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<title>Turkeynose Goes Global</title><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/index.html</link><description>Jay and Mirm&#x27;s latest adventures</description><dc:language>en</dc:language><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><dc:rights>Copyright 2007 turkeynose.com</dc:rights><dc:date>2008-01-27T15:14:47-05:00</dc:date><admin:generatorAgent rdf:resource="http://www.realmacsoftware.com/" />
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<lastBuildDate>Sun, 02 Mar 2008 16:26:52 -0500</lastBuildDate><item><title>Planning for the Superbowl</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>Brooklyn</category><dc:date>2008-01-27T15:14:47-05:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/e45000e9fb6859f5adf6c1c6a8ac5880-94.html#unique-entry-id-94</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/e45000e9fb6859f5adf6c1c6a8ac5880-94.html#unique-entry-id-94</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[It is hard to believe it has been a year already.  At this time last year, we were in the last steps of getting ready for our big trip - packing up the apartment, saying goodbye to everyone and trying out our backpacks for the first time.  Needless to say, this year isn't quite as exciting, but we do have something to look forward to...  The Patriots are on their way to the Superbowl and we are about to host our favorite party of the year - Superbowl Sunday!

I am working on the menu, but haven't yet finalized it.  Since this is our 9th annual party, the menu is always a mix of party favorites and some new things I have been wanting to try out.  At the moment, these are the contenders:  Lamb Meatballs with mint yogurt sauce Crudite with herbed yogurt dip Stellina&rsquo;s potato and basil spread Spinach Artichoke Dip Guacamole Salsa 7 layer dip  Chili Toppings (sour cream, scallions, cheese) Corn bread  Congo bars Brownies Whoopie Pies

The menu is always a I am mostly still trying to figure out the right mix of appetizers.  Hopefully I will come to a decision in the next couple of days...]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Miss Gill gets married&#x21;</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>Around the US</category><dc:date>2007-11-24T10:57:46-05:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/7449a72695517e8ae7e66697d1b3d71e-93.html#unique-entry-id-93</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/7449a72695517e8ae7e66697d1b3d71e-93.html#unique-entry-id-93</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[We spent this past weekend celebrating the enchanting wedding of Sharan Gill and Sachin Shah.  It was a truly memorable celebration and there were wonderful events throughout the weekend.

The weekend began with an early flight out on Friday morning morning with Francesca.  We met up with Julie and Sonny at LAX and headed north to the Four Seasons Westlake where we spent the entire weekend when not attending a wedding event.  Under normal circumstances, I would avoid hanging around a hotel all day, but this was a beautiful hotel and after the places we stayed on our big trip, the luxury was much welcomed!

As you might have expected, the bride was amazingly gorgeous and the happy couple was a joy to watch.  We had such a great time celebrating with them!

We had a great SchoolNet crew for the weekend.  This picture wasn't the best shot of the weekend, but it was the only one with all of us (minus the bride and groom of course!)  Amy, Jeff, me, Jay, Keith, Francesca, Niquelle, Silver, Julie and Sonny.

(There are lots more pictures here.  Take a look!)]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Love&#x2c; Scooters&#x2c; and Bun Cha</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>Vietnam</category><dc:date>2007-07-17T16:52:57+08:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/3340b0932ac7ff10e4cbcce7b7e1729c-92.html#unique-entry-id-92</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/3340b0932ac7ff10e4cbcce7b7e1729c-92.html#unique-entry-id-92</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[I don&rsquo;t think Hanoi would come to mind at the top of many Americans&rsquo; list of must-see destinations, but strangely, I had an incredible time visiting there.  It was a little unexplainable, really, to have such fun exploring a city in which my overriding previous association with it was the horrors of the Vietnam War.  When we told our parents that we were leaving Cambodia and then heading to Hanoi, they both found it a little bit incredible that we were traveling in places they knew mostly from war.  &ldquo;I guess it would be like if you had kids, and thirty years from now they told you they traipsing around in Baghdad&rdquo; Miranda&rsquo;s mom Jessica said.

But there is something unexpectedly exciting and warm about Hanoi &ndash; and I&rsquo;m not just talking about the warm temperature (which was in fact scorching and so humid that sweat pellets formed on our brows at the mere thought of going outside).  The local economy is booming right now and apparently has been on a tear ever since the country decided to open up trade in the 1990s.  But what attracted me most about the city was an infectious energy and happiness I noticed nearly everywhere I looked.  We were staying near the &ldquo;Old Quarter,&rdquo; which is comprised of about 30-40 charming little streets with beautiful old Vietnamese buildings, literally overflowing with restaurants, beer hoi breweries, and more shops than I could count.  At night, the streets seemed full of young couples cruising on motorbikes, young girls snuggling up to their husbands or boyfriends, zipping through the city joy riding.  In the interest of balanced reporting, Miranda didn&rsquo;t quite have the same perspective as I did.  She suggested that I might be projecting my own romantic mood (from our travels) onto the young couples.  Also, presumably it&rsquo;s safer to ride on the back of a motorcycle with your arms snugly around the driver&rsquo;s waist, so as not to fall off.

Ok, so perhaps the roads at night were not 100% full of young lovers cruising dreamy-eyed on shiny new red motorbikes, but we both agreed that the city was unusually energetic.  One aspect of the city that stood out in particular was the food.  Hundreds of little local restaurants lined the narrow streets of the Old Quarter, with tiny toddler-sized plastic chairs and tables spilling out onto the sidewalks.  The most famous of these local foods is the wonderfully delicious &ldquo;pho bo,&rdquo; which is a slow-cooked beef soup served with the softest, fresh rice noodles you can imagine.  Pho is a specialty of Hanoi, and its aroma can tempt you beginning early in the morning and late into the evening.  While pho might be the most well known food of Hanoi, our undisputed favorite local dish was a scrumptious, mouth-watering Vietnamese pork barbecue dish (mmm, barbecue, how we miss thee!)  called &ldquo;Bun Cha.&rdquo;  It&rsquo;s hard to describe the wonders of the delectable Bun Cha &ndash; the crunchy and flavorful pork is served with fresh vermicelli noodles, a tasty peanut sauce, fresh herbs and a tangy fish sauce with pickled vegetables.  I don&rsquo;t know if the description conveys how good it is, but trust me&hellip; you would love it.  We&rsquo;ve learned to cook a few of these dishes and maybe we will even be able to make a passable rendition for you to try sometime ;)]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Let the countdown begin&#x21;</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>Malaysia</category><dc:date>2007-07-12T12:21:05+08:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/aaaaabfab087c02529a47e9ea20f814b-90.html#unique-entry-id-90</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/aaaaabfab087c02529a47e9ea20f814b-90.html#unique-entry-id-90</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[Amazingly, we are in the countdown to our return home!  It is hard to believe that this wonderful adventure is coming to a close.  But I will save the trip ending post for later...  I did want to let you know that we would be arriving back in New York on Friday, July 20th - nearly 6 months after we left!

We have sublet our apartment through the end of August, so we will be extending our vagabond days a little longer.  My sister (Liza) and Mike are letting us crash at their place while we are in New York while we will are eagerly arriving the arrival of some very important babies.  Once they enter the world, we will also be traveling a bit and making sure to savor some of the parts of the US that we have missed.

Yesterday, we made the very long journey from Vietnam to the island of Langkawi in Malaysia.  Despite only a total of four hours flying, the trip took 16 hours to get here ...  Add that to the list of things I won't miss about traveling ;) But now we are settling in for a wonderful week of relaxing by the beach.  The beaches are white sand, the water is a lovely turquoise and the drinks are cold.  I think this will certainly pass as a good way to end!

We are filled with mixed emotions about the trip ending, but it will be wonderful to see and talk to everyone to catch up!  Can't wait!!]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Horns of Hanoi</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>Vietnam</category><dc:date>2007-07-10T23:10:46+07:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/156a1844adcea71cf73199e67a3cd481-89.html#unique-entry-id-89</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/156a1844adcea71cf73199e67a3cd481-89.html#unique-entry-id-89</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[There are so many possible titles for this blog, but it comes down to one simple fact: Honking is a way of life in Vietnam.  The horn is as necessary a tool for the Vietnamese driver as a bedside lamp is for a night reader, as a good pair of gills are for a fish, or a buoyant set of silicone implants are for a teen pop star....  Honking isn&rsquo;t even limited to an &ldquo;I&rsquo;m angry and want to run you off the road&rdquo; cry.

...It&rsquo;s as if the auto makers have deployed cars with advanced fuel-efficient engines that supplement gasoline with honking rather than electricity.  Sometimes, by chance, something distracts a driver, and just for a moment there is a pause in the constant honking.  Ahhh, sweet peaceful pauses in a sea of noise pollution&hellip; But when this happens, the drivers feel compelled to start honking even more furiously for a few moments, like out-of-breathe athletes who have just finished sprinting.

...Our first experience on the road in the country of Ho Chi Minh began when we landed in Hanoi....  (Mirm had given our hotel her name over the phone to arrange a ride into town, and, frankly, &ldquo;Skambs&rdquo; was closer than we expected&hellip;) Our silent guide motioned to us to follow him into a minivan, where three young girls were waiting for him.  After Jay helped him get our packs into the minivan, he ran around to the front seat and we quickly took off.  It should be noted that we exchanged more than a few glances on this 45-minute ride, trying to confirm that we were, in fact, in the right car&hellip;

While we sped along the highway from the airport, our host cranked up the gas, as well as a repetitive, thumping techno CD, and he and his entourage of girls quickly began chatting and giggling in Vietnamese.  It didn&rsquo;t take long before we began to see the motorbikes of Vietnam that are famous in this part of the world.  We had already become accustomed to seeing more motorbikes than cars on the roads in Thailand and Cambodia, and we were even a bit used to the &ldquo;unconventional&rdquo; road rules that are followed by so many bike drivers in Southeast Asia.

...We drove along speedily in the dark, with our driver occasionally &ndash; miraculously &ndash; dodging obstacles like a giant pile of rocks in the middle of the highway and one time a garbage bag, which seemed to appear out of nowhere from the darkness....  The bikes drove across the road, they zigzagged in and out of all the lanes (despite a lack of traffic), and, most surprisingly, many &ndash; very many &ndash; motorbikes drove against the traffic on the highway!  This happened so frequently that it took us about twenty minutes to determine whether one drives on the right or the left in Vietnam.

...After arriving safely in Hanoi, we noticed that there also appeared to be a near total lack of traffic lights and signs&hellip; And where the odd light or sign existed, none of the drivers appeared to take any notice....  Wit no one giving two hoots about standard traffic regulations, the horn takes on a very important series of roles in the functional chaos.  It serves as a turning indicator, a yield sign, a &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t Walk&rdquo; sign, and the all important &ldquo;hey, here I am!&rdquo;  Lastly, you should never discount the long, loud &ldquo;I have a car and you have a bike&rdquo; honk (which seems to be most popular among car drivers).

...Along with the incredibly impressive boom in the Vietnamese economy in the past ten years, there has been a huge boom in motorbike ownership.  According to Minh (like Ho Chi), one of our tour guides, ten years ago there were only a few hundred thousand motorbikes in Hanoi....  Since opening up trade, though, Minh estimated that now there may be as many one motorbike for every two residents &ndash; equaling a staggering two million motorbikes on the road just in Hanoi (We shudder to think what crossing the street will be like in Saigon, which probably has four times the number of motorbikes).

...We believe that this must be due to a scientific relationship between new auto-owning folk and honking (maybe MIT has done a study on this?)...  We didn&rsquo;t catch his name, but he drove us from the airport in Danang to the lovely seaside town of Hoi An....  For most of the drive, in fact, there was barely another soul to be seen &ndash; nevermind another vehicle that might actually put us in peril enough to warrant even a toot!...  Or maybe he was composing an entire symphony&hellip; Oh, how we long for the quiet streets of New York!]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Look at the latest star on SITCA&#x27;s site&#x21;</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>Thailand</category><dc:date>2007-07-08T13:08:18+07:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/90d7ddbb4c2667e857fb6c1eaeabd56d-88.html#unique-entry-id-88</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/90d7ddbb4c2667e857fb6c1eaeabd56d-88.html#unique-entry-id-88</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[I have traveled far and wide and now I have earned my spot on SITCA's website (the cooking school I attended in Thailand)...  Jay and I both agree that my face seems to be stretched a little though ;) I swear I didn't eat that much Thai food!]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Big Mama&#x27;s Massage Parlor</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>Thailand</category><dc:date>2007-07-03T23:09:39+07:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/67c1ef8aa9a7013955ae4e92952fd5ca-86.html#unique-entry-id-86</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/67c1ef8aa9a7013955ae4e92952fd5ca-86.html#unique-entry-id-86</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[When I was in junior high in Alabama, some of my friends and I went through a brief phase when we listened to a band of longhaired rockers called &lsquo;The Cult.&rsquo;  The Cult was a pretty popular rock band for a long time with plenty of worthwhile albums and even a greatest hits CD.  At the time of our 'Cult' phase, I think their most popular song was a wonderful little ditty called &lsquo;Fire Woman.&rsquo;  It was not Fire Woman, though, but a different tune of theirs dancing through my head during our last week in Thailand.  The song I couldn&rsquo;t escape from was called &lsquo;Bangkok Rain.&rsquo;...  The song&rsquo;s magnificently creative lyrics essentially describe someone sitting at a bar in Bangkok waiting for the rain to stop.  But the rain doesn&rsquo;t stop in Bangkok, so most of the song is a relentless &ndash; yet surprisingly catchy &ndash; screaming of the following chorus: &ldquo;Bangkok rain keeps on [&hellip;dramatic pause featuring rhythmic drum banging&hellip;] coming down!&rdquo;

Given all this, I&rsquo;m sure it will come as no surprise to anyone still reading, that, in fact, it rained a whole heck of a lot while Miranda and I were in Bangkok.  And now maybe I will go to iTunes and buy that Cult album again just to play Bangkok Rain again.  Like clockwork, really, we could expect every decent morning of humid sightseeing and spicy street food sampling to be followed by powerful afternoon and evening thunderstorms that lasted way into the night.

Due to the predictability of the rain, we were often looking for indoor activities to pass some of the time....  We had heard that there was a blurry line between massage parlor and brothel, that many times the masseurs will try to convince you to get your massage in some kind of seedy back room where anything goes.  This wasn&rsquo;t what I had in mind, so I looked carefully for an upstanding looking establishment.  Around one corner I passed a well-lit place with three cheery young women singing, &ldquo;massage,&rdquo; as I walked by.  The place had a wholesome name &ndash; Mama&rsquo;s &ndash; and a wooden sign propped in the window reading &ldquo;strictly nonsexual massage.&rdquo;  It doesn't get more upstanding than that, so I decided to try it out.

Well, I don&rsquo;t know where the three cheery young women went, but when I sat down for my foot massage, out walked a very sturdy older woman with rippling forearm muscles and triceps as thick as my thighs.  She said hello with a tight lipped smile and introduced herself: I had just met Mama, whom henceforth I will only refer to using her GLOW wresting handle, Big Mama.

Now, I haven&rsquo;t really gotten many massages in my life, so I&rsquo;m not sure what they&rsquo;re supposed to feel like.  What I can say is that Big Mama had hands of iron and fingers forged by steel.  When she grabbed hold of my foot and clamped down, my pulse quickened, and I was just barely able to stop my face from contorting into a humiliating wince....  But relaxing was pretty hard to do when all I could think about was what a humongous wimp I was being.  After a while I managed to calm down, but then big Mama took out this wooden poker and started applying focused pressure to different spots on the bones of my toes and the balls of my feet....  It took all my energy to prevent my body from writhing under the pressure.  I hated myself for being such a wimp, but it really hurt!  Finally, I thought of Jack Bauer from the show 24 being tortured with knives, electricity and who knows what for inspiration to show no pain.  If Jack could resist torture from the Chinese, but I couldn&rsquo;t handle a foot massage in Thailand, what does that say about me?]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Goodbye Thailand&#x21;</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>Thailand</category><dc:date>2007-06-29T12:06:41+07:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/541285a120809ee13f05b05b2a1fab2e-83.html#unique-entry-id-83</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/541285a120809ee13f05b05b2a1fab2e-83.html#unique-entry-id-83</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[We are heading out of Thailand this morning after spending a great month here.  These past few days we have been lying low and recharging before heading off to Cambodia today.  We had a couple of memorable dinners with new companions here.

First we had a lovely dinner with Mithran and his fiancee, Pun.  We were introduced to Mithran through my mom, who met Mithran on Zoetrope (a collaborative website for writers).  They took us to a terrific restaurant where we dined riverside and got some great local info about Bangkok.  Thanks Mithran and Pun!

Next, we reunited with our friends Melanie and Laurelle from the Waterfront in Koh Samui for a dinner at a great Thai restaurant near our hotel.  We had lots of fun at dinner before they both jumped on a plane back to North America.

We are going to see Angkor Wat in Cambodia over the next few days.  We are looking forward to seeing the world renowned temple area (and dreading its infamous heat!)  Then we fly onto Hanoi to see Vietnam.]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>My Sister&#x27;s Art Opening Tomorrow Night&#x21;</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>Brooklyn</category><dc:date>2007-06-27T18:42:54+07:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/71c7f2a389a82ce34bcc731c0d0e985a-82.html#unique-entry-id-82</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/71c7f2a389a82ce34bcc731c0d0e985a-82.html#unique-entry-id-82</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[For those of you in New York, I would definitely recommend that you check out this art opening of my very talented sister!!  If you can't make it tomorrow night, you can drop by at any point during the show through July 25.  ________________  Petra Projects presents  orderline  Works by:  Matt Phillips Eliza Stamps  Opening Reception: June 28, 2007 6-9pm Exhibition on view through July 25

Mehr Gallery 436 W.  18th St., NYC  www.PetraProjects.com

...Petra Projects is pleased to present, orderline, at Mehr Gallery, featuring the paintings of Matt Phillips and the drawings and textiles of Eliza Stamps in a two-person show exhibiting June 29-July 25, 2007.  orderline opens June 28, 6 to 9pm.

Matt Phillips views painting as an "evolving and living language" as artists attempt to discover a means by which to express the world around them.  Phillips' interest is rooted in how color interaction evokes a specific light, describes space, or depicts a unique form, as well as in the use of repetitive and discrete marks to arrive at a final image.  His approach results in "describing forms in varying states of expansion and compression, materialization and dissolution".  Phillips seeks to surpass the simplicity of forms by referencing quilts, mosaics, architecture and other tangible objects, thereby creating multiple visual possibilities.

Originally from Roanoke, Virginia, Matt Phillips received a Bachelors Degree in Visual Art and Art History from Hampshire College.  After participating in exhibitions in both New York and Virginia, Phillips pursued a Masters of Fine Arts Degree from Boston University in May 2007 with a Constantin Alajalov Scholarship and in 2007 was honored as a Kahn Award Finalist.

Eliza Stamps works between textiles and drawings, creating symmetry between the movements of needles and pencils.  In both mediums, she reflects the use of order in all aspects of existence, "the passage of people and animals through space, the movement of cells through the body, the transition of emotions through the psyche".  Each piece ultimately explores shape and composition, providing a sense of metric sequence to both animate and inanimate matters.

Eliza spent her formative years in Newton, Massachusetts, and pursued a Bachelors Degree in Visual Art and Art History at Bates College.  From there, she went on to receive a Masters of Fine Arts Degree from Pratt Institute in 2006.  Stamps also works as an art educator in Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan middle schools integrating visual arts into curricula ranging from ESL to Social Studies.  She recently participated in exhibitions at 440 Gallery, and Gallery on Dean, both in Brooklyn, NY.

For additional information or images please contact Anastasia Rogers at 1.917.679.5496 or Anastasia@PetraProjects.com.]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>A Traditional Fishing Village</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>Thailand</category><dc:date>2007-06-27T15:43:33+07:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/b984a919c8d5ff27fc171e3ff2af3d93-81.html#unique-entry-id-81</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/b984a919c8d5ff27fc171e3ff2af3d93-81.html#unique-entry-id-81</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[(And I don't mean obscene as in we have not been working for several months so any ordinary hour is obscene to us......  The alarm went off at 5:45AM and we quickly hurried to get ready in order to sneak in our complimentary breakfast before meeting our tour guide at 6:30AM....  We had heard about it from a father and son pair, Allen and Victor, whom we met in Koh Samui.

...We met our guide, "Jerry" and hopped in his car and headed one and a half hours south of Bangkok in the opposite direction of the fierce rush hour traffic....  He explained these were in fact salt farms and immediately we began to pass tiny stands selling large bags of salt.

...Jerry stopped the car and told us to hop out and pointed to a fisherman who would be leading our tour.  While the fisherman spoke no English, he made it clear that we were to climb down a steep ladder onto a small long-tailed boat.

...The homes teetered high above the water and many had long tail boats hoisted under their homes or floating along side them.

...The person turned towards us. Her head was covered with a traditional hat and her face obscured by a mask (like a ski mask)....  The guide explained that in fact she was standing in mud up to her chest!...  This work is incredibly taxing (imagine slugging through mud up to your chest all day long) and each kilogram of cockles only fetches about 70 cents at the market.

...The water stretched out before us, with small poles systematically poking out of the water to designate boundaries of each fisherman's farm.

Most fisherman have a land house (like the ones we saw initially in the town) and a sea house.  The sea houses tend to be tiny huts on high stills where the fishermen sleep to guard their farms during the night.

We had been told before we left for the tour that we should bring some money for monkey food....  Suddenly, monkeys began emerging from the trees and climbing to the edge of the water next to our boat.  Our guide handed Jay a bag of watermelon slices and he began tossing them to the eager monkeys.

...He is an all white monkey and he quickly leapt onto the boat and began helping himself to the watermelon slices.  He ate rapidly with both hands and Jay had to battle to ensure there was still some watermelon left for the other monkeys waiting patiently on the beach.

...In several cases the fishermen (and women) used a wooden "surfboard" to help them navigate the deeper waters or to provide a firm surface when they were harvesting shellfish on the mud flats.

...After our tour, the fisherman brought us up to his own bamboo sea house for lunch....  We ate spicy and sour soup with fish, deep fried fish with shrimp paste, curried crab, fresh prawns and raw oysters with seafood sauce.  Immediately following the meal, they asked us to lay on a bamboo cot while they ate their meals....  But we realized this was not the case, as they led us by the arm to the cot to lie down.

...And we were amazed to find out the house was put up by 10 men in only 20 days!

...The tour was particularly special because they only take a maximum of three tourists a day into the village of 2,000, so it felt like a more intimate experiences than many of the "authentic" experiences you are offered while traveling.  We leave with a deep respect for the work that goes into getting the seafood to our plates and appreciation to the fisherman for allowing us a little insight into a way of life we will never know.]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Jogging in Bophut</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>Thailand</category><dc:date>2007-06-27T00:25:26+07:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/d9badc18c6e21630f2b5b154e8b8b6b3-87.html#unique-entry-id-87</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/d9badc18c6e21630f2b5b154e8b8b6b3-87.html#unique-entry-id-87</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[I got up before 6AM to go jogging along Bophut Beach before the other tourists came out to play....  Nevertheless, jogging on the beach in Thailand provides much better scenery than jogging on a treadmill in Manhattan, so I was all smiles as I lumbered down the beach.  After about twenty minutes of slowly trudging down the beach in one direction, I turned around and headed back towards our hotel.

A few minutes into the return, I was very, very tired.  It seemed that the more tired I got, the more the sand slipped under my feet, and the less traction I had.  At least it was too early in the day to be hot, I thought happily, and plodded onward.  Next I tried to distract myself from my fatigue by changing the songs on my ipod.  This worked pretty well, and I ran onward, with my head down and my fingers switching songs repeatedly....  What did I find but two very large and very intimidating water buffalos directly in front of me.  They were looking me in the eyes from the edge of the beach and the water, right in front of my path, snorting and breathing heavily in a very loud and scary way.  Well, I did not feel like issuing a challenge, so I snapped my head back down, and kept my eyes on my ipod.

...Of course I was sort of doing this already, but unfortunately I was running right towards the giant water buffalos.  Another option - to turn around and run away - might have been more prudent.  But by now I was too tired to run any other direction then towards my hotel.  Also, truth be told, I totally lacked the capability to actually run fast enough to "get away&rdquo; if they didn't want me to.  As I got closer, it appeared that the water buffalo were on a "leash" held by a little skinny boy who didn't look a day older than twelve, nor and inch taller than four and a half feet.  I say "leash" because it looked more like yarn than a leash - maybe he was knitting them matching scarves.  Sizing him and his leash up thus, I determined that he would be no help whatsoever in preventing the water buffalos from stomping all over me.

On the other hand, perhaps the mere fact that the buffalos allowed themselves to be on the "leashes" was a sign of hope...  I tried to decide whether it made me feel better or not that the buffalos were on completely useless leashes held by a skinny kid.  I think it did make me feel better for a moment, but then I remembered reading earlier in the Lonely Planet that the locals on Koh Samui were avid gamblers, and lucky for me, their favorite leisure activity was betting on water buffalo fighting.  Just my luck that I would come across a pair of battle hardened water buffalo on my first jog in Thailand.  No wonder the hotels in our village were cheaper than in Chaweng!...  So I slipped and slid to the top side of the beach, keeping my eyes down, switching songs on my ipod every two or three seconds now, and hoping for the best.  I&rsquo;m typing this with all my limbs and vital organs in tact, so I made it safely, but I did not expect large water buffalos to be blocking my way and exhaling loudly in a menacing way as I passed.  Later in the week I got up early again for an early run and saw that the kid was "running" the water buffalos early in morning presumably to work them out, I assume to make them better fighters.  All that loud breathing when I saw them before was probably from their workout - they were tired of running on the sand too, so there was no chance they were going to waste energy goring me or stomping me into oblivion.]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>The Tom Yum Apprentice</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>Thailand</category><dc:date>2007-06-25T00:05:58+07:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/8df2e5e8c331da50f888ac3b4df04ebb-80.html#unique-entry-id-80</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/8df2e5e8c331da50f888ac3b4df04ebb-80.html#unique-entry-id-80</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[I didn&rsquo;t have much trouble keeping busy while Miranda spent her last few days in Koh Samui mastering the secrets of Thai cooking at SITCA in an intensive course.  For three days I joined in the fun.  After a morning *run* on the beach, I would clean up and accompany Mirm from our hotel in Bophut village on the fifteen minute trip to her cooking school amidst the busy streets of Chaweng village.  There I also took a stab at learning the tricks of the trade in three &ldquo;tourist level&rdquo; half day classes.  This arrangement worked out great for both of us, since we could travel to class together and then share, and eat, the fruits of our labor together at lunch.  It worked out especially well for me, because no matter how much I messed up the dishes in my class, we always had seven or eight quality dishes from Miranda&rsquo;s class to fall back on.

A nice, outgoing teacher named Yung taught my classes.  Yung laughed a lot, and she credited her jovial mood to a mysterious mushroom tea she drank each morning before class.  Yung led a fabulous class, which usually consisted of about five to seven other students, with plenty of other beginners eager to learn how to make a few Thai dishes.  The menus usually included a curry dish (we made green, red, and &ldquo;spicy red&rdquo; curries), with the curry paste made from scratch, a traditional Thai soup called Tom Yum Soup, and a stir-fry or noodle dish like phad thai.  Fortunately, some of being around Mirm&rsquo;s cooking had rubbed off on me, and I was able to keep up pretty well as a result of having passable knife skills (for an ordinary human).

As for the superhuman knife skills in our family, each day the students in my class would ask about Miranda&rsquo;s two week class, and watch in awe as she busily prepared one dish or another in the pro course.  It seemed like every time we looked over at her, she was just finishing carving some ornate floral design on a previously bland looking fruit or vegetable!

By the end of my third class I could make an acceptable curry paste.  But what I was most proud of was that I had doubled the amount of fresh red chilis I could tolerate in my Tom Yum soup (eight).  This of course was nothing compared to Yung, who, perhaps under the influence of the odd looking mushrooms in her tea, only laughed as she tossed everyone's extra chilis into her Tom Yum Soup.  One day she added twenty chilis to a portion of soup intended for just two people!  It was liquid fire.  Nevertheless, I felt eight chilis was a worthy accomplishment for my wimpy American palate.

After my last class, I even received a &ldquo;certificate of participation&rdquo; for &ldquo;Basic Thai Cooking.&rdquo;  Thank you for playing!  With any luck, I can parlay my newfound certification into a promotion in the Albany Stamps house from kitchen cleaner extraordinaire up to sous chef when we get home and have a kitchen again!]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Five Star Hospital</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>Thailand</category><dc:date>2007-06-21T15:54:06+07:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/6e6d43cda4e1694f500d9929888b9b93-79.html#unique-entry-id-79</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/6e6d43cda4e1694f500d9929888b9b93-79.html#unique-entry-id-79</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[Going to the hospital is probably the experience I dreaded most on our trip.  But unfortunately, it had to be done and luckily, it gave me something to write about too.  I was sick for several days before finally conceding to go to the hospital.  At the time, I was feeling OK, so I was able to fully appreciate the scene that was the Bangkok Hospital Samui.  This hospital was completely unlike any hospital I have ever seen in the US. When we pulled up in the car, a man dressed as a bell hop came and opened our doors.  We walked up to the reception desks and were greeted by women dressed as hotel receptionists.

Once I had registered, a nurse led us to the International wing of the hospital.  As we walked by, Jay and I both noted the computers available for free web surfing while hanging out at the hospital.  In the next wing, I was greeted by a nurse decked out from head to toe in the movie classic nurse outfit - all white, fitted skirt, small hat and white high heels.  What a hoot!  The usual stats were taken and then I was off to the doctor.

Following my visit with a (somewhat) English speaking doctor, Jay and I were led to a lounge where we were offered tea, coffee, soda, English television and several English newspapers.  Moments later (just as I settled into a good article actually), we were brought into another area to pay and await my prescription.  The well-clad nurse delivered the prescription complete with a little gift bag.  A gift bag?!

After we completed the obligatory customer satisfaction form, we were led back to the lobby to await a taxi.  We waited just a couple moments for the taxi, before another woman appeared carrying a tray of bottled water - offering it to us for the journey.  Seriously, this was too funny.  And the whole thing took less than an hour and cost about $130.  Try that in the US!

...  And for those who are concerned, I am all healed now and back on the scene!]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Carving Up a Storm</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>Thailand</category><dc:date>2007-06-19T13:11:12+07:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/83e46ab6642bf02f7a959ed40c19f4c9-77.html#unique-entry-id-77</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/83e46ab6642bf02f7a959ed40c19f4c9-77.html#unique-entry-id-77</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[Fruit carving was part of my Thai cooking course as it is an important part of Thai cuisine.  I was not, however, looking forward to this portion of the course.  It seemed difficult, unachievable and a bit boring.  Well, it turned out that I actually rather enjoyed carving.  It shares the repetitive and almost meditative aspects that I enjoyed about cake decorating, along with the pleasant surprise at the end where I think, "Oh wow, I did that?  Pretty cool."

I know I'm a dork, but here are a few pictures of my carving adventures...

My first melon...

Never have a spent so much time pondering a single potato...

An unfinished melon...  Tomato roses, cucumber leaves and scallion and chili curlies

These are actually soap carvings...]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Have you ever wondered...</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>Thailand</category><dc:date>2007-06-19T12:25:43+07:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/976b56fa458af16d93f26115f1645de6-78.html#unique-entry-id-78</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/976b56fa458af16d93f26115f1645de6-78.html#unique-entry-id-78</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[How a coconut turns to all of its various coconut byproducts (coconut milk, coconut oil, etc)?...  I was prepared for your answer, because before my class, I hadn't either.  But don't worry, I have decided to tell you, anyway.  If you have ever used coconut milk, it was probably just another neatly packaged can in the cupboard, opened without much thought as to how it arrived there...  didn't they just crack the nut, and then pour the milk into the can?  And as for coconut oil, well, most of us probably only think of it in terms of something you might break out sunning on the beach.  But I witnessed the whole process of taking a coconut from fruit to finish the other day, I thought I would share it with you...

We begin with a whole aged coconut with a brown shell.  The younger green ones have sweet milk inside and are good for drinking.  The milk is not as sweet in the older ones, but these are better for extracting the cream and oil from...  Removing the outer shell is quite an operation when you are only using a knife.

...After removing the shell and emptying the coconut juice into this silver bowl, the next step is to remove the coconut meat from the inner shell.  This handy-dandy "tool" is specifically designed to scrape out the coconut meat.  I think its funny that the little guy has a face ;)

Once the meat is removed, it is pressed to extract all the coconut milk.

This is then boiled to separate the coconut cream from the milk.  Once the cream has started to separate (it looks a little curdled), the heat is turned off and the mixture cools.  The cream rises to the top and it is then skimmed off.  The clearer liquid at the bottom is saved for used in soups.  The coconut cream is used for curries and desserts (and many other cooking uses).

Once the clear liquid is removed, the cream is poured back into the pot to yield coconut oil.  This is an extremely messy process because as the coconut oil is rendered, the concoction spits furiously.

Slowly the solids begin to coagulate and the oil becomes completely separated from the solids.

...The final products from the coconut * - coconut cream, coconut oil, fried coconut meat (to feed animals) and toasted coconut to include in dishes

*In the interest of full disclosure, my teacher grabbed a bag of freshly grated coconut (about the sum of 10 coconuts) to extract the coconut milk and then used fresh coconut milk to get the cream.  The machinery at the market is much more efficient at extracting the milk, but its still a pretty low tech process.

Shredding the coconut and pressing the meat to extract the coconut milk.]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Was alone&#x2c; but not lonely</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>Thailand</category><dc:date>2007-06-17T11:18:57+07:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/e0d5453d0ca5ccdfa1197f8671081b90-75.html#unique-entry-id-75</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/e0d5453d0ca5ccdfa1197f8671081b90-75.html#unique-entry-id-75</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[The second week of cooking school went well, although I was eagerly awaiting Jay's return.  I had mentally prepared myself for a lonely time while Jay was away, but was secretly hoping to find some other solo travelers.  I was a bit dismayed to discover that all the guests here at the small, but social hotel were here as couples (plus one family).  Despite the bleak beginnings, of experimenting with the local restaurants by myself, I ended up meeting a wonderful group of people and we developed quite the crew during my second week here.  Luckily, although they were all couples, they took pity on me and I was not relegated to spending every meal in this beautiful place by my lonesome :)

We had some great dinners and spent many hours chatting around the bar late into the evening.  Jon and Caroline were in Thailand for a friend's wedding and were able to extend their holiday from Leicester in England for some relaxing time by the beach.  Roz and Ralph were on a five month trip very similar to ours, after two more weeks in Bali they will be heading home to Ipswich, England.  Sadly, Jay wasn't able to meet them because both couples left before Jay returned.  Luckily, Drew and Alex were still here when Jay arrived, (so he didn't think I had a bunch of imaginary friends).  They are from Toronto and will be moving to New York in July.  Hopefully I will be able to introduce some of you to them once we are home.

Roz, Alex and Caroline (and me!)

Sampling my fare from cooking school...  Roz, Ralph, Caroline and Jon

(Somehow I failed to end up with a picture of Drew...)]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Hello Paradise. It&#x2019;s Me&#x2c; Jay</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>Thailand</category><dc:date>2007-06-15T17:44:00+07:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/f9fdfe770eca3fe460b6f48b1786c98b-73.html#unique-entry-id-73</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/f9fdfe770eca3fe460b6f48b1786c98b-73.html#unique-entry-id-73</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[It took me about 27 hours to get to Thailand from Birmingham, including a couple of decent layovers in Dallas and Tokyo.  Lucky for me I had an unbelievably easy time in Thai customs at the Bangkok airport at midnight, and then I grabbed a little shuteye before my early morning flight to reunite with Miranda in Koh Samui.  Total time from Birmingham to Koh Samui including all stops, sleep, and transit: 36 hours.

On my flight to Bangkok from Koh Samui I relearned an old lesson: Grasshopper, never take a large bite into a pastry when you don&rsquo;t know what&rsquo;s inside it.  Sadly, this lesson came just after I greedily shoved a pastry full of savory bean flavoring into my mouth.  Unfortunately for me, I was expecting it to taste like it looked &ndash; sweet.  Maybe it was being forced to watch the deadly double feature of Tim Allen in Wild Hogs and Nicholas Cage in Ghost Rider on my earlier flights that caused me to temporarily loose my sanity and bite into breakfast without checking to see what it was.  Regardless, when I chomped into the surprising bean pastry, I realized that, yes, I was officially back on our trip.

Even though I was on the 6AM flight from Bangkok, Mirm greeted me at the airport with a wonderfully big smile and an even bigger hug.  We chatted on a short ride to the hotel, and then ate some real breakfast: crepes and honey (although, to be fair, the crepes were mislabeled as &ldquo;pancakes&rdquo; on the menu).  After breakfast, Mirm went off to cooking school.  I pretty much went straight to the bed before she had closed the door on the way out.

...Despite the travel fatigue, though, my best decision of the day was to drag my jetlagged self out of bed and accept Miranda&rsquo;s invitation to meet her at cooking school for lunch to see where the magic happens.  When I got there, I was greeted by a very friendly staff and was led into the kitchen to say hello to Mirms.  A few minutes later she finished up, and we went upstairs into a room filled with all of the goodies Miranda and her classmate Govind had made that morning.  There was a stunning spread on the table.  Suddenly I was extremely &ndash; extremely &ndash; glad Miranda was taking this class.  There must have been at least eight courses, all prepared while I was trying to snore away my jetlag.  A seafood salad, a few different curries, a wonderful tom yum soup, and several sweet smelling meats wrapped in delicate leaves were among the many beautiful dishes that decorated the long dining table.

We ate for a long time but barely made a dent in the banquet.  There was far too much food to eat it all, even with me there, so we sampled tastes of all the dishes.  While we ate I peppered Miranda, Govind, and their teacher with questions about the food.  Then we went out for a break before their afternoon session and got hour-long foot massages.  Miranda and Govind returned for their afternoon session, while I walked around town and took a gander at the beach.  When I returned a few hours later I found another feast with seven different courses beautifully displayed on the table, and most importantly, ready for our immediate consumption.

...Today my day was similar, but it also included a mini, tourist-level, morning cooking course for myself, eating lunch from the spoils of both my course and Miranda&rsquo;s, and I plan on ending it with a nap in the hammock by the beach in front of our hotel.  Let it be known that I know and appreciate how lucky I am.]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Back in the Magic City&#x2c; Home of The Vulcan</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>Thailand</category><dc:date>2007-06-14T17:38:21+07:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/0eb890b1329b8ee13b2ab040471acd64-72.html#unique-entry-id-72</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/0eb890b1329b8ee13b2ab040471acd64-72.html#unique-entry-id-72</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[So last week I was back in the Magic City, known on your trusty map as Birmingham, Alabama, for my oldest friend Matthew Boehm&rsquo;s wedding to his beautiful, charming new wife Leslie.  Matt & Leslie had their reception by my favorite Birmingham icon, Vulcan Park atop Red Mountain.  For those of you who don&rsquo;t know, The Vulcan is the largest cast iron statue in the world!  I had a wonderful time catching up with so many friends and family in Alabama, and one of the questions folks had for me was &ldquo;what do I miss most?&rdquo;  Since Mirm has been in cooking school, I thought it would make sense to answer this question in terms of food.

One would think that after so long away, I would crave some fine dining, or wonderful Southern food.  My main food craving, surprisingly, was not barbecue (which of course I still did eat plenty of, being in Birmingham and all) but Mexican style food.  I say &ldquo;Mexican style&rdquo; food because what I was craving was anything that included good melted cheese &ndash; really just nachos, which I associate with times when I go out to Mexican or Tex Mex restaurants.

Once home, I basically ate as many nachos as humanly possible.  Like a man possessed, I only deviated briefly from my nachos diet a few times, usually when presented with good Southern food like fried chicken, my mom&rsquo;s low country boil, cheese grits, and of course barbecued pork.  Here&rsquo;s a good example of my nacho frenzy.  One night soon after I arrived in Birmingham, I went out to a fun dinner with my great friend Warren and his wonderful wife Leigh Marriott at a popular place in Birmingham called Rojo&rsquo;s.  We ordered chips with queso dip as a shared appetizer.  That hit the spot, but apparently I couldn&rsquo;t get enough melted cheese, because then, to the surprise of my friends, I just went ahead and ordered a heaping plate of loaded nachos for my main course.  It was a good plate of nachos, too.  The cheese was melted perfectly &ndash; it wasn&rsquo;t overly glopped in the middle &ndash; and there was enough cheese for every chip.  I would have ordered another plate for dessert if I could have.

In case the theme isn&rsquo;t clear here, I became a freak who ate nachos with melted cheese again and again and again and again, regardless of the quality of the restaurant (although Rojo&rsquo;s was a good place for them).  In fact, I couldn&rsquo;t even wait to get all the way home before ordering nachos.  So, after four months away from home, the first meal I ate in the USA was at a Chili&rsquo;s in the Dallas airport (during my five hour layover there).  I sat at the bar, giddy, watching NASCAR, and wolfing down nachos with melted cheese, extra sour cream, and a green paste I believe was intended to resemble guacamole.  Oddly, the same song that I couldn&rsquo;t escape from the last time I was in the US was blasting in Chili&rsquo;s, the song about having a bad day...  at least it wasn&rsquo;t the other song I couldn&rsquo;t get away from before I left, the one by the weirdo with the voice like a pig squealing &ndash; the chorus is a screeching &ldquo;You&rsquo;re beautiful&rdquo;.  You&rsquo;re welcome for the two awful songs stuck in your heads :)]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Serious cooking and serious eating</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>Thailand</category><dc:date>2007-06-10T12:19:51+07:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/7c0aaaa3719c49e44689db6c211c4631-71.html#unique-entry-id-71</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/7c0aaaa3719c49e44689db6c211c4631-71.html#unique-entry-id-71</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[Today is my first day off since starting my Thai cooking course at SITCA on Koh Samui a week ago. I am quite pleased to be having a day of relaxation because while I learned a lot, it has also required a level of attention and concentration that I haven't had to muster very often over the past few months.

The course is designed for cooking professionals (which I, of course, am not), but I decided to take it anyway.  I wanted an intensive experience and Jay was going to be back in the US for a couple of weeks, so this seemed like a good way to entertain myself.  The class covers at least 100 recipes over the 12 days and the last day is spent on the art of Thai fruit carving.  Each day we start at 10AM and work our way through a wide variety of dishes - curries, soups, salads, desserts....  We sit down to a hearty lunch then cook all afternoon ending up with a feast at dinner also.

...I decided that I needed a substantial course if I was going to conquer Thai cuisine because my solo efforts to create Thai dishes have been nothing short of disastrous.  Of the five worst meals I have ever cooked, at least three of them were attempts to make Pad Thai....  It was in-eatable to say the least and I was overwhelmingly relieved when he postponed our plans....  The result was a mushy mound of ugly noodles that had a pungent odor that rang of nothing other than smelly feet....  So I knew if I was going to devote some time to learning a cuisine, Thai would pay-off - certainly after two weeks I should be able to muster a meal that is at least mildly eatable!

As a result of this traumatic past, I have tried to be that much more diligent in the course.  Taking lots of notes and pictures of the dishes in the hopes of having some of the information sink in. It has been a barrage of new ingredients - fish sauce, oyster sauce, multiple kinds of shrimp paste, eight kinds of eggplant, all types of soy sauce, palm sugar, pandan leaves, banana flowers, fresh green peppercorns and so many more....  Prior to this experience, I viewed myself as having an above average tolerance for spiciness when compared to the average American palate.

...Surely when I made this dish at home, I would need to know how it would taste without setting fire to myself and my guests....  I would still include them, but made sure to carefully toss at least half of the little monsters off of my prep station before beginning the dish.  This is met with laughter each time I discard them and then my instructor happily snatches them up and tosses the little buggers into her own dish.  I have also learned to ignore comments like "Oh, this is a sweet sauce, it is not spicy at all".  This only means that although your brain initially sends a signal that a little bit of sugar has arrived on your tongue, before the hammer falls and your mouth roars with heat.

...Perhaps, my self-image had been all wrong and in fact I had less tolerance for spice than a newborn!...  This is a dish I loved at home, but it left me in tears when I tasted it in class.  I felt I needed to face my fear head on. I ordered the dish at a restaurant, knowing others had found this same dish quite spicy and braced myself for humiliation, but alas you will all be glad to know that I survived without incident.

...After a couple of days in class, I woke up one morning and my finger tips were burning severely.  I tried to ignore it all day, but my fingers were on fire and I started to wonder if I might be having an allergy....  Funnily enough, one of the first articles that popped up was a discussion board about what to do when chopping chilies has left your fingers burning and no amount of hand washing can cure it.

...I was apprehensive at first, but many of the dishes have a unique flavor, but hit the spot when you want a sugar fix.

...I have to keep reminding myself, how lame it would be to become a vegetarian as a result of getting squeamish in a cooking course.]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Welcome to Thailand</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>Thailand</category><dc:date>2007-06-03T08:20:54+07:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/d914b02e2b2916159c6dd87c8e248b7b-70.html#unique-entry-id-70</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/d914b02e2b2916159c6dd87c8e248b7b-70.html#unique-entry-id-70</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[Jay and I had a fabulous time in Japan, but all good things have to come to an end and on Saturday we had to temporarily part ways.  Jay has made his way back home to Birmingham in the US, while I have forged ahead to Thailand.  Jay's oldest friend, Matt Boehm will be marrying Leslie next weekend and, of course, he wanted to be there.  (Congratulations Matt and Leslie!!!)  So off he went!

I headed onto Koh Samui where I am going to be taking a cooking class here for the next two weeks.  Jay will be back here to meet me in about a week and a half and we will continue our adventure around SE Asia.  Not much else to report.  Cooking school starts tomorrow, so hopefully that will provide some fodder for the blog.]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Cleaning Our Clothes in Takayama</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>Japan</category><dc:date>2007-05-31T13:56:13+09:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/56d36ecd76c8db95a8115161cb7e5556-69.html#unique-entry-id-69</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/56d36ecd76c8db95a8115161cb7e5556-69.html#unique-entry-id-69</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[Travel has the very unique facet of sometimes turning the most mundane activities into an absurd adventure.  We had one such experience in the town of Takayama.  We arrived after a long journey from the mountain town of Koya-san.  The trip included one bus, one cable car and six different trains before we finally pulled into the station at Takayama eight hours after leaving Koya-san.  Exhausted, we decided we would wait until the morning to solve what had recently become an urgent laundry problem.

We asked our host whether there was laundry available at the ryokan.  (There had been laundry available almost everywhere we had stayed in Japan so far&hellip; ) No such luck here.  Without speaking any English (or even humoring us by explaining it in Japanese for that matter), she abruptly took our map, drew a big circle on it, and seemed to indicate we could get our clothes cleaned there.  We weren&rsquo;t sure if we were looking for a Laundromat, a dry cleaner or some other place, but we couldn&rsquo;t wait another day, so we set out hoping for the best.

As we headed towards the giant circle on the map, the walk turned a bit more absurd....  Then found ourselves following a series of hastily made signs, which led us down into a not particularly well-lit tunnel.  At about the midpoint of the tunnel, the signs instructed us to switch sides of the walkway &ndash; perhaps the tunnel had actually gone deep enough to take us to the United States for a brief moment, because we were walking on the right hand side!  When we at last popped out of the tunnel, nothing looked like it should have looked according to our map, so we randomly guessed where to turn next.  I looked up and suddenly saw a sign &ldquo;Coin Laundry&rdquo; posted in English.  This must be the circle on our map.

...We confidently stepped into the Laundromat and put our laundry bags on a center table.  Initially things seemed familiar, but upon closer inspection, there was nothing at all familiar about our surroundings.  Try as we might, we could not even remotely distinguish the washers from the dryers.  There were many different looking machines, with widely varying prices (the prices were the only thing we could read...)...  There were several signs with many different opening and closing hours, but we had no idea what any of the text around them said....  Walking from machine to machine trying to guess what each said.

Finally, after many minutes, I convinced Jay we should just try one of the machines.  He was reluctant, claiming that everything looked like a dryer.  We poured our coins into the machine in front of us. It cost 1,000 yen (about $8.50), which seemed like a lot, but who knows?  The machine started to rumble and as we looked at our clothes tumbling around through the glass window, it looked like we had just spent all of that money to tumble dry our already dry, dirty clothes....  A little water splashed the window, then a little more, and then at last, soapy water!

...The timer indicated it would take 80 minutes, and 80 minutes later we returned to find our clothes washed and dried.]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>&#x201c;You Will Never Find It&#x21;&#x201d;</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>Japan</category><dc:date>2007-05-31T13:55:25+09:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/55df9b83192c4b68c8cc3b722dcbc400-68.html#unique-entry-id-68</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/55df9b83192c4b68c8cc3b722dcbc400-68.html#unique-entry-id-68</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[On one of our last nights in Kyoto, we strolled into a sake bar a few blocks down from our ryokan (Japanese guesthouse).  Hirota-san, the proprietor of our guesthouse, insisted that we should visit Yorum&rsquo;s Sake Bar, as he is &ldquo;a real connoisseur of sake and even speaks English.&rdquo;

...The group quickly slid down and space was made for two more bar stools that had previously been tucked away in a corner....  As he poured each glass, he offered a detailed description of the sake with a tone and air usually reserved for elite wine rooms in Napa....  He is serious and knowledgeable about his sake &ndash; and he spoke of it with the gravity akin to sharing a national secret.  He didn&rsquo;t seem to be completely convinced that we were worthy of his sake related insights, and was very skeptical of the sake we could have had available in New York, but slowly divulged various factoids.

...This was a man passionate about sake, so certainly there was some cuisine he enjoyed, and frankly, it seemed like we should change the subject before his head exploded.

...The dishes are all laid out on the counter and you select which of the prepared dishes you would like to eat....  He went on to tell us that it is completely out of the way, very difficult to get to.

...He harrumphed, made a vague circle of the area, and indicated the restaurant was around there, quickly pointing out how far this was from the nearest subway and train stop.

As he wrote the name in Japanese, he lowered his voice and said ominously, &ldquo;You will never find it.&rdquo;  If we really wanted to go, he suggested we get ourselves to the area and then try to see if we could find a taxi familiar with the restaurant.  We realized we wouldn&rsquo;t get any more details from him, and we would have to venture out on our own if we were to taste this amazing home cooking style food that we could never cook at home....  We had forded the fast flowing rivers in Australia, certainly we could roam around a residential neighborhood in Kyoto looking for a restaurant.

Now, a normal person might take an experience like this and think to themselves&hellip; Geez, there are so many fantastic restaurants in Kyoto.

...As we meandered through the Kyoto streets we continuously repeated Yorum&rsquo;s proclamation: &ldquo;You will never find it&rdquo; in our best Arnold Schwarzenegger accents....  Relieved I had some comprehension left after the hours and hours I spent hunched in the Columbia language lab listening to Japanese conversation.

...After a successful series of pointing, smiling and gesturing, we were given a table provided we agreed to eat within the hour....  Normally, one would think that a long counter filled with dishes would make the ordering easier than trying to navigate a menu in Japanese....  Nothing on the bar was recognizable and we had no idea what we were ordering or how much to order.  Jay finally selected one dish by pointing and saying &ldquo;fish,&rdquo; and we were able to convince our waiter to pick out the rest for us.

Several dishes arrived in front of us. Jay&rsquo;s selection turned out to be a big plate of fish heads....  We also got a plate of whole small fish (perhaps they were sardines?), a selection of vegetable dishes and an unidentifiable fried ball of some meat related product.  We surveyed our table as we felt the rest of the restaurant&rsquo;s stare to see how we would fare with the meal....  He ate each of them enthusiastically; in fact, I think he actually had to restrain himself from sucking on them!

...Their initially icy stares had changed to big smiles and as we left, they gathered at the door asking us to come again.  They handed us their business card asked us to call first, so we could reserve our table (in Japanese of course!)]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Memorial Day Weekend in Hiroshima</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>Japan</category><dc:date>2007-05-31T13:53:35+09:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/c83b08ea520fe83a7cc1fb7436ce0786-66.html#unique-entry-id-66</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/c83b08ea520fe83a7cc1fb7436ce0786-66.html#unique-entry-id-66</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[It was almost by chance that Miranda and I found ourselves in Hiroshima this Memorial Day weekend.  Japan itself was a relatively last minute addition to our itinerary, and we had only decided to make the trip from Kyoto to Hiroshima a couple days before leaving.  Frankly, we were a little wary of visiting Hiroshima.  The sobering walk through the city&rsquo;s Peace Memorial Park was going a major departure from our fun-filled food tasting and sightseeing tour of Kyoto.  And even though we had heard the Japanese appreciate it when Americans visit Hiroshima, we knew we were going to feel sad and uncomfortable, at the very least, walking by the site of one of the lowest points in American history.  Nevertheless, we felt a responsibility to ourselves to see it, and so early Sunday morning we boarded the Shinkansen from Kyoto to Hiroshima.

The first thing we saw when we got off the tram from Hiroshima Station was the powerful reminder of the destruction of Hiroshima, &ldquo;A-Bomb Dome.&rdquo;  A-Bomb Dome is the preserved ruins of an old industrial building right by the center of the bomb&rsquo;s explosion.  Looking at the information boards around A-Bomb Dome, we were reminded of the fact that, by the end of 1945, the atomic bomb attack on this city was responsible for the deaths of 140,000 of the 350,000 people who were living here.  Seeing this place and reading about the horror of what went on here made those figures sink in much more than reading them in school.  We couldn&rsquo;t help but wonder how we might respond to such a horrible experience.  It would be so easy to be consumed by anger or to lose the will to live.  So we thought it was very impressive how modern Hiroshima instead chose to rebuild itself bigger than before and committed to spreading peace.  The people here are really a testament to humanity.  Modern Hiroshima is about three times as big as it was before the atomic bomb.  The city where scientists said nothing would grow for seventy-five years now has beautiful green grass, musicians playing by the river, and a population well over one million.

Even more impressive, though, is the hopeful spirit here.  Walking through Peace Memorial Park and the A-Bomb Museum, you can feel that Hiroshima is a place dedicated to helping realize the possibility that a peaceful world free from nuclear weapons can exist.  The memorials don&rsquo;t focus on casting blame, but instead focus on how important it is to rid the world of nuclear weapons.  For us, one particularly moving exhibit was a wall of hundreds of letters written by the mayors of Hiroshima to world leaders, one sent after each nuclear test by any country since 1968.  These were written with a lot of thought.  Each one was unique, with a message specific to the time and the country doing the nuclear testing, and all the letters had one message: please stop making nuclear weapons and pledge to destroy your nuclear arsenal.

As we got to the end of the wall of letters, we couldn&rsquo;t help but notice the uncomfortable fact that the overwhelming majority of the letters sent in the last 15 years were addressed to Bush and Clinton.  One letter in particular stood out to Miranda and me, written to Bush shortly after a nuclear test conducted in Nevada on September 26, 2001.

...&ldquo;Finally I urge you to consider extremely carefully any military action the United States might take in response to the terrorist attacks.  I demand that you refrain absolutely from using nuclear weapons and avoid any other inhumane form of retaliation that could bring harm to innocent people.&rdquo;

...To read more of his letters, you can check out this link.]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Eating my way through Japan...</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>Japan</category><dc:date>2007-05-25T14:20:50+09:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/1fdda5ba687d9c2c94b95291fa02ee24-65.html#unique-entry-id-65</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/1fdda5ba687d9c2c94b95291fa02ee24-65.html#unique-entry-id-65</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[All of these completely legitimate reasons to visit, but as you know for me, there is no better reason to visit somewhere than to eat!

...I have been to Japan twice before, but not since I spent the summer here when I was 12.  Everyone has been asking whether I remember it (and also if I remember any of the Japanese I studied for so many painstaking hours!)  There is not much that I explicitly remember about being here, but the food and smells have been most familiar.  For instance, yesterday, we sat down for a meal at an okinomiyaki restaurant in Nara.  That is where I lived when I was here for the summer, and as soon as I stepped into the okinomiyaki restaurant I was reminded of sitting there as a child watching as they cooked the japanese "pancake" in front of me....  I have had several dreams about my mom's terrific Nova Scotia pancakes since we have been gone and this is nothing like those :) But it is delicious in its own right.)  Okinomiyaki seems most similiar to the Korean seafood "pancake" that is found at lots of places in New York.

...One of the great things about many of the restaurants here is that they specialize in a particular style of dish and tend to make that dish very well....  Another common restaurant feature here (in the very small places) is that all the cooking is done right in front of you.  Either at your table or the counter where most of the guests are sitting....  There is no doubt that each dish is made to order when it happens right before your eyes!  We had lunch the other day at a tempura restaurant and the chef carefully floured each vegetable and tossed them into the fryer in front of us and passed it to us mere moments after removing it from fryer.

...Last night we made it to the most specialized restaurant place yet....  Each bite was a handmade morsel assembled by a woman sitting along side us at the counter....  With a quick smile to each other, we ordered another 10!

...People kept telling us before we arrived that Japan would be hopelessly expensive and we would be relegated to eating from vending machines, but that has not been our experience at all.  While I am sure that some items are quite expensive, traveling as we are, there are great bargains.  The accommodation options are little more than the big cities in Australia, but unlike Australia (which is quite clean in its own right), each place is spotless, making budget travel more comfortable.  From a food perspective, there are endless options of local fare that need not cost more than $10 for a complete meal.

...I love sukiyaki, which is sliced beef, vegetables and tofu cooked at each table with a bit of soy sauce and mirin (sweet rice wine).  This dish is a bit of a luxury here, but I had to try it!...  A man removed our shoes when we entered through the door and we were escorted by several people to our table.  A woman dressed in a lovely kimono sat at our table throughout the entire meal, carefully preparing the dish and serving us. Definitely a unique experience.

...We keep meaning to find the right place, but each time become distracted by another tasty looking meal that is less widely available at home!

Here are a few shots of the food we have been eating...  Tea house - complete with step-by-step picture instructions on how to prepare our tea]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Exploring Kyoto</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>Japan</category><dc:date>2007-05-24T10:15:35+09:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/f2082ac9b183320e6f38d0482178c81e-64.html#unique-entry-id-64</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/f2082ac9b183320e6f38d0482178c81e-64.html#unique-entry-id-64</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[Japan is about as different of a place we could possibly be from Australia, so we were expecting to experience a bit of a culture shock.  Australia is a vast country &ndash; as big as the continental US with only a tad over 20 million people &ndash; while Japan is quite the opposite, with over 120 million people living on islands whose collective size is about the same as Montana.  Also, this has been the first part of our trip in a non-English speaking country, and while Miranda knows some Japanese, it was a little intimidating (and also exciting) when we stepped out of our train, weighed down by our giant backpacks, and headed into the throngs of people bustling about Kyoto Station, definitely not speaking English.  Fortunately we were sharing this experience with a charming Australian couple, Henry and Lola, whom we had met from our flight from Brisbane to Osaka.  Our camaraderie definitely made getting our bearings in Kyoto more of a fun adventure rather than the overwhelming experience it could have been, and we have met up with them for a drink or a meal a couple times since and swapped travel stories.

...You might guess that this was the result of Miranda&rsquo;s map reading skills and had nothing to do with my "walk until you have to turn around" navigation strategy....  It is a wonderful city made from an incredible mixture of old and new Japanese culture....  It&rsquo;s the kind of place where you can look right to find a twenty foot high inflatable Hello Kitty in front of a web of power lines, and then look left to admire an 8th century Buddhist temple.  It is place that can seem incongruous at times &ndash; a hundred people crowded around a Zen rock garden for instance &ndash; but somehow it works, like a new twist on an old family recipe that makes everybody at the table want a second helping.

A very noteworthy thing about our stay in Kyoto so far has been the friendliness and the hospitality of the Japanese.  One example of this came on our second night in Japan, when we found ourselves unable to find the restaurant we had set out for, followed by a dose of having trouble deciding on a new place to eat.  In our search for food, we introduced ourselves to a fellow backpacker who had a confident look about him, a very nice Italian named Alessandro.  Alessandro did not speak Japanese, but was nevertheless engaged in trying to strike up conversations with every attractive Japanese woman who passed down the street.  Fortunately for us, his overtures were not reciprocated, and he therefore had plenty of time to chat.

It turned out Alessandro had only been in Kyoto for a day longer than we had, so he didn&rsquo;t know a place to eat.  But, he said, he was waiting on a friend he had met yesterday who was Japanese, and maybe she would know a place.  This seemed like a better alternative than just walking into the next place we came across, and we liked our new friend, so we waited together for his friend to arrive.

...After we introduced ourselves and asked her whether she knew of a restaurant she could recommend to us, she said for us to hold on, that she could ask the local restaurant if they could seat us. Wait here, we will be back, she said.  Mikki and Alessandro ran around the corner, while Miranda and I waited with renewed hope and also very keen to find out what was the local restaurant (we were thinking that it must be excellent if Mikki had to ask if they would serve us).  A few minutes later we saw Alessandro running towards us. He explained that the place was for locals and was very small....  Luckily, we had very little with us, and he sprinted off again to tell Mikki.  A few minutes later Mikki returned smiling and invited us to eat at the local restaurant.

Before we knew it, we were all gathered around a tiny bar topped with several delicious looking, home style dishes.  It turned out that Alessandro and Mikki had only met the owner the night before at another restaurant, and he treated all four of us as his honored guests....  A plate of hot, dried sardines was passed down to us and we dutifully munched into the fish, head and all....  They passed us a mystery meat dish and we chewed slowly on a tough meet in a tasty sauce.

...We realized the only way we would be table to make it home would be to stop touching the glass completely At the end of the evening, we bid our hosts farewell and waited for the bill.]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Departing thoughts</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>Australia</category><dc:date>2007-05-17T09:43:15+09:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/5058b175cf7ea44fc1410ead249a3be9-62.html#unique-entry-id-62</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/5058b175cf7ea44fc1410ead249a3be9-62.html#unique-entry-id-62</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[As a final Australian entry, we thought we should share a list of all of the wildlife that crossed in front (or nearly!)  in our time in Australia.  It is a great reminder of how much wildlife we saw and how much distance we covered!  - Kangaroo - Emu - Cow - Bull - Goat - Sheep - Bird - Camel - Snake - Wild Horse - Dingo - Lizard - Rabbit - Echidna - Wombat - Wallaby - Pademelon - Koala - Flightless bird - Pony - Brahman - Feral cat - Fox - Fish - Donkey - Penguin - Frog - This unidentified animal

And if you add in water vehicles (otherwise known as boats) - Dunong - Dolphin - Sea snake (eww!)

A few more some random facts and thoughts that Jay and I wanted to share as we end our 2.5 months of travel in Australia.

- Aussies have an obsession with turning normal items into things with endearing objects with a simple nickname: mushies (mushrooms), sunnies (sunglasses), bikkies (biscuit), brekky (breakfast), specky (spectacular).  There are really endless examples of these items, but we'll spare you :)

- You don't have to wear shoes here.  There doesn't seem to be the same fear here that bare feet pose a public health risk.  You see people walking down the street in bare feet all the time, not to mention seeing those naked tootsies in the grocery store and in restaurants.

- The drinking culture in Australia is really serious business.  We were warned before arriving that this was the case, but nothing prepares you for seeing a bar packed with beer drinking patrons at 10:15AM on a Sunday morning.  No food.  No athletic event.  Just having a beer.]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Put It All on &#x22;the Whopper&#x22;</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>Australia</category><dc:date>2007-05-15T11:33:38+10:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/8e015639ff908e5aa759eda11565e2ed-63.html#unique-entry-id-63</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/8e015639ff908e5aa759eda11565e2ed-63.html#unique-entry-id-63</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[There's a lot they don't tell you about places like Port Douglas....  We knew there might also be time for a trip fishing for barramundi, a stroll along Four Mile Beach, or a crocodile cruise on the River Queen.  Above all, we knew that at every turn there would be plenty of good food and ice cold Victoria Bitter.

...Front and center on Macrossan Street, with an interesting saloon styled facade, it's a place where locals and tourists have congregated for a stubby and bite for decades.  But last night we ventured beyond the pleasant varnish of Iron Bar's friendly exterior, beneath the cover band singing wasted away again in Margaritaville, and well below all the g'days and g'don-yas.  It was here we stumbled across an activity so perverse that it could only be thought of and practiced in the country with the highest gambling rates in the world.  These behind-closed-doors goings on featured wagering on one of the most sinister animals in Queensland, what biologists call the Bufo Marinus.

It started when Miranda got a tip from a friend and we showed up at the Iron Bar at 7:30....  There were a few Tassies and a worried looking Pommie with us, but mostly we learned that the others were from Queensland and New South Wales....  Whatever was about to happen, we didn't think we needed to be scared, but we wanted to be ready to move quickly if we had to.

Out from a door we hadn't noticed stepped a tall man clad in bushwear, a wide brimmed dark brown hat with the tan shorts and short-sleeved shirt....  He pretended it was loose, laughed, and out it came, the Whopper, the biggest cane toad this side of Sydney.  One by one this man pulled the Whopper's competition out from the buckets, delivering each cane toad into the arena complete with a back story and loud cheers from the crowd.

...A random raffle selected which of the lucky guests would be able to step into the arena, kiss their toad (an absolute requirement!), and perform the jockey duties.  Jockey duties consisted of the aforementioned kiss and blowing into a paper kazoo wildly until your toad hopped off the edge of the table.  At which point, the crowd screamed and you had to grab the toad and run it to the second bucket.  The first to finish was declared the winner, and the lucky winning jockey walked off with a cold, private labeled Cane Toad Racing beer and a bit of notoriety.

...The lowest two performing toads in the first two rounds were replaced with "fresh-legged" toads, adding a real twist to the whole process....  While others struggled with where to place their bets, we sat back and watched this bizarre and uniquely Australian spectacle.  Sadly, The Whopper had proved to be big but not very quick, and didn't make the final on this night.

...His father stepped up with a broad grin (clearly having hoped for this outcome), and road Mr. Amazing to the promise land.  He walked away with his head held high, an ice cold victory beer and $200 worth of prizes.

...Interestingly, feral cane toads are actually among the most destructive animals to Australia's natural habitat, and the country is spending millions to stop their assault on its fertile regions.  About a hundred cane toads were introduced into Australia in 1935 from Hawaii, in an effort to curtail the sugar cane beetle population.  But like so many animals that have been brought from other continents to Australia, the sinister cane toads quickly spread and thrived in a land with no natural predators, and have become a plague upon the Great Down Under.  The geniuses who came up with this idea apparently were not aware that the cane toad have long lives (about 5-10 years), are toxic to most animals who try to eat them, and can give birth to up to 30,000 baby toads in one pregnancy - and can give birth twice a year....  It is now estimated that there are more than 10 billion cane toads in Australia, creating quite an ecological problem.]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>The Great Barrier Reef 15 Years Later</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>Australia</category><dc:date>2007-05-11T18:08:50+10:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/bc5118630333206aab4d32fe5f07b775-61.html#unique-entry-id-61</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/bc5118630333206aab4d32fe5f07b775-61.html#unique-entry-id-61</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[Today, Jay and I did what all good tourists do when they come to Port Douglas, we took a boat out to the Great Barrier Reef.  We were loaded up with about 30 other passengers and headed out for about an hour and a half before arriving at our first reef stop.  (The seas were a bit rough today and unfortunately many of those onboard didn't find the sea swells too agreeable.  We were armed with Dramamine and were just fine though!)

One of the unusual things about visiting the GBR is that the tour operators allow you to dive without having a PADI certification.  As a result, most people who visit the reef are able to scuba dive and see the reef up close.  We had a safety briefing onboard and then headed into the water with all of our gear.  After some initial adjustment for both of us, we were swimming along just like fish down there!

This was actually my second time diving on the reef.  My first visit was with my family when we came to Australia when I was 14.  My memories are of floating through the sea, seeing the entire underwater world filled with amazing color.  There was a vibrant spectrum every way which way I turned - the fish, the coral, the strange looking sea plants, all in technicolor.

...The brilliant colors that are seared into my mind from that first dive were nowhere to be seen.  Although the reef remains very beautiful, it is but a faded version of what I saw on the first visit....  My mental image must have exaggerated the color that I saw a decade and a half before....  as if I had made an absurd statement, "Oh yeah, this is nothing like what you would have seen then...  And in another 15 years, a lot of it won't even be around."

I had heard the the GBR was being damaged by the elevated sea temperatures, but I still had a difficult time wrapping my head around it when faced with extent of the harm.  We hear so much discussion about global warming and "climate change", but so rarely have I seen such a blatant example of the destruction that we are inflicting on this planet.  The last few decades we have begun to destroy what has taken hundreds and thousands and millions of years to create under the sea.

The Great Barrier Reef has already lost about ten percent of its coral, but if we remain on our current course, the whole thing will be dead in the next few decades.  The reef depends on a fruitful, but delicate symbiotic relationship between algae and polyps.  When the waters get above 86 degrees for more than a couple of weeks, this relationship is destroyed and the coral starves to death.  With its death, goes the entire ecosystem, full of life that lives within and around it.  I don't want to get too morose about the whole thing, but the change was a bit shocking...

[On a lighter note, I am not sure that the damage to the reef can explain away the absurdly shocked look on my face in our underwater picture......  I don't think this picture was taken from my best angle ;) ]]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Land Ho&#x21;</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>Australia</category><dc:date>2007-05-10T16:14:29+10:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/0aef5975175632f1557c2d691502511c-60.html#unique-entry-id-60</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/0aef5975175632f1557c2d691502511c-60.html#unique-entry-id-60</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[Miranda and I spent the last week and a half on a big road trip "bush camping" our way from Broome through the vast Kimberly region on our way to the Bungle Bungles and ultimately up to Darwin.  We were really overwhelmed with everything we saw, but we both agreed that our favorite part of the road trip was the adventure that was driving along the Gibb River Road.

...When I'm actually driving (versus parking), I am generally safe and am often inclined to regale my passenger with stories and charming conversation (if I do say so myself), but I do have a mild tendency to wander away from the planned route.  Or, rather, I should say that there is a special, haphazard force that compels me - sometimes suddenly - to take massively wrong turns, to insist I'm headed in the right direction, and to follow those turns until I'm hopelessly lost.  To summarize, if I were a professional chauffeur, my oversized business card would read something like this: "If you say 'Home James,' you can count on me to be cheery as I bring you comfortably and safely to a place on the opposite side of town, where I will circle the block of someone else's house until I've exhausted our gasoline, having been unable to park."

Living in New York has shielded me from my own driving for the most part, fortunately, due to the fact that I don't have a car, and also that the MTA won't allow me to operate the B train.  So now, even if you haven't been a passenger on the Albany Express, I think you'd agree that I would not seem to be a natural candidate for "adventure driving."...  We set out down the Gibb River Road on the first day it was opened after the Wet season, when there were barely any other cars, of course no lined parking spaces, and really only one road to drive on (most of the turnoffs on the Gibb River Road require actually getting out of the car and opening a gate, which puts a damper on my desire to take random turnoffs).  Driving the Gibb River, what was really needed was the following: 1) the dexterity to negotiate sand, mud, big rocks and holes in the road; 2) the ability to dodge the numerous cows, bulls, wallabies, and dingos that run across your path at top speed- actually it would probably be OK if you hit a dingo, but running into a giant wild brahman cow would be a car-smashing, trip ending experience; 3) the wherewithal to bring plenty of food and water in case you fail to avoid the previously listed obstacles, and most importantly 4) the stupidity to drive into a really big river and hope you make it across.

...On our first full day on the road, we decided to camp at a wonderfully rural cattle ranch called Mornington Station, which was the closest spot to Dimond Gorge....  Take it easy, they told us, as they explained that the 90km trip was going to be a three hour drive on a "rough 4WD road."...  I was answered with a laugh, a "not like this" and a promise to come look for us if we weren't there in the morning....  The drive was muddy and bumpy and filled with these crazy cows and bulls that would appear to be moving out of our way at first, only to freak out and run at top speeds right in front of us just as we were about to pass them.

...I want to preface this story by saying that right before we left we saw all these trucks with something called a "safari snorkel" sticking out of their car, which moves the engine's airtake much higher on the vehicle, reducing your chances of flooding your engine in really deep water....  Instead, we were given a wry smile, an emergency beacon (gulp!), and the following advice: "You could walk into any water before you cross it to see how deep it is....  'Course there are salties (saltwater crocodiles) in most of those rivers, and they're nasty, so maybe you should just wait for someone else and see if they make it."...  So, there we were, on our way to Mornington, the sun about to go down, knowing we would never be able to drive this road at night....  But this was a big river, and we had no idea if we could cross it in our snorkel-less state of being....  I did not feel like moving from the passenger seat in an area where there might be crocs, but we needed to go, so I gingerly and quickly hopped out of the car and into the water to examine the terrain.

...For those of you who didn't go to high school with me, the Beast was a monster truck style souped up SUV that a classmate of mine named Hardy Johnson drove in Birmingham.

...One night we camped at a place called Elizabeth Station, where we woke up to find a bull standing right in front of our flimsy little tent, staring at us through the mesh with interest.

...The Pentecost is the one that is on Gibb River Road postcards because it is so long, but crossing the Durack was just as formidable in my opinion because it was deeper....  The water was onto our hood again on the Durack, and when we saw how long the Pentecost was, we were seriously wishing we had invested in a safari snorkel....  There was another truck that had just made it across coming from the opposite direction, so we tried to copy the path he took by looking at the tire tracks entering and exiting the water.

...They were up from Broome, they had their dog with them and were looking for a place to camp the night, did we know whether Home Valley Station was open?...  They said if we used them we could look down river to see a truck that tried to cross the river two weeks before but got bogged and washed downstream....  We looked at them and they looked at us. They didn't budge, and it became apparent that, while they were nice as could be, they had absolutely no intention of crossing the Pentecost before seeing if we made it...]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>The Bungle Bungles</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>Australia</category><dc:date>2007-05-09T16:11:24+09:30</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/9099e393d4ebe55578b22a0ddb576306-58.html#unique-entry-id-58</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/9099e393d4ebe55578b22a0ddb576306-58.html#unique-entry-id-58</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[As Jay mentioned in an earlier posting, traveling to the Bungle Bungles had become the symbol for all that our trip was about.  The Bungle Bungles do not have the usual characteristics of a dreamy "destination" place.

First of all, they are truly in the middle of nowhere....  It requires that you drive far, far away from anything else.  And then, once you have driven several hundred kilometers from the nearest supermarket, you turnoff the highway and drive another three hours on a rough 4WD track to reach the visitor center.  Only to be told it is another 30-45 minutes to the campsites, where you arrive to find there are no facilities.

You only have the opportunity to reach this place a few months of the year because for most of the year the environment is wholly in hospitable to human life - torrential rains and insane heat.  That is not to say that the heat is acceptable once the park is open.  On the walks around the park, the temperature regularly reaches 50 degrees Celsius.  For those of you who don't remember the formula from high school, that is a blazing 122 degrees.  (We were lucky and the temperature for us was a cool 110 on our walks...)

And you do all this to see a bunch of rocks in unusual shapes.  That's it, there is no other attraction other than the huge rocks.

So, the journey to this place had become a symbol of our trip.  Everything you wouldn't do on a two week vacation, but somehow a place we dreamed of seeing....  The isolation and remoteness of this place adds to its mystique.  When we finally pulled up to the national park sign after bouncing along the dirt road for several hours we both felt a great sense of victory.  We had set our sights on these pages in the Lonely Planet so many months ago and now we were standing at the entrance to the park.

We watched the colors of the sunset fill the sky over the beehive domes and knew we had made it.  We set-up our camp and felt a sense of pride that we were able to confidently and comfortably camp based entirely on what we brought in. We were self-sufficient, as they say.

...The heat was pounding on us. Jay happily snapped pictures as I devised ways to maximize my time in the shade among the domes.

Once we had seen the rocks from the ground, we headed to the airstrip and jumped in a helicopter....  over areas of the park that you cannot access by foot or car. The sky gave us a completely different perspective on the park.  The immensity and beauty of the area was quite impressive as we swooped and turned over the landscape.

It is hard to imagine how this place was "undiscovered" until the 1980s because the terrain looks so unusual from up high.  it really speaks to the isolation of the whole area.  It may not be a dream trip for everyone, but for us it was pretty special - the distance, the heat and the enormity of the sandstone formations.]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Let the adventures begin&#x21;</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>Australia</category><dc:date>2007-04-30T14:51:26+08:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/d3ccd012e474fa7d92ef688e1a9819c5-57.html#unique-entry-id-57</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/d3ccd012e474fa7d92ef688e1a9819c5-57.html#unique-entry-id-57</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[There are two seasons in this part of the world - the Wet and the Dry....  It is marked by soaring temperatures, even higher humidity, drenching rains, and dramatic lightning storms.  Much of the region in the Kimberly becomes impassable during this season - all of the roads are literally closed and areas can only be accessed by light plane.  We have come at the end of the Wet and have stayed a few extra days in the hopes that the Gibb River Road would open up for the season.  Our wait has paid off and by the middle of the week, the entire length of the road is expected to be open.  The Gibb River Road is considered one of the world's last great adventure drives, which can only be attempted by high-clearance 4WDs over the rugged unsealed road and various river crossings.

For whatever reason, we have decided this is the adventure drive for us. (predicated on the assumption, of course, that there *is* an adventure drive for us...)  We are most apprehensive about the river crossings.  My only knowledge of trying to ford a river is playing "Oregon Trail" and having my wagon turn over as I tried to cross the river.  I'm banking on this trip having little to nothing in common with the Oregon Trail.  We will follow local advice for river crossings - if it is more than 3/4 up the tires, don't attempt it.  If you aren't sure, wait for another vehicle to cross successfully before trying it.  While this could take a day or so, it is preferable to being swept down river.  The usual advice elsewhere is to try to cross the river by foot first, to get a sense of the depth, but this is not advisable in the Kimberly because the river systems are filled with vicious and massive saltwater crocs.

Many locals say this drive is no longer the adventure it used to be because it has become more well-traveled.  News I welcome :) (Not to mention the fact that they say it can take a day for the next car to come along...)  Popular or not, it is not like any road at home.  The Gibb River Road is 655kms, and it cuts straight through the heart of the Kimberly.  The Kimberly is a region four times the size of Texas with a population of only 25,000 people, making it one of the least populated places on earth!  Needless to say, once we leave "cosmopolitan" Broome, we will be *out* there.  Beyond the obvious lack of mobile phone coverage, there are not even public phones on the Gibb River Road.  Once setting off, it is recommended that you carry enough food, water and fuel to last you several days beyond your expected journey in case there is trouble.  We are feeling well prepared with all of our supplies (emergency beacon and all!)  and are looking forward to the journey.  We expect to be on the road for about 6 days before reaching the small town of Kununurra on the other end of the road.

Not sure if this entry has sounded like a sales pitch or a warning about this trip or maybe just flatly absurd, but either way, we're going to give it a try.  As Jay says, it appeals to the cowboy / cowgirl in all of us. I have never considered myself much of a cowgirl, but here goes!]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Broome Time</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>Australia</category><dc:date>2007-04-30T14:50:48+08:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/24599c65b4b0949c12f9a12bde457314-56.html#unique-entry-id-56</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/24599c65b4b0949c12f9a12bde457314-56.html#unique-entry-id-56</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[For the last week we have been in Broome in the northern part of Western Australia (WA).  Broome has been both a destination and a pit stop for us in between our road trip up WA from Perth, and our upcoming road trip into the heart of the "Top End" - Darwin.  With a population of just 15,000, Broome is the largest city in the Kimberly, the beautiful and isolated northwestern part of Australia, with an incredible mix of gorges, mountains, plains and rugged coastline.  It isn't hard just looking at a map to get a sense of Broome's remoteness - it is the largest city for 2,000 kilometers in any direction.  At one point on the drive up here we passed a road sign warning us to stock up, as the next place for supplies of any kind wouldn't be for 632kms.  Once here, the town is like an oasis, nestled on a small stretch of beach facing the Indian Ocean.  The environment is relaxed.  The locals are friendly and easy going, and the days pass slowly just as they should when you're sitting by the beach with a stubby in your hand waiting for a breeze.  They call this state of being "Broome Time" now, but apparently this has been a place of tranquility for Australia's inhabitants long before Captain Cooke landed.  Aboriginal people in the Kimberly sent their sick to Broome for resting and healing.  Different tribes would even meet in Broome as a safe place where they could peacefully settle disputes.

As for us, well, we came here to celebrate my 30th birthday and to see the red sunsets on the famous Cable Beach.  We have rested, recouped, and replenished our supplies.  And now we are about to return to "the bush" for one last big camping trip, across the Kimberly along the beautiful pack of dirt, sand, crocodiles, and mud that is the Gibb River Road, to a place called the Bungle Bungles, ultimately headed to Darwin.  A word on the Bungle Bungles.  In case we haven't told you, seeing the Bungle Bungles is one of the main reasons we came to Australia in the first place.  They are supposed to be an awesome formation of sandstone rocks located in Purnululu National Park, which is located precisely in the middle of nowhere.  So middle of nowhere, in fact, that thirty years ago it was actually nowhere - the Bungles weren't "discovered" by white Australians until the mid-1980s.  That's right, they were not on the map at all until the 1980s.  One of the main inspirations for our decision to break away from New York, from the security of our jobs, our apartment, came from learning about the Bungles.  I have the clearest image in my head of Miranda sitting on the floor in our apartment in Brooklyn, reading aloud to me from a book about Australia, and telling me about the Bungle Bungles.  It's not just the colossal sandstone domes that drew us here.  It's more the fact that it seems to represent what is fun and adventurous and even a tad scary about Australia.  Australia is a place so vast, nearly as big as the continental United States but with less than ten percent of the people, and a place with such a harsh climate that you get the feeling that even now there is so much left to explore and find out there.  And that's kind of how we feel about ourselves, that there's a thrill as we veer off the maps we drew for our own lives, even if it's just for a few months, and find out what's really there.]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>The Big 3-0</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>Australia</category><dc:date>2007-04-28T16:03:58+08:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/c4e3be20a024971adbc6ec33e7d57299-55.html#unique-entry-id-55</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/c4e3be20a024971adbc6ec33e7d57299-55.html#unique-entry-id-55</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[Jay entered the world of adulthood yesterday and he successfully found a way to make it one of the longest birthdays to date.  It began the night before...  not sure why, but it did.  Then we celebrated on his birthday day and agreed it would continue until his birthday had ended in the US, which was noon on the 28th here.  We had a great day, although we missed celebrating with friends and family.  I did my best to sneak away from Jay, so there could be a couple of surprises.

We spent the afternoon sailing on a replica pearl lugger boat.  The water and wind were perfect for our 4 hour cruise and just as the sun was setting they brought out a cake and Jay was serenaded by the crew.  It was followed by a tasty dinner at the best restaurant in town.

If you haven't had a chance to wish him happy birthday yet, it's not too late!  Feel free to drop him an email :)]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Have you seen a lot of frogs?</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>Australia</category><dc:date>2007-04-28T16:01:20+08:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/355b51ee9e3cdae2a070e45734e9669b-54.html#unique-entry-id-54</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/355b51ee9e3cdae2a070e45734e9669b-54.html#unique-entry-id-54</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[[Let me preface this entry by saying, that it is somewhat borderline subject matter for our blog.  I particularly can be a bit prudish these sorts of subjects, but it seemed too good to miss sharing it with you...]

You don't always get questions like "have you seen a lot of frogs?"  within the first few minutes of meeting someone....  The proprietor of our B&B was showing us around the place just after we arrived.  We had switched to the B&B to celebrate Jay's birthday and enjoy a few creature comforts.  He pointed out the light switches and the location of the air conditioner remote, pointed to the breakfast area and the fridge for our use.  Then, he added casually, "have you seen a lot of frogs?"

...No, we haven't seen lots of frogs.  Where does one normally see frogs?  But in fact, we did see one just last night at the movie theatre (it's an open air cinema).  "Oh" he exclaimed, "let me show you one."  (Apparently our cinema frog sighting wasn't intimate enough...)  We followed him hurrying out of our room and into an adjacent room.  We were in a bathroom.  This was going to be interesting.

...as he flipped open the lid of the toilet seat.  And there it was - a bright green Australian Tree frog hanging out in the toilet bowl....  To me, this statement meant that this was not actually a functional bathroom, but rather a frog aquarium of sorts....  He flushed the toilet explaining, that this is normally a good way to get them to hide and frog started kicking madly against the current of the flush.  (I will add at this point, that the frog was not a tiny little tadpole...  it was about the size of my fist.)  The frog stood his ground and refused to be flushed.  "Well, if that happens, try to push him down with toilet brush and if that doesn't work just go ahead and do your business and don't worry about the frog."  He didn't flinch, he wasn't joking.

Don't worry about the frog?!

...We're a long way from New York...]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Tomato Sauce Doesn&#x27;t Start with &#x22;K&#x22;</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>Australia</category><dc:date>2007-04-22T16:05:55+08:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/5aed025569be184b65eeba095ec7e44e-53.html#unique-entry-id-53</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/5aed025569be184b65eeba095ec7e44e-53.html#unique-entry-id-53</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[At first glance, there are far more similarities between Australia and the US than differences.  Yes, there are many more people in the US - 300 million versus the 18 million in Australia....  Australia is the same size as the continental US. Fashions and food are quite similar.

...I mostly expected to hear a lot of British terms: serviettes (napkins), boot (trunk), petrol (gas), university (college), chips (fries), crisps (potato chips).  We became accustomed to these terms pretty quickly and made a conscientious effort to use them when speaking to the Aussies.  Although periodically, I do slip up when trying to buy gas and get a very strange and quizzical look if I ask if the gas pump is open...  And I get even stranger looks if I ask someone if they are on line rather than in the cue...

However, there are a whole slew of words that we have begun using on this trip that we have never needed to use very regularly in the US. These words have started to slip into our lexicon without effort and without thinking.  This puts us at risk for one of the biggest travel injuries you can suffer - coming home sounding affected.

I will share a few of the dangerous words and see if you find them a bit catchy too.  Bitumen - I actually had to look this word up soon after arriving....  This comes up when someone tells you the bitumen continues for another 30 kms and then you have to drive another 10 kms on an unsealed road.  Which brings me to another example: sealed and unsealed roads rather than paved and dirt roads.  Needless to say, we don't spend a lot of time in New York talking about the quality of dirt roads in the near vicinity and whether they are passable, but the quality of the unsealed road comes up quite often for us these days.  RVs are called caravans or at least they are the closest relative of a caravan in Oz.  RVs are the stuff of folk lore here and there is a perception among camping folks that the US is nearly overrun with giant mobile homes.

When you are packing up a lunch to go to the beach, you bring an Esky, instead of a cooler....  You grill meat on a barbie, but it is not like an American grill....  They don't, however, put tomato sauce on their sausages.  I know what you are thinking, we don't either....  We were a bit reluctant to ask for tomato sauce for our hamburgers at the beginning, but eventually realized it was our only hope.

...Last night we were at a fish and chips shop eating our first meal out in over a week.  The fish was great and we were merrily eating right along until we dipped our fries in the provided red sauce....  (I admit I am a little picky about ketchup, I normally try to avoid Hunt's ketchup if I can.)  So we started joking that we should have brought our own - we had Heinz in our car after its joyous discovery in a grocery store last week.  I continued on with the joke and said the restaurant should be B.Y.O.K....  "Tomato sauce doesn't start with K," he exclaimed before a brief stunned look and his head fell into his hands...]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Travel Games</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>Australia</category><dc:date>2007-04-17T16:57:45+08:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/98e2eb11c053366a4a974a87ff07723f-52.html#unique-entry-id-52</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/98e2eb11c053366a4a974a87ff07723f-52.html#unique-entry-id-52</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[This week we are in the midst of a big road trip up Australia's Highway 1 from Perth to Broome, which is about an 1,800 mile journey.  The roads in Western Australia are mostly simple two laners that stretch calmly into the horizon.  We can drive sometimes for a few hours without seeing as much as a building or a sign - although we are usually treated at least once a day to the odd animal trying to cross the road (yesterday it was "feral goats").  Alternating between views of the Indian Ocean and a barren, dry inland, the landscape continues to impress us. But frankly, with that many hours in the car, we've been trying to come up with ways to pass the time, and this has involved a lot of game playing.  One thing, though, is that there are only eight states in Australia, so the license plate game doesn't really make the trip fly by as quickly as it did when we were kids...

One game that has brought us endless amounts of joy is something we call the Howdy-Do Greeting Game.  This game is played on low-travelled roads (perfect for our trip!), where Aussies have the friendly habit of nodding or waving at one another when they pass a car on the road.  The game is simple.  When a car passes us, we wave.  But oh, which wave will we give our road neighbor, and will the other car wave back?  So many choices, so many ways to say howdy-do....

There's the basic hand on the steering wheel wave.  Simple, laid back, not overbearing.

There's the "I Know You Hi!"  Full Wave (This one doesn't get used very often...)  The American cowboy style hello  The British technique  The I've been in the car too many hours and have seen nothing

And finally the *special* fingered waive.  The one that says, you should have turned your brights off...]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Flies&#x2c; flies&#x2c; everywhere there&#x27;s flies</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>Australia</category><dc:date>2007-04-17T16:45:32+08:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/c4c9f936ec25cd21b5827d597c82a764-51.html#unique-entry-id-51</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/c4c9f936ec25cd21b5827d597c82a764-51.html#unique-entry-id-51</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[There is an open secret about Australia that is pushed under the rugs in most guidebooks - there are heaps of flies here.  We haven't talked much about it on TN so far because frankly, when we are in the midst of this kind of adventure, who cares that we had to bat away a few flies along the way?  Most of the time this approach works.  We were quickly introduced to the common saying that swatting away flies is the Aussie salute.  We have even giggled to ourselves watching the other tourists wearing fly nets, thinking we are somehow superior for being able to endure the flies without resorting to putting a net on our heads.

But some days, the joke seems to be on us, and the fly problem stops seeming like a harmless nuisance.  While the fly problem may not fall into the same category of ecological crisis as the feral goats or destructive rabbits that haunt Australia, ecological problems are not the only problems to worry about.  (In fact, I don't think there is an ecological problem with them at all...)  The fly problem is destructive to the sanity of a harmless American wandering through the country hoping to soak in its beauty.  These nasty little beasts will buzz around you until you think you just might go insane.  This phase lasts briefly until a new revelation comes to mind: the delusion that you might be able to enter a Zen like state and peaceably live with them.  This lasts for an even shorter period because as soon as the swatting stops, one lands on your cheek, lips and sunglasses and the process starts all over again.

We arrived in the Kalbarri National Park yesterday, ready to venture around to see the various natural attractions of the park, mostly namely a gorge called Z Bend.  When we got out of our car and headed up the trail we were were swarmed by flies.  This day was not your average fly experience - this was different.  This was not merely batting a few flies away....  There was nothing left to do but make a game of the absurdity as we prone to do these days.  The game was called "don't talk with your mouth open" ...  for fear we would encounter some unwanted protein.  I know, you sitting at home are thinking, wow, not talking with your mouths open - fun game....  We were playing along, discussing what the rules might be.  The loser is the one that laughs, exposing themselves to the very real risk of oral fly invasion?

...A fly went straight up my nose!...  Now we really knew the rules of the game.  No more fun to be had.  I hightailed it back to the car, refusing to see any more mother nature in this park.

(Look at Jay's back for the visual of the infestation...gross!)]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>The Red Center</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>Australia</category><dc:date>2007-04-13T22:22:31+08:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/48dee31c65750a97b9d37db4c85cd29b-50.html#unique-entry-id-50</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/48dee31c65750a97b9d37db4c85cd29b-50.html#unique-entry-id-50</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[So, as we depart from the middle of Australia to head west, I'd like to make a few observations about the very hot and sparsely populated place we have been for the last week.  It's all very "outback" here.  There are lizards and flies galore, humidity is something the folks here have only read about in fairy tales, and people actually sport those dark brown cowboy type hats.  But I think for me the most notable part about being here in the middle of the country is the way the color is so much more pronounced than during our ventures into the South Australian outback.  The Aussies call it "The Red Center."  This is named appropriately.  The land in the center is no longer "turning red;" it's not a patchwork of tans, oranges and reds.  It's brick red sand.  The rocks aren't pinkish - they are red.  Now, I know geologists would probably say this is due to hues or minerals or what have you.  But I am convinced that, after the last climate change, the ground out here just didn't bone up on its SPF 30.  Maybe it tried to get by with SPF 8, because this place is (as the Aussies say it), sunburnt!

The hub of the Red Center is a little town called Alice Springs.  Alice Springs is the biggest city for hundreds and hundreds of miles in any direction, and is built around an old telegraph station, which is right by what is generously called the "Todd River."  I say "generously" because, as far as I can tell, the Todd's river days are far and few between.  Perhaps it should be renamed the Todd Ditch.  Just a suggestion.

The claim to fame here, or at least one of the claims to fame besides "we're the closest place to Uluru" (Note - Uluru is also called Ayer's Rock, and it's a really big and spectacular red sandstone rock about a five hour drive farther into the desert), is that Alice Springs is the town that is "closest to all of the beaches in Australia."  The folk around here love to say that.  In case you're wondering, the polite response I continue to give to this joke is to give them my most bewildered American look and wait for them to chuckle and guffaw.  "Ha-ha!  Get it?  The Red Center...it's in the center of the country mate!  Closer to every beach!"  Well, I'll give them points for their positive attitude and for teaching geometry in the desert, but the only things resembling the beach here is sand, sand, and red sand.  Did I mention while we were here we saw some wild camels?]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>The ROCK</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>Australia</category><dc:date>2007-04-13T19:25:09+08:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/27c34d26815902d1d3a9c50c31f615d3-49.html#unique-entry-id-49</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/27c34d26815902d1d3a9c50c31f615d3-49.html#unique-entry-id-49</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[[For those of you that are wondering if we have lost our minds, this isn't a post about a cheesy wrestler turned pseudo action star...]

The incidents over our first couple of days in Alice Springs (the ones mentioned in the previous posts and several others that I won't bore you with) made us start to question whether this journey to the center of Australia was worth it.  It was a big trip to a very hot place where everything is overpriced to accommodate the tourists and the distances between attractions averages about five hours.  The last 24 hours have made it all worth it, though.  On our way from Kings Canyon to Uluru (Ayers Rock) we saw some mammoth creatures crossing the road in the distance.  We slowed the car as we have been trained to and squeezed our eyes to identify the four legged giant.  Yep, you guessed it.  A pack of wild camels!  Seeing camels in the wild had been a goal of ours ever since an Aussie told us there was no chance we would see one.  It turns out that in fact Australia has the largest population of wild camels in the world.  A few were set free in the Outback after they had served their purposes in the early expeditions in the center of Australia.  The rest is history...  OK, so back to our trip.

After hours of driving along, the long stretch of road to Yulara, we saw it emerge on the horizon.  Uluru stood tall and apart from the rest of landscape.  (For those of you that have not been studying Australian travel guides, Uluru is the traditional Aboriginal name for Ayers Rock located in the desert center of the country.  The rock is the giant red tabletop rock that competes with the Sydney Opera House for most iconic image of Australia.)  We had finally arrived.  Now we have definitely been to Australia.

We stepped right on the metaphorical tourist train and immediately started the requisite sight seeing activities.  The rock has to be viewed at sunset and sunrise to fully capture its power.  It changes dramatically in color of the course of the day and most substantially at the beginning and end of the day.  We lined up in the parking lot along with dozens of other cars and waited, watching the giant rock.  This is not the first time on the trip that we have been amongst a huge crowd all staring intently at seemingly nothing except this time, the object wasn't even moving.  It's a giant rock and we were surrounded by many other people who had all made the same arduous trek to the center of the country - a couple thousand kilometers from any city in any direction.

But, wow was it beautiful.  Uluru is a rock like one we have never seen before.]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Stuck between a big rock and a hot place</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>Australia</category><dc:date>2007-04-13T19:24:08+08:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/d005d51755c3c70fc4950012658aca55-48.html#unique-entry-id-48</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/d005d51755c3c70fc4950012658aca55-48.html#unique-entry-id-48</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[Liza deserves credit for this succinct summary of our first adventures in the center of Australia.  Now before I begin, I must predicate the following statements by saying that I am fully aware of how fantastic this opportunity is to travel and see the world.  (And I read many travel blogs while researching our trip and always thought the whiny blogs were so annoying......  Having excused myself, I will say we have just encountered our first real bout of travel fatigue.

...There was a hectic effort to force all of our sprawl from our two-week outback road trip into a couple of backpacks.  The trick on flying days is that all of our heavy items must be stashed into our carry-ons (2 bags each), so our backpacks (which we check) don't exceed the maximum allowable weight.  This was not a problem when we left the US, but now, traveling with camping gear (and a tiny new collection of cooking supplies to accompany our camping stove), we are packed to the brim.  Consequently, our carry-on baggage exceeded any weight I would attempt to lift at the gym (fortunately, I also packed a husband).  When we got on the plane, we figured it would all be fine now, just an unpleasant little blip.

Once we arrived, we had an uncomfortable and restless night in a hostel.  Anyone who has ever stayed in hostels knows it is a bit of a toss up....  And, on rare occasions, you end up just waiting for the night to end.  This place handed us a padlock and sent us to sleep in an old caravan stationed among the weeds at the end of their backyard.  Let's just say this was a night that left us pondering if we were perhaps too old for this lifestyle.  We packed up quickly and headed out hoping to pop back into our typical trip perkiness.

Unfortunately, our first bout of travel fatigue coincided, perhaps not coincidentally, with my first bout of trying to lose things....  I know what you are thinking, its a money belt, which means by definition it should be on your person at all times making it very difficult to lose - unless you've lost yourself too, which apparently I did...  Well, I managed to hide it from myself overnight leading to a panicked search the next day.  In the end, the belt had slipped behind the mini fridge and into the coils of it.

...Jay found this quite amusing since historically in our relationship, he has spent much more time precipitating a frantic search for a lost item.  In fact, it happens so often, it rarely even gets a rise from either of us......  The next incident, however, made us start to question if I was developing a new and unfortunate pattern.  Overall, we have been able to keep track of our things well on the trip....  I left it carefully tucked under the table at dinner as we left the restaurant.  It took about an hour and return to our hotel to realize our third wheel had not made it home from dinner....  When the server said that they had it behind the bar, we both let out a huge sigh of relief.  Both items are now safely in our possession again and the hope is that I will be able to keep track our things for a little while now.]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Flying and 4WDing through the Flinders</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>Australia</category><dc:date>2007-04-08T17:57:18+09:30</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/d3ddf5788a66e44e8501617d30e19b32-47.html#unique-entry-id-47</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/d3ddf5788a66e44e8501617d30e19b32-47.html#unique-entry-id-47</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[Jay and I have spent the last several days far from the urban jungles to which we are accustomed.  Sure, I know you are all thinking, I know the population of Mildura (pop. 25,000) and it's not a huge town...  Well, let me tell you, 25,000 looks like Mexico City when compared to towns with a population hovering in the single digits.  We have been in an area of South Australia called the Flinders Ranges about six hours north of Adelaide, which must surely qualify as the Outback.

...We went on a half day hike to get a view of the pound from up high and then drove around it on unsealed roads for about 4 hours.  There were moments when we doubted the intelligence of driving our rented Hyundai on the "road" which was only densely packed rocks the size of grapefruits in some parts......  It seemed every time we looked at an area of trees for a few minutes we could spot one or two or three kangaroos grazing for dinner.  We saw so many, we started getting snooty with our photo shots, only stopping for kangaroos that were well lit ;)

...(Not to mention that all of our meals were coming from our tiny camp stove without access to a refrigerator and with ingredients bought from a store with the equivalent stock of Store 24.)...  We weren't too optimistic, but decided to call the Prairie Hotel in Parachilna to see if, by chance, they had space....  We had read about the hotel in a few different places and sounded like it was just the sort of place we would enjoy.

...Apparently rocks they found here led to the identification of a whole new geological era - the first new era defined in 120 years - and the only era based on rocks found in the southern hemisphere...  But since I know nothing about this stuff, I was mostly just enjoying looking at the amazingly colored rocks.)

After relaxing our first afternoon at the hotel, relishing being able to nap on a real bed and take a hot shower, we went over to the bar....  We had a great time chatting with them and ended up sharing a table for dinner....  It was my first time ever to travel in an SUV where a 4WD was actually legitimately required for the terrain.  We bounced up and down along the dirt track through an old sheep station, now home to 700 heads of cattle on 500 square miles (a small-ish property for the area...)...  The lake is over 200 kms long and 40 kms wide, so the white stretched as far as the eye could see.

...We saw a whole new view of the countryside on this tour and had some magnificent views.  But it turns out, this wasn't going to be the highlight of our day or even our trip to the Flinders after all...  Once we returned, John asked if we would like to go for a fly over the area after lunch....  We enthusiastically accepted and an hour later were able to get a whole new view of the amazing landscape from 7,000 feet!...  We had also spent a few days in the area, so we were all about to identify lots of the places we had been from the sky.

...Another great dinner last night at the Prairie and then we did the long drive to Adelaide today.  Tomorrow we fly out to the center of Australia to start the next leg of our big tour of Oz.

A giant thanks to John and Cilla for such an amazing addition to our trip!  And thanks for teaching us the proper pronunciation of emu - it's e-miu rather than the north american e-moo...(I will post their picture next time I download pics...)]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>He Who Hops with Kangaroos</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>Australia</category><dc:date>2007-04-07T16:39:56+09:30</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/10db8b6218c1cfa34cd07c40ff988ee5-46.html#unique-entry-id-46</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/10db8b6218c1cfa34cd07c40ff988ee5-46.html#unique-entry-id-46</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[I want you all to know that, despite my naturally keen vision and a burning desire to see the flightless bird in its natural habitat, sadly, I didn't see any wild kiwi in New Zealand.  And, despite the fact that it's hard to come across a wild kiwi - the kiwi should really be extinct if it weren't for the incredibly diligent, concerted, almost inhuman efforts of New Zealanders to keep some of them alive - I took my lack of wild kiwi sightings hard.  I didn't actually sulk (because I'm on an extended trip after all), but I did spend a few seconds in the car or before going to sleep every now and then, wondering whether it was a bad omen.  Did it say something about me?  Whether I was a bad adventurer?  Would I fail to live up to my aspirations as a 21st century yuppie American explorer, returning home from the Great Down Under with my only kangaroo sightings having been with them asleep, stoned, or bored in zoos or other controlled for-hire environments?  Would the pinnacle of my animal viewing be the aforementioned "Penguin Parade?"  [link]

My friends, just call me Captain Albano (or perhaps "He Who Hops with Kangaroos"), because I can say to you: I have now seen the wild kangaroo in all its glory.  I have seen the big Red and the medium sized Grey, territorial males and pregnant females, adults and joeys, mobs and loners.  I have seen them hopping softly and I have seen them hopping at the speed of my car. I have looked into their wild red eyes and peered into the depths of their...  marsupialness....

Over the last week and a half or so, Miranda and I were very much rewarded by the gods of nature for driving up from the southern coast towards (and into) the outback.  And as we have done so not only has the temperature risen, the earth turned red like the sunburned clay in Birmingham, but we have also moved into the sparsely populated areas where kangaroos outnumber humans and emus roam the land, balancing weirdly on their scrawny non-flying legs like awkward lawn furniture.  By the time we arrived at the top end of Flinders Ranges National Park, and not counting an organized kangaroo feeding we went to earlier, I think that we have seen enough wild kangaroos over the last week to bring our daily average (arithmetic mean) to 1.5 "roos" per day we have been in Australia.

But as anyone who has been keeping in touch with Mirm and me while we have been traveling knows, we can't go anywhere without discussing the road signage.  There are many road signs up here that warn you to break for kangaroos.  At first I thought they were like the watch-out-for-deer signs in the US. You know, the ones that are kind of test of your appetite for risk.  To me they seem to say: "You should really keep a lookout because it will mess up your car if you speed recklessly and hit a deer, but it's OK to drive the limit at night if you need to get somewhere, because the odds of your actually crashing into are pretty low."  Not so here with kangaroos.  They are everywhere.  Once dusk comes around here, you need to seriously slow down because some big mobs of kangaroos are running wild and they could care less about roads or cars or you.  A few locals told me that they don't even drive at night in some of the places we have been because it is so hard to avoid hitting them (others drive trucks with something called "roo bars" on them - ouch).  Thankfully, Mirm and I were warned aggressively by the manager of our campground before we drove to the Wartook Valley in Grampians National Park, because there is no doubt in my mind I would have committed marcupialcide otherwise, which I believe would make my name He Who Pays to Fix his Rental Car...]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Dadswell Bridge Has Nothing on the Vulcan....</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>Australia</category><dc:date>2007-04-05T16:31:02+09:30</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/b64d36a86682d2a5150b35bb4329174d-45.html#unique-entry-id-45</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/b64d36a86682d2a5150b35bb4329174d-45.html#unique-entry-id-45</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[On our trip to the "Walls of China" in Mungo National Park, one of the things we learned about was that, many thousands of years ago, before the last ice age - whoops, "climate change" - the outback was verdant.  Super-sized killer kangaroos, giant wombat thingies, and flightless birds four times as big as an emu roamed the land here.  Here's a rendering of what the giant wombat thingy (called a "Zygomaturus") might have looked like:

And I believe it, because it looks like what I imagine Ziggy might look like if he were hairy and a something-a-turus.

Alas, there were no super kangaroo renderings.  The kangaroos (called "Procoptodons") were 12-foot tall and were fierce hunters.  They were carnivorous of course.  They were not tofu hunters.  And they were not leaf and grass eaters like today's friendly neighborhood kangaroos, which only top out at about six feet due - probably due to their low-protein diet...  Speaking of leaf eaters, these sightings came on the heels of sighting this colossus, located in a very tiny town called Dadswell Bridge:

Fear not, this is only a fake koala.  It's part of a thing in Australia about having the "world's largest" of many animals.  This is the world's largest bronze statue of a koala - "Giant Koala" - and it stands at about forty feet high.  Large statues hold a special place in my heart because Birmingham is home to the world's largest cast iron statue, the Vulcan.  I strongly encouraged Mirm to drive to Giant Koala after discovering that we had driven very close to but missed "Big Lobster."  After as up-close a look as you can get without paying the entrance fee, I have concluded that if there were ever a Godzilla-type movie called Vulcan vs. Giant Koala, Vulcan would win - spear or traffic lantern.]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>The Birth of civilization in Oz</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>Australia</category><dc:date>2007-04-03T10:51:18+10:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/1b043f9c2ecc2ca83a22f92c37b45d30-44.html#unique-entry-id-44</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/1b043f9c2ecc2ca83a22f92c37b45d30-44.html#unique-entry-id-44</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[We are staying in the town of Mildura which is in the northern part of Victoria right near the NSW border....  I read an article early in our travels here about an oasis in the middle of nowhere with several great restaurants all started by the same man, Stefano de Pieri.  It seemed like one of those fun and random things that you get to do on a trip like this, so off we went.  We drove about 300 km through a lot of quiet land before arriving here....  The roads are lined with palm trees and many of the street names are things like Avocado, Lemon, Almond, etc.

We decided to take a day tour to the Walls of China, which is located in a national park about 100 km from town.  It was a side note in the article I read and all we knew was that it was supposed to have beautiful sand dunes....  When we got in the van, the guide told us that it was the first day that he and his brother had owned their business out right....  They are the first Aborigine owned business to operate separately from the governmental and umbrella organizations that oversee all of the indigenous owned businesses in the country.  They have been quite successful and were able to buy themselves out of the big bureaucratic structure and go out on their own (and our trip was their first day in their new standing!)

...We began the drive out to Mungo National Park, which part of the Willandra Lakes Region World Heritage site.  After about 20 km all of the trip was on unsealed roads, making for a very bouncing trip in the van.  We got out of the car in the desert and the Walls of China stretched out before us. I should mention that the Willandra Lakes Region dried up about 25,000 years ago and it is all now semi-arid land....  It went from tropical conditions to semi-arid conditions (as did much of Australia).  This change in environment killed off all the vegetation and as a result there was nothing to secure the soil and the prevailing westerly winds blew all of the sand and soil up to the highest point, forming a 22 km long sand dune known as the Walls of China.  Eventually, new vegetation emerged that could withstand the dry conditions and the accumulation of the soil stopped and the slow process of erosion has been taking place over the last several thousand years.

In the late 1960s, the first archaeological discovery was made on this site.  It was the skeleton of a woman (known as Lake Mungo 1) that has now been dated back to 40,000-42,000 years old.  There have since been many discoveries at the site including what may be the oldest homo sapiens ever found estimated to almost 60,000 years old (although this seems to be the subject of some debate).  The land is governed by a group of Aboriginal elders and they have come up with a collaborative solution with the local universities to do research here.  This is a sacred site for the Aborigines, so they don't want a big excavation project.  Instead, every time it rains at least 2 inches, 6 teams go out and survey the site to see what the rains have uncovered....  We were able to see calcified trees, hairy-nosed wombats, tasmanian devils and open fire places - all from tens of thousands of years ago - as we walked around the site....  The bright blue sky (it was over 100 degrees!), with the red sand, white sand and amazing clay pinnacles that have been left behind as the result of erosion.

[We did end up going to the restaurant that originally drew us to Mildura for dinner last night.  It was a great meal, but it couldn't compete with the beauty of the day for top billing on turkeynose :)]

...The park is actually in NSW, but since we were staying in Victoria, I left them there for simplicity...]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Mobs of Kangaroos in the Grampians&#x21;</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>Australia</category><dc:date>2007-04-01T08:10:33+10:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/af8988eb8b4756533f42cf4d526aafb7-43.html#unique-entry-id-43</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/af8988eb8b4756533f42cf4d526aafb7-43.html#unique-entry-id-43</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[We arrived in the Grampians to do some hiking and see the natural beauty of the area.  What was not mentioned to us is that there have been two big bush fires here and much of the forest has been burned.  It offers its own beauty though because seeing the green emerge from the forest of char is quite amazing.  Many of the trees remain standing, fully blackened, but covered in new growth.  Our visit here has been pretty quiet (minus some very loud bird squawking!)  We are staying in a small cabin at a campground in a "town" where the campground also serves as the only petrol station for miles and the only general store.

Another reason we made our way to this area is because we heard you could see lots of wildlife.  We hoped we would get a quick glimpse of something while we were here and we were not at all disappointed.  There are road signs all over Australia that tell you to watch out for kangaroos, but here in Wartook Valley, they are really not kidding!  There are roos of all sizes visible in the late afternoon.  (They sleep in the morning and start to eat in the late afternoon.)  As we drove down the road, returning from our hike, it seemed nearly every paddock had a mob of kangaroos.  (We learned that mobs is the official term for a group of kangaroos.)  They are quite a sight all together, particularly when they decide that they want to get going and they all start their amazing hopping together, speeding down the pasture.

Last night, we came back to the cabin and Jay went to talk to reception at the campground.  I hung around the cabin.  I waited some time for him to return and finally decided I would venture out to see what was going on. I came around the corner and saw Jay along with about 40 kangaroos!  Apparently the owners of the campground have been feeding a small group of kangaroos for about 30 years and every evening they come for their daily ration of day old bread.  They are quite a sight!  There were baby kanagroos in their mother's pouches and other toddlers sticking their heads back into the pouches for a quick meal.  The kangaroos came from all directions when they were coming and going, hopping right through the campground.]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Strolling on the Great Ocean Road</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>Australia</category><dc:date>2007-03-30T16:16:38+10:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/7c192abf04bcb4326afd6c52a492c4d0-42.html#unique-entry-id-42</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/7c192abf04bcb4326afd6c52a492c4d0-42.html#unique-entry-id-42</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[We have spent the last few days meandering down the Great Ocean Road.  The road runs along the coast (as the name would imply) for about 300 kilometers on the southern coast of Australia, west of Melbourne.  The trip began with a ferry ride from the Mornington Peninsula (after our visit to the Penguins) to Queenscliff.  The we drove southwest to the beginning of the Great Ocean Road in Torquay.  We have been taking it easy along the trip.  The weather hasn't totally cooperated with the image of a sunny, warm trip down the beach road.  It has been rainy and unbelievably windy, although I have been rather pleased with the weather because it frees me from the guilt of not seeing every single sight!

After camping in Phillip Island and in Aireys Inlet, the last couple of nights we stayed in Glenaire in the Otway Ranges in the forest in our own little lodge.  We were a bit weary from the camping and decided to treat ourselves to a secluded log cabin getaway.  There was a log fire and an electric blanket.  We were really living the high life!  But today we are back on the road again.  We saw the 12 Apostles this morning (probably the most famous landmark on the GOR).  They are a series of limestone rock formations in the ocean off the coast.  There are actually only eight of the rocks (one has recently collapsed and no one is sure if there ever were actually Twelve, but that's another story...)  We pulled into the parking lot, which was already filled with many sightseeing vehicles, and realized the situation as soon as we got out of the car. The wind was blowing like crazy!  Jay could barely get his jacket on in the furious winds, but we decided this was not a sight to be missed and headed down the path.

Seeing the Apostles was an impressive sight.  They stand tall above the roiling ocean.  However, on this day, the rocks were far less impressive to me than the show that mother nature was in the midst of putting on. The wind continually knocked us off our path as we tried to fight our way along the cliff top walk - you could feel the erosion happening with every step!  Bracing myself for photographs was nearly impossible, so I am sure most of them are blurry.  But through it all, we were mostly laughing because the whole situation was so absurd.]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Why&#x27;d the Koala cross the road?</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>Australia</category><dc:date>2007-03-29T16:20:31+10:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/ad89ef81a6818aeb8777eaea83b4e1e3-40.html#unique-entry-id-40</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/ad89ef81a6818aeb8777eaea83b4e1e3-40.html#unique-entry-id-40</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[Not sure, but we were pretty glad to be there when he did!]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Penguins Know Drama</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>Australia</category><dc:date>2007-03-29T09:23:45+10:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/aa913be29bf39996b1484f7c03ddaacd-41.html#unique-entry-id-41</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/aa913be29bf39996b1484f7c03ddaacd-41.html#unique-entry-id-41</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[Before setting out to drive the Great Ocean Road we decided (after some debate) to make a side trip about an hour and a half southeast of Melbourne to a very popular tourist destination called the "Penguin Parade."  The Penguine Parade takes place on Phillip Island, which is home to about 60,000 Little Penguins.  The Penguin Parade is one of the most bizarre but strangely entrancing tourist attractions we have ever seen.  Each night just after sunset, thousands of tourists gather at a place on Phillip Island called Summerland beach to watch penguins "parade" in from their fishing expeditions, rafting in from the ocean and then waddling over the sand to their nearby burrows.

When we arrived at Summerland beach the first thing I noticed was the size of the parking lot.  The road is crowded and the lot has about four long bays, all of which are nearly full, and I started to get a feeling similar to when I've gone to a big sporting event.  OK, remember where I parked the car. I wonder if there is a way to leave a touch early to beat the crowd.

We walk from the parking lot to a large gate complete with souvenirs and a concession stand that sells fresh popcorn.  After paying a high entrance fee, we follow throngs of other eager spectators along a windy wood planked path that leads us toward a large set of bleachers built right on the beach.  There are two sections, each of which seat a little over a thousand people I am told, with a pathway between them for the penguins to have a "natural, unobstructed" route from the ocean to their burrows in the sand dunes.

We sit with the others staring at the ocean waiting for the penguins.  When the sun sets, large flood lights illuminate the beach like a baseball field....  We just paid like twenty bucks to sit in bleachers to stare at the beach."  Strange indeed, and yet somehow there is something that intrigues me about how this natural occurance - a penguin coming home after fishing - can consistently attract such large crowds.  And what can these penguins possibly be thinking when they emerge from the water to find that they are being cheered on by two thousand humans?...  Are they humming "Eye of the Tiger" to themselves for motivation as they prepare to march from sea to sand?

A few minutes after the lights come on an announcer begins to tell us what is about to happen over a PA system....  He says that when the penguins reach the shore they will be hesitant at first, and may turn back several times before finally running at full speed through the pathway in between the bleachers that leads to the safety of their burrows.

And then finally our little blue gladiators make an appearance in this beach colloseum.  In addition to us, tonight the penguins also have a natural foe to contend with, a cluster of pesky seagulls, who no doubt have been attracted to the area by the fresh popcorn and concessions.  The seagulls bully the penguins as they come into shore, blocking their way as they attempt to make it to their burrows.  I turn to Mirm: "We have front row seats for the Nature Channel's When Seagulls Attack."...  Initial tries to reach home are repelled by the birds, and a surprising amount of drama builds....  I want to shoo the seagulls away, but we have been told we cannot interfere with "nature taking its course."  As more penguins come to shore, they work together, congregating in groups of about ten to twelve, and then they make a collective move towards home....  This happens several times over the next fifty minutes, and each time the crowd is elated with the penguins' success.  There are even a few heroic penguins who make it on their own.]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Away and Up &#x26; Up</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>Australia</category><dc:date>2007-03-28T10:28:15+10:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/6edf9d93bfb3ed35dd5e0c03bb20438a-39.html#unique-entry-id-39</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/6edf9d93bfb3ed35dd5e0c03bb20438a-39.html#unique-entry-id-39</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[After our plan for a three-day stop morphed into a week of indulging ourselves with fantastic food and drink, we finally escaped the epicurean jowls of Melbourne.  It was difficult to leave.  Melbourne is a wonderfully beautiful, friendly city with an impressive variety and quality of cuisines readily available.  On our last day, for example, we went to "Wicked Sunday," which was the highlight of the two-week long Melbourne Food & Wine Festival.  "Wicked Sunday" consisted of a nearly unending row of booths with cheap or free local food and drink available at every turn.  A street was blocked off with unlimited wine tasting available from over 70 vineyards.  At its conclusion, a sweet aroma was leading crowds of jolly tasters across a bridge to another street blocked off and equally full of coffee and dessert - including some very fine pistachio gelato!  We thought the gauge in our tummies read Full after making it through these streets, however, when we turned the corner there was also a Greek Cultural festival, and we found room for lamb souvlaki from the best place in town, Stalactite's.  Not surprisingly, this was one of the first cities we have been to where we turned to each other and detected a grain of seriousness when we said "I could see us living here for awhile."

But we did make it out of Melbourne on Monday, deciding to drive south towards Phillip Island.  And to pay penance for our excesses, rather than flogging ourselves, we decided to pull over and embark on a popular trail in the Dandenongs National Park called "The Thousand Steps."  From the name of the track we suspected that we were probably in for a challenge, even though it was only supposed to take an hour and a half return.  This was confirmed when the friendly park ranger at the visitors center smiled a nice greeting, tipped her hat, and told us that a lot of Australians walk it to "train."  We left the car park knowing that we needed to get a little burn in, and after fifteen minutes or so, it was not too long before our calves were calling to us. Then we saw the steps.  Collectively we must have had a lot of guilt about eating so much in Melbourne, because I really don't understand why we decided to continue onward against the pleas of our up-goer walking muscles.

Our calves rang again.  "Excuse me, you haven't used us in a week.  Did you see that nature trail full of lyre birds that was the same distance but flat?"  We still had time to turn off there.  Onward we climbed.  Then the thighs joined in. "Pardon me, but I'm on fire.  Is this really necessary?"  Protests from the up-goers continued for another fifteen or twenty minutes or so before they acclimated.  On the way up we did indeed see several Australians "training" - happily, we noted that they were breathing heavily, too!  And although this wasn't the prettiest walk we'd ever been on, there was a sweet sense of accomplishment nonetheless at step 1,000, hands resting on our knees in fatigue, just like our Aussie brethren.]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Gluttony and Deliciousness&#x21;</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>Australia</category><dc:date>2007-03-24T19:32:12+11:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/de67aed99930f3e960c5da0b6d472883-36.html#unique-entry-id-36</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/de67aed99930f3e960c5da0b6d472883-36.html#unique-entry-id-36</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[Wonder of wonders, it turns out that this week we have stumbled upon (read: meticulously planned to be in town for) the Melbourne Food & Wine Festival, which just happened to coincide with our decision to prolong our stay here in "the most livable city in the world!"  In addition to this fortuitous coincidence, we have also taken advantage of the many culinary wonders available in the city, going on foodie-targeted tours each of the last three days.

In order to fully enjoy the spoils that the city has to offer, we decided that a wine tour was the right place to start.  We went on a wine tour of Yarra Valley, most known for the cooler climate grapes such as Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Shiraz, although like many other new world wine regions they grow a much larger selection of grapes in small quantities.  The "cooler climate" didn't exactly materialize for our tour, though, because it was about 100 degrees...  but the heat here was extensively discussed in our last blog entry....  We tasted lots of great wine - perhaps not the most fantastic, but it was very enjoyable nonetheless.  The nice part was that we were on a small tour that actually had three members of the US Air Force on it as well as a French-Canadian couple and a couple from Australia.

This morning we headed out of our hostel to meet a smiley little energetic chef named Allan in central Melbourne.  Allan was our guide for a wonderfully gluttonous and delicious walk he called the "Foodie Tour of Melbourne."...  We met Allan at Max Brenner Chocolates (an international chain with a store in NYC) at 10AM, where he met us with terrificly tasty Venezuelan Dark Hot Chocolate as well as a tasting of chocolates with praline......  Allan led our eager group of about 20 adventurous eaters through Melbourne's alleyways, wending our way on a quest for culinary delights.  Melbourne has been highly influenced by several waves of immigration, so there is an amazing variety of foods and tastes from so many different cultures.  One favorite stop was at a Hong Kong style bakery for something called an "egg tart"....  The shell was like a very delicate butter cookie with a rich and light custard on top, served warm.  This was actually the third in a series of four incredibly rich tastings including two chocolate stores and an Italian coffee shop - perhaps revealing the key to Allan's high energy!  In the afternoon we had a taste from one of the fish and chip shops that competes to be the best in the city, and ultimately wrapped up the tour at a Japanese Noodle House for some gyoza and edamame.

...We planned on venturing to Chinatown for some highly recommended fare after the tour....  The tastes were wide ranging, but small on the tour - and it was 2PM!!)  But as it turns out (and this was a legitimate coincidence), the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival was in full swing in Federation Square right where the tour ended.  There were stalls all along the Yarra River with a huge range of food to munch.  A Turkish dish, much like a crepe, filled with ground chicken, feta and spinach was the highlight.  Needless to say, we had a go at several booths and then had souvlaki at an acclaimed Greek restaurant , spoiling any chance that we may have had at dinner.

(So instead of dinner, we have been drafting this blog entry jointly from a bar with free wi-fi access.  Aren't we cool, hanging out at a bar and typing on a computer at 9PM on a Saturday?!)

For those of you that are interested, there is also a new page up with the photos from Victoria (as well as the last of our Tassie pictures) in the Photos section......  All this eating and drinking doesn't photograph that well ;)]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Foodie Heaven</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>Australia</category><dc:date>2007-03-22T22:46:16+11:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/eed6da0629c06e2fd7c268ccbce7ea64-35.html#unique-entry-id-35</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/eed6da0629c06e2fd7c268ccbce7ea64-35.html#unique-entry-id-35</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[It is very rare that I would bestow such a compliment on a city, but these women do really have great shoes.  Melbournian women also wear their high heels everywhere, much like women I see in New York that perplex me by wearing 3.5 inch heels running through Grand Central...For those of you that may be wondering, I have not indulged my shoe addiction.  I have not even walked into a single shoe store because I know what kind of trouble that could cause in trying to zip up my backpack when we go to the next place!  I have to keep telling myself that I love the comfort that wearing hiking boots brings, even in a metropolitan city.

My next note is dedicated to those of you that are feeling stuck in the last throes of winter.  If you are in the winter then you probably haven't heard me complain about the heat in awhile (and your name probably isn't Jay...), so I will fix that right now.  Today we decided, after visiting an amazing market (more on that later), to head to the zoo.  I am not such a fan of zoos, but Jay really wanted to see some Australian animals that you rarely encounter in the wild and we read that this zoo was particularly humane, progressive, etc......  I was thinking to myself that I was melting and decided to look at the handy temperature / compass combo clipped to Jay's backpack....  What a relief, I thought to myself, because at least I am not a total wimp......  Jay insisted the thermometer was wrong and that it really wasn't that hot.  He's reminded me that being from Birmingham, he knew real heat and this wasn't it....  Jay read each sign carefully and searched until he found the animal that was supposed to be on display.  I walked intently from each little spot of shade to the next, wondering if Jay would feel guilty if I melted.  At one point, I hid on a shady bench while Jay went on a water mission, but otherwise, I held it together....  We looked up the high today and it ranged from 95-99 depending on your location in the city :) I know you must be wondering what I am going to do when we get to the desert a couple of weeks and frankly, I'm not sure....

...Yesterday, Jay and I spent the afternoon doing a walking tour of Melbourne's food sights.  I found a free audio tour online and thought it could be a fun way to see the city and Jay kindly indulged this desire....  We saw some beautiful shops - the chocolate shops in particular were amazing - and made stops for coffee and beer along the way.

Last night, we had one of the best meals on the trip, to date....  The service was probably the best we had on the trip, the waiter went so far as to offer to hold one of our main courses until we finished the first one, so we could let him know if we were still hungry before he actually put the order in!  He also saw we were debating between two desserts and he offered to give us both on one dish.

...It was mostly a looking tour though because we don't really have a need to be buying groceries at the moment.  These sorts of places make me wish that I liked the idea of cooking in a shared hostel kitchen more than I do......  I don't wish that I wanted to spend more time in a shared hostel kitchen than absolutely necessary.  Instead, it makes me wish that I had my kitchen teleported along with me throughout my trip (and that I had hungry friends and family to feed too!)

...Wine tours aren't always the best because sometimes they bring you to cheesy places rather than small, interesting places, but at least you don't have to worry about who is driving!]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Back from the bush&#x21; (Jay)</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>Australia</category><dc:date>2007-03-19T08:49:09+11:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/051f986c0a5db54bb5beaee145051aa8-33.html#unique-entry-id-33</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/051f986c0a5db54bb5beaee145051aa8-33.html#unique-entry-id-33</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[We are back in Hobart after a camping, driving and hiking trip into some of Tasmania's beautiful national parklands.  We began on the east coast, where we went for a short but steep hike to Wineglass Bay in Freycinet National Park.  The terrain in Freycinet was stunning - an incredible contrast of the tranquil white beaches and blue waters of Wineglass Bay lying beneath a group of tall cliffs of pink granite rocks called the "Hazards."  The weather was very hot for this hike, but we were rewarded by good scenery and a couple friendly encounters with wallabies along the way.

After Freycinet we journeyed onward up the east coast of Tasmania to the Bay of Fires where we made our first camp site.  Our tent was in a secluded spot right off a spectacular beach with brightly colored rocks.  It was the perfect camping spot.  Sitting by our small fire under the southern hemisphere's stars on a quiet beach in a land called Tasmania, we couldn't help but think that this is about as far from New York City as we could possibly be...  and it was right about that time that two cheeky possums came over and tried to steal our dinner!  (unsuccessfully I might add).

The next day we drove from Bay of Fires across to Cradle Mountain & Lake St.  Clair National Park, stopping in Launceton on the way for lunch and to stock up on our rations.  We camped by Cradle Mountain for the next couple days in weather that was close to freezing, so we were pleasantly surprised when we found that our new campgrounds had "facilities."  These included a communal shelter with a large fireplace and stovetops for cooking.  Even though all we had was a Leatherman knife, one very small pot, and some paper plates, Miranda was somehow able to conjure up some incredible meals out of what seemed to me like thin air.  On the last night we were there when I looked around at the other campers I almost felt bad.  They must have been incredibly jealous when they looked over from their ramen noodles to see that what smelled so good was Miranda making a full mexican meal of steak and cheese quesadillas and a delicious avocado, tomato and onion salad.

The walking in Cradle Mountain and Lake St.  Clair National Park was pretty challenging, largely because of the weather.  The conditions were not great, as it was cloudy, windy, drizzly, and very cold while we were there.  The big hike we did started out at the beginning to the Overland Track, before veering off to climb Wombat Peak.  By the time we reached Wombat Peak, the drizzle had stopped and the clouds were showing signs of clearing, so we were encouraged and embarked upon another climb upward to Marion's Lookout.  The climb to Marion's Lookout was very steep, and we had to fight heavy gusts of wind, but it was well worth the effort.  On the way up we had a great view of a rainbow over Crater Lake, and the view from the top of the lookout was fabulous, too.  Instead of retracing our steps, we headed down a steep path that linked into the Dove Lake walking track, which was the most popular walk in the park because of the great views of Crater Mountain from Dove Lake.  We have posted some pictures of the hike, but I will include one here from Marion's Lookout:]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Back from the bush&#x21; (Mirm)</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>Australia</category><dc:date>2007-03-19T08:34:53+11:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/fcff97e5c62babf16ce8b62b4dfdc3eb-32.html#unique-entry-id-32</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/fcff97e5c62babf16ce8b62b4dfdc3eb-32.html#unique-entry-id-32</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[I sort of pictured that we would ease into the whole camping thing.  I am not exactly sure how I figured that one "eases into camping", but I thought that is what we would be doing.  But no, we were camping for real.  Just us and our tent and the stuff we brought in our car. (Granted, we did still have the car nearby, so we didn't have to carry everything to a far off location...)  We actually managed pretty well, but I will leave Jay to tell the stories.  We have now returned to Hobart and will spend the day seeing the Southeast of Tassie, hopefully including some stops at wineries and more casual sightseeing than we have done the last few days before we fly to Melbourne tomorrow.

We have been busily trying to plan the next part of our route.  It will likely involve some more driving and camping as well as some flying for the long hauls across Australia, but we are trying to figure out the best vehicle for the trip.  Camping was fun, but somehow, I think it will be even more fun with a few more creature comforts.  Jay is under the mistaken impression that it won't count as camping, but I hopefully will be able to convince him that sleeping in a van that has a little heat and cooking on a camping stove will still count :) Stay tuned for our next move.]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Tassie</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>Australia</category><dc:date>2007-03-14T21:16:57+11:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/96ed0b13b811236eafbe4d44f2fee08f-31.html#unique-entry-id-31</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/96ed0b13b811236eafbe4d44f2fee08f-31.html#unique-entry-id-31</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[We have just finished our first day of hiking around Tasmania.  The day wasn't too intense, but we saw some gorgeous scenery in Mt.  Field National Park.  I have added a Tasmania photo page and will update it as we have internet access.  Starting tomorrow we plan on being a little further out and trying camping.  I am not sure how this part of the adventure will go, but it is worth a try to see how we like it...  At the very least it should make for some humorous stories...]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Bacon with a side of bacon</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>Australia</category><dc:date>2007-03-13T23:04:53+11:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/575ccea54cef0cbdc94155aa8d5b2aa1-30.html#unique-entry-id-30</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/575ccea54cef0cbdc94155aa8d5b2aa1-30.html#unique-entry-id-30</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[This part of the world loves bacon in a way that can hardly be conveyed with words.  The only way to truly understand the obsession is to experience its pervasive nature on menus, particuarly the budget friendly places.  Most prepared sandwiches include bacon as does every possible breakfast dish including the very strange bacon and banana croissant that we saw in New Zealand.

Now, I like pork more than your average joe.  In fact, most of you have probably had a conversation with me at some point about barbeque and listened to me discuss how much I enjoy seeking out fantastically prepared pig.  But Australia and New Zealand take the bacon thing to a new level.  And bacon doesn't mean the traditional American bacon that we all know.  Bacon seems to encompass a wide range of sliced pork - it may be "streaky bacon" or "shoulder bacon" or "American bacon" or something similar to Canadian bacon that seems unnamed or even at times it appears to be some variation on proscuitto.  Most of the time you don't know what kind of bacon will appear on your dish until it arrives.

I am not complaining...]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Turkeynose introduce TN Lists</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>Turkeynose</category><dc:date>2007-03-12T19:29:03+11:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/c9afc57b59e4902f33421740e962bf1d-29.html#unique-entry-id-29</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/c9afc57b59e4902f33421740e962bf1d-29.html#unique-entry-id-29</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[For those of you that are watching Turkeynose hawkishly, you may have noticed a new addition to our top navigation.  (OK - our parents might be the only people watching the site hawkishly, but you can still take a look now that we have pointed it out.)

We have added a new section to the site called TN Lists.  TN Lists includes lots and lots of detail on the places we stayed, where we have eaten and the activities that stood out to us. We have been keeping a small notebook with this information since the beginning of the trip and started worrying about the fact that we had no backup of our little black notebook.  Once we realized we would be re-typing it, it seemed like we should go ahead and post it.  It's probably not the most fascinating reading, but if by the off chance that you are in one of these places, the tidbits might come in handy.

One other small Turkeynose note, we added an Itinerary section to the site.  If you take a look at the list and think to yourself, "Geez, I have a friend / sister / parent / cousin who has been there and could give some great tips about traveling there", please feel free to send them our way.  Tips from real people are always more interesting than guidebooks that give equal weight to everything...  Or if you read the itinerary and think to yourself "Geez, I know a friendly person X who lives in place Y and they would probably be happy to share some insider tips on traveling in the area" then by all means send them our way :) We will be happy to return the favor to anyone traveling to the places we have been!  In fact, our waiter yesterday said he was going to NYC next week for the first time and I probably scared the poor man with my excitement of telling him all the places to go - I had him writing frantically!]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>This is your lucky day</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>Australia</category><dc:date>2007-03-10T23:49:19+11:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/933de6ea2986b3bf7780cd94ed4e665d-27.html#unique-entry-id-27</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/933de6ea2986b3bf7780cd94ed4e665d-27.html#unique-entry-id-27</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[Australia at last!  A little over five weeks in and we have reached kangaroo country.  We flew into Sydney on Thursday from Christchurch, NZ, where we were greeted by prostitutes, beetles and pimps at our hostel, the Highfield Hotel in Kings Cross, just like we were at home in New York.  On the bright side, we were a short walk from downtown Sydney and haven't spent much time at the lovely Highfield.

Over the last two days we have walked all over Sydney, and the report is that the city is lovely.  The area by Sydney Harbor is particularly nice, with the Sydney Opera House and Royal Botanical Gardens on one side and the Sydney Harbour Bridge - the largest steel arched bridge in the world - on the other.  We also had a fun exploring Chinatown and Darling Harbor, especially with Miranda doing some culinary research to lead us to the best eats in the area.  Last night we had delicious Peking Duck at BBQ King, and this afternoon we ate a fantastic soup at the Japanese noodle shop, Ramen Kan, after touring the Chinese Gardens in the morning.

This afternoon, we decided we would go ahead and bite the bullet and take the bus tour of the city.  We had put in a solid eight hours walking yesterday and were close to reaching that again today.  Before our feet gave out completely, we figured we would pay the price and get on the Sydney & Bondi Explorer bus, so we could get a little more site seeing in...  When we got on the bus, the driver asked for $78 for the two hour audio tour.  We were a little surprised at the price, but it was near the end of the day, and for some reason the guy said "Looks like it's your lucky day.  Go ahead and sit down" without taking any payment from us. That was a nice twist!  We got to take our trip across the bridge and then hop off the bus without feeling obligated to listen to the audio-recorded commentary.  Tonight the luck continued.  We had stumbled upon free tickets to watch a simulcast of La Traviata at the Opera House tonight.  It was pretty cool to sit there watching the sunset, listening to the performance and sitting with 4,000 other people.

Tomorrow we are off to the Blue Mountains to enjoy what Mother Nature has to offer in this area.]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Saying goodbye to NZ</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>New Zealand</category><dc:date>2007-03-07T09:33:22+11:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/b624c8ce9e8b015583cda64c6a81a256-28.html#unique-entry-id-28</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/b624c8ce9e8b015583cda64c6a81a256-28.html#unique-entry-id-28</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[Tomorrow we fly out to Sydney and the New Zealand part of our adventure will come to an end.  I will be sad to leave this fantastic country as well as sad to say goodbye to my mom who flies home tomorrow!  I asked Jay if he was sad to leave, and he said not really because he feels like we really saw the country over the past 4 weeks and at the same time still has a list of things he wants to come back and do...

...We had a perfectly clear night and the guide pointed out the major constellations that are only visible in the southern hemisphere as well as some old favorites like Orion.  It was a great night to look and it gave me lots of flashbacks to my days in astronomy classes in college, although it was a painful reminder of all that I have forgotten!...  I remember doing this once before and I think it is so cool because Saturn really looks like the pictures you see of it, rings and all!

...The next morning we went out for a dolphin specific boat cruise to see the Dusky Dolphins again.  I couldn't get enough of it the first day and I had the amazing experience of swimming with these dolphins in the open ocean.  Jay and Mom graciously allowed me to take the one open wait listed spot and I got to swim along with 12 other people.  It was amazing - I couldn't see much in the water and then suddenly out of my peripheral vision would appear, one, two, three dolphins swimming by me only a foot or two away!  A few times the dolphins actually circled me a several times, making eye contact before swimming on. Theoretically, I am skeptical of all people / dolphin experiences because I worry that the industry may have a negative affect on them.  But in this case, they were completely wild dolphins swimming in the open ocean, not being fed, touched, coerced into the experience at all.  In fact, the dolphins seemed quite interested in the people and were checking out all of the swimmers.

...Before we got in the water, we received a safety briefing and my fellow swimmers took one tidbit quite seriously.  The guides told everyone to be as "dolphin-like" as possible in the water and to make dolphin-like sounds to attract them.  Let me tell you - once let loose in the water, these people sounded nothing at all like dolphins.  It was an unfortunate cacophony of weird squeaking sounds coming from everyone around me and apparently some of the people thought the dolphins were also a little deaf and thought very loud, random squeaking was necessary.  But I blocked them out :) and listened to the real dolphins underwater making their much more attractive high pitched squeaks and clicks...

We arrived in Christchurch yesterday and have been taking it easy as we tend to do in cities....  The one item to note about today was that we went to the International Antarctic Center.  New Zealand is among the closest land masses to Antarctica and Christchurch is one of the most common places for planes to take-off for the 8 hour flight to the Antarctic....  It is the Antarctic Storm experience and for whatever reason, we headed into it.  Now, we should have seen the need to put on over-boots and jackets as a red flag, but apparently we missed the cue.  So we went into this room wearing our boots and big jackets and it was freezing - I mean literally below freezing....  For those of you that are curious, there is nothing particularly notable about the difference between a fake Antarctic storm taking place in the middle of a museum and standing on a street corner in New York in the biting wind except for one major thing...  There is no reason to be freezing and shivering in the middle of a museum - it's not fun or unique or informative, it's just cold.  So, we left the fun exhibit a little early and headed onward to see pictures of people being cold rather than suffering ourselves...]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Eating Birdfeathers in Kaikoura</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>New Zealand</category><dc:date>2007-03-06T13:05:08+13:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/11b0714600978191aaff3c4ed16516ce-24.html#unique-entry-id-24</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/11b0714600978191aaff3c4ed16516ce-24.html#unique-entry-id-24</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[Well, we've had a pleasant lack of easy access to the world wide web over the last several days.  Thankfully that has also meant an abundance of good old fashioned mother nature.  We spent the last two days at the Anchor Inn on the Kaikoura Peninsula, which has a population of about 4,500 humans, 2,000 dolphins, 200 Orca killer whales and a whole slew of sperm whales.  Kaikoura is one of the most naturally beautiful places I have ever been, with the town set amidst an incredible variety of terrain that includes the South Pacific coast, an ocean canyon more than 1,600 meters deep, rolling sheep grazing fields just outside of town, and mountain ranges along the horizon.  But what Kaikoura is best know for is its marine wildlife.  As Miranda mentioned in her description, the most notable marine wildlife here is crayfish, which is kind of like lobster.  Kaikoura actually means "to eat crayfish" in Maori.  A lesser known but also true fact, however, is that the most common mispronunciation, which I accidently said all the time at first, translates as "to eat bird feathers" in Maori.  Sweet, sweet birdfeathers, mmm.

So far we have been extremely lucky with our wildlife sightings.  Yesterday we saw a large seal colony playing on the rocks just south of town.  Before this trip I had never seen seals in the wild, and these did not disappoint.  There were probably 20 adults and at five to ten baby seals.  They were playing, sunbathing, and having a grand old time.  This morning we went on a great whale watching tour, where we were able to see sperm whales up pretty darn close four times.  Each time we were able to watch them on top of the water for a couple minutes, with their spouts blowing about every 20 or 30 seconds.  Then the whales arched their backs slowly and began their descent deep into the ocean for feeding, waving the tale in a flourish just before complete submersion.  The captain of our ship had a lot better luck than Ahab finding the sperm whales - maybe they could sense that we had no intention of harpooning them.  There's probably a bunch of stuff these whales know, because in the 20 million years they've been on the planet they've managed to develop brains to 1/3 of their body weight.  But while the whales were awesome, what really stole the show was the ride back to Kaikoura, where we saw heaps of dolphins, more seals, and an albatross.  Mirm has already described the dolphins in her entry, but I just have to add that the dolphins were spectacular - they were in peak form - leaping, diving, single and in groups, racing, just incredibly playful.  It was really the kind of experience that was so unique I had to remind myself to pay extra attention because I will probably never see anything like it again.]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>In the land of Crayfish</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>New Zealand</category><dc:date>2007-03-05T17:25:06+13:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/5b6e52749b92551d383408c6affd858a-22.html#unique-entry-id-22</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/5b6e52749b92551d383408c6affd858a-22.html#unique-entry-id-22</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[We are staying in a town called Kaikoura on the eastern coast of New Zealand's South Island.  The name "Kaikoura" means to eat crayfish in Maori, so we decided we better find a way to do just that.  Crayfish is sold all over the place around here, but that didn't mean we were going to eat it willy nilly - we needed a plan.  This is the end of the crayfish fishing season and the fishermen are near the bounds of their quotas for the year.  As a result, the average going rate for a crayfish was upwards of NZ$70 (or about US$50) in the restaurants nearby.  Although we wanted to enjoy the local fare, we wanted to have it without paying through the nose....  It isn't the little shrimpy like fish that you hear about in the US, it's actually much more similar to lobster...)  We heard about roadside crayfish stands and decided that would probably be best and least expensive way to taste the prized shellfish.

...(No need to mention that our crayfish dream had only begun the day before......  I added some shots below to give you a sense of the place we found.  It might have been a shack, but it was probably also the most beautiful location that we found for a meal.  We grabbed our crayfish wrapped in newspaper and headed to a picnic table overlooking the ocean and playful seals.  We got to work on the crayfish using a rock from the beach to crack the shells and we had a fantastic meal.

...I can't, however, just use this blog entry to talk about my lunch regardless of my obsession with food because today also touched on another obsession of mine - dolphins.  Some of you know this part of me very well, but those of you that didn't know the 13-year-old me, you might not know that I am a great fan of dolphins.  I went through a stage in my unfortunately awkward teenage years when in addition to dying my hair purple, I also surrounded myself with dolphin everything.  I had dolphin earrings for all of my piercings, dolphin rings, dolphin necklaces, dolphin t-shirts, a dolphin mirror, dolphin pens, a dolphin statue, dolphin calendars, dolphin books......  Luckily for me I grew out of this phase and I no longer have the dolphin version of everything (particularly considering that dolphin paraphernalia tends to be hopelessly tacky!)

...I love their gracefulness in the water and I love learning about them as highly developed beings.  They are fantastic creatures and today I got to see them in all their glory.  We went on a whale watch (which is what puts Kaikoura on the tourism map) and they have a very sophisticated system for finding whales.  They use a microphone that listens for several miles to hear the echolocation of the whales.  Over the course of a little more than an hour, we saw 4 gigantic Sperm whales - impressive creatures in their own right.  After the whale sightings were done, we headed towards land and came across an enormous pod of Dusky Dolphins.  Dusky Dolphins are known as the "acrobats of the sea" for their tendency to jump and flip constantly.  We probably saw a couple hundred of them today, bounding around the boat, playing in its wake and speeding past us. A very memorable experience for me...  I have posted a movie clip from my camera so you can get a taste of the excitement in the NZ South photos page!]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Jessica&#x27;s take on the trip...</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>New Zealand</category><dc:date>2007-03-05T17:22:49+13:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/281b0a99de5d91258f02bf0b841a2050-23.html#unique-entry-id-23</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/281b0a99de5d91258f02bf0b841a2050-23.html#unique-entry-id-23</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[My mom has written some about our trip and I thought I would share it with you.  Click this link to read on...

For those of you that don't know her, here's a picture...  and for those of you who do have the privilege of knowing her, consider the picture a bonus :)]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Watch out for Wekas and other random observations</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>New Zealand</category><dc:date>2007-03-02T18:27:22+13:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/25c986d53a14483bf5d8f25cb840d10d-21.html#unique-entry-id-21</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/25c986d53a14483bf5d8f25cb840d10d-21.html#unique-entry-id-21</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[Time for a random side note here about the daily entertainment that is driving in New Zealand (again).  After a hairy first day, I'm pleased to report that it didn&rsquo;t take long at all to become accustomed to driving on the left (and still wrong) side of the road.  It turns out there is a much greater attraction to driving in NZ, however, and that is the extreme - sometimes threatening, other times giggle-inducing - public service signs on the roads here.

In the North Island, a surprising percentage of road signs seemed part of an incredibly pervasive, government sponsored, safe driving campaign, which is predicated upon fear and intimidation.  The highways and most tourist buses are full of signs with some version of "Speed Kills," "Fatigue Kills," and the eerie:  DRINK  DrIvE

I wish we had been able to snap some good pics of these, because it is hard to communicate the degree of passion behind the North Island's safe-driving campaign in words.  Sure, I could tell you about the public service announcement we heard on the radio that told us that for every ten kilometers faster we drove, we doubled the chance that we would kill ourselves or someone else in an accident, but what really comes to mind is the only thing similar campaign I can remember in the US - Nancy Reagan's Don't Do Drugs campaign when I was a kid.  Miranda said "it's like the thisisyourbrainondrugs commercial - except that instead of an egg in the pan, the NZ version would actually be frying human brains."  If we have an inordinate amount of time, we might try to do a little more research on this campaign, but my favorite scary road sign that I can remember right now was a highway sign with a picture of a road with two lanes (the slow lane on the left and the passing lane on the right), except that they were labeled: " LIVE | DIE " Seriously, couldn't they have used the old standby, "pass with caution"

In the South Island, the creative energy seems to have been focused on making some gems of caution signs.  Slowdown, penguin crossing.  Caution: cowboys.  Honestly, if you're a mammal or non-flying bird in the South Island, you have an orange triangle somewhere with a lampoon of you that cautions motorists that you might be about to dash across the road.  I have a caution sign, therefore I am...  But there's more.  Beware: boulders might fly out of the tires of the car passing you.  And my personal favorite: Look out for bicyclers who don't look out for train tracks on this one way bridge and fall on their faces.  For your amusement, some of these are pictured below.]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Why you should come to New Zealand</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>New Zealand</category><dc:date>2007-02-28T22:39:03+13:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/2f8d5cf332d0621b9966dbd0b8ac5607-20.html#unique-entry-id-20</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/2f8d5cf332d0621b9966dbd0b8ac5607-20.html#unique-entry-id-20</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[We have only provided a few sparse updates on our goings on in New Zealand and frankly, the trip should be better documented, so you will understand when I try to convince you that your next vacation should be in New Zealand.

After we left Queenstown last Thursday, we headed to Te Anau which is in the southwest of the southern island of New Zealand and a launching point for our adventures into Fiordland National Park.  I can't exactly remember the definition of a fiord, but it certainly has to do with landscape carved by glaciers.  If you are at all like me, you have never considered how landscape carved by glaciers is particularly different from ordinary landscape, but in fact, it is.  The glacial activity leads to dramatic gorges, sheered rock faces and rounded domes of mountain slowly ground down by the force of gigantic ice moving through and above it....  These fiord areas both lead into the Tasman Sea and each receive 7-8 meters of rain per year!  In fact, it rains so much that there is a permanent layer of fresh water that sits on top of the ocean below - it is the only place on earth where you can dip a cup into the ocean and drink fresh water.

...After a hike for Jay and horseback riding for my mom and me, we headed to Fox Glacier to take an exciting heli-hike up the glacier via a spectacular drive....  Jay and I were both a bit disappointed, but truth be told, I think my mom was thrilled we hadn't dragged her onto a helicopter and dropped her in an ice field.

...The drive from Fox Glacier brought us through some gorgeous scenery, but more importantly, endless cow and sheep pastures....  I included a picture of the cows below so you can get a visual (although you have obviously seen cows before and the remarkable part is how many places we saw that looked like this!)

...Punakaiki is known for "pancake rocks" these incredible limestone rock formations that have lead to the rocks that looking layered like pancakes.  (I am pretty literal when it comes to food and I, personally, would never eat pancakes that look like rocks, but that is a separate issue...)  Jay and I went climbing on some next to our hotel and brought our camera along and I have posted some pictures.  The Pancake Rocks are also known for their blowholes that are in full effect at high tide.  I wasn't exactly sure what to expect from a blow hole, but it turns out that it is something like a huge wave comes in makes a bit of a booming noise and then a few seconds later a spray of water emerges high into the air from the rock formation a couple hundred feet in the air.

...Jay and I rented kayaks (called canoes for some unknown reason) and paddled up river lined with limestone cliffs and native bush.  The man rented the kayaks had made the river sound pretty threatening, enough to scare my mom from the activity, but it turned out to be very tame.  We had some lovely quiet moments surrounded by the sounds of the forest and other moments when I was groaning trying to make forward progress against the much stronger current of the river.  I have to say, the trip downstream was a lot easier and we both felt accomplished to have triumphed over the grade 0.5 rapids.

Yesterday, we made the drive from Punakaiki to Nelson on the northern end of the south island....  We were a bit skeptical of the stop, but it turned out to be a real highlight....  As we looked down we could see dozens and dozens of New Zealand Fur Seals including many tiny pups.  They were adorable just learning to hop along awkwardly on the rocks and many still afraid to swim.  They would inch up to the water hop around like they were going to get in and then a wave would come and they would hop back.  Sadly, the zoom on our camera has died, so we didn't get any real pictures, but trust me, you would love it!

We are taking it easy today before we head into Abel Tasman National Park tomorrow for a day of kayaking and hiking.]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>I thought I could pump gas...</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>New Zealand</category><dc:date>2007-02-24T22:04:50+13:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/15040fdede2df7f25c914bea5e7b9bae-19.html#unique-entry-id-19</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/15040fdede2df7f25c914bea5e7b9bae-19.html#unique-entry-id-19</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[Over the past few days, we have seen some of the most extraordinary scenery on earth....  We have spent the last two days taking boat tours around Milford Sound and Doubtful Sound.  These areas are fiords, part of a World Heritage site in southwest New Zealand.  We took tons of pictures and I posted a few to share with you (in the New Zealand - South photos).  However, I will leave the eloquent words about what we have seen to Jay.  Instead, I thought I would share a story that can only happen when you are traveling...

On Thursday morning, we were trying to quickly get ready to head out on a 2.5 hour drive to the departure point for Milford Sound.  Milford Sound is in the middle of nowhere, so we were told to leave with a full tank of gas.  I was nominated to drive to the gas station to fill up the tank while Mom and Jay finished getting sandwiches ready, cleaning up, etc. When I got in the car, I noted to myself that I had come a long way in the last three weeks.  After starting out being terrified driving on the wrong side of the road, I had gotten to the point I was taking excursions by myself to try to find a gas station.

The first part of the trip went according to plan....  (There are only 3,000 people in the town, so I had a pretty good shot at finding it in the town center...)  I waited patiently for a pump and pulled up when it was my turn.  Since I was driving a Subaru, I was confident I picked the right side of the car for the gas tank given that we had owned one for years.  I went to open the gas tank and strangely it was not where I remembered it from our old jalopy....  Now, I should note that we were not the only people told to fill up our gas tank before heading out in the morning.  In fact, there was a huge line of cars, but what was I to do?  I had to fill up the tank.

...I had to get the manual out to try to find it.  I looked in the manual, but alas, it was not as pictured in the manual.  I circled the car, pushing on the gas tank wishing it would just open!  An older British man in the car behind me got out.  I shared my plight, which was already painfully obvious from me racing around the car, holding the manual and looking every which way at the drivers side.  I pondered leaving the gas station having failed my mission, but he insisted we search on.

Finally, he sat in the car trying to see if the driver's seat perspective would help.  As he sat down, I saw a little bump on the floor and carefully hidden under a giant very thick plastic mat was a gas tank release.  I laughed my head off to myself as I filled the tank...]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Rockin&#x27; the Routeburn Track</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>New Zealand</category><dc:date>2007-02-21T22:00:35+13:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/32b466d55c0ba3cda04e1c5d2c7ab2b1-16.html#unique-entry-id-16</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/32b466d55c0ba3cda04e1c5d2c7ab2b1-16.html#unique-entry-id-16</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[Yes, I just used the word "rockin'" in my subject line, but I couldn't think of a title!  Today, we went tramping on the Routeburn track, one of the most well known tramps in New Zealand.  (OK - I used "tramp" a couple times to inpart the point that they are not called hikes here, but tramps...  now I will return to my normal language.)  My mom was an absolute trooper through the entire walk.  We did 11 miles on a beautiful summer day.  Most of the walk was in under the canopy keeping us cool and comfortable.  We were with an energetic guide named Peter who made strategic stops during the gentle ascent to ensure that everyone caught their breath.  He pointed out several plants and birds and overall was quite informative.  Not to mention that he was a total character making cracks throughout the day.  (He took this picture of himself...enough said)

Peter actually worked for a company started by the son of the man who originally built the Routeburn track.  Now, this may not sound this impressive from the distance at which you are reading this, but here, it essentially makes him a local legend.  He took us off the main track for part of the day and walked us along the riverbed along the original track.  (The current track had to be widened and is now a bit up from the often flooded river.)  This part of the walk was my favorite of the day because it really felt like we were walking in the middle of nowhere.  We were surrounded by mountains, river and forest on a gorgeous, sunny day.  We all enjoyed the day and felt accomplished when it was complete, but we were most proud of my mom for rallying through and completing the longest hike of her life!  I have posted more shots from the day in our new, New Zealand South Island page.

Tomorrow we are heading to Te Anau to spend a couple of days seeing the fiords by boat.  The trip sounds incredible and I think we are all looking forward to that adventure!]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Touchdown Queenstown</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>New Zealand</category><dc:date>2007-02-20T21:15:41+13:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/883023b276f9d3730a3baae928a88ab4-15.html#unique-entry-id-15</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/883023b276f9d3730a3baae928a88ab4-15.html#unique-entry-id-15</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[Two short hours south by air and we were in awe upon arriving in Queenstown.  As impressed as we were by the North, we didn't even make it off the tarmac before we saw how New Zealand's South Island earned its reputation as one of the most remarkable places on the planet.  The only mountain range other than the Rockies to run due north to south, the Remarkables screamed "Welcome" to us as we landed.  We were all in agreement that this feels like a very special place.]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Mom arrived&#x21;</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>New Zealand</category><dc:date>2007-02-20T09:48:08+13:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/8995b98d82199b063060d197799072f1-14.html#unique-entry-id-14</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/8995b98d82199b063060d197799072f1-14.html#unique-entry-id-14</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[My mom arrived to New Zealand on Saturday morning.  We had a wonderful, leisurely weekend in Auckland.  Jay and I really enjoyed being in a real hotel again with a temperature controlled climate and a great view!

On Saturday, the three of us went to the Devonport Food and Wine Festival.  Devonport is a suburb of Auckland and was hosting its first food and wine fest, a short ferry ride from downtown.  There were lots of vendors and we spent a nice afternoon listening to music, munching on different dishes and drinking some local wines.  We were surprised that they actually were handing out actual glass wine glasses for the tasting.

Sunday was a quiet day.  I suffered with Turkeynose, which suddenly stopped working and everyone else relaxed while I yelled at the computer.  Yesterday, we took a longer gorgeous ferry ride to Waiheke Island.  It is an island off the coast from Auckland and was a great community that reminded us of Fire Island except it is more built up and has 29 vineyards.  We had gorgeous weather and stopped at a fabulous vineyard called Mudbrick.  The wines were quite tasty and we had a scrumptious wine and cheese platter with bread and olives.  Yum!

We are now packing up and heading for a flight to the South Island to Queenstown.  This part seems like the real beginning of New Zealand trip because we will be regularly moving from town to town seeing lots of sights.  Should be fun!]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Day 10 in New Zealand</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>New Zealand</category><dc:date>2007-02-19T09:21:32+13:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/f493f4deeb1383becdc7e06ccc89094d-13.html#unique-entry-id-13</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/f493f4deeb1383becdc7e06ccc89094d-13.html#unique-entry-id-13</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[Howdyall,

It&rsquo;s about day ten or so in New Zealand, and so far the beauty and variety of the New Zealand landscape has more than lived up to its reputation.  We&rsquo;ve been treated to dramatic cliffs, beaches with scalding water just a shovelful below the surface, stunning mountain ranges, and plenty of native bushland &ndash; and we&rsquo;ve only been traveling in the North Island (which the guidebooks described as the busier and &ldquo;less beautiful&rdquo; of the two).

For me the highlight of our time in New Zealand so far was when Miranda and I hiked the Tongariro Crossing.  Turkeynose.com has links with some great photos from this hike (if I do say so myself).  We couldn&rsquo;t have had better weather on this seven-hour hike, which had sweeping views of Mt Tongariro and Mt Ngauruhoe, as well as several lakes and craters.  Mirm handled the hike with aplomb, and we finished off the day with a cheerful dinner of local steak and a nice bottle of NZ red wine at the lodge where we were staying in Tongariro Park.]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Conquering the Tongariro Crossing</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>New Zealand</category><dc:date>2007-02-18T14:08:52+13:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/bc6f64e505dcf33a5931183064f27300-12.html#unique-entry-id-12</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/bc6f64e505dcf33a5931183064f27300-12.html#unique-entry-id-12</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[While &ldquo;conquering&rdquo; may be an excessive term for some people when discussing a ten-mile hike, it is not for me!  The Tongariro Crossing is widely considered one of the most beautiful one-day tramps (the Kiwi word for hiking / walking) in New Zealand, with beautiful views of Mount Ngauruhoe and Mount Tongariro.  Jay and I read about it in a guidebook and decided that we would add it to our itinerary during our first week in New Zealand.

...After a quick call from my parents to finalize my mom&rsquo;s arrival details, we packed up our lunch and jumped on the bus....  I tried hard not to be too intimidated when I felt tuckered out 20 minutes into the walk and we were being passed by almost everyone on the bus.  I knew I had another seven or eight hours ahead of me and wasn&rsquo;t sure how I would endure.

...I discovered that the hike was around the base of a volcano and the ground was scattered with volcanic rocks of many different colors.  (Jay said that the mountain is actually used for Mount Doom in Lord of the Rings.)  The most impressive rocks were a beautiful mix of black, red and yellow....  It involved putting my leg as high as I could on the rocks above me and then pulling myself up.  Now, you must keep in mind that I whine incessantly on the stair machine at the gym and am never willing to continue for more than 15 or 20 minutes.  After 45 minutes of this vertical struggle, I was starting to question the likelihood that I would finish the day.  More accurately, I wondered if I would spend the night on the mountain because I certainly would not be climbing back down those crazy rocks!

...I munched some gorp and agreed to soldier on. After one more intense steep climb we reached the high point of the hike and I was quite pleased.  I knew that we still had several hours to go (the hike ends several hundred meters below where it started, so there is a very long and slow descent), but at least there would be no more hoisting myself over rocks for endless periods of time.  And the view wasn&rsquo;t bad either It overlooked several lakes and some beautiful mountain ranges.  We really lucked out with the weather and there were only a few clouds in the sky for most of the day.

...After climbing the volcanic rock, we were on something that looked similar to red sand.  We then past crater lakes of bright turquoise and vents of sulfur gases (a relatively unpleasant occurrence when you are gasping for air).  As we passed the halfway point, the terrain became covered with a short shrub that is able to survive near the volcano....  We had a quick lunch about five hours into the trip and then decided that we wanted to keep moving so we could get on the first bus back to the lodge.  Years of skiing have taught me that the longer the lunch, the less I want to ski in the afternoon.

...The end of the hike was a little bit torturous because it had lots of stairs, many of which were the height of three normal stairs and my little legs struggled to lower me down over and over again.  The last hour of the hike was in a forest and past a great bubbling stream.

I was quite pleased when we finally emerged from the trail to the pick-up point.  The funny part of the whole struggle is that Jay and I were the first people on our bus to make it to the end....  Overall, we had a great day and I will enjoy it even more when I can walk without pain again.]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>The Food So Far</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>New Zealand</category><dc:date>2007-02-14T22:38:49+13:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/64f57d509ddd9cd31692b1737be5797e-17.html#unique-entry-id-17</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/64f57d509ddd9cd31692b1737be5797e-17.html#unique-entry-id-17</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[It is about time that I start writing about my favorite subject: food.  I am trying to keep track of various foods that standout along the trip.  We began the trip in the Cook Islands and we had our sights set on great fish and tropical fruits.  Unfortunately, a combination of our budget and a storm at sea led to several days of cheeseburgers and fries (chips as they are called).  The burgers were actually a bit interesting because of the accompaniments that are added to the burger....  We also had several burgers that included fried egg, pineapple, sliced star fruit and ham (often all of these ingredients were included at once).  These additions were actually quite tasty, but given that we had them for several meals in a row, we are swearing off burgers for the foreseeable future.  Once fish was available on the island again, we had fish and chips.  This was pretty similar to your basic fish and chips, but was often served with sliced lime and it added a nice contrast to the fish.

Another food highlight in the Cooks, was paw paw (papaya).  Paw paw is plentiful around the island and we had it a few different ways....  This would actually be a great addition to a summer time barbeque back home!...  Kumera is a local root vegetable that is similar to a sweet potato and the combined salad is similar to a potato salad with mayonnaise.

We were thrilled upon arriving to New Zealand to have access to plentiful ingredients again, particularly produce.  It is the height of the summer season here and there are many people selling fresh veggies (spelled veges here) on the side of the road.  There is normally a small amount of fruit and veggies for sale with posted prices and an &ldquo;honesty box&rdquo; at the stand.  You simply select the produce you would like and drop the money in the box....  I don&rsquo;t know if it is just the wonder of having amazing fresh corn in the middle of February or if it is something special about NZ, but the corn we boiled the other night was amazing.

On Monday, we did a nice walk in the morning to Cathedral Cove on the Coromandel Peninsula.  We took a quick ferry ride to the town of Whitianga and had lunch at a place called Nina&rsquo;s Caf&eacute;....  It contained the expected fresh seafood, but the chowder part stood out.  It was similar to a creamy, New England chowder, however, in place of some of the cream was coconut milk, a touch of curry, ginger, cilantro, lemon zest and maybe even lemongrass....  If I ever venture to make clam chowder, I think I will try this sort of twist.

Last night we attended a Maori hangi as part of a Maori cultural show....  The food is lowered into an earth oven(below ground and cooked slowly similar to a barbeque pit.  The meat had a distinctive flavor that must be the result of a different type of wood used in the cooking process.

I am enjoying discovering the different details of food as we go.]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>First Photos</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>New Zealand</category><dc:date>2007-02-13T16:39:26+13:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/4aeb3c64751c851c0f02a17ad76e63bf-11.html#unique-entry-id-11</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/4aeb3c64751c851c0f02a17ad76e63bf-11.html#unique-entry-id-11</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[We have finally found a place that will let our dear MacBook connect.  In our first two weeks, we got to experience the internet (and technology in general!)  in a way we haven't seen since 1995.  (And in those days we didn't know any better when the internet lost a race to any snail that challenged it.)

Enough moaning about life on the gorgeous island of Aitutaki :) Here are the pictures.  You will see the extraordinary places we saw.  Needless to say, the camera couldn't capture the beauty, but we thought we would try.  This will also give you an opportunity to see what I (Mirm) look like when I am melting and have stayed in excessive heat for over a week :)

We have also thrown in a few pictures of New Zealand.  We have only been here a few days, but included pictures of our first adventures.  This country is really gorgeous.  We will add more pics when we get them.

Last, but not least, my Turkeynose file is acting up so some of the formatting is up.  I will fiddle around with it when I am not paying for the internet connection and will repost later.  For now, ignore the alignment problems with the comments...]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>First Day in New Zealand</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>New Zealand</category><dc:date>2007-02-13T16:24:29+13:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/6ed7e81775faa414e4d4206604a22fed-10.html#unique-entry-id-10</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/6ed7e81775faa414e4d4206604a22fed-10.html#unique-entry-id-10</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[Mirm and I left the Cook Islands and arrived in NZ yesterday safely, although on a bumpy plane near the back row.  It was sad to leave this little oasis in the south pacific, but we are pumped for a month in NZ, too.

Before leaving Rarotonga, we met a cute elderly couple from Auckland in the Rarotonga airport, who liked the US because they had been horse traders in North Carolina before moving to NZ.  We had a nice chat about our trip plans and their vacation in the Cook Islands.  When we told them our plans for our first day in New Zealand (to immediately drive from Auckland to a rocky coastland region called the Coromandel pennisula), their eyes widened but they didn't say anything specific...

Later on the plane Miranda and I decided that they must have thought we were about to bite off more than we could chew with the drive, but they probably didn't know that we regularly drive from New York to New Hampshire after work on Friday nights in the summer...  Well, it was definitely harder than we expected.  It was an arduous drive that took quite a bit longer than the three hours we had planned on. Thankfully we made it before sundown.  Because we were smart enough to leave without a detailed map of the area we were driving to and would have been hopeless if trying to navigate our way in the dark.

On the bright side, the New Zealand landscape was just as beautiful as advertised, and we benefitted nicely from a few early wrong turns so that we were able to see more of the NZ countryside than expected.  After a couple hours, however, the roads narrowed and became so twisted and vertical that I really couldn't appreciate it as much of the scenery as I would have liked.  Actually in retrospect I think that Avis should have provided sick bags when we told them where we were headed.  Also, just for the record, everyone was driving on the wrong side of the road here.  Maybe that's a Sunday thing.  We had about an hour and a half of incredibly windy mountain roads - and everyone was flying past us and at us and sometimes almost off the mountain and all this in a wrong lane that just looked funny ...  "scare the pants off the american" is apparently the next most popular sport out here after rugby.  So overall it was a bit much for my first day of driving on the left hand side of the road.  Oh and of course we have a manual transmission because I wanted to be macho about it, but eventually we made to the little and beautiful coastal town of Hahei on the Coromandel pennisula in the North Island of NZ.

It was definitely worth the drive.  Hahei and the whole region reminds me of some of he prettiest parts of the pacific northwest beaches, with hills / small mountains heading right up to a dramatic rocky coast.  Today we went for a short and very beautiful hike to a place called Cathedral Cove Beach, which is a stunning rock formation on a thin beach about an hour and a half's walk from Hahei.  Then we ate lunch in a nearby town Whitianga at a great place called Nina Cafe.  The population of Whitianga isn't much, but since it's by far the biggest town we've been in yet (we never actually went into Auckland), so it seems like a veritable metropolis, and the web is a good bit faster here than in the Cook Islands, so be prepared for turkeynose.com to get updated in the next couple days.

Thanks for all your emails - it is great reading them and keep em coming!

Hope all is well!]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>We are going to miss this little island&#x21; </title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>Cook Islands</category><dc:date>2007-02-09T11:23:38-05:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/581d3a6cb375a129526c00658d3db278-9.html#unique-entry-id-9</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/581d3a6cb375a129526c00658d3db278-9.html#unique-entry-id-9</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[Today we spent the day on a lagoon cruise traveling around the lagoon around Aitutaki.  There are actually 14 (15?)  motus (little islands) within the reef that surrounds Aitutaki and we stopped on a few of them today.  We snorkeled and saw some cool fish and then had lunch on an island called One Foot Island.

Later in the afternoon, we stopped on the island where they filmed Survivor:Cook Islands.  It sounds like the production crew treated the local people here pretty well and bought up everything available for the 3 months they were here.  They seemed proud of the spot, but I only learned that Survivor was filmed here upon arrival, so I couldn't be too impressed.  overall we enjoyed the day - although it was a battle against the fierce sun all day!  I held up pretty well although I looked like a total dork.  I wore the peach hat and a green t-shirt over my bathing suit all day......  On the trip was a couple on a 4 month trip for the husband's 60th birthday.  They were from Oxford and they basically did the reverse of our trip.  Pretty cool I think!

Last night we went to Island Night at Samade's on the beach.  There was a traditional meal - a buffet of sorts.  (Although today's lunch was actually a better version of the same thing.)  Mostly it was just a good break from the cheeseburgers and fries that have dominated our meals here.  One tasty treat from the buffet was papaya with a little mayo, curry powder and lemon juice.  I know it sounds gross, but it tasted great!

The evening included traditional dancing.  I always find events like that a bit voyeuristic and touristy, but it is certainly the closest thing I will get to seeing the real thing.  The dancers were pretty casual about the whole thing, but the style was definitely soemthing I hadn't seen before - for women it was like belly dancing on fast forward - very impressive.  The men's dance is basically undescribable...  a cross of an mc hammer move and an elvis move......  We also sat at a table with some great people and I think Jay and I both enjoyed the opportunity to branch our converastion out a little beyond ourselves :)

Tomorrow is our last day here, so we are trying to figure out the best way to spend it.  We are going to miss this little island!]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>On our way&#x21;</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>Cook Islands</category><dc:date>2007-02-06T18:57:11-05:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/a1c258b25e4c5a500eedec2730583777-8.html#unique-entry-id-8</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/a1c258b25e4c5a500eedec2730583777-8.html#unique-entry-id-8</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[We have arrived safe and sound in the Cook Islands after 30+ hours of travel.  All went very smoothly and we were glad to have finally started our big adventure.  The Cook Islands are basically due south of Hawaii about 4 hours from New Zealand.  (Although we are also a day behind NZ because you have to cross the date line to get there.)  We spent the first night on the island of Rarotonga and then flew to Aitutaki the second day.  We're spending a week here mostly lounging on the beach under palm trees, swimming when we need to cool off - a pretty huge change from NYC!  The island is very sleepy and gorgeous.  The entire island is surrounded by a huge coral reef, so a shallow lagoon of turquoise water is directly off the beach and then you can see the waves breaking in the distance.  It is truly spectacular!  The island doesn't have many tourists at all at the moment, so most of the day we are able to sit on a huge stretch of beach all to ourselves.  This is a very relaxing way to start this adventure and finally a few days into it, Mirm is finally adjusting to the heat :)

We have a few activities of snorkeling and island night planned in the next few days, but mostly we are taking it easy.]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Lots of goodbyes</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>Brooklyn</category><dc:date>2007-01-28T23:02:40-05:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/ff28b0edbb4e12879cd936c302ff0a89-7.html#unique-entry-id-7</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/ff28b0edbb4e12879cd936c302ff0a89-7.html#unique-entry-id-7</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[The last week has been action-packed and pretty emotional, too.  We have been busy bees tying up what seems like a never-ending string of final details before we leave.  We have also been fortunate enough to be able to spend some quality time with both our families.  We spent the first part of the week in Newton visiting with Mirm's family, and then Jay's mom came up from Alabama to visit this weekend.

We had a lot of fun on Saturday night seeing so many of our friends at Soda in Brooklyn.  Tonight we had a small dinner with a few friends at Samara and Matt's house.  Thanks for the chili!  Samara started cooking at 9AM this morning making the chili.  (Turns out that the chili recipe that Mirm wrote actually works, so feel free to try it.)

Take a look at the lovely pictures.  We promise that the photography quality will pick up once we are on our way.]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>One week&#x21;</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>Brooklyn</category><dc:date>2007-01-23T21:17:27-05:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/9517c2ded1ff90646e5dfb57ebc6440b-6.html#unique-entry-id-6</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/9517c2ded1ff90646e5dfb57ebc6440b-6.html#unique-entry-id-6</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[We are leaving a week from tomorrow!  Hard to believe that we are this close to a trip we have been planning (read: thinking about) for SO long. After a little deliberation, we decided that we should move our tickets forward a couple weeks and get going on the trip.  Thanks to Air New Zealand, it was much cheaper for us to re-book our tickets to add a stop in the Cook Islands rather than fly to Auckland directly 2 weeks early.  We are going to the Cook Islands on January 31st and then will head to Auckland on February 10th.  Wish us luck in the last week of craziness getting ready to go.

P.S. Make sure to send good vibes to the Pats that must be recovering from a sad loss to Indy on Sunday.]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>The end of work...</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>Brooklyn</category><dc:date>2007-01-13T13:05:41-05:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/1ada301d46518ef6dfaef610707a7073-3.html#unique-entry-id-3</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/1ada301d46518ef6dfaef610707a7073-3.html#unique-entry-id-3</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[So we are both done working...  very strange!  For the most part, this last week has been very busy with wrapping things up at work.  My co-workers threw me a going away party on Thursday night, which was a great ending.  I have worked with lots of fantastic people at SchoolNet and it was nice to be able to say goodbye.  The idea of being done with work has always seemed like it would be a great relief, but it doesn't quite seem that way yet.  Mostly, I can't really get my mind around it, but I imagine with time, I will adjust ;)

Now we just need to focus on getting things in order before we leave.  The sublet process continues to be a bit of a bear.  People have been by to see it, but either it hasn't worked for them or it hasn't worked for us. Hopefully in the next week, we will find someone.  Otherwise, more drastic steps will be necessary.

This weekend we are seeing friends and of course we will be focusing on the Patriots on Sunday afternoon.  GO PATS!!]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>A little more than 6 weeks to go&#x21;</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>Brooklyn</category><dc:date>2006-12-29T18:53:50-05:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/f1b324218b9197655dbeb440e0e960ee-1.html#unique-entry-id-1</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/f1b324218b9197655dbeb440e0e960ee-1.html#unique-entry-id-1</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[We have a little more than six weeks to go before we take off on this adventure.  We are leaving New York on February 13 headed for San Francisco.  We'll spend a couple of days in SF with my friend Liz (thanks Liz!)  before we board our flight to Auckland on February 15th.  My mom is meeting us in San Francisco and joining us for the first leg of the trip in New Zealand.

Our itinerary in New Zealand has already been planned out in detail, so hopefully that part of the trip will help us ease into the lifestyle ahead.]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Getting Turkeynose.com ready</title><dc:creator>info@turkeynose.com</dc:creator><category>Brooklyn</category><dc:date>2006-12-29T18:51:00-05:00</dc:date><link>http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/feab09465a35aaabb347e44173af9083-0.html#unique-entry-id-0</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.turkeynose.com/TurkeynoseGoesGlobal/files/feab09465a35aaabb347e44173af9083-0.html#unique-entry-id-0</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[Well, I have spent the last several days trying to figure out how to get this site set-up.  As some of you may know, I have been really bad about updating this site in the last few years.  In fact, I haven't updated it since right after Jay and I got married.

That is all changing now :-) We are getting turkeynose.com set-up so that we can keep you updated on our upcoming trip.  My hope is that once I get this set-up properly, it will be little work while we are on the road.]]></content:encoded></item></channel>
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