Batscapades

I wish I could have called batman last week. One evening, I was planning to Skype into a wedding. My old roommate from the States was getting married. It was supposed to start at 2pm her time, 10pm my time. I arrived at home around 9:30 and changed into something nicer than a T-shirt for the occasion. My sister was at the wedding holding the device so I could watch. We were chatting beforehand to make sure it was working. We hung up until the wedding started. I killed some time on social media. As I was doing that, I heard what sounded like a large bug fluttering around. I turned to see what it was and realized it was a bird.

I.HATE.BIRDS. Over the years, my hatred for them has only increased. My first realization that I hate them was at an aviary. It freaked me out that they would fly all around me and would land on people. If you know me, you know that I’m not a fan of humans coming into my personal space, much less animals. At least with humans, I can tell them to not come near but not so with animals. Then several years ago, I rented a cabin for some time of solitude and rest. I propped open the balcony door to let in some fresh air and in flew a bird. As freaked out as I was, I spent an hour trying to get the thing to leave. The ordeal ended with the bird not leaving and me heaped in a puddle on the bed weeping. I left the cabin early, locking the poor bird inside. About a year later, I was walking at a park and a bird flew right over me making weird noises for about 5 minutes. The hairs on my arms were standing up. I eventually lost the bird. 

So when I saw the thing fluttering around in the room with me, I bolted to the hallway. Wouldn’t you know I met ANOTHER ONE in the hallway!!! I ran to my bedroom and slammed the door behind me. Luckily that room was free from the beasts. I sent a message to my sis telling her what was going on. A minute later, she informed me the wedding was starting. 

This picture is a pretty good representation of how I felt.

Needless to say I was a little distracted during the ceremony. I texted H, my big bro, to get his advice on what I should do. He suggested I call my security guard. I could hear the fluttering from inside my room. I kept praying that somehow they would find their way back outside. Throughout the wedding, I was trying to figure out how to use my language to call the security guard and say, “Hi, I have birds in my house. I am afraid. Will you help me?” I was also dreading the moment I would have to leave my safe haven and run through the battlefield to let in the security guard. 

As soon as the wedding ended, I called BB, the security guard, and he agreed to help. I walked to my bedroom door and turned on the flashlight on my phone. I opened the door to peek out and WHOOSH! one flew down the hallway. I quickly closed the door. I gathered my courage and finally just bolted out of my room. I slammed the door behind me and ran ducking down the hallway and out the front door. I waited in the stairwell for my security guard. He came in and saw a bird whoosh by. He asked for a broom. I hurriedly grabbed one from the kitchen and then ran back into the stairwell. He was in there for about 30 minutes. He finally called me back in. He said I had a big problem.  There had been 8 in total. EIGHT!!! He managed to get 3 of them to fly out the window and corralled the other five into two separate rooms. Two were in my living room and three in the back room. He said he was leaving and wanted to shut my windows. What?!? You want to shut up their only way out? His reasoning was that the open windows were how they were getting in and he didn’t want anymore to get in. He shut the window in the living room but left the other one open. He told me to call if I needed anything else. Yeah, I can’t think of anything else I need other than someone making these FIVE birds leave.

After he left, I called H and gave him an update. He offered for me to come spend the night at their house and he and my other big bro B would come try to take care of the birds. I packed up a few things and as I was heading out the door, BB called me back and said he wanted to come try again. This time he brought a small dry-erase board with him as a weapon. I, of course, stood out in the stairwell again. He called me back in after a few minutes to an empty room and a dead bird. It was small and black and looked a bit like a bat. Then he tossed it out the window. 

As he was getting ready to face the back bedroom, and I was returning to the stairwell, H & B showed up to help. I let them in and again waited in the stairwell. A few minutes later, they left the room and explained the beasts were gone. Shew. After BB left, the guys explained that there had been five in the back room and they were bats, not birds. Uggghhh!!! I’m glad I did not know that at the time. I also think BB had been right to want to close the windows. Two more had joined the party while he was away. That brought the total up to around ten. TEN BATS. What in the world?!?!

I ended up spending the night with H and his family. I was too creeped out that one somehow was left behind. The next day though, it started to become laughable. What in the world?!?!?! How many nights have I had my windows open and no critters came inside? (Just for clarity, my windows do not currently have screens.) And why on earth did 10 bats decide to invade my house at the same time? What is the likelihood that they would come in a minute before I’m Skyping into a wedding? 

I closed all of my windows, not wanting Batscapades Episdode 2 to happen. The following morning I returned and decided to do a thorough cleaning job. I kept seeing pieces of bat droppings everywhere. I also wasn’t sure where all they had touched so I wanted to sanitize everything. I managed to clean everywhere except the back room where most of them had been. I left and went to hang out with some friends. After hanging out with them, my friend wanted to come over and paint. Since all my painting stuff is in the back room, I headed in there to try to clean the room before she came. I cleaned off a few things then headed to the kitchen to grab something when WHOOSH! a bat flew by.

I felt my skin crawl and my stomach churn. I grabbed my phone and keys and bolted for the front door. Outside, I was shaking and called H. He answered, “Please tell me you do not have another bat.” I told him that there was at least one. I called him because I hadn’t seen my security guard earlier. While on the phone with him, I went to see if AB, the other security guard, was here. He was. I told H I would keep him updated. AB thought I was crazy. He asked if it wasn’t just a butterfly that my mind had exaggerated. I told him about the 10 bats from the previous night. He agreed to come upstairs with me. He jumped a little when he saw one whoosh by in the living room. He got my broom and went inside the room. I stood outside holding the door closed so none could escape. From inside, he yelled that he was a little bit scared as well. After a few minutes, he had somehow managed to get BOTH of them to fly out the window. I thought there had only been one but apparently there were two. He then checked all of the other rooms and looked behind curtains and places to make sure there weren’t any hiding. We think that maybe it had been sleeping in one of my curtains in my back room. When I went in to clean that night, it flew out of the back room. I’m hoping that’s the case and that I never see a bat in my house ever again. 

My Recent Proposal

I was proposed to last week. Repeatedly. Relentlessly. By a mother. 

My friend learned that I was interested in taking an art course. She had recently reconnected with her teacher who had taught a local art form called Ebru. You can see how cool the process is in this video. She invited me to meet her old teacher and get some info about her class. When we arrived, we discovered the teacher was engaged and would be moving away in several months. She would be teaching her final Ebru course this fall. How lucky that I caught her last class! While there, I was also introduced to her mother. 

Her mother began asking the usual questions:

Why did you come?

What does your husband do? (They always think I’m here because of a spouse.)

You live alone? How do you ever manage to live all by yourself?

How old are you?

When she learned that I am 33 AND single, she quickly informed me that she has a son who is the same age and also single. At that point, I felt like I had just stepped into a somewhat reversed version of Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice. A mother so DESPERATE to get her son married off that she plots and schemes and harasses to get what she wants. I think I know what poor Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingley felt like. 

The mother, we’ll call her Mrs. Bennet, said she would take me to meet her son and I could get to know him. She would chaperone us of course. She tried to sell him to me: “He’s a musician. He’s very handsome. He’s lost weight since this photo. Now he is buff and strong. He doesn’t drink or smoke. He’s a good boy. I’ve decided I love you and I think you guys would be great together.” 

We moved to the outdoor seating area and the dialog continued:

Mrs. Bennet: “Don’t your parents want you to be married?” 

Me: “Yes, but to the right guy. Lots of people are married but not to good guys.”

Mrs. Bennet: “Oh, my son is so good. Really, he is. He’s a hard worker. He makes money. He doesn’t smoke or drink. Why won’t you marry him? Will you think about it? You should think long and hard about it.”

Me: Well, my beliefs are really important to me. It’s important for me to marry a Christian. (This usually silences people because they adhere to a different belief system.)

Mrs. Bennet: That’s no problem. People here marry Christians all the time. So, what do you think? Do you want to meet him? When are we going to meet him? Do you have Facebook? Add me on Facebook and then you can add him. Then you can see what a great guy he is. You guys can meet on there first. Do you have a cell phone? Go get it right now and add me as a friend right now.

Me: Right now?

Mrs. Bennet: Yes, right now.

I was grateful for an excuse to go into the house to get my phone. I was exhausted from being peppered with questions and suggestions from her. I went to get my phone and added her as a friend. After that, we shared a meal together in the kitchen. 

She continued the assault while we were eating. My friend chimed into the conversation and was trying to help defend the assault. My friend explained again that my beliefs are important to me and it’s important I marry someone who is likeminded. Mrs. Bennet picked up her phone right then and called her son. She said to him, “I have a Christian girl here. Is that ok? Would you marry her?”  I’m not sure what his answer was but she got off the phone with him quickly. My friend and I figured that she does this kind of thing to him all the time. After that, she asked to see my phone and to open Facebook. She told me to search for her son. Once I found him, she added him for me. Glad to know I had a choice in the matter. Then she used her phone to take FIVE pictures of us in the same pose and added it to her wall. 

After eating, she finally took a break from the assault. Her daughter and I discussed details of the class. She told me how I could register and explained that on the first day I could come to her house and then we would walk to class together. It was getting late into the evening by this point so we started saying our goodbyes. At the door, they invited us to come back over in a few days to join them in celebrating a holiday. I have a stinking suspicion that her son may make an appearance at the celebration as well. 

Lesson learned: a pursuing man has nothing on that of a woman determined to marry off her son. I’ll take the son any day. 

Finding Community in Locals

I was ever so glad to return to my city after having fun with friends. I counted that out of 76 days, I had spent 38 of them in other cities. I had slept in 9 different places in 6 different cities. I returned and I was still culture shocking a bit. I do know that in dealing with culture shock, it’s good to take a day to retreat and be an American. After that, a person needs to get back out. I spent some time praying that God would help me find community in the locals. I spent a day resting and then the next day, I tried to make a local dish. This would give me a reason to visit my neighbors. I decided to make bulgur salad, a dish I had learned on my language sprint, for my neighbors. I have added the recipe below. 

After a couple of hours cooking and cleaning, I was ready to deliver the goods. Unfortunately, my neighbors were not at home to receive them. I decided to do some other errands. Later, I was able to visit Big Sis U. She is always so welcoming and invited me in. I learned that she was dieting so she did not eat my goodies. She gave some to her mom and nephew, both of whom praised my culinary skills. I’m not convinced they were really that impressed but merely trying to be kind. Either way, they both finished off the food with a smile. They commented on how pretty it looked, especially the salad in the tomato. Then they commented on how expensive it would be to serve that to a bunch of guests, it would take a lot of tomatoes. It was a lesson to me on how thrifty and practical the locals are. I think it is a skill they have learned out of necessity. 

The day was taking it’s toll on me and I was ready to retreat again. Unfortunately, DG asked if she could come over at 11pm. I don’t know about you, but I’m starting to wind down by 11pm. I spent some time asking God for some endurance. When she came, I enjoyed a nice chat with her over...you guessed it...tea. It was actually my first time making it without help. 

The following day, I visited Di for breakfast and stayed with her until almost 5 in the evening. She is such an easy person to be with and I loved spending time with her. I still hadn’t resolved a bank issue. I explained to her that I needed to go to the bank and the post office. She offered to go with me in case I needed help explaining or understanding something. You have no idea how that warmed my heart. Most days, I’m completely on my own in trying to get things done. To have someone offer to go with me and be an advocate was so good. Life is just easier when done alongside someone. I could see how God was answering my request for finding community in locals: Big Sis U, DG, and now Di. 

The next day, I went to the University to find out when my classes would start. Originally, Mr. E had said they would begin on September 7. Then I learned that some of the schools had been pushed back 2-3 weeks. There is a big holiday here from September 23-27. Those who had created school calendars failed to realize the students would only have class for a week before getting a week off for the holiday. So they changed the entire school calendar to begin on the 28th. I suspected that my classes would follow suit. I showed up at the university and realized there was something special for international students. Hmm, I wondered if I supposed to be there? I went into the main building and found Mr. John, the director. It looked like he was helping students register for classes. Still, I was clueless as to whether or not I was supposed to be doing anything. He spotted me and gave a friendly greeting. He was excited to see me but also busy registering people. Finally, he broke away and I was able to ask when classes would start. He said they would probably start on the 14th. I didn’t trust his probably so I decided to grab some lunch at a cafe and wait to see if I could catch Mr. E to ask him. I did find Mr. E and he informed me that all the schools had been delayed until the 28th. Yep, that’s right. The whole country’s school schedule was just revised two weeks before school was set to start. 

In addition to Big Sis U, DG, and Di providing community to me, CFS has been texting a lot saying she misses me and updating me on her life. I decided to visit her at the store. She was busy that day but I did learn that her co-worker, Hem, was now a father. His wife had just had a baby. I don’t know why, but it made me feel more connected to this place. It’s the first time I’ve known someone to have a baby since I’ve been here. I was very excited for him. 

God continued to answer my prayer for community in locals as well as melt away some of my culture shock. A kind cultural center security guard gave me information on how to register for community classes. I was able to make treats for and get to know some neighborhood kids. On another day, I visited Violet. She is one of my favorite people here. She is always so inviting and yet understands that I don’t know the culture very well so she spells things out for me. The owner of a cafe I frequent took time to ask me how I have been. The guy at the market went out of his way to make sure I had fresh chicken. AB introduced me to new neighbors, helping me make friends. My nut salesman brought me some melons from his dad’s village just to be kind. Then AB passed me on his bicycle and insisted on carrying the melons home for me. The many ways the Father shown Himself to me through the kindness of locals cannot be counted. 

One evening, DG came over to spend the night and to paint. While together, we talked of many things. We eventually started discussing funeral traditions. I found it interesting that the topic of funerals came up twice in one day. I had been discussing that subject with AB earlier in the day. Anyway, I learned that people aren’t buried in coffins here. They’re taken out of the coffins and laid in the ground. She said they put boards in diagonally over the deceased so their spirits don’t try to escape. They will try, but when their head hits the board, they realize they have been laid to rest. She said the ones who officiate burials have heard the deceased raise up and hit the board. Some of what she shared may have been lost in translation. Afterwards, we painted until 2:30 in the morning. I’ve been thankful my sleeping schedule has been slowly shifting to better handle late nights. I was also thankful to have a friend to paint with. It was yet another answer to community. 

Bulgur Salad Recipe

(Serves about 4-6 people)

2 cups of bulgar 

4 cloves of garlic

1-2 cucumbers (peeled and diced)

9-10 romaine lettuce leaves (chopped)

2 tomatoes (peeled and diced)

1 small onion (diced)

3-4 sprigs of parsley

Handful of fresh mint (remove stems and dice)

Red pepper paste

Salt

Oil

Lemon juice

(Crushed red pepper and dill are additional ingredients that go well with the dish)

-Add boiling water to bulgar until it’s all wet. Cover and let it steam about 10 minutes. At that point feel it to see if it is softened. You don’t want it too soft. 

-Grind garlic in mortar and pestle. Add salt to crush easier. (I used a garlic press instead.)

-Add garlic to softened bulgur and mix with hands

-Add red pepper paste until you get the color you want.

-Mix with hands until the bulgur is uniform in color. 

-Add veggies (the more the better)

-Add a good amount of salt (To taste but definitely more than a pinch. Maybe 1-2 tablespoons?)

-Add 1/4-1/2 c. oil

-Add 1/8 c. lemon juice

-Taste & see if it needs more salt, juice, oil, spices. 

-Put in fridge to chill. You’ll want to make it the day you plan to serve it.

Use lettuce leaves for guests to scoop the salad into. Another option is to hollow out tomatoes to serve the salad. 

Written in Letters Too Large

“Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord his God, who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, who keeps faith forever; who executes justice for the oppressed, who gives food to the hungry. The Lord sets the prisoners free; the Lord opens the eyes of the blind. The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down; the Lord loves the righteous. The Lord watches over the sojourners; he upholds the widow and the fatherless, but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.” -Psalm 146:5-9

As I read this passage the other day, it occurred to me that Jesus really did these things. After reading, I wondered what people thought when it was first written. Were they thinking of metaphors? Did they have any inclination that the God man would come and literally do these things? Later during Jesus' day, did the Jews think back to these Scriptures when they saw Jesus give justice to the oppressed? Were they thinking of Psalm 146 when he fed the 5,000? What about when Peter, Paul, and Silas were set free from prison? Did they remember when blind Bartimaeus and other blind men were given sight? 

Then I thought of me? I confess that too frequently I read these statements as metaphors. Why shouldn’t I be asking God to both literally and figuratively do these things? Too frequently I have tiny expectations for God. I forget to hope and beg for the miraculous. 

This psalm also reminded me of something I read by C.S. Lewis in his book of essays called ‘God in the Dock.’ He said that God writes miracles in a script too large for our eyes to see. Jesus came to put the miracles in finite chunks so we could understand them. Lewis gave examples of how God nourishes the ground that grows vines which produce grapes that result in glasses of wine. This is a regular miracle. When we read of Jesus changing water into wine, it’s merely a tangible version of what God has been doing for centuries. He again used the example of corn. He said that every year, God takes a little corn (or seeds) and makes much corn from the ground. It is a wonder and yet we can’t see it until we read of Jesus taking a little bread, breaking it, giving thanks, and sharing it with 5,000 men. The same is true with the fish. You can go to a body of water and see there is an abundance of fish. God multiplies the fish in the seas and he multiplied them that day on the shore. (You can read part of what Lewis wrote at the end.)

My point is that this psalm points to realities. Jesus did all these things. He did miracles all the time. Not only that, God has been doing these things for centuries. Yes, he does them metaphorically, but He also does them literally and has been doing them for as long as earth has existed. These truths have given me much reason to worship. What glorious wonders are God doing before my eyes that I'm too blind to see?

Years ago I attempted to depict this idea in a visual.
Notice that the yellowish words, "I AM" have been
written in letters too large for the canvas. Jesus' words
are legible.

From 'God in the Dock' by C.S. Lewis:

“There is an activity of God displayed throughout creation, a wholesale activity let us say which men refuse to recognize. The miracles done by God incarnate, living as a man in Palestine, perform the very same things as the wholesale activity, but at a different speed and on a smaller scale. One of their chief purposes is that men, having seen a thing done by personal power on the small scale, may recognize, when they see the same thing done on the large scale, that the power behind it is also personal - is indeed the very same person who lived among us two thousand years ago. The miracles in fact are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see. Of that larger script part is already visible, part is still unsolved. In other words, some of the miracles do locally what God has already done universally: others do locally what He has not yet done, but will do. In that sense, and from our human point of view, some are reminders and others prophecies. 

God creates the vine and teaches it to draw up water by its roots and, with the aid of the sun, to turn that water into a juice which will ferment and take on certain qualities.

Thus every year, from Noah’s time till ours, God turns water into wine.  That, men fail to see. Either like the Pagans they refer the process to some finite spirit, Bacchus or Dionysus: or else, like the moderns, they attribute real and ultimate causality to the chemical and other material phenomena which are all that our senses can discover in it. But when Christ at Cana makes water into wine, the mask is off’ (John 5:19). The miracle has only half its effect if it only convinces us that Christ is God: it will have its full effect if whenever we see a vineyard or drink a glass of wine we remember that here works He who sat at the wedding party in Cana. Every year God makes a little corn into much corn: the seed is sown and there is an increase, and men, according to the fashion of their age, say ‘It is Ceres, it is Adonis, it is the Corn-King,’ or else ‘It si the laws of Nature.’ The close-up, the translation, of this annual wonder is the feeding of the five thousand. Bread is not made there of nothing. Bread is not made of stones, as the Devil once suggested to Our Lord in vain. A little bread is made into much bread. The Son will do nothing but what He sees the Father do. There is, so to speak, a family style. The miracles of healing fall into the same pattern. This is sometimes obscured for us by the somewhat magical view we tend to take of ordinary medicine. The doctors themselves do not take this view. The magic is not in the medicine but in the patient’s body. What the doctor does is to stimulate Nature’s functions in the body, or to remove hindrances. In a sense, though we speak for convenience of healing a cut, every cut heals itself; no dressing will make skin grow over a cut on a corpse. That same mysterious energy which we call gravitational when it steers the planets and biochemical when it heals a body is the efficient cause of all recoveries, and if God exists, that energy, directly or indirectly, is His. All who are cured are cured by Him, the healer within. But once He did it visibly, a Man meeting a man.

Where He does not work within us in this mode, the organism dies. Hence Christ’s one miracle of destruction is also in harmony with God’s wholesale activity. His bodily hand held out in symbolic wrath blasted a single fig tree; but no tree died that year in Palestine, or any year, or in any land, or even ever will, save because He has done something, or (more likely) ceased to do something, to it.

When he fed the thousands he multiplied fish as well as bread. Look in every bay and almost every river. This swarming, pulsating fecundity shows He is still at work. The ancients had a god called Genius - the god of animal and human fertility, the presiding spirit of gynaecology, embryology, or the marriage bed - the ‘genial bed’ as they called it after its god Genius. As the miracles of wine and bread and haling showed who Bacchus really was, who Ceres, who Apollo, and that all were one, so this miraculous multiplication of fish reveals the real Genius. And with that we stand at the threshold of the miracle which for some reason most offends modern ears. I can understand the man who denies the miraculous altogether; but what is one to make of the people who admit some miracles but deny the Virgin Birth? Is it that for all their lip service to the laws of Nature three is only one law of Nature they really believe? Or is it that they see in this miracle a slur upon sexual intercourse which is rapidly becoming the one thing venerated in a world without veneration? No miracle is in fact more significant. What happens in ordinary generation? What is a father’s function in the act of begetting? A microscipoic particle of matter from his body fertilizes the female: and with that microscopic particle passes, it may be, the colour of his hair and his great grandfather’s hanging lip, and the human form in all its complexity of bones, liver, sinews, heart, and limbs, and pre-human form which the embryo will recapitulate in the womb. Behind every spermatozoon lies the whole history of the universe: locked within it is no small part of the world’s future. That is God’s normal way of making a man - a process that takes centuries, beginning with the creation of matter itself, and narrowing to one second and one particle at the moment of begetting. And once again men will mistake the sense impressions which this creative act throws off for the act itself or else refer it to some infinite being such as Genius. Once, therefore, God does it directly, instantaneously; without a spermatozoon, without the millenniums of organic history behind the spermatozoon. There was of course another reason. This time He was creating not simply a man, but the man who was to be Himself: the only true Man. The process which leads to the spermatozoon has carried down with it through the centuries much undesirable silt; the life which reaches us by that normal route is tainted. To avoid that taint, to give humanity a fresh start, He once short-circuited the process. There is a vulgar anti-God paper which some anonymous donor sends me every week. In it recently I saw the taunt that we Christians believe in a God who committed adultery with the wife of a Jewish carpenter. The answer to that is that if you describe the action of God in fertilizing Mary as ‘adultery’ then, in that sense, God would have committed adultery with every woman who ever had a baby. For what He did once without a human father, He does always even when He uses a human father as His instrument. For the human father in ordinary generation is only a carrier, sometimes an unwilling carrier, always the last in a long line of carriers, of life that comes from the supreme life. Thus the filth that our poor, muddled, sincere, resentful enemies fling at the Holy One, either does not stick, or, sticking, turns into glory. 

So much for the miracles which do small and quick what we have already seen in the large letters of God's universal activity. But before I go on to the second class – those which foreshadow parts of the universal activity we have not yet seen – I must guard against a misunderstanding. Do not imagine I am trying to make the miracles less miraculous. I am not arguing that they are more probable because they are less unlike natural events: I am trying to answer those who think them arbitrary, theatrical, and worthy of God, meaningless interruptions of universal order. They remain in my view holy miraculous. To do instantly with dead and baked corn what ordinarily happens slowly with live seed is just as great a miracle as to make bread of stones. Just as great, but a different kind of miracle. That is the point. When I open Ovid, or Grimm, I find the sort of miracles which really would be arbitrary. Trees talk, houses turn into trees, magic rings raise tables richly spread with food in lonely places, ships become goddesses, and men are changed into snakes or birds or bears. It is fun to read about: the least suspicion that it had really happened would turn that fun into nightmare. You find no miracles of that kind in the Gospels. Such things, if they could be, would prove that some alien power was invading Nature; they would not in the least prove that it was the same power which had made Nature and rules her every day. But the true miracles express not simply a god, but God: that which is outside Nature, not as a foreigner, but as her sovereign. They announce not merely that a King has visited our town, but that it is the King, our King." (p. 13-17)

Parks and Sea Serpents

After my language sprint, I spent a few days in my city before going away to have some fun with the other Americans here. I thought it was a good idea to go do American type things since I was struggling with the culture. On our first day, we went to a zoo. I live in a country where a good motto is, “Set your expectations low.” I did this in regards to the zoo and I was pleasantly surprised. The place was really well done. In fact, it was not called a zoo but a “Natural Life Park.” They had tried to make it feel more like animals’ natural habitats. It also had lots of greenery, something I don’t see a lot. After the zoo, we headed to the mall. I learned there was a good sushi place in the mall. I confess that I ditched to group to go have a quiet dinner by myself. The sushi was equal to what I have had in America. It was no Taiko, but it was good for a girl who hasn’t had Taiko in a while. 

The next day we went to a water park. Before going, I saw advertisements for the park that declared it was Europe’s #1 Waterpark. I kind of chuckled to myself because, again I was setting my expectations super low. I was expecting it to be dirty, crowded, and disorganized. It was none of those things. The park was really well done and came really close to equalling parks in America. It also wasn’t too crowded. I’ve been to Disney World, Universal Studios, and Dollywood (a Tennessee park) in the summer time where waiting in lines can be horrendous. We did go on a weekday, which I’m sure helped, but wait times were anywhere from 1 minute to 15 minutes. I really enjoyed my time there and would love to go back. 

One of my water slide riding buddies.

The following day, we went to a beach on the Aegean Sea. The water was beautiful but the water was frigid. Having been in the Mediterranean less than two weeks before, I was shocked at how cold it was. Since it was so cold, I decided to play in the sand with the girls. I built a teensy castle while the girls worked on building a wall. They said the wall was to protect my castle from the water. I can’t remember who came up with the idea but we decided to extend the wall around the castle. Then someone suggested we make a sea serpent instead of a wall. He would be the guardian of the castle. They kept building the body around the castle and I set to work at creating the face. After the face, we tried to make it look like it had scales but it didn’t look right. Instead I make spikes to run along the top of the serpent. Working on the sea serpent was a great creative outlet for me.