Shopping in Delhi

We're in Delhi, India. It is totally insane. There are people, cows and cow droppings everywhere. It really is almost too much. So on our first day here, to get right into the spirit, we went shopping. Sarah is a quirky shopper. There are so many incredibly cheap clothing markets that it's almost pointless deciding on what shirt is better, because they cost a dollar each. My philosophy is, "what the hell, get em both!"

She's a bit more picky. For one thing, she can't be in any store (actually they are more like clothing stalls, or large closets) where someone is trying to talk to her. She doesn't like the hard sell. She wants to browse undisturbed. I completely understand this. The problem is that kind of shopping doesn't exist in India. Or anywhere in Asia for that matter. These sales people get so excited, they just can't help falling all over her. They approach, telling her those pants look good on her, or that they cost seventy five cents and she's long gone. Whether she was interested in the clothes or not, she's outta there. I try and explain that it's just how it is over here, but it's no use.

She's looking for a pair of cotton capri-ish pants and maybe one of those colorful tunics I see people wearing here. Actually, the only people I see wearing anything really "Indian" are old grandmothers and white tourists. Some of these people look like they're going to an Indian theme costume party. Couples walk around holding Lonely Planet guidebooks wearing bright orange mail order sarongs on their waists. Considering all the locals are dressed conservatively in dress shirts and long pants, the tourists look they're trying too hard.

Anyway, she browses, and then tells me it's too hard for her to shop when I am around. She says I make her nervous, even though all I do is wait patiently pacing on the sidewalk. I usually pass the time by counting the number of beggars who come up to me, and seeing who has the fewest limbs.

Sometimes I will walk into the store to check on her. As she holds up a shirt in front of the mirror, the sales guy and I will exchange glances. I may roll my eyes ever so slightly and we will share an unspoken bond, sympathizing with each other for having to deal with these crazy women shoppers. It's a nice cross cultural experience for me.

She buys the shirts, gets back to the room, tries them on and declares that she needs more shirts.

"Why honey?"

"Because these are too big."

Sigh.

-Brendan

Wedding Pics

A few days ago, we were heading back out into the great unknown (also known as India), and Sarah was trying to pass the time until we actually got on the plane by looking at wedding pictures. I'm referring to our own wedding pictures that now exist on our computer, which we travel with. We have thousands of pics on there. I hear they're nice. I wouldn't know. I've never seen them. This is because she manipulates the computer. Usually, when I get on the laptop, it's to write a new iVillage blog, or edit a new podcast, so I haven't had much time to check out the wedding pics. It's OK though, because I hear they're nice. I hear all of her thoughts on the pics. Stuff like, "Oh! That is CUTE!!" and "Well, aren't you so handsome!" and "Don't you look SOOO dashing!" and "I just have the best husband ever!" (OK so I'm exaggerating a little).

She likes sitting in bed next to me looking at the pics making a running commentary on the wedding itself. From the guests arriving to the ceremony, "I am so glad they could come. Don't you think Uncle H--- looks good in this picture? I'll have to send it to him."

To the ceremony itself. "Here is the part where I told my mom, 'DO NOT CRY!!'"

To the reception and everything else in between. "We look like such idiots cutting the cake. What are we even doing in this one?"

Every time she looks at these, she relives the day. It was six months ago, but it feels like several lifetimes have passed since we were bound for all eternity. We barely remember anything about it. There are several pictures of her with people she doesn't even remember meeting. In short, it was a blur. And the pictures are what brings her back to that day. It doesn't stop her from second guessing herself though.

"Maybe I should have worn my hair down."

Or, "Is the arch a little off-center? It looks a little off-center in this one. Don't you think?"

"It looks fine honey. You were beautiful that day."

-Brendan

Exhausted in India

Permission to vent? Ok here goes. So... jet lag is a royal pain in the butt. It's literally ruining my day. But I don't know why. I mean, I never felt this way until about a month ago. See, in my pre-married youth I crossed my share of oceans to frolic in distant lands without ever really feeling jet-lagged. My entire 20s were spent working long enough to save enough vacation time to fly as far away as I could once or twice a year. I was kinda sorta tired that first day or two on that new continent, but certainly not enough to keep me from the top of the Eiffel Tower at sunset or whatever cool sight-seeing idea I had come up with in the midst of my dizzying excitement during the plane ride over.

But celebrate enough birthdays and cross one too many time zones and your body will eventually revolt, as I'm sadly learning. Just over two weeks ago, Brendan and I traveled 28 hours from Bali, Indonesia, to Chicago, Illinois, and it took us a good week to stop waking up at 2 a.m., starving and wired. Thankfully we were staying with his folks, who were understanding, patient, and at least pretended to be sympathetic when I almost broke down in tears in Nordstrom Rack around 2 p.m. (because I could not deal with the disarray of the shoe racks after ten unsuccessful cups of coffee, which seemed like the saddest thing in the world at the time).

Just when our bodies got used to Central time again, we went and flew 14 hours in the opposite direction to Delhi, India, turning our backs on what we'd been training our fragile internal clocks for the past two weeks. I knew this stretch of the trip would be a crazy whirlwind adventure beforehand, but I never expected to be hit this hard by the backwards-ness of it all. A good's night sleep would help, but I just can't seem to find my rhythm. After dinner I'm ready to start my day and after breakfast I feel like it's closing time at the bar. They say the best way to get acclimated to your new time zone is to stay active and outdoors during daylight hours, letting the light of the sun be your natural guide. And that sounds very practical and easy in theory, doesn't it? Well, yesterday (our first full day on the Indian sub-continent, mind you) Brendan and I napped from about 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. No lunch, no nothing. I honestly may not have gotten up if the building had been on fire, napping felt so good.

I know I sound very weak and ungrateful right now. I know this, and I know that if Brendan is reading this he's nodding his head emphatically (hi honey!). We're lucky enough to be traveling the world for a whole year, and part of traveling very long distances by air means that I will have to get used to new time zones on a semi-regular basis. It's a small price to pay for authentic aloo gobi and veg pakoras, after all. But man, I'm just tired of being tired. What happened to all that traveling adrenaline I used to have?

Thanks. I feel better. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go flip a coin between eating dinner or passing out for the night (it's 6 p.m., btw).

-Sarah

Q & A

We eat out. A lot. Since we've been traveling, I estimate that we've eaten out 450 times. That's about three times a day, every day, for 5 months. And Sarah still hasn't really got the whole ordering thing down yet.

You'd think by now that she'd have mastered the whole "waitress comes over, we order some food, waitress goes away" routine by now, but no. In Asia, once they give you the menus, the waitress will just stand over you waiting for you to decide. Sarah can not handle this. It makes her very nervous. She feels like she's being unfairly pressured. She will look at me with pleading eyes, because the longer the waitress stands there, the more Sarah loses her poise. You can't tell them to leave, because they'll never come back. But she can't focus on the menu. All she can think about is the well-meaning teenager in a stained uniform smiling at us. It's excruciating.

After a few minutes, I will ask her if she wants to order, and every time, without fail, she will say, "No dear, you go ahead."

"Fried noodles please. (pause) Honey?"

Staring at the menu, "Uuuuum, um, um, um, um, um... I'll have a turkey salad sandwich please."

Sarah has a knack for ordering the weirdest thing on the menu. And when I say weirdest, I mean the one dish guaranteed to be disgusting. Poor thing. She just can't handle the pressure.

Meal times are when we get to sit and chat. We compare notes on strange things we see. The first week we're in a new country, we have so much to talk about at meals that we sound like a Sienfeld episode, making witty yet superficial observations.

"The rickshaw drivers here seem to be less aggressive than the ones in Vietnam."

"You noticed that too?"

"What is the deal with the old ladies carrying baskets on their heads everywhere they go?"

"Really. It's like they're carrying laundry hampers across town or something."

And so on.

After a few days, we've exhausted all our snarky comments, so meal times are usually spent reading. We can sit in silence, just reading our respective novels, picking over a fruit salad for her and a chicken and rice dish for me. It's great. But the silence never lasts. It's broken by her questions.

She has a very curious mind, and when reading something she doesn't immediately understand, she will ask me what it means, much in the way a fourth grader might ask her father. It's adorable.

I'm eating, looking down at my book. Suddenly she pipes up.

"What are the Boston Pops exactly?"

"What does stasis mean?"

"Do you think Mississippi is like a fun place to go? You just never hear much about it."

Some answers I know. Some I don't. I will, however, always provide her with an immediate response.

"Who is Kaiser Willhelm?"

"He was the last leader of the Austria-Hungary empire. He was also a central figure leading up to World War One."

(BTW these are all actual questions and answers. Sadly, nothing has been embellished).

I know I'm giving her inaccurate information, but I want her to think that I know about lots of things. I don't want her to stop asking me. I like being the person she comes to with questions.

"What's so great about Eric Clapton anyway? What am I missing here?"

"He's not so bad honey. Could you pass the salt?"

-Brendan

Heading...Home

The last few days in Bali were spent in a holding pattern. Knowing we were heading back to to the States, it was hard not to thinking of anything else. It was tough getting motivated to do anything besides lounge by the hotel pool. It was bliss, doing nothing. No sight-seeing. No shopping. Nothing. Just the pool and a book.

Sarah wound down too, but she's different. When I want to temporarily give up being a tourist, I sit on a deck chair all day. She heads to the internet cafe where she reads five different celebrity gossip sites. I can't understand this. I know it's a guilty pleasure for her, but I don't see how she's kept up her level of interest all this time. I can go weeks without looking at a newspaper. For me, this trip is a time out from the modern world. For her, it's a chance to read about Tom and Katie and Jennifer and whoever else. She spends hours on these sites. This is semi-normal behavior, right? The best part is when she sees me walk into the internet cafe, she quickly shuts down all her gossip sites so I won't know what she's up to. Sometimes I'll catch her in the act and she'll be in the archives of some site, reading gossip that's months old. What a strange girl I married.

So we were being lazy tourists since we were excited to get home. It's like, "Yea, a month in Bali is great, but what I'm really looking forward to are traffic jams and below freezing temperatures!" I think were just ready to not be excited and amazed all the time. We want to know what's coming. We want a blah November cloudy midwest sky.

When you're traveling, every day is different. And that's great. But sometimes you want to wait in a long line at Starbucks, go to work, hate your job and come home and watch a football game you don't even really care about. You need the sameness to appreciate how wonderful it is just to be somewhere else.

I kind of miss everything that we didn't like in the first place about America. Like political talk show hosts. And never being able to escape knowing who got voted off American Idol, even though I never watch and never bring it up in conversation. I know that may sound crazy, but it's true. We started traveling because we wanted to see the world, not because we wanted to leave America. So it's nice to be home.

-Brendan

I'm Still a Newlywed, Aren't I?

If you follow our travel website, you may already know that Brendan and I flew back to Chicago for two weeks for some R&R and to stand up at his beautiful sister Sheila's wedding. It took about 28 hours from Bali to O'Hare airport, but we made it in one piece (or I guess two pieces, technically).

The wedding was the first we've attended since our own wedding six months ago, and throughout the night we kept repeating things like "Oh aren't their flowers amazing? Remember our flowers?" and "I love what they did with these placecards. Ours were pretty cute too." And here I thought we were over our own wedding madness. Nope, not quite. This morning, I found "A Wedding Story" on TLC and watched the whole thing. Back in April I promised Brendan that I would stop making him watch "Whose Wedding is it Anyway?" once we got married, but I'm pretty sure if it came on TV right now we'd both be secretly glad (and even more so if it was an all-day marathon).

I guess we're allowed to still be a wee bit wedding-obsessed. After all, we got married and immediately left the country, surrounding ourselves with millions of people who don't care about aisle runners, unity candles or head tables. Now that we're stateside again, we get to enjoy our first year of marriage with family and friends who are still trading our pictures. There's no place like home, even if just for two weeks!

-Sarah

Grab Me a Beer, Will Ya?

I know marriage takes compromise and you have to give to get, but sometimes, I just wish Sarah would surprise me and bring me a cold beer. I would even settle for the cold beer I just asked her to get me (I even asked her nicely, with a "please" and everything). She said no and went outside to read wile the sun fades on the little porch outside our room. Granted, I could just go get it myself, as it is only thirty feet to the bar, but I just don't want to. I want her to get me one.

The reason I thought I might qualify for a free beer is I just spent six hours chauffeuring Sarah around on a motorbike. We went up and down the coast of southern Lombok today. I was lucky if there was a stretch of road not covered by huge boulders, cows or cow pies. Plus, in every village, little children darted out in front of me and screamed "hello!!", making me very nervous about running a few of them down. Meanwhile, Sarah, who is not fond of motorbikes, freaked out every time I changed gears. The backseat driving is nearly intolerable. Sure, I appreciate how she points out the dog straying into the road at four hundred yards ahead, but I am more worried about the huge ditch which seems to have swallowed up the road. My nerves are shot. In short, I could really use a beer.

The other reason I'm on edge this evening are surfers. We are staying at a place called "The Surfers Inn". So named, because it's a small United Nations gathering of surfers at this place. We are the only non-surfers. It's awkward. There are about a dozen guys who look like they could be the male surfer / model of the year all running around with their shirts off jumping in the pool and talking about their boards. I'm no slouch, but next to these guys, I am a complete slob. And I don't surf. I'm afraid of sharks.

Today in the parking lot as we we're waiting for our motorbike we rented, an older Brazilian guy said to us, "You surf?"

"No, bad shoulders." This is my stock answer to the surf question. It's also true. I have had surgery on both shoulders and I really can't move my arms far enough to paddle.

Apparently he didn't hear me. "You weak?"

Am I weak?? Is that what he said? I thought.

"Um, no. Bad shoulders." As I demontrated by doing a sort of chicken dance for him. But I don't think he saw me. He and his longboard went inside.

Can We Talk?

One thing we have in abundance on this trip is time. Whole days to do nothing but sit around and talk. Lately, the conversations we have while lying on the sand or waiting for our eggs and toast to arrive are about one of two things.

1. What are we going to name our children.

2. What are we going to do with our lives.

More than anything else, Sarah loves to play the baby name game. Mind you, she's not pregnant, nor do we hope she'll be pregnant anytime in the next 10 months or so. We still have to finish the trip, get jobs, insurance and a roof over our heads before we can really play the baby name game for keeps.

The game usually begins after Sarah notices a name either in a book or a celebrity gossip site (something like Hester or Dylan), or even a sign on the side of the road (Charlotte's Guesthouse 2 Kilometers Ahead) and then asks me, "What about Charlotte?"

To which I usually reply, "No."

I get my ideas in other ways. Usually from the cocktail menu. "How about Jack?"

She likes Jack, but prefers not to think of it in the whiskey sense. Much like Sarah, my taste in baby names is a bit strange. I saw the name "Willanaius" on the side of an oil tanker in Vietnam and was only half kidding when I suggested it. Sadly, "Willanaius" was vetoed.

Lots of times I think she's kidding. "Ruby" is in her top ten, but I laughed when she first said it.

"How about Ruby?"

"Sure, if you want her to be a honky tonk singer."

The second most popular topic of conversation usually comes up not long after we tire of the baby name game. It's the great question that everyone asks of themselves. What are we going to do when we grow up?

My favorite answer for this is "I don't think we ever really figure out what we want to do, we just do something we like and hope for the best."

Sarah needs something more concrete. She figures she can always get a job in TV, but it may not be her life's calling.

"Maybe we should start a production company."

To this I nod and start at the bottom of my coffee cup.

"There seems to be a lot of those though," she says.

"What if we did something with animals, like have a cat rescue shelter."

I am flattered that her entrepreneurial ideas include me, but running an animal shelter is not why I was put on this earth.

"I don't think there's a lot of money in that sweetie."

"Oh."

By this point the conversation dies down, as I don't want such trivial concerns as money or jobs getting in the way of my day of lying on the beach for eight hours. And it occurs to me, that right now, lying around and NOT thinking of those things is what I want to do with my life.

-Brendan

Communication is Key

I know that most men feel that women think too much. Well, the thinking isn't really the issue as much as the thinking and then wanting to talk about it. This need for communication seems to be the root of many a relationship hurdle, with the female half being blamed for yapping too much, while the male half gets it for being obtuse and distant. If you ask me, being thoughtful (as in, full of thoughts) and then attempting to bounce it off the next person is a lot more interesting than being a man of few words. Then again, I'm a woman.

Brendan and I seem to be falling into this stereotypical male/female communication pattern quite nicely. But what I'm beginning to learn is that it's not the case that Brendan doesn't think a lot (in fact, he's really quite on top of his emotions and has an opinion about everything), it's just that he often chooses not to share his thoughts with the world around him. To do so would be too girly and sensitive, so it's better to just not say anything at all and stew (or so thinketh the man). Unfortunately, this leads to pouting, and girls can't deal with a pouty man. We have to know exactly what the problem is, so it can either be 1) fixed, or 2) laughed out of the park for being a) irrational, b) unreasonable, or c) dumb.

To illustrate my plight, here is a transcript of a recent exchange between Mr. Moran and me:

ME: (leaving hotel room) "I'm going out to the pool for a while."

HIM: (on bed reading) "Okay."

**45 minutes pass**

(I come back into hotel room and immediately retreat to the bathroom and take a shower to wash off the pool chlorine)

HIM: (now typing something, presumably a blog entry, on laptop and eating some really gross peanut butter cookies I bought at a market earlier today) "Yuck. These cookies are the worst cookies in the world. "

ME: (exiting bathroom, sitting down on bed next to him and opening up a book to read) "Yeah, they're pretty bad." (grabbing leftover package of cookies that he's abandoned and wrestling with the plastic to get at the bottom row)

HIM: (looks over at me, heavy sigh)

ME: (having freed the bottom row of cookies from the plastic packaging, eating them in the particular way I like to eat sandwich cookies, which consists of small nibbles around the edges until the cookie's outer crusts fall away from the gooey inside) "Am I bothering you?"

HIM: (saying yes with his eyes) "No, not at all."

ME: (going back to my book) "Okay."

HIM: (opening up some other program on the computer) "I just lost my concentration."

ME: (figuring I know why) "Because I was eating?"

HIM: (lying) "No, no, of course not. It's nothing. Don't sweat it."

ME: (not sweating it) "Okay."

HIM: (more dramatic sighing, now entering the pouty zone)

ME: "What's wrong?"

HIM: "Nothing."

ME: "Seriously, what's wrong?"

HIM: "Nothing, nothing at all."

**Several minutes pass, pouting intensifies**

ME: "Come on, what's wrong?"

HIM: "Nothing, I'm absolutely fine......I just lost my concentration."

ME: (walking through wide-open door) "Because I was eating?"

HIM: "Well, yeah. And I just needed some space to write."

ME: "Ok, why didn't you just tell me that before?"

HIM: "I thought it would be obvious."

ME: (deciding if this falls into an irrational, unreasonable, or dumb category, then making my choice) "That's dumb."

HIM: (walks out the door and pouts directly outside hotel room window to be in full view)

ME: (picking up tossed aside laptop, beginning to write this very blog entry)

HIM: (walking back inside hotel room) "So are you mad at me?"

Sigh.

-Sarah