Category Archives: Travel Musings

Bangles and Babies

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Bangles and babies go together, right? What newborn doesn’t want to “Walk Like an Egyptian” or doesn’t dream of an eternal flame burning? Okay, maybe I’ve got the wrong type of bangle there (but really, who doesn’t love singing along to some fantastic 80s ballads?), nevertheless, bangles and babies collided in my world last week.

I’ve been to a lot of baby showers for friends and family over the years (and blogged about several of them), usually grumbling because for a married woman with no kids, baby showers are filled with landmine questions.  In general, baby showers are my least favorite kind of shower (rainy season rain showers in Malaysia may rank as my top choice) because they are open season on personal questions about why I don’t have kids, regardless of how well I know the asker. Apparently, if you are co-guests at a baby shower, you can ask anything that pops into your head!

 

My less-than-stellar past baby shower experiences were eclipsed last week through when the consular section in Kuala Lumpur hosted a party for one of our officers who is having her baby in late January. Malaysia’s eclectic mix of cultures took center stage Friday night, when our American-style shower was combined with an Indian bangle ceremony.

Awesome!

One of our local staff members who is Indian-Malaysian offered to give the party an Indian-twist, which she did in spades! She brought in sarees for any of the ladies who wanted to really get into the theme of the party (I chose a deep purple one with a beaded paisley pattern long the edge), jewelry to match, all the accouterments for the ceremony itself, and of course, a beautiful saree and flowers for the mother-to-be. Of course, the baby shower was not about me (thank goodness!), but I did love that I got to dress up in an absolutely gorgeous saree and spend the night contemplating a tour in India. (I’m actually not super keen on a post in India, but I am dying to see the Taj Mahal at some point. I don’t need two years of India, but I could definitely use two weeks!)

While most American bridal showers consist of a few games (ick!), gift opening and lots of cake, Friday’s event was unique in the way that the focus was on the soon-to-be-mother. Each person who attended the shower was invited up to individually greet/bless the mother through a small ritual consisting of sprinkling rose water over her, putting sandalwood paste on her cheeks and placing glass bangles on each of her arms. These few brief moments were special, as it gave each guest a chance to say a few words one-on-one, even in a room full of chatting women. It was a bit of calm in a room filled with music, conversations and laughter.

Living abroad can be difficult, especially when it means missing out on important events in the lives of family and friends at home (yes, even baby showers!), but it is nights like Friday that help fill those gaps. Never in Idaho would I have gathered with friends from Yemen, Malaysia, Venezuela and the US, donned a magnificently hued saree and attended an Indian bangle ceremony in celebration of a friend’s impending motherhood.

Sand dances, gold crocodiles and foreign types with hookah pipes-Bangles and babies are where it is at!

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Seriously, Malaysia Takes Ingrown Toenails Seriously

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I’ll put it out there from the start- I tend to minimize all illness/injuries. I’m pretty sure most anything can be walked off and there is no need to miss a day of school or work unless bodily fluids are running or you are in the hospital. In the last year though, I’ve started to think maybe my medical philosophy has steered me wrong. It was due to these stringent “rules” that I wrote a literature paper and worked for three days, all while blind in my left eye. Just when I was thinking it was time to rethink my “suck it up and stick it out” thought process, Malaysia has reiterated that overly cautious and slightly wimpy is not the way to go.

How did this rethinking of my thinking come about? An ingrown toenail.

That’s right. I would like to officially retake my stand on illness and injury. Pull it together and do what you need to do.

You see, I have had problems with an ingrown toenail on my left big toe since March. It all started when we went to Tioman Island to do our SCUBA certification. I stubbed my toe hard on something and it broke the nail down fairly low. As it grew in, it grew *in.* Since March, I’ve just dug it out occasionally as it pushed into the skin. It hurt a little, but was never something I couldn’t fix with a pair of nail clippers and a few winces of pain. (Keep in mind, this was the same SCUBA trip that took place a week before my sudden left-eye blindness. Maybe SCUBA is the death of me in a way I never imagined!) Lately though, the home remedy was no longer sufficient. Last Friday night, after a fun farewell dinner for one of our local staff who has worked at Embassy KL longer that I have been alive (seriously), I sat down to do a little self-surgery. As I took the clippers to the edge of skin, basically the skin folded back on its own, leaving a strangely gaping hole and no nail to dig out. (Gross, I know. Sorry if you are eating breakfast as you read this. But if you are eating breakfast, thank s for starting your day with In Search of the End of the Sidewalk !) Thad took one quick look at it and announced we would be going to the walk-in clinic first thing Saturday morning to have it cut out by a professional.

Since the toe was red and pretty painful by this point, I relented and off to the nice, shiny private hospital in KL we went. I assumed that the clinic would be able to cut it out and then send me on my way, but boy was I wrong. This is where the drama of a single ingrown toenail begins.

Saturday we went to the clinic. They wouldn’t cut my toe, instead made me an appointment with an orthopedic doctor for Tuesday and gave me a bag full of prescription drugs- anti-inflammatories, pain medication and antibiotics. They sent me home to wait for my mid-week appointment.

Tuesday rolls around and off I headed to the doctor. I took an hour off work, figuring my 11AM appointment would have me back at my desk by 1PM. Boy was I wrong!

My first meeting of the day started with the doctor giving me two options: do nothing or cut into the nailbed, forever changing the shape of the nail. When Thad asked if there was a middle-of-the-road option, we were told no. So, we opted for the second, as doing nothing was not going to be useful. The doctor then told us he could do it December 18! What? I thought it was going to happen today; that’s why we had the appointment. The doctor got all kinds of surly and told us that is not the way it works and that he had to be at the airport in two hours to catch his flight to India, so there was nothing more he could do.

After asking a few questions, which he interpreted as arguing, he finally referred us to another orthopedic doctor in the same building. (Those of you who know me know that I am not an arguer- especially in that kind of situation! I am not sure why he interpreted it as such, but needless to say I was less than impressed with his entire bedside manner.)

Doctor #2 on Tuesday was a much better fit. He actually examined my foot (something the first doctor did with a mere glance) and said he could remove the toenail and let it grow back in on its own, suggesting the more radical option be saved and used only if the toenail didn’t return correctly. He also said he could do the surgery today. (He kept calling it a surgery. I kept calling it a procedure. Little did I know how correct he was!)

We scheduled for 2PM in the day clinic for the procedure (I was still sticking with that term) and showed up a bit early to check in. Upon giving my name and passport and removing every piece of jewelry I was wearing, I was escorted to a curtained off area where I was handed a dressing gown, a pair of disposable underwear (?!?!) and a hairnet.

Suddenly, this all got a whole lot more serious. Why do I need all of this for a toenail?

I changed and Thad tied up the forty-seven ties on the back of my gown, not even trying to contain his giggles at the ridiculous disposable granny panties and hairnet I was rocking. Then, they made me lay in the bed and off I was wheeled to, yes, SURGERY!

I was actually taken to a surgery room where I was transferred onto a surgical bed and hooked up to a variety of machines. Covered with a blanket which had a magical layer of warm air being blown into it and with the huge ceiling lights all aimed at my foot, it was time for the doctor to make his grand entrance.

Again, we are talking about an ingrown toenail here!

Not being able to contain myself by the time, I blurted out, “Doctor, this is all a little dramatic for a toenail, don’t you think? In America, we would have cut it out in a walk-in clinic.”

He laughed a bit and then went to work, numbing most of my foot with four injections that made not very nice words tumble out of my mouth in a murmur or two of pain. He told me he was giving me the American dose of numbing injections rather than the Asian. Did he just call me fat??

All the while, as he numbed and cut and clipped (not painlessly, I might add) he wanted to talk about the visa waiver program! Are you serious? I should count this as work hours! So, while I had a minor (VERY minor) operation on my big toe, I did a bit of simultaneous consular section outreach.

The numbing and cutting and clipping took about half an hour and then I was wheeled back to where Thad was waiting. The nurse suggested I rest for another half an hour, but I said I was probably all right to go. There is nothing lying there would do for me, so she handed me my sack lunch (Yes, I am serious. I got a sandwich, two orange juices and a water. Sadly, no cookies.) and off we headed to pay my bill, get my new drugs and head home.

All in all, my ingrown toenail is going to set me back about $800 and a day and a half of work. (Luckily, we have very good insurance, but I am still not sure how to register the claim. I think I am going to look up the medical terms for ingrown toenail and make it sound super fancy, otherwise, it is ridiculous!)

And this, my friends, is why I am reverting to my previous beliefs about medical issues. If you aren’t seeping bodily fluids and you are not prone on a hospital bed, you are fine. Who would have guessed a single ingrown toenail would become so much drama and ridiculousness? Not I, I proclaim as I lay on my couch, trying to type with the computer on my lap and my foot propped up above my heart level. I guess they take their toe problems seriously in Malaysia!

Lesson learned.

 

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Thailand Instead of Turkey

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Since we are going to Idaho for Christmas this year and will be surrounded by snow (maybe?!), live Christmas trees, sparkly wrapped packages, peppermint hot chocolate and all of the excitement of the holidays at home, we opted for the non-traditional Thanksgiving celebration.  Last year we had Foreign Service friends from Chengdu and Kuala Lumpur over for a giant turkey (two, actually!), every possible side dish you can imagine and several hours of Taylor Swift’s “Blank Spaces” video on loop (thanks, Tom!), but this year we traded all of that for Friendsgiving in Thailand:  fruity drinks with umbrellas in them rather than turkey, lunch delivered to our beach chairs instead of dinner at a dining room table and snorkeling with the sharks (just one!) instead of pop music on repeat.

I have no complaints about either one.

With friends in town for the month of November, we thought wrapping up their visit with a trip north was the perfect way to celebrate. What’s not to be thankful for with white sandy beaches, clear blue water, inexpensive massages and beautiful pink sunsets?  (Plus, it was one more stamp in their passports, after a whirlwind three countries in four weeks!) Shannon and Joe had already hiked the rain forest in Borneo, wandered miles of pavement in Singapore, visited Batu Caves and all the sites Kuala Lumpur has to offer, dressed up in formal wear for the marine ball and checked out the street art in Penang. There’s no better way to end a first-trip to Southeast Asia than with a bit of tropical paradise.

Possibly the most amazing thing about our Thanksgiving weekend was that we spent three days either on the beach or on boats (or a combination of the two!) and I got absolutely no sunburn! Granted, I did get a weird set of hives, possibly from the hotel shampoo, but that is entirely out of my control. Between one day lounging on the hotel beach, one day snorkeling off a dive boat three hours from shore and spending one day at Hong Island, I barely had a pink tinge to my skin. It’s amazing what a little bit of sunscreen can do for a white girl! (Tan? No way. That is asking too much for this pasty skin.)

On our Air Asia flight Wednesday afternoon, Thad and I were trying to count how any times we’ve been to Thailand and I think we came up with this being our sixth trip there, but even with multiple visits to Bangkok, Phuket and Krabi over the years, last weekend did offer up a new experience- fish pedicures. That’s right- a tank full of tiny fish that eat away the dead skin around your toes and feet. Thad partook of this strange experience when we were in Cambodia with friends a few years ago, but I think I did a little night market shopping while he let his feet be nibbled upon. The idea of purposefully letting something, even a little something, bite me held no appeal.  But, it when Joe wanted to give it a shot (not his first go at the strange experience) I decided now was the time for me to join the club. Everyone’s doing it, right?

How did it go? I don’t think there is any need for words. Watch the video. That is all.

I may not have busted out the turkey platter, gravy boats and autumn table cloth that I obsessed over getting last year, but Thanksgiving 2015 was fantastic and I got the best of both worlds this year: Thanksgiving with best friends on a beach and then a white (??) Christmas with family in Idaho. Happy holidays all around!

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Singapore through New Eyes

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An odd part about living abroad as an expat with the Foreign Service in contrast to the extended travel we used to do on our summer breaks from teaching in Idaho is how routine certain far-flung trip/cities have become. When I graduated from high school almost twenty years ago (is that possible?!) I would never have imagined that a weekend in Singapore would be second-nature and easily booked on a Thursday evening to fly out on a Friday morning. And yet, being assigned to Kuala Lumpur, planning a weekend in Singapore is about as much work as putting together a trip to Salt Lake City would have been. We’ve been there half a dozen times now, and have hit almost all of the main attractions. We’ve been on the night safari at the zoo, visited both the city botanical gardens and the Gardens by the Bay, spent hours sitting and people watching at the base of the merlion, wandered Sentosa and Haw Par Villa, shopped the markets in Little India and lunched in Chinatown and perused the high end shops on Orchard Street. Heck, we’ve even tried out the international hospitals, ophthalmologists and neurologists in Singapore! I think the one major tourist attraction we are missing is the Singapore Flyer, a huge Ferris wheel taller than the Eye of London. Thanks, but no thanks on that one.

But, this last weekend, we got to enjoy it all over again, almost as if for the first time. (Our initial trip to Singapore was in 2007. We were on winter holiday from our small teachers’ college in China where we were serving as Peace Corps volunteers. Along with good friends who were also PCVs in Gansu province, we did a multi-country tour of SE Asia and decided, on a bit of a whim, to hop a long-distance bus from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore for an overnight excursion. Unplanned, but spectacular, it was one of the highlights of that trip.) A good friend of Thad’s from high school came out to visit for two weeks and wanted to add another stamp or two to his shiny new passport, so a trip to Singapore was a great way to get another country and another experience in just a long weekend. Even though we’ve been there a handful of times, this last one stood out because we got to experience it all again, as if for the first time. Garrett was full of boundless energy, wanting to see and do everything the city had to offer, so we tied on our tennis shoes and headed out for two action-packed and long days of conquering the sites of Singapore, shin splints and haze be damned.

It was fun to take in the city again from the perspective of a new traveler. Wanting to see and do more than chill, we booked a budget hotel with small rooms, as we planned to spend little time there. What we didn’t know upon booking was the weekend we stayed would be the hotel’s first weekend with guests. It was brand new! This was great in that that pillow top mattresses were to die for and everything was sparkly still, but there was some evidence that they were still working out the quirks in their building. Morning showers and hot water were a particular issue. While Thad and Garrett opted for quick and cold, I chose the on/off method of conserving water to get maximum heat. To each his/her own. We did “get” to take selfies with the manager for their Facebook page, so there was that…

In two and a half days, we saw as much of the lovely city-state as humanly possible. Thad and I have a special love for Haw Par Villa, a strange and wonderful park on the marina side of town, built by the founders of the Tiger Balm empire. Wanting to pass on traditional Chinese beliefs about spirituality and the afterlife, the park is made up of statues and 3-D murals depicting traditional Chinese tales. A visit through the grounds culminates with a trip to Hell. Literally. The creators put together a slightly horrific and strangely graphic diorama inside a man-made cave that walks patrons through the nine courts of Hell, specifically outlining misdeeds and their punishments before one can drink the tea of forgetfulness and be reincarnated to give this world another shot. Haw Par Villa is strange and wonderful, cartoonish and graphic, all in a single glance.

After going through Hell together, we stuck to a much more cheerful and lighthearted schedule, focusing on the marina area, visiting the Sands Hotel and its ridiculous compound/attached mall area, where I searched endlessly for a merlion charm for my Pandora bracelet, but apparently such a thing does not exist. The air conditioning was a nice reprieve from the heat/humidity/haze of outside, so a turn or two around the shops wasn’t a bad break. The Gardens by the Bay were also on the itinerary for the day, a place we had not previously visited, so the one for which I was most excited. The free parts of the gardens are quite extensive, but we did shell out the Sing dollars to get into the Cloud Forest Pavilion and the Flower House. I was particularly drawn to the cloud forest, as they are talked about extensively in Jonathon Maslow’s Bird of Life, Bird of Death, one of the books I am writing about in my thesis. It was awesome to see that habitat in person, even if it was man-made. It may not be the basis of why I chose that book for my writing, but I’m going to chalk the ticket price up to research anyway!

While I was the one pushing to visit this particular green house, I think Thad and Garrett may have enjoyed it more. The set-up reminded me of the aquarium in Baltimore, where you go to the top of a multi-story building and wind your way down through the exhibits, back to the main floor. In Baltimore, that worked great for me. It was just a series of ramps circling down through tank after tank of fish. The cloud forest was not so comforting for those of us with major fears of heights. Rather than solid floors, the path that wound down was more like a suspension track with woven metal floors that you could see through. Not good. Plus, it moved. Just a bit, but a bit was too much for me. I tried on the top floor to do it, but made it about ten yards before chickening out and heading back to the stairs in the center of the building. I opted to meet my companions on each solid level. Towards the bottom, maybe floor three (there were seven in total), I decided to give the walkway a try again, thinking I could make it happen since we were so much closer to the ground. Did I make it to the next level? I did. Did I see or enjoy a single flower or plant along the way? I did not. Did I nearly run over a lovely Indian family who were camped out doing photos in the middle of the walkway? Shamefully, yes. It seems Maslow at least had the “death” part of the cloud forest right!

Feeling like we were quickly running out of time to see and do everything the city had to offer, on Sunday we opted for tickets on a hop-on/hop-off style bus tour that took us to Little India for some great Deepavali shopping, Chinatown for an amazing xiaolongbao lunch and through the modern financial districts as well as the historically colonial neighborhoods of town. Seeing the city through Garrett’s eyes was rejuvenating, as he loved each and every place we wandered. Watching him barter for singing bowls in Chinatown or search for a taste of durian, it’s great to be along as someone experiences something so entirely different from their normal day-to-day life. It makes me think maybe I should have become a tour guide! The hundreds and hundreds of photos and dozens of videos on Garrett’s phone attest to his newfound love of all things Singapore.

And of course, no trip to Singapore is complete without some quality time with the merlion, so we had dinner down on the marina and enjoyed the perpetually warm nights that come with being mere degrees above the equator.

After my two most recent trips to Singapore having been on behest of my eye, I loved having the chance to go down and take in the sights as a tourist- 100%. There is much truth in the fact that last weekend’s trip really was seeing Singapore through new eyes- both Garrett’s and my own. (Click here for the back story on my previous, less fun and more stressful trips to Singapore.)

Sugar Beet Harvest

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Recently, as I was scrolling through my Facebook feed, mostly in an effort to avoid working on a chapter in my thesis that was quickly become painful (think: redundant, superfluous, unnecessary, beating a dead horse, and just overall not adding a single new idea to academic discourse), I came across the headlines for the daily newspaper in my hometown. The Idaho Press Tribune has been a part of my reading repertoire since before I could actually decipher letters, words, paragraphs and articles. While that jet black in was still nothing more than strange black squiggles on paper, I was able look at the photographs, make stories out of the comics and figure out if there was going to be a yellow sun in the sky or a menacing cloud with a lightning bolt overhead each morning.  Living overseas, it has been years since I actually had a subscription to the paper, but that doesn’t mean I’m not up to date with happenings in the Valley. Not only do I see the headlines in my Facebook feed each evening (the advantage to being fourteen hours ahead in that the morning news stories show up before I go to bed), but I still get occasional clippings in the mail from my dear mother. (I never know which stories are going to show up in the envelope. It might be one about a former student who is doing well. Or maybe the story will be about someone we went to church with growing up. Book lists often make the clippings cut, as do random comic strips and the occasional goofy article included just to make me laugh.)

Most of the stories that make the newsfeed headlines have to do with local construction projects that are shutting down lanes of the freeway or the drama of a school board election recall campaign. Those pass me by like Malaysian snatch and grab hoodlums on scooters. But, recently, one caught my eye and then my heart.  The headline read: “Sugar beet harvest on the horizon.” Of all the days for the IPT posting to catch my eye, it was the day they wrote about the sugar beet harvest. I instantly felt a pang of homesickness, as nothing says fall in southern Idaho quite like the sugar beet harvest.

Sugar beets hold a special place in the memories of my childhood. I was fascinated by those giant brown tubers. Once harvest season started, giant trucks filled over the brim with the beets would roll by our house, one after another, all day long. Because they were filled by other giant machines, they were always overly full, meaning as they sped along the road, the top-most layer of beets fell to the wayside, littering the edges of the country roads. I can’t begin to count how many of those sugar beets I collected with my sister and brother over the years. For a long time, I was convinced that if I could crack one open, I’d find it full of sugar. After all, it was a *sugar* beet. In my eight year old mind, if I could only get through that tough outer layer, I’d have cups of refined sugar, just like the stuff in the yellow Tupperware sugar bowl on the dining room table. Sweet! Of course, the truth was about as polar opposite of that as one can imagine, which I found out once we were finally able to chop through one of the beets with a sharp-edged shovel.

No sugar.

That’s what the sugar beet factory is for. That appellation itself is a bit divisive. Everyone who was raised in the area calls it nothing more and there is no need to explain that the factory actually refines sugar and doesn’t *make* sugar beets, as the name seems to imply. I’ve heard people argue that it isn’t correct terminology to refer to the operations as a sugar beet factory, but these are usually the same folks who’ve moved in from California and Texas who think Boise is pronounced with a “z” sound at the end. You’re non-Idahoan ways are showing, folks!

If you are local to the Treasure Valley, the sugar beet factory is a landmark, both visually and olfactory.  Someone once tried to tell me it had an “almond-y” smell, which I would heartily disagree with, but after living away from home for so many years, I must admit to a fondness for the unique stink that permeates the valley during processing season. One whiff of that unique odor and I know I am home.

It’s a bit ironic that I’m weirdly touched by an agricultural headline from home at a time when agriculture in Southeast Asia seems to be trying to kill us all. Indonesia is burning crops at the end of the growing season (and forests in an attempt to make more room for palm oil plantations) and the smoke from their fires is infiltrating the Malaysian peninsula to an unprecedented level. The air has been so hazy that Malaysian schools have been cancelled three days in the last two weeks and it burns my eyes to be outside for more than an hour or two at a time.  Maybe it is precisely because of the current air situation in Malaysia that I am drawn to stories of home, where the sky is blue, the leaves are changing color and the harvest is in full swing.

It doesn’t matter how far I travel or how many stamps clutter up the pages of my passport, at heart I will always be from Idaho, land of sugar beets and giant trucks and that oh-so-familiar smell of Nampa’s sugar beet factory, as well as home of the Idaho-Press Tribune, a relic in world where news consumption has shifted to the online world rather than the rolled up paper delivered to one’s driveway each morning.

A Recipe for Cement…and More

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The idea of travel evokes many emotions. On one hand are the positive ones: excitement about seeing and exploring a new place and a new culture, and thrill at participating in new adventures and activities. But on the other hand, there is a bit darker side of travel that can, at times, be hard to reconcile for those of us raised within the confines of middle class American privilege. When I am on the road, it is hard for me to not see the poverty that abounds and even harder to know what to do about it. Should I bargain for a handful of bracelets from the little girls standing outside every temple in Siem Reap or does that encourage them to hawk to tourists rather than attend school each day? Does buying the stunning, but mass produced artwork from a night market in Laos benefit the sellers and their families or does it cheapen the beauty of their culture? I have read article after article online about being a thoughtful and responsible traveler, but in the end there is no way to overcome a small amount of internal awkwardness when it comes to traveling in developing nations; after all, it is because of travelers like myself, who have the expendable income to throw on a backpack and hop a flight to a remote country that these tourist-driven economies even exist.

As both a traveler and an ex-patriate, I think it is important to find ways to give back to the communities that I call home for several years at a time. In China, that meant serving as a Peace Corps volunteer for two years in rural Gansu province and then organizing a donation campaign to help earthquake survivors in Sichuan after the quake of 2012. Here in Malaysia, I spent six months volunteering as an teacher for Chin (a Burmese minority) refugees, trying my best to not only strengthen my students’ understanding of comparative and superlative adjectives, but to also given them a sense of what American middle and high schools will be like once they relocate. Once I started work at the embassy, I was no longer able to devote several days a week to the school, but was still on the search for other ways to be a positive member of the community in which I was living. At a bit of a crossroads, not sure what to do next and not having a whole lot of free time between working full time and working on a literature and writing graduate degree, the embassy newsletter had my answer! One Wednesday, scrolling through the pages of information about upcoming concerts in the city, welcomes and farewells to officers and their families, and my favorite, the book club calendar, I noticed an advertisement seeking help with a Habitat for Humanity project. I wasn’t wholly unaware of this project, as CLO had been doing fundraising all winter and more than once I had dropped my spare ringgit in collection containers around the building, but with actual building time on the horizon, I was excited to sign up and join in!

The US embassy was assigned two days to work on the project in a small town a few hours outside of Kuala Lumpur. I signed up for Saturday, thinking it would give me Sunday to rest and sleep in before another week of work. The Saturday crew met at the embassy at 5AM to hop in the vans to carpool down to the site. My van had one poor marine trying to sleep in the backseat and four women, all of whom chatted and laughed the entire trip south. Arriving at the land cleared for the new home, I was struck by several things: 1) the large piles of sand and rocks placed beside the road, 2) the square footage of the foundation of the home and 3)the fact that the sun was already blazing down and it was barely 8AM. These three things were to be the entire focus of my day.

Saturday’s crew had one goal: complete the cement foundation. The catch? The cement needed to be mixed. By hand. There was no electric cement mixer. There was only a pile of shovels, a pile of rocks, a pile of sand, bags of cement and a hose for water. Quickly, I learned the correct recipe for cement:

Habitat for Humanity Cement

5 wheelbarrows of sand

2 wheelbarrows of rocks

1 bag of cement

Add water until a thick goo. With a shovel, mix, mix, mix. Once the cement is the right consistency, load it up in a wheelbarrow, drop it in an empty corner of the foundation and spread quickly, before it starts to harden.

Repeat. For seven hours.

When we arrived at the building site and were given our job for the day, I overconfidently that it would be no problem. The foundation was small. It was perfectly square. It should be easy to fill it up, three inches thick. Boy, was I wrong. Wrong is an understatement. We worked the entire day, sweating in the relentless sun (thunderclouds threatened, but we never saw a drop of rain), and still we barely finished the foundation by the end of the day. By late afternoon, we were all dog tired, pulling the last of our energy to mix a final batch of cement to complete the last corner. (There was semi-serious discussion about buying the family a nice plant to put in that last corner to cover the lack of foundation. None of us were sure if we could load up the last wheelbarrows of cement ingredients, let alone stir, stir, stir.)

I learned several things about myself over the course of that seven hour work day. First, I discovered that I was not really cut out for physical labor. Apparently, there is a reason I prefer to collect degrees rather than get my hands dirty. (Okay, this wasn’t really a sudden epiphany. There is little about me sporty or athletic.) Sunday morning I could barely roll out of bed. It took until about Thursday before I was able to go up and down stairs without having to rest the majority of my weight on the railings. I was in pain. But, with that said, I also realized (or re-realized) how great it was to be a part of something bigger. I may never see that completed house, as other teams were working on continuing the project, but I know that in a small way, I helped to provide a solid home for a family in need. (While on the site, I walked over to see where the recipient family was currently living. It was basically some wooden walls covered by a blue tarp with a lean-to addition off the side that housed a one-burner gas stove.) One of the best moments in the day came mid-afternoon when everyone was feeling the pain of the work, but still plugging away. A fellow embassy volunteer, closer to my parents age than my own, walked over to where I was loading yet another wheelbarrow of sand and told me how impressed he was with how I had been holding my own throughout the day, always one of the last to break and the first back to the shovels. With a smile on my face, I told him I had my parents to thank for that one. Work ethics were never lacking in my house growing up.

My Saturday as a Habitat for Humanity volunteer was humbling and a good reminder that giving back is an important part of being a traveler. I might still struggle with the conundrums of coming from the privilege of a highly developed country living/visiting areas where governments and people struggle to ease the difficulties of daily life, but I try not to be blind to the issues. Finding small ways to help is important. I didn’t build a town, a neighborhood or even an entire house, but I did literally build a foundation for a new life for one family.

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A Different Kind of Girls’ Getaway

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When I hear someone say they are headed off for a girls’ weekend, my mind instantly jumps to images of women wearing fluffy white robes with mud facial masks spread across their faces and cucumbers over their eyes. Or maybe the still photo in my mind is of a line of women sitting in large massage chairs with their feet in tubs of hot water, prepping for the Barbie pink mani/pedis headed their way. If not those images, then one of well-dressed ladies enjoying a nice white tablecloth dinner on the patio of a ritzy restaurant, glasses of red wine in their hands and pates of tapas on the table. The problem with each of these pictures is that my mind can’t really place me in them anywhere!

So, what’s a girls’ weekend to look like when I’m not willing to spend my entire paycheck on fluff and frill? Picture the exact opposite of all of the things above. Instead of billowy bathrobes, imagine sweat-soaked tank tops. Instead of massage chairs and pedicures, imagine long boats and millipedes. Instead of expensive alcohol and pristine table settings, image bags of melted trail mix and bottle after bottle of potable water.

Now those are the building blocks of a fantastic weekend getaway.

I first saw photos of the Malaysian national park at Taman Negara almost a year ago and have wanted to make the three hour trip north, but it seems like weekends are quickly overtaken with school requirements and work obligations. A few weeks ago, sitting at an outdoor steak restaurant (corrugated metal roof, folding tables, plastic chairs and the best Australian beef in town!), the idea was floated and we quickly had five ladies signed on for Labor Day weekend. No froof and fluff for us. We were off to the jungle for a weekend of hiking, river swimming and insect inspecting.

The most relaxing part of the weekend was the longboat ride up the river. Forty-five minutes of peace (minus the outboard motor), complimented by kingfishers sailing by, monkeys catching fish on the shore and one lazily swimming monitor lizard. Once we reached our upriver destination, it was a short twenty-minute hike to a place where the rocks create a natural whirlpool tub, complete with a massaging waterfall. (Maybe our girls’ weekend had a bit of spa-day included after all!) Since all things nature-y freak me out a bit (ironic, no?), I did spaz out a bit each time a leaf wrapped itself around my ankle, sure that it was one of the lecherous leaches we had been duly warned about before leaving Kuala Lumpur. Soon, our secluded swimming hole was overrun by late-arriving tourists (kudos to our guide for always getting us to destinations ahead of the masses, so we were able to spend a chunk of time unmolested by the other jungle trekkers), so we threw back on our wet shirts and shorts (from the sweaty hike) over our wet swimsuits (from the river) and made our way back down the hillside for another idle ride on the river.

The most unexpected event of the weekend was the night trek. I saw this outing on the original itinerary and didn’t think a whole lot of it, but quickly learned that it would have been more appropriately labeled the “Let’s Marvin Gay and Get It On” insect tour. That’s right. I don’t know if the rainforest is that (re)productive every night, but last Saturday there was some serious breeding going on. We were witnesses to everything from stick bug sex (which then led to a long conversation and later, several Googled articles, about what exactly a pregnant stick bug would look like) to leaf bugs and jungle-sized grasshoppers doing it. (Not together. That would make a strange set of baby bugs.) This entire walk took place in the pouring rain, which was no deterrent for the tiny tropical nightlife, but did teach me that my China-made/China-purchased raincoat had absolutely no waterproof abilities. I was as wet as anything out there that evening.

Our ladies’ weekend wrapped up with the biggest undertaking of the trip- a two kilometer trek up the mountain, through the rainforest, to a beautiful viewpoint at the top of the ridge. As with many (most?) Southeast Asia treks, this one was comprised mainly of stairs. So many stairs. And, keeping in mind that I am pretty wimpy when it comes to physical activities, I did my best to not fall behind the pack. (Considering the five month pregnant woman was leading the line most of the time, I had some strong-stamina shoes to fill!)

Up the stairs.

Up the stairs.

Up the stairs. Every time I thought I saw an end, we’d round a bend and I’d look up to see another endless set.

Essentially, I hate hiking. I always have. I love the view from the top and I am enamored with the possibility of seeing animals on the way, so I lace up my shoes and head out time and time again, but in the moment, I hate it. As much as I dislike hiking, I fear heights. So, what better way to end the weekend than with a canopy walk on the way down the mountain? (I’m apparently a sucker for self-inflicted torture.) The thing with canopy walks is that I’m terrified of being 150 feet in the air on a tiny walkway with nothing between me and the ground but a layer or two of tropical leaves, but I can’t walk away from the potential awesomeness that exists up there. So, once again, I tightened my backpack and struck out across the dangling bridges, keeping my eyes straight ahead and trying to steady my knocking knees. As I climbed the first set of stairs to the initial bridge, I asked the worker how many bridges there were in the course. He promised three. At the end of that first one, I posed the same question to a worker stationed on the platform. His English was less polished, but he seemed to understand me and answered, “Five.” Hmmm… Those two answers didn’t match up, but the thing with canopy walks is that once you start, you are in it for good. There are no emergency egress routes. There are no escape hatches partway through. The only way out is forward. Now thinking I had four more lengths to go, I headed out, with a mind only to getting through.

Three more to go.

Two more to go.

One more to go.

But wait. That was the fifth one and I was still fifty meters in the air. Someone did not tell me the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. As it turns out, there were eight sections in total, one a swinging staircase that had even the most height-loving of our group regretting their canopy walk decision.

While it wasn’t filled with cucumber eye masks or glittery nail polish or hard-to-pronounce French menus, this last weekend was a better kind of ladies’ getaway. As we sweated through our tank tops on the jungle trails, hummed along to Charlie Puth, commiserated over drenched clothes, and generally enjoyed clowning around in the rainforest together. If girls’ getaway weekends are about bonding, this one was definitely a success!

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Photo credits to Jaclyn, Audrey and Puma

Tea with Tales and Tails

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Three weeks in Idaho were not just filled with gun ranges, rodeos and county fairs (see those stories here!); it had a softer side was well. In between picking up casings and stepping over piles of farm animal poo, I squeezed in a bit of “girl-time.”

My best friend, who has a fantastic new job as a traveling nurse (I must admit to not totally understanding the logistics of the program, but love the fact that if we got posted to DC next, there is a chance she could take a gig on the East Coast and we could be neighbors for a few months) flew up to BOI to spend a few days of what turned out to be non-stop chatter and catching up. As we yakked endless with stories of her new job and my new home, we did find time to do a bit of shopping and not just any old shopping, but shopping with a mission- a Marine Ball dress! She and her husband are going to be in KL this fall, arriving just in time for the annual gala, so a fancy new dress was on the “to do” list. After wandering through the mall and surrounding shops, trying on shimmering dress after glittery dress, she eventually settled on a gorgeous navy blue gown that is going to be perfect for the ball. So pretty!

BFF dress shopping was at the start of my time home, but not content to get away with just one major shopping excursion, I book-ended my vacation with another (bigger!) outing at the very end. This one was with my older sister and two nieces, who needed new outfits for their trip to Washington DC. My sister won a national STEM teacher of the year award and as part of her prize package (yes, there was a whole package!) she got to go to the White House to meet the president and she figured the clothes hanging in her closet weren’t quite White House-worthy, so back to the mall we went! This time we were in search of a couple nice dresses for her various events, as well as for the girls who were invited to the awards reception.  After an entire day at the mall, I think they walked out with six dresses (two each), three pairs of shoes and enough accessories to have everyone sparkling just right.  I do think I created a monster though when I introduced the idea of “holding” a dress while you look at other shops. I don’t think this was on either of their radars and suddenly, tough delicious about which dress to pick were put on the back burner so we could continue to pursue the mall. Put all the dresses on “hold!” In the end, everyone came out looking fantastic. Another successful styling/shopping trip in the books!

Girl-time wasn’t all filled with swipes of the credit card though (luckily most of these were not mine!), as I did get to participate in this year’s annual teddy bear tea party, hosted by my mom for the little girls. This year’s theme was “Tea with Tales and Tails.” We invited the two youngest girls (first and second grade), who were each requested to bring along a favorite tale and tail. Both girls came bearing fantastic picture books and a fuzzy stuffed friend. After hauling out piles of animals from Grandma’s teddy bear stashes, we were ready for our tea party.  A few rounds of “crazy apes” (the dollar store version of crazy 8s), we were warmed up and ready for a lunch of Uncrustables and bananas with pink lemonade to wash it all down. This tasty meal for four was accompanied by everyone reading their favorite book from the pile. Our lovely tea party wrapped up with brand new coloring books and crayons for the littles, which were promptly opened and a fantastic session of coloring commenced.

Looking back, my three weeks in Idaho were actually a well-balanced calendar of “Idaho!” and girly-girl time. Guns were shot. Dresses were bought. Cowboys were thrown from bulls. Picture books were read just in time for back to school. Take a bit of this plus a bit of that, throw them together and you get the fixings of an All-American hometown vacation.

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#BPLComiccon15

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Idaho friends, don’t pass up this chance to check out a great activity in Boise in just over a week. The email below is from the event’s most-magnificent organizer, long-time friend and one of our regular overseas couch-surfers, Josh.

Be there or be square!

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There are only nine days until the 3rd Annual Library Comic Con arrives on Aug. 29th! Excited? Terrified? Wholly indifferent? Too full of competing emotions to have a clear idea of what you’re feeling? Maybe this email will help.

First, I’d like to share a few new things that we’re trying out for this year’s event:

  • The Friends of the Library will be selling a specially commissioned commemorative LCC15 poster during the con. The artwork is by local creator Adam Rosenlund http://www.adamjrosenlund.com/ Adam has also recently designed a traffic box wrap for the city, which will be installed either later this year, or next summer. The Friend’s poster will be 13×19, printed on nice paper stock, limited to 250 copies, and sold for $10.
  • To really spruce the place up this year, several team members, with the help of our wonderful pages, constructed post-it note artwork, some of which will be involved in a Super Mario themed scavenger hunt. Wonder Woman was completed yesterday, and is currently guarding the Artist’s Alley.
  • Local artist Jim Sumii is in the process of constructing a “Pikture Booth” where, for a small donation, he will draw caricatures of passersby. He plans to donate all proceeds to the Friends.

Additionally, we’ll be bringing 14 amazing special guests to Boise, including Nate Powell, Steve Lieber, Emi Lenox, Farel Dalrymple, Joëlle Jones, and many more. You can read about all of our LCC creators here: http://www.boisepubliclibrary.org/classes-events/library-comic-con/2015-library-comic-con-guests/

There will be three food/drink vendors: Fanci Freez, Pie Hole, and St(r)eam Coffee. The 501st Legion will be attending all day (Stormtroopers!), as will the R2D2 Builders group, with at least three, life sized droids. Why hasn’t there previously been any LARPing, you say? What is this LARPing thing, you say? It’s Live Action Role Play, and it’ll be happening this year! There will be a Zombie Walk, (no, I’m not just talking about the staff at the end of the day). Need to know how to make a wand? Don’t worry, Dave Ultis from Citizen Scientific Workshop has you covered!

This is the website for LCC15, which has more information as well as specific times for events. http://www.boisepubliclibrary.org/classes-events/library-comic-con/ And if anyone would like to share this information with friends, family, random people on the street, that neighbor that keeps complaining about your lawn, your child’s harried school teacher, the local fishmonger, or just on your own social media, please feel free. We even have a hashtag to use this year: #BPLComiccon15, because we’re fancy like that!

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“What I Did on My Summer Vacation”

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“What I Did on My Summer Vacation.” The much dreaded first essay of a new school year is a perfect fit as we wrap up Summer 2015. In school, this is where your English teacher gets a sneak peak of your writing skills. Can he use punctuation correctly? Does she know the difference between their/there/they’re? Has he figured out that paragraphs really are the go-to structure for an essay and that indentation is more than a passing fad? These are all the things your teacher is making mental notes of while you squirm and try to finagle a summer of video games and sunbathing into an essay that makes it sound like you read the complete works of Toni Morrison and spent your free time perusing the artifacts of the Smithsonian.

Although it has been years since I had to write such an essay, it is a perfect theme for my return to the blogging world. (Again, if you read the previous post, I blame my month of silence on a combination of vacation, Secretary Kerry and a bit of laziness.) Three weeks of my summer were spent back in Idaho, and what an “Idaho” vacation it was. Between a trip to the gun range, a night at the rodeo and visit to the county fair, I pretty much fell right back into the rural lifestyle with which I was raised.

Now, the gun range is not on my normal “to do” list. As a matter of fact, I’d only ever shot a gun once before this summer’s trip, but when it came up as a possibility, I was all over it! What’s not to love about pinging metal targets and shooting clay pigeons? Between the rifles, revolvers and pistols, we had a pretty good assortment of hardware for our morning outing. I do have to say though, I think I am much more of a pistol kind of girl than a rifle one. That rifle tried to knock me on my ass more than once and left a nice little sore spot on my shoulder. While we had our tiny arsenal to play with, I think the guys up a few spots from us at the range brought the militia. I have no idea what they were shooting with, but I’m going to take an uneducated guess and say rocket launchers and tanks!

The gun range outing was followed up, just a few days later, by a trip to the annual Snake River Stampede. This year was the 100th anniversary of the Stampede, so the turnout was great. A packed house! Events kicked off early with mutton busting and then headed right into full-blown patriotism with giant flags hauled around the arena by pretty girls on the back of prettier horses. (For those of you unaccustomed to the rodeo circuit, mutton busting is how dads break in baby cowboys. Little kids, think four and five year olds, are placed on the back of sheep who then haul mutton-butt across the arena, trying to rid themselves of the forty pound monkeys on their backs. This usually ends with a toddler face-first in the dirt and a happy sheep doing what they do best- huddling with the rest of its herd. I am not sure how much little kids actually enjoy this event, but for the spectators, it is hilarious!) Between bronc riding, roping and bull riding, the evening was a success- more so for the livestock than the riders, but a success nonetheless.

And, of course, any summer in small-town America is not complete without a trip to the county fair. Being the thrifty family that we are, we opted to go on “free” day- the first day of the fair. We got there right at lunchtime so we could enjoy the wonders of fair food (although, I was hugely disappointed to not get my brick of fries that is my normal go-to choice at the Western Idaho Fair) and then it was into the exhibit hall to check out the entries and 4-H projects. (As a former 4-H-er myself, I understand the last minute struggle to get those portfolios in tip-top shape just days before they are due.) I was excited to see that my 14-year old niece won several ribbons for her artwork (including a grand champion!)and her 10-year old brother got a ribbon for his woodwork piece. From there it was out to see the stars of the show- the animals! I was bummed to see that there is no longer a llama 4-H club in the area, but did enjoy looking at the cows, goats, rabbits and, of course, my favorite- the pigs. It was a hot (but not Malaysia-sticky!) day, so a few hours of wandering the fairgrounds were enough for our entire entourage. I skipped the carnival part of the fair, as I am already terrified by most rides to begin with and then you add in the fact that they were just pieced together that morning by a few sleep-deprived carnies and I will have to take a pass. How easy would it be to lose a crucial screw in the grass, misplace a necessary nut or just botch the thing in general? No thanks!

Summer 2015. It was as “Idaho” as one can get, and yet it was also just about perfect. My three weeks back Stateside were filled with family and friends, which are the things we miss most as we hop around the world from country to count every couple of years. Being home was a nice break and makes me look forward to December- our first Christmas home in almost five years! With summer quickly fading in the rear view mirror, it is time to buckle down at work (VIP visits), with school (a thesis) and personally (TLC for the blog). Ready…set…go!

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