NYC for Thanksgiving

Hey - the book sold, so that's cool. But what's even cooler? Our trip to the Big Apple for Thanksgiving!



Settle in - much to say.



Back in 2002 on our first adoption trip, we got to know Jeff & Tina H., a couple adopting through the same agency. If you're unfamiliar with the way China adoptions go, usually when you travel to China to complete the adoption, you are part of a group of families from your agency, all being processed the same time. Jeff & Tina were in our group and what we went through together, being in the Civil Affairs office together and experiencing the same thing at the same time has glued our families together. They are in our videos and photos of the trip, and we are in theirs, and we are part of each others' stories. Of course, we shared the experience with other families in our group too, but all of the other families are either somewhere in the Pacific Northwest (near our agency's offices) or scattered elsewhere. One dad, Greg, is on a tour of duty in Iraq, and we all hope and pray for his safe return to his three daughters and wife Cheryl. Other parents in our group, pre-adoption, were adversaries in a legal situation (one representing the plaintiff, the other the defendant, in a government case) and now are able to put differences aside because of what we've all gone through together. Adoption is amazing that way.

Anyway, every November, we get together with the H family to celebrate the anniversary of that 2002 adoption trip. So far we've been to Mt. Airy, NC (the "real" Mayberry with lots of Andy Griffith stuff), they've come to Harrisonburg, we've gone to South Carolina, and last year we went to Pigeon Forge/Gatlinburg, TN. For the fifth anniversary we wanted to do something big, so we decided on the Big Apple. They'd never been--bonus! It's so much fun to take people to NYC for their first time, and I'm happy to report that the city definitely cooperated, and we had a great experience.

They came up late Tuesday night before Thanksgiving and slept over. After a quick breakfast Wednesday morning, we hit the road. It was pretty smooth sailing until we got within shouting distance of New Jersey. The interchange between 81 and 78 was closed due to an accident, so what should've been a 6-7 hour trip turned into 10-11 hours. Ugh! I didn't mind though, because Tina and the girls and I were in one car and Chris, Jeff, and Jeff's son were in the other car, so we had lots of time to catch up and talk about the different things we could do in NYC.

We got to the Mariott Brooklyn Bridge no problem. Drove through the Holland Tunnel, across lower Manhattan, across the Brooklyn Bridge, and the hotel was super easy to find. We settled into our rooms (Jeff's company has a deal w/Marriott, so the rooms were only $100/night!!!) and decided to go out for Pizza. The good restaurant street near the hotel was Montague Street, and we found Monty Q's, an honest-to-goodness New York pizza joint. It was wonderful pizza. The Italian sausage was just out of this world. We went back to the hotel and rested up for the next day.

TO BE CONTINUED...Macy's Thanksgiving Parade, photo gallery, and much more!!

Book for Sale on Ebay

I have a confession to make. We fell so hard for Antwerp, we started wondering whether, now or later (early retirement?), we could actually move there. For now, anyway, it is not to be, but if you are moving overseas...wanna buy a used tax guide?

International Living Bookstore sells this book called The Expatriate's Tax Bible. I bought it but now we don't need it and it's just sitting on the shelf...written by a lifelong IRS guy who knows his stuff, too.

You can buy mine on ebay...http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=170166687007&ssPageName=ADME:L:LCA:US:1123

If life gives us another opportunity to consider an overseas move, I'm sure the tax code will have changed by then, so might as well sell this one while it's current!

Thanks,

LG

No New Car For Now

We have come to the realization that it is not the right time to buy. It doesn't fit well in the budget, there's no obvious vehicle that we both agree on and are excited about, and the need is not urgent, so we're going to let this Fall Sales Extravaganza period pass.

We're both keeping our eyes on VW (about to be bought out by Porsche?) because they have been threatening to put out a new Microbus for several years now, and also because the '08 diesel models are starting to come out. Diesel is now lower in cost than regular, and they can make engines that burn cleaner & get better mileage.

That's all for now,
LG

Test Drive Results...eh

Well...

We are the car buying equivalent of picky eaters.

I went to try the Town & Country and it was fine. Handled well, nice pickup and smooth braking. Plenty of room, and I like the stow 'n go seating. In order for MeiMei to be comfortable in her booster, I had to remove the headrest from her bucket seat in the second row, no biggie. I like the power side doors and power liftgate. I felt like Magic Mommy when I pushed that door button and MeiMei lit up like we were in on a magical secret together.

But there were these little nagging things. When I pulled out the cup holder, it just felt cheap and didn't move very well. I had to kind of bang it to get it to go back in. Then, when I was going over 55mph, there was a tiny little tap-tap-tap sound from what seemed like the front axle area. But I thought well, I'm probably hearing things or making too much of what I am hearing.

We picked John up at work, and he dropped us off at home so we could go get JieJie from kindergarten, and he drove it back to the dealership. Before he dropped me off, I noticed that the armrest on the left side of my passenger seat was vibrating madly, buzzing. Hunh? He noticed the same little tap sound. He liked the same things I liked and we both agreed that it was comfortable to drive, and roomy.

BUT...

We weren't in love with it. He remembered buying the Camry back in 2000 and thinking that it was the perfect car for us at that time, as well as being a really good deal on a good car. Since we're not in a hurry, we've realized we're both waiting to feel that feeling again, whichever car we end up with. So we're going to let this van go.

I still say renting a car for the next long trip may be the most economical option. Beats a car payment!

Will We Buy A Minivan?

Friday morning, a salesman from the Chrysler dealership we visited last week called to say they had just gone to the dealer auction and bought a Pacifica and a Town and Country Touring model, and would we be interested in either one?

John went Saturday morning to test drive the Town and Country, but it wasn't unloaded from the truck yet, so he's going tomorrow morning after he drops MeiMei off at preschool.

All this time I've been resisting the minivan option...maybe it's all those times when I've driven to a playground or school or kid-friendly event and felt like I was intruding on the Minivan Army with my Camry. Maybe that's why I liked the Pacifica...it was van-esque, but a little different.

But maybe a van is really the best thing for us right now. If the price is right (20K miles on it, it's an '06 just coming off a lease program, list price is $19,988 but perhaps we can go even a bit lower?) who knows? I may have a new photo to post later this week.

We'd likely hang onto the Camry, since it runs well and is paid off.

A minivan? Again?! Ok, so I'm reminded of the day I went shopping for a wedding dress and kept trying on all these white cocktail and prom type dresses, but nothing was quite right. Finally the saleslady looked me in the eye and said, gently, "dear...you're getting married. That's why none of these dresses is quite right. Shall I show you the WEDDING DRESSES now?"

I can hear her now: Dear, you're a mom with two kids. Shall I show you the MINIVANS now?

The Globetrekkers Go Car Shopping

How is it that a discussion of how to get me to the airport became a flurry of car shopping?

It was like this: a few days ago, I mentioned that I would like to try to find a Thursday flight for a long weekend visiting my family in Minneapolis. John teaches Thursdays and could only drive me at certain times of day, or I could find another ride somehow.

We only have one car, because of our recent travels.

Whaaaa?

Long story short, rather than let our '92 hand-me-down Plymouth Voyager sit in the driveway for five months, hoping against hope that it would start when we returned from Antwerp, we sold it to our friend Farmer H, who raises chickens on a farm north of Harrisonburg. Delicious chickens, by the way. Real chickens, like Auntie Em raised in Kansas.

So we were down to the Camry, which was a surprise 30th birthday present back in...well, let's just say several years ago. It runs great and I love zipping around in it, love the manual transmission. For long trips though, it stinks! The girls are growing like weeds--sorry, like beautiful precious flowers--and when they don't want to be in the car, the easiest way to let us know is to kick the back of our seats. Since there's no legroom in the back, it's getting harder and harder to ignore the thumping. That, and the sore butts, hips and back we get from the front seats, which are just not very comfortable anymore, if they ever really were.

Fast forward to this week. "How can I get to the airport" turned into "this is a GREAT time of year to buy a car!"

I got all excited because I've never actually chosen my own wheels before. If it were just me, and money were no object, I'd already have the red Mini Cooper with white racing stripes and checkerboard rearview mirrors sitting in the driveway, with matching mini-Minis for the girls to scoot up and down the block. And John would get his Jaguar or Cadillac or whatever.

But it's not just me, and money most definitely IS an object. Why spend any more than you have to, after all?

We've been all over the web in the past few days. Edmunds.com, CarsDirect.com, Autotrader.com, Cars.com, and ConsumerReports.com were some of the most visited. I particularly appreciated the advice on CarTalk.com, which features a flowchart questionnaire designed to come up with the cars you should consider based on the things most important to you.

Since this car is to be the tour-mobile for all the trips we look forward to taking, there were three major considerations: seat comfort, spaciousness (rear seat legroom!) and fuel economy. CarTalk.com's little questionnaire spit out five models: the Hyundai SantaFe, the Chrysler Pacifica (one I've had my eye on), Mazda5 (another one I like the looks of), the new Ford Taurus, and the Ford Edge, a new CRV-style model that just came out.

We'd had a Taurus before and liked the ride quality, but it had this disturbing tendency for the entire dash assembly to shudder above 65mph. I come from a Chrysler family (and you thought we were German/Scandinavian) so the Pacifica was on my radar. Not as frumpy as a van, I thought. As for the Santa Fe, I really don't like all these roller-skate-like designs that are out there, but trying to keep an open mind. Never thought of Hyundai.

Monday, I picked MeiMei up from school and drove out to Myers Ford in Elkton for a test drive of one of the '07 Ford Five Hundreds they're trying to get rid of. It was deja vu all over again...floaty handling, shuddering as I put the brakes on, very underpowered and very frustrating. I didn't like it at all. John suggested I go back and try one of the Limited editions, since I just drove one of the base models.

Tuesday, I dropped the girls off at school and went straight to the Chrysler dealership on Route 11. Nice salesman, low pressure, and soon I was zooming down I-81 in a red Pacifica. It was so much fun to drive, I was singing out loud to the great stereo system. I picked John up from work and took him to breakfast. He didn't like the Pacifica. But the power liftgate! I said. Nah, seats not that comfortable, he said. But it's so cool! But it's so expensive, he said. For that kind of money, we could get something better, he's right.

Hyundai SantaFe: didn't even want to test drive it. Salesman, so young he's probably still using Clearasil, was naming every part of the car he could point to, apparently to make it seem more "loaded." But come on..."this is the leather strap for pulling the liftgate down" is a little much. Especially just having used Pacifica's power liftgate button on the key fob. And then, as he described the safety features of the Santa Fe, screeeeeeccchhhhh....BAMBAM! About 100 yards away on Route 11, a Land Rover had run into some kind of sedan. It was a bad looking accident, the front corners of both cars absolutely smushed, but the drivers got out and seemed ok. Still, though I tend not to be superstitious, if that ain't an omen, I don't know what is.

Went to have lunch with JieJie, who is still having a tough adjustment to kindergarten. There's a lot going on in such a big school, and the cafeteria is really chaotic, especially compared to the orderly lunch room in their Antwerp school. In a way I'm sad that she has to get used to all the noise, but we're not in Belgium anymore... it was so quiet there!

After lunch, I went back to Myers Ford to drive the Ford Five Hundred Limited. It was much nicer, both in the gadgets included in the dash/console and in the drive/handling. There was no shimmy, no floaty feel. I was not in love, but it would be an acceptable car. But then I'm sitting there going Man, $400 a month is too much for an "acceptable" car! I want to be in love with that next car. Cadillac had a great slogan on the commercial I just saw for their new CTS: "When I turn my car on, I want it to return the favor." Yeah, baby!

So that night we went full circle and came to the conclusion that if we need a car for a long trip, we'd save a lot of money just by renting it for 2 weeks, instead of the monthly payment, the increased insurance, increased personal property taxes (Virginia...sheesh), all for a pretty car that's going to spend way too much time in the driveway. Matter closed.

Not.

The next day, John confessed to visiting the Cadillac dealership to look at the CTS. Too expensive, though nice. As for me, I snuck over to the Nissan dealer to peek at Maximas. They're so pretty! And I have to say I'm a sucker for high-tech goo-gahs, from navigation systems to Bose stereos to an engine that actually learns your driving habits so it can perform more efficiently...Come to Mama! And they said they can go to auctions and get program cars just coming off of a one-year lease, saving the potential Maxima owner thousands of dollars for basically a new car.

Brought Maxima brochure home, shared with hubby. Opened new can of worms. What about the Toyota Avalon? he said. It seems the obvious choice, since he's as much a Toyota man as my dad is a Chrysler man. Since we already have a Camry, maybe we could get a good trade-in and stay with one car, just a larger one that fits us better AND works for long trips. Hmmmm...

No, we haven't test-driven it yet. Stay tuned. I'm reminded of the man who sets his hat down at the haberdasher's, tries everything on and ends up so confused he tries to buy his own hat. Put your money on the 2000 Camry. It's paid in full.

Antwerp over the holidays!

We've decided (I think--still haven't booked tickets) that we are going to go to Antwerp between Christmas and New Year's this winter. YAY! Yeah, it'll be dark, it'll be blustery, we'll be jet-lagged and all that good stuff, BUT we miss it too much not to take advantage of the chance to get there.

Fares look best from Newark to Brussels on 12/27, and then we'd fly back probably January 3rd, and the girls would go back to school the next Monday. They will miss a couple of days of school, but we think it's worth it.

Hoping to see friends we met through the girls' school, also Mr. K and his wife (of course) and we can visit friends in The Netherlands, also perhaps do an overnight (Cologne?).

Yay.
LG

4,000 hits!

Pretty cool to think that items in FTJ have been viewed over 4,000 times (of course my parents probably account for 2,000 of those, but still!)

Let's celebrate with a photo, shall we?

Remember the "Flemish PTA Rave Party"? Well, here's a photo from that amazingly memorable night (search past posts for February 2007). If you know me, you know which one is me. Also featured in this photo are my friend "IV" and her husband "SB" and also the head of the girls' Antwerp school, Mevrouw H. The party was at a cool riverfront catering facility in Antwerp called...er...Barcelona. Yup.

Where to go next...I'm flummoxed.

We seem somewhat stuck at the moment. Can it be that we are still trying to get our bearings after all of the running around in the spring? We are down to one vehicle and feel no particular urge to get a second one. We really have no fall travel plans. In fact, for the first time in several years we're talking about a party at our house sometime soon, cocooning with friends (maybe I'll call Steve Parks to bring some of his old-time musician friends over) as we celebrate our house's 100th birthday. This is supposed to be the Family Travel Journal but right now it seems to be the Let's All Stay Put Journal.

School started, and JieJie loves her teacher. MeiMei is in love with JieJie's school and wants to be a kindergartener now, not next year, but we tell her she has to wait just a little longer. JMU started, so now John and I have classes and students and grading and meetings and all of that stuff. This is the routine we took a break from last spring semester, and it somehow feels right to jump back in. We're ready. We were all ready two weeks ago.

It's time to stay put for a while.

But we're batting around the idea of--can it be?--Antwerp over Christmas break.

I'll keep ya posted.

A Cool Day in DC

Today was a day-trip to our nation's capital, known in this neck of the woods as simply "DC." I left about 10am, took 81 to 66 to Constitution Avenue, turned left on 7th Street and parked by Woolly Mammoth Theatre, where my friend M is in the final stages of rehearsal for a new show that opens next week.

If you've driven into both New York City and Washington DC, you're struck by how different the two experiences are. To get into New York, it's such a production, whether you take bridges or tunnels. All the lanes merging, all the nosing in front of other people (it's nose or be nosed) and then even when you get onto Manhattan, it's not like you're seeing anything famous.

DC is so different! The interstate BECOMES Constitution Avenue, and immediately on your right is the Lincoln Memorial. Before you know it you're driving past the National Mall, the White House, The Washington Monument, the Smithsonian, the National Archives, Commerce Department, with a view of the Capitol in the distance.

I love visiting DC. It's a really pretty town, and the height restrictions on buildings there have kept the built environment at a human scale. I worked in DC in the 1990's, first interning at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, then later getting a master's degree from The George Washington University (don't forget the The or the alumni association will get you). During my master's study, I met a really interesting woman, R., who does museum exhibit evaluation. I was a data collector for her for a bunch of projects, which meant that I got paid to hang out in museums and ask people questions about things like storms and spiders and American Indian artifacts. Finally, I worked as an Arts Administration Fellow at the National Endowment for the Arts, back when Jane Alexander was in charge. The NEA offices are in the Old Post Office Pavilion on Pennsylvania Avenue, not far from where I parked today. I love knowing my way around--for the uninitiated, DC can be a really confusing place to drive!

I took Metro to an appointment in Bethesda, MD, a schizophrenic suburb of DC which used to be a nice little city, you can tell, but these days the old main street is dwarfed by 12-story office blocks. I used to work there too, and even 15 years ago I thought Bethesda was all mixed up.

And Metro...it's a system that is showing its age. Half the announcements were about elevators out of service, line delays, and rather scolding-sounding warnings to Stay Away from the Doors!

Ah well. Dinner with M near Woolly Mammoth was great, though too short of course. And when I was killing time at the nearby Olssons Books & Records cafe, in walked Michael Kahn, head of the Shakespeare Theatre, so that was my Famous Person sighting for the day.

TTFN,
LG

NYC's Chinatown

This November, we are heading for NYC with friends we traveled to Chongqing with in 2002. We've all been to the world's biggest city together (that would be CQ) but they've never been to the Big Apple. We figured it was as good a place as any to celebrate our fifth Adoption Day with our families.

I had the great luck to correspond with an adoptive mom in Brooklyn, NY who was willing to give me the lowdown on what to do in Chinatown, where to eat, etc. and here's what she shared with me:

Jing Fong: For a more traditional dim sum experience, in a HUGE dining room. On Elizabeth Street. Get there by 11 AM or expect to wait (though it moves quickly)

Dim Sum Go-Go: For great dim-sum that you order from a long list rather than from carts. Big variety, many vegetarian options. Restaurant has a more modern ambience. On East Broadway near Confucious Square.

Joe's Shanghai: For dinner. Famous for the soup dumplings. Go early or wait outside. On Bayard, I believe.

XO: Kind of a hole in the wall, but great congee and stellar har gao (crystal shrimp dumplings)

We've also had dim sum at Ping, Pearl, Triple 8 Palace and Golden Unicorn, all of which were quite good and I'm sure a non-dim sum meal would be good at any of these places as well. They are all well-known in Chinatown.

There are restaurants all up and down Mott, which is one of the main arteries of Chinatown. Often people refer to them by their address number (75 Mott or 25 Mott) and everyone has their favorites. Just ask around.

For dessert, Chinatown Ice Cream Factory on Bayard can't be beat. Their longon and lychee sorbets are fabulous. For traditional buns and pastries, Fay Da Bakery on Mott near Canal is great--we get our mooncakes there. A few doors down is a traditional tea shop and Aji Iciban, a Japanese snack shop that sells everything from candy to fermented sweet potato, and they have samples of everything. Every place I've mentioned is near the main commercial part of Chinatown.

Columbus park is a great playground/park, where you can see old-timers playing Go and Mah-jong and sometimes playing instruments. The other playground is at Seward Park, which is further east. Any Chinatown map will help you locate any of these places.

Brooklyn:Smith Street is filled with restaurants of every type, except Chinese (well, there's one, Chance, but it's not great for kids). We like Ki and Hana for sushi, but there are several new sushi places we haven't tried yet. Fa'an is pan-Asian and the decor is fun for kids. The food is fine, not outstanding, but also very cheap. Any of the French restaurants are good, and even the fancier ones are used to lots of kids. Same goes for Thai. Gravy is a fun diner, and the attached pizza place is supposed to be great (I'm not a pizza fan). There's a new branch of the Manhattan Italian restaurant Po on Smith now, and it's very pricey, but supposed to be great. Any of the old-timey looking Italian places are good too, just very traditional. On Court Street, parallel to Smith, Joya is great, cheap Thai (but the music can get very loud). Osaka is good sushi, and Sal's is good pizza. Way down Court Street near 4th place is Frankie's Sputino, which is excellent modern Italian food, and a pretty famous restaurant in the neighborhood (Leonardo DiCaprio apparently hangs out there when he's in town--though I've never seen him there). It's a very trendy place, but they're happy to serve kids. Everyone in Brownstone Brooklyn has kids, so they're everywhere :)

So there you have it! A few places to eat and people-watch in the Big Red Apple :)

LG

Antwerp Aftermath: Some Changes Stuck

Have you ever gone away on a trip and come back determined to do some things differently? Maybe you relaxed so much that you resolved never to get so stressed out again, as happened to us the first time we went to Italy. Maybe you promised yourself you'd get out into nature more often, to remind yourself of the wonder and miracles, as we did after visiting Banff and Lake Louise. For us, Antwerp and our vacation on the Costa del Sol were a real wake-up call in terms of the way we deal with garbage/recycling, and conserve water and electricity.

And we actually have been doing things differently since coming home. Things like...

• not using the clothes dryer. We bought a drying rack, put up some clothesline on our screened porch, and we let the summer breeze work its magic. The girls LOVE to help hang up and take down clothes, they smell fresher (the clothes, not necessarily the girls!), the upstairs laundry room doesn't heat up so much, and we have noticed a MAJOR difference in our electric bill. Usually the bill in the summertime is over $120, but last month it was $85.
• recycling more kinds of things. The city doesn't take paperboard (cereal boxes) but I found a place locally that does. We are also looking into getting a composter to get the kitchen waste out of the landfill.
• using fewer lights. We replaced many of our bulbs with the compact fluorescent kind, and have been careful to turn off lights in rooms we're not using. In many buildings in Europe, lights in common areas of buildings have automatic shutoff timers that turn lights off after, say, 10 minutes. The stairwell in our apartment building had those, and it really makes so much sense. In order for those to be used everywhere though, there has to be trust in a certain level of safety, so people aren't worried about what happens in the few seconds between the light shutting off and someone finding the turn-it-back-on switch. Would Americans feel safe enough?
• Saving more water. We had a toilet that was leaking / running anyway, so when we replaced it, we found a dual-mode flush model from http://www.faucetdepot.com/ that looks a lot like the ones we saw all over Europe. The button on the top has two sections, one smaller than the other. If you push the smaller button, you get a .9 gallon flush, which is enough for most...er...jobs. If you need a little extra oomph in the flush, you push the larger button and you get a 1.6 gallon flush. The way it's designed (ours is by a company called Toto) the flush works just fine and isn't "wimpy" at all like some low-flow models. And compared to the old 3-gallon water guzzling commode we had, we are saving some serious water!!! We noticed that in a household of four people, we had the same water usage after installing that toilet that we had when our solitary renter was here!!!! And again, lower bill: was $47, now $39.

And now, thanks to the wonders of the internet, you don't even need to go to Europe to lower your utility bills and save resources. Just jump straight from reading this article to taking your own conservation measures.

Tweaking the Blog

Hey faithful readers,

We're not even on a trip and people keep checking in, so I thought I would give you some more to look at until our next travel adventure. The main addition, thanks to Blogger's newsreel feature, has links to news from Chongqing, which is where JieJie and MeiMei were born. Check out the headlines to the right of this post. Right now they are having some really horrendous storms there, worst in over 100 years, and the impact has been devastating. Lives, homes, and crops have been lost to the rain and lightning.

I will let you know if I hear any news from the girls' home towns of Fuling and Liangping, which are both in Chongqing Municipality.

Storytelling in the Valley

Okay, time to write what there IS to do around here. If you know where to go, there's enough.

Tonight my friend H had invited me and the girls to see a story teller at the Museum of Frontier Culture in Staunton, Virginia, which is about a half-hour south of Harrisonburg. We picked her up at 6 and took Route 42 through winding countryside, mountain vistas in the distance, cut over to Route 11 (the old Valley Pike) and then down to the museum, which is fairly young as museums go.

This living history museum features an Appalachian homestead farm as well as a few other farm buildings literally taken apart in Europe and put back together in the Valley to show the kinds of farms whose architecture and agricultural practices influenced Valley settlers. It's popular with public schools for field trips. We've been to a wedding there in the octagonal barn. It was a lovely evening to be sure and one of two weddings we've been to with reception music provided by the incredible Hackensaw Boys. I was going to, but now realize I don't want to talk about the storyteller we saw tonight, who was absolutely respectable, or the fact that I spent the whole second story watching JieJie and MeiMei attempt really painful looking cartwheels behind the storytelling shed. As soon as I got that Hackensaw music rolling in my head, it reminded me of so many things...Never heard of 'em? Sit back.

In fact, to really get the most out of what I'm about to write, open another browser window, go to http://www.hackensawboys.com/ and play the concert footage from Amsterdam that's on there now. I don't think they play many weddings anymore...they're at the Knitting Factory in NYC and the enormous Floyd Fest in southside Virginia this month, and they're from here.

Now let's get one thing straight. I do NOT like most country music. I love Johnny Cash (thanks Dad) and during the Urban Cowboy era I liked stuff like Eddie Rabbitt and the Oak Ridge Boys, and John Denver's music always makes me smile, but most of today's country-pop leaves me cold. I like what I guess is called "roots country" like Alison Krauss and the O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack, stuff like that. Living in Virginia has made me appreciate roots / bluegrass so much, and despise the stuffed-cowboy-hat stuff even more.

At our wedding reception, over a decade ago now, John and I had a group called Dominion Express (Violinist Two-Gun Terry with friends Cameron Nickels and ??) play and everyone had such a great time. EVERYONE was up and dancing. You just can't help it when there's live bluegrass playing. Even my great aunt Mickey, who was a classical music professor at University of Idaho, sat rapt, wondering at Two-Gun's amazing fiddle playing. She knew good music and mastery of technique when she saw it.

But see, the Hackensaws and Dominion Express are NOT country music. They play Bluegrass, or more correctly for this area, "Old Time" music. A friend of mine who has played both styles tried to describe the difference between bluegrass and old-time. He said Bluegrass is more like jazz, where the group plays in unison for the first verse to state the theme of the song, and then each instrumentalist takes a solo turn with laid-back support from the rest of the group, then everyone gets together for the wind-up. With Old-Time, though, he said everyone plays full-out the whole time, and it can be physically grueling to keep up. check out some of the tempos in the Hackensaw clips!!

The other thing that's amazing about the Hackensaws...well just look at the footage of their concert. Is it 2007 or 1937?? You half expect Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, or a young Bob Dylan to come strolling in. Look at the pork pie hats, the flannel shirts...how skinny they all are, like they've been working all day at the CCC camp...and my goodness the instruments! Accordions, washboards, mandolins and banjos, stand-up bass violins plucked hard. Do they blow into a jug? I didn't see one, but I'd put money on it.

Along with Old-Time music goes Contra Dancing, or square dancing with two long lines (Virginia Reel for example). You can try it the second Saturday of every month at the Dayton Learning Center, a former high school in the little country town of Dayton, VA (never mind the aroma...it's the chicken and turkey processing plant. Hope the wind blows the right way and you'll be fine). Show up at 7:15 for a Contra Dance lesson, and the actually dance begins at 8, always with live music. It's a bargain at $5. If you're looking for a Harrisonburg-area old-time ensemble for a wedding or party, try contacting Steve Parks http://www.steveparksmusic.com/music.html who is an anchor of the local scene.

And sooner or later, if you live around here, you'll get invited "out to the county" to someone's giant piece of land where they have a year's worth of wood, paper, and God knows what-all that's set up in a huge bonfire. About 1 in the morning, when the bonfire is no longer eyebrow-singing temperature, the guitars and mandolins come out and you find yourself singing "Goodnight Irene."

So that's a bit of what there is to do 'round these parts.

But I swear we're feeling like we've done it all...restless...

unsure about summer vacation

Crazy, isn't it? But we still haven't decided where we want to go to get out of the 'burg this summer. And we seem to be among the few. Our street is like a ghost town right now with all the people gone on vacation.

But we're stuck.

Do we do the free-lodging family trek through Indianapolis relatives to Minnesota? Do we find a cozy cabin on Peaks Island in Casco Bay, Maine and eat lobsters and blueberries till we can't stand it anymore? Do we visit friends in Alabama at their lake cabin? Or...

Perhaps we should open the blog up for suggestions. I would say the three main criteria are

1. there must be a body of water involved, salt or fresh doesn't matter.


2. can't be expensive. Don't send us to the Greenbrier.


3. fun stuff for the kiddies = fun time for the parents

So what do you think? Let's hear about the best places you've gone with your family. We are not beyond showing up at a rental agency and offering half the week's rent so they at least have somebody in the property (an old Outer Banks tactic).

In looking around on the web I found this fun fill-in-where-you've-been map, and did one for me for the USA and the world. Ta-da!

Now I'm the Tour Guide

A couple of weeks ago, John and I were trying out the new Harrisonburg restaurant Downtown 56, an upscale spot that is part of an attempt to revitalize the downtown (it's in a renovated old warehouse, part of a project that also features loft apartments, something one doesn't usually see in Harrisonburg, county seat of a very rural, agricultural area). Food was fine, the menu was creative and it was clear that some thought had gone into things (e.g. all the prices are $xx.56...cute). Food was good, though we were so spoiled by the consistently excellent food in Antwerp, we're not really tempted to eat out anywhere anymore. After dinner, we enjoyed some entertainment by local favorite Scott Murray, who is engaged to an acquaintance of mine. Ah, small towns. We knew the hostess, one of the waitstaff, and someone dining at the next table too. I'd gotten used to being anonymous while we were away, but no longer.

As we sat listening to Murray's enjoyable singing and guitar playing, a couple across from us asked whether we were from here. They were staying the night in Harrisonburg on their way from Florida to the eastern shore of Maryland, retirees taking the scenic route through the certainly scenic Shenandoah Valley. They wanted to know what there was to do in Harrisonburg the next morning before they headed toward Fredericksburg/I-95.

What about the farmer's market they saw on I-81? They wanted to know. You mean the Shenandoah Heritage Farmer's Market? Yes, she said. Blecch, I said. Unless you're looking for guns or overpriced biscuit mix, skip it. It's hard to describe exactly what's wrong with that place. Maybe the building is too big for what they have there. It feels empty and depressing. Much much better is the Dayton Farmer's Market on Route 42. But the next day was Sunday, and Dayton Farmer's Market is only open Thursday-Saturday.

We racked our brains trying to think of any reason to stay in Harrisonburg beyond breakfast at the hotel...

...and we couldn't think of a single
thing

Isn't that sad??? Maybe we've just lived here too long, but the first thing that came to mind was what they could do once they got in their car and left. We ended up recommending that they drive Route 33 east over the mountains (passing through Shenandoah National Park on the way) and then continue across Route 29 to a section of 33 that goes through some beautiful historic farmland, then tour Montpelier, James Madison's home.

So what DO we do here in Harrisonburg when we want to go out and have fun? Well, there are plenty of things to do, but it's more a case of knowing when those things come around. This isn't the kind of place where things are going on all the time. Especially Sunday morning. There are plenty of free family activities (John is taking the girls to a free movie this morning at our local Regal Cinemas), plenty of little holes in the wall to enjoy an ice cream or a wrap sandwich or whatever.

But that's an article for another time. Gotta get back to work!

3,000 hits!

Well, it's official. The Family Travel Journal has topped 3,000 hits! Pretty exciting. I'll celebrate with a photo from our last night out in Antwerp. We figured out the setting on my camera that allowed me to capture Onze Lieve Vrouwecathedral by night from the Pelgrimstraat. Enjoy, and thanks for reading.

Debriefing: Energy Conservation

We enjoy traveling because it gives us the chance to see our lives from the outside, to question our assumptions about the way we do things in the day-to-day and why. When we get home, we see opportunities to make changes that are healthier for ourselves and for the environment too. Since we got home from Europe, here are some differences in the way we live each day. And by the way, as you read this, are you reminded of the way our grandparents lived??? We are...

• Skipping takeout food. Do you realize how much waste we generate from the "need" to eat food while we go from place to place? Think of the paper and styrofoam and plastic used by one fast food place for one day. If you to to Starbucks (which I never saw the whole time we were in Europe by the way) and order your coffee to go rather than "for here" in a ceramic mug, it seems like no big deal, but multiply that choice by the number of customers, and it's a mountain of trash. If you don't have time to sit down and have that snack or meal, either you don't need it or--just perhaps--your life is too complicated.
• Using a clothesline. In Estepona, our clothes dried much faster on the line than in the dryer anyway because the sun is so hot and bright there! I couldn't stand using the dryer when the sun was shining here, so I strung up a makeshift clothesline on the back porch as a placeholder. We'll probably put in a permanent clothesline out in the sunny part of our yard later this month.
• much more conscious of turning electrical appliances off when not in use, even to the point that we unplug the coffee maker, since we don't really need a third clock in the kitchen. When I walk away from the computer, I don't leave the speakers, printer and screen on.
• installing water conservation devices around the house. In Estepona, there are often water shortages, to the point that we were encouraged to water plants with waste water from cooking, rather than putting it down the drain. We will be replacing an old high-capacity toilet tank with the dual-flush type that is ubiquitous in Europe. The design allows you to use a small flush for pee and a more powerful flush for the other stuff. Why haven't we been using this kind of thing all along? They're not impossible to find here either, if you were looking for a convenient excuse. Your local home supply store can order one for you. I found ours on the web with free shipping. The brand is "Toto." The other thing we're likely to do is put in at least one rain barrel to catch gutter runoff for use in gardening and cleaning. I read that the average suburban house catches 24,000 gallons a year!!! Perhaps we should be putting some of that to use. Funny thing is, our 100-year-old house seems to have had a cistern and pump at one point, but all that's left are some terra cotta pipes near the gutters and a pump mechanism with no handle. Wish they'd left it alone instead of making "improvements," whoever's decision that was.
• eating "greener." We're lucky to have a farmer's market twice a week right down the street where we can buy locally grown produce. It stays so much fresher and tastes so much better. In Europe we paid a bit more for our groceries but everything was so much closer to the source, whether it was bread, meats, cheeses, even chocolate. We look at labels much more carefully, and if something has a bunch of high fructose partially hydrogenated crapola in it, it stays on the shelf.
• driving about as much as we did before. On this score, I have to say we have been doing better than most, because we live a 3-minute bicycle commute from work (even closer to the Family Travel Journal World Headquarters, ha). Once MeiMei finishes preschool, they'll both walk up the street to their elementary school, so we won't need to drive much of anywhere except the grocery store.
• composting. The city of Antwerp has everyone separate out biodegradable food waste, partly because the plumbing system wouldn't be able to handle a bunch of disposals pureeing food waste and putting it directly into the wastewater pipes. I would like to find one of those barrel things that you turn with a crank every once in a while.
• reining in spending on home decorating. Look at HGTV and you realize that America has given itself a House Fetish. People are tearing out perfectly good rooms because the stove is suddenly not trendy anymore or the light fixtures are just all wrong. Where does all that waste go? In Belgium, since it's far more common to entertain friends out at a restaurant than to invite them to your home, nobody needs to have a house with all kinds of room to show off a few times a year at a party. You just need a place to live everyday family life. We enjoy our house here, but have realized how much we spend on pretty frivolous things. I'm having a yard sale on Saturday to de-clutter a bit.

So I challenge you...will it take a trip out of the country to get you thinking about ways you could waste not and want not? Or at least waste less and want less?

Ouch, my heart!

Ok, so I just got an email from JieJie's teacher. We had promised to keep in touch. She said that every morning, when they take attendance and notice who is absent, they mention our daughters' names. Then they say that JieJie and MeiMei are home in America and that we are all thinking of each other. The postcard we sent from Estepona is posted in the classroom. Massive sniff and sigh.

I'm glad for email, but it's such a tease. It makes us seem so close, and then we realize that we are so far away. I just have to believe we will see one another again. That school is so fantastic, I wish the commute weren't so impossible.

The girls went to the last day of their old preschool today. They were invited to the last day of school party and they had a fantastic time running through sprinklers and getting their faces painted. Their teacher here said it was as though they had never left, though she noted that both of them seem much more confident and intrepid, which I absolutely credit to our semester abroad.

If I'd known the school in Antwerp was going to be so incredible, I'd have arranged to stay and let them finish out the year somehow, I think.

You too can hear Belgian radio!

Click on the title of this post, and you will find yourself on the homepage of Radio Twee (two), which was my favorite station to have on while hanging out in the Antwerp apartment. Eclectic and stimulating, the songs are a mix of pop and one-of-a-kind Flemish folk and singer-songwriter music. When you get to the home page, make sure pop-ups are enabled, and then choose "Luister Live" to get audio streaming. I heard a news update and missed the sound of the little "between stories" punctuation sound, which had wormed its way into my everyday sounds without my even knowing it. Listening to Radio Twee lets me imagine I'm not so far from Belgium.

Give it a try!

And by the way, you would never believe how much more internet is out there beyond the .com's and the .org's--every European country has its own suffix, and there are hundreds of thousands of webpages you'll never find if your Google is set only to English language sites.

Gotta love the internet.