peppermint crisp is chocolate with mint candy inside, sort of like pop rocks. The 13 year old also got a slushie – I guess it’s fun to try favorite snacks in foreign countries. (Some of the kids on our tour got strawberry milkshakes with every single meal and one day, I asked them if the strawberry milkshakes were better in South Africa, but they said, no, they just really like strawberry milkshakes.) Also – there rest stop gave us our first peek at animals; the rear deck of the rest stop looked out over an animal reserve where we saw ostriches and impala.

Our snack haul – ketchup chips (which they call tomato sauce), slushie, peppermint crisp and a Wonka bar, which was just milk chocolate.

We got back on the bus and continued driving. There was a lot of driving this day, but it was interesting to drive through some towns and see how they were different and also the same from America. A lot of the towns didn’t have paved roads beyond the highways and that felt so different to me. Some of the buildings were only half built, but clearly were still being lived in. And then every so often we would pass a sign for a library, and it was somehow really reassuring to me. I wrote this haiku:

Even in this small town
without walls and pavement,
sits a library.

I have to admit, there is something a little uncomfortable for me about being a tourist in a country that is still developing. Even this idea that South Africa is “developing” seems not quite right because there are parts of South Africa that are as sophisticated and modern as any other city in the world. Yet there are large income gaps for sure, and I’m not even really sure how to talk about those parts of my trip. As a visitor to this country, I wonder if I’m objectifying other people’s lives when I take in these small towns and notice the poverty and lack of resources? From the comfort of my air conditioned bus, I watch people go about their day walking to buildings without electricity, selling things from ad hoc stands made of salvaged materials…I don’t want to be patronizing, because people don’t deserve that from visitors to their country. But I do think about what I am bringing to a country as a tourist. Do I add value here? Should I? Because it seems off to just take from a place. I didn’t even want to take pictures of many of the towns we passed through, it seemed somehow disrespectful. I don’t know if I’m articulating my feelings well. It’s a question I thought a lot about while on this trip. and actually on our last day, I got some good insights on this from a tour guide.

Some of the beautifully stark landscape we drove through.

For lunch we stopped at Misty Mountain Lodge where, in addition to a restaurant, there is a 1.7 km Toboggan track. The toboggan ride was fast and exhilarating and only slightly rickety as it curved down the side of the hill, thorough open grass land. I couldn’t decide whether to take in the scenery or close my eyes and savor the wind in my hair.

That orange line is the toboggan track. Way in the back, at the top is where we started.

Me coming to the end – push the handle to brake!

After our toboggan ride, we had lunch on the patio of the restaurant where we got to enjoy the beautiful views of the mountains.

After lunch we got back in the bus and continued on to the next stop: Graskop Gorge, and an elevator that would take us down 51 meters (about 15 stories) into the gorge for a walk through a rainforest like ecosystem. One thing that I didn’t realize until this trip was what a diverse range of environments in South Africa. When I thought of South Africa, I often thought of savannah and grasslands. On this trip, however, I saw such a wide variety of habitats. Graskop Gorge is full of lush green trees and waterfalls. The trail had informational placards all along the way that detailed the biodiversity in the area. We took about an hour to walk the trail through the forest.

There was so much green during our walk in the gorge. So different from much of the landscape during our drive.

Sketch of the gorge while waiting for our group.

After the trail walk, the elevator took us back to the top of the Gorge where we could see the gorgeous views of the Mpumalanga province. We then had the option of adding a zipline experience to our Graskop Gorge visit. Despite having a fear of heights, I’ve always wanted to go ziplining, so I jumped at the chance to go and the 13 year old came too. Funny story, as I was getting into the helmet and gloves and harness for ziplining, I asked the person working the zipline what the helmet was for.
“It’s so that you don’t hit your head on the cables.”
“Oh,” I said, “I thought it was to protect your head if you fell.”
He laughed at me. “Nothing is going to protect you if you fall.”

Well that was reassuring… In the end, though, the zipline turned out to be very relaxing. So long as I didn’t look down and think of falling to my death, I mean. It was a little like being in a swing, slower than I expected, and as I looked off in the distance to the mountains and trees, I tried to savor the near weightless feeling of flying across the gorge.

After the leaving the Gorge it was just another hour and a half to the Safari Lodge where we would spend the next two nights. We arrived around 5pm and had about an hour to get settled into our cabins (yes… cabins!) before dinner. The cabins were quite spare – stone floors, one outlet, and real keys. I mean when was the last time you use an actual key at a hotel. Well this wasn’t a hotel for sure. The 13 year old had a bit of a crisis when she realized that there was no wifi in her cabin.

I had a little bit of time to spare, so I walked around the grounds, and sat by the pool, did some yoga. It was certainly too cold to go into the pool, but I took my shoes and socks off and dipped my feet, which felt quite refreshing. Oh and there were zebras just wandering around, no big deal.

We were literally summoned to dinner by the banging of drums. Dinner was buffet style – soup, eggplant, chicken stew, roasted sweet potato, salad and dessert was a variety of fruit along with mousse and Malva cake. We had to be up early the next morning, and it had been a long day of travel, so after dinner, I went back to my room, took a shower then read and journaled and went to bed. I have to admit that I had a rough night of sleeping. There was loud music that played all. night. long. It was as if someone was having an all night dance party. I found out later that it was indeed an all night dance party – turns out we had arrived on pay day and the town two miles away had a dance club and people always partied all night on pay day. Or pay weekend, as it turned out to be.

Day 4 – Kruger National Park Safari. The next morning, we got up at 4:30am to meet up for a Safari at Kruger National Park. We had a morning snack of rusks and tea (or coffee, depending on preferences.) Rusks are very dry cookies (biscuits), almost like biscotti, which you dip in your tea (or coffee) to soften. The Lodge also packed us each a breakfast pack in a brown paper bag to take along with us. It was very early and quite chilly – the sun still hadn’t come up yet. We were all a little bleary eyed and shivering as we were introduced to our safari guides (our guide was named Derrick) and we loaded into the jeeps. We were given cozy fleece lined windbreaker ponchos to wear to keep us warm as we drove to the park, which was about fifteen minutes away. As we drove, we could see the sun start to rise.

The safari was absolutely magical and amazing. We saw so many animals just walking around and doing their thing. Derrick said that the animals are used to the vehicles, so it’s generally pretty safe if you stay in the jeep. It’s when people get out of the vehicles that animals starts to get defensive. Derrick was a great guide – he is from a tribal area near Kruger National Park so he grew up in the area. He said that it’s sad because there aren’t as many animals at Kruger as there used to be. A combination of factors has made it more difficult for the animals to find food so many of the herds are migrating to other parts of Africa. Even still, we saw an amazing array of animals, I thought. I’m just going to photo dump a bunch of the animals we saw in the first hour or so of our safari:

Zebras. We saw so many zebras. Did you know a group of zebras is called a dazzle?

Impala. We saw a lot of impala. Derrick told us that impala don’t live very long because they get eaten a lot, which is probably why they reproduce so prolifically. Also this was the day that I learned that an impala was not just a car.

I loved the giraffes. They are so elegant with their slightly awkward gait and seem to float when they walk.

… a lioness and her cub. I didn’t get a picture of the cub, though. This was pretty magical.

Hyena and baby hyena. Not gonna lie, I thought about Lion King a lot while on Safari.

Two young male elephants play fighting. This was pretty thrilling to see.

One thing I thought was really neat was that as we were driving around, the tour guides all would stop and tell each other what they had seen and where. Which is how we managed to see a lion. As we were driving down a road, another jeep pulled up and told our guide that they had seen lions down by the dam, and so our tour guide headed that way, and sure enough….

The lion sighting was brief, but very exciting.

Around 9am, we stopped to eat our breakfast packs and I also found more ketchup snacks and bought some post cards. We bought some tea and hot chocolate at the snack shop since it was still quite chilly.

Continuing on our way. More animal (and non-animal) things we saw…

Verreaux’s Eagle-Owl. The largest owl species in South Africa. I hadn’t thought of owls as something I would see in South Africa!

Animal skull. This area of the park was part of the controlled burn area, hence everything is so black.

Hippo. Apparently hippos kill the most number of humans of any other animal. This is primarily because they live near water and humans often come to the river for water and hippos get defensive.

More Zebras. There is something so mesmerizing about their stripes.

Baobab tree. Have you ever read The Little Prince and said to yourself, “Hmmm… I wonder what a baobab tree looks like?” Well, I have, and I finally got my answer. These are the trees that the Little Prince is trying to keep from taking over his planet.

For lunch we stopped at a picnic area and had sandwiches, fruit, and cake that the guides had brought along. Across the river from our picnic area we could see a herd of elephants and I did some sketching. I was really leaning into the sketching on this trip, as a way to remind myself to slow down and really look at things:

After lunch, we drove around for another few hours. Here are more photos of the post lunch part of our safari:

Elephant and baby crossing! Elephants walk at such a sedate pace. There is no rushing them. Nor would I want to… I couldn’t believe how close we were to these elephants.

Giraffes drinking water. A group of giraffes is called a “tower”. I love how they spread their front legs so wide apart and then bend their necks low to get to the water. Can you see the zebra in their midst?

I think this might be the same hyena we saw at the beginning of the safari. She hasn’t moved very far from where we saw her that morning.

Around 5:00pm we started heading back to our Lodge. While we waited to re-fuel at the gas station, I asked Derrick if the land that made up Kruger National Park was taken from tribal lands. He said that it was and that it’s a long, angry, complicated story, but that many of the tribes are still getting payments for their land and that the park has created a lot of jobs, so it isn’t all bad. I’m not sure if Derrick was trying to put a positive spin on things or what, but it is for sure a complicated issue.

My practical takeaways from the safari: 1) Dress in layers. We start in the early morning for best chances of seeing animals and it is quite cold. But then in the afternoon it got very hot. Also those fleece lined windbreaker ponchos were amazing. If they had sold them in the gift store, I would have gotten one or four. 2) It is very windy driving around in an open jeep. One of the kids in our tour group lose his earphones when they flew off his head as we were driving along. Evidence of how windy it was:

We got back to the lodge and had and hour or so to rest before dinner. The 13 year old wanted to spend some time on her tablet, so I got out my watercolor paints and decided to make a painting of the little cabin where I was staying. Even though my painting supplies take up lots of space and I use them maybe only once or twice on a trip, I always try to make room to bring them because there is always some point on the trip where I just need a soothing quiet activity. I spent maybe an hour painting it felt so restorative to be doing something creative after the past few days of so many new experiences inputting into my brain.

Dinner that evening was a feast of grilled meat. We ate in the boma, which we were told was short for British Officer Meeting Area, a term from colonial days. It turns out that a boma actually dates from pre-colonial days and originated as a word for an outdoor enclosure that was used for anything from containing animals to community gatherings. For sure the current day use was more the communal gathering type. The food was delicious and we lingered over dinner, talking and swapping tales.

Around 9pm, I retired to my room to shower and pack since the next day we would be leaving the lodge and be on on our way to the airport then to Cape Town. It had been such a beautiful day and I was sad that we had just one full day at the Safari Lodge. Our tour guide later told us that they also have safari trips where you camp, and some of them are very kid friendly. Bucket list items for sure.

Favorite road trip snack? (I liked sour gummy worms.) Do you have a particular food you always order when you are away from home? Have you ever been ziplining? What is your favorite collective noun for animals? Any bucket list vacation ideas/hopes/dreams?

South Africa 2025 – Part 1, Days 1-3. Flights, London, Johannesburg

So Yes, I did go to South Africa earlier this summer, and “Write South Africa Trip Recaps” has been on my to do list since then, but for whatever reason I’ve been finding it hard to get it all down. Well last week, my sister in law sent me a picture:

She FINALLY got the postcard that I sent her. It took two months. And she’s in Amsterdam, so who knows when the post cards to America will arrive…. But I think her text gave me a bit of a kick in the butt to not wait for motivation (and fittingly because I was pondering the subject of motivation earlier this year) , and just sit and write South Africa recaps. So here we go…

TLDR: South Africa is an amazing country – it’s history is both prehistoric and very recent, which makes it feel very different from any other country that I’ve visited. We saw a lot of beautiful, wonderful things, and we saw a lot of really heart breaking, hard things. Wherever we went, though, our guides were willing to talk to us honestly and openly. My advice for anyone going to South Africa, is to do so in a way that allows you to connect with South Africans, to hear their stories about their past and about their thoughts and dreams for the future. Also – all that means that these recaps won’t be full of beautiful scenery (thought there was definitely some of that). But I’m not a travel blogger, so I don’t imagine you all are here for gorgeous pictures….

First off- why South Africa? Our trip to South AFrica was organized by EF Tours, a company that does educational travel for middle and high school students, both domestic and international. The 14 year old’s English teacher has been a trip leader for EF tours for several years now, having taken students to Italy, Vietnam, Japan, and Brazil. The past couple of trips that I had seen flyers for had been to places that either we had already been to, or which I could see us going to on our own. For whatever reason, South Africa was a place that felt daunting to plan a trip to on our own. So when I saw that the summer 2025 trip was to South Africa, I really wanted to go. Truth, I probably wanted to go more than the 13 year old.

EF takes care of everything – flights, accommodations, tour guides, transportation, most meals. We just sign up, give them our money, pack our bags and passport and show up at the airport. The last time I did a travel tour was twenty years ago, when I went with my mother to Egypt and Turkey. Or maybe it was two separate tours? I don’t remember – my mother has a friend who is a travel agent/tour guide, and her friend often takes friends on tours as guinea pigs to work out the kinks before she makes the tours available for her business. Turkey and Egypt were two of those test tours. Anyhow, multi day tours aren’t necessarily something that I usually gravitate towards – I think it’s a cost and flexibility thing for me. I will say, though, this EF tours was really well run. Each day was PACKED. I might have liked to travel at a more savoring pace, but I did appreciate how much we covered in one week and how little mental energy it took.

Our flight left at 10pm on a Monday evening. It would be a day and a half of travel, including a long layover in London. The Husband and the 5 year old dropped us off at the airport. Touchingly, the 5 year old was really upset we were leaving – she cried in the car the whole way to the airport. But the Husband took her to McDonalds on the way home and apparently she stopped crying. Hah.

The flights were all very smooth. On the flight to London Heathrow, I slept some, I watched some tv, read. Luckily I was in an aisle seat, so I could get up and stretch and go to the bathroom whenever I wanted. For some reason, the 13 year old was sitting a few rows behind me and didn’t want to switch seats to sit closer to me even though the seat next to me was empty. We arrived at Heathrow in the late morning and had a nine hour layover, so we took the Heathrow Express into London, getting off at Paddington Station. I highly recommend the Heathrow Express – we were in London in about 20 minutes. We were all much too exhausted to really do anything, and plus we had all our carryon luggage with us, so we walked to Hyde Park where we could rest our feet. The 13 year old and I found a nice place to sit under a tree; I bought us an iced chai and a vegetarian sausage roll at a cafe in the park and we just soaked up the sun and shade and people watched and sketched in our sketch books.

Sketch of the Italian Gardens at Hyde Park

For lunch our group wandered back towards Paddington Station and we all found lunch on our own. I got fish and chips from Micky’s Fish and Chips – one of those tiny counter service and two table places that you read about in rom com books. They really exist folk! The fish and chips did not come wrapped in newspaper, like I was lead to believe from the movies, but the portions were HUGE! I felt bad because I bought two of the smallest size and we only ended up eating one. We sat in a park that had Paddington statues and ate our fish and chips. I sketched some of the buildings across from the park. Even though we weren’t doing any “touristy” things, the few hours we spent in London were still exciting, with that buzz of being in a foreign country.

After we finished out lunch and rested in the park, we met back up with out group and headed back to Heathrow airport for the next leg of our flight- a twelve hour flight to Johannesburg. The flight itself was pretty uneventful, I watched movies and slept and read a little and tried to get up and stretch once in a while. We arrived in Johannesburg at 7:00 am- it was a long day and half of traveling, but our adventures were just beginning!

Day 1: Arrival in Johannesburg. We were met at the airport by our tour guide and he got us on our bus. There were two other school groups in our tour – one from North Carolina and one from Bethesda, MD, which is actually near us. Both the groups were from high schools, and interestingly were all girls. (There were two boys in our group) We were taken immediately on a tour of Soweto, a township in Johannesburg that is southwest of central Johannesburg. Soweto was formed in the 1930s when the government, looking to segregate the population of South Africa, created “Black” townships and moved a lot of Black people there.

This first day we learned a lot about the history of Apartheid and the fight for equality in South Africa. The topics were very sobering and it might have been a little too heavy for us all just having got off an overnight international flight, but I’m glad to have seen all the spots we visited.

The bus took us through Soweto, and we had a local guide, Mama Queen, who told us about the history of Soweto. Even today, parts of residential Soweto have no electricity or running water. Mama Queen said that after the end of Apartheid, the new government said housing was a basic human right, but the government has not been able to deliver on that.

Our first stop in Soweto was the Hector Peterson Museum. Peterson was a 12 year old boy who was killed in the Soweto uprisings in 1976, when students gathered to protest the use of Afrikaans as the primary language in schools. Outside the museum there is a statue in tribute to Hector Peterson and inside the museum were many first person accounts if the Soweto uprisings. The accounts were from both sides of the conflict, and it really made me think about how deeply entrenched and systematic racism is. In the middle of the museum was a courtyard scattered with bricks, each brick with the name of someone who died in the uprising.

This Memorial features the famous picture of Hector Peterson’s dead body being carried to the hospital by 18 year old Mbuyisa Makhubo. Makhubo ended up fleeing South Africa and no one really know where he ended up

Courtyard with the names of people who dies in the Soweto Uprisings on 1976.

We next visited Nelson Mandela’s house in Orlando. Before the trip had just finished Mandela’s memoir Long Walk to Freedom, and he writes often about this simple house where he lived before he went to jail. It was the first house that he ever purchases, and it was here that his children were born. The compact house is full of pictures, awards, commendations, and framed letters honoring Mandela. There were only three rooms in the house and thinking about how Mandela lived here in this tiny space while being a lawyer, while fighting for South African equality was certainly humbling.

Not his real bed, but a reproduction. Also this small house only had three rooms – two bedrooms and a kitchen/common room.

under this tree, Mandela buried the umbilical cords of his children, per tradition.

We then had lunch at a nearby restaurant – the lunch was buffet style, which the 13 year old loved because she loves a buffet. There was soup, stews, rice dishes, yams, cake, salad. There were even chicken feet, which made me happy. I love eating chicken feet at dim sum, and seeing such a niche food in a foreign country tickled me. We were sitting in the outdoor portion of the restaurants and buskers frequently came by to serenade us, their music loud and rhythmic.

Following lunch we went to the Apartheid Museum, a place of many hard truths. There were so many things that stuck with me from this museum – the entry way where each person was given a ticket that said “White” or “Non-White”, and had to go through the correct door; the walls of pass books (during Apartheid Black people had to carry pass books with them all the time or risk being jailed); There was one exhibit which featured full sized pictures of people viewed from the back, an exercise in realizing that it wasn’t always easy to see the color of someone’s skin, moreover that exhibit was used to describe how people could be “reclassified” on a whim; the interview footage with Mandela; the interview footage with the white leaders who talked about their duty to be the guardians of the Black people – I thought the degree to which they didn’t view Black or Coloured people as equal humans so fascinating – they truly believed that white people were genetically superior and that they were doing God’s work by keeping Black’s separate. All in all we only spent ninety minutes at the Apartheid Museum, but I could have spent half a day there. There was an entire exhibit on Mandela and another one that about reconciliation that I only got to skim.

There were no pictures allowed inside the museum, so these are from the outside and the entry way.

Each pillar represents one of the seven principal of the South African Constitution: **Democracy, equality, reconciliation, diversity, responsibility, respect and freedom**

After the Apartheid Museum we were taken to our hotel where we had a buffet dinner before turning in for the night. (Buffet was kind of a food theme of the trip, which I think is common and makes a lot of sense for tour groups.)

Day Two: Day Two was another history filled day. We started the day with a visit to the Cradle of Humankind, a Unesco World Heritage site where many fossils of ancestral humans were found. We didn’t actually see any remains or archeological sites, but rather visited the museum/ visitor’s on the site. To be honest, the museum was a little run down, with paint chipping and a couple of the interactive exhibits not working. The information, however, was fascinating. I especially liked the hallway that had the timeline of earth on it. The hallway stretched on and on, but the portion where humans were on earth was maybe two feet of space. Apparently we are in the midst of the sixth great extinction. So the world has built up and become extinct five times already. That all gave me a sense of perspective. Surrounding the Cradle of Humanity museum are walking trails – I wish we had had time to go on a walk on these trails because the scenery was beautiful.

After leaving the Cradle of Humanity, we stopped at a mall for lunch on our own. The 13 year old and I picked up some poke bowls and dumplings and boba – always fun to find boba tea in a foreign country! While waiting for our food, I went to pick up a charging cable because I had discovered that I had left mine at home. While I was there I also got a new screen protector for my phone – the store had a fancy machine that custom cut the screen. protectors. I thought that was pretty cool. It was kind of fun to do something so ordinary, like buying a screen protector, in a foreign country.

Our next stop after lunch was Constitution Hill, where South Africa’s Constitutional Court is located. Also on the site is the Old Fort, Number Four Prison, Women’s Prison and Hospital, all of which now is a Museum. The prison was known as the “Robben Island of Johannesburg” because in addition to common law criminals, a lot of political dissidents were imprisoned there, including Mahatma Gandhi. Nelson Mandela was once held in the Hospital. Number Four was where the Black prisoners were held. Touring the museum was very sobering – we got to see the rooms where people were packed past capacity, the courtyard where they ate their meager food, the latrines next to those courtyard, which meant that often bodily waste flowed around their feet while eating. We saw the cells where people were held in solitary confinement. The tour guide told us about the harrowing and traumatizing experiences inflicted on the prisoner by both the prison wardens and other prisoners.

One of the prison cells in which thirty prisoners were crammed.

The Prison yard. The red roof is where prisoners would eat, squatting on the ground. All the way in the back leads to solitary confinement. You can actually go into those cells and see what they were like. The thought of having to live in solitary … well it is a form of torture.

I was struck by the exhibit of blanket sculptures. When the prison was occupied, on Sundays there would be a contest among prisoners to build elaborate blanket sculptures, the prize for the winner would be an additional crust of bread. The exhibit featured blanket sculptures which the museum had made by former prisoners of Number Four. I had always associated blanket sculptures with fancy hotels or cruise ships, but seeing the elaborate creations that these prisoner made, made me think about how our desire to create things of beauty and complexity persisted even in prison.

The next building we saw on Constitution Hill was the Constitutional Court Building, which was opened in 2004. One thing striking about the building was the entry way – tall, and decorated with carvings to represent the principles of the South African Constitution, the doors are the way everyone enters and exits the building, prisoners, judges, lawyers, the public. The guide said that there are no back entrances to the building because the court was built with the idea that everyone is equal so everyone must use the same doors. (I find it a bit of a fire and security hazard that there are NO other doors – perhaps there are no other public entrances?). Inside, we were told a little bit about the history of present day South Africa. South Africa has 12 official languages, and the guide pointed out to us the room where all the interpreters sit. The bricks in the main court were taken from parts of the prison that were torn down, as a reminder of South Africa’s past.

“Constitutional Court” written in 11 of the 12 official languages. The 12th official language is South African Sign Language.

Detail of a section of the intricately carved door.

The main court room. The interpreters sit behind the glass on the fight.

After we left Constitution Hill, the bus dropped us off at a Mall – Mandela Square. I guess they figured a bunch of teens and tweens would really love to spend a spare hour shopping. The mall had many of the same stores you see in America, a lot of them were the high end things. There was also a library and a theatre in Mandela Square, but those were closed so we I didn’t get to go in. The 13 year old and I aren’t huge shoppers, but we do always like to check out grocery stores when we travel; grocery stores are such a great peek ar what a country is like. We bought a bunch of snacks and blueberries too because by this point I was feeling a severe lack of fresh fruit in my life. The blueberries were so sweet and crisp. The 13 year old and I ended up always buying more blueberries whenever we got a chance for the rest of the trip.

This juxtaposition of these two restaurants made me laugh

Some images from things we saw at Checkers, a grocery/ home store – it felt kind of like a Super Walmart:

Then the bus returned us to the hotel and we had dinner at the restaurant next to the hotel. For dessert, I had my first experience with Malva pudding – a South African sponge cake that often has cream poured over it. It has a springy moist texture and is not too sweet. We would come to eat many pieces of Malva pudding in the weeks to come. I am clearly not a food or travel blogger or I would have taken perfectly lit pictures of the Malva pudding so you could almost taste it. But you’ll just have to take my word that it was delicious. Plus, it’s a very humble looking cake, and perhaps not very photogenic.

We returned to our rooms to pack and turn in for the night because the next day we were going to check out of our hotel and head for our next adventure: Kruger National Park and a Safari Lodge!

So that’s part one of South Africa adventures!
Have you ever taken advantage of a layover to see a bonus city? Do you visit grocery stores when traveling? Do you like visiting historic sites when you travel?

Weekly recap + what we ate: New York City

I started typing this on the train back to DC from New York City. My sister in law – who lives in Amsterdam – has a workshop in NYC this coming week and brought the whole family, so we went up to see them and spend some time together. The Husband went up on Friday morning with the two little kids and the 13 year old and I went up that evening after camp and work.

The trip up was a little tedious – we had a bit of a tight turnaround between getting home in the afternoon and having to leave to catch the Metro to the train station. There might have been a few rough teen moments involving a screen not being unlocked and threats of not coming along. But we did make it to the train station with barely enough time. Only to find the train was delayed; the trains were running a little more slowly due to the high heat. That was certainly frustrating. If I knew we were going to have an extra hour, I might have not felt as rushed and might have handled the unlocking of the tablet with a bit more patience. Oh well. We made it to NYC eventually and were at the hotel by midnight- we were staying at a Residence Inn in midtown – not the cheapest option, but very convenient and the rooms were nice and more spacious than I had expected for a hotel in midtown.

(Side note – the train just made an announcement reminding people to lock the doors if they use the bathroom. !!! I’m so curious if there was an incident or if this is a standard announcement they make???)

The next day, we had quite a fun, packed New York Saturday. (I’m not a travel blogger, so I didn’t take a lot of photos, but I’ll dump a few into this post… ) We started by having hotel breakfast. It was the usual fare – waffles, hot bar of eggs and sausage, cereal, toast, oatmeal, etc. One nice surprise, though, was that there was a big bowl of raw spinach. And it was really tasty spinach too. I don’t suppose raw spinach screams “Breakfast food!”, but I did appreciate being able to start my day with a serving of something green. Sometimes I find when traveling it’s hard to get greens into me.

After breakfast we met up with my Sister in law and her family at a lovely shady park on 42nd and 2nd – Mary O’Connor Playground. I love how there are all these playgrounds tucked in between building in New York, giving people a bit of green space and air in a very dense crowded city. We sat on benches and chatted while the kids played – my SIL has two kids about the same age ast the littles. Even though we only see my SIL and her family once a year or two, the kids love hanging out and get along so well together.

We let the kids play for a while then we headed to Brooklyn. We had planned to spend most of the day in Brooklyn because it just seemed a little calmer than Manhattan and very family friendly. Also since my SIL’s family would be in NYC all week, they already had plans for exploring Manhattan itself. We took the Subway to Brooklyn Bridge Park, and took in views of the Brooklyn Bridge and then went to year another playground. Then we wandered to Montague St. for lunch, picking up sandwiches and eating at picnic tables on the sidewalk. I had a delicious Ham, Brie, and Fig Jam sandwich with arugula. Brie and jam is such a delicious combination!

Following lunch we went to the New York Transit Museum. Here we learned all about the NY Subway system, how it was built, how it has evolved. There is also a whole other room devoted to bus/ trolley/ cable car transit. And then on the lower level there was a huge collection of retired subway cars that you could go into. I really loved this museum – it was a good bleand of history and nostalgia for me. And while the kids weren’t really into all the informational placards, they loved getting to play in the ticket boots, subway cars, and the fake buses. I think this museum is all good blend of interesting for adults and fun for kids – highly recommend. Also – the tickets are cheap: $10 for adults and $5 for kids. We also got shirts and magnets at the gift shop because we discovered that there is a subway line for each of our first initials, so we each got a shirt and magnet with our corresponding subway line on it. It was incredibly nerdy, but made me so happy.

Subway line magnets! I feel like we should all be a family of lawyers given our initials.

After the transit museum, we went back to our hotel to rest a little until dinner time. Dinner was at a Mexican restaurant – my SIL says that the Mexican food in Amsterdam is terrible so whenever she comes back to the States we go out to Mexican food. The Husband and I split and order of grilled octopus tacos and an order of fish tacos and they were both delicious. The octopus was so tender and slightly smoky from the grill.

My Sister In Law’s family went back to their hotel after dinner, and the Husband and I and the kids wandered around NY a little bit. Went to Bryant Park, and visited Kinokuniya, the Japanese Manga/Stationary store across the street. We had visited that store in January when I had brought the kids to see Hadestown and I was eager to go back. The Husband bought something that was perfect for his Secret Santa group. I’m dying to post a picture of it here, but I’ll keep mum in case someone from his group reads this blog (VERY unlikely…) Myself, I bought some Coleto Hi-Tec-C multi pens. They are customizable multi-pens; you buy the barrel and then you can pick what colors and size point you want in them. I’ve been wanting one for our family calendar so I can color code each person’s activities – I have multi pens, but there are five people in the family and all the conventionally available multipens of decent quality have only four colors so I was using two pens with different colors to cover our family. Coleto pens come in barrels of 3 to 5 inks so I could customize one pen barrel that would work for the whole family. I was going to order them from jet pens, but it is so much more fun to buy them from an actual store.

We left Kinokuniya and wandered up to Korea Town. I had read that there were some fun stores and an amazing dessert place in Ktown, so I thought we’d check it out. New York City is CROWDED! I’m always amazed at how busy the town is even later in the evening when a city like Washington DC would be winding down. DC is pretty dead after, say, 8pm, but it was almost 8pm by the time we got to Ktown and it seemed like the night was just starting. In Ktown we checked out Teso Life, a Japanese convenience/ drug store that is loaded with all sorts of Asian snacks, beauty supplies, toys, housewares, etc. Browsing the snacks is always a lot of fun – of note were the scallop chips, the matcha Oreos, the orange and chocolate Kit Kats.

We also swung by a K-pop store, but it was kind of a madhouse and we’re not really K-pop fans, so we didn’t stay long. Then we went to a dessert cafe called Grace Street. We ordered strawberry and grape tang hulu (the candy coated fruit that we tried to make earlier this summer, and which is very popular in Taiwan), a Nutella mochi waffle, and mango shaved ice. It was all amazing. Korean shaved ice is different from Taiwanese shaved ice because it is finer and often made from milk. This was my first time having Korean shaved ice and it did not disappoint. Sweet and creamy yet not too heavy, with mango, banana, mango popping bubbles, and mango syrup. The mochi waffle was also delicious – crispy on the outside with that mochi chew in the inside, not too sweet and covered with Nutella, strawberries and whip cream. If you are looking for an NYC dessert, I highly recommend Grace Street Cafe!

After we finished dessert, we headed home. This time, we took the bus back to the hotel. The bus was a nice change from being on packed subways all day. We were actually the only ones on the bus to start, though only one other person got on while we were riding. It was nice to see the city from the bus as we drove back to midtown – the people and the lights and the beautifully lit shop windows and neon signs. The ride was a calm way to get home after such a packed day.

The next morning, I got on the 9:05am train to make it back to DC in time for rehearsal. Well, not quite in time. As I was getting off the metro at home, the heavens opened up and there was a veritable deluge. I was unprepared for this and had to walk home with nary an umbrella or raincoat. It was the wettest, most miserable walk of my life. But I got home, quickly changed and headed to work, though I ended up being forty minutes late to rehearsal.

So that was our trip to New York City! Like I said, I’m not a travel blogger so there aren’t any gorgeous vacation photos from our little jaunt, but rest assured the food was tasty, the sights were iconic, the people watching was colourful, and the city bustle was energizing. Every time I visit New York, I leave feeling that I only saw a teeny tiny bit of it and that there is so much more to see and do, and at the same time, I’m glad I don’t live there – the pace would be overwhelming for me to live every single day. All in all, though, it was a nice little break from a week of work and camp and commuting.

Some fun and frustrating things last week:

-Field Trip with he 13 year old’s theatre camp group. I got to accompany the campers to a production of Midsummers NIghts’s Dream by the Synetic Theatre. Synetic Theater specialized in wordless theatre – everything is told through movement, dance, acrobatics, stage combat, etc. The performance was so beautifully precise and over all show was amazing – how the actors were able to tell the story, to make us laugh and gasp and sigh, just by using their bodies. I knew the story going in, but I think even still the storytelling was so clear. Afterward, the 13 year old said, “Not having to think about the words made it easier to think about the story and the characters.” I thought that was such an interesting point.

I want to see more by Synetic Theater now, but I heard they actually just lost their space so their future is a little bit up in the air. Bummer.

-In the category of frustrating, but resolved – I had a jury summons last week. The notice had come before I booked the current job, and to be quite honest I had forgotten about it until the weekend before. I had no little amount of anxiety about this – I’m not the most important person in the rehearsal room, but it is inconvenient to miss rehearsal, plus I was missing a day and a half of rehearsal already to go to New York. I was mostly frustrated at myself for not taking putting in for a postponement sooner. Anyhow, I called the Jury Services office Monday morning ( I was to appear on Tuesday) and they said I needed a letter from my employer to request a postponement. I feel really bad asking people for things last minute because I messed up, but I took a deep breath and called my boss. He was actually great and very understanding and wrote me a letter saying that I was working on a one night only show and that it was important that I was available for rehearsal. I managed to get to the Jury Services Office an hour before they closed. Thankfully their turnaround time was quick, and now I’ll report for Jury service in October. But it was a stressful day for sure as I wondered if I would be able to postpone service.
I’ve been summoned maybe three or four times in the past couple of years, and did get to serve on a jury once. I was an assault case, where someone intentionally rear ended someone else. Being on the jury was such a fascinating process. Truth, I found it flabbergasting that twelve people with no law degree got to argue about the definition of “deadly weapon”, as the charge was actually “assault with a deadly weapon.” Eye opening for sure.

-I’ve been trying to run in the mornings these days. I realized that I can leave the kids at home with the 13 year old for 30 minutes while I run and I’ve been taking advantage of it. Last summer I would run at work on my dinner break, but it’s been so hot this year that it’s more appealing to run at 7am than at 1pm or 5:30pm. I still don’t love running, but being able to do it when there is shade and the sun is not blazing makes me dislike it less.
Also – super fun, on two of my runs last week, at least one kid came with me. The 8 year old and 5 year old had asked me one morning as I was lacing up my shoes if they could come too. I’m all for anything that will get the kids outside and moving, so I said yes. The second time was they Friday they were to drive up to NYC; I hadn’t even been planning on going for a run and the 8 year old said, ‘Can we go run? I’m going to spend all day in the van so I want to have some exercise today.” Truth – they are SLOW. I tried to do 2 min walking/2 min running intervals, but it was more like 1 min run/ 5 min walk. Oh well, I’ll take what I can get. It was also really fun to see all the other runners giving them encouragement as they ran past us. One runner said to me, “I like your run team!”

-The kids are obsessed with the sountrack to Kpop Demon Hunters lately. I guess the 8 year old watched it at Taiwan camp. (The 5 year old reports that all they got to watch was Bluey in Mandarin.) Okay, I have to admit it is helluva catchy. I ran to the song Golden one day at it kept me going at a good pace. The frustrating aspect to that fun thing is that it is the ONLY THING they will listen to – it sometimes feels like extortion because they won’t do their chores unless I put the soundtrack on for them.

-Traffic traffic traffic. I am seriously considering if I ever want to do this gig again, the traffic is soul sucking. One day I left at 8:30am, dropped the 5 year old at camp and didn’t get to work until 10:30am, moving along the whole time at a slow crawl. Google Maps took me through some parts of the city that I’d never seen before – so I guess that’s a plus, I got to see some beautiful neighborhoods.

Grateful for:
-Tap to pay on NYC subway. You can now just tap your credit card (or phone) to pay on the subway. It’s so convenient – no having to buy tickets and try to swipe them. I”m all about seamless transit. (Interestingly, the Transit Museum had a placard that talked about how tap to ride was the wave of the future – guess they can now update that display, because the future is HERE!)

-Audiobooks.

-That the 13 year old still is okay with me sitting with her at lunch when she’s with her friends. I was a little nervous on the field trip that the 13 year old would want me to disappear, but she actually wanted me to sit with her and her friends. I remember when I was that age, I refused to let my mom sit with me and my friends when I went to soccer tournaments. (Why was I such an asshole to my mother? Sorry, Mom!)

-Being home for dinner two nights this week.

-Our Lead Negotiator. We’re in the midst of union negotiations right now and I’m really grateful for the person at our Union who is navigating us through the process. Negotiations aren’t really something I will talk about about specifically here, but it’s taking up a lot of my mental energy right now. Grateful to my union.

-Beautiful weather for our NYC trip. The day before had been in the high 90s so I was a little nervous about our planned day wandering the city. But the day turned out to be in the low 80s and just cloudy enough to take the edge off the sun. That combined with the periodic breeze made it a perfect New York summer day.

-The Husband packing lunches. He’s been packing the camp lunches the past few weeks, and it’s taken such a load off my morning.

Looking Forward To:
-Free day from work and taking the kids to the pool. We haven’t been to the pool since the end of swim season. While the break has been nice, I’m looking forward to going to the pool on our own pace and not rushing because we’re late for practice.

-Tomatoes. Given to us by our friend from his CSA – he doesn’t like tomatoes. What should I do with two large summer ripe tomatoes

-Going to rehearsal every day, and also having the mornings off. I genuinely look forward to rehearsal every day. The director is easy to work with, the other stage managers are kind and competent, and there is just a sense of all of use working together – I just look forward to seeing what we create every day. Also, the current show rehearses in the afternoon and evening, so I have the mornings open. Of course I have the kids with me, yet knowing how much I lamented losing my summer with them when I booked this gig, I do love these pockets of mornings to spend with them. The 5 year old made a summer fun list today:

In case you can’t read the 5 year old’s handwriting, the list says: Hang out; Relax; make popsicles; go to the pool; Mom Dad Lulu (what she calls her big sister) – I think that means she wants to spend time with us.

-The 13 year old’s showcase for her musical theatre summer training program. It’s been a little up and down emotionally this summer because she wasn’t given as many solos as she wanted in musical numbers. On the other hand, she apparently has a big part in the dance number (which, considering that she’s not a dancer, is pretty cool), and she’s playing Rosalind in the scene from As You Like it. It hasn’t been the camp experience she wanted, but I think she’s been learning to stretch different muscles.

-Snacks! I went to Trader Joe’s and went a little crazy with the chips and then also stopped at Giant and filled up on other snacks.

Those are Carolina Gold BBQ chips, Deli Sandwich chips, and Dill Pickle chips. Along with lots of other tasty things. Whatever gets us through the day…

– My next audiobook – I’m almost finished with an Agatha Christie radio play and then I’ll move on to this book:

What We Ate:
Monday: Pork and eggplant stir fry with udon noodles. The Husband cooked. This was really tasty. I ate leftovers wrapped in a tortilla for lunch later in the week.

Tuesday: Taco Tuesday – squash and turkey tacos. Trying to eat up some summer squash that was languishing in our fridge. The Husband cooked.

Wednesday: German potato salad, Brazilian cheese buns, and steamed green beans. I asked the kids

Thursday: Breakfast sandwiches (The Husband cooked at home.) leftovers for me at work.

Friday: Sandwiches from Pret a Manger at the train station.

Saturday: Amor Loco – tasty Mexican food in NYC.

Sunday: Leftovers, eaten at work. Basically I looked into the fridge and grabbed whatever leftovers were available and it happened to be two week old leftover Burmese food. I guess it’s lucky I didn’t get food poisoning…

Welp, I can’t believe August is just about here! School starts in less than a month for us, which is a little terrifying. I didn’t even write my June reflections yet. Oh well… summer keeps rolling, and I hope yours is going well. Have a lovely week!

What is the most unique chip flavor you’ve ever eaten? What colours would you want in a multi-pen? Are you on the Kpop Demon Hunters bandwagon? We don’t even have Netflix and the family is obsessed! Tell me, what little things have made life easier these days?

Kuala Lumpur, Winter Break 2024 – Day #1-3

I know it’s spring, but all the spring break travel recaps I’m seeing has inspired me to write recaps of our winter break trip. I keep meaning to these recaps, but I kept getting a bit of writer’s block regarding the Taiwan portion because truth to tell, I didn’t plan that part, so I didn’t quite know how to write about it. Since I’m a little stuck on the Taiwan portion, I thought I’d just start with the Kuala Lumpur recap, even though it was the last part of our trip.

People looked a little surprised when I told them we were going to Kuala Lumpur. I guess it’s not a place on everyone’s radar. It wasn’t on mine either when were were looking for a trip to add to our Taiwan trip. The Husband and I both came to the table with three suggestions for places to visit, and Singapore was on both our lists – it’s easy to navigate, close to Taiwan, and has lots to see and do. Singapore, however, is actually quite expensive. My brother-in-law had once mentioned that Malaysia was one of his favorite countries, so when I read that Kuala Lumpur was a lot like Singapore, but more affordable, I started looking at that. If we had more days to spend in Malaysia, I probably would have also tried to go to one of the beach towns, but since we only had five days, we decided to stick to one location and travel at a slower pace – lots of time to relax, swim in the pool, and wander around.

I will say – of those three things, “wandering around” might not be the best thing to do in Kuala Lumpur. While there are lots of parks and outdoor spaces, the roads are very difficult to cross and there is a lot of traffic. Despite there being a public transportation system, and even though I believe that using public transportation is one of the most enlightening parts of travel, we didn’t end up doing that. For most of our trip we took Grab (their version of Uber) almost everywhere. It was very convenient. And cheap. I think for 5 days in Kuala Lumpur we spent something like $50 on Grabs. The tour guide on our food tour told us that Grab is so cheap and convenient because the government subsidizes the cost of gas.

But we certainly did eat a lot of food. Warning – there will be lots of food pictures in this recap.

We went to Kuala Lumpur (or KL) for five days, four nights. This post will be the first three days.

Day One – Leaving Taiwan and arrival in Kuala Lumpur (KL)
We left our hotel in Taiwan the morning on December 29th. The flight to KL was about five hours long and we arrived at 4pm. The line through customs was very long and a little confusing. The Husband was able to go through the automated kiosk, but since I had the kids, I had to stand in line. After about thirty minutes in line, someone pointed me towards the Family line where there was no wait at all. After we cleared customs, we picked up our luggage and took a taxi to our AirBnB.

We had a slight snafu with booking our accommodations. We had originally booked in a hotel, but the week before, we couldn’t find the reservation and our credit card hadn’t been charged. We ended up finding an AirBnB that was close to where we wanted to stay. It was pretty much an extended stay apartment kind of situation, which was a little disappointing because it didn’t have the housekeeping or breakfast that are convenient when we stay in a hotel. But the place was clean and spacious, with a kitchen, and there were enough beds for everyone and there was a pool, so it was a fine place for us to stay. And, there was a view of the iconic Perdana Towers out our window.

The iconic Perdana Towers seen through our curtain.

By the time we got to our Air BnB, it was maybe 7pm. I will say, we are not good “arrivers” when we travel. The day we arrive in a new country, we are always discombobulated and cranky and incapable of making decisions. This almost always manifests in us being hungry and at the same time unable to find anything to eat. So this first night, we couldn’t pin down a place for dinner, and decided to go for a walk to explore our neighborhood. We ended up at My Family, which is a 7-11 type convenience store, where we got wraps and sandwiches and instant noodles to take back to the apartment. Not the fanciest first meal, but it got us fed and we could all go to sleep.

Day Two – Exploring KL on foot, and Food Tour
To start out our second day, we decided to explore on foot. Here’s the thing we quickly realized – even though things look close on the map, they are actually quite difficult to get to. The roads aren’t always straight, and many of the roads are four lanes of traffic and crosswalks/ traffic lights are spaced out rather far apart, so it is a little difficult to get from point A to point B. But it being our first full day in KL, we thought it was an okay first way to explore. One of the good things about walking though, is we passed a street vendor selling the Malaysian National Dish – nasi lemak (steamed coconut rice with cucumber, peanuts, spicy sauce, and in our case quail.) This vendor also sold tasty sweet fritters and other street foods. We ended up buying something from this stall every day we were in Kuala Lumpur. We found out later on that the regulations on street vendors have been loosened since 2020 because people were hard hit by COVID so the government wanted there to be fewer barriers for people to make money.

We walked to Bukit Bintang, which is known as the central hub of Kuala Lumpur, known for high end shopping and ample street foot. We ended up at the very pink Opera Cafe for lunch, an adorable restaurant that felt very fancy.

The 5 year old with her Turkish Delight hot chocolate

After lunch, we browsed the bookstore at the mall then wandered around the area some more. KL is very busy city and it was almost overwhelming, all the hustle and bustle and foreign languages being spoken. We stopped for some yogurt cubes – an interesting frozen treat.

We bought tickets for the hop on hop off bus tour that we would take the next day, and also made a stop for some fresh fruit juices. We tried all three flavors: watermelon, lemon/lychee and mango. The lemon had salted plum in it, one of my favorite drink add ons. All the juices came with handy little carrying handles, which I thought was so smart!

It was mid afternoon by this point, so we took a Grab back to the AirBnB to rest. The kid wanted to check out the roof top pool, so we went up for a few minutes:

The big event of the day was the Sambal Nights Food Tour. A food tour is one of our family’s favorite things to do when we travel. I try to book one for our first day in a place – I find it is a good way to orient ourselves in a city, gives us some of the history of the place, and the food keeps the kids engaged. We took a Grab to the meeting place and met our tour guide Cash. He was such a knowledgeable tour guide and willing to answer all our questions about life in KL. There was SO MUCH food involved, and all of it delicious. One of the most interesting things about Malaysia is that it is the intersection of Malay, Chinese, and Indian people and cultures, and the food very much reflects that.

(Side note: On that international note, Cash told us that when kids are in elementary school, they are given the option to learn another language, either English, Mandarin, or Tamal. I thought it was so interesting that Cash said the idea is that kids are given the chance to learn the language of their parents. It’s such a different mindset then I encounter in the U.S. where people are alarmed if kids don’t learn English and choosing a foreign language is about learning something different rather than connecting with one’s roots. Little insights like that are what make traveling to foreign countries so fascinating to me.)

The first stop was a walk through the local market where we saw stalls for fruit, vegetables, meat, seafood, spices….

After the walk through the market, the food tour took us for our first stop where we had noodles and roti. While waiting for our food, Cash brought out all the fruit that he bought at the market and we tried them all. I love fruit, so this was probably one of my favorite parts of the whole tour.

Pictured above was only a sampling of the fruit we had – Mangosteen, which is banned on public transportation because the skin makes a deep purple stain. This was very sweet, juicy and chewy. Rambutan – kind of like a lychee on the inside. The kids really liked this one, with the fuzzy pink exterior. Snake fruit – I had never had this before, and I really liked it -you peel aways the scaly exterior (hence the name) and the inside is light and crunchy. Not pictured, but we also had durian, which to my palette was not as stinky as people like to say.

After the fruit, we each got a chance to try our hand at making roti. The man who instructed us in roti making makes 400 roti a day. 400!!! Watching him make roti is like watching a magical dough ballet. My roti flips were no where near as elegant.

Friends, there was SO MUCH food on this tour. I can’t even document it all. There were steaming bowls of noodles. Fried street food. Mango smoothies.

roti and daal. The kids had roti and condensed milk

And this isn’t even all the food that we had. The food tour lasted four hours and by the end, our stomachs were stuffed and we had learned so much about Kuala Lumpur. The food tour ended at the base of the Perdana towers at around 10pm, and from there we took a grab home and collapsed into bed.

Day Three – Hop on Hop Off Bus and New Years Eve
I had a read that a Hop on Hop off Bus was a good way to see a lot of the city – the KL Hop On HOP Off Bus had over twenty stops. You could just ride the bus to all the stops, or your could get off, do some exploring and catch the next bus to continue on the bus route.

The first stop we got off at was Central Market, a building that was built in 1888 as a wet market and today is a arts and crafts market. A friend of mine had recommended it to me as a nice place to find souvenirs. We stopped at a batik stall and looked at all the beautifully skilled batik pieces. Here the kids each picked a prepped screen and tried their hand at batik painting. These paintings are one of our favorite souvenirs that we brought home and now sit in our sun room.

Next stop on the Hop on Hop off Bus tour was Little India. The family loves Indian food so we thought this would be a good place for lunch. The moment we got off the bus, I was wrapped with the sights and sounds and smells of India. Well, I’ve never been to India, so I can’t say for sure, but the architecture, the Indian music, the smell of spices and food – it was all such a different world.

We had lunch at a place called MRT1924, a vegetarian restaurant the served South Indian Food. Very tasty:

Then back on the Hop on Hop off Bus. Our next stop was the Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia.

The Islamic Arts Museum of Malaysia was on a lot of lists of “must see” museums in Kuala Lumpur, and I agree. Coming to Malaysia, I hadn’t really thought about how Malaysia is a Muslim country – I had never visited a Muslim country before, and I didn’t know what to expect. The wonderful thing about this Museum is that they really highlight the intersection of the Islamic and Asian. There were quite a few exhibits on the history of migration to the area, which I found fascinating. And then there were lots of displays that highlighted how the Muslims who came to the Malay peninsula influenced the culture. For example, batik fabrics that feature Islamic designs and writing – I was in awe of how skilled the batik was:

Chinese Islamic calligraphy:

There was also a huge display of models of mosques thoughout the world. I found this part facinating – how there are basic elements that all mosques have, but each country/culture puts their own spin on things:

We ended up spending the rest of the afternoon at the Museum and then took a Grab back to our apartment. As always, the kids wanted to go to the pool, so we had some more pool time before going to dinner. I have to admit that I was a little leery of the rooftop pool since I don’t like heights. I stayed away from the outside edge of the pool and kept to the shallow end. Even still, there is something really cool about being in a pool so high up, that it gives the illusion of extending into the horizon.

After pool time, we grabbed dinner at a restaurant that was just next to our apartments. We had burgers and fruit juices and the Husband ordered a super spicy yet delicious goat curry.

Afterwards, what with it being New Years Eve and all, we decided to stay home since everyone said that it would be a madhouse in the City. Fortunately, our apartment had a great view of the firework display at the Petronas Towers, so we got to watch those. We don’t usually watch fireworks – they are often too late and too loud – so this was a special treat for the kids to be able to stay up and watch them from the comfort of the apartment.

After the fireworks, we went to bed, but there continued to be smaller firework displays throughout the city that I could see. I marveled at how back home fireworks were very regulated, so aside from sparklers, the only fireworks one could see were the displays put on my the city or county.

And that was our first three days in Kuala Lumpur. Lots of food, and sensory overload as we took in such a multicultural teeming city. We had two more days in the city and more adventures to come!

Have you ever been to Malaysia? What are your “must dos” when you travel? Do you like to watch fireworks?

New York City Day, January 2025

In the scheme of things, New York is not that far from Washington, DC. Even still we don’t get up there very often, One of the reasons we don’t go to New York City very much is because the price of a hotel kind of intimidates me. Last time we went for an overnight stay, we stayed with friends. That was in 2017. But since then, I’ve discovered that NYC is actually a very manageable day trip from D.C. A couple of years ago, the Husband and I took a day trip up, leaving on the 6:30am train and coming home on the 6:30pm train. If you can buy train ticket well ahead of time, it’s actually not too expensive. And then you don’t have to pay for a hotel.

When I saw that the two older kids had a random Wednesday off at the end of January, I thought about things we could do. Usually on these days off I will take the kids down town to the Mall or on a hike somewhere local. On a whim, though, I looked at train tickets to New York and they were not that expensive – $120 round trip and the 8 year old was discounted. (It would could have been even cheaper if we took an even later train; the DC-> NY leg was only $45!, but the return was $75. The 11pm return was $25)

So I started to look for things to do, thinking we’d go to a museum or something, and then I discovered that the last week of January was Broadway Week and a lot of shows had 2-for-1 ticket deals. Now usually I take a long time to plan things and I hem and haw and book things two minutes after I should and things are way more expensive than they could have been. I tend to over think travel. But this time, I surprised myself and decided to book the trip. This was of course after asking the Husband if it was a silly idea, after all we had just gotten back from an not inexpensive trip to Asia. Why not have an adventure? I thought. I’m never the “fun parent” and I wanted to be the “fun parent.” Plus I wanted to see some theatre.

Originally I wanted to take the kids to see SIX since they have been listening to that soundtrack non-stop for the better part of a year. But there was not Wednesday matinee of SIX. So when I looked to see what else there was, I saw that there was a Wednesday matinee for Hadestown. I didn’t know anything about Hadestown except that all the theatre people I knew raved about it. Well that was good enough endorsement for me, and Hadestown it was! All together I think we paid $77 per ticket with the Broadway Week deal.

The day of the trip, I got everyone up at 5:00am so that we could get on the metro at 5:30pm for Union Station. I packed lots of snacks, water, and some books and games for the train ride. The kids were surprisingly uncomplaining about having to get up so early. I guess they were looking forward to the trip too. I also promised them hot chocolate if we got to Union Station and didn’t miss our train. So there was that. We got onto our train with plenty of time to spare and we were off! One of the things I love about taking the early morning train is getting to watch the sun come up as we sped up the coast.

Three and a half hours later we were in New York City. It still felt like morning when we got there, and we had a whole day in front of us!

First stop: Bagels! We picked up bagels from Best Bagels and took them to Bryant Park and sat in the park to eat. New York bagels are enormous! I had a bacon and egg bagel, the 8 year old had a blueberry bagel with strawberry cream cheese and the 13 year old had a salmon sandwich. The bagels were soft and tender, breadier than I am used to. And the blue berry bagel was a revelation – it tasted like real blueberry, not like artificial blueberries.

We sat in Bryant Park for an hour, watching people go by and the 8 year old chased pigeons.

Next stop – after a stop at CVS and a bathroom- was the New York Pubic Library. This wasn’t actually the part of the library with books, rather we saw one of their exhibits of parpphenelia related to their collections. There were some video clips and design sketches from their performing arts library, the papers and novels of James Baldwin. My favorite part was the collection of stuffed animals that inspired Winnie the Pooh:

The original Pooh, Tigger, Eeyore, Piglet, Kanga. Roo apparently was lost in an orchard somewhere.

After examining the library’s exhibit, we headed towards our next stop, but as we were leaving the library, we saw a group giving juggling lessons. What a whimsically serendipitous thing. We spent about twenty minutes tossing bags around and watching the other jugglers.

Our next stop was Kinokuniya, a Japanese bookstore that specialized in manga and graphic novels. It was an amazing place – the kind of place where dreams come true. At least for me. The store was three stories. The main floor was full of book- best sellers, a children’s section, gift gooks, the usual. (There was a four foot display for Onyx Storm). The second floor was all manga and graphic novels. These were the two floors where the kids wanted to spend their time and money.

The second floor – all manga and graphic novels.

The lower floor, though…. The lower floor was my heaven- the lower floor featured a stationary section. Pens and notebooks and paper and pencil cases galore. I was in a state of bliss. So many A5 notebooks! My fingers trailed over paper and pages, reveling in the different textures. And all the pens- so many colours and sizes.

We stayed at Kinokuniya until it was time to head over to the theatre, leaving with quite a haul. Each kid chose a book – the latest Dogman for the 8 year old and a graphic novel called “My Super Hot Husband” for the 13 year old, that is not as racy as the titles would have you believe – and I picked out a notebook and two pens.

(Okay on the note of My Super Hot Husband. I had no way to vet it before we bought it because all the books in the Manga section were wrapped in plastic. I tried to Google the title, but nothing really came up. I had a massive debate with myself in the bookstore about whether or not I should tell the 13 year old that she couldn’t get the book. In fact I did make her pick out another book. But then I couldn’t really come up with a good reason why she couldn’t make her own choices as to what she wanted to read as long as she felt comfortable discussing topics with me that came up. I’d rather she feel confident and open about sharing her reading choices with me, than ashamed and hide things from me. Plus, why and I so worried about a book when there is the whole internet in front of her? So in the end, she came home with “My Super Hot Husband” with the proviso that I got to read it too.)

From the bookstore, it was a fifteen minute walk up Broadway to the theatre. Up past Times Square, full of brilliance and bustle, even at 1pm in the afternoon. We held hands tightly so as not to lose one another as we wove in and out of crowds. When we arrived at the theatre there was quite a line to get in because everyone had to go through security screening. At first I was worried that we would be late for the show, but the line moved very quickly. I suppose when you do eight shows a week the staff gets very used to moving people through quickly. Broadway theatres are so different from the theatres I work in. For one – they are much smaller so the doors open straight into the theatre.

I’m going to give a huge shout out to the ushers at the theatre. There was one lady stationed by the bathrooms. She was managing the traffic with such firm efficiency and calm. “Please move in. You can stand against that wall and wait for a stall on the left. Thank you. Can you stand here behind the person with the plaid shirt, and wait for a stall on the right. Please don’t worry. I’ll get everyone into the bathroom and into their seats before the show. I never leave anyone in the bathroom. Step this way, please….” It made my stage manager soul really delighted to watch her work.

After our bathroom stop, we went to our seats. And there was another usher who looked at the kids and asked, “Is this anyone’s first Broadway show?”

The eight year old said it was his first Broadway show, and the usher gave him a sticker set that said, “My First Broadway Show!” One sticker was to go on his program and one was to go on his shirt. He wanted to save the shirt sticker for later, but he did put a sticker on his program.

In our seats. They weren’t the most expensive or the cheapest, but Broadway theatres are so small that I think all the seats had pretty good views.

I didn’t know a whole lot about Hadestown going in. It’s billed as a folk musical which intertwines the myths of Orpheus/Eurydice and Hades/Persephone, and sets it all during the Dust Bowl. We had listened to the soundtrack to prepare, and on the train in I listened to a few podcasts on Greek mythology with the kids because I had heard that if you didn’t know the underlying myths the story might be hard to follow. Other than that, I didn’t know anything about the production aspects of the show. I had known that Hadestown had won a lot of Tonys in 2019, but then there was the pandemic, and it fell off my radar. I wanted to go in without a whole lot of information, so I could experience the show pretty fresh.

The show was AMAZING! I loved it so much. – Okay, a gripe first. During the show not one, but TWO cellphones went off. TWO!!!! The second one went off in the second act during a moment of absolute silence. WTF!!!?!?!. People, turn your phones to silent! – But even that could not ruin a wonderful time at the theatre. Technically the show was stunning, the set seemed simple when you first walked in, but then it became such an integral part of the drama. The actors inhabited and interacted with the set in such beautiful organic ways. I loved the musicians being onstage – you could really watch them play and the actors work off them. I loved the way the ensemble moved together. And I also really just loved the story telling. I mean we all know how the Orpheus story ends, but I was still on the edge of my seat as the story unfolded. The show has so much to say about connection and feeling alone and the importance of stories in our life. The songwriter Anais Mitchell first wrote the musical in 2006 as a concept album, but so much of the show felt really pertinent to our times. Hades is a wealthy womanizing mogul who runs the mining town, exploiting the poorer people. There is literally a s song called, “Why We Build the Wall”. There was one line when a character gives a toast “To the times we live in now” which was greeted by the audience with absolute silence and a palatable air of tension. I love when a theatre experience feels like it is perfect for them moment. The whole timeless/ timeliness of art – I think about that a lot.

After the show, we went for dinner. The kids had requested burgers. I had to admit I was a little nervous about eating near the theatre because I hate waiting in lines and eating in crowded places, but we ended up at Bareburger a nice quiet burger place with no wait. (Maybe because it was only 5:00pm?). I think the place is actually a chain, but it still had a nice sit down/neighborhood feel. We ordered fried pickle chips, and each of us had a burger.

After dinner, we had a few hours before our train, so we wandered back to Penn Station slowly, staying a few blocks from Broadway. We got some boba at Jooy Tea Shop. The Boba was very good and the drinks not too sweet.

Then we stopped at Muji near Penn Station. Because one Japanese stationary store in one day wasn’t enough. I love Muji – the simplicity and practicality of everythint they carry. We didn’t buy anything at Muji because we had already bought ourselves presents earlier in the day. But it was fun to look.

We made it back to the train station with plenty of time to spare and soon we were on the 7:40pm train back to D.C. The train ride back was uneventful. The kids read their new books and played games on their screens. We were back in DC a little after 11:30pm, and didn’t have to wait but a few minutes for the Metro home. By midnight everyone was tucked in bed.

Just for my records, I kept track of how much the day cost, and here’s the breakdown:

Train Tickets: $330 (for three tickets)
Hadestown Tickets: $250 (for three tickets)
Hot Chocolate at Train Station: $8
Bagels: $34
CVS: $8 (Funny story – I had to buy pads because I had a period emergency. But then I left the pads in the bathroom at the park! I felt really stupid about this one. But the 13 year old found some pads at the bottom of her bag. I’ll never give her a hard time about not being prepared ever again.)
Kinokuniya Bookstore Haul: $80
Dinner: $64
Boba: $19
TOTAL: $793 – So it wasn’t exactly a cheap day, but I think as a once every six months or so splurge-y day of fun for me and the kids, it felt pretty doable.

All in all, a great day. Full of adventures, but moving at a slow enough pace that I didn’t feel rushed. I don’t know if Broadway Week is a regular thing, but I’m going to keep my eye out next year because it was such a fun, doable day trip for us.

Winter Break 2024-2025: Taiwan and Kuala Lumpur

Happy New Year, everyone!

It’s been a little quiet here lately, I know. We are currently on our way home after a week in Taiwan followed by four days in Kuala Lumpur. The trip has been beautiful, exhilarating, exhausting, eye opening, and full of loved ones. I think I realized on this trip, the most important thing is family.

Here are some highlights, in case I don’t get to write recaps.

There was so much food:

Night Markets in Taiwan:

Temples:

Visiting Family:

Amazing hotel breakfasts:

Such well thought out family bathrooms:

Even a few quiet moments:

And in Kuala Lumpur, iconic sights:

Animal sightings:

Islamic Art:

And even more food:

There were definitely times when I thought we made the wrong choice to come this far, to be in a part of the world so different from home. There were tears and arguments and lots of people being hangry. We’d never travelled so far as a family of five, and I have to say I am so proud of how everyone did. It hasn’t been the most comfortable or relaxing trips- I wouldn’t even call it a “vacation”- but it’s certainly been an adventure.

More soon!

I hope you have had a beautiful New Year!

A Trip to Maine- Summer 2024

We just got back from a trip up to Maine. I’m always so slow to write trip recaps, so here are some highlights…

Eating lots of seafood-

Portland Maine- cobblestone streets

Ferry ride

Historic Mansions

Then on up the coast.

Our home for four days on Swan’s Island, near Acadia National Park:

We went to the beach:

Saw the lighthouse-

Went to the quarry swimming hole.

And generally relaxed and watched many, many, many hours of Start Trek: The Next Generation. There were lazy days, sandy treasures, bug bites, hot tubs, saunas, and beautiful sunsets.

Then we came home, stopping in Jersey City to visit a friend on the way. There were many long days in the car, but also hotel pools and hotel breakfasts and hotel tv, which, let’s be honest, the kids love. The drive home down I95 on a Sunday was hard, and the Husband is a hero for doing all the driving.

And now it’s summer and back to summer camp schedules and swim meets and in a few weeks, a summer opera gig for me. So many things to look forward to this summer- some tedious, and some exciting and some just new rhythms. These little life shifts are sometimes hard for me, but I think it’s good to keep me from getting into mindless ruts. When time opens up or is obligated in different ways, it is a chance to see where the important things fit.

Friday, as we were driving home- a very long car ride on a very long day- literally the longest day- I realized that the year is half over. I wonder if this is just how time goes- 2024 seemed to stretch endlessly before me six months ago and now I can see the shore. (Forgive the clumsy metaphor, but I have been in Maine looking at shores for the past week.). These markers are arbitrary, which seems like both a gift and a burden. A gift of freedom to mark my path however I want, but also a burden to know that I am responsible for navigating myself to that shore. I want this week, amidst feeding the family and driving them places to have some time to think about what the rest of the year can be.

Berkeley/ San Francisco Spring Break 2024 Day 9 and 10: Chinatown, Fisherman’s Wharf, the Emergency Room and home

Finishing out our Spring Break Trip recaps… Because, you know, summer vacation starts next week.

Day 9 of our trip was perhaps the most stereotypical San Francisco Tourist day. I wanted to ride the cable cars and see Chinatown. Fisherman’s Wharf was a close walk from there, so we decided to see that as well. On this day, my brother, sister-in-law, and niece came along and we met up with the Husband’s friend R and my sister-in-law’s mother came for part of the day as well.

We left Berkeley around 9:30am in the morning and got off at Embarcadero where we caught the cable car to Chinatown. I’ve always loved the cable cars – I worked in San Francisco, one of my first stage management gigs in the early 2000s, and from the theatre you could walk a few blocks and catch the cable car which would take me to the apartment where I was staying. There was something so magical about jumping on the cable car and riding with the San Francisco air and hum around me, this very slow and aged method of transport. Also, at the time, that particular line was free. It was all so romantic. The cable cars are no longer free, but they are still really fascinating to ride.

We took the California line to Chinatown where we got off, and slowly meandered through the streets, with their paper lanterns strewn above and steep hills and colourful murals. I stopped in at a wok shop – it was filled with all sorts of kitchen implements that I remember my mom having in our kitchen when I was growing up. Reminding myself that it would be very impractical, I refrained from buying a wok, but I did pick up a ginger grater, just like the one my mom used.

We made a walk through stop at the Fortune Cookie Factory, which was really one room where you could see them making fortune cookies, taking the freshly baked cookie off the mold and quickly folding a slip of paper inside before it hardened. To be honest, I wouldn’t say it’s a “must see” of Chinatown, even though it’s on a lot of lists – it was kind of a cramped, rushed experience and took all of 20 minutes, 15 of which were standing in line.

After the Fortune Cookie Factory, we walked to the San Francisco Cable Car Museum. This museum is housed in the powerhouse and cable car barn, and inside you can see the gears turning, winding the cables through the series of wheels, pulling the cable cars. It was really neat to think about how the cable cars we were just earlier riding on were powered by the machines we were looking at. There was all sorts of displays and artifacts that told the history of cable cars, as well as a collection of antique cable cars. My favorite was the display they had which showed how they detected frays in the cable. It was remarkably low tech – involving sensors that went off when a stray bit of cable filament was detected. I thought this museum was really interesting – definitely recommend it. AND it was free! I love me a free museum.

Just think -those are the very cables that pulled us to Chinatown!

After the cable car museum we decided to go back to Chinatown for lunch and ended up at a Pho restaurant – pho is one of my favorite dishes and this pho was amazing, so flavorful and rich. I also made a quick pit stop at a bakery in Chinatown to pick up some egg tarts, one of the 12 year old’s favorite desserts.

Following lunch, we walked to Fisherman’s Wharf, about a 30 minute walk, though North Beach. Fisherman’s Wharf is definitely touristy and part of the fun of going there is to people watch and soak in the bustling atmosphere. We were (probably) scammed into giving some guy $10, which felt icky to me, but the Husband said that we should think of the fast talker as entertainment, and he was hugely entertaining, with his swagger and confidence. So maybe not worth the whole $10, but at least worth something – it made me think about how maybe I shouldn’t be snobbish about how people decide to work hard for their money – because the guy was clearly working hard and probably not making much money. We also visited the Musee Mechanique, a huge collection of coin operated amusements and games. The place was fascinating – so many games to play and little dioramas that came to life at the drop of a coin – and some not so little dioramas too. Everything was so loud and bling-y and almost overwhelming. We gave the kids $5 each and let them play games until their money ran out.

After about an hour, our money spent, our ears ringing and our minds spinning from all the over stimulation, we decided to walk down the Embarcadero, taking the long way back to the BART station. On the way, we stopped at Pier 39 for ice cream (I got lychee- one of my favorites!) and to see the sea lions.

We got home around 6:15pm, and made pizzas for dinner and finished the evening by watching Mitchells vs. the Machines, which was a lovely movie.

The next day was Easter Sunday. We found a church in Berkeley and went to Mass. It was a lovely modest church and, maybe it was because we went to the 8:00am Mass, the pews were on the empty side. Nonetheless, the service was quite lovely. The homily was centered around the question of “Who will move the boulder?” – meaning we often worry about tasks that seem impossible (who will move the huge boulder from the tomb of Christ so that Mary may see to the body), but perhaps they are not as impossible as we think (the boulder being already moved when they arrive.) I’m not Catholic, not particularly religious, but I do often find things to ponder when I listen to homilies. Afterwards we went to breakfast – at first we tried to go to a local diner, but it was closed, so we ended up at IHOP, which actually was quite nice – we have an off and on family tradition of eating at IHOP on Easter Sunday.

We went back to my brother’s house where we had an Easter Egg hunt. We were on the fence as to whether or not to do Easter eggs, but then decided that the kids would like it, so we bought and filled a bunch of eggs and my sister in law had hid the eggs while we were at church. Now my SIL is Jewish, but fully appreciates the fun of looking for candy in plastic eggs. Even their neighbors came over for a little while.

After the easter egg hunt, we decided to go on a nice little walk around Berkeley. We went to a really tasty Mexican restaurant for lunch – I had tacos and nachos and plantains and horchata.

Then we headed to the middle school, by way of a pretzel store (Squabisch Pretzels, above), to play a game of pick up basketball – kids against grown up. So funny story – my brother was a HUGE basketball fan/player when we were growing up. But, being a short Asian boy, his dreams of playing in the NBA weren’t entirely realistic. When we decided to go shoot hoops, he pulled a pair of basketball shoes out of the attic that must have been at least 15 years old. Anyhow, as we were playing basketball with the kids, he shoe FELL APART! Like the sole came off. Only not all the way because the sole was stitched at the toe. He walked around the rest of the day with his sole flap flap flapping awkwardly. Well that pretty much put an end to the basketball game, so we decided to walk to coffee and Indian Rock Park, where there was a nice rocky scramble. My kids LOVE a rocky scramble. Indian Rock is a popular local spot for urban rock climbers. We saw a couple groups that had brought their own crash pads and were bouldering across the rock faces.

At the summit of the Indian Rock was a spectacular view of Berkeley and Oakland and across the Bay. We hung out there and let the kids play for a little bit, but soon it was time to go home and pack as we were leaving the next morning. I went to rally the kids, taking this photo of the fearless 4 year old before telling her to come down so we could leave.

Then things went south. I turned to look for the other kids, and then I heard a cry. I looked back and couldn’t see the 4 year old. Running over to the rocks, i saw that she had fallen down between two rocks and was crying. She very rarely cries, so I knew she was in trouble, so I reached in a pulled her out, giving her big hugs and cuddles and trying to comfort her as I carried her back to the exit. Then this is where it got scary. Someone, I can’t remember who, but I think the 12 year old started frantically saying, “BLOOD BLOOD BLOOD!!!” It took me a while to register, but there was blood running down my hand, the hand that was cradling the back of the 4 year old’s head. Then my brain kind of just froze.

Things I am grateful for:
1) My brother, who is a physician. Took a look at the gash on the back of the 4 year old’s head, and rinsed it with water and decided that we should go to the children’s hospital and he came with me.
2) All the bystanders who offered help, including:
-the preschool teacher who came up and said, “I just completed my 1st aid training for school. Can I help?”
– the rock climber, who came up and just handed us a big wad of gauze. Okay, I guess it makes sense for people who are engaged in highly dangerous activities to carry gauze with them.
3) The Uber driver who took us there, offered us water and didn’t even blink that we were dripping blood in his car.
4) The Husband and my sister-in-law who got the rest of the kids home and fed them dinner. And the Husband who packed us up to leave while I was at the Hospital.
5) Bluey.
6) Insurance.

So we get to the ER at Oakland Children’s Hospital and check in. The lady at reception was so funny. First of all, a few minutes after we arrived, the power went out – I’m not sure what that was about, but then the generators kicked in. As the lady took my information, I asked how she was, and she said, “It’s Easter and the power keeps going out, so I think I’ve been better.” Then, as she was entering my personal information into the system – I give her my birthday, and she types it in, then looks at me and says, “That’s your birthday? You look good!”
“Thank you,” I say, laughing. “I’m sure you see lots of people in here.”
“I’m not kidding,” she says, “Sometimes people come in and give me their birthday and I’m really surprised.”

We were in the waiting room for about two hours initially. Frankly by the time we got to the ER, the 4 year old was a lot better. “It doesn’t hurt as much anymore,” she said as we entered the hospital. Further proof – Paw Patrol was playing on the TV in the waiting room and as soon as we checked in, she walked over, pulled a chair in front of the TV and was glued to the screen. At some point, after the power went out, the TV turned off, so we switched to watching Bluey on one of our phones.

Finally it was our turn to go back and be seen by the doctor.

So this is one of the great things about having my physician brother with me – Oakland Children’s is a teaching hospital, and the first people we saw was a nurse and a resident. “How are we doing?” one of them asked.
“She fell off a rock and hit her head,” I said.
Then my brother added, “There’s a two centimeter laceration on the base of her cranium. No loss of consciousness. She might need stitches.” Cool. Glad he was with me. The doctors and the nurse made murmurs of agreement. Then they went away to figure out the next steps. Before they went away, however, my brother said, pointing to his shoe (do you remember the broken shoe?), “Do you have scissors? I need to cut this sole off.” And the next thing we knew, this happened:

The resident said the he didn’t want my brother tripping and have to make a second trip to the ER.

And then a little while later, the attending physician came and looked at the wound. And she said, “You know there’s a technique we like to use on the head that is pretty un-invasive where we use the hair to close the wound. I think we should try that.”

People – this is what they did – and it’s probably one of the most amazing things I’ve ever encountered. They take tiny sections of hair on either side of the wound and twist them together tightly so that the wound closes. Then they GLUE THE HAIR TWIST so that it doesn’t untwist. They literally glued my baby girl’s head back together!!!!! Mind blown. And I didn’t need to worry about stiches (when I was five I fell and had to get stitches and there was a lot of screaming involved) or going home with a staple remover or anything. Here’s a picture (warning if you’re not into pictures of wounds, scroll down.):

All patched up and then we called the Husband to come pick us up and we were on our way. The 4 year old was in amazing spirits – I mean she got to watch endless Bluey, what’s not to love? All told, we spent about 3 hours in the emergency room. Which, actually doesn’t feel bad.

And, okay, one other fun fact – in our 12 years of being parents, this was our VERY FIRST emergency room visit. I think that’s pretty good streak. Also – if I had to guess which kid would send us to the emergency room, it would definitely have been this one. The other two kids are pretty risk adverse.

I feel as if the rest of the trip was pretty anti-climactic after that. The next morning we left at 4am for the airport to catch our 6:10am flight. We got to the airport at 4:50am and we still only made our flight by the skin of our teeth – Oakland is a very busy airport and the security lines were long. We seriously thought we were going to miss our flight. But then in the end – our plane pulled out and then sat on the runway and then returned to the gate because of a transponder malfunction and we had to deplane and get another plane two hours later. Which was just as well because we originally would have had an awfully long layover in St. Louis, but as it was our layover was pleasantly long enough to grab lunch (fried ravioli!!!!) and a beer (Schlafly!). Then we were home – we took the shuttle to the hotel where we had parked, got in our car and went home, where, thank goodness for eggs, we had dinner then went to bed.

Whew that was our whole Spring Break Trip! Next year, I’m working over spring break, so if there is a trip, I probably won’t be able to go. I’m really glad we took the time and effort and money to make this trip happen!

Oh and postscript- because of the delay leaving Oakland, Southwest sent each of us $150 towards a future flight. Not as lucrative as how Elisabeth made out on her trip to Barcelona, but it’s enough to make another trip more affordable. So – here is a list of airports that are a non-stop flight from Washington DC – where should we go next?

Albany, NY
Albuquerque, NM
Aruba, Aruba
Atlanta, GA
Austin, TX
Belize
Birmingham, AL
Boston, MA
Buffalo, NY
Cancun, Mexico
Charleston SC
Charlotte, NC
Chicago, IL
Cincinnati, OH
Cleveland, OH
Colorado Springs, CO
Columbus, OH
Dallas, TX
Denver, CO
Destin/Fort Walton Beach, FL
Detroit, MI
Fort Lauderdale, FL
Fort Myers, FL
Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands
Grand Rapids, MI
Greenville, SC
Hartford, CT
Houston, TX
Indianapolis, IN
Jackson, MS
Jacksonville, FL
Kansas City, MO
Las Vegas, NV
Liberia, Costa Rica
Long Island, NY
Los Angeles, CA
Los Cabos, MX
Louisville, KY
Manchester, NH
Memphis, TN
Miami, FL
Milwaukee, WI
Minneapolis, MN
Montego Bay, Jamaica
Myrtle Beach, SC
Nashville, TN
Nassau, Bahamas,
New Orleans, LA
Norfolk, VA
Oakland, CA
Omaha, NE
Orlando, FL
Panama City Beach, FL
Phoenix, ZA
Pittsburgh, PA
Portland, ME
Providence, RI
Turks and Caicos
Punta Cana, DO
Raleigh/Durham, NC
Richmond, VA
Rochester, NY
Salt Lake City, UT
San Antoni0, TX
San Diego, CA
San Jose, Costa Rica
San Juan, PR
Sarasota, FL
Savannah, Hilton Head, GA
Seattle, WA
St. Louis, MO
Syracuse, NY
Tampa, FL
West Palm Beach, FL

Berkeley/ San Francisco Spring Break 2024 Day 7 and 8: California Academy of Sciences and Rock Climbing and Good Food

Continuing on recaps from our Spring Break trip to Berkeley and San Francisco….

One of our other goals for visiting the Bay Area was to visit our friend R who lived in San Francisco. He used to live in DC, but moved to San Francisco five years ago or so. Even though R doesn’t have kids, he’s always really liked hanging out with ours and whenever we see him, he always suggests family friendly excursions, which I appreciate. This times, he suggested that we visit the California Academy of Sciences, an aquarium, planetarium, and natural history museum all rolled into one. We took the BART and then the bus from Berkeley there and met our friend outside the museum. There was so much to see there, but here are some highlights –

Stingray tank:

There was a great outdoor space where on one end there was a huge water table set up and a station with lots of corks and sticks and you could experiment and build a boat/raft to send down the waterways of the water table. On the other end was a play area with huge insects and sticks and structures to climb. We liked this part of the museum so much we came here twice!

There was a whole exhibit about colour in nature and all the ways that animals and plants use colour. It reminded me of the rainbow game I play with the kids, and would surely have been cheating to play it in the exhibit. I particularly liked this display on beetles, and this other case on sea life. What a beautifully vibrant colour!

Lunch – probably the best meal I’ve had in a museum – roasted brussel sprouts and tortilla soup:

The Rainforest Exhibit, steamy and warm and full of lush greenery, butterflies, and birds:

Then we wandered down into the Aquarium where there were Jellyfish –

Sea horses – so cool because I had never seen a seahorse before:

And I did play the rainbow game with the kids while at the aquarium:

That evening we headed back to Berkeley for dinner, while the Husband stayed in San Francisco to go to dinner with his friend. My brother’s family, my parents, and the kids and I ended up at this very tasty Thai restaurant called The Funky Elephant. The restaurant was teeny tiny and we ended up sitting outside, even thought the evening had gotten chilly. The restaurant rolled out some heat lamps for us, whic helped a little. The food was unlike any other Thai restaurant we’d ever been to – spicy and flavorful and not too sweet. We ordered lots of food to share and I particularly liked the crispy rice salad with tofu and the Fried Brussel sprouts. (Yes! I had fried brussel sprouts TWICE in one day! That was exciting.) And for dessert we all shared a mango sticky rice, which is one of my favorite deserts ever. Highly recommend this place if you are ever in Berkeley.

95% of the time, when I see mango and sticky rice on a menu, I will order it.

Incidentally, the Husband texted while I was at dinner and said that his friend had an extra ticket to the Bruce Springsteen concert and would it be okay if he went? Of course I said yes! I myself have never been to any kind of rock concert – and honestly, I don’t know if it’s my thing what with the noise and crowds – but I was super excited that he got a chance to go.

The next day was Friday, and my brother took the day off to hang out with us. We had planned to go hiking, but it turned out to be a rainy rainy day, so he suggested that we go to the rock climbing gym instead. Going to a climbing gym as a family had long been on my “Family Fun Wish List”, so I was excited to go. The Husband did not go with us – he wasn’t interested in climbing and wanted to have a day to himself instead. He told me afterwards that he had gone to Telegraph Road, which is one of the major streets in Berkeley, and had just walked around. I had told him that he should check out Amoeba Records. Twenty years ago, I lived in Berkeley while working one of my first stage management gigs at an outdoor Shakespeare company in Marin County. On my days off, I would spend a lot of time at Amoeba Records and also Rasputin Records. Anyhow, the Husband found the two music stores and we had this text exchange:

It’s funny in our age of streaming media to think the huge percentage of my paycheck that I poured into record stores, only to now not really have any convenient way to play those CDs.

Meanwhile, back to the climbing gym … My brother is super active and outdoorsy- he is the guy that goes on five day back country camping trips, and goes to the climbing gym at least twice a week. He had child sized climbing belts and shoes for the two little kids to wear- gear that used to belong to my niece but she had outgrown. He had actually passed the climbing gear along to his neighbor’s kids, so he called them to see if we could borrow it back. The climbing gym, Pacific Pipe in Oakland, was a huge facility. I think it’s one of the biggest in the area, and also one of the oldest. We bought day passes and rented shoes for the 12 year old and me.

We started out with some bouldering:

Then we moved on to top roping – my brother belayed. This gym had a space dedicated for kids to top rope, but it was under construction – I think they were changing up the routes – so the kids just climbed on the easier grown up walls. I was really impressed by how well the kids did and how high they went, and how even though there were many handholds, they tried really hard to follow the colour of each route, even though it wasn’t always easy. I didn’t feel like renting a climbing belt, so I just stuck to bouldering myself. It is SUCH a workout.

For lunch we went to Ikea then the kids wanted to climb some more, so we went back to the gym for another hour or so.

Around 3pm, we headed home. The two little kids and I walked down with my sister in law to pick up my niece from school.

Since it was a Friday in Lent, we wanted some tasty vegetarian food for dinner, so my brother took us to Vik’s Chaat. I had come here years ago, when it was just a restaurant in a big warehouse. Now it also has an Indian grocery story attached, which was very exciting to me and I made a note to check it out later.

We ordered lassis; the kids had mango, and I had a rose lassi. I don’t often see rose lassis on a menu, but it is one of my favorite lassi flavors so I always order it when I see it.

Dinner itself was very tasty, but somewhat of an ordeal. Vik’s is not like Indian restaurants at home where you order a bunch of dishes – basically everything come in a Thali so you get whatever your order – saag panner, dosa, samosa, along with chutney, dal, and rice. The idea being that your order is your meal. Well one child, likes to eat family style and try a bunch of different things, and also wasn’t familiar with the menu, and thought the cheese dosa would have paneer in it, but it just had American Cheese. And said child was probably hangry and tired and then had a meltdown in the restaurant and had to be taken aside to calm down. The whole thing made me realize how, even in America there are places that can be bewilderingly different from what we are used to in our own city.

After dinner, I checked out the grocery store. Because I didn’t want to bring a lot of things home with us in our suitcases, I exerted great restraint and did not buy all the dals and spices and snacks that were there. I did, however buy a 16 oz container of cardamom pods and 16 oz cloves and a bag of Assam tea because it all was about 1/2 the price as what I usually get at home, and I can’t usually find Assam tea at home. It is soon going to be iced chai season and I am really excited.

After that we headed home, the kids went to bed, I chatted a little with my brother and sister-in-law before going back to our apartment and turning in for the night. We had two more days left in our trip and they would be filled with planned and unplanned adventures.