And here’s where our summer picked up a bit.  As we did last summer, we teamed up with our friends, the Sheffields, and hit the road in this bad boy.

This would be our home on wheels for the next 10 days.  At the time Benjy picked us up from the airport, we were completely oblivious as to how true that statement would be just a few short hours later.

Benjy and Jen are the planners on the trip.  Those 2 personalities are plenty big for any one group, so the rest of us just sit back and go along for the ride.  I barely knew what our itinerary was before we left and I rested easy knowing that those 2 had everything under control.

The launching point for Memory Maker II was Spokane, WA.  Benjy’s and Jen’s grand plan was to drive “until we got tired” and then find a motel and sleep for the night.  Our destination, Grand Teton National Park, was a 9 hour drive and we knew we didn’t want to drive the entire way in one afternoon.  Around 10:00 pm we had reached our limit, so we decided to start looking for a motel.  At our first stop, the place was completely booked, so we kept driving until the next exit.  We stopped and that motel was also completely filled.  At the third stop, it was the same result.  Finally Benjy asked, “what is going on that every hotel in the area is booked?”  Turns out that Brigham Young University – Boise was having their graduation…on a Tuesday night…on July 18.  Well, that was unexpected.  We get back on the road and started making calls.  We quickly discovered that all motels within a 2 hour radius were booked.

We then pulled over at a Best Western motel at about 1:00 a.m.  There was one room available, but the lady at the desk told Benjy that it was reserved.  Benjy tried to convince her that whoever booked it isn’t showing up at 1:00 a.m., but she wouldn’t budge a centimeter.  She said to Benjy, “I really wish I could help.  You’re the first person tonight who hasn’t cursed at me.”  Then a light bulb went off in her head.  “There is a camp ground about 45 minutes from here where you can stay.  It’s called the Beaver Dick.”  She said it just like that. With a straight face.  The Beaver Dick Campground.

So Benjy climbed back in the van and announced to us, “We’re going to the Beaver Dick Campground.”  I said, “Wait…What???  Beaver Dick? Did that lady know we have children in the car?  What kind of place is this?”  But, there was no point in protesting.  We were a half step away from all of us sleeping in the van in the parking lot of Walmart. Our options were very limited and less than ideal.

We arrived at the Beaver Dick Campground around 2:00 a.m.  We circled about 3 times waking everyone in the park as we hunted for an empty spot.  We finally found a place that looked sort of like a camp ground space.  Benjy parked the van and pulled out our camping gear.

The boys immediately set to work.  They were like a NASCAR pit crew and had the 2 tents up in 10 minutes.  Trouble is that the 2 tents only hold a total of 4 people and we had 8 people.  Benjy made the command decision that the boys would sleep in the tents and the girls would sleep in the van.

So daylight breaks and this is the scene of the crime.

The van is parked all askew; tents barely standing, strewn in a space that in the light of day doesn’t really look like a camping space at all, but rather a gravel parking spot next to some woods.  If you had walked past us that morning you would have thought to yourself: now that there is a camping trip gone terribly wrong.  I didn’t get pix of the girls, but the scene inside the van wasn’t any better; and of course we all felt even worse than we looked.

Did we really spend the first night of our vacation in a campground called Beaver Dick?  What in the world?  And then we saw this.

OHHHHH!  So Beaver Dick was a MAN.  It was not, as we so wrongly thought, the private part of a large male rodent.  Nor was it the venue of some salacious, hermaphroditic outdoor experience.  Beaver Dick was just some guy.  Named Dick.  Who was a fur trapper back in the day and apparently trapped beavers and other game.  He’s well known in these parts, so I guess that’s why the lady at the Best Western talked abut him so nonchalantly.

We even found a photo of good ‘ole Dick himself.

Beaver Dick Leigh.  Now that’s a name!

You just can’t make this stuff up!

While we were in the U.S., we celebrated this girl’s 13th birthday.

I don’t know how it’s possible that she’s 13!  What a lovely, intelligent, fearless, determined, friendly, inquisitive young lady she is!  To celebrate, mom and the birthday girl took a trip to Savannah, Georgia, all by ourselves.  Just us girls!

Dad booked us a room in a fancy hotel, close to shopping and restaurants.

And this guy guarded our room 24/7.

We did lots of shopping and eating, completely uninterrupted and unhindered by the male contingency of Team Woods.

Savannah is a charming southern city.  It was nice just strolling around enjoying the parks and architecture.

Webs and I took a cooking class while we were there.

It’s tough to mess up bacon cooked with brown sugar, though.

So this is what we ended up with.

And we rolled ourselves out of there and back to Jacksonville.

Happy birthday my beautiful girl!!

Well, it was a long summer!  We left Hong Kong for the U.S. on June 1 and we got back on August 22. For me, it’s always like climbing through a wormhole in the universe, traversing between our life in Hong Kong and our life in the U.S.  The 2 worlds rarely intersect, especially on the U.S. side.  We get on an airplane in Hong Kong, where just about everyone is Asian and speaking Cantonese.  Seventeen hours later, we pop out on the other side in Dallas where just about everyone is white and speaking English.  It’s surreal and it takes me awhile on both ends to adjust.

So we landed in Hong Kong and were greeted with the city’s hideous heat and 100% humidity.  The very next day a typhoon level 10 hits (T8’s are the norm).  Welcome back!  Now, I’m staring down the abyss of another school year.  This is my 5th year homeschooling.  All I can say is….wow.  We’re all still here…alive…and still (somewhat) sane.

Anyway, we covered a lot of ground while we were in the U.S. (both literally and figuratively), so there’s a multitude of pictures to share and stories to tell…some not always so great (more on that later), but never dull and mostly a blast.

So, I’ll start at the beginning of our summer which included a lot of family time.  We spent some time with Benjy’s mom and her husband, Rob, at their house in Gulf Breeze.

Then the Filipino side of Team Woods converged on a beach house my sister rented on Pensacola Beach.

My cousin, Maya, and her family joined us again.

This time we also had a visit from my cousin Michael and his 2 handsome sons.

The last time I had seen Michael is when I was 15 and my mom and sister and I had traveled to the Philippines to visit my grandparents.  This is a picture taken during that visit.  In it are my grandparents and most of the Malonzo cousins alive at the time.

Michael is the oldest cousin and he’s standing on the far left.  My sister, Gay, is standing next to him and that’s me to the right of her.  Maya is on the left sitting on the floor holding a kitten.  This was taken at the house in Zamboanaga, Philippines where my mom and her siblings grew up.  My Lolo has passed away, but my Lola still lives there.  She is 106!

So we did all the beach-y stuff.

Aaron, of course, went fishing with Lolo and did quite well.

He also fished off the pier of the beach house every opportunity he got.  We were required to enjoy the bounties of his labor,  no matter the size or genus.

True to Filipino form, we did a lot of eating.

and hanging out

We had a great time!

We flew out of Lhasa and had an overnight layover in Xi’an.  I have never forgotten our first trip here way back in 2014.  It wasn’t the memory of the terra cotta warriors that wouldn’t leave my mind.  Instead it was the street food on Muslim Street I had been dreaming about.  On our last visit, we had eaten a very big lunch before our guide took us to Muslim Street, so, try as I might, I simply had very little room left in my belly to properly appreciate the food experience.  I was determined to get the full effect this time.

Muslim Street is lined with cart after cart of street food vendors.

So the last time we were here, I noticed these noodle shops where people would be given pita bread.  Each person would tear up the pita bread and put into a bowl.  Then a server would whisk your bowl away and mix the pieces with broth, glass noodles and slices of beef.

The result is this.

The pita bread softened and were like the dumplings in chicken and dumplings.  I know the picture doesn’t really look that appetizing, but it was quite good and very filling.  The broth tasted similar to pho broth.

The kids had this “Chinese Hamburger,” which was a like thick  beef stew mashed up and then placed between a split pita.  It also was tasty.

Benjy’s personal favorite is what he calls “Monkey on a Stick.”  I don’t think it’s monkey though (or I hope not).

There were candy makers pulling candy.

And spice shops selling every spice imaginable.  This one was obviously the chili pepper shop.

Yum!

Muslim Street was definitely worth another visit!

So, I know I haven’t done this in a long while.   Here is the Dog of the Day.

Yes, that’s a dog with sunglasses being pushed in a stroller.  Only in Hong Kong!

You’re welcome.

On the second day of our road trip, we finally arrived at Mount Everest, also known in Tibet as Mount Gomolangma.

It was nearly sundown, so we stopped at the Rongphu Hotel, our home for the night.

I use the term “hotel” loosely.  It’s really just a building near the Rongphu Monastery where tourists bide their time waiting for the weather to clear enough to get a good view of Mount Everest.  The monastery is the highest monastery in the world at about 5,000 m (16,400 feet).

We had 1 room for the 5 of us (including Bow).  When our guide told us that we would all be sharing a room for the night, I jokingly told Bow that our family liked to sleep naked and that I hoped she didn’t mind.  She giggled nervously at first and then realized that I was totally kidding.  Sometimes I forget that American humor doesn’t always translate.

And this was our room.

There was no heater (it got as cold as -10 C/14 F at night), no running water and the “toilet” was just a hole in the ground out back (don’t even get me started on the toilets in Tibet, the only dark spot (pun intended) in an otherwise delightful country).  It was so cold we slept fully clothed in our jackets, gloves and hats.  Good thing we were only staying one night!

There was a small restaurant that had a yak dung burning stove, though.

So we camped out here until it was closing time.

Finally the moment we had traveled all the way here for…. Mount Everest base camp.

Before sunrise, we got up and piled into our car.  No, we didn’t hike the last 4 km up from the monastery.  We didn’t want to miss the sunrise over Mount Everest and it’s a good thing we didn’t attempt it because the last 100 feet which we had to walk up about killed me.  We were at an elevation of 5,300 m (17,500 ft).

If you look closely in front of the mountain, you can see tiny tents.  There was a team of climbers who had arrived the night before and they would camp here for a few days to acclimate to the elevation.  It would take them 6 weeks to make it to the summit of Everest.  Here’s a close up of the camp.

Yep.  This is what we came here for…lots of pictures of Mount Everest.

Now being a slave to fashion and hyper-aware of everyone looking at her (which, of course, no one is), Webley refused to wear a hat or pull her hood up.  That’s why she looks so miserably cold.  Benjy and I took off our hats for the photos only, which explains our terrible hat head.

Now this is a funny story.  This random Chinese lady in another tour group asked Webley and Aaron to take a photo with her.  We had never seen her or spoken to her before.  I guess she thought a shot of her with two half white/half Asian kids at the base camp of Mount Everest was photo-worthy.  The photo bomb of the guy in the back cracks me up too.

So that’s another item checked off our bucket list.

We went on a hike outside of Lhasa up in the mountains near this Buddhist monastery.

As we hiked around the mountain, we encountered these pilgrims doing the hike as well, only they were worshiping.

On the rocky trail, they would take 3 steps, bow down and fully prostrate on the ground and then stand up.  They did this the entire path, which was about 2-3 miles long, rocky, steep in places and dusty.

Along the way, there were countless prayer flags flying in the wind.

We happened to be at the monastery when the monks were having a special ceremony of offerings and prayer.  There were lots of people there to see it.

The monks had colorful robes on and

they burned offerings,

and chanted scripture.

We took a tour of the Potala Palace, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  That’s our lovely travel companion, Bow, who was the only other person in our travel group.  She was so sweet and fun to be with.  She is from Thailand and had to endure Team Woods for the duration of our trip.  Poor girl.

We weren’t permitted to take pictures of the inside of the Potala Palace, so there were lots of pictures of the outside.

We got to see the inside of Romache Temple.

This is the kitchen where the monks prepare their daily meals.  I thought it was so ancient looking with the huge copper caldron and firewood. Aside from the fluorescent lights and electric fan, it was a scene straight out of the Middle Ages.

And then we began our 2-day journey to Mount Everest Base Camp 1.

No, we didn’t hike up.  We drove.  I know that seems unexciting and a bit lame, but I honestly don’t think I could have hiked up like you have to do on the Nepal side of Mount Everest.  It’s not that I’m terribly out of shape, but I’ve never lived anywhere but at sea level.  The altitude made any physical exertion feel like I was a coach potato who had spent the last 10 years on the sofa.

It took us about 12 hours to get there driving at the maximum speed limit of about 25-30 mph, which is strictly enforced by the Chinese police.  It felt like Chinese water torture driving at such slow speeds in the middle of nowhere with no one else around.  But, we did have gorgeous landscapes to look at as we made our way up.

and more temples.

Next stop, Mount Everest base camp!

For our spring break (yes, homeschoolers get spring break), we decided to head north and explore Tibet.  We landed in the capital city of Lhasa which is at an altitude of 3,600 m (about 12,000 ft.)  We would be staying in Lhasa for a couple of days to acclimate to the altitude.

Our hotel in Lhasa was a restored home of a Tibetan Lama.  It was stunning!  Traditional Tibetan décor is so colorful and unique.  I really loved our accommodations.

The hotel had a rooftop porch with views of the city and the surrounding mountains.  Almost every Tibetan home has these prayer flags flying atop.

We also had a great view of the Potala Palace, the most iconic structure in Tibet.

My most favorite thing about Tibet is its people.  They are physically beautiful, with their high, rosy cheekbones and smooth complexions.

They have easy, bright smiles.

They are gentle and kind, even though the harsh environment requires them to be rugged and tough.

Still, they maintain their sense of humor and sweet disposition.

I love how the women weave bright colors into their braids.

They are also very devoted Buddhists.  Buddhist pilgrims flock here from all over the world to worship.  This is the Johkang temple, the holiest Buddhist temple in the Himalayas.

You can see the pilgrims worshipping outside the temple.  They prostrate fully face down on the ground and then stand up again.  We saw these little old ladies doing this over and over again.

As a believer in the One True God, a part of my heart breaks for them that they do not know Jesus.  But I found their devotion also to be indicting and inspiring to me and it made me reflect on my own faith and the outward demonstration (or lack) thereof.

You can see in these ladies’ hands the prayer beads they hold as they continually recite their prayers.  Our tour guide also held these beads and I could tell when he wasn’t speaking to us that he was murmuring breath prayers.

As I go through my day, I don’t think I pray continually as the apostle Paul instructs us to do (“Rejoice always, ¹⁷ pray continually, ¹⁸ give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18).  Instead, I get caught up in the busyness of day-to-day life.

These are prayer scrolls which have scripture written on them.  As worshipers walk by, they spin the scrolls as if to release the scripture into the atmosphere.  Some pilgrims walk around with miniature versions of the scrolls.  They are mounted on top of a stick and the holders whirl them around as they go about their day.

It reminds me of the scripture scrolls that Orthodox Jews wear on their foreheads (“These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. ⁷ Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. ⁸ Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. ⁹ Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.” Deuteronomy 6:6-9).  I don’t think I need to wear scrolls with scripture on my forehead, but I certainly could do a better job of memorizing more scripture so that it is more “on my heart.”

Now, I know Jesus instructs us not to pray just for the show of it or to yammer on and on (Matthew 6:5-8) and I am not advocating that, but I certainly think I could be more conspicuous about my faith.  I’m always too afraid of offending or making people feel awkward.  But, our tour guide, who was a devout Buddhist, openly said he would pray for us and he asked that we pray for him.  I wasn’t offended when he said those things to me and I didn’t feel awkward.  I just said I would pray for him; and I did and I do.  I want to be more bold like him in sharing my faith.

Another thing I loved about Tibet is the ubiquitous yak.

The Tibetans rely so heavily on this animal for their daily life.  Yak meat is a staple in the Tibetan diet.  It tastes like a mix between beef and lamb.  I quite liked it.  We enjoyed yak burgers.

The milk of the yak is used to make butter…

and cheese

Yes, that’s cheese on a string and it is hard as a rock.  Seriously, when I first popped a chunk into my mouth I tried to bite down on it and nearly cracked my tooth.  Our guide told me that I needed to suck on it for awhile and it would get soft.  It did…eventually.  It had a sweetish flavor and it reminded me of parmesan cheese.

Yak butter is used in a popular Tibetan drink, butter tea.  The tea is creamy, but salty.  Webley describes the taste like a liquid pretzel.

Tibetans even use the yak’s dung to heat their homes during the cold winters.

I watched as shovelfuls of the stuff were dumped into this stove.  Surprisingly, it doesn’t stink and it certainly makes a warm fire!!  Nothing goes to waste in these parts!

Tibetans also make offerings of yak butter at the temples.

The scent of burning yak oil permeates the air inside the temples.  I enjoyed the smell of it, but Benjy and the kids weren’t so keen.

Isn’t this yak beautiful?

From Siem Riep, we took a bus to the capital of Cambodia, Phnom Penh.  We went to visit 2 Christian ministries, the Joy of Cambodia (JOC) and Children at Risk (CAR).  Unlike last year, we didn’t lead a short-term outreach team from our church.  We mainly wanted to love on and encourage the people who run these organizations.  They pour their hearts and souls into what they do, all for the Kingdom.  It can be exciting and exhilarating doing the Lord’s work, but it also can be exhausting, stressful and discouraging.  In the past when we have been part of short-term outreach teams, we have focused more on serving the people that JOC and CAR serve.  The purpose for our visit this time was to care for, encourage and bless the JOC and CAR team members.

Our first stop was JOC’s Jehovah Jirah Center.  The center ministers to the children who live near the center, many of whose parents work at the city’s trash dump.  JJ Center provides tutoring for the children and a hot meal each day.

We spent our time hanging out with the kids.

We ate lunch with them.

And helped them do some painting.

In addition to the JJ Center, Joy of Cambodia has a women’s ministry called Dorcas Women’s Ministry.  DWM employs women and teaches them to make jewelry and accessories from the inner tubes of old bicycle tires.

Webley and I were able to join in on a class and were taught how to make some of the accessories.

It’s actually a long process and not easy to do, but the results are so cool!

That evening we enjoyed a Khymer dinner with the Joy of Cambodia team.

Next we spent some time with Children at Risk, a YWAM mission organization.  Tim and Mel Chan are the leaders of Children at Risk.  They so graciously opened their home and hosted a barbeque lunch for us.

Children at Risk began their ministry reaching out to children who were at risk of being trafficked.  Over the years, it became clear that the ministry needed to broaden and address families as a whole.  Keep in mind that during the reign of terror of the Khymer Rouge, one-fourth of Cambodia’s population was killed.  The family unit was destroyed.  Because of the genocide, only 3% of the population is over 65 years old and over 60% of the population is less than 30 years old.  The people of childbearing age are in great need of mentorship.  So Children at Risk now not only provides care to children, but also builds homes for families, provides guidance and mentoring on parenting and includes a sewing business that designs and produces fair trade clothing for Recreate Store, an online store based in New Zealand.  You can see what they sew at the store’s website.  Here’s one of the dresses sewn by Tim’s and Mel’s team.

This is Mel.  At 19, she came to Cambodia from the U.S. as a YWAM missionary and never left.  Her husband, Tim, is Khymer.  She is a fellow homeschool mom and was homeschooled herself.

And this is their precious team!  Mel’s husband, Tim, is standing next to Benjy.

Please join me in prayer for both of these ministries, Joy of Cambodia and Children and Risk. “And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests.  With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people.” Ephesian 6:18

We traveled by tuk tuk to another temple, Angkor Thom.

Here is our tuk tuk driver, Vonsan.  He took such great care of us!

Angkor Thom was was probably my personal favorite temple of the day.  It was straight out of Indiana Jones.

Again, the workmanship is amazing.

As magnificent as all of the ancient temples are I have to confess that eventually we began to suffer from a bit of temple fatigue and our attention got diverted to other less remarkable attractions, like the funny monkeys who are omnipresent and are always looking for bite to eat.

Aaron was carrying a banana he was saving for later.  He was holding it when a mob of monkeys emerged and ran straight for him.  Needless to say, Aaron relinquished the banana without a fight.  But this didn’t stop the monkeys from their own brawl over it.  They grabbed one another by the tails and started biting each other on the rear end.  I didn’t want to get in the middle of all of that, so we got out of there quickly!

This momma monkey decided she was thirsty and grabbed the water bottle straight out of the hand of a tourist.  She snatched it from him, unscrewed the cap and helped herself.

Now back to the temples.

We went to another temple, Ta Prohm.  This is where the movie, “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider” was filmed.

This place was amazing.  The size of the trees growing on top of the ruins is an indication of how long ago they were built.

Our tour guide did such an excellent job of timing our tours, that we avoided the crowds and had the place virtually to ourselves.

Now here’s a thing that makes you go “hmmmmm?”

This is one of the many carvings on one of the walls of the temple that was pointed out by our guide.  He said it’s a dinosaur.  What do you think it looks like?  To me, off the top of my head, it looks like a stegosaurus.  Now why would these ancient people be carving in the temple walls a likeness of a stegosaurus unless they had seen them roaming around?  Of course, it could be something else, but I really don’t know what else it could be.  A rhinoceros? Well, a rhino in southeast Asia is just as interesting an assertion as a stegosaurus.  It definitely begs a question.  Benjy thinks it’s a hoax and someone placed a the carving of a dinosaur much later after the temple was built.  I suppose that theory isn’t any more outrageous as an actual stegosaurus roaming around.  Anyway, I thought it was interesting and I definitely have thought a lot about it.

We visited the ancient temples of Angkor located in Cambodia’s province of Siem Riep.  The area has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage site and it’s easy to understand why.

It was still dark when we left our hotel to get our first glimpse of the temples.  We wanted to get there in time to see the sunrise over Angkor Wat.

Construction of Angkor Wat took place during the early part of the 12th century.  Our tour guide told us that when it was constructed it was fabulously ornate, with the walls covered in gold and precious jewels embedded in the walls.  Sadly, all of those things were stripped away long ago, but what remains is still extraordinary.

When you see the temple, it makes you realize how highly skilled and advanced this civilization was.  The walls are adorned with these intricate carvings, which are both uniform and unique.  They had no machinery or computers to help them keep things lined up and consistent, but the designs were complex and sophisticated, not like stick figures etched out on a cave wall.  I have no idea how they did it.

Angkor Wat is a now a popular tourist destination as you can tell by the throngs of people who visit it.

Our tour guide said that he began giving tours in the early 1990’s when there were only a handful of visitors who came each year.  Back then, he said he carried an AK-47 with him while he gave his tours to protect his group from bandits and Khymer Rouge soldiers who were still on the loose.

Yes, lots and lots of pictures.

And I’ll end with this mama monkey who bummed breakfast off one of the tourists.