Viva Nepal

I was reading Sydney's latest post, and it got me thinking back on some of the great trips I took while living in Hong Kong. Two of the most EPIC trips of my entire life were to Nepal, where my kid sister Sydney is now working/volunteering. She's having a great time, I'm sure of it, because you cannot go to that place and not leave a changed person. If I had the option to go anywhere in the world, somewher I've been or somewhere new, I would choose Nepal, hands down. I have so many good memories from my two trips there.

Among my memories of Nepal are an awesome trip down the Seti River on kayaks. This was a week-long trip with about 20 students and 2 teachers from my high school. We kayaked by day and camped by night in tents on the shore. Children from the villages would come down and play with us. We would sit around the camp fire and discuss the things that really mattered to us - and other things that didn't matter at all.

There was one episode from that trip that I will never forget. At one point, there was a large bolder in the river that created a huge whirlpool. Looking ahead of myself I could see that people weren't faring very well. I saw people swimming, holding their kayaks and swimming to shore because they didn't make it past the "hole." I went over the rock, and like the others, flipped. The only problem was that I was too big for my kayak (I was 6'3'' by then if I remember right). I was wedged into place, and when I reached for my spray skirt to bail out, I couldn't force myself out of the kayak and was stuck under water, no paddle, and no air. I attempted to barrel roll, but having lost my paddle, I was only able to get my lips above water and take a gulp of air before re-submerging. As I was taught to do in pre-trip classes, I began banging my hands on the bottom of my kayak hoping someone would come to my rescue. Just as I was about to inhale the water, I felt the hand of God (Dan Whitmore), pulling me out of the water. I got lucky. Fortunately there weren't too many near-death experiences on that trip.

The other trip I took to Nepal was with my family, the Knells, and the Hoers. Now we go to Lake Powell every year, but back in the day our destinations were a bit more exotic. Our plan was to hike the Annapurna Mountains. This we did - 5 days of hiking from city to city, with Sherpas carrying out belongings and pitching tents before we arrived every day (this guys were fit, and they wore flip-flops). That was all that we planned, but we got much more than we bargained for.

As we were walking up the mountain (away from Kathmandu), we noticed shepherd after shepherd guiding goats toward the capital city. At one point we had to wait at a bridge while hundreds of goats were herded across the bridge in the opposite direction. It wasn't until we got to Kathmandu that we understood what the goats meant.

After our trek, we hired a van from Pokara to Kathmandu. In the parking lot where the van stopped, a small group of Nepalese people were standing around an ornamented van waiting for something. There was a dish with spices, flower petals, and rice. There was a vase with a liquid, and a goat - much like the goats that we had seen walking down the hill. The man in charge began to sprinkle the items in the pan on the goat's head. Then he sprinkled the liquid (oil or water I assume) then everyone watched in suspense. The man had a large knife in one hand that he clutched at this side as we all looked that the goat. [[This part is kinda gross - consider yourself warned]] The animal (reminiscent of a dog) shook its head dry, and just as it did so, the man jumped at it, grabbed it by the throat and sliced it across the neck. He walked the goat around the vehicle as its warm blood spewed upon the tires and door panels. Once he returned to the ceremonial location, he finished cutting off the head, then took portions of the neck skin which he placed on the hub caps. He cut the tail and put it into the mouth, then started a fire on the crest of the head. He used the intestine as a balloon and draped it across the front of the vehicle and the ceremony was done. [[End gross part - you may resume reading]].

Some may have been terrorized from this one event (the Knell girls were) - if it were seen only once. But in the course of the day, everywhere we looked we saw the same ceremony repeated again and again - dozens of times. With goats and ducks and even buffalo. Daniel and I, unlike the poor girls, were fascinated adolescents and we watched with full attention, not wanting to miss a single detail.



Even after years have passed, I have never had another day like that one in Nepal, nor have I been anywhere like Nepal. It is a mystic land, and I hope that Sydney enjoys herself there and knows that her brother is very jealous.

How to insert an image into a blog post without uploading.

This post is for Ashley MacKay who buzzed me this question over Gmail today:

I am working on customizing a blog (http://ashleymackaydesign.blogspot.com/) and I would like the pictures I upload to be the same width as the column where I post like http://thesartorialist.blogspot.com/ or http://jessicahische.blogspot.com/.

I have tried making the images the size I want them to be in photoshop, uploading them, then editing the html to make them the right size, but it just makes them fuzzy. I have tried making them really big and hi res and they end up fuzzy. And I can't believe that these other blogs actually have to edit the html every time they make a post. I hate blogger for not letting me just choose how wide I want my pictures. Do you have any idea about how to fix that? If you've never even thought about it don't worry about trying to figure it out. I just thought I'd ask.

Thanks!

Ashley Mackay

I'm going to approach this like a recipe so, ingredients first:

1 Blogger Blog
1 Image you want to keep it's aspect ratio
1 Picasa account (you have one if you have a blogger blog)
(ps. you don't need a picasa account if you have your own server where you store images)


Instructions:

First you have an image on your computer that you've sized how you want. You need to get it onto the web, and blogger's upload thing resizes your image for you, so you need to use some other method. Here I suggest picasaweb.google.com which you already have if you are a Blogger blogger.

Go to Picasa and click on the "Upload" button on the top (see image)


Then create a new album



I called my Blog Album


Once you create the album, you can then upload any images that you want to use in your blog. Uploading this way, whatever size the image was on your computer is the size it will be in your blog. (Be sure that you crop or edit it before uploading it).



Once you upload, you will be brought to the image you just uploaded. You need to get the image's location. This is a bit tricky. Right click on the image and select "Copy Image Location" from firefox.


If you are using Internet Explorer, it is a little trickier. You have to right click, then go to "Properties." Once in the Properties menu, highlight the "Address:(URL)" and copy it.

GET YOUR IMAGE INTO YOUR BLOG

Now go to your blog post. Click on the Edit HTML tab in the edit window:



Now go to the place in your post that you want to put your image. Insert this text:

<img src="copied_URL" />

This will include the image whatever size it was.

IMAGE WITH BLOGGER:


LINKED IMAGE:

Meandering down to Kilkenny

Paul and I woke up at 8:30, showered, and went to the airport to get a rental car. The plan was that Paul and I would get the car while the girls went to Mass at St. Mary's Pro-Cathedral (anyone know what makes a cathedral a "pro"?). Well, we got on a local bus (2 euro), and got to the airport in about a half an hour. While on the bus, I asked someone what time it was and he said, "8:00". I thought it was 9:00, so needless to say I was confused. It turns out that during that the night before was daylight savings. We all of the sudden had added an hour to our day.

When we got to the airport, we picked up a small 4-door Nissan, and drove away – yes, it was really that easy. It took about 10 minutes to get to downtown Dublin driving on the wrong (left) side of the road. We parked where I thought Catrina had pointed out to me on a map, but it turned out that she was pointing to the north side of the river, and we parked on the south side – so we had to walk about a half a mile up to the cathedral, but still made it in time for Mass. I came in at the point where everyone has to turn to the person next him and shake hands. The priest's accent was inaudible, so when this part came, Paul and I turned to each other and the people around us and said, "Pleased to meet you, pleased to meet you…" When Catrina and Laura found out what we had said, they explained to us that we were supposed to be saying, "Peace be with you." Again, the priest really didn't annunciate very well.

During Mass, we looked around and couldn't see the girls. When we got out, we walked around the Cathedral and still didn't spy them. A couple minutes later, they finally came around the corner. They had been eating breakfast. We asked what went wrong, and apparently they didn't know about the daylight savings change either, so when they showed up for Mass at 9 (which they thought was 10), no one was there, so they walked across town to another cathedral, which unfortunately was neither open nor catholic. So they then decided to eat breakfast in a café.

We walked the half a mile to the car and hit the road. The Irish countryside is about as beautiful as any I've ever seen – especially in the fall. Every shade of yellow, orange, and green were represented and the hills were painted in fire. We lost the main highway pretty quick (I don't know if it was because Laura got shotgun – or on purpose) and drove mainly through the back-country. We stopped in a small town and bought a CD that we hoped would be Irish. When we asked the girl at the music store to give us a CD that is by and Irish artist. She found one then we asked her, "Does it sound Irish?" She turned to her boss and said, "He's old, he'll know…. Is this music Irish-ish?" The guy looked at her with a don't-ask-me look on his face, "ish…." (meaning no). We bought it anyway and it was certainly only Irish-ish, but fun to listen to as we drove. (At least more fun than listening to all that American country music they play on their radio stations).

Paul, at some point along the way, said, "I want to stop at a farmers market." Well, when we drove through a city called Athy, there was a little farmers' market in the main plaza. I got a homemade loaf of apple bread that ended up being our lunch and we talked to some people who were standing near our car. I asked one of them, "What do you do for fun in this city?" He responded without hesitation, "Drink ourselves silly." Typical. We continued on.

As we were pulling into our destination city, Kilkenny, we witnessed an interesting phenomena that rang surprisingly familiar. Droves of people were walking all in the same direction with blankets and jackets –the young boys had a strange hybrid of lacrosse and cricket mallet. We rolled down the window and asked a passerby, "What's going on here?" and they excitedly responded, "It's the country finals! The Shamrocks verses Saint Martin's." Soccer? Rugby? Cricket? We had to know. "What sport?" "Hurling!"

Hurling? Were we going to go? Of course we were going. There was no parking, but our car was small enough to pull up onto a sidewalk (not our idea, we just did what everyone else was doing). We followed the crowds to a large stadium. We asked, "Which side do we have to sit on if we support Saint Martin's?" (I still don't know why we picked St. Martin's, but once we were there, we had become die-hard Martin's fans). The man in the ticket booth said, "Oh, you can sit anywhere, we're all friends here." True to what the man said, most people we asked said that they were neutral and didn't care who won. So, needless to say, when Paul would yell his heart out in favor of St. Martin's he got more than a few awkward stares. Of course the Shamrock's won (they were national champs last year after all), and after it was over everyone went onto the field as the captain, from the stands, lifted the shiny silver cup over his head and gave a Gaelic victory speech (It was actually English, but so hard to understand that Paul attempted to give a translation.)

After the game, we went to see the castle just as it was closing. After that we walked down the main street, over the river and to a restaurant on the corner. I got fish and chips as the TV above us reported the Shamrock's victory from earlier that day. I felt Irish just for a second. We made our way out of the restaurant and asked around until we found a hostel right in the middle of the town. When we paid, everyone pulled what was left of their money, and we had to scrape together coins from everyones pockets til we came up with the amount we owed. We were broke, happy, and heading home in the morning. Good trip.

Iron & Wine - feelin just fine...

Laura Jane asked us, "Hey guys, what are we doing?" I answered, "Well, we're in Ireland, but that's all I can really think of." Then everyone looked at each other and said, "Oh yeah, we're going to see Iron & Wine!" What an amazing day.

It all started in my dirty, Polish hostel where I was so afraid to leave my bed the night before that I ended up sleeping for 11 hours trying not to touch anything (especially the pillow which i could only mostly cover with a spare shirt). Upon springing from bed, I threw on some clothes, packed up and went to the front desk. I asked the surprisingly clean girl at the desk what I needed to do to vacate my bed (ie. turn in sheets for cleaning), she said, "Eh, just leave." So I left with a sick taste in my mouth, scared I had already contracted TB.

I checked my email and Paul and his friends had made the flight to Dublin, so I went to our meeting spot on the Northeast corner of the O'Connell bridge. I thought they'd be there around 9 or 9:30, but they ended up getting there around 11:30. I discovered that I am absolutely intolerant to waiting. Without a cell phone and the ability to know exactly where someone is and when they will arrive, I shut down. I was pacing up and down the bridge, jumping up on the wall to sit, then jumping down again. But they eventually showed up, and it was like no time had passed at all.

Fist thing we did was walk back to my hostel to grab my bag which I had stashed in a closet. The vomit I almost stepped in the day earlier was still just stagnating outside the door. We walked to a good hostel which I already knew was full and they redirected us to some good hostels. Brown's hostel was very nice and we ended up booking for the night, however, in our quest to find new accommodations, I walked into a hostel and was surprised to be greeted by Marta, the Pollock lady who had checked me into the hostel the day before. She recognized me, and I said, "This place isn't as bad as the other one is it?" And she said, "It's not much better, but that one down the street (the one I'd stayed in) has to be the worst hostel in Ireland." (Not an exact quote - explicatives removed). So, not only was that hostel nasty by my standards and the Moroccan guy who was in the bunk next to me, but it was also admittedly the worst hostel in all of Ireland.

So we checked into Brown's, and away we went. We walked down O'Connell street, across the bridge and past Temple Bar to Trinity College. We walked around the 16th century campus and pretty much talked about how much fun we were having walking the streets of Dublin. As we went from Trinity to St. Stephen's Green, we passed the buskers and flower stands and I felt the reality of the moment. What could have been a simple suggestion, a whim even, from 3 weeks earlier had become a reality - putting us on the other side of the world, seeing things we've never seen before and learning about a people that, before this day, we knew nothing about. That wasn't the only time I felt this way during the weekend, but it was the first.

St. Stephen's Green was indeed green. Nice statues of people I've never heard about, grass and trees. By the time we had walked around Dublin for a few hours, it was lunch time. We went into a pub down the street from the hostel. I had already bought a baguette, so I sat down for a few seconds before excusing myself. As I stepped out of the booth we were sitting in, my foot got caught under the leg of the table and I slowly and awkwardly tumbled to the ground, almost landing on a woman and her daughter - "Yeep!" I got up and said, "Oi, mate!" and then just whispered some embarrassed, half discernible Irish/American/confused phrase and walked out of the pub as the guys in the booth next to us were chuckling.

We took a nap and then left for the Ambassador theatre, where Iron and Wine were performing. I remember buying my ticket online a few weeks ago. I said to myself, "Well, I'm throwing this money away." I didn't have them send me the ticket in the mail because it would have been a lot more likely that I lose them between Utah and Dublin, then if I picked it up when I got there (and when i bought them, it was more like if I get there). But I got there, and that feeling came again - it was real. In fact, standing outside the theatre minutes before the show, Paul said, "Somebody pinch me, am I really here?" I pinched him - it was real.

We walked in and a band called Johnny Flynn and the Sussex Wit played. They definitely had a strong Irish folk sound and really rocked. Go to their MySpace page http://www.myspace.com/johnnyflynn. Again, we were really in Ireland. When Iron & Wine came out, I looked around and noticed that most the guys in the audience were middle aged with beards. Is this some demographic that I didn't know I was a part of? It was awesome because Sam Beam's beard beat them all. And his hair was long and bushy. He had a soft stage presence and his voice is so distinct and clear. The music was awesome. So worth coming to Ireland (ps. They will be performing in Magna, Utah in December).

After the show, we walked out on O'Connell street again and sat down on the base of a statue of Sombody Grey and just watched people go by and laughed a lot. People were dressed in their Halloween costumes and every time a girl would walk close to us, Paul would cry out in the dirtiest Liverpool accent he could conjure, "Helloe, Lovvely!" We would all be embarrassed, but laughing our heads off at the same time.

We ended up walking back to Brown's, only a couple blocks away, and fell easily asleep. A good day in Dublin.

This Irish Life

I'm totally in Dublin right now. It's already been a jolly old time. I arrived at about 8:15 this morning. I found out that it is a holiday weekend in Ireland, so the hostels are all booked up. That kind of freaked me out because I only had plan A and plan B. Plan A was to ask a stranger if I could stay with them. Plan B was to stay in a hostel. Seeing that plan B is the "realistic" plan A, I really have no plan now. Live and learn I guess.

I went to a couple hostels from the Lonely Planet book Paul gave me and sure enough they were all booked up this weekend. So I wandered down one of the main avenues looking for other places to stay and I found one advertising relatively good prices. They had an open bed in one of their 10-bed rooms tonight, so I paid the 15 euro and signed up. The place absolutely reeks, they don't wash the bedding (I'm sure of it), and there is one dim light lighting the whole room. As I walked out of the hostel, I almost stepped in a puddle of vomit. We should definitely try to figure something different out for tomorrow night.

Other than the hostel, though, Dublin is sweet. It's in the 50's, the sky is cloudy, and it's drizzled a little today, but the people are freakin sweet. I talked to a bunch of locals and they're all so jolly and happy to talk to you. I talked to a newspaper stand guy and a bunch of his friends on a street corner. I wanted to know if there was any rugby being played in Dublin this weekend cause I'd really like to watch a math. They told me that they don't like rugby because they always kick the ball off the pitch. It was fun to talk to them. I also met a Andy and John, a couple of gardeners who were working in an elderly woman's Dalia garden. They really liked my accent, and I really liked theirs.


The coolest experience I had today, bar none, was meeting a fellow by the name of Jerry Sloey He's a folk singer/12 string guitarist who was busking down on Grafton Street. I sat there and listened to his deep smoke-scared voice and melodic strumming as I ran my tape recorder. When he was done with his first number, which was quite a dramatic song I might add, he explained to me the meaning of it. It was about the Irish workers who went over to England to dig a tunnel under the Thames and died. He then played another couple songs that he sang from the bottom of his heart. This guy had his teeth half rotten, his long hair pulled back in a pony tail and kept a half-smile the whole time he performed. I'm going to make a podcast called "This Irish Life" based on this experience.

A touching side-note to this story is the homeless kid (probably 25) who came up to Jerry and requested an old Irish song. You could tell that he loved the music that Jerry played. Before Jerry began to play, the homeless kid said, "I'm sorry, I'm homeless and I don't have any money." Jerry said, "Me too, I can't help you, sorry mate." Then the kid, surprised, responded, "No, I just don't have any money to spare that I can put in your guitar case." Jerry then looked at the kid and said, "Don't worry lad, we don't take from our own." Then Jerry played on. I could tell that for the first part of the song, the homeless kid was disturbed that he was listening without contributing to the artist. He pulled a couple 20 cent coins out of his pocket, took one, and threw it in to Jerry's box. For the rest of the song he sang to the choruses. I even joined in for the last few lines (which by that time had been sung about 5 times). It was moving.

Freedom means sleeping on a bench undisturbed

A few words about Amsterdam...
I really didn't know much about this city before arriving this morning. All I ever heard was that pot and prostitution are legal here and that people are super liberal. I once saw a thing on TV about it and a spokesperson for the city said that Amsterdam takes pride in being the "Freest city in the world." Today, however, I discovered that Amsterdam is not so free afterall.

It was early. I got of the plane in Einhoven and took a bus to the train station, then a train to Amsterdam. After a night on a bench in the Madrid airport, and all that movement when I arrived in Holland, I was tired to say the least. On the train from Eindhoven to Amsterdam there were grass-covered fields surrounded by flower-covered pastures. I was sitting there day-dreaming of laying down in the grass, then I got to the city, and it was all cobblestone and pavement. I walked from the train station to Dam Square (you heard me - 'Dam Square') and then walked as far as I could from downtown trying to find a grassy park. The best thing I could find was a bench next to a bridge by a canal in the middle on nowhere. I layed down on a bench with a book on my chest, then drifted peacefully asleep for a couple of hours.

I would have kept sleeping had I not been interrupted by someone pulling on the towel I had laid over my eyes. I slapped the hand, then it just kept pulling at my towel, so I jumped up, pulled the towel from my eyes and as soon as I realized who I was about to scream at, I decided to sit and listen. It was two police officers looking down at me. I said, "What's the problem?"

"No sleeping." the older of the two said.

"I was reading a book, " I answered.

"You were not, you were sleeping. You may not sleep. It is illegal."

I was flabberghasted. Taken abback. I sat there with my jaw open wondering how on earth it could be illegal to fall asleep under a tree next to a canal, but legal to smoke pot and buy a prostitute. But then the officer said one last thing as he walked away.

"You're making more work for me."

Aha! The root of the "free" Dutch society. Cracking down on drugs and prostitution was just too much work. It's not worth it to put forth the effort to try and stop something, so let's make it leagal in the name of "freedom!" Well, I just wish they would have decided to make a napping under a tree legal too.

Sleeping at the airport in Madrid

Tonight I´m going to sleep in the airport. Unfortunately I wasn´t thinking when I baught a super-cheap airplane ticket from madrid to Amsterdam. My plane leaves at 6:00AM and no busses start until after 6. So I had to make a descision... do I pay for a taxi to the airport, or do I sleep at the airport and use my metro day pass, which I.ve been using since this morning. The choice was pretty obvious.

No real point to this post, but I thought you might like to know that I.m tough.

Holy Toledo!

We took a day trip out of town to a city called, you guessed it, Toledo. You may think that Toledo is a city in Ohio (you may also think that Moskow is only a city in Idaho), but Toledo is actually the ancient capital of Spain -- and it´s beautiful. The city itself is surrounded on three sides by a rolling river in a deep gorge. It is the perfect position for a fuedel fortress. It is in Toledo that Christopher Colombus came to ask Queen Isabella for the money to go to India. If he could navagate through the windy streets of Toledo, it´s no wonder he could brave the Pacific.