Welcome, Day 100!

It's here! Our 100^th day on the road. We left October 16^th, and now it's January 23^rd.

That said, it's been nuts. We've been all over the place (so far: Japan, China, Tibet, Nepal, and India), heard all sorts of languages, and walked probably more than is healthy. 

Just joking. You can never walk too much.

So, what am I doing to celebrate our 100^th day? Writing this blog post, full of small snippets of our life over the past hundred days.

Before I begin, though, something Melly, a friend from the Write Write And Write group, said before we left:

"The number one thing to remember, mino, if anything ever goes wrong, it will make a hilarious story later on."

And she was right.

Japan

Kyoto

Japan is one of the most organized countries I've ever seen.

While waiting to enter (or exit?) one of the any gardens (which are stunning, by the way), I spotted a black and white dog that looked decidedly out of place.

I nudged Ileana.

Look at that dog. I said, I think that's the first out-of-place thing I've seen here.

Unfortunately for my very interesting quote, even the dog was in-place— he went up to a security guard and started eating the scraps of his sandwich as if he was very used to such royal treatment.

--

While in another garden, hurrying because the closing time was approaching, a gardener walked up to Dad. The rest of us kept walking, because we wanted to see as much as possible of the garden before it closed.

When Dad caught up to us, he said

Știi ce mi-a zis omul ăla? "Sloowly, sloowly, hurry-hurry-hurry!" Adică, bucură-te de grădină, dar grăbește-te.

[And in English!]

You know what that man told me? "Sloowly, sloowly, hurry-hurry-hurry!" Which means, enjoy the garden, but hurry up.

That about sums it up.

Tokyo

Dad has a compass on his iPhone. He pulls it out regularly, makes bee-dance motions with his hand, and then checks the direction we're supposedly going in.

While pulling out his iPhone to do exactly that, he says,

Stai să ne busolim puțin… Ăsta este un cuvânt nou.

Let's compass ourselves a bit… this is a new word.

China

Beijing

Near our hotel room in Beijing, there were a few restaurants.

One of these was a 'hot-pot' restaurant. You order raw food and the waitress brings over a bronze pot and fills it with boiling water.

You then use chopsticks to throw your food into the pot.

That's the easy part.

The hard part is getting it out.

As Dad said while we were 'bobbing for apples with sticks,'

Mi-a căzut și mi-a scăpat bucata cea mai mare de carne de la inventarea "mutonului."

I just dropped and lost the biggest piece of meat since the invention of mutton.

We found it…

Eventually.

--

Usually when we go places it's because our parents are pushing from the back for us to go there.

Not so to this random place we went to in Beijing. Dad unexpectedly said, as we were looking about…

Visul meu, speranța mea, este să nu mai venim pe aici. Uitați-vă bine.

My dream, my hope, is that we don't come here again. Look well.

—

Upon meeting Bunica and Bunicu and Nasha in Beijing, Bunica remembered she wanted to bring out the brushes she'd brought for us.

Am făcut bagajul foarte organizat, ca urmare acum nu găsesc nimic.

I made the bags very organized, so now I can't find anything.

—

You all remember that the real name of the Great Wall of China is the Great Steps of China.

This unprecedented find was helped by Ioan.

—

Peking duck is also known as the duck from paradise, as dubbed by Ileana.

Tibet

Lhasa

I try to get a quote from each city we go to, but we'd been in Lhasa for almost a week and I still had no quote.

Someone say something funny for our Lhasa quote!

I exclaimed, and Ileana burst out laughing.

Nepal

Kathmandu

We were in a restaurant other than our beloved Alchemy, and we'd just ordered what looked to be very red and green food.

Red, of course means spices. Green often means the same thing.

Ia să vedem ce e aici, Mama a zis, luând niste carne dintr-o farfurie, Uite, Tata.

Let's see what this is, Mom said, taking some meat from a plate, Here, Dad.

The food looked to be spicy.

This looked like a blatant attempt at poisonization! We all stared at Mom.

Dad dies, Ileana says, and Mom says, "Free at last!"

Dad grins and says, "Ah. Guess I shouldn't have let him cancel the life insurance."

(Referring, of course, to the fact that we are every American's worst nightmare: Jobless, Homeless, and Uninsured.)

When we'd finished eating, I looked at my plate with a frown and said,

Okay. I ate one piece of chicken, one of those, and a fourth of the macaroni. That's it. So why am I so full?

Dad grinned.

You're full of yourself. He said.

Of course, with such bantering going on around me, I had my iPod Touch out almost constantly. When I drew it out again, Ioan said,

Are you sure you want to take that risk?

Prompting, of course, another quote.

What risk? It was a calculated mistake.

And when I put it away, Ioan said,

Are you sure you want to do that? A funny quote WILL come.

— 

The next morning, at breakfast on the terrace, we looked up because a strange noise was coming from the water tank.

"Oh," said Mom, "it just filled up."

"How much water do you think is in that?" Ioan asked,

"About 1000 liters."

"What happens when it runs out?"

"No more hot water." Mom said, "And then you get rusty water."

Ioan looked over toward Ileana, a mischievous smile on his face. Ileana is well-known for her long stays in the bathroom when there is access to a shower and/or mirror. 

Hear that, Ileana? He asked, If you use more than 1000 liters…

—

The next night, at dinner, while confronted with some of the spiciest food we've encountered, Dad said,

Mananc ceapa ca sa-mi scot iuteala.

I'm eating onions to take away the spiciness.

Yeah, the food was that spicy. 

But we had not yet arrived in India… where 'not spicy' means 'two little chiles.'

India

Goa

One night, after a movie, Ioan, Dad and I decided to start playing FAZAN.

The basic rules of the game are this— 

1. Have someone say the alphabet. Someone else must then say STOP.

2. The person saying the alphabet must say a word starting with that letter.

3. The person to the right or left of the first person must then say a word that begins with the last two letters of the previous word. (Which is why this game is very hard in English.)

4. Repeat step 3 until someone cannot find a word, at which point play starts again from Step 1, and the 'loser' receives a letter from the word FAZAN.

When Dad started winning too easily, we changed to a derivative of the game "we're going on a picnic…"

That of naming gods and goddesses. When we couldn't find anything for a C We called down Ileana.

And spent another hour trying to figure out gods and goddesses name. Apparently, according to Dad, Christ doesn't count for the game, because:

Real gods don't count.

When we got to K and couldn't find anything, it was Dad's turn. He said,

"I don't know anything for K… there's a psychiatric medication for that, but I don't know any deities."

I asked Dad if he really knew 26 medications from A to Z… and he knew about 20 of them. (There are not many medications for J, W, etc.) He knew them, side effects, use… etc.

I think I want to be a psychiatrist when I grow up!

—

Hampi

The first day, we all went up to see a temple walking distance from our hotel. However, when we finished sightseeing the temple, Ioan, Mom, and Dad wanted to climb up some huge rocks and see from up there, but Ileana and I just wanted to walk home.

Because Ileana gets lost coming back from the bathroom in an airport, I took the lead.

And led us into a thicket of brambles that didn't quite look like the path we'd come back by.

HOWEVER. The bramble path was right in front of us, and the correct path was out of the way and to the right.

While we were trying to push through the bramble path, Ileana stepped on a bramble.

This is painful— proven by Ileana's loud exclamation.

"This is all your fault!"

"I didn't make you step on a bramble." I said, laughing, "You should have looked where you were going."

For the sake of humor, it's YOUR fault! Ileana exclaimed,

And that was that. XD

Kerala

Dacă mănânc tot ce e aici, pot să dorm eu în camera din mijloc și țânțari o să leșine.

If I eat everything that's here, I can sleep in the middle room and the mosquitos will faint.

No explanation is needed for this quote besides the fact that spicy food deters mosquitoes.

China

Guilin

As we were climbing 800 steps to reach the Moon Palace (a round, circular HOLE in the middle of a mountain in Guilin, China, that looks like a 'full moom' in some places and a 'full moon' in others), Ileana and I spotted a white person.

At the beginning of the trip, says Ileana as we climb, everyone was looking at us like 'oh look a white person!' And now I've turned into them!

It is true. It's soooo amazing to see a Caucasian (or African, or anything besides Indian/Asian) that we sometimes stare.

NO ONE tells you about this when you head off to Asia.

—

I ordered a spaghetti bolognese at the Luna restaurant.

The waitress as she was reading it back, said:

So you wanted a spaghetti broken eggs, green beans and pork, … etc etc.

Yes, please!

—

It is cold in China. When I am miserable, everyone must be miserable as well. Hopping around is not an acceptable behavior for freezing people.

BUT… that is exactly what Ioan was doing.

Ioan! It's cold! HIBERNATE!

Guangzhou

IT'S COLD! I'M COLD! I'M COLD! I'M COLD!

There was no heating, you see, in our rooms.

Hong Kong

Our washing machine (how awesome are washing machines!) makes strange sounds. Something like an airplane taking off.

Mom's reaction was something like this:

Cine își ia zborul?

Who's taking flight?

We are! Except we're taking the ferry out of Hong Kong, not an airplane. ^_^

— 

As a side note, Chinese New Year Parade was amazing, long, and somewhat tiring— we were squashed against the fence in one position for about an hour. Moving meant losing part of the parade. NO WAY.

It was… amazing. But more on that (and hopefully pictures) later!

Write Your World (amino): Coincidence

Write Your World (amino): Coincidence: (this was first published in Maria's blog)

On the last day in Nepal, while hurrying up and down three flights of stairs in order to eat breakfast, make our bags, tell people the food was ready… grab the Nutella (have I ever mentioned our recent obsession with Nutella?)… etc.

THREE FLIGHTS OF STAIRS.

While buttering my slices of toast and spreading jam on them, Mom was talking to a young Asian woman in her early twenties about writing and our travels. Mom introduced me, and we talked a bit about writing blog posts (here's a secret: writing about traveling is hard), gave her our card (we're that cool!), and said goodbye, hurrying down three flights of stairs to check underneath our beds, shake out the sheets, and in general make sure that important things like plastic spoons and razors were not forgotten.


Of course we headed to the airport, got on the plane… went to New Delhi, Agra, Goa… and now we're in Mysore (my- soh-reh), at the Railway Museum's playground, having spent a lovely hour or so looking at trains and playing on the seesaw and the slide and the whirly-chair thing which would be banned in America due to safety reasons. (By the way, today was a very… very relaxing, productive day with enjoyable activities).

As we were getting ready to leave and head to the market (by the way, we saw flowers there! Everywhere! And learned how incense sticks are made! And mounds of powdered color!), I hear a "Hi!"

Turning around… and there is Lindsey (or Lindsay? We never managed to exchange name spellings).

Please note that we were last in Nepal December 15th, and that we had never planned to ever meet again. It was one of those chance encounters that you think of for maybe a while (at least, that's what we did, as we couldn't exactly check up on Lindsey, as she didn't have a blog), but then tend to forget.

And all of a sudden, here in Mysore (a truly unfortunate name for native English speakers), at a railway playground, is Lindesy! Coming up behind her is a woman she met in India, who apparently lives in the same town as her! She is half Japanese and half Welsh, loves monkeys, and is fascinated by trains. Unfortuantely, we could not remember her name. This saddens us.

After having a long discussion about what to see in Hampi (they were heading towards Hampi), and what to see in Kerala (we were heading towards Kerala), they realized that they actually needed to hurry in order to see the rest of the museum, and we realized that we needed to hurry in order to see the market before it got dark.

After the market, we ate Domino's Pizza (with oregano, choco lava cake, and butterscotch mousse).

While traveling is hard at times, it's also ridiculously rewarding. At home we never would have enjoyed such a day— all of us would have been on our own agenda.

Asian TRAFFIC

We have had a hard time dodging Asian traffic.

It is crazy, except in Japan. There you get nice drivers who pay attention to the rules. You can wait for a long time for the traffic light to change. Most people in Japan wait through this, even if there are no cars.

Then you get in China and you feel like people don’t care if they run you over. They just want to get to their destination, but of course they care that they might break their car. In some parts of China they have built bridges where you can go over traffic, YAY!

That's just some. In China and Tibet (which is in China) the traffic wouldn’t stop, so we usually followed the locals, or time really well, and RUN!

Nepal was mostly the same with narrower streets and so is India. Here we jumped into a bus while it was moving, because the drivers don’t stop, they just slow down.

If you are reading this, it means we are ALIVE!

Guitars & Nepal

blog: 1. (noun) a personal website or web page on which an individual records opinions, links to other sites, etc., on a regular basis. 2. (verb) add new material to or regularly update a blog.

Well, that was helpful. I still don’t know how to blog.

Anyways, y’all didn’t get a blogpost on Nepal from me. So sorry about that. I like to blame lack of computer due to selfish parents, but then again, I’m biased.

Nepal in one word: Phantasmagorical (I swear to you I did not make that word up).

Nepal in more words: gorgeous. Great. Loud. Noisy. Fascinating. Colorful. Ridiculously interesting. Great temples. Cool people. Epic clothes. Fun.

All in all, I loved Nepal. I loved seeing the temples (did not love reading up on them beforehand, though), and I loved seeing the clothes, and, sadly enough, I loved walking by the guitar store and nearly bursting into tears*. Our hotel was right outside a school, and I actually liked hearing all the kids screaming and laughing outside (I didn’t like the kid upstairs, though, who, according to Mom, was playing with a hammer). The only part I didn’t like were the vaccinations, as I do not, in general, like vaccinations.

*This is the part where I start moaning in regret. The things I miss most from home are my piano and guitar. I’ve been studying piano since I was six, and have been avoiding it religiously ever since my first lesson. Guitar, however, I’ve only been studying since I was eleven, and avoided just as religiously until this summer, when I started to play it much more often. But now that I’ve gone and there is no way for me to play them (Apps are not adequate replacements), I’d like to go home and spend a ridiculously huge amount of time just playing**.

**Of course not “just playing”! I have compositions to compose! Accompaniments to arrange!

Oh God I sound like Maria.

Ahem. Anyways, I’ve been informed that blogposts don’t have to be a million words long. Just 500 is OK. So, I’m just going to talk about Chitwan, Nepal, which was the most epickingest part of Nepal (I didn’t make that word up either. Your spellcheck, however, will disagree).

To reach Chitwan from Kathmandu, a bus must be taken. The road will occasionally have bumps, but it’s mostly a smooth ride. After many hours, Chitwan is reached. We get to Sapana Lodge, which is beautiful and bright, and are given the welcome drink, which is delicious. Naran, the manager, comes up to us to discuss rooms (we’d originally booked two, but they had an overbooking problem and he wanted to know if we were willing to have just one big room instead), program (if we want to go to the village, through the jungle, bird-watching, canooing, etc.), prices, etc. We go to our one big room and quickly acquaint ourselves with three little girls and an even littler boy. I cannot remember their names for the life of me, but they were very sweet and would kiss us, hug us, put flowers in our hair, and ask for pens, hairties, money, candy, and my crucifix. The pens we needed and didn’t give, the hairtie I wouldn’t have minded giving if it hadn’t been my only purple one (sobs into handkerchief), candy I did not have, and my crucifix was mine, and, considering how possessive I can be of my things, I’m surprised they escaped unscathed (I think it was the cuteness factor). And as for the money, before we left the US, I took out all the cash from my wallet ($6) and put it in one of the many pockets from my Scottevest, which was what I’d been wearing when we met the children. As they were putting flowers in our hair, it occurred to Maria that she and Mom needed hairties (of which I was in possession). The hairties were in the same pocket as the money. Later, as I was putting the hairties away, one of the girls stuck her hand in my pocket and came out with the cash. She gave one to each of them and kept one for herself, then gave me the remaining two dollars. They hugged me and left. Since then, I have not carried cash longer than necessary.

That evening we went to a Tharu village not that far from the lodge and we met with more children. They asked us our names and we asked them theirs, and some brought us flowers. One of the little boys took to taking dramatic poses and shouting, “ILENA!”* at the top of his lungs. Pretty soon all the kids where shouting my name and by the time we left the village, I had my hands and my hair full of flowers.

*Meeting non-Romanians that can pronounce my name properly is just short of astounding, and results in having that non-Romanian reaching a very high level of respect in my eyes (so far it’s just Nick). For those who can’t say my name, Ilena/Alana is [just barely] acceptable. Nicknames are suitable.

On the way back from the village I ceremoniously dropped the flowers on the Grandmother River and watched them float away. I kept the little boy’s purple flower in my hair, though.

After dinner there was a Tharu stick dance demonstration. It was pretty much indescribable. It was like martial arts a bit, but still dance. It reminded me a bit of the hora, which is a traditional Romanian dance, mostly because of the dancing around in a circle, I guess, and probably the white outfits. After they showed us the harvest dance, the fire dance, the war dance, and more—there was one last dance in which they asked us to join in. I failed worse than snowman with a hairdryer, but GOLDARNIT I HAD FUN.

The first full day in Chitwan was spent like so: a lovely elephant ride through the jungle, where we saw trees, leaves, plants, and occasionally even (gasp!!!) animals. It was lovely, so long as you ignored the elephant driver as he beat the poor elephant with his stick, but besides that it was gorgeous. Then, after the elephant riding, we went elephant washing. It was very wet. But it was amazing! The elephant is so huge and so rough, but so soft and loving... I can’t believe that such a huge animal, one which could easily overcome an unarmed human, puts up with the sort of treatment it receives from its handler. Not all handlers are bad, though. As we were walking into the jungle for the elephant ride, we passed a handler and his elephant. He was sitting on the elephant’s neck, eating crackers, then the elephant would then reach up with his trunk and would receive a cracker.

After the washing, we lazed around in the room, attempted to connect to internet, and in Maria’s case, swung in hammocks, until the evening where we took a canoe ride to the elephant breeding center, which, unlike the Beijing Zoo, did not have cages, but was no less saddening.

The next day, Ioan and Dad were going to go bird-watching, but Ioan had developed a fever from the Typhoid shot, and so stayed home, to his infinite sadness. Mom stayed in the room with him as Maria and I played badmington with Jamal our waiter, Paras the assistant cook, and another waiter. Then Dad came back from bird-watching and it was Maria and Jamal vs. Dad and I. They won, but only because the wind was on their side. Then Dad and Jamal faced off and Jamal won again. I played a bit of football soccer with Jamal as Maria played more badminton, and then we went back to our room.

Later, I was writing outside as Jamal was drying the glasses. One thing that I’d noticed about him was that he liked to sing, but, unfortunately for me, he sang quietly. So I asked him what he was singing.

“Nepali love song,” he said.

“Oh. Will you sing it for me?” I asked, being the insatiably curious one that I am.

“Nooooo,” he said, embarrassed. “What about you, do you sing?”

“Well, um, yeah. You know. A bit.”

“Sing something for me,” he said, making encouraging gestures.

“Oh, okay.” I said. “I like to ride with a jungle-machine repair man. Na na na na na na na na na... He was high on individualism. I’ve never been there but the brochure looks nice... Jump in, let’s go. Lay back, enjoy the show. Everybody gets high, everybody gets low. These are the days when anything goes. Everyday is a winding road... I get a little bit closer. Everyday is a na na sigh... I get a little bit closer, I’m feeling fine.” (In my defense, I don’t really know this song. It was just stuck in my head since the elephant ride.)

Jamal clapped, complimented my voice, and asked for another. The result was “Fearless” by Taylor Swift. He said I sang like this boy, he didn’t know the name... The waiter from earlier came over with his cellphone and they found the singer, so I came over and listened to one of Justin Bieber’s earlier singles. Is it okay to be told you sing like Justin Bieber if you’re a girl? Dad’s bird-watching guide came over too and they asked me to sing more. I brought out my iTouch and sang some of my own lyrics. They recorded me, took pictures and video, and added their compliments to Jamal’s. Almost thirty feet over, the director, Dhruba, heard me and shouted that my voice was beautiful and that he thought someone was playing a CD. Then he said the most beautiful thing that I had ever heard in my whole entire life: his friend had a guitar, and they could bring it over tonight. Naturally, my reaction was, “A guitar?!! Where?!! When?!! Can I have it now? Can I keep it?” but instead I just said, “Really? Thanks!” (how unoriginal).

All throughout dinner, everyone was coming up to me saying that, sorry, the friend is late, but he is coming and we can play around the campfire after dinner. Then, when the friend arrived and the food was eaten, they ushered me to the campfire and I played.

And then, the worst possible thing happened: I forgot all the chords.

Naturally not the lyrics. Lyrics can be sung in the shower and at the top of one’s lungs in empty hotel rooms. But chords require guitars (or guitar apps). But I’d forgotten to copy the chords to my songs somewhere other than in notebooks. Which happened to be in a big, plastic box. Beneath my bed. At home.

(Lucky me, I know exactly which notebook. It’s green, spiral-bound, has 70 sheets, cost about ten cents, and has “Thirteen” written in black ink on the cover. The chords are on the last page of “At a Gas Station”, which is in the middle of the notebook.)

Even luckier, I still remembered the chords to my favorite song I’d written, “Last Time (The Rain Falls)”, “Na Na Na (Campfire Song)” also by me, and “I Love You” by Avril Lavigne. The guitarist friend played more songs, mostly Nepali songs, but also Pink Floyd. At one point he asked me who my favorite singers were, to which I quite naturally said Guns N’ Roses.

“Do you know ‘Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door’?” he asked.

The answer was a yes, so he played it and I sang along. Later we also sang my all-time favorite, “Don’t Cry”, which I forgot the lyrics to.

Of course, I was not the only one singing. Mom sang a song about a man who meets a wolf, to whom he says, “Don’t eat me, wait for my wife.” The wife comes along and the man says, “You can eat me or my wife, better yet, eat my mother-in-law!” Another of the guests who’d heard me singing the day before sang a song like “Just look on the bright side of life...” All in all, we had the most lovely time around the campfire, singing and guitar-playing. I hated leaving the next day, but while waiting for the parents to get in the jeep to get to the bus, Maria and I started planning.

“When I come back here,” I said, “I’m bringing Lydia and Ingrid.”

“I’m bringing Helen.” Said Maria. “Oh, but I have to take her to France first.”

“Maybe I should bring Michael?” I asked.

“Why?”

“Um, because it’s Michael, and he’s sweet and fun and hilarious?”

“Yeah, but still.”