fun times and even a picture of me!

Train travel in this country is the way to go - if you can travel on the nice, fast trains. There's WAY more leg room than an airplane, and even though it's not as fast as a plane, it's really not bad.

The only downside is, of course, people who smoke in the bathrooms and pee on the floors and generally have different hygiene standards than Westerners. Arriving at a train station is also usually a fairly chaotic affair - people, luggage, cigarettes, no lines...I truly could go on and on.

Then, a few weeks ago, we traveled to a new train station we'd never been before. Granted, it was made with those "Big Games" in mind, so of course it should be impressive. And it did not disappoint - it looked like an airport! A nice, beautiful, clean airport. There were enough places for people to sit (a constant problem), no smoking sections, bright open spaces... I was like a kid in a candy store.

While we were waiting for our train, a bystander with a huge camera started snapping pictures of Emma. We were so enamored by the beauty of the train station that this usual pet peeve didn't bug us. After he was finished, we gave him our email address and asked him to send us the pictures! I've never done that before...


Anyway, here's the train station...
...and here's Emma, listening to his advice to give the "peace" sign or "victory" sign or whatever you want to call it.


One of the personal highlights of our trip was going to a new park and finding these cool bicycle buggies. After a big of haggling and lots of excited kids (and one excited, nameless grown-up) we ended up with two buggies that fit all 13 of us.

Here's emma and mantha safely strapped in the front of the bicycle... ...and a family pic before we started off. We had the bicycle for one hour. I originally thought that was not enough time, but after physically realizing what one hour on a bicycle meant, I decided that was enough time.
We stopped at a nice shady fountain about halfway through to let the kids play and to give the pedallers a rest. I asked rachel to take a picture of josh and I since I know everyone misses seeing what I look like.

Incidentally, this is also the park where the beach volleyball venue is located. We pedalled our little buggies over to see how much of it we could see, but unfortunately, so much of it was fenced off. We could see the stadium thing, but not much more than that. It was a great park, and riding the bicycle things was the perfect way to see it all. The kids had a great time, and I did too!