We were excited to leave Hoi An and get back to our normal traveling routine. Da Lat seemed like a good place to go, but we quickly discovered we could only get a room there for one night. We arrived just before two big Vietnamese holidays, Reunification Day (April 30th) and International Worker's Day (May 1st). That meant we could only stay about a day and a half, which was a little disappointing, but we still enjoyed our time there.

Our favorite new fruit we discovered on the trip is jackfruit, we we bought a great big slice and ate it for our lunch and dinner (it's a big fruit). We did end up getting a little sick of it by the end, but we knew that in less than a week we wouldn't be able to buy any more so it's good we got our fill.

The next day we did some real sightseeing. We went to the crazy house which is a series of Alice in Wonderland type structures and gardens. The woman who built it lives in the house which doubles as a hotel. It was fun to explore, stairs that went up, down, and all around. Leading you to the giraffe room, from roof to roof, or sometimes back where you started. It was a fun place to spend the morning.

Next we hiked over to the king's summer palace. Also an interesting place to visit, but not quite as grand as it sounds. Not at all like Buckingham Palace, or the palaces we visited in Thailand. This "palace" was very, very communist. It was communist in the sense that it was very simple. It served its function without an excess of adornments. Not built to impress, built to serve its purpose. To me the palace represented what communism should be, but wasn't. I would never expect to see a "palace" like this in Moscow and didn't expect to see one in Vietnam. But Vietnamese culture is very different, maybe its leaders were more serious about their own commitment to communism.

Sadly, that was it for Da Lat. We left that evening on a night bus for Saigon. Ugghh...another night bus. At least we could take comfort in the fact that we knew it would be the last night bus of the trip.

Hoi An's old town is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, but that isn't really why people come to visit. They come for one reason and one reason only. That's the shopping. Everywhere you look, it's all clothing shops, tailors, shoe stores, and more. We went out to buy a loaf of bread and came back empty handed because literally every store is geared toward selling clothes to tourists. There's nothing else around. But there are good deals to be had in a place like this. Everything is custom made just for you. You can pick out any fabric or style you wish or you can even create your own design. They will replicate clothes you bring to them, make something from a picture, or even a sketch. It is truly every shopping lover's dream.

Usually, this is the sort of place we would avoid at all costs, but at this stage of the trip we're starting to think about returning home. We don't have many material things waiting for us, so it's a good chance to pick up some custom clothes at cheap prices before we make the trip.

We spent two overwhelming and exhausting days shopping. I picked up two suits, two ties, one pair of casual shoes, one pair of dress shoes, two pairs of pants, two pairs of shorts, and four pairs of boxers, most custom made, all for $170 (haggling was required). A custom fit really does make a difference too. The moment I tried on one of my new suits I realized that for my entire life I've been wearing clothes that don't really fit me. It was a big realization and an odd feeling, but that doesn't mean I'll be buying everything custom made from here on out. It did give me a new perspective on clothes though.

The people of Hoi An have had tourists coming here and buying clothes for a long time. The sad part of that is that everyone knows the drill. The locals put up with their town being overrun by foreigners and they make us what we want. We bring the money, buy lots of clothes, and pay the hotel bills. But the smiles are few. We aren't guests, we're customers. In a place like this, you have friends only as long as you keep shelling out the American dollars.

The fundamental truth we've found in all our travels is that people who stand to make money off you usually are not interested in being your friend. Sometimes they're not even interested in being friendly. They look at you and they don't see you, they see dollars. When they talk to you, they don't care about getting to know you, they only want to find out how they can squeeze another dollar out of you. Sometimes it really gets us down.

The good news is that there are exceptions and there are also many people who don't make their money off tourists. These people will treat you like a person. Many tourists spend their whole trip without talking to locals like this, but they're out there. We're lucky to have made some friends on our trip. We exchange e-mails regularly with a monk in Nepal, we have a letter waiting for us at home from a friend we made in India, and we will never forget the family we stayed with in Sri Lanka. The people we've met like this are really the ones who have made this trip worthwhile, much more so than what we've seen or done. For them, we are grateful.

We knew coming in that Vietnam would be more like Thailand and Malaysia than Cambodia and Laos. More touristed, more amenities, and more expensive. We crossed the border in our preferred manner. We took the local bus to the border, walked a few kilometers across the border, then negotiated with the same tourist bus that left from Savannahket for a lower price to take us the rest of the way. We were asked "How did you get here?" by a SE Asian traveler. Most tourists travel on the tourist buses even if they don't come from so far away, people often don't even know how to get around any other way.

Often the truth is neither do we, but between our past experience mixed with a significant amount of guesswork we're able to predict pretty well that we'll be able to get from here to there. Or more accurately, from here to somewhere else to I don't know where to how did we end up here, to there. But we get there. We each saved 20,000 kip by traveling our way. That's about $2.50 to you and a dinner in a nice restaurant to us.

It took the whole day to make the trip and we arrived in Hue in the evening. It was about what we expected. Higher standards than Laos and Cambodia for restaurants, hotels, and everything. Not just for us, but also for the Vietnamese. Everything is much greener now that we're on the coast and there are conical hats everywhere. We saw a few in other places, but it really is a Vietnamese thing.

So we got acquainted with the new types of food (fried rice and noodles are still the staple), did some walking around and sightseeing, some little shopping, and settled into the last major country of the trip.

The day we traveled to Savannakhet was the last day of the Laotian New Year. So, in the continued spirit of the last few days, in every town or village we passed through we endured buckets of water being thrown on the bus. It got in through the windows and got us pretty wet, but we didn't have it nearly as bad as the bus driver. In parts of the world like this, bus drivers often drive with the door open for increased ventilation. This works pretty well most of the time, but on this day it meant the people with the buckets had a clear shot at him and they took advantage of it. Sometimes he'd be going along slowly and whoooosh! a big splash comes in and drenches him. Oh well, we all kept cool.

Savannakhet is a small town, smaller than Pakse, but bigger than Champassak. But you wouldn't be able to tell the size of the town if you saw the size of the party happening on the main street. Traffic was bumper to bumper and completely stopped. The street was full of trucks loaded with people, tailgates down. They were so stuffed that more than once we watched people falling out the back of the trucks. And of course, everyone had water. The people in the streets, the people in the trucks. At our last stops there were distinct groups of people celebrating and throwing water, here one group just blended into the next. There was music blaring and it was madness! We enjoyed the fun a little, but we were mostly partied out by this point. We went to our guest house and got some much needed rest.

Our main intent stopping in Savannakhet was to get our Vietnamese visas (last visas of the trip!), so the next morning we did that with surprisingly little difficulty. Our Laos visa took several days, our Vietnamese visa 10 minutes. I guess it all averages out. We spet the next few days seeing some of the minor sights like a dinosaur museum (many fossils have been found in the province) and various temples.

We also spent a great deal of time at the local bazaar. We're nearing the end of the trip and don't have so many material things waiting for us back home. So we're taking advantage of the good prices and buying clothes and things we'll need when we return to our old lifestyles. The only thing is that it's much more difficult for us to buy clothes than we expected. In the United States, I fit well into a medium sized shirt. In Laos I am an extra large and no one has extra large sized shirts. I feel like a giant whenever I try to shop. Female travelers be warned, unless you have iron clad self-esteem, don't go clothes shopping in Asia.

We stopped in Pakse for a day with the intention of making a day trip up to the Bolaven Plateau to see the coffee plantations. The only thing is that the Lao New Year celebrations were still going on, except now we were in a much larger city. In Champassak we ran across four or five groups of people trying to throw buckets of water on us, in Pakse there were dozens.

Just trying to find a place to stay was challenging because we didn't want to get our stuff wet. So Heather stayed put with the things and I went searching. We couldn't find any really cheap places to stay so I ended up walking into a fairly nice hotel dripping wet from the buckets asking if the receptionist could show me a room. I took her slight smile as an indication she wasn't upset with me for dripping in her hotel.

So, we got settled, rented another motorbike, and put all the important things we had with us in plastic bags. At least this time we were prepared. So we headed out of town and on to Pakxong. We passed lots of bucket gangs on the way out, some we dodged, others soaked us, but that's how it goes.

The problem we had when we reached the plateau is that the higher elevation meant it was much cooler. So cool, that we really didn't want to get splashed with any more buckets. Even though Pakxong is a pretty small place, there were lots of people "celebrating." We got splashed and we were very cold. It's always best to try to embrace the culture, but this is the point that it really stopped being fun for us. We did make it to the plantation and we had a very nice cup of coffee before heading home.

We were so happy to descend into the warmer climate again. After we returned our bike, there wasn't much to do except join the party. So we made friends with some locals who were more than happy to share their splash buckets with us in exchange for us allowing them to dump water on us periodically. It was warm, so we didn't mind.

So we had fun splashing people who came by, but the protocol confused us a little bit. Apparently, you aren't supposed to splash just anyone. We discovered this after Heather emptied her bucket on two middle aged women coming by on their motorbike. She got them really good and they looked rather upset. We felt bad because sometimes people had gotten us when we really didn't want to be splashed, but we were just trying to do what the Lao people do. Oh well, we still had good fun.

It doesn't matter where you're going to when you depart from Don Det, all boats leave at 10:30 (or perhaps 11:15). This meant we got to hang out and chat with some fellow travelers that were all heading to different places. We mentioned to one American guy that our next stop was Champassak. He told us that there really wasn't much to do there except visit the temple. It was only after a few more minutes of conversation and him giving us advice about the town that it came out he hadn't actually been there.

He met a girl who stopped there for a day and wasn't impressed. And, of course, the Lonely Planet didn't have much to say about it. This new information only strengthened our resolve to go there. Sure enough, the town didn't have a wealth of major attractions, but it had a natural, authentic, Laos feel that you don't get in places which have rave reviews in the Lonely Planet. It's true, there's not that much there except Lao people living the Lao lifestyle. But isn't that why we came to Laos in the first place?

So we walked the one road town back and forth and enjoyed the river views. The next day we rented a motorbike again so that we could go and see the temple which was a little way outside of town. We weren't expecting what happened next.

We knew that it was the start of the Lao New Year, but we didn't know the specifics of how this holiday is celebrated. Sure, there are parties, and eating, and drinking, and music, and dancing, and all the things you would expect. In addition to these things is the 'cleansing' aspect of the holiday.

So we're riding out to the temple (the second day in my life I've ever ridden a motorbike) and I see a group of kids standing by the side of the road. As I get closer they start walking out into the road and I naturally respond by slowing down. As I approach I notice that they have water guns and one girl has a large bucket of water. In the few seconds that pass between the time I notice them and meet them on the road, I begin to piece together in my mind what is about to follow. I figure it out just as the girl throws the water from the bucket into my path and it hits me in the chest like a sack of bricks. I was totally soaked.

All I can say is that at least after the first time it wasn't a surprise anymore. It seems a little dangerous to me, but people celebrate the holiday by throwing water on each other, on cars, and especially on passing motorbikes which is how most people get around. Some people speed up to try and escape, others accept their fate and continue as normal, and others still slow down or come to a stop and allow buckets of water to be dumped onto their heads.

We tried each of these strategies at different times. It did cool us down, which was refreshing after we had removed sensitive objects from our pockets. The ancient temple was pretty cool, but nothing compares to Angkor. We returned home to get splashed again by all the people that got us the first time. It was really lots of fun once we accepted our role in the festivities.

By the time we made it to our first stop in Laos we were really, really tired. We were badly in need of some rest and relaxation. Lucky for us Don Det is the perfect place for that sort of thing, in fact, you'll have a hard time doing anything else there. It is one of the 4,000 islands in the Mekong river near Cambodia. We walked around the island, spent some time swimming in the river, and relaxed in our hammocks and read books. We must have spent almost a week on the island.

Other than that the only notable thing we did was to take a day trip to neighboring island Don Khon to try to catch a glimpse of the river dolphin. We didn't see any dolphins from the beach or the hammocks where we spent the afternoon, but neither did the people that spent the cash to hire boats to take them where the dolphins can sometimes be found. We were happy enough that we got to spend the day on our own private beach and lounging in hammocks by the beauty of the river that it didn't matter whether there were dolphins or not. This was definitely one of the most relaxing stops on the trip so far.

For our last stop in Cambodia we decided to go someplace smaller and less touristy. Ban Lung was a good choice. Although we did see a few western tourists here, most of the tourists were Cambodian. Like us, they came to swim in Yeak Laom volcanic lake. The volcano is no longer active, but is now a popular swimming spot for locals. People were happy and smiling and the kids wanted to talk to us and swim with us.

We love being in places like this where people are happy, genuine, and excited. At many of the tourist destinations locals can get pretty jaded and don't smile at us much, don't care that where around, or worse, they look at us and only see American dollars. Not so in Ban Lung. I dove into the water from the docks and swam with the kids. They lauged about how pale my skin is and asked us questions about ourselves and where we're from. We had a great time, but were tired from all the walking and biking we'd done in the past week so we called it an early night.

The next day we rented a motorbike from our guesthouse for $5. A good deal, but still a bit of a splurge for us. I think the proprietor was a little nervous after I got on because it was quickly apparent that I had never ridden a motorbike before in my life. It was a manual, so tricky at first, but I quickly got the hang of it and we sped off into the distance before she could change her mind. We headed for some waterfalls where we spent the better part of the afternoon. It was pretty quiet, there were only a handful of children there swimming in the pools beneath the waterfalls.

I got some good practice riding on dirt roads and small paths when we rode out to a surprising large garden. It must have been several acres and we only ran into one or two other groups of people. The admission fees can only pay for a portion of the upkeep. This is a garden that is maintained out of love for nature and not to rake in the big bucks.

We returned to our guest house tired again after a great day to the great relief of the owner who rented us the bike.

After Phnom Penh we headed north to Siem Reap. The main attraction here are the temples of Angkor. We gave ourselves three days to see the temples which are many. We could have easily spent more time there, but there is only so much you can absorb at one time. Many of the temples are huge and all together they include over 400 years of history. Honestly, they are worthy of at least a weeklong trip all by themselves.

Since we're on a tight budget we decided to rent bicycles to get to and around the temples instead of hiring a tuk tuk. This was a challenge because the temples are about 12k from Siem Reap. When you factor in round trip, the oppresive heat, and the distance between the temples (they are pretty spread out) we were pretty tired by the end of the day. We're in pretty good shape at this point in the trip, but by the end of the second day we realized we were physically incapable of biking another day and we committed to shelling out the cash for the tuk tuk the next day.

We didn't regret it. Angkor is one of the highlights of a trip that's been pretty incredible every step of the way. For the first time we arrived at the temples fresh and ready to explore (except for our badly aching butts). The sheer size and beauty of them was magnificent. Some were overgrown with trees, their roots sprawled out over walls and rocks which only added to the ancient mystery of the ruins.

At it's peak Angkor included dozens of active temples and was close in size to modern day Los Angeles. As many as one million people lived in this area. To support this population they created an extensive system of irrigation that was unmatched in its time.

Cambodians are very proud of Angkor which is apparent in their modern day culture. There is a picture of Angkor Wat on the countries flag, Cambodians drink Angkor beer, there are Angkor restaurants and guest houses, etc. It is everywhere and if you ever make it to Angkor you will understand why.

We've discovered that you can't help comparing each new country visited to the ones visited before. Sometimes this is a good thing, sometimes it's a bad thing, but that's just the way it is.

Malaysia and Thailand were very nice, very easy places to travel. We loved them both, but we missed the roughness and toughness of India, Nepal, and, to a lesser extent, Sri Lanka. It's difficult to explain, really. In those places, everything isn't always pretty, people aren't always nice and respectful, the poverty is in your face, and it seems like the hassling never stops. But there is a flip side to that also. Many of the most beautiful things we've ever seen are in these places, we met many warm, friendly, and amazing people, even though the poverty is tough everywhere you look people are trying to make a better life for themselves by being incredibly inventive and hardworking entrepreneurs. The bottom line is that life can be hard, life can be good, life can be cruel, and life can be beautiful. Not only can it be, but it is.

On the first part of our trip this is exactly what we saw, all around us, all the time. We didn't love every single experience. What we loved was the realness of it all. What you see is what you get and that's life, nothing is glossed over. You like seeing the Taj Mahal? That's great, it's part of life in India. You don't want to see a disfigured child crawling across a train floor sweeping up garbage and begging for rupees? Too bad, that's part of life in India. You like seeing the cultural diversity in food, language, and dress? Great, that's life in India. You don't like seeing kids pooping on the side of the road and smelling human sewage as you walk the streets? Too bad, sometimes that's just the way it is in India.

Things aren't easy, everyone is just trying to do the best they can to make it in this world. To make life just a little bit better for themselves and their family. That by itself is beautiful. We were lucky enough to see it in it's rawest, purest form and we'll never forget it.

We were very happy to arrive in Cambodia even though we had to leave some of the comforts behind. The reason is we left some of that gloss behind too. We were excited to shed it and get back again to having life come at us full on, no apologies.

Yikes, it's my first post for Thailand and we're already getting ready to cross into Cambodia! It's been a busy few weeks. Our first week here we met up with my mom in Bangkok and spent our time seeing the sights in Bangkok and around. We saw so many things and were a bit worn out, so we decided to spend our second week in Thailand relaxing on an island beach paradise. Without a doubt, it was the right thing to do! It's a shame we didn't have time to see more of Thailand, but we enjoyed every minute of our time here and sometimes it's okay to take some time to relax.

There's way too many experiences from the last two weeks to write about in detail, but there was one I wanted to be sure and get down here. It's about Libya. I'm certain that if you're reading this from the United States you've had more than your fill of news from Libya, but hear me out.

Islands are nice, but they're really expensive. On Ko Chang, transportation was particularly expensive. Since it's impossible to get lost (there's only one road around the island) and people here were quite friendly we decided to try and hitchhike. After a while some friendly guys picked us up and we got the standard question "Where you from?" People are always excited when we tell them we're from the United States and these Thais were no exception. Their English was very poor, but this was typical. What wasn't typical is what came next. "Oh....America. Libya.....Qaddafi, booooooooom!"

We only read about it on the internet a day earlier. All we could do was smile nervously and say, "yeah, that's us!" It really wasn't what we wanted to hear from someone that just picked us up by the said of the road. After a prolonged silence due to an almost impenetrable language barrier we were comforted when he said "America....good," to which we replied "Thailand good" and everyone was happy. Just in case, we topped it off with a "Long live the king!" I don't think he understood that bit, but if he did he would have appreciated it. Thais really love their king!

Sadly, since then whenever someone finds out we're American, Lybia is the first thing they bring up. We don't really know how people around here feel about the issue and we don't even know very much about it ourselves. It's hard to keep up to date on the news when you're in a foreign country (or several) and in a different city an average of every three days. I makes things kind of uncomfortable, especially when you throw in language barriers. Usually people can communicate enough to say they know what is happening between the US and Libya, but that's about the extent of it. Maybe we will have to start claiming to be from Ukraine, a fabrication we usually reserve for people we don't want to talk to or those who are persistently trying to sell us things. No English....only Ukrainian!

We rushed a bit through Georgetown so that we could have some extra time at our last stop in Malaysia, Teluk Bahang. We are so glad we did! Teluk Bahang is a small fishing town with easy access to a national park. There are hardly any tourists and that means hardly any taxi drivers, touts, or tour operators hassling us. Instead of all that we're simply in a quiet, friendly place.

The national park is well worth the visit too! It was surprisingly well maintained and entrance was completely free. The had a very large and informative visitors center that taught us about many of the animals in the park. The only thing that cost money was the canopy walk. We didn't have to pay for this either because the street vendor we bought our lunch from gave us extra tickets left behind by some departing German tourists. Free is great! The canopy walk was one the highlights for us even though it was slightly terrifying. The bridge didn't seem entirely.....stable. But we put our faith into it, had a great time, and took some amazing photos.

The next day we hiked for over two hours through the jungle stopping to rest at some of the beaches along the way. We saw plenty of wildlife including squirrels, monkeys, and lots giant water monitor lizards. Many of them were bigger than small alligators! We ended our hike at Monkey Beach.

Most of the few tourists that come to the park hire boats which take them straight to Monkey Beach and drop them there. Many of these were Malaysian, so we weren't that surprised to see fully clothed women walking the beach complete with hijabs (Malaysia is primarily Muslim). What did surprise us was a European girl that was walking around topless. I think it's great if women are comfortable with their bodies, but going topless in a Muslim country is not just unwise, it's incredibly disrespectful. Please don't be like her and try to respect local customs when you travel!

Our time in Malaysia is just breezing by. I'm happy to report that we were able to do plenty of relaxing in the Cameron Highlands. We stayed in the small town of Tanah Rata in the hills. It was absolutely beautiful there, as lush and green as you can imagine. There are many things to see in this area - tea plantations, strawberry farms, rose gardens, butterfly sanctuaries, waterfalls, and more. We mostly spent our time hiking through the jungle, relaxing at our hostel, and eating Indian food.

Unfortunately for us, most Malaysian food is not vegetarian. However, historically, many Indians came to Malaysia from Tamil Nadu (southern India) to work on the tea plantations. This meant jobs for them, and today, it means Indian food for us (yum!) They are always so impressed when Heather greets them with "vanna kam" (hello in Tamil). They probably don't hear it much from foreigners and they really appreciate it that we know just a little bit more about their culture than the average tourists.

After our super-relaxing stay in the Cameron Highlands, we headed to Georgetown loaded with energy. In the past 24 hours seen all the major sites we hoped to including churches, mosques, Hindu, Chinese, Thai, and Burmese temples, a sleeping Buddha, the national museum, the clock tower, and Fort Cornwallis (from the outside). We also managed to go to the hospital to get our second vaccination for Japanese Encephalitis. All that and I've still got the energy to write about it all on my blog.

As usual, the highlight of the day wasn't the sights. The longer we travel the more we value the truly unique experiences, whatever they may be, over another temple or museum. Today, that truly unique experience took its form as a refreshing street snack we heard about from some locals, called ice kachang. The dish is made only on this small island and thanks to some excellent directions we were lucky enough to sample it at the stand of its inventor. Ice kachang is shaved ice with sweet syrup (sounds good so far), beans, corn, slimy gummy worm type things, milk, some kind of green jelly balls, and maybe a little rambutan (tropical fruit)? As you can imagine, it was....interesting. I don't have my photos uploaded yet, but here is a picture I found on google images that looks about as close to ours as I could get. Mmm....tasty.

Kuala Lumpur was a really nice place to be after Singapore. We went from an ultra-modern city, with every convenience imaginable, and super strict laws (think caning for minor offenses and the death penalty for drug possession), to the most normal city we've been to in the last two and a half years.

It wasn't like Nepal, India or Sri Lanka. There were no touts hassling us as we got off the bus, walked along the street, or went shopping. Sometimes a person would approach us wanting to sell something and we'd say "no thanks." Then they said "ok" and walked away instead of following us for a few hundred meters down the street. No one stared at us as we walked by anymore. In fact, no one even gave us a second look. We were just ordinary people again. It's so nice not to have crowds of people staring at you, some of them trying to take pictures.

We did our share of sightseeing in KL, but the highlight of our time there was being normal again and doing normal things. We went to the 7/11 and got a slurpee - it was really exciting and fun for us. We just haven't been able to do things like this! There have been no 7/11s and no slurpees in our lives for a really long time and it was nice to have these things back. We also saw our first English language movie in a theatre since the states.

I think doing these sorts of things here will make our readjustment easier when we get back home. The United States is still going to be a strange place for us when we get back, but at least we'll have started doing normal things like these again, even if it's in bits and pieces. I imagine it would have been really weird going into a 7/11 with friends or family and being so excited to get a slurpee and being like, "Oh my God, it's so delicious! And it's cold! So cold!" And them looking at me and being like "Yeah, it is" and thinking they're glad I'm back, but I'm a little strange now.

The thing is, it won't just be a few things like this that are normal to everyone else, but strange, exciting, and wonderful to us. It will be everything and that's part of what makes readjusting difficult. Thank you all in advance for your patience with us when we get back!

We woke up from our overnight flight at 6 AM Singapore time (3:30 AM Sri Lanka time) and found ourselves in a completely different place. Often an airport doesn't tell you much about a city, but it certainly did in Singapore. The airport had free internet access, all kinds of western restaurants, free massage chairs, and even a swimming pool. There were lots more things too, but these are the ones I noticed as I was being pushed through the airport in a wheelchair by an airport worker.

You might reasonably wonder why I was being pushed through the airport in a wheelchair. Regular readers of my blog know that I carry a large bamboo stick with me for many reasons. It's very useful and we discovered a new use for it in Sri Lanka when someone droped their sandal on the rail track and needed some help. As useful as it is, it sometimes gives us problems at the wide variety of security checkpoints we come across in our travels. I tend to develop a limp as we approach security checks police officers and the like. After we pass through I'm usually able to walk normally again. Unfortunately, this isn't the case at airports.

You don't just need to pass through a checkpoint, you need to pass through two or three on your way in and even after that you have to get your passport stamped by immigration exiting one country and then entering another. This means I'd need to keep up the act for quite some time. Luckily for me I don't have to because they usually check the stick for me when I check in. That means the only way for me to get through the airport is by a wheelchair. Then the only thing I need to deal with is the guilt of wasting everyone's time, but I'm not willing to give up my bamboo so this is how it must go.

When we got out of the airport and into the city the first thing that struck us was how easy it was to do everything. There were no touts hassling us for taxi rides or tours as we left the airport. The public bus we took to the city was clean and comfortable with pleasant buttons you push to signal to the driver where you want to get off. The bus wasn't overcrowded, there were no offensive odors, and it was even air conditioned. We just sat there feeling so comfortable it was almost eerie.

On the bus and everywhere else things just seemed so sanitized and sterile. It's not that we don't appreciate being comfortable, but it was a bit too much for us. Eventually I realized that the discomfort caused by all this comfort was boredom. It's true, taking the bus in Singapore is not exciting. You might think taking the bus shouldn't be an exciting experience, but for us every bus we've taken from Nepal to Sri Lanka has been. Riding the bus entails so much in these countries.

You need to hurry up and get on so that it doesn't start leaving while you're halfway in. Then, if you're lucky, you stumble to your seat while the bus swerves left and right. If you're not lucky there are no seats and you're faced with the constant challenge of holding on and not falling over. Usually you don't know exactly where you're getting off and stops aren't announced (in a language you understand) so you have to figure this out as you go. And on and on. There is so much to do while you're riding the bus in these countries. In Singapore, whether we were on the bus, the metro, or even just walking around, there were no challenges you had to overcome. Everything was taken care of for you in a clean, comfortable, and efficient way. We appreciated a break from all the stress, but it really was a bit dull!

After settling in, we headed downtown. Everything was very modern, of course. No horns honking, no tuk tuks, plenty of blinking crosswalks. Enough about all that, you get the idea. We were in a very different place. Our first stop was Chinatown which is clearly just for the tourists these days. It was so artificial it was almost like being in Disneyworld. We walked around and found a temple that claimed to have a tooth of the Buddha, just like in Sri Lanka. Except this one you can just walk right up to and look at. I don't know how many of these Buddha teeth there are laying about the world, but the excitement has passed.

On the edge of Chinatown we saw an Indian temple that was unlike any we had seen in India. The colors were bright and bold, not faded. There were so many different carvings. It was really beautiful, but to me it didn't seem very authentic. I quickly realized the problem wasn't that it was not authentic, but there is just so much more money in Singapore. They can afford to spend so much more on making things look nice than was the standard in India. I wonder if all the temples in India would look like this one if it were a wealthier place.

The next day we went to the bayfront and noticed three large buildings with a (fake) boat on top of them. I've never seen a boat-like thing on top of three skyscrapers before so we went to check it out. It was a really fancy hotel - too fancy for us really. We couldn't get to the roof without a keycard that we weren't willing to pay for. That was fine, we're used to not satisfying our every whim. It's really not that sort of trip. But all of these things we saw had an impact on us. What kind of place has a boat on top of some really high buildings just for the luxury of it all? Singapore.

You can imagine that it was a very expensive place for us. Believe it or not, we found that the best place to eat in Singapore is at the shopping mall food courts. Yes, really. First of all, there are shopping malls everywhere. You really can't avoid them. Second, they're some of the cheapest places to eat in the city. And finally, you can get so many different things there! It's really an amazing concept that I never appreciated before. You can get Chinese, Italian, Indian, and fast food all in the same place, so cheaply. I can't ever imagine a group people in the states wondering where to eat until someone suggests the food court at a shopping mall and everyone applauds the idea as a brilliant one. But to us, it's a revalation - and just so convenient! Maybe I've been away from home too long and am going a little crazy or maybe I see the world from a broader perspective now and appreciate things more in the way we all should or maybe the truth is somewhere in the middle - I'll let you decide.

Anyway, the convenience never stopped. When it was time to go we found ourselves missing India, sad to leave the comfort of Singapore, and excited about the thought that moving on might mean returning to whatever small amount of normalcy we knew before coming to this place.

From Tissamaharama we made our way to Kandy over the course of two days. The reason it took so long is not because of the distance, but because there was no direct way to get from one place to the other. We kept thinking that after getting to the next destination there would be a direct route from there, but this never seemed to be the case. We ended up taking three buses and two trains and finally arrived in Kandy after about 36 hours.

While we were en route, we arranged to stay with some new friends who live near Kandy. In fact, they were a host family for Peace Corps trainees back in 1989, so it was cool to have an immediate connection with them. In addition to the usual sight-seeing we would have done if we hadn't stayed with them, we had the pleasure of cooking meals together, going for a walk with them around their garden, and trading traveler/host stories. The grandmother was thrilled to be able play dress-up with Heather and we had a photo shoot with her sporting Indian and Sri Lankan style saris. It was loads of fun! They were a wonderful family and staying with them was one of the highlights of the trip.

The single biggest sight to see in Kandy is the Temple of the Tooth. It is said to contain the tooth of the Buddha which was found after he was cremated. Of course, we were excited to go to the temple and see this Buddhist relic. We were a little disappointed to find out that you don't actually get to see the tooth. Really, you don't even get to see the casket where the tooth is kept. What you do get to see is the door behind which is the casket in which the tooth is kept. I wasn't impressed, but all the people prostrating themselves outside the door seemed to be.

We took a day trip from Kandy to Pinnawala to see an elephant orphanage. It was by far the most elephants we've seen at one time, maybe two dozen or so. Some of these were injured or orphaned in the wild, but they have also started breeding the elephants and keeping them in captivity. This gave me some mixed feelings because that makes the place less of an orphanage and more of a zoo. Still, it was our first time seeing baby and juvenile elephants and we got to be there for feeding time and watch them take a bath in the river. Good fun, but this place had by far the most tourists we've seen so far in Sri Lanka.

After three days we said goodbye to our new Sri Lankan family and continued by AC bus to Anuradhapura. By this point in our trip we've traveled many ways, but this was our first AC bus. Now you'd think that since we're in Sri Lanka and it's 90+ degrees outside an AC bus would be a good idea, at least that's what we thought. It was the first time since we landed in Kathmandu that all the windows on our means of transportation were closed. That meant there was no air circulation from the outside and I was quite ill. The fact that we were in the hill country and traveling winding roads didn't help. It's the only time I've ever taken dramamine and still been motion sick (that stuff really works!) From here on out, no AC buses! Windows are great!

We came to Anuradhapura to see the old city and different collections of ruins and ancient stupas. We were not disappointed, there was lots to see and some were over 2000 years old! In the afternoon, we decided to travel off the map and went to see a place that isn't in any of the guide books. The reason for that is it's still under construction. 15 km outside the city, but the side of the road, in the middle of nowhere are 500 Buddha statues all standing in a line which meanders around a beautiful park. We would never have known about the place, but we'd seen pictures hanging in restaurants and hotels and asked the locals. The statues were person-sized, so having 500 of them was quite a feat even though the last several were still being painted and sculpted. In addition to the Buddhas we saw lots of wildlife including a really long snake, some kind of large squirrel, and a land monitor. We also ran across a guy who was washing each of the Buddhas individually. He wasn't just hosing them off either, but carefully rubbing his hand all over each statue to get the dirt off. It seems like a full time job, but he was a happy guy and let us take his picture.

The whole time we walked around we only ran into one Sri Lankan family that came to see the Buddhas, there were no other tourists at all. Not even an entry fee, only a small donation box. We made a small donation and asked the guy about the park and why there were 500 Buddhas (496 really, I counted). Sadly, he didn't speak much English and couldn't explain much. I'll have to look it up later to learn more.

After spending only about one full day in Anuradhapura we continued on to Colombo. We extended our time in Sri Lanka by a few days to see the Perahera which is a Buddhist festival that happens once a year. The big one happens in Kandy, but at a different time of year. By extending our time, we had just enough time to see the Colombo Perahera. I'm really glad we stayed for it. Basically, it was a really, really long parade. I don't have pictures uploaded for this yet, but look for them in the future. There were people dressed up in all different costumes, monks, elephants, guys dancing on stilts, fire twirlers, dancers, and more. The parade went on for well over two hours. I can't imagine what the Kandy Perahera must be like!

Today is our last day in Colombo and we're parting ways with my dad after traveling with him for about a month. We catch the red-eye to Singapore tonight. I'll post soon on our adventures there and in Malaysia.

I've finally managed to upload the photos from my camera and there are lots! You can get to them by clicking the links to the right, below my picture.

We spent a lot of time at the beach Induruwa. It was just so relaxing after running around India that we decided to take some time to relax while we were at such a beautiful place. Mostly all we did was play in the ocean, lie down with a good book, and eat wonderful Sri Lankan food (it's surprisingly different from Indian food). We did do a few things of note, however.

We visited a nearby turtle hatchery which was lots of fun! The turtles have a hard time making it by themselves, so the hatcheries (there are several) pay fisherman a little bit of money to bring them any eggs they find. They hatch the eggs and then keep the turtles until they're old enough to have a better chance surviving in the wild. We got to have a look at the eggs that were waiting to hatch and they had a big tank of baby turtles swimming around that we were able to pick up and hold. They also had albino and blind turtles that they keep permanently because they would not be able to survive in the wild. Their efforts are funded by private contributions and entry fees. Unfortunately, the whole place was completely destroyed by the tsunami. Our guide had a picture of himself on the site of the flattened hatchery which was pretty depressing. The good news is that they have rebuilt and are still passionate about their mission.

While we were in Induruwa I had my first Sri Lankan epiphany. One of the great things that Sri Lanka has to offer are coconuts, lots of them! These are frequently sold by the side of the road for 20 rupees (about 15-20 cents) I did some quick math in my head and realized that drinking coconut milk is cheaper than drinking water (the coconut meat is a bonus(! Since then I've been drinking coconuts exclusively when I can get them, which is most of the time. I love the tropical life!

After Induruwa we made our way to Tissamaharama which is conveniently located next to two animal reserves. We hired a jeep for a whole day to take us around the parks and spot wildlife. We were really lucky! We saw so many different types of animals - birds, monkeys, water buffalo, crocodiles, elephants, deer, rabbits, mongooses, peacocks, etc. We really loved watching the elephants, but the highlight was seeing a Sri Lankan spotted leopard. They're usually pretty elusive, but the one we saw was just walking down the road that our jeep was on. We followed him for about 10 minutes before he made a turn and simply disappeared in the jungle. We couldn't believe he let us stay with him for so long. Every once in a while he'd just turn around and look at us as if to say "Why are you following me? Stop following me!" The funny thing is, we've felt the same way about people trying to sell us rickshaw rides and hotel rooms, but we couldn't not follow him! Oh, the ironies of life...

At this point I'm hopelessly behind in my blogging, so I'll just put down a (very) brief summary to get you up-to-date.

Delhi

We met up with my Dad in Delhi since he decided to join us on our trip. He was in this part of the world almost 40 years ago and has never been back so it was a very exciting reunion! We visited some of the places he went to last time he was in Delhi, like the Red Fort.

Agra

There is really one reason that people come to Agra and that's to see the Taj Mahal. Last time my Dad was in India he decided it was too much trouble to make the trip from Delhi to Agra to see the Taj Mahal and he's regretted it ever since! We were thrilled that we were all able to go and see it together for the first time. It's as beautiful as they say!

Mumbai, Surat, Dandi, and Mumbai

There is lots to see in Mumbai including plenty of British architecture. However, this wasn't what drew us to India's largest city. Bollywood filmmakers have a habit of picking up Westerners on the street to come and be extras in their films. Since before we even left Ukraine it's been Heather's dream to make it as an extra in a Bollywood film. It only took a day or two in Mumbai before someone approached us, it wasn't a Bollywood filmmaker, though. Instead it was a wedding planner who was hiring western women to greet guests at a very, very large and expensive wedding. Heather decided to do it, she made thirty bucks and we were all invited to by far the most lavish wedding I've ever been to. It was really incredible and now I understand why Indian weddings have a reputation of being really over the top.

The wedding was five hours away in Surat so on the way back we stopped in Dandi to see the beach where Gandhi marched to make salt in defiance of the British government. It was one of the major events on the road to Indian independence and there is a lovely monument and we saw the palm hut where he lived at this time and where he was arrested.

Kanchipuram

We stopped here on our way to the coast to take a tour of five major Hindu temples. At one of them we all got blessed by an elephant after paying his fee (we literally had to give the elephant a rupee after he reached down with his trunk!) All the temples were very beautiful, it's a shame we couldn't spend more time in southern India.

Mahabalipuram

Our last stop in India and the first beach we spent any time at. It was a pretty touristy place, but it was a good change. We got to sample the south Indian cuisine (off a banana leaf), see ancient stone carvings, go to a beach temple, and soak up the tropical air.

Tirusulam (Chennai airport) and Colombo

We left early in the morning to catch our flight to Sri Lanka. I must admit that I have a whole new perspective on flying. In the states it just seems like a pain and you spend so much time just waiting around. After taking several 24 hour trains, countless buses, rickshaws, etc. it seemed like a really pleasant experience. Sure you have to wait a bit, but everything is so clean and nice...yeah, a different perspective. We didn't stay in Colombo, but went straight to Induruwa.

Induruwa

My dad booked us rooms at a beautiful guest house on the beach. We just arrived yesterday, but I can already tell that Sri Lanka is a completely different place than India. Much, less hectic, much more relaxing. I'll write more soon, promise!

It's been too long since my last update and a lot has happened since then. This time I'll just post some of the highlights and consider myself caught up.

Jaipur is the capital of Rajasthan, one of the most well-traveled regions of India. It's another big, crazy Indian city, but the walled, old city was the big draw for us. Most of the business done in the old city comes from local crafts. In fact, the city is divided into specific craft sections. In one area you can watch stone statues being carved, in another textiles being weaved, bangles being made, etc. It was great fun just to walk around for a while, getting lost in the small alleys. We also visited the palace, an observatory, and other major sites.

One of the most enjoyable things we did while staying in Jaipur was take a day trip to nearby Amber to see Amber fort. The fort itself was magnificent - simply huge with beautifully decorated rooms and courtyards. But the views of the nearby mountains, each with their own fort on top, made it that much better. There were incredibly long walls leading from the bottom of each of these mountains to the each fort at the top. While we were there a Bollywood movie was being filmed, so we got to see some of the brightly colored costumes and dancing associated with Indian film. After a short stay in Jaipur we continued on by train to Jaisalmer.

There was a fortress and plenty of temples here, all worth seeing, but the reason we came to this city is because it is one of the best starting points in India for camel safaris. Our safari was only two days long, with one night spent sleeping under the stars in the desert. The first thing you notice when you're looking at a camel that you're going to ride off into the desert is camels are really tall! They aren't like horses at all. My camel in particular was especially tall, maybe the tallest one there. I am quite tall myself by Indian standards, but even though they kneel down for you to get on I had to jump and struggle to get on top of mine. I felt a great sense of relief when I was finally in my seat, but the fun wasn't even close to over because after you get on, the camel has to stand up.

This probably doesn't sound like such a big deal, but that's just because you've never ridden a camel. You see, for camels, standing up is a process. They stand up with their back legs first and later, when they are ready, they stand up with their front legs. This is fine for the camel, but if you're sitting on top you have the harrowing experience of trying to hold on while the camel remains for several seconds at a 45 degree angle before standing up the rest of the way. This might have been easier if it had been expected, but none of our four guides warned us.

Another way that riding a camel is not like riding a horse is that your legs ache. You got used to this after a while, but it was still a few days after the safari before I could walk completely normal again. Besides these challenges, the whole thing was an amazing experience. We walked most of our time in scrub desert, but we spent the night by the most beautiful sand dunes. Our guides cooked us some simple Indian camping food and we spent the evening singing songs around the campfire. We returned the next day happy we had taken the safari, but also happy to be finished riding camel.

There were no trains we could take to Udaipur, so instead we traveled via sleeper bus (man I wish they had these in Ukraine). It was bumpy, but far better than riding a regular bus. The biggest site in Udaipur is a beautiful palace sitting next to a tremendous lake. But at this point we were pretty tired of doing the tourist things. We went on the camel safari and had gone to countless palaces, forts, temples, etc. by this time. All of them were great, but we were just really tired and wanted to do something else. Our budget was also stretched to the limit from all the tourist stuff we'd done in the previous week. So we didn't even go into the palace.

Instead we went to a youth festival that was happening far from the tourist area. There were free concerts going on and we got to hear some traditional flute and drum playing. It was nice to relax and listen for a while and as a bonus, we were the only white people there! After listening for a while we went to see some traditional dancing and a puppet show at the cultural center. Both were spectacular, but the Indians really, really loved the puppet show! They were cheering and yelling throughout the whole thing, I had no idea a puppet show could incite such excitement! After a relaxing time in Udaipur, we hopped on a train for Delhi!

I must admit that I didn't fully understand the meaning of Teddy Roosevelt's famous advice the first time I read it in a textbook in grade school, but I can say that it carries new meaning for me now. In fact, I've chosen to take his advice quite literally and, after several weeks of searching, purchased a large walking stick to accompany me through our travels (Of course, I have always striven to speak softly). There are so many reasons why it is useful: to deter pickpockets, to keep away monkeys that are interested in our things, for walking, to reach underneath the bed when something falls there, to ward off overenthusiastic touts and beggars, to scare away rats and other street animals that get too close, and many more. All of these are good reasons, but by far the most compelling to me is all the attention Heather attracts from the men in this part of the world.

She is both beautiful and blonde which is often enough to make the men in our vicinity just stop and stare at her. If we stay in one place too long the men will begin to collect until there is a large group standing and staring at her which only encourages more to do the same. Men will often ask to have their picture with her which we no longer allow because some are not respectful and will put their arm around her or things like this. This behavior is especially inappropriate here, where even I cannot put my arm around Heather without it being an excessive public display of affection. Some men are not so well mannered to ask and will just snap photos of her in the street. A few have even been bold enough to jump in front of us, pull out their camera, and take her picture. If she leaves my sight, even for a moment, men start 'bumping' into her or attempt to engage her in conversation.

All of this is bad enough during the day, but if we're walking around at night on poorly lit streets we really don't want that kind of attention. After I started carrying the stick, there was a noticeable improvement in our situation. We still have the same sort of problems, but they are much less frequent. Something we didn't expect, however, is that people now pay a great deal of attention to me!

Now people stop and stare at me and the make comments to each other about me. We've learned that there are many cultural reasons for this. We've seen other people in India with sticks like mine, but they fall into only three categories. Old men who really need help walking, sadhus (holy men), and police officers. I clearly do not fall into any of these categories, but the assumption is that since I do not need this stick to walk or for religious purposes, I use it for hitting people. In fact, the man I bought it from asked me if it was for Heather (I'm really not sure he was joking).

The reactions we've gotten are numerous. Several times a day people ask me "What is that for?" with worry visible in their eyes. Others have assured me that India is a safe place to travel. Some hold their fist in the air with a flexed arm and say "Good bamboo!" Some tell me I look like Ali Baba (I really don't understand this one, but an Indian told me he was a maharaja). I've also learned that a bamboo stick like mine is associated with someone who lives in a small village and is unsophisticated.

I really can't say I'm fond of all the attention, but the positive aspect is that everyone is looking and talking about me instead of Heather. Although I don't like others to think that I just go around hitting people, the stick clearly commands respect. We walked by a group of guys who were giggling and staring at us and I just stared back without smiling. After a short moment they began to show more respect. While I have mixed feelings about people's reactions, so far it has been a net positive for us and I'll keep the stick for the foreseeable future. One final note about the stick - we were in a cafe this morning and I saw a portrait of Gandhi carrying a bamboo stick exactly like mine. It's a shame people don't make that association instead, ah well.

My hour's up, I'll write about Jaipur next time!

After Amritsar our next stop was McLeod Ganj. We planned to make the trip in one day, but this turned out to be a little too ambitious. After all, we were taking four different methods of transportation to get there. For starters, we took a train to Pathankot, which was late by two or three hours. From there we would switch to a smaller train which runs on a narrow gauge track (nicknamed the toy train). We met a local on our first train who informed us that instead of taking 2 1/2 hours like the guidebook said, the toy train actually took 5 hours. This new bit of information combined with our late arrival into Pathankot meant we would stay the night there instead of continuing the journey that day. We didn't know anything about Pathankot, it's not really a tourist town, so we were afraid it might be another Gorakhpur. On the contrary, it turned out to be a really nice place and we were happy to stay a night there.

The next morning (New Years Eve) we got up at 5 AM to get to the station by 6 so we could grab a seat before the train left at 7. There are no reservations on the toy train and everyone told us we had better get there early or risk standing the whole way. We actually got there at about 5:45 and the train pulled away at 7 with about half the seats empty. We learned a very long time ago to be flexible and just go with the flow and it's a good thing too, otherwise we'd probably be a lot more frustrated.

The toy train was really great. We had imagined a tiny little train, like at Disney Land, that takes the kids around in circle. The reality was something between that and a regular train. It was about 2/3 the size of a normal train with very narrow rails because it takes passengers into the mountains. The views were spectacular and we were glad we took this route even though it took a lot longer than expected. The end of the line for us was in Kangra.

We loved this little train station. Because there is only one route on these tracks and the train is petite, the stations were much smaller than we're used to. Just a little building to buy tickets and snacks and then there is nothing else around! Less than we had hoped for, in fact. There wasn't even a major road within sight and we didn't know where we had to go to catch our bus. That's okay, we're used to asking directions by now. We walked for about a mile, still uncertain about where we were going. People are always happy to give us directions, but sometimes they all give us different directions. Eventually we found a bus that took us to Kangra bus station where we had a quick lunch and caught the bus to Dharamshala.

I've been on a lot of buses these last few years, but this may just be the most terrifying ride in memory. I was standing, holding onto the rail and the bus driver just swung the bus from left to right as he navigated up the twisting mountain road. I could hardly even hold on and almost fell over several times! It's not a good feeling to have as you're looking out the window at the steep drops and almost complete lack of barriers. My stomach was in knots and I cannot tell you how happy I was when we finally pulled into Daramshala. From there we had to catch another shorter, calmer ride up the rest of the way to McLeod Ganj. It all really would have been too much for one day.

This is especially true because just as we arrived there a hailstorm began. So we trudged on with our bags and started our hotel search. We found a good one eventually and after a short rest went back out to find something special to do for the New Year. There were lots of dance parties and things like that going on. Most of them didn't interest us that much and cost anywhere from 2-7 days budget. There was some live music that looked good, but it was already completely booked. We finally found a nice little restaurant that had festivities and wasn't completely beyond our price range. So we went back to our hotel room for a little rest before going back out again and promptly fell asleep. We woke up around midnight to hear everyone yelling and cheering for the New Year. We let out disappointed groans and went back to sleep.

We were really happy to be in McLeod Ganj, but it turned out our timing was not so good. Because we were there on a holiday weekend, there was really nothing happening. All the excitement happened on New Year's Eve and after that it was time for the town to take a break. We spend most of the day going from place to place to find out that they were closed and wouldn't open again until Monday when we would be leaving town. Heather was really excited about doing yoga, but there was just no way it could happen. There was also no live music, no astrologer, and no museum during the weekend. The Dalai Lama was away too; he has been traveling around India for the last several weeks.

I'd like to say that we just moved right on and didn't let the disappointment affect us, but we were kind of depressed. That is, until we put things in perspective. We sat in a cafe and reminisced over some hot tea. We remembered all the times we were in Ukraine and would have given anything, to be anywhere, doing nothing, except being together. And here we were. But we were really much better off than we would have settled for. We were in McLeod Ganj! We were enjoying Tibetan food and culture all around us! And, most importantly, we were together.

We felt better and things quickly improved after that. We went to see the main temple and the home of the Dalai Lama. The next day the museum did actually open, even though it was Sunday. The museum was excellent, it detailed the history of the Tibetans since the Chinese invaded and before. We go there just at the right time to see a film about the uprisings in 2008. The Tibetans have had (and continue to have) a very rough time. We made a small donation and left better informed and better educated.

I'm very happy to report that our exit from McLeod Ganj was much less eventful than our entrance. We took a long bus and a long train, but that's all we had to do! Sure it was still 30 hours of traveling, but if there's one thing we've learned, it's all about perspective!

We spend the last of our time in Amritsar volunteering at the dining hall and visiting the Sikh museum. We met a Sikh man as we were circumambulating the golden temple who told us everything we ever wanted to know about the Sikh religion, the Golden Temple, etc. One thing he told us about the dining hall was that they wash all the dishes and utensils seven times. This is one of the pieces of information we were skeptical about, we love India, but the cleanliness habits are not always our favorite part. But I can tell you, after participating in this process, that they do wash everything seven times and extremely thoroughly! In fact, I caused quite a stir when I inadvertently allowed some of the washed dishes to touch my clothes as I was moving them to the next basin down the line. The guy next to us was really upset. The looks I received made me feel like they had been doing this the right way for the last 500 years, until I came and fouled up the entire process. No one was rude to us, but we were watched very carefully after that to make sure we didn't do anything else wrong. I felt really bad, it was my mistake, but the pressure was just too much for us. We changed jobs and started peeling garlic.

Maybe these jobs don't sound very exciting, but the scale is incredible. We walked over to a giant pile of garlic that was just laying on the floor. A few dozen people were around to help with this task. Really the pile of garlic was relatively small compared to the nearby pile of onions. Anyway, I just sat there for the first five minutes watching the guy next to me peel his garlic. I didn't want to mess up the job! He must have though I was really strange just sitting there watching him and I might have made it worse when I tried to explain to him why I was doing this. Sometimes I talk with my hands which is normally okay, but not when you have a knife in your hand and the other person can't understand what you're saying. Needless to say, all the people there were very tolerant of us.

After doing our part, we had lunch in the dining hall and headed to the Sikh museum. Based on what we saw at the museum, I can tell you that the Sikhs have had a pretty rough history. Some of the paintings were of religious leaders and events and some were of resistance and wars. Most, however, were of all the different ways Sikhs have been tortured throughout history. Some of the methods were quite inventive, but honestly it was a little much for us after a while. It was a learning experience though, after visiting the museum we finally understood why some of the Sikhs we saw walking around the city still carry swords on their belts!

We finally left a donation and bid farewell to Amritsar the next morning and headed to catch our train. It was an adventure, I'll try to write about the last days experiences soon. Gotta go get some dinner now!

Getting from Varanasi to Amritsar turned out to be a lot more difficult than we anticipated. We bought tickets a week or two in advance, but were put on the wait list. There was plenty of time for cancellations, but the morning we were supposed to leave we were still numbers two and three on the waiting list. We went out to the track to talk to the conductor and he told us there were no seats, we had to go and get a refund and buy tickets for another day. This was really not what we wanted to hear since we didn't want to wait two or three more weeks for a confirmed train ticket and we also didn't want to take a 24 hour bus all the way to Amritsar. We had almost given up hope but the last time we went back to him, he said "OK, get on. I'll find you a seat." And he did. I don't know why it was so difficult before and so easy the last time we asked him, but we were just happy to be on the train.

All was well until it was time for us to arrive. We weren't arriving. We looked out the window to see the names of the stations we passed and deduced that we were quite a bit behind schedule. We finally pulled into Amritsar almost four hours late. It's no fun spending an extra four hours on a train, but it's REALLY no fun starting to look for a hotel at 8:30 PM in a new city. We were very lucky though, there is no better place we could have been with these problems.

After leaving the train station we found a free shuttle waiting to take us directly to our destination. Within five minutes after we got there someone was showing us to our room which was no charge (except for our donation). One minute away was a dining hall where we could be served 24 hours a day, also at no charge. "Why?", you might reasonably ask?

Our destination was the Golden Temple which is the holiest site of the Sikh religion. One key thing you should know about the Sikh religion is that they don't believe in the caste system like Hindus do. They believe in treating everyone equally and that is exactly what they do. Their goal is to make the holiest site in their religion accessible to everyone, regardless of caste, religion, nationality, or wealth. This is why they provide a free shuttle and a free place to stay. Instead of just giving free meals to the poor, which they believe perpetuates the class system, they offer free meals to everyone - equally. Very equally. Everyone sits together, in lines on the floor and for at least the duration of that meal no person is better than any other.

It's sounds pretty cool, but really the scale of it all is nothing short of magnificent. They serve 60 - 80 thousand meals every day! And that's when there isn't a festival or a holiday or something going on. I really felt special just to be a part of it. Even more impressive than that is that everyone who works at the temple is a volunteer. The people who serve your food, the people who wash the dishes, peel the garlic - all volunteers. Many of the volunteers are Sikhs, but many or not. Really, anyone can volunteer. All you have to do is just start doing the job you want to help with. It's really wild!

The temple itself is really amazing too. The reason it's called the Golden Temple is because the entire temple is plated in gold. It sits in the middle of a lake and, during the day, houses the most holy book of the Sikh religion. At night they carry the book to its bed in a different building where it stays for the night. True to their belief in equality, anyone can go inside the temple (we haven't been allowed to go in most Hindu temples) and anyone can participate in the ritual of carrying the book to its resting place. We just witnessed this even last night and there was a crowd of people surrounding and helping to carry the palanquin used to transport the book. I would have jumped in to help myself, but I could see that participating in this ritual meant a lot more to some of the other people there than it did to me.

The Golden Temple is really the main attraction in Amritsar and we couldn't expect anything more, really. But there are some other interesting things in the area as well. Yesterday we took a shared taxi to the Indian-Pakistani border at Atari where they have a ceremony every day to close the border. While this might sound a little dull, it's anything but. The border guards are dressed in a uniform that I can honestly say is nothing short of ridiculous. Imagine someone in a military uniform wearing some kind of hat with a one and a half foot fan on top of it. Yeah. Then imagine these guards stomping around (sometimes almost at a jog), waving their arms back and forth at insanely fast speeds, and performing high kicks that reach within an inch of their forehead. At the end of it all they shake hands, lower the flags, and the gates slam shut. The Indians love it! They have stands built, almost like a stadium for the people (mostly Indians, but some foreigners) to come witness this ceremony. It's kind of unbelievable really.

We arranged for our taxi to take us from the Golden Temple to the ceremony and then back again after the ceremony was finished. We didn't expect our driver would want to take us to a couple more temples on the way home, but we were excited to see them since it isn't always so easy for us to get to these places and hiring taxis isn't normally in our budget. We weren't prepared for what he had to show us.

The first temple I can only describe as some kind of bizarre Hindu fun house. I don't mean to be rude by calling it this, but there is simply no better way I can describe it. This place had many of the things you'd expect from a Hindu temple like statues of Gods, places for offerings, and things like this. But it had other things as well. First of all, you had to travel along a very circuitous route. Up stairs, down stairs, through little alleys, etc. Many of the rooms had broken mirror mosaics as well as a variety of other things we didn't understand. At one point we had to crawl through some sort of artificial cave. We looked up to see a cow's udder on the ceiling that was dripping like a stalagtite. Another time we had to roll up our pants and walk through ankle deep water for some purpose that was beyond our understanding. At the end of it all there was a man sitting who told us to kneel as he put a necklace of marigolds on each of us, gave us a mark on our forehead (the third eye), tied some kind of shiny, glitter cloth around our heads, and gave us a sweet coconut treat, then said thank you and goodbye. At the end of it all we just looked at each other trying to comprehend all that we had just experienced and completely failing to do so. But the night wasn't over yet, there was still time for one more stop!

At the next stop we got out of the taxi and just did a double take. The temple we were looking at looked exactly like the golden temple. Completely plated in gold, sitting in the middle of a large lake, and everything. But it wasn't the golden temple. It was the Hindu version of the golden temple. I guess they liked the Sikh's idea so much, they built their own! Even though this temple looks golden just like the actual Golden temple it is instead called the Silver Temple because of its silver doors. The whole time we were walking around it we were trying to figure out why the Hindus would build what was almost a replica of the Sikh's holiest site just a few miles away. It's something for us to think about.

It's been a really eventful last several days, I'm really happy to get all this up on the blog. We're planning now to do just a few more things here and then tomorrow we will head to Mcleod Ganj, the residence of the Dalai Lama and many refugees of Tibetan Buddhism.

The holiday season is always different when you're far away from home. It's a little sad for me to say that we're becoming experts on spending holidays in foreign countries, but it won't be that way for so much longer. Nothing is like being with family, but at least I can say that we usually don't spend the holidays alone. In Ukraine it was easy to meet up with our Peace Corps volunteer friends who were in the same boat we were. It was nice to have each other and we got together for Christmas parties, Thanksgivings, and the like.

Because we are always traveling, we don't have too many long-term friends and so things are a little different. The other side of that coin is that we meet new people all the time, much more often than we did in Ukraine. It can be a lot of fun meeting new people, especially when you click! We spent Christmas Eve with an Australian woman we met at breakfast the day before. We took a trip to nearby Sarnath. This is the place where the Buddha gave his first lesson and also the final stop on our Buddhist pilgrimage tour (All four major sites, yay!). We shared the rickshaw fare and also the company, which was great. Her last visit to India was 30 years ago, which is amazing! She told us a few stories, but didn't remember much (it was a crazy time!) It reminded me of my dad who was also here about 30 years ago and he is coming to meet us soon, maybe sometime in the next few weeks.

In the evening we returned to Varanasi and went to a nearby cafe that was having a Christmas party. It was fun. To be honest, it's nothing like being back home, but in some ways that makes it more interesting. We sat down and listened to what I can only imagine to be "The Greatest Christmas Hits of Country Music" while we ate spinach ravioli, pizza, and apple pie. An Italian guy came and sat down with us, so we chatted with him for a while about our recent trip to Italy. Later, the live music started. We got to listen to an Argentinian duo play some self-composed music, some in English, some in Spanish. So we had a very multi-cultural Christmas Eve.

We had met an Israeli guy a few days before that told us about a Christmas lunch at the River Ashram (or as he called it, the Jesus Ashram). Everyone was invited and so we showed up (a little late) to check things out. Apparently the food was amazing! All the other travelers told us about the lasagna and Mexican food they had and how amazing it was. Unfortunately, it was almost all gone by the time we arrived. The good news is there was plenty of dessert left! I ate all the sweets I could handle while we met travelers from Denmark and Colorado. We always get great tips from other travelers about our future destinations.

For example, all the holiday gatherings were passed along to us through word of mouth of travelers. Other things too, "Oh, you have to go on a camel safari in Rajistan!", "Check out the hot springs in Manila!", and "Get to the river early in the morning to see the Ganga river dolphins!" Some people are able to give us better tips than others though. We talked to a guy that had been to Laos about stuff to do there to learn that he spent an entire month on one tiny island dazed and confused. He did say it was the most relaxing time in his life though, I believe it.

For now we're just hanging out waiting to catch a train to Amritsar. It's another long one, about 20 hours, but it's a good jumping point to get to Mcleod Gang, the home of the Dalai Lama and where we may spend New Year's. I hope you all enjoyed your holidays!

PS Heather posted some pictures of our travels thus far on her flickr website. Check them out! www.flickr.com/heathercaturia

We made it safely to Varanasi, although not how we planned. We got up before dawn to catch the bus and went to the stop where the touts tried to sell us advance tickets (with commission). We've never needed to buy bus tickets in advance before, and we probably wouldn't have needed to this time either except that after the bus didn't show up the touts informed us that the real bus stop was 2 km away. Nice.

Since the only other bus that day would have put us into Varanasi late in the evening (no good if you don't have a hotel booked) we took an autorickshaw to the next town over which had a train station. Thanks to a bit of luck we ran into an Indonesian guy there who was also traveling to Varanasi and told us which train we wanted and all that good stuff. He also knew a great (and cheap) hotel to go to in Varanasi. So we ended up taking a 3 hour train instead of a 7 hour bus and didn't have to go from hotel to hotel looking for a room. This is the kind of thing that happens all the time, luckily we learned a long time ago in Ukraine that even though things don't always go according to plan, there is always another way.

We always negotiate on the prices for our hotels, especially if we plan to stay several nights. Since the place we stayed the first night wouldn't budge on the price we went out looking for another hotel the next morning. We ended up at a much nicer place that was double the price, but we managed to get them down to the same price as our other hotel. You know you're getting a good deal when the manager begs you not to tell any of the other guests how much you're paying! And you know you're staying in a nice hotel when they give you a free bar of soap and roll of toilet paper (yeah, we're roughing it)! Even better than that we have hot water and a balcony view of the holy river Ganga (Ganges).

At many places along the river are large steps that lead down called "ghats." These provide access to the river for many purposes including drinking the water, bathing, laundry, offerings, and cremations. Our balcony overlooks one of the cremation ghats which is a little intense, but also fascinating. Hindus come to Varanasi from all over India to die and be cremated on the Ganges. Hindus believe in reincarnation and also that being cremated on the Ganges will free a person from the cycle of death and rebirth. We've witnessed the process several times.

Bodies are completely wrapped in cloth and are brought to the river on a stretcher-like device made out of bamboo. The family accompanies their relative and may play music and possibly make lots of other noise with shouting and maybe dancing. Sometimes it really looks like they are having fun! The body is then dipped in the river and placed on stacks of wood. These are then lit and burned completely. It's not unusual for us to look out our window and see three or four fires going at once down at the ghat.

The first time, I have to admit, it was kind of difficult to watch. It's becoming more normal for us since it's happening all the time and not once have I seen any of the family members crying or be visibly sad. This may be because they are confident in the well-being of their loved one. I think this makes it easier for us to get used to and we now just accept it as the way of life in Varanasi.

Sadly the river is terribly polluted. Heather and I have decided not to go for a dip. As you would expect, part of the problem is the cremations and also all the bathing and washing that happens there (including the cows). By far the biggest problem is the sewage though. Not only from Varanasi, but also from more than a hundred towns further up the river, sewage flows freely into the Ganga. This knowledge is enough to keep us at a safe distance.

What else is interesting about Varanasi?...the monkeys! There are lots of monkeys in Varanasi, particularly near our new hotel. In fact, I think a large extended family lives just below us. You might think that monkeys are cute and cuddly, but that's just because they don't live in your neighborhood! We see/hear them there every night, sometimes jumping on the tin roofs or onto the balconies below us. We've seen them go inside peoples homes looking for food. Last night they even came onto our balcony on the third floor. They were throwing our chairs around and they also left presents which we found the next morning. We noticed today that our neighbors hung their laundry to dry on their balcony and I suspect they will have an unpleasant surprise by tomorrow morning if we don't find them and warn them first.

More soon.

We had a great time in Calcutta, but I have to admit we spent as much time relaxing at cafes and our hotel as we did going out and seeing the city. We needed it though, traveling can be really exhausting after a while. One of the nice things about being in a city that has a lot of tourists is that it's easy to get western style food. Now, I know what you're thinking, I should be sampling the local cuisine. I have and although much of it is too spicy for me, some is very good. I've come to realize that you can enjoy local food, but sometimes also eat familiar food that doesn't make your stomach grumble, growl, or cry out in pain. Yes, I got Delhi belly one day after arriving in India and have been more selective with my food choices since then. (Heather was smart enough to avoid it, I like to learn my lessons through experience).

The most notable thing we did while we were in Calcutta was visit Mother Teresa's mission. There is a small museum that tells about her life story and has some of her personal effects such as letters, a toothbrush, her Nobel Peace Prize, and even a piece of a tube that was used to help her breathe in her final moments. You can also visit her very modest room at the mission and the tomb where she is buried.

It was fascinating to learn about her life and it was very clear that she devoted herself completely to her mission and did a great deal for the poorest people in Calcutta. It wasn't easy for her to spend her life with the destitute, sick, and dying and the "darkness" she experienced is frequently mentioned. She gave everything she had and accepted other people's suffering as her own. She believed she was doing the work of Christ who took on the burden of others' suffering in the same way. All that she did for others was very inspiring, but at the same time I felt sad for her that she did not derive more enjoyment from her life. Even when she was smiling on the outside she still suffered. I only wish that a person who gave so much experienced more personal happiness.

It was with these thoughts that we left the mission. As we did we stopped to chat with some nuns who lived and worked there. The first question they asked us is "Are you Catholic?" I answered them honestly that I was not a Catholic, I was a humanitarian. I know I should not be surprised, but I have to admit that I was hurt a little that they were not satisfied with this answer and immediately began trying to convert me. I know they are Catholic nuns and they were just doing what Catholic nuns do, but it still surprises me that they were not accepting of others who do not share their specific beliefs, especially when there are so many things we can agree on (like their humanitarian mission). It makes me a little sad, but what can I do but accept them for who they are?

We left Calcutta two or three days ago for Bodhgaya, which is the place where the Buddha achieved enlightenment. We previously visited Lumbini (his birthplace) and Kushingar (where he died). We went to Kushingar as a day trip from Gorakpur, I might have forgotten to mention it. Anyway, I think we came to Bodhgaya at the right time because right now is the Buddhist festival of Karama Pa. There are monks EVERYWHERE. We went to the Bodhi tree yesterday where the Buddha became enlightened and we saw just a sea of maroon and gold robes. We were lucky enough to hear some Tibetan throat singing during a ceremony which is quite unique. If you've never heard it before you should listen sometime.

Originally, we planned to stay at one of the many monasteries in town, but they were all completely full because of all the monks that are visiting. After a little searching we found a nice little guest house (and cheap too!) Really, it was just as good as staying in the monastery because it was full of monks too! I made friends with a monk that was staying in the room next to ours. He was just sitting on the balcony and wanted to chat. He was from Nepal and he told me about his monastery (he is the head monk!) It is very difficult to get to. He said first you have to take a car from Kathmandu, then an airplane, then walk for two days. It sounds really cool, I'd love to go there someday. He gave me all of his contact information including his monastery's website in case I ever make it there (http://www.namkhyung.org/).

He also told me about his trip. He was granted a short audience with the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala. He was understandably thrilled about that. I laughed at how he described the meeting. He said that His Holiness the Dalai Lama was like a monkey - in terms of the amount of energy he had. He was able to go from a standing to sitting position (on the floor) in the blink of an eye! My new friend had only the most wonderful things to say about him. In the Dalai Lama's presence he felt only peaceful and happy. We will also go to Dharamsala, but we won't get to see the Dalai Lama. He's busy traveling all over India right now.

We also talked a little about Buddhism. He told me about some of his beliefs and his reasoning, but in contrast to our experience in Calcutta he said that different belief systems work best for different people. The same one isn't right for everyone. I think this is something that makes Buddhism unique, it is more of a philosophy or way of life whereas many other religions claim to be the one true faith. I enjoyed my time with him and I hope to see him again someday.

We've really enjoyed our time spent in Bodhgaya. Besides new friends and the sights (so many temples!) we've thoroughly enjoyed the Tibetan cuisine. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner - it's been great. Since the food and lodging is much less expensive than in Calcutta, we've really been able to indulge a little and eat lots of good food. Maybe we should be saving more for when we're in another big city, but it's okay to eat well once in a while. I'm running out of internet time, but I'll write again from our next stop in Varanasi!

Just a short update here of the route we have taken so far on the trip. I'll try to add to this as we travel.

View Asia route in a larger map

We spent the last of our time in Nepal in Lumbini. This is the birthplace of the Buddha and pilgrims from around the Buddhist world come here to see this sacred spot. They come and leave offerings of money, silk scarves, incense, etc. It was a really special place and the first place since Kathmandu where we saw a lot of international tourists. Just as interesting as seeing Buddha's birthplace was seeing all the temples and monasteries nearby. Many countries with significant Buddhist populations have places of worship in Lumbini including Japan, China, Korea, Myanmar, Vietnam, even France and Germany. We spent an entire day just walking from temple to temple which was absolutely incredible because the architecture and the people at each of these temples was from its own country. It was like taking a tour of the entire Buddhist world in a day. You can think of it a little like the "it's a small world" ride at Disney World, except instead of dolls and little houses for them there are real people and full size, traditional buildings. It was kind of surreal!

After a few days we left to cross the Indian border. It turns out we stayed in Nepal one day longer that we were supposed to....oops! Lucky for us the customs guy didn't notice or didn't care and just stamped us through. We each avoided a $34 fine which is a lot for us on this trip. We caught a four hour bus from the border to Gorakhpur which is the first major city from where we crossed. Let me take this first opportunity to tell you that Gorakhpur is a very poor introduction to India. It's a busy city and there is garbage everywhere. Then there are the cows that seem to eat exclusively garbage because there is nothing else around. The only hotels around were expensive and gross. It seemed like there was nowhere to walk that you weren't stepping in trash (or worse), in the mud, or dodging traffic. Most of the places to eat had flies all over. There was also no internet cafe nearby so that's why you haven't heard from me for a while. After spending a little time here we were beginning to rethink our entire trip.

Even though this was only our first stop in India, we knew it could not all be this bad. Everyone we know that has gone to India has loved the experience so we knew there had to be more here. The solution was simple. We had to get out of Gorakhpur! The only problem was that the train was all booked up, so we got on the waiting list for a train three days later. The man who sold us our ticket told us that we were number 5 and 6 on the list and there would be no problem. There would definitely be a seat for us. We came back the morning the train left so he could give us our seats and there weren't any. He said we could stand, but that was no good. Our destination, Calcutta, was 24 hours away. So he said go to the train, get on, and the conductor will find a spot for us, hopefully someone will not show up. We were pretty worried, we didn't want to stay longer in Gorakhpur and we knew that we would have to wait another week to get a confirmed seat if we didn't get on this train.

So we went to the station and the train was two or three hours late. This is bad enough, but we were sitting there staring at an empty track uncertain about our future. We really didn't want to stay. The train comes and we find the conductor and he says "Go three cars back wait for me. I'll come soon. I'll see if there are any seats for you." We do and after waiting for a while we start to get nervous - then the train starts moving. Then it starts moving really really fast. Eventually I decide to try to find the guy and I start walking from car to car through crowds of people trying to find him. I never do. By the time it starts getting dark we decided we needed to fend for ourselves and when a few seats opened up we grabbed them. It was still pretty stressful though because we never knew if at the next stop someone would get on with a ticket for those seats and tell us to move. But what can you do? We made the best of it.

After a while we made friends with a local across from us. He was very kind and generous he shared his food with us and we taught each other card games. As it got later he could see that we were getting very tired and he got up and left. Ten minutes later he came back with the conductor who assigned us some seats. He isn't the only person we've met that has been so nice to us. More than once we've heard people here tell us that we are guests in their country and they have shared their food with us, bought us tea/coffee, and more. Sometimes it's really too much and I feel guilty accepting their generosity but it really seems to be their pleasure.

Eventually we arrived in Calcutta (24 hours is a really long time to spend on a train). Now Calcutta is known for its problems with homelessness, begging, and garbage, but after Gorakhpur all we can think is how nice it is. That was really surprising to us, but it's true! Maybe the government has done some work to clean up the town and its image. In any case, we are very happy to be here. In addition to being India's third? largest city it was also the capital when India was a British colony. There are many historical buildings here, some beautiful parks, etc. Also in Calcutta is Mother Teresa's mission. We haven't had a chance to look around and explore very much yet, but I'll write more when we do.

We've left Kathmandu now and have been spending time in some of the small towns in the Himalayas. It's so much quieter here than it is in Kathmandu! It's really like being in a different country. While we were in Kathmandu we stayed in Thamel which is where the cheap hotels are and where all the tourists stay. There was traffic, bicycle rickshaws everywhere, and no sidewalks. Lots of noise from horns, etc. I don't mean to get down on Kathmandu, there's lots to see there and in between all the tourists, banana pancakes, and people trying to sell you things there is real Nepali culture there. But we were happy to have a change.

The smaller mountain towns are more off the beaten track. To get to the town we're staying in now we had to take a small jeep from the valley into the mountain town of Bandipur. We shared the back of this jeep with about 12-15 other people, a goat, and a spare tire. There were always about four or five people standing on the tailgate and holding onto the roof where our bags were as we twisted and winded around the small mountain road. We found an inexpensive hotel that is one of the nicer one's we've stayed in so far. There's no hot water, but the view is incredible! Snow capped mountains in the distance which seem to float in a sea of fog in the morning. The fog lifts in the afternoon and then you can see all the way down into the valley. It's going to be hard to leave, but the other stops on our route will be just as wonderful, I'm certain.

We are very tired though. Since leaving Kathmandu we haven't spent more than two consecutive days in the same place. Lots of traveling. The good news is we've been getting to sleep pretty early. Power outages are a daily occurrence in Nepal. Hotels in the bigger cities have generators, but places like we are right now do not. When the lights go out, they're out. If you don't like it you can buy some candles. We brought our cell phones with us from Ukraine. They don't have service until we get new sim cards, but they do have flashlights built in which have served us well.

We have only one more week in Nepal before our visas expire. We'll cross the Indian border and head for Varanasi, a holy city on the Ganges. There will be lots to see there, but we will have to adjust again from the quiet mountain towns to having people everywhere! Really, EVERYWHERE. India has well over a billion people so it gets pretty crowded there. I'm sure we'll continue to retreat once in a while to smaller towns so we can clear our heads and take time to absorb all we're experiencing. More updates soon, bye for now!

It's only been two weeks since I left Ukraine, but it already seems like a distant memory. I think that's because so much has happened between now and then. I spent a wonderful week in Italy with my family. It had been a year since I'd seen any of them and I appreciate time spent with them now more than ever. During our time there we traveled through southern Italy, learned more about my roots (before my family's name was Ceo it was Cea), ate the most delicious food of our lives, and indulged in a non Peace Corps lifestyle for a short time.

We're in Nepal now and are back to being quite frugal. So far we've managed to keep our daily expenses to under $10 a day (this includes hotel, food, travel, sightseeing, etc.) Things are very inexpensive here, but a budget this strict is a constant challenge. Here's an example of our daily expenses:

hotel -$3

food - $4

entrance fee to a temple, monastery, or other attraction $2

misc - transportation, internet, postcards, or other misc. $1

It was a little hard to adjust back to watching our pennies so closely, but after a day we were right back in the swing of things. Often I don't even realize just how frugal we're being and when I do I just go ahead and laugh at myself. As an example, we waited around in front of the bread store for a half an hour until 8 PM so we could get a 50% discount on bread. Amount saved: 25 cents. But our reward is well worth it - six months traveling all over!

We've seen some pretty amazing things already. Lots of monasteries and temples, complete with monks, prayer flags, and Buddhas. They are absolutely beautiful! One of the temples we went to had monkeys living all around. They were lots of fun to look at, they're so playful. After walking up hundreds of steps to see the temple I sat down to take a break and have a sandwich. One of the monkeys saw me and called his friends over. They ran straight for me and one of them jumped and rebounded off my thigh in an attempt to grab my sandwich! He didn't get it though, no beast in the world is going to come between me and my sandwich. I've got so much more to write, but I'm running out of internet time. More later!

is my last update for Ukraine. It’s been great serving in Ukraine as a Peace Corps volunteer, but my time there is officially over. For the next six months I’ll be traveling to many countries in Asia (Nepal, India, Sri Lanka, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Malaysia). I will continue to post updates with pictures and tales of my travels and I hope you will continue to check in from time. Goodbye one last time to my friends in Ukraine, I hope to see you all again someday!

One last older post from the summer. I took a trip with some friends to the Mykolayiv zoo, which is said to be the best zoo in Ukraine. It's been around for 108 years, as you can see from the sign below. I think the pictures are pretty self-explanatory so I won't post a lot of comments. Go ahead and have a look at the best zoo in Ukraine!

Our friend Chuck came from western Ukraine to hang out with us.

Heather and one of our friends from Mykolayiv, Oleksandr.

A Native American village, please don't ask me to explain.

This sign shows how to tell the mood of a chimpanzee based on its facial expression.

These are the inside quarters for the hippopotamus, I have to admit that this was something that didn't impress me.

During our last day of class we learned about Latin American culture. Here my students are making God's eyes.

The librarian was interested in what we were doing and stopped to make one too!

We had the second class in another room and talked about some of our memories from the time we spent together.

I enjoyed teaching my students very much and I'll miss them a lot. I hope we can keep in touch!

This picture is from my last English club at the central library. They gave me a book with pictures from some of the nature reserves in the Mykolayiv region. I've never met a group of people more dedicated to the English language as the ones in this club.

This is the last pizza at Celentano's with my counterpart, Andriy. It's always hard saying goodbye and there are many people I'll miss. I'm lucky I was able to spend two years teaching and learning in Ukraine. It's an experience that will be an important part of my life for a long time to come. Good luck to all my friends in Ukraine!

These pictures will show you how a Peace Corps volunteer in Mykolayiv lives. Keep in mind that my apartment is nicer than that of most volunteers, even the ones that live in the city. Some volunteers in the city get their heat from wood fire stoves, don't have hot water, etc.

Ukrainian kitchens are small by American standards, but I did have a stove and oven, luxuries that not all volunteers have.

My bathroom is pretty typical except that usually in Ukraine the toilet is in a different room from the bath tub (usually a very small room).

This is the view from my balcony. It's dark, but if you look close enough you can see City Center. Balconies in Ukraine are usually not for sitting on, but they are where you hang your clothes to dry.

This is my living room and bedroom.

You can see my suitcases all packed up. I took these pictures the night that I moved out.

Here are a few more pictures of Mykolayiv. These are all near the last apartment where I lived.

The nicest church in the city is just a few blocks away from home. I'd walk by here every day on my way to the university.

Across the street from the church is the City Center which is really an upscale shopping mall.

The main street in Mykolayiv is Lenina. The two directions of traffic are divided by a small park which goes through the median.

According to my counterpart, this is a monument to the KGB.

After the monument, you can turn to get to the entrance of my apartment building.

This is the playground near my building. It's one of the nicer ones.

Here is the entrance to my building. Next time I'll post some pictures of my apartment.

Since I'm leaving Ukraine very soon this is my last chance for blog updates. Before I leave I want to show you the city where I've spent the last year plus a few months. To begin our tour we'll start with my daily route to the university.

This is where the marshrutka (small bus) drops me off when I go to the university from my apartment. This is the USSR cafe and bar with a small notary in the bottom corner there. All cafes in Ukraine DO NOT look like this, but it is the theme of the restaurant. Behind it is a huge grocery store, I've been very lucky to live in Mykolayiv. It's unusual for a volunteer to live in a city of 500,000 people.

As I cross the street, this tank sits in the median. Tanks are fairly common monuments throughout Ukraine. There were probably a lot left over from Soviet times so this is where many of them end up.

This says market.

And there is a large covered market on my way to the university. You can buy food, magazines, sweets, and many other things here.

Just past the market, many people sit outside selling whatever they have. It could be anything, the most common things are fruits, vegetables, meat, and fish. Mostly these things come from the surrounding area and families often sell the goods they produce themselves in this way.

This is a tobacco kiosk. Vendors often display all the goods they sell in the windows, as you can see here.

This is the entrance to a park that's right next to my university. It's one of the nicer ones I've visited because it's well cared for.

This woman saw me taking pictures and said "Hey! Take a picture of me!" So I did.

Inside the park it's very green and a nice place to relax. Sometimes I would sit for a few minutes if I had time before teaching my classes.

One of the cafes has a rabbit that lives in this little cage.

In addition to beautiful trees, etc. the park has many recreational activities. You can see air hockey and тир which is BB gun shooting. This is very popular in Ukraine.

This is a trampoline with bungee cords. It's only for children :( A guy holds bounces the kids down onto the trampoline and then they go shooting up in the sky. It looks like lots of fun!

A hair cutting school on the left and a place where you can fill up bottles with water on the right.

This is the entrance to my university. It is very small, there are two buildings and they share this one with a primary school.

This is the sign for Ukraina university. The sign is written in Ukrainian, as most official things are, even though Mykolayiv is a Russian speaking city. Really, the residents don't even call it Mykolayiv (the Ukrainian name) they call it Nikolaev (the Russian). The country is pretty evenly divided between Ukrainian and Russian speaking cities. Even more common is for people to speak both languages and just mix them together. It works well for them, but it can be difficult for us volunteers.

From the university, I take you downtown to my favorite restaurant. This is Celentano's pizzeria. It's a chain with many restaurants throughout the country. Pizza in Ukraine is different from what Americans are used to. Here it's not unusual to find pizza with mayonaise, hard-boiled eggs, or ketchup instead of tomato sauce. But if you can find a Celentano's you know you will get a decent pizza at a good price.

I was just walking near the water and saw this guy hopping around. He unenthusiastically agreed to let me take his picture.

This is the top of a staircase that leads down to the water. It's common for Ukrainian newlyweds to have their pictures taken at all the major sights of the city and if you are here during the weekend you'll probably see brides getting their pictures taken at this spot.

Here you can see the rest of the staircase. Pretty - but it's a lot of steps!

This is a pedestrian bridge and in the distance you can see some cranes. Traditionally, Mykolayiv is a ship-building city and this is the area where they would be built. The economy is in bad shape right now and there isn't a whole lot of ship-building going on any more.

This fountain is near the water and there are many tables nearby with places that you can buy snacks and drinks. One of the library English clubs that I attended would meet here during the summer instead of at the library. English club was always fun!

Near this area there are lots of things for the kids!

Nearby is a large square with some government buildings and monuments.

And, of course, no Ukrainian city is complete without it's very own Lenin statue.

Also in the square is beautiful Orthodox chapel.

And an eternal flame monument. If I remember correctly it's for the soldiers of World War II.

From the square we walk down Sovietskaya St. toward the rest of of the city. After Ukraine became independent all official documents, signs, and street names were changed from Russian to Ukrainian so officially Sovietskaya St. is called something else, but everyone in Mykolayiv still calls it Sovietskaya.

There was a concert going on that day which is not so uncommon.

In the center you can see some small children wearing traditional Ukrainian clothes.

On Sovietskaya there are many vendors selling souvenirs, but there is also some artwork on sale near the park.

This park is called pensioner's park and many men come here on a nice day to sit and play chess, or just watch.

Nearby was the Bunker Bar. I was curious and went down one day. There were all kinds of things from the war in this bar like machine guns, helmets, etc. a lot of older men that looked like they could still be fighting in the war who were all staring at me and wondering what I was doing there. I slowly backed up the stairs.

Just before I left this bar was closed and it's a lego store now. Things are changing.

This is the Canadian Burger Club which is like a McDonalds, except kind of trippy. I've often wondered if there are actually Burger Club's like this one in Canada.

This store is called Tango. They don't do the tango here and I'm not sure if it's associated with tango in any way, but that's okay.

In Mykolayiv we have our own McDonalds! This might seem to you like a silly thing to get excited about, but in Ukraine McDonalds is a really nice restaurant. People here are often very well dressed because they're going somewhere special.

Another monument, next to the McDonalds.

You're probably just as surprised to see this as I was. I'll go ahead and tell you the story that I've heard from Ukrainians and previous volunteers. Some Americans opened this place up because there aren't many places you can get a good cut of meat in Ukraine. They really don't eat steak or things like that. Anyway, the business was very successful. It was a little too successful in fact which resulted in them being pushed out by criminals. They were convinced to sell and leave. Dixie Barbuque still sells barbuque, but now it is also a strip club.

Now we are away from the city and at the beach! I was really lucky to live in Mykolayiv which has so many things to offer.

Unfortunately, this is a common sight. Ukraine is a very beautiful country, but it could be much more so without the garbage problem.

This man is a Palestinian living in Ukraine and he made me SO HAPPY! He sold me falafel and hummus that he made at home and brought to his little fast food kiosk just for me. These things weren't even on the menu because they are not popular in Ukraine, but all volunteers miss the variety of foods available in America and any time we can get something a little different it is very exciting!

This is me at the train station. Buses and trains are how we travel in Ukraine and volunteers do a lot of traveling.

There's a really cool painting inside the train station.

This is the first neighborhood where I lived in Mykolayiv. Those doors are the entrance to my apartment building.

Every neighborhood has it's own playground like this one.

Someone was burning trash or leaves or something while I was taking pictures. This is a pretty common phenomenon here. Especially in the spring and fall. Leaves are burned when they fall from the trees and the fields are burned to prepare the fields for the next crops.

In Ukraine they reuse and recycle. In my neighborhood many of the backs of benches are old doors.

There is a dentist just a few blocks away from me!

And a mosque! This was a big surprise. There are not a whole lot of mosques in Ukraine, unless maybe you live in Crimea.

We went inside and they were so excited to meet us and happy that we came!

This is a different beach that is part of a very large park, called Victory Park.

There are more tanks and military vehicles in victory park. Great fun for the kids!

Here is one last view of the inlet where ships were built, this time from the other side.

I started writing this post in Ukraine and am finishing it in Italy just a few days after my service ended. I'll miss Ukraine and I have a few more posts to put up, hopefully in the next few days. Stay tuned!

I took a trip to Egypt in August. Below are some of my favorite moments from the trip.

In this picture I'm not yet in Egypt, but I have started my trip. We took a marshrutka to Odessa where we would fly to Cairo. We had a little time and I decided to get a haircut (Egypt is HOT in August). We stumbled into this haircutting school. We were in a rush and told them we only had 15 minutes for the haircut, this is NOT enough time for a haircut in Ukraine. Usually it takes about half an hour from the time the barber picks up the scissors. They came up with an unusual solution that you can see above.

Here I'm at a cafe by the airport. You can see I had my hair cut shorter than usually. This is partly because we were expecting temperatures of 110 degrees and partly because it's difficult to communicate things like desired hair length in a foreign language. If you happen to know me well, you know that I don't typically wear camo. However, camo is pretty common in Ukraine and it helps me fit in. When Heather took this picture of me with my new haircut and camo t-shirt as we were preparing to board the plane we realized this might not be the image I wanted to present as an American in Egypt. This was the last time I wore this shirt for the rest of the trip.

Still not in Egypt. Our plane had a six hour layover in Prague. Heather spent time in Prague and knew the city well enough to show me all the major sights in a few hours. We rushed around town and then back to the airport in time to catch our plane. It was pretty awesome spending these hours in Prague because it is a completely different place than either Ukraine or Egypt. I'd love to go back someday.

If you're paying attention you can see this is not Prague. Here we're walking along an old Egyptian fortress.

We went to see some traditional Sufi dancing and music at a mosque near our hostel. The performance was incredible and it was completely free!

These guys were amazing! They just kept spinning and spinning, sometimes for 20 minutes or a half hour. For them it is a religious experience.

We made it to Giza and here is our obligatory pyramid picture. It wasn't easy getting to the pyramids! We were trying to minimize the amount we spent on taxis since we were on a strict budget. We took a local bus which would have gotten us there easily if a local hadn't offered to "show us the way." He showed us the way to his camel tourism business and tried to sell us a camel ride around the pyramids. We weren't interested and couldn't afford it. This wouldn't be a huge problem except now we didn't know where we were and had to find our own way to the pyramids. If you haven't been to Cairo before you'd think this would be easy, you just walk toward the huge pyramid looking things. Unfortunately, it wasn't so simple. The pyramids aren't way out in the desert, they're right on the edge of the city. But we did it! And it was worth it! And we got some falafel on the way!

It was really, really hot. You could probably figure that out for yourself, but to give you an idea of exactly how hot it was I couldn't walk more than a few blocks unless I had a bottle of water with me otherwise I'd start to feel dizzy. We took lots of breaks during the middle of the day, drank lots of cold water, and we did okay. The pyramids were tough though. Pyramids seem like a good idea, we think the Egyptians are so smart for thinking them up and building them. To be fair, they are incredible. But in our opinion they had one fatal flaw. Pyramids, because of their nature, are absolutely terrible at providing shade. Almost no matter where the sun is sitting in the sky you won't see any shade from a pyramid. Because there's nothing around but pyramids and sand there is really nothing to protect you from the sun. The sand, by the way, is white and reflects straight at you and was incredibly bright. You could barely see anything at all if you weren't wearing sunglasses. Lucky for us there was a shallow cave not very far from the path. We relaxed for a while and drank lots more water. Then we were energized to walk around and get a closer look.

Here is something we didn't expect to find. Hidden in the loose bricks and behind a small building this very sad looking donkey was tied up. He didn't have any water or anything and we felt bad for him.

We didn't have much water with us, but we still decided to share with him. He was very grateful.

These camels were tied up at the entrance to the pyramids. They're waiting for tourists which were surprisingly sparse.

After the pyramids we were ready to cool off. This is the entrance to the Egyptian museum which was just room after room of the most amazing artifacts. It's unbelievable how many things were left over, even after the British looted and sent home all the things they wanted. Unfortunately, pictures weren't allowed inside the museum.

Cairo was great and we thoroughly enjoyed it. While there are many ancient things in Cairo it is also a modern city. Very big, busy, spread out, and crazy. When it was time to go, we were ready. We headed to Luxor which is the place to go if you're interested in ancient Egypt. It's a smaller, more manageable city and there are temples all over the place!

There are also many feluccas!

We hired one to go for a ride on the Nile. We had to haggle for it (like you do for everything in in Egypt - food, bus fare, water), but we managed to get a really good deal since it was the off season. These two guys sailed us around for an hour for 20 Egyptian pounds which is about 4 dollars.

Most of the city is on the west bank of the Nile. This picture is of the east bank where you can see more of the natural environment.

Luxor is a popular place for balloon rides. It's been one of Heather's life goals to go on a hot air balloon ride, so I took her on one for her birthday.

They picked us up at 5:00 in the morning, but it was worth it! Here they are filling up our balloon with hot air and getting ready for the flight.

Here we are in the balloon, above Luxor. You can see the desert landscape behind us and contrast it with the lush vegetation directly next to the Nile. The Nile is life in Egypt.

This is the view from our hostel in Luxor.

On the top floor there's no roof!

This guys is pouring me some mango juice. It doesn't look that appetizing coming from a reused water bottle, but this is the most delicious juice I have ever had in my entire life. There is not one bit of exaggeration in that statement. If you are ever in Egypt during mango season try the fresh juice at one of these stands, you won't regret it!

This is a pretty typical example of the streets in Luxor. Lots of small shops, very small sidewalks, and everyone haggling for something.

Dates!

Falafel! He's making it fresh on the street, it was so good! One of my favorite things about Egypt was that wherever we went if I was hungry I could just grab a snack at a place like this very, very cheaply and take it with me. We didn't need to sit down and have a formal meal all day if we didn't want to. We could just snack our way through Egypt!

Luxor train station.

This is the entrance to Karnak temple, one of the highlights of our trip.

These columns were really big! And there were dozens of them!

Centuries old graffiti. It's interesting how when it's done, it's vandalism. Two hundred years later we preserve it and it's one of the sights because of its historical value. Sadly, people still write their names on the walls and columns of these ancient temples. Oh well, maybe in two hundred years that will be interesting to someone.

We were just crossing the street and there was a solitary chair in the median. What to do, but sit?

One of the things near the top of our to do list was to see Egyptian belly dancing. Surprisingly enough it was nearly impossible to find anywhere. This can only be because we were there during the off season. Nevertheless, our relentless efforts to find belly dancing in Luxor finally paid off. We were rewarded with quite a show!

This part was a little cheesy when they came out in the pharaoh outfits, but the rest was very authentic.

Heather even got called on stage to perform!

She did quite well!

This part was pretty amazing. While the girls were dancing this guy was standing on his little drum and was scooting all around the fountain doing a little dance of his own. It was a really good time!

Here I'm enjoying a traditional Egyptian dish called kushari. It's pasta, rice, beans, chick peas, fried onions, and maybe some other things served with a spicy tomato sauce. It was delicious!

Back in Cairo we were just walking on the street and we came across all these people marching. One of the difficulties of traveling in an Arabic speaking country is that you can't read ANYTHING! We had no clue why they were marching and we still don't, but it was interesting to watch.

The biggest falafel EVER! Every time we'd walk by this place I'd start drooling.

More of my friends selling fresh mango juice.

And this is where our trip ends, at Cairo airport. We were sad to leave but we were also ready. Egypt is an exhausting place! The heat and the haggling wore us out. We were happy to get back to Ukraine where things were easy and made sense to us. It's amazing how your perspective changes, I certainly never thought I'd say that. But it's true!

Last month Heather and I organized a week long summer camp at my university. Ukrainians from all different parts of the community participated and volunteers came to help from all over the country.

This is the entrance to my university and, for this week, to Camp Excel.

Me and Ed are just inside registering people for the camp. It cost 15 hryvnia for the week (about $2). This is very inexpensive, even by Ukrainian standards. We wanted to keep the price low so that it wouldn't prevent anyone from participating. We did need a little money to serve tea and cookies every day (this is customary in Ukraine) and to buy some other supplies for the camp. Of course, the money was not for Peace Corps volunteers. Everyone who volunteered offered their time and paid for their own train tickets to come to Mykolayiv. I'm very grateful for their contributions.

This was a bit of a snag. They were painting the front of the building on the first day of the camp and the scaffolding is blocking the front door. We managed to get everyone in the building and have the camp but this made it slightly more complicated.

Day 1 was International Awareness day. On this day we focused on teaching the participants about prejudice, discrimination, and tolerance. In Ukraine there are few minorities and people are not always understanding of them. This discussion was helpful for better understanding of people of different cultures, ethnicities, religions, sexual orientations, etc.

We brainstormed common stereotypes for different groups with the students and talked about what it means when we classify people.

I was walking around town after the lesson and took pictures of some graffiti. It isn't unusual to see graffiti like this and I'm sad to admit that I hardly even notice it anymore.

I showed these pictures to the students the next day as an example of intolerance in their own community (people always think the problem is somewhere else).

Day 2 was Film Day which was a bit lighter and lots of fun. In this picture we are introducing them to different types of characters in film. Our friend Bennett is cross-dressing for a laugh.

The students made their own skits in groups that corresponded to different types of film genres. Brandon is accompanying this skit on his guitar.

In this skit Vika is a young woman enjoying a beautiful day and Roma is a vampire that will seduce and murder her.

Pavel provides the comic relief as the bumbling doctor.

Martin (the one in the bunny hat) led this day and he did a great job.

This is the green screen challenge. In this scene the stick will be a dragon after the cgi is added. and they are acting as if it were visible.

Now the students are improvising Foley Art, also known as sound effects for a film clip that is playing on the screen.

They had lots of fun with this and made lots of noise! It's a good thing there were no other classes going on!

At the end of the day we made pinatas. Of course, we had to explain to them what a pinata is and what you do with one, but they were totally into it!

This is my counterpart, Andriy. I started making this pinata and he finished it. He intended to make a baby monkey, but he couldn't find the colors he wanted. Instead he left the majority unpainted including the name tag I had put on it the previous day so I would know it was mine. He seemed to think it was an easy transition from a baby monkey to baby David so that's what he called it. I decided to consider it an honor that he created an idol in my image.

Here are some of the other pinatas. You might agree with me that many of them ended up looking a bit like their creators.

Most people made animals or faces, but not Pavel. He made a bomb. Iea is lighting it for him and after that, watch out!

The next day was environmental day. Heather is leading an activity called the "web of life" showing the participants how all life in an ecosystem is interdependent.

Next we put the students in charge of making environmental projects and teaching each other about their topics. I'm showing them my example on invasive species.

This group got a little carried away, but I'm sure after this presentation no one will be littering. You can see a clean happy world on the left followed by pollution to the right and, finally, something that looks like the apocalypse below. Yikes!

After this we did a recycled sports activity. The students created sports and games using only recycled materials. This is recycled bowling!

and recycled tennis.

A few days earlier I took pictures of a nearby park that was littered with garbage. Unfortunately this is all to common in Ukraine. People just throw their trash on the ground and no one picks trash up. What could really be a beautiful park was in reality just gross and disgusting. I showed the students these slides in the hopes of motivating them to participate in a clean up.

A trash pick up is usually viewed by students as some type of punishment, cleaning up parks or beaches is not part of their culture. We tried to show them it could be a positive thing by turning it into a game.

This guy is Sasha. He was just biking by and stopped to ask if he could help us. We said of course! He really made our day, we didn't expect anyone to stop and help at all.

Finally, we took pictures of the park after we cleaned it up. The next day we showed the students the before and after pictures. The difference was dramatic and everyone felt really proud.

The prize for the group that picked up the most trash was that the counselors would write a song about them. The volunteers were great and wrote two songs. One for the winners and one for everyone who participated. This picture is of Heather singing Y'all picked up the trash, set to the tune of I've been everywhere. The kids loved it!

The forth day was Music & Drama. For a warm up the participants are making words with their bodies. See if you can figure this one out!

And this one!

In the next activity, groups made household things out of them selves. Bennett is the television, Heather is the TV program, and Martin is the antenna.

This one was particularly funny. Their object was a guitar.

Later we had them make more skits with interesting props.

They had fun.

Next, we played a game called The Raven. The girl who is sitting is blindfolded. The other participants must silently sneak up and try to take the keys that are sitting in front of her. If she hears them she can point at them and they're out. Lots of fun!

After the warm up activities we had them make their own musical instruments out of recycled materials.

They definitely got into it!

When they were finished we had a music circle with all our new instruments.

Musical chairs. The students loved these games because they had never played them before. As a bonus, Brandon provided the music with his guitar and Heather with her harmonica.

For the blanket drop game we had two teams. Each team had to pick a person to go to their side of the blanket. Then we dropped the blanket and the first person to say the opponent's name won and increased their teams' numbers by capturing the loser. Another fun activity between the main ones.

Martin sang his song a second time to congratulate the winners of the trash pick up since some of them arrived late.

Group pinata picture!

The next day was Healthy Lifestyles day. Brandon is writing some new vocabulary on the board. These are words they will need to know to follow the instructions for yoga, which is the next activity.

To practice the vocabulary we played "people to people." They had to follow instructions by touching body parts like "knee to thigh" as pictured above.

With their newly learned vocabulary they could follow the instructions for yoga.

After yoga it was time for HIV/AIDS education. HIV/AIDS is a big problem in this country. Ukraine has the fastest growing rate of HIV infection in Europe. In this picture the students are trying to decide how HIV can and cannot be transmitted.

This was followed by class discussion.

This group is talking about the prevalence of different types of transmission in Ukraine. Sharing needles, unprotected sex, mother to child, etc.

Healthy lifestyles was the last day. Everyone had so much fun that they didn't want to leave. Students hung out for an hour or two after we finished to get pictures and movies of the camp and to chat with the volunteers one last time before they said goodbye. The event was a huge success and I consider it to be one of the highlights of my service.

May Day is a big holiday in Ukraine and all former Soviet countries. Every year we get two days off for May Day. It is their equivalent of Labor Day. It was a huge Soviet holiday because it celebrated the workers and it remains popular today. I spent May Day in the village with Heather and we went to the square to see the festivities.

Lots of people and lots of flags!

You can see a lot of Ukrainian flags and you can also see a lot of communist flags. Generally speaking, the communist flags are held by older men. I didn't notice any young people or women holding communist flags. This may be because the older men are the ones who are are most nostalgic about Soviet times.

Here you can see some Ukrainians in their traditional dress. They're waiting to dance, but they have to wait a while. Government officials are talking a lot and giving awards, flowers, etc. to various people. This is very typical of these types of events.

Communism still has life in Ukraine. A block away is a communist party office.

These children are also waiting to perform. There was a lot of dancing and singing and also a lot of socializing. It's a small town, but everyone from the area comes to the event and it's an opportunity to catch up with others in the community. Heather and I didn't stay the whole day, but it's fun to stop by and get a small dose of Ukrainian culture.

All pictures by Heather Caturia.

Wow...where to begin? The circus in Ukraine was definitely one of those Peace Corps experiences that you won't get anywhere in America. Sure we have circuses in the states, but like everything else in Ukraine this circus was just a little bit different.

For starters it gave me an idea of what circuses must have been like years ago when they went to small towns that didn't have that much else going on. The circus coming to town was a really big deal as it is today in Ukraine. Heather and I saw a poster up in her village and decided to go. There were many people from her village there, but also buses that had come from neighboring, smaller villages. Even with multiple villages in attendance it was still relatively small by American standards, there were only about five or six rows of seats.

All of the performers were also vendors. When they weren't performing they would come out and sell things, then go back to performing when it was their turn again. I'm sure it's not an easy life and they all worked very hard.

The balloons, popcorn, and cotton candy are pretty similar to what we're used to.

This is an example of where things get a little different. Believe it or not, this is a clown. There were two clowns at this circus. One of them was similar to our clowns, but in Ukraine there is always a place for a somewhat scantily clad attractive female. Clowns are not an exception to this rule. In Ukraine even Santa Claus has a sexy granddaughter named Snigaroshka that follows him around everywhere.

The tent was kind of small and sometimes the performers were limited by the space available to them, but they did a pretty good job.

This guy walked around on his ladder for a while, but also did some juggling. Honestly, he wasn't a very good juggler. He was dropping things all the time, but he didn't give up and he kept trying. He did keep us entertained, which is the most important thing. It's also easy to forgive his juggling after considering that he was also the magician, and of course a vendor.

Clown 1 and Clown 2. Like I said, in some ways things aren't so different from American and in some ways they are.

This guy had a giant cube he was spinning around to dance music. He also sold me my cotton candy in photo 1.

This guy was something of an acrobat. He was pretty good and also surprisingly young. Again, we have acrobats in the states, but they usually don't have mullets and they usually don't wear homoerotic costumes (as most of the male performers did). These things are normal in Ukraine.

More clown entertainment.

We started to get wary when this monkey appeared, but he seemed to be well treated and did not appear to be unhappy. And everyone likes monkeys!

This woman was pretty cool. She sat? on her chair like this and spun, bounced, and threw things around with her feet. There's a video of her in action at the bottom of this post.

This guy did a cool little balancing act. It doesn't look so hard at first, but he kept adding stuff underneath his little balancing board. By the end it was pretty impressive.

See? I told you!

When Ukrainians get really sad they say something that directly translated means "my soul hurts." Well, our souls started to hurt when they starting bringing the bears out. This one was a little guy, but they kept extremely strict control of him as they paraded him around. He was obviously a very unhappy bear.

More acrobatics, perhaps our favorite part of the circus.

Yes, clowns embarrass children even in Ukraine.

They made him stand on things and walk around and then they let him go back to his cage.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot about the scooter. My soul is starting to hurt again.

The video on the right is of a large bear they brought out at the end as the grand finale. They had him do some rolls and wave to people. This bear was also clearly very unhappy. There were several times when they were walking it around that it made very sudden movements and looked like it was going to attack its "trainer." They maintained control of the animal, but the message was clear. "I belong in the forest, not in the circus! I need to live free, not muzzled and caged!" I'm sad to say this message was probably lost on many of those that were present.

Heather talked with her kids at school about it the next day and some of them felt sad for the bear. I talked to my students as well and some of them just couldn't understand why having a bear in the circus was a problem. All circuses in Ukraine have bears, they always have. One thing I am certain of is that I will come away from my service with a much more developed view of animal rights.

We've made it through our last winter in Ukraine, but it wasn't easy! These pictures are from Heather's village during the snowiest part of the winter.

Most shopping in the village (and sometimes in the city too) is done at the bazaar.

The bazaar is only two or three days a week so you need to plan your meals.

Ukrainians eat a lot of canned goods during the winter. Prices of fruits and vegetables drop dramatically in the summer and most people take advantage of this by canning summer foods to eat all year round.

Dried goods are another option.

It is still surprising to me the number of people in Ukraine that get around like this.

The ice froze straight to the branches this day. It was very beautiful, but it didn't last long. Heather took advantage of the moment and snapped this picture.

This is in front of heather's apartment. This is the area where the chickens are usually running around. That is a well in the center, but unfortunately it is pretty polluted.

Heather's apartment building.

It snowed a whole bunch!

Heather's apartment is heated by a wood fire stove. It was an extremely cold winter, even by Ukrainian standards. That meant we got to split lots of logs. Even with the fire it could still get pretty cold. Especially at night because after you go to sleep the fire goes out pretty quick. It's not practical to get up every half hour to throw another log on. The best solution at night is lots and lots of blankets.

We needed lots of kindling for starting fires too. This was not exactly what I imagined when I first thought of doing Peace Corps, but they did tell me to be ready for anything.

Thanks to Heather Caturia for the use of these pictures.

Last month I spent a very non Peace Corps evening with my counterpart at the theater. I didn't even know that we had a theater, but apparently there are two. One that does its productions in Russian, the other in Ukrainian.

Here we are before the play.

It was a very nice theater!

Our seats were in the front row and they were only 10 grivs each (about $1.25)

There was an aquarium near the refreshments.

And a birdcage.

And turtles.

And a chinchilla. It was like a small zoo in there!

On the other side they had a hand made doll collection.

And this tapestry. Unfortunately this is where my camera ran out of battery, but other than a few more dolls I got the most important stuff. It was a lot of fun stepping out of my Peace Corps shoes for an evening.

At the end of January Heather and I went to Western Ukraine for a language refresher. We stayed at a sanitarium with many other Peace Corps volunteers and had language classes with Peace Corps teachers. Unfortunately, there's not much sun this time of year but the area was very beautiful. We went for a little hike and took some pictures.

I haven't seen so many pine trees since I came to Ukraine. The sanitarium was in the middle of a forest which gave it a really nice atmosphere.

Temperatures around this time were -20 degrees Celsius and there was plenty of snow.

There is a lake nearby, but it was completely frozen over.

Heather really wanted to stand on the frozen lake. I was scared.

We made a new friend just outside the building where we were staying. We had fun, but I was happy to leave the north and get back to my warm apartment.

Christmas is on January 7th in Ukraine, but we still like to celebrate Christmas on December 25th. For Christmas we had some of our friends over. Even though most people still had classes they were able to get a day off to come down.

Here Heather and Martin are preparing some Christmas food in my very small kitchen (by American standards). Notice the hot sauce on the table. Thanks to all of my family for contributing some of those American foods that we miss so much. It's a real treat to have those things on holidays or just to bring a little excitement to a dreary day.

Here Martin sports his home made batman christmas hat and his frosty tie. I makes me think back to packing for Ukraine. Martin had a very different idea from the rest of us as to what he should bring.

Here is our Chuck eyeing our Christmas feast. Everyone worked real hard to make something special and we had a fantastic meal. The only rule we had for people coming was that they had to bring a dish as well as their own fork and plate. I don't think any volunteer in Ukraine has enough dishes by themself to host a party, but we all chip in to make a great party. It's idiosyncracies like this that make life in Ukraine interesting. We don't mind, it's just a little different from the way we usually do things back home.

This is our Christmas tree! We bought it downtown and had quite a time getting it home on the marshrutka (small bus), but nothing was going to deter our Christmas spirit. We didn't have any ornaments, so we decorated it with things from around the house. We also made popcorn and strung it. It may not be the prettiest tree I've ever had and it didn't have the most expensive ornaments, but we worked hard for it and it really made our Christmas special. We were so grateful to have it. This picture is credited to Heather Caturia.

My landlady has many of her things in the apartment and one of those things are these antlers. It has become a tradition that we always put the punch in antlers, like so. Why not?

Heather and I wish you Happy Holidays!

I've added a little map at the bottom of Heather and my past and future travels. Check it out!

Heather and I spent three weeks at a summer camp in western Ukraine in August. Below are some pictures from the camp.

Here are some of the kids playing ping pong. I played a few games and the kids were very impressed by my mad ping pong skills!

This is how I spent most of my time at the camp. The kids didn't spend nearly as much time outdoors as kids do at camps in America. Mostly, we just hung out and played cards.

I really tried hard to convince this guy that vacuuming out the computer was not a good idea. For some reason, he didn't believe me.

Heather wrote our group's motto. Our group was different from the rest of the kids at the camp because they had English language classes (which is why Heather and I were there). It was really fun because they would recite this several times a day. Sometimes Heather and I would be in a different part of the camp, but we could still hear our kids yell out the last line, "Don't mess with Texas!"

Ukrainians usually play only one card game, called Durak (fool). We taught the kids a few other games and brought along these uno cards which some of the kids really loved.

Heather brought her guitar for the camp. One of our kids, Mischa, was a very talented guitar player. For one of the concerts he played a Metallica song which he practiced religiously. In my opinion it was the best performance of the camp.

This little belly dancer was pretty good too!

Costumes for another concert. I'm still not exactly sure what the theme was, but these girls were having fun!

This has to be the cutest little boy I've ever seen. He was the youngest in our group and spoke almost no English. I got to practice my Ukrainian with him because he loved hanging out with me and playing cards.

This is some art from the auditorium. Mickey looks very relaxed.

I really enjoyed playing sports with the kids. I could probably count on one hand the total number of times we played sports like this outside, but when we did it I had a blast!

There were two little puppies at the camp. They got so much attention from all the kids that they weren't even that interested in getting more.

That didn't stop me from playing with them though!

We went on an excursion to Chernivtsi, this is a policeman in the city.

On some of the days there were themes at the camp. On this day the theme was Native Americans. Unfortunately, it was obvious that no one at the camp had much idea what a Native American is and they didn't ask us either. They all ran around dressed as Pacific Islanders.

Shrunken head on a stick.

This is one of our language classes. Unfortunately, there wasn't that much for Heather and I to do. There were Ukrainian college students who were in charge during the classes. Heather and I hoped to teach the classes ourselves, but it didn't work out that way. Instead the kids spent most of their time doing word searches.

This is our friend Brandon who lived near the camp. He came to visit and hang out one day. We were really happy to have him visit after two weeks of playing cards.

This is the building where the kids and us stayed.

They came around to film the English lessons one day for advertising purposes. This was the only day that Heather and I were asked to teach the classes. We would have been happy to teach them throughout the camp, but only teaching for the camera made us feel kind of exploited. We refused.

These are some of the older kids. Although things weren't perfect at the camp, some of the kids were pretty cool and I really enjoyed hanging out with them.

Heather in Chernivtsi!

All pictures in this post are by Heather Caturia.

After an amazing summer we ended it with a week in Istanbul. We were looking forward to the trip for months and were expecting it to be the highlight of our summer. It completely surpassed our expectations. It may have been the most amazing trip I have ever been on. If you ever have the chance to go to Istanbul, go!

One of the many mosques in Istanbul. They are beautiful and are scattered all over the city.

We went out to dinner one night hoping to see some belly dancing. We didn't find any belly dancers, but these performers came along instead. They went to different restuarants, but for a while they sat down right by our table and played two or three songs just for us. It was great!

We were in Istanbul during Ramadan so there were many people gathering around the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sofia this evening. It was king of crazy with so many people around, but it just added to the excitement.

Heather had to cover her hair and shoulders while we were inside the mosque.

We visited Taksim which is where a lot of the nightlife in Istanbul is. One evening we went to this rooftop bar called 360. From here you could see a lot of the sites in Istanbul while eating snacks and sipping a delicious drink.

This guy made my kebab and that made him my best friend.

Ramadan!

This is a replica of an obelisk that was given to Turkey by Egypt a very, very long time ago. The obelisk itself is a replica, but the base was the original.

We did see a few people sleeping on the street, but there was a rabbit checking out this guy and his stuff. I don't know where a rabbit came from in the middle of Istanbul, but we watched as he stood up and looked inside this man's bag and then hopped over to smell him.

The trams here were very big and very nice, but you really had to watch out because they would run you over!

Several members of my family surprised us by meeting us in Istanbul. They stayed on Prince's Island and we took the ferry to go and meet them.

There were no cars on the island, only horses!

This is what you get when you have no cars and only horses.

This guy had the most amazing moustache. At first, Heather tried to take a candid photo of him, but he noticed her and just gave a big, warm smile as she took this shot of him and his impressive moustache.

Heather and I went biking around the island and found the stables where the horses were kept. The view of the water and Istanbul in the distance were amazing.

We also found a graveyard on our bike ride, but it was locked and we couldn't go inside. Judging from the skull and crossbones, that may have been for the best.

Back in the city we ran across many crumbling, yet beautiful ruins like this.

All of the above pictures were taken by Heather Caturia. The ones below are from my camera.

We went on a boat tour of the Bosphorus and got to see many of the sites from the water. It was well worth the price of the ticket, especially since we haggled the price down as you must do with everything in Istanbul.

Just one of the many palaces.

This is the boat group.

And I'm sitting up top. For a long time I was there by myself because no one wanted to join me. Eventually this guy came up and it didn't take long before he went horizontal and fell asleep in the position that you see him. We thought it was cute and charming and we just smiled.

Some kind of shopping/restaurant island?

With a dog that knows how to swim.

Here we are trying a popular local drink called raki. It tastes kind of like licorice, but is very strong. We drank it mixed with an equal amount of water as most people do and it was still very strong, but delicious.

For Heather's birthday we went out to a Japanese restaurant. She was very excited.

Next we went to the French street and had dessert. There was plenty of live music and the desserts were good too.

This was our waiter. All the men in Istanbul loved Heather. Can't say I blame them.

After dessert Heather wanted to go out dancing. We walked around for a while looking for something until we heard some music and followed our ears. It looked like there was nothing even there from the outside, but when we got upstairs this bar was wild and had fantastic music. Heather is really a great dancer.

There are no figs in Ukraine and I was pretty excited about them. This guy was pretty excited about being in our picture. All the people in Istanbul were tons of fun. There were so friendly and were always having a good time.

A shoe shiner napping on the job.

This guy had this sign up as a joke. He was nice enough to hold it up while we took his picture.

This shop had all kinds of amazing instruments.

This is how we ended the trip. The day before we left Heather's appendix decided it wanted to come out. We ended up having to stay another week, first in the hospital and then in the hotel. She was very well taken care of and Peace Corps paid for all expenses.

I was looking around a little bit and found my pictures of Wroclaw. Even though though this was the first place we went in Poland and they should have been posted first, better late than never.

The city was very beautiful and the buildings were colorful. This was a big change from Ukraine where colors are usually much more dull and buildings are often old and not well taken care of.

It was common in the squares and even along the side streets for buildings to be brightly colored like this.

I don't know how it got there, but that teddy bear was sitting there all by himself as people walked by. Somehow he lost his family, how sad.

There were statues of dwarfs like this all over the city. The dwarfs were originally a symbol of a protest group called the Orange Alternative which protested the communist government. Today the dwarfs commemorate these protests and are a fun tourist attraction. (The dwarf is on the left and my mom is on the right).

From Lviv we continued on the train to Poland. First we stayed in Wroclaw in western Poland and then traveled back east to Zakopane, and then Krakow. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of Wroclaw, but I do have some of the other places we visited.

This is a small fortress we saw near Zakopane.

Despite the warning, we didn't see any ghosts.

This is the view from the top of the fortress.

No fortress is complete without its very own torture chamber.

On another day we went to the top of this mountain so we could hike around the lake.

There were horses for the people who didn't want to walk up or down the mountain. There were no cars allowed!

The city of Zakopane.

The hostel we stayed in was beautiful.

After a few days in the mountain we continued to the highlight of the trip, Krakow.

Wawel Hill

The fire-breathing dragon, guarding Wawel Hill.

Somehow, one of these pigeons had a circle of bread around his neck. His hungry friend pursues.

One of the best places we went was on a tour of the salt mines.

These sculptures were carved from the salt by miners in their spare time. The many sculptures, rooms, and large size of the mines were what made it so impressive.

This ballroom is completely underground and everything you see is carved directly from the salt. That includes the stairs, chandeliers, etc.

The floor tiles too!

The main gate to the city of Krakow.

This is the barbican, in front of the gate. If you're like me, you're wondering what a barbican is. It is a small fortress that was in front of the gate. It was connected to the rest of the town by an underground tunnel. If the city was under attack it would be used to help defend and prevent the attackers from breaching the gate of the city.

A native american that's a long way from home.

Auschwitz.

Birkenau.