We're on a Trip, not a Vacation!

Let  me count the many ways! Having first gone to Japan for our honeymoon, this was Kyusik and my 4th time and the boys’ third trip.  First, you can have amazing food everywhere you go. During our time in Tokyo, we had the best shaved ice we’ve ever had, sushi for breakfast, late night ramen, yummy panko fried pork called tonkatsu, fancy Buddhist vegetarian food, grilled meat and vegetables called yakitori, and many bento boxes, which we ate on the Shinkansen or bullet train between Tokyo and Nagano. We also hit the basement of Isetan, a fancy department store. Like other nice department stores there, you can buy all sorts of prepared Japanese food to take away. They also carry produce, alcohol, tea, coffee, baked goods, and both Japanese and European desserts. On our penultimate day in Tokyo, we bought sushi, tempura, menchi katsu (fried ground meat cutlet), and had the most beautiful and tasty bento box.  Kyusik and I also enjoyed a number of meals on our own, including...

By Bryce In Tokyo we did many things, and the main thing we did was eat Japanese food. There were 5 big highlights of Tokyo. The first one was a shaved ice place. The shaved ice place had many interesting flavors, but these are the ones we chose. Me: strawberry shortcake Mommy: matcha Daddy: chestnut and Acadian: chocolate raspberry. Mine came first, and in all the shaved ice were little chunks of sweet stuff to add texture. I liked mine the best. Another place we went to was a yakitori restaurant. It was very fancy, and the food was good. Yakitori is chicken that is cooked on skewers. I got chicken skin yakitori, egg yakitori, thigh and onions yakitori, and some rice. The chef serving our food said that we were polite and told Acadian that sticking his chopsticks in his rice was offensive to some Japanese people. After finishing, he walked us out the door. The third place was a curry restaurant. It had tonkatsu and tempura with the curry, and it was really good. My favorite was the to...

When we got to Japan, there were so many good restaurants with food such as ramen, yakitori, which is like meat on a skewer, sushi, dumplings, tempura, and curry. There were lots of ramen places, but my favorite type of ramen was tonkatsu. The yakitori was also really good because there were so many types of meat, and the chefs even walked us out of the door! The sushi was delicious, and my favorite types of fish were salmon and tuna. We actually got to see the tuna being sold! There were raw ones, big ones, small ones, and frozen ones. There were lots of dumplings, but they were all called gyoza. The tempura place was super good, and they were super nice. They even gave us Pokemon stickers because they saw our Pokemon stuffies! There was also the curry which was really good because the rice went perfectly with the yummy sauce. There was also fried meat or fried shrimp with the curry and once there was a curry soup with noodles.   We got some bento boxes for the Shinkansen!

     Today we went to Cirque Du Soleil. Grampy parked in a parking lot a few blocks away from the circus tent because the parking lot right by the tent was five times more expensive as the one farther away from the tent. We soon got there and someone scanned our tickets. It was very hot, one hundred something degrees and we had no water because Grammy and Grampy don’t bring water because they will have to go pee. We all had to go to the bathroom, so we went to the porta potties outside of the tent. The porta potties flushed and even had running water. Then, we went inside the tent. There were three Cirque Du Soleil merchandise stands and two huge food stands. We didn’t get anything because it was too overpriced. Then we watched the show. The show was about this evil jester who became the king. People performed jumps  and tricks and danced  around. A  small acrobat tried to jump in the shoulders of two stacked people but fell two times. He had to be tak...

      Yesterday, I went to a museum in Sacramento with Grammy and Grampy. It was called MOSAC. It was a  very hot day. While Grammy and Grampy checked in, I looked at the gift shop. They didn’t have many interesting things, and they were all overpriced. We got there just in time for a show at the planetarium. The show talked about the different planets in our solar system. Next, we checked out the space section of the museum. I launched a rocket using water and air pressure, and tested out a twin ion engine. (The TIE in TIE fighters is for twin ion engine because TIE fighters use them) Then, we moved on to making planes with straws and paper. Mine did not fly very well but Grampy’s did. I started making a sword out of straws but took it apart when I realized that I couldn’t take it with me. After that, we went downstairs to the bugs and animals exhibit and played some animal games. We saw a live millipede, a red tree frog, a lizard, and a big beetle. Then, we went to...

This week, I went to a camp called “Coastal Camp” and had a lot of fun. We ate cookies, went on hikes, went to Battery Mendell, went sailing, played games, saw a sea lion get freed*, went into a lab, and we learned so much stuff! My group was the Bobcats, and my counselors were Meg (pronouns: she/they) and Spore (pronouns: they/them). We had so much fun. There is also a lab called the fish bowl, because it was covered in glass. There were a bunch of smaller labs inside but I only went in 1. I went in the skins and skulls lab and my favorite skin was the seal skin because it was very soft. The picture above is me holding a hawk wing, and over here is me doing the three peaks challenge where we’re on a boat and we’re running out of supplies but, we see two other vessels that are full of supplies so we are supposed to use wood planks to get from ship to ship. I also learned that ferns have been around since the Cretaceous period. But do you know why they’ve been around for so long? A: bec...

Initially I had a hard time adjusting after Kyusik and the boys left. Not only was I lonely, but I had to check out of the cottage and into a hotel. My room was quite small and not terribly nice. While there was a garden, it was not nearly as lovely as Viv’s yard. It was also set on a very busy road with only a few restaurants within walking distance. Things improved immensely on Tuesday when I went with my colleagues Precious and Tatenda to a meeting at the office of Population Solutions for Health, a partner NGO. PSH is now scaling the work we’ve piloted in 5 districts (63 in the country) to an additional 4 districts in collaboration with the Ministry of Health. If all goes well, the plan is to expand it to another 8 districts next year. I am also trying to work on how to convince the big donors like PEPFAR (US Presidents Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) and the Global Fund for TB, HIV, and Malaria to fund it. After the meeting we went to lunch. I’ve been craving Asian food and partic...