Bali, Summer, and Birthdays

Wow - it's been a busy summer so far! And it's been over a month since I've posted anything, oops! Let me try to recap and we can get back to a regular schedule!

I never did share any photos from my trip to Bali, and hardly any from Singapore so let me get to that!

The food in Singapore is quite delicious, and it is so vegetarian friendly! They use a lot of mock meats (wheat gluten based mostly I think) which are actually quite good. Their desserts, on the other hand, are the strangest (read: bad) things I have ever heard of. They put corn and beans in everything! The picture on the bottom right is of the desserts I ordered with my coworkers - the top one is shaved ice with soursop jellies (they also love jelly things - I don't get it), the next one is shaved ice with brown and pink flavoring (I have no idea what the flavors were supposed to be and neither did my coworkers) topped with durian sauce (have you ever had durian? I wouldn't recommend it) and then FILLED with corn, beans, and more jelly things! The last one is simply shaved ice with strawberry syrup topped with peaches - I ended up eating mostly that one.  :)

I spent the weekend in Bali - in an inland town called Ubud. My hotel was across the street from the Monkey Forest - a place where monkeys are sacred and roam everywhere, including all around my hotel. At breakfast the staff was constantly shooing them away with brooms or sling shots. It was pretty cool to see an animal in person that I had only ever seen in the zoo before, but I was a bit wary of them and tried to stay a good distance away.




 This little offering was set out on the stairs between my hotel room and the lobby on my first morning there. I think it is by far the most beautiful offering I saw while I was there. Let me tell you a little bit about the offerings while I'm at it. All day long the locals set out these small offerings for the spirits and the gods. They are often filled with cigarettes, small pieces of food, flowers, and incense. If I understood my driver correctly the offerings set out on the ground are for the spirits and the offerings placed on a temple are for the gods. Literally everywhere you walk there are offerings set out on the sidewalk - in front of every store, every restaurant. You had to be really careful not to step on them or kick them over (I imagine that is bad karma, although no one told me that specifically).

I spent my first day wandering around Ubud and relaxing. I walked up to a place called the Ubud Market - they sell mostly crafts and fabric foods, along with some food - mostly fruit. There was a small temple at the edge of the market where this woman was placing offerings - look at the piles of them everywhere! I find it fascinating.

I am also really intrigued by the tropical fruits you can find there that are harder to come by here in Oregon (maybe I can get frozen versions of some of these at a specialty store - but I've never seen fresh durian or mangosteen). By the way - mangosteen is probably the most delicious fruit I have ever eaten. And that crazy spikey thing underneath the table? That's the famous durian - smells like feet and natural gas, and kind of tastes about the same.

I'm not going to say much about the rest of the photos so that I can move on to other things, but they are pictures from around the island and some various temples I visited!

I had a few days to recover from my jet lag before Jonathan's family came to visit us for the 4th of July weekend. We had a great time - the weather was perfect which is always great when you have visitors! We took them to breakfast at Gathering Together Farms, went to the farmer's market, did some wine and cheese tasting, had a BBQ, attempted to go to a Knights game, and spent some time at the Corvallis Red, White & Blue festival. I failed at taking many photos of the weekend unfortunately.

We made a trip up to Portland the following weekend to go to Portland's Vegan Iron Chef competition. I had found out about this competition right after the first one happened a year ago so I'd been waiting all year for it to come around again and I was really excited I was able to get tickets to it! We decided to go to a new sandwich place for lunch called Brass Tacks - I read about them because they were tabling at the competition and they had both vegan and meat options so Jonathan wouldn't bee too unhappy.

Turned out the girl who owns the shop is someone Jonathan knows from high school back in Kalamazoo! Pretty small world. The sandwiches were awesome (we've actually even been back another time already). The iron chef competition itself was pretty interesting, although a little hard to follow since the seating was all flat and there was only one screen which was difficult to see. It was cool to feel the energy at all of the kitchen stations though, and I think I just will watch the video of the event when I have some time to get a better view of everything that was really happening!

The weekend after that had been planned out for months, and I was really ready for all of the secrets to be out! It was Jonathan's 30th birthday and six of his friends flew in from all over the country to come celebrate it - all a surprise to him! Everything went perfectly - the surprises had to be staggered since people were arriving at different times, but it all worked out great! We met up with everyone up in Portland and spent Friday night there. Saturday we headed out for a rafting trip on the Clackamas River - it was so much fun that we're booking a 2-day rafting trip here in a couple of weekends! We went with a company called the Oregon River Experiences and the guides were great, I would definitely recommend them to anyone looking for a fun rafting trip!

 After the trip we headed back to Corvallis to clean up and then meet up with a few other friends at Block 15 to continue the birthday celebration. We got lucky and were able to take over their game room which is nice because there was plenty of space for everyone and avoids the awkwardness of sitting at a long table where you can't mingle. Jonathan got to pick a dessert for his birthday and he chose a rootbeer float - the waitress we had was pretty fantastic and actually brought shot glasses of their house made rootbeer for everyone along with the float.


By Sunday we were all pretty exhausted, so we mostly just relaxed and recovered - we did get in some birthday cake and singing though before the first people to leave had to head back to the airport. This picture cracks me up because the party hat looks so ridiculously tiny. I think it was a pretty good 30th for Jonathan though and I'm glad all of the planning and surprise work is over, at least for another year.  :)

That doesn't quite catch us up on summer, but I think that's good for now. More to come and hopefully before another month passes!

-C