Thought Provoking Message of the Day

Today's Publication: My Original Text Displayed

2019-12-23T09:37:00.003+03:00

Announcement time: I've published a book! It's called "Jack Weatherby, Cat-Person." You can buy the ebook here on Amazon, and within a few days, you'll be able to order the paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B082SLXJLX

Plot summary:

5-year-old Jack Weatherby finds himself mysteriously transformed into a cat one day. His life as he knew it is over! Or is it?

Pre-teens to adults will enjoy puzzling out with Jack how he might manage to maintain his relationships, his career, his household, and his identity after life throws him a major hairball.

It's a bit like Disney's "The Shaggy Dog" meets Andy Weir's "The Martian", but with a cat. Recommended for precocious ten-year-olds or grown-ups who are still kids at heart.

It took me 287 days to write, which is one week longer than human gestation. So you might call this my second baby born this year! In case you missed that announcement, here's how the first one looked when he was born in November:

Ten-year-old Posts Momentarily Occasion Ten-year-old's Delight

2019-10-25T21:38:00.001+03:00

My ten-year-old son asked about an old email I was looking at this evening, one of my Thought Provoking Messages of the Day. I showed him one and he wanted to read more, so he ended up reading until 9:30 tonight laughing at a bunch of the ones I wrote the year he was born. Precocious-10-year-old is about the right reading level for the TPMOTD in its heyday.

Nostalgically,
Steve Stay

Timeline Prediction Muddies Observable Truth Dispensation

2018-04-02T15:14:00.001+03:00

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I'm looking for scriptures or prophets' teachings that express the idea that God will unfold the Restoration as fast as the Church is willing to receive it. I believe I've read something like that, but I can't find where.

Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith (2009) p. 149 has "Even the least Saint may know all things as fast as he is able to bear them," and that might be extrapolated to the Church as a whole. p.9 (ibid) has "Could we all come together with one heart and one mind in perfect faith the veil might as well be rent today as next week, or any other time."

There are all the versions of "unto him that receiveth it shall be given more abundantly" (D&C 71:6; 2 Ne. 28:30; etc.)

In Ether 4:6, the Lord speaks about the full writings of the brother of Jared: "They shall not go forth unto the Gentiles until the day that they shall repent of their iniquity, and become clean before the Lord." So that's kind of what I'm thinking of, but this verse is very specific to that book being revealed, not the revelation of principles or policies in general.

In D&C 71 the Lord commands Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon to go on a preaching mission for a while to "prepare the way for the commandments and revelations which are to come." (v. 4). But that doesn't really say anything like, "the revelation won't come until they're ready" which is the gist I remember.

Similarly, in D&C 109:14-15, it's written, "those who shall worship in this house may be taught words of wisdom out of the best books, and that they may seek learning even by study, and also by faith, as thou hast said; And that they may grow up in thee, and receive a fulness of the Holy Ghost, and be organized according to thy laws, and be prepared to obtain every needful thing". But again, it doesn't explicitly say they won't obtain the needful things until they are prepared.

1 Nephi 3:7 read in this context could be interpreted as "God won't give the church a commandment unless he prepares a way for them to accomplish it" and perhaps waiting until we are ready to receive the commandment is a part of his preparation. And Alma 16:16-17 supports that interpretation: "the Lord did pour out his Spirit on all the face of the land to prepare the minds of the children of men, or to prepare their hearts to receive the word which should be taught among them at the time of his coming— That they might not be hardened against the word, that they might not be unbelieving, and go on to destruction, but that they might receive the word with joy".

In 3 Nephi 17:2-3, the Savior says "I perceive that ye are weak, that ye cannot understand all my words which I am commanded of the Father to speak unto you at this time. Therefore, go ye unto your homes, and ponder upon the things which I have said, and ask of the Father, in my name, that ye may understand, and prepare your minds for the morrow, and I come unto you again." But this is on a very short time scale, and I'm thinking of the process of the Church changing over years, due not only to size and geography of the church (like changes in quorums of the 70 organization), but spiritual readiness of its membership.

I've been thinking about this because of the major announcements at General Conference. I think the members' preparation to receive new things is an important limiting factor to how often new things are revealed. Certainly the preparation of the hearts and minds of the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve is also a limiting factor, but I'm inclined to believe that they're more ready to receive greater truths than the church as a whole, and that the membership really are the greater limiting factor. In this light, the work of becoming united with one another as a church appears to be a way for us to speed along the Restoration.

On the other hand, there's the danger of believing we or the church leadership are the ones in charge of the time table for revelation. The Lord has said, "Behold, I will hasten my work in its time." (D&C 88:73) Demanding that this or that change should happen in the church just when we think it should could result in looking beyond the mark: "But behold, the Jews were a stiffnecked people; and they despised the words of plainness, and killed the prophets, and sought for things that they could not understand. Wherefore, because of their blindness, which blindness came by looking beyond the mark, they must needs fall; for God hath taken away his plainness from them, and delivered unto them many things which they cannot understand, because they desired it. And because they desired it God hath done it, that they may stumble." (Jacob 4:14).

I do believe that members talking with each other and with the media about difficult issues influences the timing of major changes, and that it should continue to happen. But I don't think it's working in the same way that grassroots political movements do, influencing policy makers through lobbying or voter pressure. Instead, I see those discussions as preparing people's minds, digging and pruning and dunging (a lot of dunging!) so that the growth can happen at the pace that natural growth happens -- sometimes in spurts like my kids are doing right now, but usually imperceptibly slowly.

Lots of people are saying things like "Wow, President Nelson sure is making a lot of changes!", but none of these changes developed in the time since President Monson died. He wasn't holding all this back or standing it its way. There weren't secret meetings between all the other 14 planning to do all these things once he wasn't around to veto them anymore. They've been working together on this stuff for a long time. And the Lord decided when the time was right for it to happen.

Our Europe 2016 vacation

2016-08-28T21:03:00.002+03:00

The photos for this post are available separately at the following links:
June: https://picasaweb.google.com/101629469363395785145/6313186981417427441?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCJyXjd6Viq32DQ&feat=directlink

July: https://picasaweb.google.com/101629469363395785145/6313215557411594849?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCK2p2LOLiKiFqQE&feat=directlink

We're talking about a thousand pictures or so.

We had a relaxing few days chilling around the house and packing after the kids were finished with school, and then we flew to Budapest on June 20. The flight was easy and the kids did fine. We left at a normal reasonable time like 6 AM instead of something ridiculous like 2 AM like we always do when we fly home to the US, and we arrived with plenty of time left in the day to go exploring and get settled in. When we got to the Budapest airport, we couldn't tell what would be the best way to get to our apartment, but a very eager gentleman approached us and offered to drive us in his private taxi. Giving us totally unsolicited tour-guide commentary in his beat up old Ford, he very excitedly gave us the grand tour as he drove, using his broken English to tell us about all the things that we were seeing along the drive. It took us about 20 minutes to get to our apartment, so he had plenty of time to talk. It turned out that he had been on the Hungarian Olympic team just a few years before my coworker, Csaba Hegyes. When we got to our apartment, it was right on a main street next to the trolley line (on Erzsebet krt.), tucked between a bar and a restaurant and halfway between a Supermarket and the Oktogon metro stop. We buzzed to enter and the owner of the apartment came out to give us the keys and give us a tour. She was an old lady who didn't really speak any English at all, so she pantomimed everything for us and was quite sweet. First we walked down a long hallway to a central courtyard at the middle of building that she had set up as a public garden. Our apartment was across the garden on the left side. It was nice that it was so far set back from the street, because the street was very noisy each night. The apartment was very comfortable, decorated in a very modern in a minimalist way (probably everything was from IKEA), and the kids loved it. So did Rachel and I.

After unpacking just a bit, we got some food from the grocery store down the street and had a nice lunch of fresh food fruit, fresh bread, fresh cheese, and some yogurt. Then we set out to explore. We walked past the opera house and zigzagged through the streets to the northwest until we finally reached the parliament building. It was beautiful, and the kids really were excited to see that a trolley system went right past the building. We also walked over to the river and saw the basilica and the fisherman's bastion at the top of the hills across the river. We also found a small playground just across the street from a monument and a water fountain you can play in. Several of us accidentally got soaked in it. Then we walked back home and got dinner at a restaurant down the street from where we lived. We had some delicious food, all very traditionally Hungarian.

I had a lot of chicken paprikas that night because the kids only ate a part of theirs. I tried to splurge by getting a very traditional desert too, but it turned out to be little more than cottage cheese balls breaded and fried with cream on top and just a little bit of jam on the plate next to them. It really wasn’t very sweet at all, so hardly something I would consider a dessert. But I guess that's the risk you take when you're eating traditional food. Mostly it's just us Americans to overdo it on the sugar. Finding out how little the dinner cost, as well as how much we could get at the grocery store was a nice surprise.The next day we went to visit a lake and park at the castle in the middle of town. At the pond there was a golden retriever swimming around after the ducks and the kids were very excited to see it. I was a bit worried that it would climb out of the water and shake itself off and soak us all, but fortunately it stayed in the pond. We soon found the park that we were searching for, and then went to try to get a bus to the train museum outside town. In what was the most unpleasant and unfortunate part of our entire trip, we missed the stop, ended up going about 40 minutes past it, got wrong directions from several different people, and finally gave up. With me in a very grumpy mood and all the kids disappointed, we went home.I learned my lesson to be much better prepared with all of our plans for using public transport for the rest of the trip.

The next day, we went to Margaret island in the middle of the river to meet Heidi Carson who also happened to be in Budapest the same week that we were. Our kids played together at the playground, but it was uncomfortably hot, so I didn't enjoy that part much. Then we rented little golf carts that had been made to look like old-time cars and drove around the island for about an hour. That was nice, but we didn't get to see very much after all, because the carts drove so slowly. However, we did get to see a musical fountain that the the kids loved. It was obviously computer timed and controlled, because it was quite an impressive show.

In the afternoon, after a nap for the kids, we all went to the Fishermen's Bastion at the top of the hill. It had a beautiful church, and an almost Disneyfied look to it, but I suppose that's because Disney took inspiration from so many pieces of European architecture. It certainly gave us a great view of the city. We walked from the bastion to Buda Castle, and by that time it was getting pretty hot. Kids were grumpy, and entering the castle was expensive, so we just walked around the outside of it to see the fountains and exterior architecture. Rachel saw a stand selling a traditional desert (Kürtőskalács) that she was eager to try, so we all sat down in the shade of a hedge to eat the desert. It looked like it was the dough of a cinnamon bun that had been stretched into a long snake, then coiled around some sort of pipe and cooked to form a cylinder. You could buy it with any number of different toppings, but we just went with sugar. It was hot and fresh and delightful, and we all enjoyed it thoroughly. We had dinner that night at home, and then the kids went to bed and I went shopping. All evening we had been hearing cheering from the apartments around us, and on the way home we noticed that lots of people had flags painted on their faces, so we assumed that there must be some sort of big game on for the EuroCup of football. When I went outside there was loud cheering and thousands of people walking down the street. The street was so full of people that they could hardly move, and the trams weren't running at all. People were climbing on top of lampposts and bus stands dancing and singing and cheering and setting off fireworks and flares, and probably 90% of the people were drunk. I walked down the street to the grocery store just to buy our groceries, and the whole store was packed with people, too, just celebrating and dancing and cheering, and again and everyone of them was in there to buy alcohol. They said they had beat Portugal. People laughed when they saw that I was just doing grocery shopping. So ended June 22.

The next day we walked past Parliament again and to the river so that Rachel could see the Shoes on the River memorial, which were a bunch of metal shoes meant to represent the shoes of the Jews who had been executed in a pogrom there along the river’s edge. We didn't tell the kids what it meant, because Rachel felt it would be too depressing to them. We then walked further along the river to the chain bridge, which is one of several interesting bridges that cross the river. I was surprised to see that the chain consisted not of O-shaped links, but rather flat links that looked more like a bike chain, but with many more stacked plates in each link. We walked across it and thought about taking the funicular up to Buda Castle again, but the price was too high and it wasn't covered by our Budapest tourist card even though it said in the card’s pamphlet that we could ride. So, disappointed, we went back to a park that I had seen on the way there with big Olympic rings in it.The park was free and had a very fun play structure in it, shaped like a giant boat, so we had a snack there and let the kids play until it was time for lunch. That afternoon, after the kids’ naptime and Rachel's schoolwork time, we went back to Margaret Island. We took the bus to the far north end that we hadn’t reached the first time, and then walked back south toward the part that we had covered the first time we went. I think we got to see everything that we wanted to. Unfortunately, all the churches were locked, so we just had to satisfy yourselves getting pictures of outside of them and wandering a lot through the ruins of the monasteries. This was one of several occasions on our vacation when we had to save Amelia from a toilet accident by letting her to just put on a diaper temporarily, a trick that we learned with Elliott in a subway station when we went to Spain two years earlier. We went out for dinner again that night at a restaurant called Rhapsody, and the kids had great fun playing peekaboo with the hostess who stood by trying to get other people to come eat at the restaurant.

On the 24th we went to St. Stephen’s Basilica. It was very impressive, and we even got see the purported mummified hand of St. Stephen in the back. Unfortunately, the treasury cost more money to go in and look around, so we didn't pay for that. That afternoon, we went to find another church called St. Elizabeth church. It looked like almost no tourists ever went to visit there, as it was located in a sort of rundown neighborhood on the wrong side of the tracks, with people who looked homeless sitting and chatting with each other on the benches outside in the overgrown lawn next to the cracking asphalt driveway, looking very surprised to see us there. It was quite the contrast between the very touristy St. Stephen's Basilica, and the obviously well-used and well loved St. Elizabeth Church, which was full of bulletin boards listing community activities and packed with pictures of kids at Bible camps. On the way home we stopped at another park we discovered online which promised a water play area, but didn't appear to have when we got there, or at least it was turned off. But after a few minutes of playing in the playground, we noticed that the water was on, so the kids ran down and played in it for little while until it turned off again.They were very hesitant to get into the water at first, but soon they were running and laughing and jumping and screaming and having great time. It turned off soon after, so they went and played in the playground again for a half hour, and then came back when the water turned on again.L ydia got worn out and crabby, so she went home with Rachel to cook dinner while I stayed with Elliott and Amelia.

I mentioned earlier that Rachel would do her schoolwork during the naptime between our morning excursions in our afternoon excursions, but it was really only a naptime for Lydia.The other two kids refused to attempt to sleep or even be quiet, so I usually had to take them out and go explore around the city to keep them out of Rachel's hair and let her concentrate. One day we rode the tram in front of our apartment all the way to its terminus at the north end, which included a little play area with some metal sparrows scattered around the planter boxes. Another day, Elliott and I walked to a park called Klauzal ter near a farmer’s market, which became another go-to spot for times when we knew the kids couldn’t handle sight-seeing. It had a zipline and all sorts of other fun stuff for the kids that they hadn’t seen at other parks. Not having a break at lunchtime made me very grumpy in the afternoons, so we made sure to find away to get some alone time for me as well. For example, one night I walked to the train station to buy our Eurail passes. I took all the money and passports and all the documents we might need and started off. I wanted to make sure that I knew how to get there so that we would be on time for our morning trip on the day we had to go to Vienna. When I got to the train station, I went to an office that said International Tickets on the sign. After waiting 40 minutes I got to the front of the line and the person told me the tickets for the Eurail were in a different office. They gave me directions to go find it on the first platform, but I looked for 15 minutes and couldn't see it anywhere. Just when I was about to give up, I noticed a tiny 2 inch by 8 inch sign that was little more than a sticker on the window of the business class lounge.I went inside, and sure enough, that was the place to pick up our passes. However, they were closing, so I ended up having to come back in the morning to get the tickets. So we all left extra early the next morning from our apartment to begin our journey to Vienna. It worked out fine, the trip on the train was nice but hot, and we got to Vienna on the afternoon of the 25th.

Vienna

When we arrived, we took the metro to a stop (Taborstrasse) as close to our apartment on Grosse Schiffgasse as we thought we could get, and then started walking from there with all our luggage. We were supposed to meet the person who would unlock our AirBNB apartment at 12:30, so we were in a real rush to get there. But when we arrived, he was not there and even after waiting for 15 minutes he still had not arrived. So I called using some international minutes on our phone to speak to the person who owned the apartment, and she agreed to call the guy who was supposed open it for us. As it turned out, that day was his son’s birthday and he had completely forgotten about us. He said he could be there in half an hour. However, we were all tired and hot from having been on a hot train and walking in the hot sun at noon on one of the hottest days on record in Vienna, and we didn't have any drinks or food because we ate all of it on the train because we thought we would to to be able to eat as soon as we arrived! So while Rachel entertained the kids on the sidewalk in front of our apartment building, I went exploring for a grocery store. Instead I found a little shop next to the farmers’ market where they sold drinks. I bought a bottle of water and a bottle of sparkling apple cider, as well as a very expensive pint of raspberries. About the time we finished all those off, the guy showed up and let us into the apartment. The apartment was clearly old and had been subdivided off of a bigger apartment, but it wasn't too small, and the guy said that to make up for making us wait he would give us the keys to the garden that we would've had to pay extra for otherwise.The apartment also had a loft made all of wood which the kids called a tree house, and under the loft was a sort of dark room, which we called “the cave.” Just as Rachel had anticipated when she booked it, the apartment was an instant hit with the kids. After lunch and a nap, we headed out. We just walked around and explored mostly on that first day, finding where our apartment’s nearest ATM and grocery store were, and then relaxing inside because it was so hot. We also did not intend to buy (or rather to activate) our Vienna card until we could use it for three days consecutively, and since the very next day was the Sabbath, we weren’t going to activate it yet.

We spent Sunday morning visiting parks across the river. On the way home, we discovered a metro station (Schottenring) that actually ran under the river so we could use it instead of going out of our way to cross the bridges, and it mas just down the street from our apartment. We used that as our subway stop for the rest of the visit. On Sunday afternoon, church started a little later in the day than we are accustomed to (2 pm instead of 9 am), so we thought it would be okay to walk a mile and a half to get there. It was another hot day and when we arrived we discovered that the church had no air conditioning just like every other place we had visited in Europe so far. But we managed to make it through the stifling sacrament meeting without anyone getting too grumpy, after which we were able to move downstairs into the classrooms were significantly cooler. We then walked home again, which the kids did not like very much, so everybody was pretty grumpy for the afternoon. However, there was some excitement as Elliott lost his second tooth. After the kids were in bed, Rachel and I spent our time planning are week’s activities and public transportation. Experience had already taught us that if we didn't, we would regret it immensely.

Monday we went to Schonbrunn Palace Outside of Vienna.This is one of the more frustrating sites of our trip because of how the ticketing structure was set up. The tickets were advertised as giving us access to all these different spots and different features of the Palace and its grounds, but what we learned only after visiting was that most of those features were open for free to the public. Had we gone to those free areas first, we could have taken our time enjoying them and then spent the half hour on the guided tour in the castle at the very end. Instead, we wasted a lot of time wandering around in front of the castle waiting for our scheduled tour to start, and then after the tour, we missed out on most of the things we wanted to do because we couldn't find the bathroom or because we just didn't know where to find them fast enough to see them before the place closed. And of course the kids needed to stop and rest about every 5 minutes as we walked around the giant gardens. Unfortunately I lost my cool on several occasions and ended up being disappointed with the whole visit. Looking back though,the palace was very beautiful and impressive, as were the grounds. And we learned a ton of other important lessons about how to manage our trip, like what sorts of deceptions we could expect from information booklets. It saved us headaches later on. Incidentally, on our way out of the garden in the evening, we heard a live performance coming from the concert shell that had been set up in the courtyard in front of Schonbrunn. I vaguely recognized the music and then suddenly it hit me that I was listening to Pink Floyd performing “Wish You Were Here.” Chances were, this was not just some cover band. But it was late enough, and we were all grumpy enough, and it was far enough away that we decided not to go back and listen to them, especially since the kids wouldn't appreciate it. (I later checked online, and sure enough, it was them!)

On Tuesday, June 28, we decided to visit the heart of the old town. We started with St. Stephen's Cathedral, which was the first place that I had visited when I stopped in Vienna for just one night on the way home from my Egypt study abroad in 2004. Though the cathedral was under major renovations on the outside, it was still impressive outside and certainly beautiful inside. The kids were extremely well behaved inside the church, and they seemed to recognize that it was a place of worship. Cathedrals have actually been some of their favorite places to visit, rather than castles as I would have anticipated. After St. Stephen's, we just wandered around on the streets of the old town, looking at shops and discovering whatever we happened to discover. We played around next to a fountain for some time and then headed home for Rachel to do her homework and for all of us to eat lunch and take naps. After lunch, we went in a slightly different direction to see the Vienna Opera House on the way to the butterfly house and the Albertina Museum. The kids loved the butterfly house despite it being excruciatingly hot and muggy inside. An imposing building next to the butterfly house caught my eye while we were eating our snacks in front of it, so Amelia and I went to explore and discover what it was. As it turned out, we walked the wrong direction to go around it because it was attached to the palace. We had to walk through half the palace grounds to get around in that direction while we could have just walked the length of the building in the other direction. On the front we discovered that it was the Austrian National Library, and although I wanted to explore that more, Amelia was starting to have a panic attack because of being away from her mommy and she really wanted to be with mommy, not with me. So again I was in a bad mood as we hurried back to meet up with the rest of the family again. The kids were less impressed with the Albertina than with the butterfly house, but they behaved well enough, and Rachel certainly was thrilled to get to show them all the original Monets, van Goghs, Picassos, Seurats, Signacs, Cezannes, Matisses, Munches, etc.

After the Albertina, we relaxed in the park behind the Austrian National Library near a statue of Mozart, and let the kids run free in the grass. Afterward we all walked to the front of the library to get pictures with a man who was blowing giant bubbles. On the façade of the library were statues of warriors from various eras in Austria's past, and I would love to find a website or a book that has detailed images of each of them as well as information about their costumes, but so far I've had no luck in finding one. I think we had dinner that day at the main Rosenberger restaurant, which is an Austrian national chain that has sort of road houses around the whole country. They had a “buy one adult meal get the kids meal free” deal, so it was probably the cheapest meal we ate out on our entire trip. In fact, it was so good and so affordable that we went back again later this week.

On the morning of the 29th, we went back to the same area of town, Museumsquartier, but approached it via a different subway station so that we could walk past the Rathaus and the parliament building on the way to the natural history museum. That museum turned out to be a disappointment for the kids because it didn't really have a lot of stuff set up in a way the kids would enjoy, or even be able to see; it seems like much more of a museum for adults. For example, the rock collections said practically nothing about the rocks, just had a whole bunch of them on display in display cases that were horizontal and were too high for Amelia and Lydia to look at on their own. In that area I tried to get Elliott to be interested at least by handing him our camera and telling him to take pictures of his favorite stones. Lydia was in no mood to be doing any museums at all, so I had to watch her and slip her snacks when the guards weren’t looking. And Amelia wanted to be in different rooms all the time so Rachel had to watch her and everybody was getting hungry and grumpy and generally it was, as I said, a bust. However the kids did really enjoy seeing a moving animatronic dinosaur, and that's all they really remember from the museum. We went home and had some lunch and then came back to the city again. Once back in the city for the afternoon we walked past the Spanish riding school that we had heard so much about at Schonbrunn Palace, and Amelia was excited to make a connection with Princess Sisi who rode there so much. We also visited the Imperial Treasury (the Kaiserliche Schatzkammer), which I insisted on, having visited there when I was coming back from Egypt. To my dismay, the kids were not interested at all after we got through the first room or two because they just couldn't imagine that looking at intricately woven robes and jewel encrusted everything would be interesting. So I took all of them out of the museum myself without going through much of it. I entertained them with a fountain while Rachel finished looking at everything in a more measured pace so that she could really enjoy it. I let each of the kids choose a postcard to buy for one euro in the gift shop. Elliott chose one that had Charlemagne's crown on it, and Amelia chose one that had a picture of princess Sisi. I saw a few things that I would like to buy for Rachel, but I wanted to make sure I got the one she liked most, so when she came out I sent herback in to look at the things that I thought she would like, and she settled on a pair of earrings that looked like the stars that Sisi wore in her hair in the painting Amelia liked most. That evening we ate at another restaurant there in town. I just can't really remember anything about it.

The next day was 30 June. We took the metro all the way north to a bus stop and then took a bus up into the hills near Vienna in an area called Kahlenberg. There was a great overlook that allowed us to look down the city, and then we hiked on some trails through the green, green woods. We had our lunch at the top of some stairs above a fountain near where we got off the bus, and I really enjoyed the mustard we had purchased at Aldi during our first shopping trip there, a brand of Dijon mustard called Reine de Dijon. After our usual afternoon siesta to allow Rachel to do her homework and let the kids get some naps, we went out and enjoyed the Parks across the river again.

On July 1, for Elliott’s birthday, we went to the Prater, a sort of permanent state fair with free entry, and you just pay for each of the rides individually. As part of our tourist booklet, we received a bunch of coupons for it, and we were able to find enough rides that allowed small kids to go on them to satisfy the kids. Everybody had a great time. In the evening, we thawed a frozen cake from the grocery store and celebrated Elliott’s birthday.

On the morning of July second, we just visited our usual parks some more (Rudolfsplatz and Hermann-Gmeiner Park) and then in the afternoon we went back to Schonbrunn to see the kindermuseum there. What we thought was the only room turned out to be just the first room, which was a good thing because the older two kids didn't enjoy anything in the room. It had a bunch of costumes that you could wear to dress up like Sisi, which we thought Amelia would love, but she was too shy around all the other people there, and she didn't want anyone to see her in costumes. Elliott thought the whole idea of dressing up was ridiculous. The second area was a long hallway that got Elliott interested with a sort of scavenger hunt, but Amelia still wasn't enjoying it. Fortunately the third area was a room with some stairs the kids could explore under and the sort of museum mascot was a ghost who lived in the castle under those stairs. That room also had a slide and several models of the palace and churches in town that the kids could make out of blocks. The next few rooms were also interesting as they showed what life was like as a royal child. The kids especially enjoyed the kitchen room, the toy room, and the dining room, which had so much fake plastic food and fancy looking table settings that they were able to create a whole feast for us on the big dining table there. The room also included a model of Schonbrunn Palace made entirely of chocolate.

The next day was the Sabbath again, but this time it was raining. Since we were stuck inside the apartment that morning, I used the box from Elliott’s birthday cake to make a paper doll set of the apartment with our whole family in it. It was a big hit with the kids. We also decided to take the train to church this time, which was a much better decision. We bought tickets the night before so that we wouldn't be spending money on the Sabbath, and then we just activated them each time we got onto the trains for the rest of our stay in Vienna. Elliott and Amelia really enjoyed church, and Lydia surprised us both Sabbaths by doing just great in nursery with strangers.

We traveled on Monday, the Fourth of July, but not until we had another chance to visit our favorite parks across the river, especially the one with the zip line. Then we got on the train and headed to Salzburg. This time I went ahead in advance to reserve our seats on the train for a fee, and I made sure that we got in a car that had air conditioning. It was a much more pleasant trip.

Salzburg

We arrived in Salzburg In the early afternoon. We had a kind of tricky time finding the apartment because the numbering system on the road we were supposed to find it on was a bit confusing. Also there were no street signs visible from the front of the train station, despite the fact that we were told to look for them by the person whose apartment we were looking for. So it took us about a half an hour to find the place even though it was only a five-minute walk from the station. We weren’t technically allowed to check in until something like 5 o'clock or 3 o'clock, but we were allowed to drop off our luggage. So we climbed 4 flights of stairs to leave it there while the house keeper finished cleaning up the place. Then we went out to find a park (Lehener park) we had seen on the map. We walked along the river and crossed it at the first bridge we found, and then walked back up again until we found the park. As it turned out, there was a footbridge crossing the river almost exactly parallel with our house and the park, so we didn’t have to walk down and up again, but live and learn. The park had a large, heavy turntable about 2 feet off the ground; a long, narrow, floppy rubber mat strung between two walls with a roller in the middle of it that let me jump on one side and bounce the kids up on the other side, which they loved; a climbing structure made of tree trunks sort of haphazardly bolted together; and a little tiny stream trickling down a hill. We all had fun playing and enjoyed looking up into the hills around Salzburg and guessing where Maria's convent might've been and various other things from “The Sound of Music.” Rachel had the kids watch it before we left, and all three sat through the whole thing. We were amazed that they even paid attention to it. But as Rachel predicted, it made our visit to Salzburg much more meaningful to them. We shopped and had dinner at home that evening. The apartment was on the fourth floor of a building above a pizza shop just south of a very seedy part of town. It was also right next door to a jazz club (Jazzit:Musik:club) with a dinner garden out back, so the smoke from the diners always wafted up through our windows. But we could hardly bear to close the windows because the apartment got so hot thanks to the sun shining straight through the enormous windows on the west side of our apartment every evening. There were no curtains to speak of, only sheer drapes, so every evening I had a routine of putting up blankets and pillow cases and sheets over the windows in an effort to darken the room a bit. We planned to go to Lake Konigsee the day after we arrived, so Rachel and I spent most of the evening after the kids went to bed planning a trip and doublechecking all the details to make sure we would be successful getting there on time and having a full day.

On Tuesday early morning, we got a direct bus from the bus station for nearly an hour to get to Königssee. We had to cross into Germany a little bit because the lake is actually in Germany and not in Austria. The little town around Königssee was hardly more than a long street of shops for tourists, but it is a delightful place to explore. The lake itself is emerald green and pristine. We couldn't have chosen a hotter day, although we had anticipated it being much cooler up in the mountains and brought all our jackets along. The shores along the lake are mostly inaccessible because the mountain runs straight down into the lake. So the tour boats that we rode were almost the only things out in the water. The vistas changed gradually as we puttered along the long glacial lake, and every time I turned around the view behind me was more beautiful than the one in front of me! So it was quite a beautiful trip. At one point the boat stopped and turned off its electric motor so that a man with a trumpet could play a traditional song one line at a time so that we could hear the crystal clear echo come back two seconds later. I think it was probably Rachel's favorite day of the whole trip. We got tickets that stopped only halfway up the lake, where a little chapel (St. Bartholomew’s) and a small collection of restored houses was. We knew that we could go all the way to the end of the lake and do some hiking to see a beautiful waterfall about an hour past the landing, but we knew the kids could never make it. Even the small 15 minute hike that we attempted with them from the church up to Eisgraben river resulted in so much whining and moaning and complaining that we almost turned back several times. However, we were glad that we took them up for that little hike because we found a small waterfall next to a tiny chapel, and the kids threw lots of rocks into the river off of the bridge to cross at that point. After we returned to the dock, we stopped at a shop and I let each of the kids pick one locally quarried semi-precious gemstone for one euro each. I spent a little extra time choosing mine, because I couldn't decide between getting a quartz or an amethyst until I found one that was half and half! So I bought that. Elliott chose a bluish green stone almost the color of the lake, while Lydia chose a very darkly translucent reddish purple stone, and Amelia chose a nice piece of rose quartz. Rachel declined to buy anything. We stopped at a McDonald's to buy some Big Macs because there were coupons for a “buy one get one free” deal on the back of our boat tickets. Unfortunately we took so long at the McDonald's that we missed the bus we wanted to take to the Salzbergwerk Berchtesgaden salt mine. That meant we had to spend another hour in that little tourist trap waiting for the next bus to come. But we made it in time to go through the whole mine, and that was another excellent highlight of our trip. We all got to wear full-body jumpsuits, ride a straddle train through tunnels just barely big enough for the train to go through, ride down wooden straddle slides even deeper Into the mine, see a little grotto of rose-colored salt lit from behind by lights, cross a subterranean lake in a little skiff while watching a light show, hear about a brass pump that worked for 150 years without breaking down even once, and learn all about how they extract salt by flooding the salt chambers with water and pumping out the brine. Somewhere along the journey, Elliott lost his blue rock and was devastated. But we had so little time left to get the bus back to Königssee to catch our bus home that we couldn't spare any time to look for it. They wouldn't have let us go back into the mine anyway. Just before 9 o'clock, a storm reached Salzburg and it quickly turned into hail. Almost every night in Salzburg, Rachel did some laundry in the bathtub, because the person who rented us the apartment to us wouldn't let us use the washer and dryer in it. This was probably Rachel's least favorite aspect of the trip.

On the morning of the 6th, we took the kids to the Mirabell and explored the gardens behind it where the “Do re mi” scene was recorded for 'The Sound of Music.” While Rachel and the kids found a playground to enjoy behind those gardens, I went across the river to explore the old town. I had it in my head that I could find a replacement rock for Elliott’s lost blue rock and I wanted to surprise him with it. So I figured I could go to the natural history museum gift shop. Unfortunately, I went to the cathedral museum thinking that the natural history museum would be right next to it. But it turned out to be much further north in the old town, so I really had to hurry in order to get that stone and get back to the park by the time that I had promised to return. Still, I got the stone and brought it back to Elliott, and he was very pleased. It was delightful to walk through the old town and see the old buildings, some of which had stood since the 13th century. Unfortunately, there was a lot of road construction going on, so what I imagine would have been quiet sounds of chatter and Mozart drifting down the alleyways was replaced by the oh-so-familiar sound of jackhammers and the scent of diesel exhaust. Back at the Mirabell Palace with the family, we went inside to explore a little bit and found a marble performance room where Mozart often performed. It had wonderful acoustics. We all sing a song or two together there before we left. Outside the Mirabell was an old gnarled tree that was still alive despite laying almost on its side, and the kids really wanted to climb on that. I was tired and grumpy and wanted to go home, but we let them stay and play for a bit longer there. I can't remember what we did that afternoon, probably just some grocery shopping and playing at a park. But in the evening I encouraged Rachel to go explore the old city by herself, which she did and enjoyed. Having had the experience of exploring foreign cities on my own a little bit during college and on my mission, I knew that it had a much different feeling from trying to explore the cities with kids, and I wanted her to experience that. Our trip would have been so different if we had gone without kids! But of course we could not have afforded it before we had children. We will just have to make sure we can go back to Europe after our kids move out and before we get so old that we can't enjoy it anymore.

The next day (the 7th) was our trip to the zoo south of Salzburg at Schloss Hellbrunn, which had gardens that included the gazebo from the sound of music and a series of trick fountains that we saw on a guided tour. The zoo was unlike any zoo we have been to before, because it was built right against a cliff, and the animals were given much more space to roam up and down the cliff and through different natural habitats. We especially liked eating our lunch next to the rhinoceros enclosure with a giant mountain in the background. If it weren't for the fence separating us from them, we would have felt like we were sitting somewhere in Africa because there was no other signs of civilization around, and the rhinoceroses had such a natural and large area to roam in. After the zoo, Rachel took the kids to a very nice playground on the palace grounds that was open to the public, as were most of the grounds around the palace. Meanwhile, I walked up the mountain to the folklore museum where I was really interested to discover that the traditional Austrian outfit of lederhosen and a leather vest for the men and that dirndl outfit for the women, while certainly traditional, was actually declared the official Austrian garb in response to the Nazi invasion. It was their way of expressing their Austrian nationality, and the government even published a guide of how people should dress if they wanted to declare that they were Austrian. After seeing that museum, I also walked across the top of the hill and discovered a stone theatre that had been carved right out of the sandstone of the mountain. It was beautiful, and I would love to see a performance staged there. Then I walked around and down the back of the mountain along a tree-lined path back to the playground. Before going inside the palace, we visited the trick fountains, which were full of water-animated little statues, unexpected spits of water that would squirt you when you weren't looking, and generally all sorts of things that made Elliott hate it because he didn't want to be wet. Fortunately Amelia and Lydia were better sports about it, and I think everyone was having a good time by the end. The schloss itself was okay, though a bit underwhelming compared to others we had visited. We took the bus home again, had dinner at home, and then planned our next day while the kids resisted going to bed.

The next day (July 8th) started with a visit to Mozart's birth house, outside of which there was a little park that we played in with the kids. Lydia was simply intolerable in that museum, so that we barely made it through the first room before they she was fighting and whining and complaining so much that I had to just take her out. I walked quickly through the rest of the museum and saw what I wanted to so that Rachel could enjoy the museum at her own pace, since she was the one who really wanted to go in the first place. I told her I would take the kids to the toy museum and she could find us there. The toy museum was nice, with all the Brio trains the kids could imagine, as well as several large train sets behind glass that they could activate. There were also lots of other toys that they weren't allowed to touch, but there was one nice area that had a bunch of stuffed animals they could play with where they could buy and sell plastic food with each other. Since the kids’ behavior was a bit much for me that morning, and since I was convinced that they would never be able to enjoy the big museum at the cathedral in the afternoon, instead I bought a ticket for each of them and Rachel to cruise on the river in a boat after they had played for some time in the pyramid park behind the Mirabell gardens. While they went on the boat trip, I visited the museum. This worked out very well. We met that evening at a restaurant in the Mozartplatz and had a delicious albeit expensive dinner there. Amelia was smitten with the tiny flower that was used to garnish her meal, so she wore it behind her ear all the way home.

I should mention at this point that Lydia could barely put together two words when we left Doha. However, throughout the trip, her language developed a lot, and she started putting together longer sentences. She was extremely excited every time she saw a dog or a boat. Her word for dog was (and still is) “gog”, which is unfortunately exactly the same as her word for “God.” This comes up every time she wants us to sing her favorite children's hymn, I am a child of God, which she calls “Iagog.” She would often lay down when tired and say “Iagog” in a cute sing-songy voice to request that we sing it to her. Other favorites included the itsy bitsy spider, “I am Like a Star Shining Brightly”, and “Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam.” She also started saying “Oopees!” instead of oopsie, which I’ll admit I can’t get enough of.

Both Rachel and I got to see all we wanted of the cathedral and the attached museums because the next morning (July 9) I took the kids so she could go. I took the kids down to Untersberg Mountain where we rode the cable cars up to the top. It was very cold and windy up there, but beautiful. We had a great view, and the kids were thrilled to be in the clouds that kept scudding through and spritzing rain and mist on us. In the cable car, Lydia kept saying “boat! boat! boat! boat!” We also finally found our first edelweiss there at the top of the mountain. In the afternoon we took the funicular up to the Hohensalzburg fortress which provided a fantastic view of the city. We were amazed by the amount of buildings up there at the fortress; it was practically a whole other town. We were a bit disappointed by the museum, though, because it focused all on modern war and very little on any ancient or medieval armor or lifestyles.

On Sunday morning, we visited all the churches we could around the old town, because we knew that services at the LDS chapel would be only in German. So we had our own little service in our apartment, authorized by our bishop, and the kids behaved very very well in all the churches that we visited. One of my favorite stops that morning was the Benedictine monastery which had a functioning waterwheel attached to the bakery so that they could grind flour. There had been an exhibit on the Benedictine monks at the museum the previous day, and I was fascinated by them so much that for the next week I read all I could about what modern life is like in monasteries and convents. The St. Blasius church was, in my opinion, the prettiest church on the outside all covered in ivy, while the Holy Trinity church was nicest on the inside. Just after visiting that church, we were treated to music from a marching band all dressed in traditional Austrian clothes. We happened to be in town for a week-long festival of folk music, so everywhere we walked we saw people playing folk music and singing songs and all dressed in their traditional costumes. We couldn't have timed it better! It made me want to move to Austria and join one of their men's choirs. We finished our morning at the Pyramid Park behind the Mirabelle again, because the kids loved it so much. It had two fun giant swings, a 3-story-high slide, and plenty of other things to entertain the little ones. We spent the afternoon in our apartment and visiting the Lehener park across the river. In the evening, we made all our final preparations for the next day's big trip to Neuschwanstein. But what's that they always say about the best-laid plans of mice and men?

The plan was to take the train from Salzburg to Füssen and leave all our luggage in the train station there so that we could pick it up after our tour and continue on to Nurnberg. But when we got almost to Füssen the train stopped and we were told to get off. The conductor informed us that the Füssen train station was closed and the rest of the journey would be completed by bus. So we took the bus to the station, and just as they said it was closed and completely under renovation, entirely nonfunctional, and completely fenced off. So Rachel and the kids had lunch in a park right by the train station while I wandered off with all of our luggage to find a hotel that might let us keep our luggage there. Fortunately, the first one I came to allowed us to store it there for a nominal fee, and we were able to catch the bus up to Hohenschwangau at the time we originally planned. When we arrived there it was, like most of our trip, unpleasantly hot and sunny. So Rachel and the kids found what shade they could while I picked up our reserved tickets. We had to pick them up two hours before the first part of our tour, which I find utterly absurd, especially since it meant we needed to entertain the kids for two hours before we got to do anything that we actually want to do. And then, according to our tickets, we would not even make it into Neuschwanstein castle until 4:30, even though we picked up the tickets at 11. So we hiked up the hill to Hohenschwangau castle (because they won't let you tour Neuschwanstein unless you have toured Hohenschwangau, and they won't let you tour Neuschwanstein first). Hohenschwangau was painted a gaudy yellow color, so it didn't look very attractive on the outside, but inside it truly was beautiful. The intricacy of the woodwork, the incredibly detailed statuary, the gorgeous paintings, and the perfectly preserved state of it all made me glad we had visited after all. Afterward we had another gap of two hours before we could tour Neuschwanstein, so we walked the long way down from Hohenschwangau, had a bathroom break down in that little town, and then forked out the cash to take the bus up above Neuschwanstein. From there we walked another 10 minutes down to the castle. Neuschwanstein was everything we hoped it would be: truly a fairytale castle as it didn't really represent any reality of how people lived in the Middle Ages, just a more expensive version of Disney, that is, someone's romanticized idea of what a castle should look like. Still, it was beautiful, and it was very interesting to see how a wealthy person lived at the end of the 19th century even if we weren't seeing how someone lived in the Middle Ages. The kids were very well behaved in both castles, and I think they enjoyed it as much as Rachel and I did. The fact that we were slipping them candy as we went through to keep them satisfied just as we did at Alhambra in a previous year probably had something to do that! We again took the long way down and then had to jostle our way onto a totally packed bus as it was the last bus going back to the train station for that evening. We had gotten back to Hohenschwangau just barely in time to escape a torrential downpour. Fortunately we all made it under the shelter soon enough for the kids and Rachel to stay dry, but I had to venture out in it to buy us our bratwurst dinner. We caught the bus back to the train station past some stereotypical half-timbered German and Austrian homes, and then we ate the bratwurst on the train. The bus that took us to the ersatz train station was packed, and the train itself was packed, at least until we made the transition past a certain point where a lot of people got off and we went on the rest of our way to Nürnberg, with the kids watching movies the whole way instead of falling asleep. We arrived very late at night, or perhaps early in the morning. Amelia was in full shutdown disaster mode screaming that she was tired and she couldn’t walk another step without peeing herself as we walked through a very dreary, dirty, and unattractive part of town just outside the train station to the A&O hostel/hotel where we had our reservation (she made it to the bathroom, by the way). We settled into a very cramped room and then the kids woke up early the next morning and we had a bit of a slow start to our first day there in Nurnberg.

By the time we left Salzburg, I was pretty much done with the whole vacation emotionally. I had told Rachel as much, and I'm sure the kids could tell by the number of times I had lost my temper. When my first impression of Nürnberg was a place that looked a lot like Cleveland, I didn't have high hopes for the city, so Rachel suggested that we cut short our stay in Nürnberg and go spend some extra time with my parents instead. When I sent them an e-mail asking if that would be okay, Mom told me we could come right away if we wanted to. We discussed it and decided to stay for two more days, but that we would check out a few days earlier than planned to go to Frankfurt.

We were entitled to an all you can eat buffet breakfast each morning we were there, which was nice, and there was a little play area for the kids there as long as we were eating. The kids enjoyed that, and we enjoyed all you can eat food, which we did each morning as late as we could so that it would last the kids until lunchtime. The hotel/hostel itself was much closer to the hostel end of the hotel/hostel spectrum, as we were there the same time as two large school groups for teenagers who liked to stay up late at night and play football in the hallway. There was very little air conditioning, and it was extremely hot, so we had difficulty going to bed and staying asleep at night with all the sounds coming in through the open window.

On Google Maps, we could see that there was a large park nearby just south of the Pegnitz river (the Wöhrder Wiese) and north of our hotel by about a kilometer, but we couldn't tell if it had any playground equipment. So we decided to visit it in the morning. It turned out to have a very nice little playground for the kids right across the fields from a surprisingly high ropes course playground that Elliott was very interested in. He was extremely brave and allowed me to help him up to the 15-foot high nest-like net at the end of it. That afternoon and evening we went shopping and bought some cheap food on our way back to our hotel room where we had dinner. Then I took the kids on a walk just to get them out of the hotel, and we ended up spending the evening at a toy store in the mall that had a LEGO table they could build on. On the way home, Amelia had another bathroom emergency and we had to stop in an Indian restaurant so she could go. Since she went in the women’s restroom, I couldn’t go in to help her, and she couldn’t make the water turn on to wash her hands, so she had another meltdown. I ended up carrying her over my shoulder like a sack of potatos just to get her home.

On the 13th, we went directly to Nürnberg Cathedral, which was unfortunately not very impressive in the way of stained-glass because of the war, but was still very beautiful. We also happens to be there when the organist was practicing, so we got to hear the excellent acoustics of it. We then stopped at the mall again to see what the LEGO prices were because we thought we might get some stuff for the kids’ birthdays and Christmas while we were there. They had the biggest LEGO section we had ever seen, plus a whole section of Sylvania Family toys that Amelia was immediately enamored with. We decided not to buy anything at that store though, because we figured we'd be able to find anything in Frankfurt that we could see there. That turned out to be the right choice because we found the set we wanted for Elliot at a lower price in Frankfurt than they had in Nürnberg. We had planned to walk through the old city after lunch, but the kids were grumpy and we knew they wouldn't be able to tolerate that much walking, so Rachel took them to the park, and I decided to walk the suggested route that all the tourist signs had indicated would show us the best parts of the old city on the way to the castle. As soon as I left Rachel and the kids, it started to rain, not just a little rain, but a full downpour. It didn't let up until I got home over 2 hours later. But I was determined to see something of the city despite the rain, so I walked for a full two hours in the driving rain seeing everything I could, and I walked that whole tourist route. It finally stopped raining on my way back down the hill toward the hotel, but by that time I was so cold that I couldn't stop my teeth chattering the entire way. One of the neatest unexpected discoveries on my route actually came when I went a little bit off of the route to see the city wall. A portion of the wall that went over the river had been converted into a college dormitory, but I didn't realize it until I was inside the building trying to use it as a covered bridge to get across the river. I can't imagine a cooler dormitory to live in! I saw the St. Sebaldus church; the street that miraculously escaped a bombing during World War II so that the original houses were still standing and were still in good repair there; the home of Albrecht Durer; and the truly imposing and unbelievably thick-walled castle at the top of the hill. That evening we ate dinner in the hotel, and then I took Elliott down to the lobby so that he could watch the trolleys go by while I read a book. It was while watching those trolleys that he came up with an allegory for life, saying that everyone's life is like a train, and each car on the train has the number of the year of that person's life like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Each seat on the train is a memorable day from that year, etc. And he just came up with all this off the top of his head while watching the trolleys go by. It was delightful to hear. The next morning we went back to the train station to catch the ICE train to Frankfurt. The kids were disappointed that it wasn't actually made out of ice. But it certainly was fast, and we enjoyed the scenery on the trip.

My parents were waiting for us when we arrived around 11:00. Mom took Rachel and the kids to lunch and to walk around a shopping mall, while Dad and I took the luggage back to the apartment. He bought me a delicious doner for lunch, and I helped him create a PowerPoint presentation in which he used popular music from the 50s, 60s, and 70s to teach gospel principles. I also taught him to get photos from his iPhone onto his computer. I think Rachel and I used that evening to go shopping at the toy store in Frankfurt where we bought a LEGO train for Elliott and some little toys for Lydia's birthday party. Mom and Dad entertained the kids in the apartment for us. The next morning we all went to the park nearby that had the zip line (Ami Spielsplatz). Then we came home for lunch and spent the rest of the day playing with LEGOs and relaxing in the apartment on Porthstrasse.

On the 16th, we drove what should have been two hours but ended up being a four-hour drive to Rothenberg ob der Tauber, thanks to all the holiday traffic. Rothenberg seems like the kind of place that I would have loved to take Rachel on our honeymoon. It could be a self-contained vacation all in itself. It’s a quaint, beautiful old town surrounded by the oldest city wall in Germany probably, which they have restored to the point that you can walk around the entire city on the wall. After seeing many of the sights together, Rachel and I asked Mom and Dad if we could go walking on our own while they watch the kids at the playground down in the ditch where the city’s moat used to be. They agreed, and Rachel and I walked around holding hands for an hour enjoying the relative peace and tranquility of having no children around. The drive home was mercifully only two hours.

Sunday morning we all played with LEGOs, and then the kids went on a walk with mom to the graveyard until lunchtime. Afterward, we all headed to church. After church we had dinner prepared by mom, but when her friend Elsi came (the same Elsi Mom had described as the “German Aunt Shirley), she brought an entire meal herself, consisting of potato dumplings called Klosesse and a heavy meat gravy. It was absolutely delicious, and I like to think I saved Mom some troubled by eating her share of the food.

On the 18th, Rachael and I got up early and traveled to Baden-Baden while mom took the kids to a refugee camp to play with the children there. Baden-Baden was a little confusing at first, because the train station is actually outside the part of town that everyone wants to see, and quite far from where we wanted to hike in the Black Forest outside town. So we did a lot of extra walking, even considering the fact that we had planned to walk the whole day. We saw the beautiful and very touristy town itself and then made our way up into the hills to walk along he Panoramaweg. We had read online that this path had been voted the very most beautiful one in all of Germany, so we thought we should give it a try, at least as much of the 35 km as we could. Just when we finally found the trail itself, we decided we should eat lunch, so we sat at the top of a beautiful meadow and enjoyed the cool breeze in the shade while we ate our sandwiches. Our best discovery of the day was the Altes Schloss (high castle) that had been inhabited at one point by St. Bernhard. Rachel said that castle alone made the entire trip worth it, and I had to agree. I'm sure there are other castles throughout Europe that are ruined in the same very romantic way as that one, but we hadn't seen them, and this was the only one that we were able to visit without a tour guide and just imagine for ourselves what it would have been like to live there. We then took a long hike around the sandstone cliffs in that area, which is a protected national park called Battertfelsen beim Schloß Hohenbaden, and then headed north on the Panoramaweg trail until we ran back into town. At that point Rachel was done walking so we had a snack at the St. Bernard church. Then we walked back down into the heart of town for an early dinner at a café and caught the bus back to the train station. The train got us home in time to put the kids to bed.

The next morning I was exhausted, and I just needed a break from all touristy stuff, so I stayed in the apartment with Lydia while everybody else went on a bike ride. That afternoon we all played LEGO some more and relaxed.

We spent the 20th at Lochmuhle amusement park, a family-run park just right for kids our kids' age. Most of the rides were operated not by park staff but by the riders themselves, pushing a start button, pulling a rope or lever to activate the ride, or even powering it themselves. I was amazed at how much of a thrillseeker Elliot and Amelia were that day, basically trying every ride they were allowed to by the weight and height restrictions. In the evening we had a joint birthday party for Elliott and Lydia using an ice cream cake that I had purchased as the convenient store downstairs in my parents’ apartment building.

Starting on the 21st, Mom watched the kids while Rachel, Dad and I drove to the Netherlands to visit our friends the Garretts in Moordrecht; attend the Hague temple; tour the MC Escher museum; ride our bikes on a beautiful path between Gouda (pronounced khowda) and Schoonhoven to see some windmills, and generally relax without kids. It was probably my favorite part of the whole trip. The Garretts were incredibly hospitable to us, having waited up late to share their dinner with us, and putting a whole vase of probably two dozen full-grown sunflowers fresh cut to welcome us. They were excellent hosts. Then we drove to France where we stayed overnight in a really cheap hotel before visiting to refugee camps, one where we only visited the warehouse and dropped off a food shipment, and the other where we tried to find someone that Dad needed to talk to to complete the purchase of a log splitter. I really enjoyed going to the grocery store with a wad of cash to buy all the fresh produce that the warehouse kitchen had requested, which was a small amount in the big picture when you consider that the kitchen at that warehouse feeds a thousand people every day. We also spent some time there checking the quality of donated bags, backpacks, and suitcases, and sorting them according to size. The entire community of volunteers that have been built up in the warehouse was quite an amazing thing to behold, as they have developed all sorts of social contracts and rules that made working together easier when you have new people coming and going all the time. The amount of goodwill between people there was pretty high, but given the chaos of the situation, it would have to be if they wanted to get anything done. Again, we got back home on the 23rd in time to put the kids to bed, which was getting harder and harder for Lydia as our trip went on. Many nights, she didn't go to bed until at least 10 or 11, and only after enormous amounts of screaming. As I said before, I was already to be done, and I think Lydia was telling us that she was ready, too.

On the 24th, we all went walking in the cemetery nearby, the same one that we had visited the first time we met my parents in Frankfurt two years ago, and Lydia was wearing the very same jacket that Amelia had worn that first time.

Pied in the face for charity

2015-04-06T19:47:00.001+03:00

Our school celebrates Pi Day annually by devoting one of our half days to a bunch of circle-themed activities that help students learn their geometry. We also collect money for charity by allowing students to pay for the privilege of hitting a teacher in the face with a plate full of shaving cream (we've been advised not to use actual pie or whipped cream because wasting food is frowned upon in Islam). I came in second place this year with about QR 1950 ($535) donated in my name. It probably helped that I sent a reminder to parents the day before about students' required absence make-ups. :) Here's some video of me getting pied:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0E1o0VZy2iNSXZPSUFaelV2bC03NFd2blFKVGllYzlCbkJB/view?usp=sharing

Easter dust storm

2015-04-03T20:14:00.001+03:00

Our kids went to an Easter egg hunt last week hosted by some friends from work. As they did last year, they got lots of people to pitch in and set up the whole park with eggs. The kids loved it... or so I'm told. I went to my monthly RPG night instead!
Wednesday night Rachel woke me up and said the air in the kids' rooms was dusty when she went in to feed Little L. Then when she looked outside, she couldn't even see the mosque across the street! The biggest sand/dust storm in recent history had just hit, and our house's construction is so poor that it was hard to breathe in the kids' rooms. So we moved them into our room for the night and shut our door, which kept most of the dust out (our room is on the leeward side of the house). It was still bad enough in the morning that school was cancelled for kids (though not for staff...?). Unfortunately, every non-vertical surface in our house is still coated in the dust, so we have a long day of cleaning ahead of us tomorrow.
Here was the view to the mosque in the morning:

Yemen conflict

2015-04-03T20:06:00.003+03:00

During church last week, we heard Qatari air force planes taking off to go perform airstrikes against rebels in Yemen. The president of the Yemen is Sunni (one division of Islam espoused by most in the gulf countries, and the majority in most other places), and the rebels are Shiites (another division of Islam mainly followed in Iran, but also in pockets throughout the world). A coalition of mostly Arab states (Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Jordan, Morocco, Sudan, Pakistan, and Egypt) supported with intelligence from the US, have been dropping bombs on Houthi / ISIS / Al Qaeda fighters throughout Yemen this week.
We aren't nervous about the situation, but we are vigilant. We haven't been given any warnings from the US embassy here, and they're usually pretty trigger happy with warnings about safety concerns. But we do keep a close eye on regional situations like this, and we have emergency plans in place if the threat spreads.

Back pain is back pain, no matter where you are in the world

2015-04-03T20:05:00.004+03:00

I threw out my back the other day. I was trying to get Lydia's car seat out of the car the day after I had spent my whole evening carrying the other children over my shoulder and running around the playground with them. We were playing prison escape. I was the prison keeper, and the kids would escape from the play structure that I kept them in as a prison and I would make a show of getting irritated with them when they escaped, chasing them in a grumpy voice, calling them back to the prison. Of course they loved it. Then when I tried to take out Lydia's car seat, I was also tense and been sitting all day, so that probably didn't help it.
So for the last two afternoons and evenings I've been laying on the couch trying not to move much. I don't think that it's a herniated disc. There's none of the nerve pain that I think comes with a herniated disc. And with the heating pad and some ibuprofen I've regained some range of motion. But it doesn't feel like the pain has decreased significantly. Rachel has been amazing, doing most of the work that the two of us would normally do, since I can do anything that doesn't involve carrying or bending over. Unfortunately, that means that she is the one who ends up hauling Lydia around all afternoon and evening when I normally would be the one doing that.
And here are two more recent pictures: one of them is me standing in front of a science expiration museum in Orlando Florida, where I was sent to attend a training. The other is Lydia asleep on my lap during church one day.

Blog change to Google+

2015-04-03T20:04:00.003+03:00

Okay, so I haven't posted on my blog since January, but I've been thinking of starting up again. Because Google limits the number of people who can read my blog if it's private, I've decided to move it to Google+ so that I can keep adding readers while keeping it private.
I know many of you only followed my blog because you were getting ready to move to Doha. If you're no longer interested in following, it won't hurt my feelings. Just let me know, and I'll remove you from the list of who receives updates.
I also know a lot of you only follow it to see our cute kids, so here's something for you:

Wow, blog much?

2015-01-27T21:17:00.001+03:00

Apparently I don't. Not anymore, anyway. As predicted, things have become just life as usual here, so I rarely feel the need to share them with anybody. Still, many of you follow this blog not because we're in the Middle East, but because you care about our family, and you'd appreciate an update now and then.
We're all good. There's your update! What, you want pictures, too?
Well, instead of bothering with a whole bunch of photos in a blog post, why don't I just share the links to our albums for the last few months? If you're curious about anything you see, comment on it or email me, and I'll explain.

April 2014
May 2014
June 2014
July 2014 - Lydia is born!
August 2014
September 2014
October 2014
November 2014
December 2014
January 2015 - Um, possibly this won't be fully uploaded by the time you see this post, so give it a day or so... we have a very slow upload speed here.

Today's talk

2014-06-13T19:54:00.003+03:00

Here's the talk I gave in church today:

It was a hard lesson to learn that "because I'm the daddy and I said so" or "you shouldn't talk to me that way because I'm your dad" are not convincing arguments to kids under the age of 5. I don't know that they're particularly effective after the age of 5, either, but I haven't had the chance to try it yet! Paying attention to the spirit when I tried using that approach with my kids, I noticed that, in addition to not working, it didn't feel right. D&C 121:41-44 kept popping into my mind afterward:
"No power or influence can or ought to be maintained by virtue of the priesthood, only by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned; By kindness, and pure knowledge, which shall greatly enlarge the soul without hypocrisy, and without guile—
Reproving betimes with sharpness, when moved upon by the Holy Ghost; and then showing forth afterwards an increase of love toward him whom thou hast reproved, lest he esteem thee to be his enemy; That he may know that thy faithfulness is stronger than the cords of death."
During my second year as a school counselor, I wanted to put the first two verses up on my wall to remind me of what helps people change themselves. To make it school appropriate, I replaced "the priesthood" with "a job title", so that it read, "No power or influence can or ought to be maintained by virtue of a job title, only by persuasion, by long-suffering..." etc. And though I'd made that sign for school use, it also helped me at home. Someone carrying the title of "Father" only deserves respect if he is emulating the original Father, our Father in Heaven. If he abuses the authority that comes with the title of "Father" or abuses those in his care, he cannot expect to be respected either by his children or by the Lord.

Just over two weeks ago, I was asked to speak on "Honoring the Priesthood in the Family as a Father". Then the very next Friday, Brother Ricker spoke on what sounded to me like almost the same topic, so I've tried hard to cover some different ground in my talk (that means please don't go to sleep). Let's establish our terms:
1) First, Priesthood. In April's General Conference, Elder Oaks said, "priesthood is the power of God delegated to man to act for the salvation of the human family." It's a familiar definition. But it's also very different from the way most of the world uses the word. Outside the LDS Church, priesthood means "the people who have been ordained as priests, deacons, bishops, elders, etc." Sometimes this usage creeps into LDS culture and we talk about "the priesthood" when we actually mean "the men of the church." But if we accept Elder Oaks' definition, then this usage is incorrect. "Priesthood" only refers to the God's authority, not to those who hold it.
2) Next, what does "to honor" mean? Sometimes we use the word to mean "to praise" or "to say nice things about". But my sister-in-law pointed out that this definition doesn't make any sense in this context. She wrote in an email, "Priesthood... is a thing, not a person.... It is inappropriate to ask people to honor a thing. It is appropriate to ask people to honor a person, or deity. To ask people to honor fallen heroes. To honor parents makes sense (although that can become problematic for those whose parents are abusive). But it is wrong to ask people to honor a thing." (emphasis mine)
But there are times when we say we honor a thing and it does make sense, as when we say we honor an obligation, a contract, a treaty, or agreement. In this sense, to honor means "to fulfill, to observe, to keep, to obey, to heed, to follow, to carry out, to discharge, to implement, to execute, to put into effect; to keep to, to abide by, to adhere to, to comply with, to conform to, to be true to, to live up to" (Google's dictionary). So is this what we mean when we say we "honor the priesthood"? Let's try substituting some of those meanings back into the topic I was given: "To fulfill the power of God in the family as a father..." That doesn't seem quite right. What about, "To live up to the power of God in the family as a father?" We're getting warmer. "To implement the power of God in the family as a father?" Now that makes more sense. "To put the power of god into effect in the family as a father." That makes a lot of sense, but it sure isn't what my brain first thinks of when I hear "honoring the priesthood."
This is a lot of semantic wrangling to try to make sense of the topic, "Honoring the Priesthood in the Family as a Father", when what we really mean by it is something more like: "Living worthy of the trust God has given you by making you the primary bearer of the priesthood in your home" or "Keeping the covenant you made when you accepted the priesthood power and started a family." We also probably mean, "Helping your family appreciate the value of having the priesthood power in their lives." It is in this way that I think fathers can "honor the priesthood in the family:" they honor Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ by behaving as much like them as possible, and they honor their priesthood covenant by applying the priesthood power in the same way.

That's why D&C 121 is really the key to priesthood power. It says it's impossible and wrong to truly help improve peoples lives simply by saying, "I've got the priesthood, so do what I say." The priesthood only works when the priesthood holder acts like God, the source of that power. Thus: "by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned; By kindness, and pure knowledge, which shall greatly enlarge the soul without hypocrisy, and without guile. Reproving betimes with sharpness, when moved upon by the Holy Ghost; and then showing forth afterwards an increase of love toward him whom thou hast reproved, lest he esteem thee to be his enemy; That he may know that thy faithfulness is stronger than the cords of death." While people can act in these ways without the power of the priesthood and get good results, the added benefit of acting this way under the aegis of priesthood authority makes miracles happen. As Elder Oaks said in April,"since the scriptures state that “all other authorities [and] offices in the church are appendages to this [Melchizedek] priesthood” (D&C 107:5), all that is done under the direction of those priesthood keys is done with priesthood authority." This means everyone in the church (and for the purpose of my talk, fathers specifically) can make miracles happen by the same power that Jesus used if they are doing as He would do. Though I don't yet apply these attributes consistently, I have personally felt the spirit and seen God's power bless my family when I and other men in my family have managed to apply them. I'd like to share some of these experiences related to each of the attributes listed to help you envision how you a father might honor the priesthood in his family.

1) First, by persuasion - Elliott is old enough to start understanding logic, so I can often explain the reasons to him for what I ask him to do. When he was younger, though, he just didn't understand much, and Amelia is just barely getting there. When we recently explained to Elliott why we won't allow him to attend or host sleepovers, opting for letting him stay late but come home when the supervising adults go to bed, he didn't like it much at first, but he grudgingly admitted it made sense and didn't complain about it anymore. If I had just said, "You can't go because I said so," our relationship would have been damaged, and his desire for that forbidden thing would have increased. Explaining the reasons for decisions whenever possible is much more likely to foster respect than just saying, "Because I'm dad."
2) Second, by long-suffering. I had to learn to differentiate between my needs and my wants in the things I request of my kids. Do I really need my daughter to go away while I do the dishes? Or do I just want her to go away so I can have some quiet time alone? Just how much whining can I really take? Do I need her to stop whining, or do I just really, really want her to be quiet? In the end, I have to admit that it's a want. And when I'm willing to let myself suffer through the less pleasant behaviors of my children without demanding to get my way right away, I find that the spirit whispers suggestions to me like, "go play blocks with her for three minutes until she's totally absorbed in building a castle, then come back and finish the dishes. Time lost: 3 minutes. Relief from whining: priceless!"
3) Third, by gentleness and meekness. Jesus exemplified meekness throughout his life. He allowed himself to be smitten, spat upon, bruised, broken, crushed, and crucified because he knew it was the only way to accomplish the Father's will. My grandfather on my mom's side married my grandmother knowing that she had a chronic illness and pain. The constant suffering she endured made it hard for her to be in a good mood a lot of the time, particularly in her later years when I was more aware of their relationship. Grandma wanted things to be done in a certain way, and if Grandpa didn't manage to meet her expectations, she let him know it. But I can only remember a few times where he even spoke back to her to defend himself, and never in sharp, defensive tones, but always in a calm, placating tone. Being human, he probably snapped now and then when we weren't around, but I never witnessed it. I asked him about it once when we were sitting in his car outside grandma's nursing home. "Don't you get tired of it, Grandpa? Didn't you ever want to tell her to stop treating you this way?" He said something to the effect of: "Yes, I've felt bad about some of the things she has said, but I know she hurts so badly all the time, and I love her. Marriages don't work by both people giving 50% and meeting in the middle. The only way marriages have a chance to work is by both people giving 100%, and then it might just be enough." Grandpa's meekness and gentleness set an example I'm still struggling to emulate.
4) Fourth, by love unfeigned - "Pure religion and undefiled is this: to visit the sick and the afflicted, etc." My dad served (serves! he's still at it) people all the time, and when I was a teenager he took me with him as his home teaching companion. I don't remember fighting him, though I do remember whining and complaining while I helped him strip ancient linoleum off floors, fix cars in freezing rain, re-roof a widow's house, etc. But he loved me enough to put up with all that discomfort and the added irritation of having me there because he loved these other people, and he loved me, and he wanted to teach me what love unfeigned looks like.

5) Fifth, By kindness - I got the inspiration to write encouraging notes to Elliott, then hide them in his backpack or send them to his iPad reading app mailbox telling him I love him and I'm proud of him. Maybe once a month I get that prompting. And that's in addition to telling him verbally and spending lots of time with him, a luxury I planned to have by choosing to be a school counselor, which mostly lets me be home whenever he is. And Amelia can't read yet, so I can just point to any old scribble and say it's a love note to her!
6) Sixth, by pure knowledge, which shall greatly enlarge the soul without hypocrisy, and without guile. My parents and siblings set a great example for me of teaching their kids about EVERYTHING. "Teach ye diligently and my grace shall attend you, that you may be instructed more perfectly in theory, in principle, in doctrine, in the law of the gospel, in all things that pertain unto the kingdom of God, that are expedient for you to understand; Of things both in heaven and in the earth, and under the earth; things which have been, things which are, things which must shortly come to pass; things which are at home, things which are abroad; the wars and the perplexities of the nations, and the judgments which are on the land; and a knowledge also of countries and of kingdoms— That ye may be prepared in all things when I shall send you again to magnify the calling whereunto I have called you, and the mission with which I have commissioned you." (D&C 88:78-80) Telling your kids half-truths to manipulate them into obedience is not the Lord's way. The priesthood should be used to empower, not to control or manipulate. And knowledge truly is power. If you make your parenting decisions based on truth, then teaching your kids more truth can only help them to support you. Teach them how to anchor themselves by maintaining righteous family traditions like Family Home Evening, daily family prayer, daily family and personal scripture study, repentance, and forgiveness. Teach them what the Spirit feels like so it can pour pure knowledge into their souls. Teach them to attend the temple, where the purest knowledge is taught. Teach them to seek education throughout their lives.

7) Seventh, "Reproving betimes with sharpness, when moved upon by the Holy Ghost; and then showing forth afterwards an increase of love toward him whom thou hast reproved, lest he esteem thee to be his enemy; That he may know that thy faithfulness is stronger than the cords of death." You've probably heard or read how "reproving betimes with sharpness" translates into modern English as something like "offering specific correction early before a misbehavior becomes a habit" (see Elder D. Todd Christopherson's "As Many as I Love, I Rebuke and Chasten"). I like that interpretation. Correction, no matter how gently given, can feel sharp to our painfully self-conscious children, so we must be careful to do it appropriately, but we must do it. "President Boyd K. Packer has observed that when a person in a position to correct another fails to do so, he is thinking of himself." I don't really have a good story about this. Most of the times my father reproved me were when I was small enough not to remember. So I guess he did correct me early, and he didn't have to do much correcting after that. He certainly got the "showing forth afterwards increase of love" part right when he took me on campouts, helped me make Christmas presents for my siblings, wrestled with me, laughed at TV shows with me, etc.

I'm sure I could talk for another 20 minutes about this, but I hope you've got enough to chew on for now. Fathers honor the priesthood in the family by emulating Jesus Christ. I know that if you'll do this, the priesthood power will flow to each member of your family and bless their lives.

How I Got Here

2014-05-09T21:59:00.000+03:00

The exact moment when I decided to study Arabic and live in the middle east was toward the end of my 2-year mission in India. I read Alma chapters 17 to 26 from the Book of Mormon at the time, and I really saw the potential for an Arab King Lamoni someday. I wanted to be Ammon (delusions of grandeur much?), or at least one of the other sons of Mosiah.
When I got home, I lost my courage a bit, and instead of majoring in Arabic, I tried majoring in anthropology during the spring term of 2003, with just a minor in Arabic. That got boring really fast, and on July 8, I attended this devotional in the DeJong Concert Hall at the HFAC on BYU campus. It was like he was speaking directly to me, so I switched to Arabic. I spent the next two months studying Arabic close to 8 hours a day and living with a Palestinian roommate, then I moved to Egypt for 4 months to study Arabic more. When I got back, I felt like I'd made a lot of progress, but I also felt like I was plateauing in my Arabic ability, and occasionally wondering what on earth I was going to do for my career.
On Mar 2, 2004, I attended this devotional at the Marriott Center. Again, the speaker directly addressed my concerns and I felt peace even though I didn't have answers to my questions.
A few lessons from this:
1) if you attend one of the BYUs, make it a habit to attend or at least read the devotional addresses. I always came away edified and/or educated, and in these two cases, they literally changed the course of my life.
2) God is aware of you and he has a plan for you. It may take you somewhere scary or uncomfortable, but it's worth it. He'll make it work out in the end.
3) keep a journal. I confirmed all the details of this account by going back in my journals and comparing what I wrote to the online speech archives from BYU. My kids and their kids and so on for generations will know why I did what I did because I wrote about it.

Madrid Day 2 and coming home - Apr 11 - 12

2014-04-14T20:50:00.003+03:00

Friday was our temple day. I went first for an endowment session and left the kids with Rachel at the hotel so I could find the fastest way to and from the temple. It was beautiful inside, with a real homage to the architecture of the area in the celestial room's ceiling. Though I got there just ten minutes too late for the 8:00 session, I did catch the 9:00. When it ended at 11:00, I raced back to the hotel and we all jumped in the car because I found out there would be no 1:00 session for Rachel to attend, so she would have to be there no later than 11:40 in order to make the noon session. We made it just in time, and I dropped her right at the foot of the stairs leading onto the temple grounds, then went to park the car while she went inside. I found out afterward from her that she got inside only to discover she didn't have any way to pay to rent the temple clothes, and she couldn't find me when she came back outside because I had to park more than a block away. Fortunately, the temple shares its grounds with the Madrid Missionary Training Center, so a pair of kind sister missionaries loaned Rachel 5 euros so she could rent the temple clothing.
Meanwhile, Miss A had fallen asleep, so Big E and I made and shared lunch at the car to let her sleep. When she woke up, we all walked to the temple and played on its grounds and ate more lunch and snacks until Rachel came. Big E spent most of his time looking at fountains, running races with himself, and doing stretches he learned in PE at school. Miss A played with the fountains and climbed on all the benches and flower boxes she could find. I took advantage of the free wifi of the visitors' center to plan the rest of our day. Unfortunately, it didn't occur to me to plan our route to the airport in the morning, but more on that later.

After Rachel came out, we got pictures together, then returned to the hotel to change.

We went back downtown and had a great time at the Royal Palace, where I told them stories about Princess Isabella that were half made-up and half based on the plaques explaining each room. They wouldn't let us take photos inside there either, so look it up online. However, I did sneak one photo of Amelia bumping down the stairs on her bum, because she insisted on going down three whole flights of stairs this way. All the people who passed us smiled at her and said "Princess" in various languages.

Then we splurged a little bit on dinner. Rachel got garlic prawns and I got mixed paella. Big E got some potato and ham croquettes that he didn't like, and Miss A chowed on bread. Both of them finished before we got our food, so they got pretty annoyed at how long we were taking, and that put a damper on our ability to enjoy dinner. On the metro, Big E announced that he really needed to pee again, which we'd forgotten to ask before we left the restaurant. We still had 5 stops to go, but with only 2 left, it looked like an accident was imminent. I proposed that we get off the train and stick one of Amelia's diapers on him long enough to avert catastrophe, so that's what we did. At first he didn't like the idea and was worried he'd actually be wetting his pants, but I convinced him to just go for it. As he did, he kind of smiled and laughed at how silly it was, so I was glad he was taking it well.

Once at the hotel, we packed everything so we could leave for the airport by 3:30. We woke ourselves up at 2:45 to shower and get ready, then put the kids in the car at 3:30. On the way to the airport, we had to make a last-second decision to go one way to terminal 4 or the other way to the airport. Since we hadn't had wifi access, we didn't check in, and so we had no way of knowing which terminal to go to. I took the terminal 4 route and it ended up taking us through a 2 km long tunnel way off to the north. But we got to the airport and returned our rental keys, so we thought we were fine. Little did we know that terminal 4 isn't even connected to the rest of the airport! We took 20 minutes just trying to find a way inside, then they told us to wait another 20 minutes for the bus back to terminal 1 which was labeled "Departures". Both of the other terminals were labeled "Arrivals". So we went to terminal 1 and wandered along the circumference of the terminal finding no Alitalia desks. Finally we asked someone at a different airline, and they told us Alitalia was at terminal 2! So we walked for another 15 minutes to find a line about a mile long at the Alitalia desk. Things didn't look good for getting to the gate without running. Then when we got to the front, we were informed that they had to put us on standby because the flight was overbooked. We stood at that desk for a full hour until past our boarding time, but they finally found us seats on the flight, and the agent personally escorted us through security all the way to the gate. We traded seats with someone else so we could at least have three of our four seats together, and Miss A slept on my lap all the way to Rome. In Rome, we had no trouble with our connection, so we made it to Abu Dhabi with just under an hour until our flight was scheduled to leave for Doha. We rushed through the airport and got three boarding passes at the transfer desk printed because for some reason Alitalia's Spain desk could only print Miss A's. Finally we reached the gate and discovered that the flight schedule had been changed to leave a full hour later, putting us in Doha at 10 instead of 9. The flight to Doha went fine, and we managed to finagle our way through the e-gate despite the fact that the guard said our kids couldn't come through (everyone at the Ministry of the Interior desk that sold us the e-gate service had assured us that they could, so we didn't back down--but that's the way it is here: it all depends on who's working on the day you finally go to obtain the specific service you need). Then our luggage came in a pretty timely fashion except our stroller, which got lost somewhere and is begin delivered directly to our house tonight. That's one nice thing that we wouldn't have gotten
from most airports in the US!
Now we are home, and Big E made it through his first day back at school without any major meltdowns despite having gone to bed at 11:30 the night before and woken up this morning at 5:30. And Miss A unexpectedly got to see and play with her best friend, Ellie, at the store when Rachel took her shopping today, so her whole week of missing Ellie ended happily.

We had a great time! Hopefully this satisfies our wanderlust until December, because we're stuck here until then!

Travelling to Madrid, and Madrid Day 1 - Apr 10

2014-04-14T20:46:00.003+03:00

We cooked our breakfast, packed, cleaned the apartment, and left Granada by 10:00. We had considered driving up into the Sierra Nevadas to let the kids play in the snow given their obsession with "Frozen", but it would add an hour to our trip, and we already knew we would be cutting it close. So we drove all the way through to Madrid just stopping once for diesel and bathrooms and once just long enough to put Rachel in the back seat with the kids so she could hold the iPad while they watched the-movie-that-must-not-be-named AGAIN. (Sorry, it's now 13 April and those songs are still running through my head every waking moment of the day, so my memories of it are not as pleasant as the experience was at the time). The kids did fine and managed to get some sleep along the way. Our hotel was a Holiday Inn Express located near the airport, so we had no trouble finding it or getting checked in.
We did, however, have some trouble getting to the metro station the receptionist had tried to direct us to, so we were starting to stress about the time by the time we made it to Madrid to activate our tourist Madrid Card and get to the Prado. The metro stop took us to Gran Via, then I took us the wrong direction to Plaza del Sol because I thought that was Plaza Mayor. So we ended up backtracking a bit and taking a different route to get to Plaza Mayor where we got our cards, then walked all the way to the Prado. We stopped for dinner at 5:40 so no one would die of starvation or complaining, and Rachel went ahead to get some alone time in the museum without the kids around 6:00. I helped them finish dinner and we played on a grassy hill across from the ticket office for about an hour.

Then I took them in and told them lots of Bible stories and Greek myths while we wandered aimlessly through the museum. I may have also added some Ana stories in there for good measure. We met Rachel again at the entrance at 8:00, played some more, then made our way to the hotel.

We got lost again on the way, so we arrived there grumpy and tired, and the kids didn't want to sleep, but we made it to bed eventually.

Granada day 2 - Apr 8

2014-04-14T19:53:00.000+03:00

Steve writing:
Today we left our apartment around 10:00 to go to the Science Park. We drove, but given how difficult it is to get into and out of the under-reconstruction store we're parking in, we decided we weren't going to drive again here if we can help it. No point in scratching the car somewhere else!
The science park was fun, but we probably left too late in the day for it without packing anything more than just some fish-shaped salty crackers for the kids and no lunch for us. So even though we didn't see all the park had to offer, we left around 12:30 having seen most of the stuff the kids would enjoy. That's where I first spotted the purple wisteria vines/trees that I became enamored of and pointed out every time we passed them for the rest of the trip!

At home by 1:00, we had our normal at-home lunch of PB+J sandwiches with apples, carrots, yogurt, and milk. Then we started a load of laundry (hooray for an apartment with a washing machine!) and headed out for a walking tour of Al Bayazin. We walked up a river at the base of the slope beneath the Alhambra, then up a looooooong steep hill that curved up away from the Alhambra onto the hill next to it. This led to the San Nicolas church that was not nearly as impressive as the view of Alhambra from the plaza in front of it. There we enjoyed listening to some buskers sing and play flamenco music while we snacked on cheese and crackers. This time I'd brought along some chocolatey snacks to give to the kids every time we paused our walk either to find directions or rest, and they were much less irritated / irritating as a result. We saw lots of beautiful houses and flowers and churches and alleys on our walk, and got all the exercise we need for about a week.

On the way home we purchased some Piononos, a dessert I was introduced to by our guide the last time I was here. Imagine cinnamon rolls soaked to sogginess in light syrup, then put flan on top. That's kind of like a Pionono. We ate them after our at-home dinner of spaghetti with peas and some sauce called tomatas fritas, that tasted a bit like marinara sauce but was much creamier (we couldn't find spaghetti sauce at El Corte Ingles when we went shopping our first night here). Just before we started eating, our host showed up to fix the internet, and (of course) it worked without him doing anything after I'd tried 50 times to do the exact same steps I followed when I started to show him the problem. Oh, well. At least we could use the internet finally. Then after dinner, we ate the Piononos, and I did the dishes while Rachel journaled about what we did the day before. We rested a bit, then headed out once again for a small but excellent Flamenco show. The kids did a great job (helped along by another box of those chocolate snacks), so we got to enjoy the show the whole time without feeling self-conscious about their behavior. Elliott spent the first song and a half either hiding in a corner behind my backpack or burying his face in my shirt, terrified for some reason. But when the female dancer came out, he began to watch and get interested as the show got louder and faster-paced. Amelia spent the female dancer's entire performance absolutely transfixed. Rachel had told her a lady was going to come out in a pretty dress and dance, and I don't think Amelia blinked through the entire performance! I figured the kids would fall asleep because the show didn't even start until after their bedtime, but they both watched and even started twiddling their fingers and clapping along during the male dancer's performance and the encores. The guy's feet were like machine guns! It was pretty great.

Then we came home, put the kids to bed, went to bed ourselves so we could have all our energy for the Alhambra the next day! And just before we fell asleep, Rachel said, "Hey Steve! Put your hand here!" And I felt baby girl #2 kick for the first time. A great way to end the day. Maybe she was inspired by the flamenco show. :)

Malaga, Nerja, and arriving in Granada (Day 1) - Apr 7

2014-04-14T19:43:00.001+03:00

Rachel writing:
Monday we left Seville around 8:30 am and drove to Malaga. The drive was beautiful, rolling hills, olive orchards, vineyards, and wheat fields covered both sides of the highway the whole way to Malaga. So green and pretty. The mountains were beautiful and were even partly culitvated up the side. The kids watched "Frozen" for the 5th time since we left Doha. Miss A and Big E play out parts of the movie. Miss A is always Ana and Big E is always Elsa at her insistence.
Malaga was nice. We stopped at a beautiful park and let the kids play at the playground. There were parrots flying around among the trees. Very tropical feeling with all the beautiful plants around. The sun was hot and if we had brought swim suites, it would have been nice go for a swim, but as we found out in Nerja, (and we weren't surprised) the water was very cold. We ate lunch at a little restaurant at the beach.

Steve writing:
It was called Chiringuito Sicsu. I tried to order some paella, but the waiter told me it wouldn't be ready until 2:00. So I said, "What do you have?"
"Todo," he said. Everything.
"Okaaaay... how about fried octopus?"
"Mmmmm, no," he said and laughed. "This is a cheese shop, is it not?" I wanted to say.
Finally I got some swordfish steak with salad. Amelia practiced her ABC's, which she always sings as "A-B-C-D-F-G-E, next time won't you sing at me?" And I told her and Elliott an Ana story in which Ana fights a sand monster, and another in which she and Elsa vanquish a sunscreen stealing villainous octopus under the sea.

Rachel writing:
Then we drove to Nerja. Some of the drive wasn't planned as we missed an exit, but it was very scenic along the coast. The drive a bit farther inland was up higher than the road that went right along the coast and provided much more scenic views.
Nerja was great. It was very touristy, but fun. The outlook over the Med. Sea [called the Balcon de Europa] was beautiful. We got some treats at a little shop and then Steve managed to get the stroller down the very deep, steps to the beach. You can't be within sight of the Med Sea and not at least touch it. The water was so cold I wouldn't have gotten in more than my toes had I brought a swim suit. I just touched it with my hand. But there were people swimming in it.

Then we drove to Granada. The mountains on the way to Granada reminded me of the Rocky Mountains. Not as lush as the mountains on the way to Malaga.
We found the host of the place we stayed at through aribnb without trouble. He had a parking garage only for this apartment. It's an absolute nightmare to get into, but it's much cheaper than other parking and across the narrow street (think small European streets were one car can fit with out much trouble, but there isn't any more room, and some streets are too narrow for a car to go through at all.) The apartment is small but modern and cute. There is a loft with a full sized bed. Under the loft is a couch with folds into a bed. There is a small kitchenette and a washing machine. The street outside isn't much to look at, but the apartment is nice.

After we settle everything with the host (he showed us around the apartment and told us what we had available to us that he'd purchased just for us. He's the best host we've had using airbnb. He had a tourist map and showed us were we were in relation to the major sites. He also has a tourist book about Granada in Spanish and one in English for those who stay here. So nice!) We went to El Corte Ingles, which is a large department store with multiple levels. One of those levels is a grocery store. We bought food for all our meals and by the time we got home it was at least 7:30 and the kids didn't get to bed until 9. They handled the late night and late dinner (with lots of snacks before hand) quite well.

Seville Day 2 (with Cordoba, too!) - Apr 6

2014-04-14T19:29:00.002+03:00

After a breakfast of yogurt with fresh strawberries and granola bars crumbled into it (Elliott's and my idea), we left the apartment for the Mezquita in Cordoba around 9:00 in a hurry since it would close at 11:00 and we didn't know what time the box office closed. When we got there, I dropped Elliott and Rachel together by the Roman bridge so they could walk up the hill straight to the Mezquita and I could go park while they got tickets. Amelia was asleep in the back seat. I found parking not too far away, so I caught up with them just after Rachel bought the tickets. I'd been there before, so I just suggested she take the kids in for free without me while I refreshed my memory of where to find the other good sites nearby in order to save us wandering time later.

I enjoyed walking around the familiar places and finding the Calleja de las Flores to show to Rachel. It's a narrow whitewashed alleyway lined cieling to floor on both sides with wall-hanging pots of flowers, and the view out from it points directly at the Mezquita's bell tower.

When the family came out of the Mezquita at 11:30, I took them there, then through the narrow streets of shops back down to the Plaza del Triomfo and its big arch, then onto the Roman bridge, along the river past the waterwheel, and back inland when we hit the Alcazar.

That road led us to where I'd parked, so we ate snacks of cheese and apples and pita in the car as we drove back to Seville. We enjoyed the beautiful green rolling fields, the yellow wildflowers, the white little farmhouses and small cities, what looked like a giant solar collector power plant with a giant glowing tower at the center of a circle of solar panels/reflectors with beams of light shooting up from them toward the tower, and the ubiquitous giant black bull billboards that don't advertise anything anymore. It was nice to just drive at a leisurely pace for once after several days of being in a hurry and always late. We listened to Primary songs and Rachel prepared a lesson for the kids since we discovered that our internet connection at the apartment wasn't fast enough to watch General Conference. We caught up with some talks later in the week as we drove, though, or before bed.
At home, we finished lunch, then spent two hours at the Cathedral where we saw the tomb of Christopher Colombus, lots of jewel-encrusted reliquaries, and the spot where Magellan and his men prayed to give thanks for a safe return after circumnavigating the earth.

We marvelled at the amount of work it must have taken to build the cathedral with its enormous stone pillars and arches, its intricate carvings in both wood and stone, its gold and silver and brass everythings in the dozens of chapels along the sides, etc.
At the apartment again in the evening, we scraped together a dinner from ingredients our host had left behind, saying we could use what we liked. So multicolored rotini noodles + laughing cow cheese + milk + fresh minced garlic + salt + pepper sort of = a nice pasta alfredo with a side of steamed carrots. Then Rachel gave us a lesson on eternal families and talked about the temple we'd be visiting in Madrid later this week. I bathed the kids while Rachel did the dishes by hand, then she read to them and put them to bed while I planned where we should stop in Malaga and Nerja on our drive to Granada.

Seville Day 1 - Apr 5

2014-04-14T19:23:00.001+03:00

We got out of the apartment around 10:30 Saturday morning to discover that the incredibly tight parallel parking space was so tight, in fact, that the person parked behind us apparently had no choice but to put a six-inch-long scratch in the bumper of our brand new rental car. At this point, I was so tired of being irritated with everything that I told myself I wasn't going to let any more setbacks ruin my enjoyment of the trip and we'd deal with it when we returned it.
I did have the fortune of figuring out how to make my phone use GPS and a downloaded map of Seville to get around, so we didn't get lost anymore. We found our way through some pretty gardens and tiny alleyways filled with the sound of live guitar music from buskers. Rachel said that was her favorite part of the day. We made it easily to the cathedral and the Alcazar just five minutes away from our apartment, so we were glad we'd chosen it.

Because they were just opening, the lines were really long, so we decided to go wander pretty picturesque streets and see the big gardens further south in the city. Everywhere we went, flowers were budding and blooming and the scent of orange blossoms filled the air. It was perfect weather after the morning chill wore off. Elliott kept pointing out all the fountains as we went, and Amelia kept pointing out all the dogs, so we told them to keep track of how many they saw all day. That was an inspired instruction, because every time they started getting tired and bored, we'd just point out another fountain or dog, and they'd forget how tired they were! By the end of the day, I think Elliott had counted 35 fountains for himself and kindly kept track of Amelia's 8 dogs for her, too.
On the way to the park, we passed through the former tobacco factory and current Seville Polytechnic college where we saw a giant roman battle set up with Knights figures. Elliott was duly impressed. At the park, Rachel and Amelia posed with some fainting maiden statue, then we found a fun playground where a birthday party was going on.

As soon as they saw us, one of the moms invited us to join them. She was married to an American, and he and I got to talking over pizza and Fanta while the kids ate and played. He told me about some lesser-known sites to see and advised us to go just after 2:00 to avoid the lines at the Alcazar and the cathedral. Rachel was terribly uncomfortable with me accepting their invitation, but I thought it would be more rude not to, and in the end they helped us so much that I was glad we did. Several of the probably 10-year-old girls the party was composed of took to asking me lots of questions in Spanish, which I did my best to answer as I pushed Elliott and eventually several of them around on a merry-go-round shaped like a ring instead of a big plate. It's one of my favorite pieces of playground equipment I've ever seen!

We left the party and strolled over to the Plaza de España, an incredibly huge and beautiful plaza with every surface covered in brightly colored ceramic tile. The kids enjoyed dancing to some music and watching people row boats through the canal that surrounded the plaza. I enjoyed being able to hold Rachel's hand and kiss in public after the more conservative rules of Qatar!

On our way to lunch, we stopped at the site our new friend at the birthday party had directed us to. It was a hotel called Las Casas de la Juderia that we'd passed several times the night before without a second glance. But our friend told us the little-known fact that you could explore the hotel, which is actually an entire old neighborhood with its alleys open to the sky and all its old patios and houses preserved as hotel rooms! It also had a vast subterranean level that was fun to explore. I think Elliott found about seven of his fountains while we were in there.

Next we crossed the street to the restaurant where I'd asked for help the night before, and we bought lunch from them to say thanks. Rachel had some croquetitas and the kids split a ham sandwich (two slices of lunch meat and a slice of American cheese on plain white bread for 4.50 euros? Really?) Then we stopped back at our apartment so I could hit my head again on the lantern hanging in the entry way and so everybody could use the bathroom.
Just as our friend from the park had said, there was zero line at the Alcazar by the time we got there around 2:30, because that's when everyone else was having lunch. So we got in and spent until 5:00 exploring the extensive gardens including a hedge maze with live peacocks, the replica of several rooms of the Nasrid palace at Alhambra (the part you always see pictures of), and the rest of the extensive palace where the king and queen of Spain still stay whenever they're in Seville.

Unfortunately, we spent so long there that the cathedral closed before we could get inside. So we'll go back and do that later today. I drove over to El Corte Ingles, a shopping mall, to buy us groceries, then we made dinner in the apartment and put the kids to bed. Rachel elected to save seeing some flamenco until we get to Granada, partly because the only ones near to us were so ridiculously expensive compared to prices we'd researched, and partly because we were both completely exhausted. We went to bed as soon as the kids were asleep. Then Elliott woke up in the middle of the night with trouble breathing. He'd been sniffling since we boarded the plane, and he refused to blow his nose, so it all built up in his lungs and he was in a panic. Rachel woke up and was calming him with steam from the shower in the bathroom by the time I finally heard anything and woke up. She got him calmed down and breathing slowly with a wheeze, then I gave him a blessing and slept in a bed with him separate from Amelia so he would be warm and wouldn't cough on her. He was better in the morning.

Getting to Seville - Apr 3 to 4

2014-04-14T06:04:00.002+03:00

Rachel writing:

Few trips go without a hiccup, right? We've seemed to have good luck with our travels since moving to Qatar, especially when I flew by myself with both kids. Today we left for Madrid. Well, I guess it's yesterday now. Time kind of suspends when you travel long distances.

Last week we had to get new Resident ID Cards for Qatar. When you get to the airport, they take a scan of your eyes. The new card has that scan on file. We also had the option of E-Gate, which will let you skip over the long line waiting for passport control and go through a shorter line. We decided to pay for it, though we didn't really discuss it. Not wise, but it was done. Then we heard conflicting reports of whether we can use it with children. We never travel without children. So it would be a waste. But 4 families asked about it when they got their new card and were assured that yes, you can use it with children. But, here, we all know it depends on who you're talking to. PERSON A
Person A will yes, but Person B at the counter won't know what you're talking about.

When we saw the line at the Doha airport to get through passport control, Steve asked a lady if we can use E-Gate with children. She went to ask and said yes. The line was longer than I have ever seen in my whole time traveling, which isn't nearly like some people. It weaved through the dividers they have and out the door and around the room where the check-in counters are. I'm so glad it worked. So much less stress, even though we stood and waited at the gate, which boarded late, I didn't have to worry about getting there in time.

Our flight out of Doha was a bit late, but we didnt' really care as we had a 6 hour layover- yuck. But it wasn't as bad as I anticipated. The airline we flew with to Abu Dhabi gate checks the stroller and doesn't give is back to you when you land. Instead they provide their own strollers for you to borrow. I'm not really a fan of this, but today, I mean last night, it worked out well. The strollers laid bac into a bed and so both kids fell asleep since it was 8 pm by the time we got to Abu Dhabi and later by the time they fell asleep.

This is where the hiccups start. The crew held the plane for some transfer passengers that came in late, so we look off late. It was nice for those people, but bad for us. WE didn't have a long layover in Rome. (Yes we had two layovers over night with kids. We are that crazy.) The kids slept for most of the 6 hour flight. They woke up and watched frozen on the iPad and ate breakfast that was given to us. Then we hit some unfortunate turbulence. Breakfast was cleaned up just as the crew had to prepare for landing, and that is when the turbulence started. Miss A's stomach did not take well to the combination. She kept saying that her mouth hurt. I couldn't think of anything to help her with on that one and we were preparing to land. So we couldn't get up. Miss A also wouldn't stay in her seat. So Steve took her and put her in his lap. That's when she got sick. Mostly on herself, thankfully for Steve. Being the prepared Mom that I try to be, I pulled out bags and wipes and extra clothes and helped Steve and Miss A clean up. Just as we thought she was settled and okay (and in clean clothes...I only brought one set, so I guess not as prepared as I could have been) she throws up again. So she is now wearing Big E's spare shirt, which isn't as big on her as I thought it would be.

As we rush off the plane we have to find a counter to print boarding passes because the lady in Doha said she couldn't do it from there. By the time we get the tickets and run all the way to the counter they told us to go to, we had missed the flight. (I'm sure we were a sight. I'm not dressed the most fashionably with a green dress and tennis shoes and I'm pregnant while running holding Big E's hand trying to keep up with Steve who is holding Miss A.) The lady said one, the gate we were sent to went to Barcelona rather than Madrid and the flight to Madrid left 30 minutes ago. They wouldn't hold it for us, even though that is the exact reason we were late. It was even the same airline. Grrr. The next flight to Madrid was 5 hours later. So we have another, unexpected layover with not enough time to see Rome. Steve suggested it, but I would feel too stressed to try to get around and then have to be back 2-3 hours before departure.

So I took some time to wash out Miss A's clothes as best I could in the bathroom sink. Wet for a while is better than smoldering in throw-up. I hope. I knew I wouldn't be able to stand the smell, through the bag seeping into my back pack. I did get some strange looks. I'd like to see what they'd do in my situation.

Hopefully once we get to Madrid, things will go a bit smoother. We'll have to adjust our plans a bit to see some things we planed on seeing once we got there and now wont' get there in time. But it should work out.

Here's to waiting in Rome for another 4 1/2 hours.

Steve writing:
Once we got to Madrid, we were a little worried that we'd have trouble finding our luggage given all the confusion about our flights. However, we were some of the first people to get ours at the carousel, and all of it was there! So next we went to look for the rental car place in the airport. We found it pretty quickly, but because it was a Friday evening, this branch was closed. It had a sign saying we'd have to walk to one of the other terminals. No problem, right? Except at the Madrid Barajas airport, getting to the other terminals takes about twenty minutes of circumnavigating half the airport, plus going up and down escalators a couple of times. Amelia was starting to lose patience and throw fits, but eventually fell asleep. As we walked, we realized we'd never gone through any sort of passport control when we arrived, so we also worried that we'd missed something.

Finally we found the open branch and asked the guy at the desk about our passports. He said because we'd stopped through Rome and gotten them stamped there, the Schengen treaty then allowed us to visit any country party to the treaty without getting stamped again. So that was a relief. We got a brand-new, never-been-rented VW Tuaron as our rental vehicle and found it easily, then packed everything up and headed for Seville. Amelia woke up even grouchier and screamed for the entire time we were trying to navigate out of Madrid, which is a nerve-wracking enough experience when you're in a rental car and have no idea where you're going except a semi-reliable set of written instructions from Google Maps. She finally calmed down after we distracted her with the iPad. We worried that it would seem like rewarding her behavior, but I think she was so irrational and incoherent at that point that she didn't make any such connection. Elliott, on the other hand, was a champ through everything from the time we left Doha, and only started losing patience with Amelia's screaming about the same time I did. So we thanked him many times for doing such a good job.

Driving was fine once we got going, though the 120 kph speed limit kind of surprised me. I soon learned that was about as negotiable as in the US as people kept passing me, so I joined the flow of traffic and went a little faster. We stopped once for dinner at a little cafe truck stop on the side of the road, conveniently located exactly where Elliott announced he REALLY NEEDED TO GO TO THE BATHROOM RIGHT NOW!!!!! We had some salchichas frescas on bread and tortillas patatas, which turned out not to be potato-based flat tortillas as we thought, but more like an omelette with potatoes and cheese in it. Delicious!

We stopped next for a leg stretch at a truck-stop I'd visited on my last trip with the students I chaperoned, but it was closed. So then we drove on, skipping Cordoba for now because it was so late, and hoping we'd get to Seville by 11 since we'd told our host to expect us after 10.
We reached Seville at about 11:10 PM, then followed the instructions on our Google Maps directions carefully. Upon entering the old city, we promptly got lost. And after more than two hours of squeezing down impossibly tight one-way streets, retracing our route, calling our host with no response, and having the kids alternately wake up screaming and crying, I begged the guys closing down a restaurant cafe to please call her for us using their local phone. They kindly obliged and she came to meet me there, just a three-minute walk from her apartment. She was a little old lady a little shorter than Rachel, and as sweet as could be, but she didn't speak a word of English, so Rachel had to do all the talking. Apparently, she'd delayed her departure to see her ailing sister in Madrid because we were so late. She showed us to her tiny apartment, got us situated, then said she'd be just reading inside the front door until 5:30 or so when she'd go to the train station for a later train. We felt awful for inconveniencing her, but she never gave the slightest sign of annoyance. We felt very obliged to her.

However, I also felt kind of annoyed with her because the address she'd given us was nowhere near her apartment. It wasn't even on the same street. While we'd been trying to trace a 15-turn tortuous route through old Seville, she ended up having us park in an incredibly tight parallel parking space just off a main road on the edge of the old city, and walking three minute through narrow walking-only alleys to her place. We could have been there two hours earlier if we'd known. Anyway, done was done, and we were there.

Granada Day 3 - Apr 9

2014-04-13T20:58:00.002+03:00

Today was Alhambra (Apr 9). We set our alarm for 5:30 AM because we had to catch the bus around 7:00 and be at the gate to pick up Amelia's pass at 8:00, then be at the entrance to the Nasrid palaces at 9:00 sharp. If you miss your entry time, you don't get in! So one of the several times I woke up during the night, I happened to glance at my clock and realized it was 5:32. The alarm hadn't gone off, but I'd woken up just two minutes late! Another tender mercy to help us not be crazy and in a hurry all day. We caught the second bus running up to Alhambra, played in the courtyard at the entrance for about half an hour until the ticket office opened at 8:15, and another 15 minutes for the gate to open, then made our way down to the entrance of the Nasrid palaces and had croissants so the kids wouldn't be hungry during our palace tour.
We were told there would be no strollers allowed inside, so we left ours at the apartment and borrowed a baby carrier instead. At 2 1/2, Amelia is STILL just under the weight limit. That doesn't mean she's easy to carry, particularly when she doesn't want to be carried. However, she stayed pretty content as I fed her chocolate cereal and told her stories about the adventures that the princess of Alhambra had building the castle with the help of bees and fighting a water monster until it got eaten and spit back out by the lions at the lion fountain. Elliott continued his fountain count diligently (today our grand total reached 176!), and valiantly resisted the urge to touch things. It helped a lot that they had a few carved replicas made of all the different materials used in the palace that he could touch all he wanted and see how yucky they got from everybody's finger oils. He also liked the slow but steady stream of chocolate cereal, and almost never complained. Both of them were outstanding, over all.

After getting a photo of us with the church we visited yesterday in the background (to get the other end of the picture we took there of the Alhambra), we stopped for a bathroom break and ended up having lunch, then we went to the Alcazaba next, and climbed to the top of the watch tower. We saw the bullfighting arena at the center of the Palace of Carlos V and skipped the rest of the museums inside in the interest of time, Rachel's strength, and the kids' sanity. Then we saw the Church of Santa Maria de la Alhambra, skipped the Convent of San Francisco, went through the lower and upper gardens on the way to the Generalife, and hit the motherlode of fountains inside it. Finally, we strolled back down through the upper gardens and I made one more round trip around the plateau's whole perimeter to return the baby carrier.

We caught the bus back down to town and let the kids watch "UP" instead of "Frozen" for the (literally) 7th time on this trip while we rested and I caught up on this travelogue.
We decided to visit the Capilla Real where Ferdinand and Isabella are buried, and then the cathedral right next door. These were two sites I wanted to visit on my own when I came last year with the students, but both were closed when I had the chance. They weren't open when we arrived, so Rachel decided to do her souvenir shopping, and we did our best to keep the kids entertained while more and more people showed up to get in a line we didn't realize was forming until we were at the end of it. I was really impressed with the cathedral and with the giant marble monument in the chapel. I was surprised to find out that we could go down some steps and see the actual caskets underneath, too! The kids were pretty tired of wandering around looking at things at this point, so I spent more time making up stories about what we were seeing than I did actually appreciating those things or figuring out what their real history was. Still, it was a lot more fun having the kids satisfied and distracted than having them whine and be bored. They wouldn't let us take photos inside, but here's the entrance.

At the end, we just went home, had some spaghetti for dinner, and then put the kids to bed. Then we made our plans for getting to Madrid the next day and did some preliminary cleaning before our departure the next morning.

"Cats and dogs living together -- mass hysteria!"

2014-03-29T20:43:00.004+03:00

I felt like I was transported to another dimension this morning, because something took me less time in Qatar than it would have in the U.S.!
First some background: Rachel and I decided to trade up our used car for a slightly less-used car, so we spent about a month looking and finally found a nice 2010 Kia Mohave pretty close to our price range. After getting it checked out at a mechanic and test driving it, we decided to buy. Remembering the giant paperwork hassle that it was last time (getting some document typed up in Arabic, waiting in two different lines for more than an hour, etc.), I planned for the worst when I showed up to buy the car from the seller this morning.
Instead, the seller pulled out her iPhone, typed my Qatar ID number into an app (Metrash2 from the ministry of the interior), and transferred registration for the vehicle to me online, then drove me to the traffic office a block away to pick up the newly-printed card. We were done, start to finish, in 15 minutes!
Only in Qatar could you exchange ownership of a car by phone, but still have to wait in two separate lines at the grocery store to buy vegetables.

Baby update and photo dump

2014-03-22T14:56:00.000+03:00

We're at the halfway point for Rachel's third pregnancy, and last week we got to have another ultrasound. The results? It's a girl! She's still a little camera shy, but we got some nice 3-D snapshots to share. She's oriented vertically in these pictures, so her head is at the top, and you can see her arms and hands. Elliott and Amelia are both excited. Elliott thinks we should name her Happy Anniversary because we got the ultrasound done on our 6th anniversary.

And here are links to all our photos and videos for January, February, and March.
I know I haven't been posting much lately, but we'll be going to Spain soon, so you can bet I'll post about that!

Water conservation in Doha

2014-02-25T06:27:00.001+03:00

Sadly, the post title is a bit of an oxymoron. I regularly see people washing the street in front of their house with a hose, or washing their car with a hose that they leave running as they scrub, or just plain leaving a hose running for no apparent reason. Considering that it's illegal to use potable water for any purpose other than drinking, bathing, or washing indoors, and it's rumored to take the energy of 7 gallons of oil to produce one gallon of desalinated water, these are pretty blatant abuses of the system and the environment. But one of the most irritating ones that hit really close to home for me is our neighborhood's automatic water tank cleaning system.
Once a month, each villa in our compound gets a waterfall off its roof as a pump (at least partially) empties its rooftop water tank of between 100 and 200 gallons of potable water. Supposedly this is to prevent buildup of sediment in the tank, which is believable--but also wasteful. So I went on my roof one day while we had our monthly waterfall and found the hose out of which the water was spraying. I put a 30-gallon storage tub under it, and then another, and then another, and I'm sure if I had gotten there just as it started, I could have filled four of them easily. As it was, I still caught some water as it flowed off our roof, and that's when my neighbor drove by and got this shot:

So then I bought 10 meters of hose, a hose connector, and two hose clamps, and now we have the drain hose leading down our house into these tubs, and we can water our garden and wash our car all month with this saved water!

Packing and shipping advice if you're moving to Qatar

2014-02-14T15:47:00.004+03:00

This is mostly from an email exchange Rachel and I had with one of the new recruits coming to my school next year:

What type of items should I ship? Food? Toiletries? Dvd's? Sheets? It would be great to get a list like for summer camp.

Don’t worry about whether you can find most things. I think the only things Rachel hasn’t found are certain ingredients for baking and certain medicines she prefers to the local alternatives. If you’re okay with switching your diet to a more local diet, you can avoid buying the more expensive imported foods. But if you’re going to want your breakfast cereal (or insert other comfort food here) every day, shelling out $8 a box will just be an expense you have to live with unless you want to devote shipping allowance to a whole crate of that. The same sort of goes for toiletries, but it’s easier to find the same brands of toiletries here as in the US without as much increase in price.

Generally, first choose things with sentimental value that you want to have with you instead of in storage. That includes wall art, framed photos, etc. to make your house a home. You might bring certain bedding if you’re particular about sheets or pillows or mattress toppers, but you can buy pretty much anything here. There aren’t libraries, so DVDs might be a good choice, and DVDs purchased here can’t be viewed on DVD players from the US, so don't bring one, but plan to buy a universal-region one here instead. You’ll be able to access any online subscription services (like Netflix, Amazon Streaming, etc.) via VPN with no trouble. If you have kids, bring their favorite toys. You can find most familiar toys here, but they’ll all be full-price. There’s basically no such thing as bargain shopping here.

I eat dairy free and gluten free. Will it be difficult to find special flours?

Not difficult to find necessarily, but probably relatively expensive. You’re probably used to that issue in the US, too, but it’s even more of a price difference here. And many items are not consistently available even if you do find a store that carries them, so buy all you can whenever you see it on the shelf.

What type of items can you ship? What type of items are not allowed?

Pretty much everything that isn’t explosive or corrosive. They said no batteries. Don’t try to bring in pork or alcohol or multiple copies of religious material that they might think you’re using to proselytize. Some people said not to bring even a nativity scene (if you’re Christian), but we know plenty of people who had no trouble with that. You can buy every other kind of Christmas decoration here but those.

How do you ship? UPS? Or airline?

We shipped through a logistics company called Experts Logistics Services. http://www.expertslogistic.com Our HR person will send you a list of other companies people have used. This company's rate was relatively low when if you shipped by boat, but we shipped by air, and it was more expensive than we expected. They calculate the price based on some combination of weight and volume. I’d say ship by air, whatever company you choose. We've been told horror stories of shipping containers being washed off boats by big waves, or plastic items melting in the heat while the container sits in customs for possibly weeks. You’ll make up the cost of shipping by air pretty soon if you live somewhat frugally for a while here, and the peace of mind alone is probably worth the price difference.

Rachel had a few things to add, too:

I do have a few things to add...

Items to ship- If you use chili powder, bring a few with you as that is a spice blend and I haven't found it here. And what is labeled chili powder here is actually dried chilies ground into a powder, not the same. We found that out the hard way. :) But you can find most everything. If there is a specific item you're wondering about, I can see if it's here. But the store near us is good about getting items requested, at least so I've been told by people who have requested things. I haven't done it myself. You can find deodorant, shampoo, toothpaste, in brands that you'll recognize (Herbal Essence, Tresseme, Colgate, Crest, etc), along with others. Be careful with sheets as the bed sizes aren't always the same to the ones at home. I know of some people who brought sheets with them in the size they were told the bed would be and they don't fit. But you'll be provided sheets, and like Steve said, if you don't like the ones in your apt/villa, there are plenty of options to buy different ones.

Gluten Free/Dairy Free- There are a number of dairy free milks here such as soy and sometimes I see Almond milk. And of course, there's plenty of coconut milk. I watch a girl after school who is allergic to dairy and she's doing just fine here.

Shipping company- we shipped by air, not boat. The shipment came about 3-4 weeks after we got here. Our neighbors shipped mostly by boat and they didn't get their shipment until close to Christmas. Air shipment costs more but is quicker, by boat is cheaper but takes much longer.

A Qatari Wedding Party

2014-02-14T15:41:00.001+03:00

My school's assistant principal invited me and some other western guys from work to his nephew's wedding party. The wedding ceremony itself probably happened in the Sharia Court with just a few members of the family present to witness the signing of the marriage contract, without much pomp. So around 7:30 I drove to a gigantic empty field of crushed rock and dust (the native state of most of Qatar's wildlands) where 4 separate wedding parties were being held. Each party had a big sign announcing the family name of the groom in front of a greeting area of about a quarter acre of persian rugs with upholstered chairs facing inward around the perimeter, along with flood lights. The smell of burning incense was strong. This was in front of the enormous white tent (about the size of a soccer field, and two stories high) with a transparent plastic front and chandeliers hanging from the top. Inside, a queue led directly to the groom and his receiving line. The bride and her invited guests were elsewhere at an invitation-only party at a hotel that I assume was something like this. But this party, like most grooms' parties in Qatar, was open to anyone who felt like coming in, as long as they were dressed in traditional Qatari dress or at least semi-formal western dress (slacks and a button-up shirt, plus nice shoes and maybe a tie or jacket). The tent, like the outside greeting area, had persian rugs with upholstered chairs around the entire perimeter. For every few chairs, there was a coffee table with dates, nuts, tissues, and water on it. Live musicians provided entertainment and a chance for anyone interested to come dance (someone else's video) with a sword in hand. The singers (all men) faced one another in two parallel lines about 20 feet apart, with a circle of drummers in the middle. They sang songs of battle and glory in Arabic. Party guests grabbed a sword from a pile and stepped in rhythm slowly around the circle hoisting or shaking or twisting or bobbing the sword, each in his own unique style. A crane camera recorded their performance while the rest of a full camera crew recorded the receiving line and fed it to a projector that showed the view from alternating cameras on screen near the entrance. After greeting the groom, guests usually mingled and found other friends, then made their rounds along the perimeter, touching noses or kissing foreheads (for especially honored friends). Around 8:30, everyone rushed to the adjacent tent, perpendicular and connected to the first, where 80 round banquet tables sat laden with roasted goats on trays of saffron rice with white raisins and boiled eggs, surrounded by small bowls of salad, pitas, and hummus, as well as sodas and bottles of water. Seating was a free-for-all, almost like musical chairs when the music stops, with only the groom's table--with its roasted camel--off limits to most visitors. At each table, the person of highest social standing or most closely connected to the groom ripped off hunks of meat with his bare hands and distributed them to the other guests, who helped themselves to the rest of the food and ate just as often with the silverware as with their right hands.

Before entering the eating area, I talked with the performers. They were from Saudi Arabia. The only thing they asked me about America is whether we keep falcons as they do!

It was a great night, and I'm very grateful to my host for inviting me. Now that I know I could go into any wedding party here and receive the same treatment, I think I might go out driving on weekend evenings all dressed up more often! I didn't take any pictures, but this post from a stranger has some that look just like what I saw. And here is an interesting Al Jazeera article with commentary on the current state of Qatari wedding traditions.