10 Weird Moments From Our Year Abroad

6 months down. 6 months to go. Here's a few of the "Weirder Moments" from our trip.

1. Five strong young Germans volunteered to pick up our rental van and lift it out of a ditch. (For the record, I wasn’t the one who drove the car into the ditch).

2. Back home, we used to say “who cut the cheese?”, now we say ”who cut the durian?”(Durians smell so bad that in Singapore you’ll be fined if you bring one on the subway. But, then again, you get fined for pretty much everything in Singapore.)

3. We disembarked from an airplane and were walking through the Kuching airport toward the baggage carousel when the floor of the airport actually, literally started buckling and bulging below our feet. THE FLOOR IN THE AIRPORT! Everybody started running, thinking maybe an explosion would follow. A few security people sauntered over and looked at the floor, bemused. And within about 90 seconds everyone carried on as though nothing had happened. When we came back through the same airport a week later, the floor was still buckled, but marked off with flimsy, yellow plastic tape. #asianinfrastructure

I started to pull out my camera to get a photo of the floor bucking - but Rob suggested we should move along. So, here's a picture of Isla in a barber shop in Samoa getting the side of her head shaved. Her idea, of course. Weird.

4. On my 10th wedding anniversary we wandered around town looking for mosquito spray so we wouldn’t get Dengue.

5. We had a jellyfish fight in New Zealand with a breed of jelly fish that don’t sting.

Me about to paste one of my kids in the head with a jellyfish. Way more fun than snowballs.

6. I had my eyebrows waxed in a farmers’ market in Australia.

7. When we went to the bathroom in Canada, there was #1 and #2. Since traveling, we have added #3.

8. Isla fell into a sewer in Bali. (I’ve seen unmarked holes in the sidewalk up to 6 feet deep. How does it work if you are blind?) #asianinfrastructure

9. In Fiji, We saw a guy who was sleeping on a deck chair get smoked with a falling coconut. I thought that the Watch out for Falling Coconuts signs were just for photo ops - but more people die from falling coconuts than shark attacks. (The guy was okay, albeit a little stunned - that'll teach him for lounging in a deck chair unarmed.)

10. A monkey came up to my eight year old son and plucked the ice cream cone right out of his hand. Another went after my 5 year old daughter's, but she would have none of it. She held that precious ice cream over her head and the monkey jumped all over her trying to get at it. Isla:1 Monkey:0 Needless to say, both kids start cowering if they see a monkey 50 feet away.