Views from our table!

Outside Deck

Nepenthe is a greek word meaning anti-depressant drug. So good news depressed people, this restaurant is the cure!  But seriously, their hamburgers are in fact sublime. The fluffy bun is baked to perfection and practically melts in your mouth while the patty oozes it’s flavorful juice onto your tongue. Every bite reveals a new flavor, triggering sheer pleasure to arise. benin As your mind experiences emotions you had never discovered, you look out to the beautiful view of the open sea beyond the crackling fire, and realize the name, Nepenthe, fits this place as much as “awesome” fits Otto.

The Nepenthe Burger, worth the trip!

Before we dive right in, let me take you through a brief history of the bottle opener. Bottle openers have always been an understated kitchen item, but they weren’t even invented until a Baltimore bottler named William Painter came along and did so in 1892. Before this spectacular invention, soda, beer, and all other bottled liquids came with attached stoppers. This method would of worked fine had it not been for the loss of freshness through the lid. Good old beer enthusiast William came along with a solution: the crown top which is what your bottles probably have on them today.  The crown top technology was a huge improvement from a hygienic perspective, but also required a tool to be opened…thus, the bottle opener was born!

Mermaid – Florence	Crazy Donkey – Santorini	Lizard – Barcelona
Flamenco Dancer – Seville	Rooster – Portugal	Hand – Morocco
Rhino and Lion – Tanzania	Country – Vietnam	Ho Chi Minh
Thai Boxing – Bangkok	Carved Wood – Myanmar	Elephant – Changmai
Insect – Yangshuo	Tallest Building – Shanghai	Twin Towers – Kuala Lumpur
Frog – Ubud	Say No Evil – Canggu	Koala – Austalia
Whale – CA	Lobster – MA

All of our gadgets and tech unpacked when we got home!

I know what you’re thinking… didn’t you venture out into the world to get away from it all? Didn’t you successfully cut the electronic cord, shedding all the distractions to engage in daily debates, conversation and non-electrified noble pursuits? The short answer is, no! The behind-the-scenes reality of our journey, and the ability to leave home for a year, given educational priorities, career aspirations, visions of blogging grandeur and an obsession with photography demanded tools of the trade… times seven!

No one has ever accused us of traveling light, and the Trip Around the World kept our reputation intact. There was probably over 300 pounds of equipment that we carried and divided between our seven suitcases – all referred to as Troop Gear. Each time we moved locations, troop gear was assembled and divided up between each of us. This gear represented at least 50% of the weight carried across the world by us, including all of the technology, gadgets and the 35 pounds of text books the three older kids required to stay in educationally good graces. Most of it turned out to be useful; some not as necessary. Did we really need an electronic scale? No, Wescott, we probably did not. Did each member of our team need a personal iPad Mini? A resounding absolutely from all of us. Can you rely just on iPads, and leave your laptop behind? No, not if school work, travel booking, blogging and business planning are part of your agenda. Did everyone need their own camera? Maybe not, but the 80K + images will be with us forever!

For those of you contemplating a similar journey, here are a few tips from us:

Only have one cell phone with a US contract. We figured out half way through the trip that it was a lot more economical to buy a cell phone that you could swap out the SIM card in each country for a local phone number and plan. Skype was going to be our main go-to communication system to talk to people back home. However we realized that in many places, the WIFI just isn’t strong enough to support consistent connections. Lisa and I were fairly regularly on conference calls to places across the globe, and eventually we realized that having people call us on our local cell number was a much more reliable communications technology than relying on the Internet. In those first few months of travel, when we still relied on our AT&T iPhones for reliable connections, we had some horrendous cell bills!

Tech Check is Your Friend. While there were many things we probably didn’t get right on the trip, we did a great job at Tech Check, which we credit to coming home with all of the devices we left with. Almost every day that we would venture out into the village, city or countryside of the resident country, Lisa or I would yell the familiar “Tech Check!” call. That meant all iPads, computers, cameras, lenses, hard drives and phones needed to be collected and deposited into a designated suitcase, which was locked up. After a couple of countries, we realized that since all of our suitcases were cloth, it would be pretty easy to cut into our technology booty. So we ditched one of the bags and bought a hard suit case with built in locks, upgrading our security. Really tech check was more about keeping track of items and not leaving them scattered about for an easy poach than a highly secure vault; and the results kept us theft free for the entire year.

Be wary of Cellular Internet Service. When we arrived in Seville, Spain, we settled into our awesome apartment and reveled in the speed and power of the most awesome Internet service. With 7 iPads humming, YouTube videos, Skype calls and iTunes downloads abounded in the first 24 hours. And then, the pipe ran dry! Like a cripple trying to climb Everest, downloading an email took 10 minutes. The video player and Skype laughed at the mere click of intention. It was like cement was poured into the digital river of ones and zeroes keeping us connected. It tuned out that the house had a cellular modem, which only had 3 GB of data allocated a month. And, there was pretty much no way to get more bandwidth allocated! So much for productivity at the apartment. Wescott needed connectivity for online high school, and I was trying to speak to YouTube Creators around the globe. We spent a lot of time at a cafe in our neighborhood that offered unlimited WIFI. Actually, that turned out to work in our favor, as we met a wonderful friend named Julian, who took us under his wing for the 2 weeks we spent in Seville. We also ended up renting a room at local hostel in order to do Skype calls from midnight to 3 am, since the cafe was closed!

Sleeper Device that was Awesome: LED projector. On a whim, I purchased a tiny LED projector that measured 6″ x 5″ x 2.5″ so we could watch movies as a family. This turned out to be such a fun addition to the trip. We watched Khan Academy videos about art history, movies from iTunes and documentaries about a given location on whatever wall  that worked in our current home. We didn’t use it every week, but it turned out to be a fun event we all enjoyed, and I would definitely take it again.

Bring a Couple of External Hard Drives. We live in a data-intensive world. Our phones shoot HD video. Our cameras create large files for each image. When you’re traveling, pictures and videos eat gigabytes like a legion of ants defoliating a jungle. That GoPro camera you think would be fun to use? It is fun, but just that one device required 300GB of storage per country! Luckily, external hard drives are tiny, light and packed with storage. We used 3 individual terabyte drives to support the 3 computer hard drives on our laptops. Luckily, we had no major crashes; but we needed almost every ounce of storage space.

Online High School is a Really Deceiving Name. The University of Nebraska offered a great solution for Wescott to complete his sophomore year of high school while traveling around the globe through their online course offering. While assignments, projects and tests were submitted online, all of the course materials took the form of workbooks… 35 pounds of workbooks! Given our spotty Internet connections, good old print and paper remained a relevant technology that allowed for theoretically consistent studying… if only there was a solution for procrastination…then we may have been able to shed pounds sooner in the trip as Wescott completed each class!

For you shoppers out there, here is a list of the technology and devices we took across the globe:

• (7) Apple iPad Minis
• (4) MacBooks – we started with one 11-inch MacAir thinking we could all share, which lasted about a month before we realized that wouldn’t work; then added a 13-inch MacBook Air that Mouni brought to Vietnam for Wescott as he needed a dedicated machine for school; then added a MacBook Pro for Cliff when he traveled back to North America for work; then added our other MacBook from home when we got to Carmel for Otto to code!
• (6) cameras including a Leica film camera, a Cannon 5D SLR, (3) waterproof Lumix point and shoots, and a GoPro Hero 3
• (1) mini tripod (never used it!)
• (5) SLR lenses
• (5) iPods
• (2) iPhones
• (2) Samsung phone with local SIM cards
• (2) wireless keyboards for the iPads
• (1) electronic weigh scale
• (15) Apple charging cords
• (7) Binoculars for safari
• (3) Headphone splitters
• (14) sets of headphones, thinking we’d lose some, which amazingly, we didn’t!
• (1) Jambox speaker for dance parties and movie watching
• (1) Optoma LED mini projector
• (7) headlamps / flashlights
• (1) solar charger (never used it!)
• (3) USB Memory sticks
• (3) 1 Terabyte external hard drives
• (2) sets of International electrical adaptors
• (300) Kodak T-Max 100 B&W film
• (14) Workbooks for University of Nebraska
• (4) Math textbooks
• (1) Literature textbook

I only now how 3 tipe of offerings.  I now how to mack the triangal sqare flower offerings. The flower tipe of offering is sapost to have 8 petose.  It’s also like how you mack pepol.  The triangal and the sqare offering is cindove the same.  Becoase you haft to do the same thing epsept you haft to do the triangal closer to the ather Side of coconut lefe.

In case you don’t now the Bali pepol do offerings every morning and les in the after noon they do it beceas they belive in god.  I learned how to mack offerings from this varey nice bolins family. The mom named Made tot me how to mack offerings with putu. I like macking offerings because they r simpl to do and it’s fun.

STEP 1: You need a mini stapler, staples, scissors, coconut tree leaves and flowers. Also incense and a cracker.

STEP 2: To do the square, you cut the leaf 1/2 way and then twist and staple…make sure you cut all the sides the same length

STEP 3: This is what it should look like when you are done with the square.

STEP 4: Fill in the bottom with more leaf and staple it in.

STEP 5: Then you can add a few more pieces for decoration if you want.

STEP 6: Then you add flowers.

These are all the shapes I learned to make.

The next morning brought us another encounter. It took a few seconds for me to remember and realize that this was the same person who starred in last nights’ escapade. When I did put two and two together, I was ready to acknowledge the fact that same events were inevitably about to take place. Then, suddenly she turned to Sam and his two good friends, who had joined us on this trip, to talk to them instead. Sitting just opposite, I began to feel a bit self-conscious as their conversation started heating up and indiscreet, widening eyes kept meeting mine. By now, everyone other than me, was standing up and voices took on a very rushed and excited manner. Then the words were all but flung my way:

“She says she recognizes you”
“She worked at your orphanage”
“She took care of you as a baby”
“She remembers you”

“She knows you”

Suddenly I was having a deer in the headlights moment. Was this a joke? Maybe. But they kept repeating it over and over.

In a matter of seconds this “visit to the town where I was born”, this “trip milestone” had completely turned into a dream. Far, far away from reality. This wasn’t supposed to be some whole reunion, emotional, yay-yve’s-back-home crazy rollercoaster. We had no ties to my birth mom / family, we had no luck in contacting the orphanage, we knew nothing about Guiping.  We weren’t really sure what we wanted to get out of this visit other than to sightsee. To just walk around the city was perfectly fine with me. “Maybe hike a mountain nearby,” suggested Sam. Finally, Mom came over and saved me from the headlights with her sweet words and incredulous facials.

From there, things seemed to pass in a blur. How could this not be a dream? How did I get here, in this perfect moment in time? I’ll tell you something though; I’m not a lucid dreamer, and I certainly felt like I wasn’t thinking straight. A million thoughts consumed me and the only thing I could properly comprehend was… a smile. I glanced at her again, and this time I didn’t see the lines stretched across her forehead oozing with vexation or the battling way her lips kept twitching, trying to find the right words, however useless, that might penetrate through to us like the night beforehand. Instead, I saw what she had really been trying to say to us in that sluggish means of a dining room. I understood with total clarity.

Completeness in a single smile.

She took the rest of the day off and toured us down (subconscious) memory lane. We visited the ― now revamped ― post office where I was left on its steps, with locals getting a kick out of us taking pictures at a seemingly unimportant local government building. We were then introduced to the lady who found me, freed me of that cardboard box I was left in, and brought me to the orphanage. She was very surprised to see me there in front of her store yet without hesitation, in a made-for-movies moment, she enveloped me in a hug that could quite possibly induce tears to a sob-story fanatic. After our farewell, we were taken to my old orphanage that is no longer in business. And in case you were having doubts that she might have been faking the whole thing and did not actually remember me or have worked in the orphanage (which at some point after everything, did indeed cross my mind) she showed us pictures on her phone of her when she worked in the orphanage and with other girls like me visiting Guiping. To end this dream, we were graciously invited to her house where we swapped emails so we could stay in touch and keep the connection going wherever the world may lead us.

I was adopted at ten months old, which would leave me with no recollection of anything or anyone she showed me. Though, despite the fact that we may be strangers and the difficulty of the language barrier, we communicated in a way that I have never been exposed to and that’s what really touched me. Not the realization that I’m seeing where I came from, but the way we held hands like she was my best friend, sister, caretaker; and the way she looked at me and smiled like I was truly a miracle. Or maybe she looked at me thinking what slackers we were that it took us thirteen years to come and visit ― which she in fact did say, but in a nicer way. Though I am pretty certain she was just glad to see me.
Here is a text that she sent to Sam after we said our goodbyes…thank you Sam for the translation:

“Hello Sam. Thank you very much for bringing me my daughter to Guiping. Even though she is not my real daughter, I tended her when she was little and I took and treated her like my real daughter. Today I couldn’t be more satisfied than just to be able to see her even only for like a second. Thank god we met again after this long time. Hope you can tell her mom (Lisa) that she is a great mom and thank her for raising Yve. Thank you Sam and everyone for giving me this opportunity to meet my daughter again.”

In the end this is what I learned: There is a language within smiles. Within crinkled eyes and softened faces. It’s a language that is deeply rooted in genuine palpability. And hidden behind the vast complexes and double meanings is the simple truth. The truth that when there are no words to be spoken, a smile says it all.

Chen Bin Ying (the lady from the restaurant the night before) explaining to Sam’s friends in the hotel lobby that she knows me

 Chen Bin Ying and me in the lobby

Sam and me standing across the street from the post office where I was found as a baby

In front of her shop, meeting the woman who found me at the post office and brought me to the orphanage

Our movie-esque hug !

Sam having some quality “twin time” as we walked around town

Chen Bin Ying and I hand-in-hand as she tours me around Guipnig

This is everyone who came with us to Guiping: Sam, his friend from his basketball team, and his friend’s girlfriend who was also born in Guiping

Our last stop, at Chen Bin Ying’s house where we met her foster daughter (who was from the same orphanage as me)

Bodies move every which way. Arms and legs flail about trying to keep balance. Stretching until you feel like you’re going to rip in half. Unexpectedly finding comfort in the strangest positions. This is yoga. Trying to keep the breath steady, music fills the ears and above all, one voice is heard keeping in time with the rhythm. The teacher. Her name is Yanzi. Her exuberant presence floods the small room with extreme happiness, joviality, and witty humor. She’s honestly the main reason why this experience was so amazing. You could almost see the glow which blinds out the greyness from outside. Time passes quickly as each pose melts seemingly into the next.

Every week on Tuesdays and Thursdays limbs get slightly more flexible. Every week on Tuesdays and Thursdays minds get slightly more relaxed. And especially every week on Tuesdays and Thursdays there is a Tuck and Jones free morning. It’s safe to say that it really is our own mini yoga retreat. Nobody wants this time to end. Luckily though, we have kombucha and our one and only favorite organic restaurant waiting downstairs for us.

10:30 am
Namaste.

i was stretched to new heights / crazy positions! who knew i was that flexible?!

otto and yanzi perform a handstand w/o any hands or head !

cirque du soleil here we come?

it actually would’ve been comfortable & relaxing if wescott hadn’t kept moving and digging his spine into my back…. he seems to be enjoying it though

the students and the teacher on the last day of classes

The scale of this show matches the scale of the country itself, employing over 600 local villagers as actors to perform in a 70 minute show played out on the river and in front of an island where the theater seating has been constructed. The storyline is in Chinese, and while I am sure it was moving, we didn’t understand a thing that was going on. It didn’t matter, however, as the pageantry of actors using boats, floats and moving docks synchronized to music and dramatic lighting more than kept us entertained.

Art takes on many forms, whether it is human expression exposed on a stage or canvas, or Mother Nature etching impossibly beautiful rock formations or landscapes. Yanghuo brings both forms together, offering one of the most beautiful natural amphitheaters of limestone peaks with a peaceful river for a stage floor, combined with the large-scale imagination and might of an army of Chinese artists to create a very memorable experience.

If there’s one thing that I get enough of on this trip, I can assure you that it’s not water. When you have to buy bottled water way down at the supermarket, you find yourself constantly in a state of procrastination and dehydration. Nevertheless, my thirst is quenched by something else: inspiration. Yeah it’s cheesy, but incredibly true! I looked it up, there is such a thing as overhydrating and I feel like I’ve been “over inspired.” Every day it seems we meet another person living a completely alternative lifestyle and my dad will say, “Just another thing to do with your life,” in this sly tone he uses when he is hinting at something and trying to get us to think. “Just another thing to do with your life: become a world class chef and live in Florence!” “Just another thing to do with your life: become a mahout (elephant trainer) and live in Chiang Mai!” “Just another thing to do with your life: sell Buckets o’ Mojito and live in Koh Tao!”

Growing up on Mercer Island, it sometimes can feel like my future is one of the homework assignments that I used to get in Ms. Sayers’ 9^th grade English class: stringent, well-thought-out, and the same one my parents got. You know the drill: attend college, land a solid, respectable job, start a family, make a little bit of money, retire, and play some good old-fashioned golf. Now don’t get me wrong, that sounds like a pretty good life if you ask me, but it’s just one lifestyle out of an infinite amount of others. It might be a good idea to stop and consider the options every once in a while, and ask myself what I would want to do with my life if I could do anything?  If the answer happens to be scuba diving with whale sharks in the exotic Thai islands, then I’ll just book a flight to Koh Tao and apply for a job at Good Times.  Steve Jobs put it best as he neared his final years: “I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ And whenever the answer has been ‘no’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.”

Our second to last day in Bagan was the day I met Christophe, a man who risked everything and left his comforting home in Belgium, to move to Bagan, Myanmar. He was simply perusing an idea…a dream of becoming a balloonist for a living. Ever since eight years old, Christophe had been obsessed with hot air balloons, and there he was, soaring high over Myanmar, one of the most stunning places I have ever been to, simply living his dream. Meeting Christophe, someone who turned their dream into a reality, made me realize I too could become a hot air balloonist if I wanted to  Not something I would of ever considered back on Mercer, but in Bagan, starting every morning by peacefully flying over ancient Burmese temples lit up by a beautiful sunrise, and getting paid, sounded like a pretty sweet gig! “It’s just another thing to do with your life” as my dad would say.

Whenever I am suddenly inspired by some great purposefulness, some extraordinary idea that has so much potential it makes me smile by just imagining it.  My mind forgets the bounds that have restricted free, radical thoughts like “Why not?” My cognizance surpasses its deep-seated confines and ventures off into an entirely different, delightfully extraordinary world. One can never know what this kind of thinking can unearth, until they try. For example, I imagined a future as a balloonist in Bagan, and instantly dormant enthusiasm that I never knew existed in association to an occupation as quirky and awesome as ballooning erupted. Okay, so maybe I won’t become a balloonist, but it’s fun to expand my horizons by considering and envisioning the idea! What if we all asked ourselves “What if…” every now and then, and maybe by luck we would uncover what truly inspired us? Maybe we would discover the Bagan balloonist in us all, and maybe, just maybe, we too could muster up the courage to make a wild imagination’s fantasy a reality.

I greatly admire people who pursue their passion, and despite all the criticism they may receive, keep on striving. Those are the people I want to model my life after.  Not to copy what they did exactly, but to somehow figure out what it is that really inspires me and to chase it down as they do.

And on the topic of ballooning we are going to finish it out with yet another classic quote:

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

-Mark Twain

PS: Sorry to keep writing such serious, meaning-of-life-mumbo-jumbo blog posts. Maybe I’ll just post a video of me eating some exotic asian food next time.

The obligatory champagne toast at the end of the balloon ride, as if it couldn’t get any better!