Quist World Tour

Ireland and Scotland are green. And moist (sorry if that word triggers you, but it’s true). And beautiful. They are also filled with ruins. Everywhere we drive, major or minor stone buildings are in varying states of disarray, amidst well-kept farms, towns, cities and islands. One hollowed-out castle is part of a park with a small lake, a playground, and a sculpture walk. When we wandered into the “inside” of the castle walls, a man was throwing a ball to his dog, a child was climbing the walls, and a family was spreading a blanket for a picnic in the grassy center. It’s just part of the city. Our first night was in a hotel called Castle Kilronan, which was more of a big manor house than a castle. Still an amazing place. It had to be completely restored because the last family that lived there couldn’t afford it, didn’t want to pay taxes on it, and so they removed the roof. If there’s no roof, it’s not technically a building for tax purposes. But even lovely restorations require ma...

Last week we had the opportunity to go to a hurling match. It was the All-Ireland Semifinals in Dublin, with Galway up against the favored Limerick. We had been staying in Galway, where people we met at a pub told us all about hurling. From the moment we decided to go to the match, all we had to do was bring it up with anyone we encountered. No further icebreakers necessary. We would hear their opinions about the game, about the team, about their fellow Irish as well as a number of opinions about other sports or countries that are less superior. What is hurling, you ask? We had no idea. So. Picture thirteen people from each side (at least by my count) running around on a pitch that is larger than an American football field. They each have a helmet and a hurling stick. Imagine a giant wooden spoon, and you sort of have a hurling stick. They use the stick to keep a very heavy tennis ball in motion by bouncing it, hitting it, scooping it off the field or carrying the ball on the stick...

It may come as no surprise to find out that I’m afflicted with itchy feet. In normal times, I will seek out any way I can to explore via planes, trains or automobiles. Of course these are not normal times. But the point of travel isn't only to see far-away places. We travel to experience the joy of new  places.  For Mother’s Day this year, I gave out a few copies of books about traveling in Michigan.  Rebel , a fun gift store in Grand Rapids, put many of their products online so you could order curbside when retail was still shut down. One book was  Backroads and Byways of Michigan,  and another focused on hikes in Michigan. I gave myself the Backroads book, and this summer Brian and I have been exploring some areas we haven’t before, or finding new ways to enjoy places we have been. We avoid crowds, watch for well-spaced outdoor dining, and stay masked up whenever we get near other people, which puts us in the majority in some places and the minority in others....

The last few days, we have felt certain things slipping beyond our control. For instance, our tempers. We were getting to the point of any trip, somewhere between 2/3 and 3/4 through, where at least one of us is wondering at all times if we will make it to the end without hating each other.   Allison spent three days incapacitated by a stomach bug, which was particularly unpleasant yesterday as we had to take a cross-country train to get to our next destination. She made it, and the nausea is subsiding slowly. She actually did some sightseeing today and even ate half of her dinner. Now we are in the home stretch—3 hotel nights to go. Andrew is ready to see his girlfriend again (and not see us for at least a short period of time). Allison is ready to see our dog, to sleep on her own pillow, and to “see people who are not my family.” This might be exacerbated by the fact that Andrew ran out of deodorant, and Natalie had told us to avoid Japanese deodorant, so the only kind he co...

This morning, just before 5 am, a 5.0 earthquake somewhere northeast of us made a Tokyo’s ground tremble. I happened to wake up to the bed shaking a bit; this is the fourth time I’ve felt one in my life. Three of those four times I’ve wondered what Brian could possibly be doing in his sleep—a constant leg twitch? a terrifying nightmare?— to cause our bed to shimmy this way. One of those times was three days ago in the middle of the night in the same hotel room, but it didn’t occur to me then what it was. This morning I heard the wall shift slightly as it was happening and it became clear. Japan has small earthquakes almost every day, so this should be no surprise, but of course my nighttime self is not the most reasonable version of me, so I lay in bed another half hour wondering what might come next. I am the family seismograph—everyone else slept through both tremors this week.  This echoes my function in our family in real life. When one of our children is going thr...

We (except Natalie who hasn’t been with us much) don’t know any Japanese. Well, we know how to say five things to be exact. Hello. Goodbye. Thank you very much. Yes. Excuse me.  We read with the help of the Google translate app—you hold up your phone over the menu or sign or toilet directions, and English appears on your phone. It is always at least slightly off—what are meat trousers? Are they really serving fried chicken cartilage? So much of the Japanese foodie scene is wasted on me anyway, born with a strong gag reflex to anything that has lived in the sea (ask my mom). I so want to be a person who can eat anything, but I am not. And the food here is often not made for someone like me. This is a shame because there is excellent food at every turn. Even the 7-11 sells great food. Also not made for me (or the rest of my fam): observation deck windows and binoculars. We have to bend over pretty far sometimes to try to see something. Chairs and benches leave our knees at c...

Every time you get on a bus, or a train, or for that matter walk into a convenience store in Japan, you will hear a little song created especially for that place or vehicle. The washing machine in our little apartment plays a digital segment (think Wii Music) piece of classical music that I cannot place, though I know it was on one of our Baby Einstein vídeos back in the day. The doorbell (yes our hotel room has a doorbell) plays another electronic chime. The Maibara station plays something suspiciously like the chorus of "Do They Know It’s Christmas?" by BandAid, and "Mary Had a Little Lamb" came over the loudspeaker at Kyoto station once. It’s like everything electronic needs to greet you and say goodbye.  I still haven’t gotten over the toilets here. In public restrooms, seats are heated and bidet options are on offer. Here in our little apartment, the porcelain throne greets me by lighting up and starting some kind of running water noise to mask any indisc...

We left our house at 6:15 am on Tuesday and 27 hours later four out of five Quists stumbled into hotel rooms in Nagoya, Japan. We only stayed the night, but I haven’t slept that hard in years, at least without anesthesia. The next morning we rolled out of bed and caught a train to one town where we caught a taxi to Hikone, where Natalie awaited us with equal amounts of eagerness to see us and irritation at having to get up early. She’s been studying in Hikone since September through the Japan Center for Michigan Universities, an arm of Michigan State. It was so good to see her! And immediately we invaded her life, dropping our piles of luggage in her room, dragging her off to see Hikone Castle, and embarrassing her with our American tourist ways. She gets over it whenever we buy her food though, so it’s okay. She helped us order food and buy train tickets. It is an amazing thing to see your own child speaking proficiently in a language you can’t even begin to comprehend, like she is ...

When Allison told people she and I were going to Guatemala for spring break, almost everyone she talked to made the assumption that we were going as part of a mission trip. At first it made her laugh, because she’d never suggested that to be the case. We were looking forward to a fun and adventurous vacation that was decidedly not a service project! When it kept happening, though, she started to think more deeply about it. She didn’t tell me about it until we were on our way to Chicago, and when she did, she told me about her surprise that no one seemed to think you might just go there for vacation. Guatemala has old ruins, cities of thriving culture, vibrant cloudforests, beautiful lakes, and volcanoes, to name a few attractions. Beyond that, we’ve been looking forward to seeing our former exchange student Natalia, as well as her mother and sister who visited us at the end of Natalia’s time with us. Why wouldn’t we want to vacation here?! After a taxi ride from the Guatemala Cit...

Driving from Michigan to Florida during early April is like driving through spring in fast forward. When we left on Friday morning, you could see a crocus here and there, and the hyacinths were just beginning to poke their heads out, checking to see if the coast was clear. The trees didn’t show any signs of waking up yet, other than a bucket hanging from a random tapped maple in town. In southern Ohio, we noticed there were some small, white flowering trees along the roadside, mixed in with larger trees that were showing signs of budding. Kentucky and Tennessee were a time-lapse; first there were the redbuds, then the hazy hues of gold, green, yellow, red and pink that look like a rainbow-colored peach fuzz. Then we hit Georgia and Florida, and the green leaves unfurled around us so that by the time we hit Bradenton, we were into full-blown June. Some of you know that my father-in-law had a ruptured brain aneurysm in late February. I couldn’t help but think of him as I watched ...