Author: sajbat

In which the kids plan the day in Sydney and we ignore important foreshadowing

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Our first full day in Sydney and the weather was a bit gloomy. Just as well since we needed a bit of a morning off after the packed week in NZ. I found an Air BnB that looks remarkably like our place back in Denver, and is in a central neighborhood with plenty of restaurants and bars (Surrey Hill, for those of you that know it). 


Before leaving for the morning, I’d handed over the Sydney guide and map we picked up at the airport to the kids and told them that they were responsible for planning the day and navigating. They took to this with aplomb and began studying both. They came up with several alternative itineraries for the day, and the one they settled on was having dumplings at Din Tai Fung, then walking through Chinatown, then the Chinese Friendship Garden, then the playground at Darling Harbor. Perfect.

The girl said her stomach didn’t feel good and she was homesick and not eating enough. We tried to console her to little avail, and she somewhat glumly trudged after us when we left for lunch. The boy did a fantastic job getting us to the train station and then navigating us the shopping mall where the lunch restaurant was. We walked up stairs that twinkled in multicolored patterns and under a swirling metal Chinese Dragon. 


DTF is a Taiwanese dumpling and steamed bun chain and it was super yummy! We had the vegetarian gyoza, steamed buns and spinach with garlic. They had a little dish with sliced ginger in it and you put soy sauce and vinegar into it to make your own dipping sauce. The little detail I loved was that they gave you a bag for your belongings, somewhat like an upright laundry bag that they then covered with a cloth. So civilized! The girl, who doesn’t care for dumplings, instead chose the vegetarian fried rice which was tasty as well. 


As Eric has mentioned in his post, we stopped at a random shop in Chinatown which had notebooks and other paper products printed with English sayings, something of which was clearly lost in translation. 


After this we went to the Chinese Garden of Friendship and it really was lovely, though the girl’s mood continued to decline. The Garden was designed by Sydney’s sister city, Guangzhou and opened in 1988. It is a traditional walled garden in the style of the Ming dynasty, and the kids were given activity books to search for little figurines of the Chinese zodiac through the garden. There were large crowds of Australian White Ibis throughout the park, aggressive little critters they are. 


We made it to the fantastic harbor playground after that and all of the girls aches and pains and sadness seemed to vanish as she ran, climbed, swung and slid in what the boy kept calling “the greatest playground ever!” and which he describes in his post. We walked across the small bridge to the train station and boarded the light rail to head home. 
Once on board, the girl said her stomach didn’t feel good again and she thought she might throw up. Given that she’d been complaining of this all day and had just spent the better part of an hour frolicking freely without complaint, we patted her back and gave a few “there there’s” and said we’d be home soon, completely ignoring her. 
At which point she proceeded to vomit large volumes of fried rice all over the crowded light rail compartment. 
Sydney residents must have excellent reflexes, because they all jumped very quickly and no other passengers were hurt in the incident. I went into a state of shock and helplessly held out my hand under her mouth as if it would do anything other than make sure that I was covered in vomit as well. A kind lady offered us a tissue, which was nice but again, about as useful as a postage stamp at that point. 
Eric thankfully maintained some sense and insisted we get off the bus, NOW. We got off and stood there, dazed for a moment, until another kind person pointed us across the street to a warehouse and told us there was a bathroom in there. We made our way across and found ourselves in the midst of a massive flea market of sorts and got to the bathroom as quickly as we could. Once inside, I was able to clean the girl up as best as possible and we balled up her dirty over shirt and went back into the market. 
We all stood there for a minute, wondering what to do next exactly whilst surrounded by piles of plastic gizmos, Disney themed clothing and fake swords. I pulled out my phone to see if we could just call a cab home, but the wifi wasn’t working and I hadn’t loaded in a new SIM card yet. We started to look around for a new sweatshirt for the girl so she wouldn’t be freezing cold but they were all hideously ugly. I realized I could just give her my long sleeve shirt and we could make it home. 
At this point, the girl was feeling back to her old self and began chattering away nonstop, especially as we were in a flea market with about a million things she now wanted to purchase. “Let’s get those swords for our friends back home! I bet they have snow globes here! I like that shirt! Oh there’s stickers over there! That playground was great can we go again?” As Eric and I stared at each other over her head in disbelief while trying to ignore the acrid aroma of vomit that surrounded us. At that point, we realized the only way back was to get on another light rail, and we went back to the station to wait. 
Sydney has a system of cards which you tap at little pads at each site to get on or off the transit. We had tapped on when we first got on but didn’t tap off when we escaped after the girl marked her territory. At that point we weren’t sure whether to tap on again or tap off and then tap on. Thus began a comic and somewhat frantic tapping of cards only to yield multiple error messages over and over. I’d tap one and it would say “not accepted,” then I’d tap another one and it wouldn’t accept, then I’d tap another and it went through, then another one would say it had already been tapped on, and all the while the 4 of us are standing around this pole like total idiots staring at the tap pad and the Australians are staring at us. Eventually, I gave up and left it to fate and the transit police.

We got off at our station and tried to tap all the cards again, with another set of error messages that basically read, “Stop it you dumb tourist, you’re just blocking the actual Sydney residents from getting home.” 

A few blocks later, we were back at our flat, the girl was in a hot bath, and Eric and I both had drinks in our hands. I felt like a terrible parent for ignoring the poor girl’s complaints all day and blowing them off as homesickness, and apologized to her to which she replied, “Oh, that’s okay mommy. I feel better now! Can we go eat some sushi?” Lesson learned : when your kid says their stomach doesn’t feel good, stop putting food in it. You might think I would have figured this out before now, but sometimes it takes true pyrotechnics for an education to sink in. 

-s

In which we see the glow worms and my children electrocute themselves.

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We woke up in the morning and were finally warm, having left the electric heater on all night.New Zealand is cold. I knew that, of course, from researching before we left and helpful tips from current Kiwis, but we hadn’t yet been to a hotel or Air BnB without central heating. Yesterday we woke up with our toes frozen and able to see our breath as we spoke. Henceforth, I only looked at places with both central heat and wifi as well. You know, the essentials of life. 
The previous evening, Celia, the home host/property manager, had come by to meet us and brought us 6 farm fresh eggs from her chickens, 2 of which were green shelled! We had a delicious breakfast of fried eggs, leftover baguette, pesto and cheese. 
It was also NOT raining, incredibly, and we took a stroll on the property to the trout stream just down the way. Along the way we met Pat, the farmer who owns the property, and his dogs, one of whom accompanied us to the stream. 


This was an idyllic place and it made me wish it had been a bit warmer so we could have picnicked there one night. The girl found herself lost in quiet contemplation on the little bridge. (Picture completely staged, people.  She never sits still for this long.) 

On the way back we ran into Pat again and we had a long chat about the state of farming in NZ. He runs a dairy cow operation, where he gets calves from the dairy farmers in the spring, raises them to the yearling stage and then sends them off to the stud farm and then the dairy for milking and having their calves, and then the cycle repeats. One of his dogs (the big brown one) is a working dog and does all of the shepherding and moving of the herd from one area of the farm to another, where the happy looking cows (I think) munched on grass. At one point the cows started humping each other, which of course the boy exclaimed upon. Turns out, horny cows will hump anything, even without a bull around. Go figure. The actual farmer way of saying this is that the cows are approaching heat. Somewhere around this time, the girl grabbed onto the metal wire fencing to get a closer look…and electrocuted herself on the electric fence. Thankfully, it’s not a big shock and she was more slightly zapped then injured, but STILL. 
After this, a drive across country to go to the Waitomo area. I’ve been trying to plan a trip that’s a bit more off the beaten path, and for the most part we’ve been able to do that and have loved it. Here, I failed. There’s supposed to be a hike from a highway stop a bit away that shows a lot of limestone formations and is stunning and unique. Here’s the first part of the hike. 


We started on the hike and thought, oh it’s pretty! Then : Umm…this is pretty muddy. And later: Oh man we’re now covered in mud again. Shortly thereafter: Here’s a pool where the trail is flooded! We’ll go around! And then, came an impossible flooding of the trail and we were forced to go back, though not before the girl electrocuted herself AGAIN on another electrified fence. Not to be outdone, the boy was curious how this felt and shocked himself on purpose. Yes, these are my brilliant children.

Once they stopped buzzing, we headed back to the car and admitted defeat and stepped into tourist land of the Waitomo Glowworm Caves. Eric has something of a phobia of caves and underground caverns, so it was the shorter 45 min tour we chose. The caves themselves were discovered by Tane Tinorau, a local Maori chief, and Fred Mace, an English surveyor, where they made a raft and floated into the caves and saw the glowing lights. A bioluminescent “worm” which is actually the larval stage of a small fungus-gnat (doesn’t that sound pretty) lives in the caves and lights it up from the inside, like a starry night outside. They don’t allow pictures, so here’s a stock one from the web – it really is magical, though you do feel a bit hustled in and out of the cave in true tourist fashion.  While in the boat, floating with the lights around, I started to sing “Kiss the Girl” from “The Little Mermaid,” until I was shushed by unappreciative tourists.  

I’m still glad we saw them – I had been feeling a bit regretful about missing them, so the trail flooding was, in the end, a good thing. 

-s

In which we go mountain biking in a California redwood forest…in New Zealand

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One of the big things Eric and I were really looking forward to was mountain biking in Rotorua. California redwoods were imported there in 1901 to support the logging industry and while they didn’t really take off as a new source of timber, some part of the forest remains. The upshot is that in the middle of New Zealand is a gorgeous California Redwood forest just begging to be ridden through. 
We asked to stay at the farmstay an additional day since we figured we wouldn’t want to bike and get muddy and then have to pack up and go somewhere, and man, were we grateful for that decision later! It made me even happier that we had been able to add some flexibility into our schedule and not have everything booked solid before we left. 
We called the lovely people at Planet Bike in the morning and made sure they had rental bikes for us. They were so nice, even to switch the brakes so we wouldn’t have to brake backwards with the back wheel brakes on the left! I was so glad of this at many times in the ride. The kids were fitted on fat tire bikes, a first for them! And we were off on the muddy trails. Both kids tried to hit all the mud puddles as fast as they could so that by the end of the day they resembled little else than mini mud monsters. We had them strip before they got back in the car.


Riding through the forest was so, so beautiful. The entire time I was riding I just couldn’t believe how happy I felt. We ran into maybe another 3 people along the way and the feeling of cruising through a dappled forest with birds and animals chirping about you is unparalleled. The girl got a bit nervous at times with the isolated feeling, and I told her assuredly that it was impossible to get lost in this forest. 


About 5 minutes later we got lost in the forest. We had taken a bit of a wrong turn and found ourselves off trail. We used my phone to figure out the compass directions and headed that way, only to find ourselves in denser forest and the clear disappearance of the trail. Under his breath, Eric asked “you sure this is right?” And I replied quietly so the kids wouldn’t hear, “ummm, not really.” Out loud we acted like grown ups and kept saying that we were going the right way. 
After we came back out to where we had made the wrong turn, we simply turned around and saw the right road about, oh, 5 yards from where we had been. Eesh. We were able to make it back to the trail and then, the fun part after all the hard uphill riding we had done! Going downhill on a muddy trail with bumps over tree roots was exhilarating! 
We had initially intended to go to the Waikiti hot spring before going home, but instead decided to head back to the farmstay to make lunch and de-mud first. After this we didn’t feel like the long drive to Waikiti and instead went to the Polynesian Spa hot spring in town and loved it. There was a pool for the kids to frolic in and they made some friends with two local Kiwi kids who gave their opinion on US politics (Summary: Trump is bad, Clinton is okay but not as good as Obama). Given that I couldn’t tell you anything about who runs New Zealand, I’m amazed at the overall cultural dominance of the States in this regard. 
Back home for a peaceful night in, having made some pesto pasta at home for a simpler night of food comfort. 

-s

In which we commune with the Hobbits.

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The rainy day in Rotorua continued for much of the morning. This was a blessing in that we needed some downtime to just relax and not do anything for a bit. It was going to clear in the afternoon, so the kids and I thought this would be a great time to visit the hobbits! Eric’s interest in people is directly proportional to their relation to him or how much shorter they are then him, and given that hobbits are on the low end of both, hold little fascination for him. He chose to stay in town and go for a swim at the aquatic center.

After a bit of a drive we found our way on the Hobbiton set. One of the things that’s amazed me about NZ is how little things are commercialized to the way they are in the States. I mean, if this set was in the US, there’d be some sort of big theme park around it and multiple ways for them to sell you things. Here, there’s a small car park, little cabin like building, smallish gift shop and … That’s it. You board a bus to take you to the set and the gate to enter isn’t even mechanized. The tour guide has to hop out of the bus, open it, wait for the bus to pass, then close it and hop in! A stupid bit of detail but it’s things like that which fascinate me sometimes.

Onto the hobbits! 

The set is really lovely, I have to say, and you feel like you’ve been dropped into the Shire from all angles. Given that it had just rained, everything was green and misty. They take care to keep everything as it was and real – the gardens are actually growing vegetables. I could see Frodo and Sam walking through the space, and Gandalf riding in, and the big party under the magnificent tree. 


The set is just the exterior fronts – you can’t actually see into Bag End as that was all filmed on a set. The only Americanized thing I would have liked for them to do would be to pipe in some of the soundtrack music as you walk around. As it was, some of the other people on the tour whistled and hummed it the entire way for us. 
After that it was home and some tasty Indian takeaway. TV here is a bit limited where we’ve been staying so the kids are getting a new education in prime time offerings. They’re loving the Australian version of The Voice, and are hoping to catch the next episode to follow along!

In which we make our own hot pool and chill with the sheep

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It’s about 8:30 in the morning and the weather outside is foggy with a constant downpour of rain. We’re in a farm cottage where we’re staying for two nights, having rolled in yesterday. Most of my morning with the boy was spent in trying to figure out how to operate the wood burning fireplace so that it heats up these chilly rooms, and I think we’ve just gotten it figured out. The chill and wet don’t seem to bother the animals much, and we awoke to a concertina of birds, roosters and sheep.
I suppose it will surprise no one, including myself, that there will be times of friction among the four of us in such close quarters for so long. I know it’s only been a few days but the mentality is different than a week away where you know you’re going home soon. Yesterday morning was one of the first, where the boy was mad at me about having to write his blog post, the girl was mad at me for god knows what, I was annoyed at both of them and Eric had taken off for a peaceful sunrise stroll in all of this which annoyed me too. After a bit of a tearful breakdown, we managed to pull ourselves together and all cheer up again. 
Our day yesterday then turned into a lovely one, starting with hot water beach in the morning. This is a unique place on the Coromandel peninsula’s East Coast, where a hot spring that feeds to the beach runs under the sand to the ocean. If you bring a shovel at low tide and dig a little pool, it fills with hot water and you’ve got yourself a little hot tub (sans jets)! The boy had great fun trying to figure out the hottest spot to dig and how to make sure we had a nice warm pool to relax in. The weather was cooperating thankfully, and we had several hours of sunshine and low 60s weather to enjoy the hot water in. Low tide was at 9ish and we spent the next hour and a half relaxing in the warmth while the girl ran up and down the coast in a state of bliss at being on the beach. 


After this we drove down the east coast on our way to Rotorua,stopping for a nice lunch at the Sands cafe in Whangamata before heading a bit further inland to the Karaheke Gorge. Here, there was a mining facility and mining railway that are now ruins, with signs marking the way. We went for a little walk through one of the old mining trails, which was damp and verdant. I am wowed by how quickly nature reasserts itself when manmade places are left to ruin. 

We walked through one of the old mining tunnels which at one point became pitch black – I began to feel a sense of closed in panic, and the girl began to whimper as well. We had our iPhone flashlight to help, though it didn’t entirely light up the tunnel. At one point we couldn’t see an end to the darkness and all began to get scared, until a large group of Chinese tourists came through the other way and, well, I felt a bit silly for being scared. 
After this we made our way to Rotorua from where I write this post, staying at a farmstay a little way out of town, and trying to decide what to do with ourselves on this rainy day. 

-s

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It was time to rent a car and begin the harrowing process of driving on the left. To be real, it wasn’t nearly all that bad but I did get tired since you do have to pay attention and be thinking about being sure you’re on the left all the time. An Australian friend told us to remember at all times “your ass is on the line” and I have repeated that to myself over and over. The biggest thing to get used to is that EVERYTHING is backwards – the signals are on the right of the steering wheel and the windshield wipers are on the left so, as Sonia commented on my last post, every time you want to change lanes or turn you end up turning on the wipers. Every. Damn. Time. however, given that we are traveling here in winter, this is actually useful since it’s most likely just rained and we need to clear the glass anyway. 

The girl insisted on crepes for breakfast, and now that we had a car we found a creperie and made our way there. I’ll do a separate post at some point on how much I love the Internet for travel and how different these trips are with it. The creperie was situated in a little modern farmer’s market/food court (is that what you call them?) where not only did we get a delicious crepe but then stocked up on bread and cheese for our lunch. 


We drove from Auckland up the western coromandel peninsula coast. This took an hour longer than it should have because Eric was the navigator. This enabled us to cross the bridge to the western northland peninsula and have some beautiful views of Auckland city. once when going north over the bridge, and then again when going south. We’re so lucky. 
Once we actually got on our way it was probably one of the most beautiful drives I’ve ever taken, comparable to route 1 on the California coast line, except that to the right was either verdant hills with grazing sheep or a prehistoric looking tropical forest. One thing about traveling with kids is that you stop at playgrounds, which you wouldn’t otherwise as an adult. The fun part of this is that these are much needed breaks for everyone! 


After we finally made it to Coromandel, we realized that well, there wasn’t much there that we wanted to stay for and there wasn’t much in the way of accommodation, so we decided to drive east to Whitianga. After after a tip from a friend who recommended the NZ Frenzy guidebooks, we knew to take a stop at the Kauri trail along the way. It was so peaceful along the trail – didn’t see another soul along the way. Someone in our group found this disconcerting and made the interminable 6 minute hike crying most of the way. The trees, though, are truly magnificent and it felt like we had stumbled upon a hidden, secret gem of the island. 



Here in Whitianga, it was a bit of work to find a place to stay that was within our budget. I know NZ is pricier than some other places, but with a long trip like this we can’t really spend over $200 a night anywhere. We’ve found ourselves in a decent motel near the beach, but decided only to stay here 1 night instead of 2 and spend more time in the Rotorua region. I’ve also learned that last minute air BnBs don’t work so well and so at least 24 hours notice will work better – all valuable learning, no?
Tomorrow, off to hot beach and then make our way to Rotorua. 

On the road! DEN–AKL

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Our last day in Denver was getting a few last minute things together, throwing in an extra set of warm hats and mismatched gloves into our bags and getting to the airport. Our initial flight was delayed but I’d given us a big layover at LAX so that wasn’t a problem. Surprisingly, security through LAX was a breeze and we had a lot of extra time. (Side note: no security cares about those liquids anymore as long as they’re 100 ml or less)

The 12 hours to Auckland was nice! One trick I learned from traveling with my parents at a young age is to always order the special “Asian vegetarian” meal. You get served before everyone else and the dish is always tasty. The girl was in heaven in a little cocoon made up of blankets and pillows and quilts and couldn’t believe she got a whole tv all to herself that came with a anything she wanted to watch and even games. Long haul air travel has come a long way since my last flight!

Customs checkout line was looking, so the boy used it as an opportunity to play some tunes while waiting.


Once we got in and through the airport, we had a few hours before we could check in at our Air BnB. Man, these were rough hours. We were tired and gross and just wanted to get to a bed. We found a little breakfast place called Scarecrow, an organic farm-to-table place and had a very tasty breakfast. 

At this point, the kids were being absolute angels, peacefully chatting with each other about the beauty of Auckland. Or maybe they began needling each other.


After we got into our apartment, we enjoyed the view for about 10 seconds before promptly going to sleep. 


When we woke up it was time to explore Auckland a bit!

Auckland has a population of 1.4 million people which is about a third of the island’s entire population. That’s incredible! The rest of the island must be very sparsely populated other than the other smaller cities in the island. There is a lot of Asian influence here, which you see in the people walking about and in the food available. Given the chilly drizzle, nothing seemed quite as tasty as a bowl of hot ramen! We found a hold in the wall and popped on in. 


After this we took a bus to the Auckland Museum. The bus drivers make change for you, which was a pleasant surprise! 

The Auckland Mseum was fantastic. After we exited the bus and looked like lost tourists, a very kind lady asked if we were heading to the museum as she was going that way and she would walk us there. She turned out to be one of the head volunteer guides and gave us fantastic mini tour of the collections when we got there! The Auckland museum has the largest collection of Maorio art and artifacts in the world!  I found it fascinating that before the Maori, the island was entirely unpopulated by people and also by any mammals other than bats. There were plenty of large birds which had descended from the dinosaurs, which were largely defenseless and promptly killed by Europeans with guns when they arrived on the island. Way to go.

At the museum they had a Maori meeting house that they were refurbishing. Here are the kids making their best fierce Maori faces. 

After all that, we were beat. We dragged ourselves back to the apartment and ordered pizza – one of which was a butter paneer pizza! Tasty and so different. All we had the mental bandwidth for was to watch “America’s Funniest Home Videos” to which I have 2 comments – one, those were pretty funny and we laughed out loud,   and two – really Carleton? How the mighty have fallen. 

Today we are off to the coromandel peninsula, renting a car for our first left hand driving experience. Wish me luck.

Ps – I’m typing these up on my iPad and the connection lags a bit, so forgive any typos! 

Last night in Denver

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And so after many years of planning and saving, the day of leaving is here. Tomorrow we board a flight for LA and then New Zealand. We’ve got a place to stay that first night, and then after that I don’t actually know exactly where we’ll be. I think that for many, this would be a situation of unease and fear, but I love it. I love the idea that I don’t actually know what next week will hold for me. For quite some time, the overall cadence of days and weeks has been relatively predictable. I know that I’ll be going to work, I know that the kids are going to school, and while the details may vary, the essential framework remains unchanged.  I will miss people, of course. Over the last few weeks it has been a period of many goodbyes and realizing that the little times you spend with friends – working a shift together, going out for lunch, having dinner-  makes up the fabric of your friendship and these little times will not be happening for the near future.

To change the subject, though, let’s talk packing.

What do you take on a long trip like this? I don’t know what YOU take, but here’s what we’re doing:

That picture above is the sum total of our bags. After I took this picture I realized some things were missing which I list below.  But since all of that will fit into the bags above, you get the idea. We hope to do the trip with only carry on luggage as much as possible.

Here’s the girl with her stuff: 4 bottoms, 4 shirts, 3 pairs of socks, 5 pairs of underwear, long sleeved shirt, rain jacket, swimwear, pajamas and of course, a sloth mask, a kindle with a sloth sticker, and a stuffed sloth. 3 pairs of shoes – chuck Taylor’s, flip flops, and keens.

The boys pack is pretty much the same, minus the sloths and plus a backgammon set.


I decided to use the packing cube system given that we’re using backpacks – seems like it’ll be easier to manage  that way. Here’s the girls stuff all put into the cubes. I initially bought a cheap set off eBay, but the zippers were of poor quality and I could tell that I’d eventually find them annoying and will likely break soon. I splurged on slightly more expensive (yet still pretty cheap) sets off amazon for the other two. Each one comes with 4 cubes of varying sizes and 2 laundry pouches.


As for me, not really all that different than the kids except that things are bigger so do take up more room. Since I don’t really want to have my underwear on public display (even if it is all the really boring sort) I’ve left it in the cubes here and have laid out the toiletries instead. Packed my shampoo, conditioner, some makeup, and sunscreen for my face. I also have a small first aid kit with some band aids  and polysporin in it.


Things not pictured: travel guitar, camera, iPad, my knitting, kids coloring books and pencils, and 2 small backpacks for putting stuff in for shorter trips and to have on the plane. I did get a collapsible water bottle as well, let’s see if that’s any use. Eric packed the meds we’re taking : pepto, cipro, azithromycin, and flagyl.

Not bad, though I do feel like it’s still too much! As for when we hit winter in Romania, we are having a few things shipped though I think we’ll be shopping at Romanian secondhand stores for clothes we can wear and then discard, contributing to the great circle of thrift store life.  I’m really hoping I get some super stylish 80s Eastern-bloc era duds to wear.

And off we go – next time I post will hopefully be from NZ (unless the flight to LA is particularly bad then I’ll. post here to complain.

-s

FAQ

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We have just a little more time before we leave. I know I’m not supposed to say on the interwebs when we’re leaving for vacation, but given that we have people coming to stay here right away I feel okay about it.

Much like a wedding or pregnancy, when you have a major event upcoming in your life all conversations focus around that. I know that people are interested out of love and concern, but one does get a bit tired of answering the same questions repeatedly. Here, then, is a collection of the questions I seem to get asked most often in order of frequency, with answers.

  1. Are you excited? – Far and away the most common question I get asked. Perhaps it is meant to be rhetorical. I always answer “yes, super excited.” Though sometimes I want to add to that “and I also have some bone crushing nausea and anxiety if I try to think about it too much.” But YES I AM EXCITED!
  2. What are you bringing? – We are each bringing one hiking backpack on the trip. Yes, that is it. We bring about a week’s worth of clothing and plan on doing wash as we go. Given that the weather is mostly temperate or warm  (except for the first week in NZ) we should be fine. If not, we can buy stuff along the way! Except for Eric of course once we get to Southeast Asia, because even the largest size of pants there will probably come to his kneecaps. We are planning on mailing a small box of winter stuff to Romania. Partly for warmth and partly because we will all be tired of looking like characters in a play who wear the exact same outfit for days on end. Eric will have his laptop, we are bringing the Ipad and we each have our own kindles. We have bets on who will get their kindle stolen first (ha, who are we kidding, it’s going to be the little girl)
  3. What are you doing with your house? – We have it listed on VRBO and it has already been surprisingly successful! This leads me to think we have it priced too low. We’re nearly booked for all of August and September, and given that most people don’t book more than 1-2 months ahead of time, I think we’ll be fine.
  4. Are you home schooling the kids? – This is the one I answer least honestly. The answer I give (truth part) is that I intend for the blog to be the homeschool. It’s a way to look up and learn about places we go, write about it, correct their grammar and so on. The rest of the answer (lie) is that I plan on dealing with math when we get to Romania. I do not know if this will actually happen. I’m kind of relying on the Irish Catholic Nuns to whip them into mathly shape in Spring semester as the kids will be enrolled in same sex Catholic schools, uniforms and all. This is really to everyone’s benefit. Have you ever had me try to teach you anything? No? Consider yourself extraordinarily fortunate.
  5. Do you have enough money for the trip? – God I hope so. Otherwise I hope I can ply my skills as a burlesque dancer along the way to support the family.
  6. When are you coming back? – Not entirely sure. See Question 5 as that will decide a bit. Sometime next summer.
  7. Are you going to be working/doctoring abroad? – No.
  8. Where are you going? – asked and answered in prior post
  9. “I’m so jealous/I hate you” – well, you should. I’m pretty fabulous.

I really want a 10th thing because all good lists have 10 things but I just can’t think of one more.

-s

plans, finalized

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A few posts ago I wrote about our trip schedule as it was, a haphazard jumping about Oceania. Since then I’ve changed it significantly to be more linear with less plane time.

So – here it is now!

North Island New Zealand for about a week – agenda is Waitomo caves, Rotorua, Hobbiton, Coromandel, and Auckland.

Sydney 3 days – to do whatever one does in Sydney.

Cairns 3 days – Barrier reef, Daintree National Forest (avoid the crocs)

Uluru 4 days – driving through the outback and camping!

Darwin 4 days – tropical north Australia, beach, again avoid the crocs

Bali for 5 days – whatever one does in Bali. 🙂

Cambodia/Vietnam 2 1/2 weeks total – Angkor Wat, Beaches, Phnom Penh. In Vietnam it will largely be time spent in Da Nang due to the weather at that time of year.

Then to Japan – I’m especially glad I’m doing this post because as I went to check my exact flight I realized that I hadn’t booked this flight, even though I thought I had. Um, oops. Done now.

We’ll be in Japan for 2 1/2 weeks, going from Tokyo to Hiroshima and then flying out of Osaka to…Athens! 3 days in Athens and then on to Timisoara, Romania for the Fulbright leg. Further planning after that is being discussed. We know for sure of a stay in Budapest and one in Bologna and India somewhere over December but haven’t figured out specifics yet.

Total cost for airline tickets thus far is about $12,000, which all things considered isn’t too bad if you ask me!

Next step is booking some places to stay. Trying to do mostly Air B&Bs to have some flexibility with cooking and save some cash that way, especially in Australia and NZ where there isn’t necessarily different local food that we want to try.