Oops, I did it again

Last Sunday I was talking to a running friend about another running friend's injury. She said he was taking acupuncture. So I asked where, in his legs or his back. At least that's what I thought I asked. Turned out I asked if he was injured in his legs or in his fish.

Sakuna = Fish
Senaka = Back

It's always good for a laugh anyway.

Okay, down to business. This afternoon we fly out to Minneapolis and arrive there this morning. Christmas with the Schmidts this week, fly to Houston on Saturday and then on a cruise with the Zellers next week.

Happy Holidays!

Egg Nog

It turns out you can make a rather tasty egg nog in your own kitchen. Who'd have thought? I guess some of you guys that's who. I figured it grew on trees. Anyway my lovely wife whipped me up a batch and I've just about drunk it all down. One question, any problems with those raw eggs? (See poll.) As noted in the comments, it happens frequently over here but hey, they have chicken sushi too so raw foods don't seem to bother anybody.

Woo hoo, we get our Christmas this Saturday. Woo hoo!

Poll Winners and Christmas

Well, Cole's favorite thing was his new basketball shoes. Congratulations to those who picked it and thank you to all who voted. I'll get a new poll up soon. Cole's shoes have "JORDNN" written on them but I think that was a typo. I really think they are the authentic brand. Kaori doesn't get a poll because she picked about five favorites, the Great Wall, the alpine slide, the rickshaw ride, the hotel room etc.

I must vent. Here it is the Christmas season and there is no egg nog at our grocery store. I mean it must be a top holiday seller on the strength of me alone. It is Christmas season right? We are going to parties, the kids' schools have had holiday shows and gatherings. I'm hearing the music and seeing the trees, so where's the nog?

Beijing, China

Beijing was a little different from the big, modern city that I expected. I guess Shanghai, China's business and financial center, is more like that. Beijing is the older, more cultural capital. Not so many large, modern buildings. A little bit older, a little bit dirtier. Still very bustling and full of people, bicycles and cars. Air quality was poor. Very poor. There was a constant haze over the city. Maybe it was my imagination but it seemed like when you went outside you could taste the air pollution.

We had a great time in Beijing. The first day we went to Tienanmen Square, evidently the largest city square in the world (whatever that means). There was a large monument there to the common worker, in contrast to the history of the square. Adjacent to the square was the Forbidden City, the ruling place for emperors. We were surprised by the sheer expanse of the city inside its walls. It seemed to go on and on and on. The kids thought so too, but not in a good way. Later our guide and driver took us to a little out of the way restaurant frequented by the locals. Very good. We decided that American Chinese food is closer to Chinese Chinese food than Japanese Chinese food. Got that? Later that day we went to the Summer Palace; the summer vacation home for emperors. This was one of our favorite places, nicely settled along a lake. Very scenic, very peaceful. Here we were able to walk along the longest corridor in the world (whatever that means).

The next day, Thanksgiving, we went to the Great Wall. Obviously everybody knows how big it is and can look up the dimensions. However you can't really appreciate its size without seeing it in person. At any one spot it isn't an overly large building, it's just that it goes to the horizon and beyond. Over 3,000 miles beyond. It was built hundreds of years ago on hilltops and rocky terrain. For its time, and ours, a truly impressive feat. We rode a gondola up to the top and walked along it for about an hour. To get down from the mountain we took an alpine slide. Now that's what I was talking about when I said there must be a more efficient way to get down from Mt. Fuji (see earlier post). After that we dined near the Wall. If this can be considered our Thanksgiving meal then I guess we ate what the locals eat. However for dinner after we got back from the Wall we ate at an international buffet. It would have been a very nice meal with a lot of different foods to taste and enjoy. But since we only had 30 minutes to eat before we went to a Chinese acrobatic show, it was a harried and frazzled experience. At the buffet we ate American, Italian, Chinese and Japanese. So if that was our Thanksgiving meal then it was an international affair.

The acrobatic show was fun to watch. It is amazing to see what the human body can do and odd ways it can bend.

On our last day we went to a Lama temple and the Temple of Heaven. The Lama temple is a temple for the Buddhist religion. The Temple of Heaven is a place to pray for bountiful harvests. After those we took a rickshaw ride. The ride kind of had a strange start as we went up and down some unattractive back alleys. Our drivers kept explaining where emperors lived or their sisters etc. We ended up going through old Peking and around a lake. Then we had lunch and went to the Silk Market which is actually somewhat like a mall but a little smaller and a lot more crowded. The best and worst part of shopping there is negotiating the price. At one store we bought two pairs of shoes, one for Cole and one for Robyn and the starting price was about $230 for both. That's crazy talk! We got them for about $26 total.

We did go to a silk manufacturing store (separate place) that was interesting. We bought a silk comforter there. Nice.

Our hotel was great. Our room had a nice sitting area, large flat screen TV and was equipped with a computer. The only problem was the bathroom as one whole wall was glass with a glass door. We called it the fishbowl because everybody could see in. Click here to see pictures of our trip.

Beijing for Thanksgiving

Next Tuesday we will be flying to Beijing for our Thanksgiving vacation. Here is our itinerary as provided by our tour guide Oliver An:
1. 21st November
Visit the Tienanmen square and the forbidden city. Afternoon visit the Summer palace.
2. 22nd November
Visit the mutianyu great wall (cable car up and slide down).
Evening visit the acrobatic show (children like it very much.) I would be make the reservation for your family.
3. 23rd November
Visit the lama temple and Old Peking (by rickshaw).
Afternoon visit temple of heaven and local shopping.
A lot of expatriates use this guy to arrange outings when travelling to China. I'm sure this is the standard package of outings that he uses. Mostly I'm looking forward to seeing the Great Wall. I think it will be impressive.

That daughter of mine is a silly one. I was eating warm apple crisp with ice cream and offered her a taste and she recoiled like I was offering her the bubonic plague. Then I was chopping onions and peppers for supper and she walked up and said "I want to try one" and grabbed a slice of onion and started eating it. That is just wrong on so many levels. You veggie eaters have to tell me, is it just me or is this strange?

Trick or Treat

Happy Halloween! So I'm a day late here but still on time for those of you back home. Unless of course you read this in the morning, then I'm a day late again. Well I could hardly take Halloween pictures before Halloween could I? There we are, all decked out and ready to score some candy. Cole is so funny. Whenever somebody would say help yourself, take a handful, he would just say "I only want one." Kaori would take a couple but neither grabbed as much as I did. Two-fisted trick or treating baby!

I thought I should mention this article because of the obvious social impact it could have. It is so transparent that the "study" was done by some sort of fruit and vegetable lobby trying to raise the attractiveness of their tired and fibrous products. I say "Go ahead, eat the bacon!" I mean, really, when was the last time you saw a fat bacon eating animal. Wait...what? Oh nevermind...

AZ

A Weekend in Saipan

We kind of talked about it this month. We sort of thought about it. But we really didn't do anything about it until last Wednesday. Then we looked into flights and hotels. On Thursday and Friday we made some reservations and on Friday night we flew to Guam, got in at 1:30 AM Saturday morning; took the 2:30 AM flight to Saipan and were asleep at our hotel by 4:30 Saturday morning. We stayed at the Saipan World Resort. Decidedly only 3 stars in spite of it's 5 star billing. The water park however made up for those other two stars. We had a great time on the beach, lazy river, water slides and wave pool. We even took a turn in the spinning cauldron of death (my name, not theirs (see picture of Cole below)), which reminded me of those yellow vortex things that make donating coins fun. They even had a water slide that could go up (picture of Cole and me). It was a great getaway for a three day weekend and I heartily recommend going to Saipan for all my readers.

Last week before we went Cole was home from school for two days because he was sick. On Thursday night when we were putting the kids to bed Robyn made Kaori promise she wouldn't catch a cold so that we could go on vacation. A few minutes later Kaori called Robyn back into the room and said that even though she promised she was afraid she already had a cold. Robyn had to tell her that it was okay and it wasn't her fault and she wouldn't ruin our vacation. And she didn't.

The next what now?

Shingo = stoplight
Ringo = apple
Last weekend I told the taxi driver that he could let us off at the next apple. Two plus years in and I'm still making these mistakes. And that's not counting the ones that I don't know I made. At least the driver was polite enough not to laugh at me, unlike my family (and readers?).

This evening Kaori took a drink of milk, started coughing a bit and then said in a raspy voice "smooth." I shared a good laugh with her about that one. She said she was laughing so hard it made her have to go poopy.

An electronic meltdown

In the past couple weeks each of the following has stopped working:
Television
Cordless phone
VCR/DVD player
Computer

I suppose that since the television is 20+ years old, it was about time for it to go. Robyn has wanted to get a new one but I keep telling her that it has lasted this long, we have to see it through to the end. And so it seems the end has finally come. Now we are looking at some large screen, flat panel, high definition TV's. But here's the dilemma, do we buy now or wait until we move back to the U.S.? We do have an extra small TV we can use. Of course here in Japan they have excellent electronics and I believe the price wouldn't be too much different. Still, even with the assurances of the salespeople, I would feel more comfortable buying a product made specifically for the U.S. market. Also there's the possibility of it getting damaged/lost when we move back to the U.S. I think we are leaning toward waiting to buy a replacement.

For the cordless phone I just had to replace the battery; no big deal, just $15. That's a crisis I can handle.

With the VCR and computer a funny thing happened (funny as in peculiar and ginormously inconvenient, not funny ha ha). We had a power outage a few days ago and since then the VCR has started working again. I don't know why. I do have to reset the clock to get that 12:00 AM to stop flashing but again, that's a crisis I can handle. However the same power outage caused the computer to crash and stop working entirely. All I get out of it is an incessantly flashing green light. Likely it will never run again. I've spent a little time at an internet cafe (better than I expected) but now I have our old computer (children's play computer) set up with internet access. Of course it is dial up access and a much older computer; making for much slower operation all the way around. Also the "m" button and space bar don't work unless you practically stand on the buttons. With my large feet I would end up mashing the whole keyboard and typing 15 letters and numbers that I didn't really want. Finally I had a light bulb in my head and plugged in our old keyboard. It works even with two different brands of computers. How nice. Our solution to this conundrum is to buy a new computer and to do it now.

Africa: A few loose ends

A final post about my trip to Africa, just to add a few things that I forgot.

1. I missed one of the dangers in visiting the Congo; that being flying. These are a couple excerpts from this article:

"Congo has one of the worst air safety records in the world. The country's safety regulations are notoriously lax and the old and ill-maintained planes are constantly being overloaded. "

"The fiery crash underscored the dangers of flying in Congo, which has experienced more fatal air crashes than any other African country since 1945, according to the Aviation Safety Network. The turboprop belonged to the Congolese company Africa One, which has been barred from flying in the European Union because of safety concerns."

2. Life expectancy in the Congo is only 44 years. The man that I previously mentioned, the one that gets malaria every month or two, is 48 years old. He jokes that he is living on borrowed time.

3. The guys who made this trip two years ago saw a noticeable difference in the economy/activity of Kolwezi. A large copper mine has reopened, increasing the population (both good and bad) and investment from external sources.

4. WorldVision has completed a school and is in the midst of a water project adding 16 (I think) wells that will bring safe drinking water to thousands. Safe drinking water is a key to their healthy living.

5. In the Congo they speak Swahili, French and a few lesser used languages. I was surprised at how well my French came back to me and at how much I was able to use it. That was kind of fun.

6. After the bungee jump I guess I still didn't have enough. I did a tandem gorge swing. A cable was attached to us and to another cable off in the distance. We jumped off the bridge and swung down and in a large arc and eventually settled at the bottom. This was not so good an idea. I wrenched my neck and back and Jeff felt like he broke a rib but was likely just a pull or tear of some cartilage or something. Next time, I'll just stick with the bungee.

7. On the safari we also saw warthogs. Among all the animals that is the most appropriate name. They are nasty looking hoggy things, not cute like Pumbaa from the Lion King. Speaking of which, they really do say Hakuna Matata in Swahili.

Finally, pictures are up. Click here. As always, thanks for the readership, votes and comments.

AZ

On to the Safari!

After we left the Democratic Republic of the Congo, we flew into Livingstone (I presume), Zambia. As we flew into the town, our pilot flew over Victoria Falls (underlined words can be clicked on you know). The falls are a mile wide, bigger than Niagara. The bridge in the foreground of the picture is the one we bungeed off. The whitewater just to the right of the bridge was where we put our raft into the river. We got to the resort late Thursday afternoon, walked out of the lodge to the riverbank and promptly saw a hippopotamus in the water. He would periodically go under and surface, occasionally gaping his jaws to an impressive distance. During the night he (or she or one of his/her podmates) would come up on to land and munch on the grass. He felt safe under cover of the darkness and so did we as we sat and watched him feed.


Friday was an exciting and intense day. We decided to do a half day of white water rafting on the Zambezi River in the morning followed by lunch and bungee jumping in the afternoon. Hmm, seems like and odd order to do those last two things but let me preface by saying nobody lost their lunch, breakfast or supper during the whole day. For the rafting we made the request (and mistake?) to the guide, Vinnie, that we wanted to flip the raft at least 3 or 4 times. Mission accomplished. For some reason Vinnie took us through several maneuvers prior to even starting, like how to paddle, how to float, saving each other etc. No other raft did these. Either he recognized the skill level or he knew what he was going to take us through. Turns out the other rafts didn't need the practice. One group we talked to got in the "down" position for every rapid (tucked down in the raft; we did this once) and took the easy way through. Vinnie took us right into the teeth of the rapids every time but if you ask me, we had a lot more fun.

The bungee jumping was an incredible experience but it is one of those things (like running a marathon) that get better as you get farther from the event. I was very mentally prepared for the jump and after the 5 second countdown I leaped into the void. Several of the guys said I was calm and focused and didn't look like I had a problem with it at all. Like I said, I was ready. Unfortunately I can't really describe the feeling for you. You can see the pictures but if you want to know what it is like, you'll have to do it yourself (like running a marathon). At the time I felt that I had done it and I could say that and I wouldn't need to do it again. Now though, maybe I would if the opportunity presented itself. Unfortunately, I don't think the setting would be nearly as scenic the next time. Best part = rush of adrenaline as you begin the free fall. Worst part = hanging upside down and spinning with the blood rushing to my head as I waited for them to pull me up.

The next day most of us went to a large game park in Botswana. However some stayed to go fishing for tigerfish. I would rather keep my fingers so I didn't fish. On the safari we saw all of the following and more:

Herd of elephants (maybe about 200)

Hippos

Crocodiles

Antelope type animals: Sable antelope; Kudu; Springbok (I may be forgetting one or two)

Cape Buffalo

Zebra

Giraffes

Monitor Lizard

Lions.

It was pretty cool seeing them in their natural habitat. Proof of this were the animal carcasses that we came upon.

Best Memories of Africa

My best and strongest memories of Africa are the people. In spite of the conditions that they live in, they all seem quite happy and are very strong in their faith. Also, the energy, enthusiasm and sincerity of their gratitude was overwhelming. First of all, visits for sponsored children are understandably rare. So when it does happen it is like five years of Christmas and birthdays all wrapped in one. I'm sure they get more soccer balls, clothes, dolls, toothbrushes, candy, balloons, etc on this one day than they have ever seen before in their lives. The entire family dresses up in their Sunday best (in contrast to our t-shirts) and the whole neighborhood appears around the house. In gratitude and any celebration/happiness they let out an infectious ululation that spreads throughout the crowd. The only way that I can describe it is how a young boy would flutter his hand over his mouth while emitting a war cry when playing "cowboys and indians". They do this with such fervor that it is difficult not to feel their gratitude. I kept thinking that it would be great if we had something in the U.S. that was similar to this but then I realized that would make their celebration less memorable so I was glad there isn't.

While many of the children were shy, the parents (and especially the aunts) were not. They would openly welcome and hug us and with each visit, offer up a prayer for us and for us to remember and pray for them. Can you imagine enthusiastically sharing your child with some stranger from a faraway land? It sounds quite odd for us but they did it willingly and happily. Their whole mood was not one of being beaten down and needy but one of welcoming and gratitude. It was inspiring to experience.

I must say that the singing and harmonies were incredible to listen to. We went to a worship service put on by a few churches that lasted for 3 hours but amazingly enough it didn't seem like it at all. While the electricity buzzed in and out, there were 4 choruses that took turns performing. The dancing, music and especially singing were fantastic to experience. While one chorus would be getting to the climax of their piece the others would join in and send up their ululations of celebration.

One final memory was of a soccer game that was arranged between us and a group of boys, probably 13-15 years old. While we took the lead early to gain some respect (a dramatic diving header by yours truly) we ended up losing in the end, 3-1. Appropriately so. This game is such a good memory because of how much it meant to the town. It was actually broadcast on the radio. When the game finally ended the crowd rushed the field and we all ended up chanting "Kolwezi! Kolwezi!" and doing their cry of celebration. There were hundreds of kids surrounding us all wanting to touch us, slap hands or just get our attention. Must have been what it felt like when the Packers won the Super Bowl.

Below is a picture of the soccer teams and a typical house. I promise more pictures as soon as I get some more from the other guys. Next up, more about our safari and bungee jumping(!?!).