Kandy, Sri Lank

After a stinky 4 hour plane ride from Bangkok we arrived in Colombo, Sri Lanka, around 11:00pm. We were met by our driver who drove us the 3 hours into Kandy. If I hadn't had 3 + years training on the crazy streets in Taipei, I would've been extremely uncomfortable and scared on that drive. Thankfully, although they have their own brand of crazy, I could at least see that there was a flow to the madness. 

The name of the game was passing, even on curvy two lane roads. The center line is used as a 3rd passing lane, which is only a real problem when a car going both directions is trying to pass at the same time, then it becomes 4 lanes. They use their horns and lights a lot to communicate. But watch out people and animals on the shoulder walking along, if extra space is needed, that is where the cars and trucks default to make space. Okay, I hear it even as I type it. The driving was crazy.

We arrived around 3am to a humble little hotel called the Nature Walk, and promptly went to bed. Good thing I didn't see what the old pillow I'd slept on looked like until the morning, wow! 

We awoke in the morning to visitors, monkeys! They stole some coconut lights out of Carrie and Ross's open window, took it up on the roof and when it was discovered they were not food, they were carelessly chucked to the ground. These guys are sneaky!

Once Nathan heard this he put out some bait for the monkeys and they were outside our room in moments. The one above even tried to come in, I quickly shut the doors but Nathan kept tapping on the window and the monkey totally lunged at Nathan and scared the crud out of him. We had a pretty good laugh.

Though I can never quite forget that this is what their fangs look like. Monkeys are much cooler from a distance.

Our first order of business was the famous Temple of the Tooth, supposedly housing one of Buddha's teeth. Millions from India and Sri Lanka come to see it each year. It was a holiday the day we went through so there were families everywhere. All the families we observed had a mother and father, many little children, lot's of babies, often a grandparent or two. I never saw one stroller the entire trip, they hold their little ones where ever they go. All were dressed humbly but modestly (at the temple, many were in white), the 3 guys and I even had to put on sarees because our shorts didn't go well below our knees.

I liked this, you tie pieces of cloth around and say prayers for mothers and children.

Brandie and I out in the courtyard around the original temple structure. The wood carvings were very intricate and ornate.

In another area we observed monks leading worshippers in prayer, they all ran the same string through their hands as they prayed. 

My most favorite part of the trip was seeing these humble, beautiful people. Especially the children. You've never seen so many adorable babies in your life. They have lot's of black hair, lovely olive skin and these big eyes outlined with the longest eye lashes you've ever seen.

I did have the epiphany that the way I was feeling about their beautiful children is how the Chinese must feel about my children. I became a happy hypocrite by asking to take a picture or two of some irresistible babies. I love this one of this grandma and her granddaughter. She was very friendly with us and an understandably proud grandmama.

The grounds of the temple were quite large and the views were picturesque. This picture was where I had my first, I can't believe I'm in Sri Lanka, moment. Not something even a few years ago I would've ever thought I'd say.

Ross, Carrie, Me, Nathan, Brandie, and Jeremiah at the temple.

Leaving the temple we ran into a group of sweet school children, we were giving em all high 5's on our way out, and they were trying out their english on us.

This was our view from the little place where we ate lunch. A rain storm passed through and we could actually see the curtain of rain moving toward us. It passed fairly quickly, revealing this beautiful view.

I really love this picture. I love the colors and the bikes and the old man with the white hair sitting by his wheel. Guess what that big wheel is for? Sharpening knives and tools, who would've guessed?

Sri Lanka has access to many different kinds of beautiful woods and we went to a wood carving shop and spent quite a bit of time watching and later looking through the showroom of all they had. I could've spent a lot of time (and $!) in that place. (We did get a beautiful souvenir, when it arrives I will post about it.)

Ross, Nathan, Jeremiah

But we had heard so much about the cheap shopping in Kandy, and our driver wasn't showing us even after we'd repeatedly asked. As we were walking down the street after being taken to yet another expensive tourist showroom, a humble looking man comes up to us girls and says, "You know your driver won't take you to the cheap market because he doesn't get a commission there. The market is right there around the corner, and it closes at 5pm. Here, I'll show you."
And so began our first of several times being hustled. Thankfully we were never taken for more than a few dollars, but our experience in the "market" is one to be remembered.

The humble man and his "brother" (pictured above) were hurrying us through this market, talking a million miles a minute and going with us into shops and bossing the shop people around. We started to get suspicious when they would say things like, "The shops are closing and they won't open up again for a week!" then, "Tell them!" they would say to the shop keepers and these poor shop keepers would look at us and reluctantly agree.
They would do anything to get us to buy something, claiming loudly all along that they would get nothing for their efforts and were just trying to help us. They showed me a nice brand of shorts that were several sizes too big so I said no thank you. The "brother" then grabs the shorts, wraps the waist of the shorts around my neck and claims, No! See, they will fit perfectly! We all had a pretty good laugh about that.

Carrie bought a "leather" purse she was pretty happy about, whether or not it was real leather. But on our trip home when the shoe polish-like coating started rubbing off all over her white pants, ruining them, we had to laugh at ourselves, lest the hustler "brothers" get the last laugh. 

After we escaped the market that was closing right that very minute! (ha!) we headed to a traditional dance performance that we'd read about online. Ummm, the costumes were beautiful but the dancers were terrible! In any given picture each dancer will be doing a different phase of the same step, or a different one altogether. Seriously, they were really quite bad. But the costumes were cool. 

For dinner we went to a place we'd read online that we couldn't miss: Helga's. I was not expecting what we walked in to. The place looked like a hoarder had started decorating and a mentally unwell friend, perhaps, had been given permission to paint the walls. It was indescribable. I put the above picture in so you could see the crazy, all over on the walls, hanging down everywhere, even the dishes on the table were random and strange. 

Check out the huge candles (below), you may have to enlarge the picture to see well. These candles must have taken years to create, just drippings over drippings for years, the bottom getting all dusty, gray and gross. But perfect for a haunted house... or Helga's. 

It took over an hour for our dinner to be made. After we got over the initial, WTHeck of the place, and as we waited for our food, we set up the camera to take some pictures, leaving a digital trail of evidencein case we all disappeared...

The thing that has to be said, as most of the online reviews agreed, Helga's was in fact a place you just had to see for yourself. And also, the food was shockingly, unbelievably good.

20 hours in Bangkok

On our way to Sri Lanka, we had a one day stop over in Bangkok, Thailand. We made the most of our short time there. We landed at 11pm Sunday night and straight away Nathan took the Stathams and Carrie to the suit shop where he has had suits made before so that they could get to work on suits for Jeremiah and maybe one for Carrie too. I made like a middle aged woman and went to bed. 

 The next morning we were up and on the road by 8 am, headed to the floating farmers market.

 On our drive to the market we saw the craziest truck carrying pallets of water, but it was this small little truck and the water went clear off the back by several meters, with a clearance that couldn't have been more than a few inches. It was insane! It seemed like the weight of the water would have tipped the front of that little truck off of the ground. Crazy.

 It was down pouring most of the day but we didn't mind. We hopped in a boat and they took us through all of the narrow waterways to the market. Peoples homes were all along the waterway, we saw women sitting in the water, wrapped in colorful cloth, bathing in the muddy, dirty water. I imagine they don't appreciate the endless stream of tourists that go by all day every day.

 According to Ross and Carrie, the market has changed extensively over the last decade or so. It is less cool and quaint and more of a tourist trap. But we enjoyed floating past all of the the over priced collectables anyway.

 We bought bananas from this lady, and found another boat of ladies selling MANGO STICKY RICE!!! There are few foods I get more excited about, actually none that I can think of. Mango sticky rice is a sweet and savory treat that leaves your mouth watering at the mere thought of it.

 We went out to some temple, I was very into it, you can tell by how I didn't even catch the name.

 After several hours on the hard boat seats, being rained on and bombarded by each and every person selling their wares, we were ready to head back to Bangkok for final fittings for those having suits made, and lunch for all.

 At the end of Avengers Tony Stark keeps talking about how they need to try some amazing Shawarma and the show ends with them sitting in the diner, silently eating Shawarma. So when Nathan claimed they had just eaten the most amazing Shawarma and I had to try, I was still skeptical. I took one tentative bite however, and was blown away. It was so delicious. Nathan didn't bother trying to get his back (and risk losing an arm), he just went and ordered several more. Shawarma, who knew?!

Carrie, Brandie and I at the airport before we head out to SRI LANKA!!!!!

Torko Gorge Marathon

8 weeks before the marathon I found out I would have a babysitter and for the first time it would be possible for me to run. Of course this was also the year the Toroko Gorge Marathon did away with the 5k. The next option is the half marathon, and yadda yadda yadda, suddenly I was very behind in training for my first half marathon. A whole group of us from church and the community were training together, at least the crazy mountain run on Wed. and our Sat. morning long runs. It was wonderful to do it with friends.  

It was surprisingly difficult for both Nathan (training for the marathon) and I to get all of our runs in. It really is such an astounding time commitment. And then I was in the car accident and both Brandie and I struggled with running after our necks were injured. I can now testify to you of the insane ways ones neck and shoulders can completely tighten up and pull while you're running. We both wondered if we'd even be able to continue training. It was rough going. Add to that how I somehow got the flu not once, but TWICE, and my true training time was about 4 weeks. I never had the chance to do a longer run than 8 miles. And I didn't run once in the 12 days before the race. It really felt like everything was against me. 

Not to mention that I felt Nathan's race trumped mine, he prepared so much this year and I really wanted him to have his best race. 

Cut to the night before the race, we are at Silks Place having dinner. I'm supposed to be very conscious of what I eat and carb loading, but our kids have inhaled their dinner and are now being obnoxious so I take them back to the room and get them settled watching a movie. I go back to try and have a proper meal when Kenna runs in; Kohen has barfed. Awesome. Mere hours before the race and I suddenly don't know if I'm even going to get to run it. If he continued to be sick I couldn't leave him.

4am comes bright and early... well, at least early. Blessedly, Kohen was feeling better and so we headed down to the race with the Stathams.

Jeremiah was brilliant and brought a camping Jet Boil and made us oatmeal before the race. We stretched and had fun watching our fellow Asian runners do their gyrations and "stretches" before making our way down to the starting line. 

Here we are, moments before the race started. Nathan was so sweet with me through the whole training process. He was so encouraging and so proud of every small accomplishment I made. This was pretty much the last I saw of him at the race though, because the guy runs about twice as fast as I do! We started towards the back of the pack so I was able to pass tons of people, thousands actually. That part felt good.

The race starts with a mostly flat 4 miles, before turning up into the gorge where you run steadily up hill for the next 4.5 miles and then the 1/2 and Full marathoners part ways, the halfers turn and run down hill for their final 4.6 miles, while the Full continue up the gorge for many more miles.  

The scenery is absolutely breathtaking. It was a wonderful distraction for me.

And so was this guy. Can you believe I found him for the 3rd time, out of thousands of people? I recognized him from his shirt and I had to run SO hard to catch him because he was way up ahead of me. Then I had to run backwards to try and get this picture. It is an absolute marathon miracle!!!!

This is just one of many views we had, but to give you some spacial relativity, on the right side of the pic about half way down there is a faint horizontal white line. That is the road we ran, and you may have to enlarge to see but there are tiny runners on that road. The gorge walls vault up to incredible heights.

I ran by myself, did my own thing and felt really good until the last few miles once we had turned down hill. It happens to many of the runners, mostly those of us unprepared, but your muscles begin to seize up on you . They are not happy with the sudden downhill change. But I would just wait for a cramp to pass and then run hard again until another came on. It was painful but I knew I could do it. I came in a solid 15 minutes before my goal and I felt pretty good about that. It is a very hard course so I was proud of myself for even taking it on.

Here are my girls, Carrie, Brandie and I at the finish line with our medals. It was Brandie and I's first 1/2 marathon but Carrie is an old pro at these races. We all met or exceeded our personal goals for the race. Way to go girls!

Once I finished I began the wait for Nathan. The last 1/2 mile or so of the race is through this tunnel and not only is it difficult mentally to not be able to see that light at the end of the tunnel, it is difficult for those of us waiting for some one to come out of the tunnel. Then it started to downpour and everyone wanted to be in the tunnel!

After 3 tries Nathan has finally conquered the Toroko Gorge Marathon, meaning he has a respectable time he can live with. He finished first in our group of friends and I was so proud of him I could hardly stand it. I know how hard he worked for it.

I feel like the course was difficult but also worth it for the sweeping views you were privileged to see while running. And I was grateful for the opportunity to share in something that is such a big part of Nathan's life. I can finally talk "running" with the best of em.
Next year, November, if you want to join us!

Toroko By Plane

Do you remember our video from last year on our trip home from Toroko? This year, in an effort to never repeat such horror, we looked for alternate routes to Hualien. Guess what? There is a 25 min flight to Toroko. We may never travel there any other way! It was such a thing of beauty! (minus the extreme stress before the flight when it was discovered enroute to the airport that our family friend Paige, did not  have her passport with her. It took two taxis and a scooter borrowed from a friend for Nathan to make that turn around time, CRAZY!).

 Our neighbors the Stathams were traveling with us, with their 5 children and a babysitter, Cecily, who you may remember from when we went to Thailand. We were quite a spectacle.

 Upon arriving in Hualien a mere 1/2 hr after leaving Taipei (!!!!) we were able to rent a minivan for each family and we were off! Oh wait, where's Ander?

 ....Cuz that's pretty much always the question these days. Fear not, I actually brought the leash this time; remember we were headed to Toroko Gorge, by definition we'd be hanging out on the edge of sheer cliff drop offs that go on for miles. The leash was definitely warranted.

 Cool building in Hualien

 Paige getting her first taste of baozi . To be fair, I didn't think they were very good, as far as taste goes, (that's me saying they were disgusting). But Paige was super adventurous when it comes to food- get it girl!

 Kohen's been here too long to appreciate and respect the fine piece of culture that has been laid before him for lunch. And also, these were a bit big to capture by using your chopsticks properly.

We kind of took over the little shop, and spilled out into the outdoor seating. I guess there were 16 of us.

 Scarlett, will you share your snack with me? Mamas hungry, lunch was a bust.

 Cool shot of how they steam the baozi.

 Then we all went around the corner and tried these different fruit juice things. They really were just fruit puree'd and they were quite good.

We headed up to Silks Place and the children all swam themselves into exhaustion. Both the babes like the same blanket and they like to tease and pull blankets away from each other but they will, on occasion, share the same one. It's about the sweetest thing ever. The above picture was a highlight of the weekend for me. My two babies snuggled up with me, sharing a blanket, fast asleep. This kind of thing just doesn't happen in real life!

Grrr.

Frustratingly enough, Blogger is giving me fits. And my technology whisperer is out of town... again. He will arrive home, whisper sweet nothings to whichever computer or app is in rebellion and it will magically begin working again. Touch of the masters hand.
Meanwhile, I am sicker than a dog so I actually have time (if not the will) to blog. Maybe I can get a little credit for good intentions??? Anyway, all should be well in a few days. Hope all is well with each of you!!!

Halloween 2012

Scarlett set the mood on Halloween with her black and orange outfit. I still struggle to get her to sit still for a decent picture...

Aly wanted to be a "Vampire Girl" at the last minute so after raiding the neighbors dress ups and using make up to make her look vampire-ish and give her fangs (since I had no idea where to find them or if they are even to be found here). She was pleased with the outcome and posed creepily all day.

Kohen was Superman. You can tell by how he did his hair, right? He combed down a little piece on his forehead and was certain it made all the difference.  He has really been working out to prepare for this role.

Ander. Ander refused to be anything. I tried to tempt him with different costumes or swords but he wouldn't stay interested in anything for more than a few minutes. So when the time came to head out the door I pulled out a pirate hat and he wore it about 10 minutes after the pic was taken. He did go around, all on his own, taking his hat off and doing this dramatic sweeping bow that was about the cutest thing ever.
Good thing people keep their standards of costume low when trick or treating and no one gave him a hard time. I joked he went as a Teenager. Didn't want to dress up, wanted candy, and STUBBORN.

Kennedy was a Carmen Miranda inspired Brazilian dancer. As with all costumes, it's always a challenge for me to find supplies to make stuff. Asians don't get too crafty so what you can find is random. Having said that, I was pleased with how the head piece turned out. I found this dress online on clearance last year. I sent it to my sister and she brought it when she visited last Nov. The things we do!

K, have you ever put a little mascara and lip gloss on your ten year old and then about freaked out when you get a glimpse of her a few years down the road? I swear it was just yesterday I was counting down the days until my Halloween due date with her...

Here's the whole crew ready to head up to Yangmingshan for a little trick or treating. If you notice Nathan's shirt, he was Ironman thanks to an Asian Nerd connection who hooked him up with the defining "chest RT" (chest repulsor transmitter) that looked pretty cool in the dark. Several Asians recognized it and completely geeked out over it, it was awesome.

Our friends further up the mountain opened up their home to all of us as a base for the night and so we all ate food and visited and they had some freaky halloween movie playing. It was nice because they offered to keep Scarlett for us when we went out to T or T so we all actually had a great evening.
The best part? The kids throw out about 1/4 of their candy because it's Asian candies that are like coffee or tea flavored. That leaves them with about a quart size bag, about perfect if you ask me.
Happy Halloween!

Kennedy Turns 10!

 Making cupcakes to take to school are always a trial. If the cupcakes turn out after my finicky oven, you begin the battle with the frosting which turns watery and melts off due to humidity. It's always a race getting them to the school before they turn... special looking.
So when Kennedy said she really wanted Costco cookies and chocolate milk I declared her my favorite child and said DONE. It worked out perfectly in her class.

 Kennedy had a great day with her fam. She was super excited to get to the good stuff, presents and cake. If you are looking at her cake and thinking the top looks a bit burned, wrong! It's "ombre" which is totally in style right now and I completely did it on purpose. It had nothing to do with the afore mentioned finicky oven. Nope, totally planned.

 I went to great lengths for Kennedy's present. This past summer when we came home I snuck her American Girl Doll with me and once we were to the states I sent the doll off to be cleaned up and have her ears pierced, knowing that Kennedy would be getting her ears pierced too this summer.

 Of course she noticed her missing doll once we returned and she worried that Ander had done something terrible to Molly. So she was so relieved and surprised to find Molly all spiffed up with her cute new earrings.
Her other gift, I decided not to put a picture of, as she is worried about getting teased. When she first saw the Justin Bieber pajamas online I think that was why she wanted them so bad, because then no one would see them who might tease her. (Plus she liked that his ears weren't pierced yet on the pj's, oh the irony!) Anyway, her reaction was huge and she adores her J.B. pj's.

It's strange for me to reflect on being a mom for a decade, that Kennedy has survived the learning curve of her parents. She is such a kind girl. She loves playing the piano, I never have to ask her to practice. She loves music and leans towards being obsessed with Les Mis - like her mama was. She is an absolute book worm (love that about her). She is responsible, and reliable and helpful.
Sometimes I think Kennedy is a little overlooked, easy to have happen when your brother and sister are the more outgoing Kohen and Aly. But though Kennedy is somewhat shy and more quiet by comparison, once you take the time to get to know her, she is such a genuinely kind hearted girl.
I'm so humbled and grateful she is ours!