Monestel Family Odyssey

Winter Fun in Belgrade

2012-01-29T05:21:00.000-05:00

When is it going to snow? This has been our children's frequent inquiry in the last couple of months. We were told that it typically snows more heavily and earlier in the season here in Belgrade, but for some reason this has been an unusually warm winter.

Finally we got our first heavy snow of the season, and the kids (and adults) of our family really enjoyed it. Our kids have grown up in Bangladesh and Florida. They had seen snow but had not really LIVED it yet. Belgrade's neighborhoods look beautiful with the white cover of snow, and our front yard is peaceful with the snow-covered pines. It reminded me of why I like winter so much.

We got our winter gear, our new sled and took off to a nice hill in the Banovo Brdo neighborhood that is just perfect for this fun activity.

Here you can see a couple of little videos of the kids:

Pretty soon, many expats and locals joined us at this hill and it got crowded pretty quickly. We had fun anyhow without any major accidents.

We hope to do a little skiing later this winter. It should be fun since we have not done it for a long time.

New Year in Italy

2012-01-07T11:57:00.000-05:00

Where did 2011 go? I’m sure most people ask themselves the same question. Somehow every year seems to be shorter than the last. Our family had a get-away trip to Rome, Florence and Pisa for the end-of-year Holidays. It was a wonderful, relaxing time in an area that has to be among my favorite.

A few years ago we had visited Rome briefly as part of a Mediterranean cruise. However, it was a less-than-24-hour visit and it was raining! We just did not have enough time to give this wonderful city a decent try.

As always, a trip for a family of five takes some planning, particularly for New Year in a city such a Rome. We got some amazing discount flights and planned the treat way ahead of time.

Rome has so much to offer, but it can be very expensive. We got smart this time and bought some excellent maps for the ipad for Rome and Tuscany in general, as well as some excellent audio tours by Rick Steve.

First Stop was the Colosseum along with neighboring Palatine Hill and the Forum. So much history in one little area! Again, by using the Rick Steve audio tours in my ipad and the kids phones we had a very informative day and both Julie and I as well as our older kids really enjoyed the history behind the ruins.

Making a Wish at the Trevi Fountain

Pantheon

The Vatican City Museum was yet another day’s trip. It really takes a good four hours to see it. We particularly enjoyed the Egyptian Room as well as the various sculptures of great value. Austin, our youngest, found it strange that many of these male statures were complete except they were missing their male anatomy. We made all kinds of funny stories about diseases they had that led to this tragic amputation J Anyway, we found this museum to be a little challenging to cover but very doable in one day along with a visit to the Saint Peter’s Basilica.

Sistine Chapel

St Peter's Basilica

We planned some various trips around Rome. A big hit among the kids (and adults) was our trip to Ostia Antica. This old Roman port is just outside Rome but easily reachable without an extra expense if you got the Roma Pass by connecting from the metro to the FR-1 railway. This old Roman town is great fun for the kids as they are able to walk around the ruins and see what life was like back then. Again, the Rick Steve’s tour was extremely helpful to make this a fun-filled day as opposed to just a bunch of rocks.

We welcomed the New Year in Rome and took off the next day by car to Florence, crossing the heart of Tuscany. The weather was unusually warm the whole trip and it was sunny almost every day. It is hard to describe how amazing Florence is as a city unless you listen to an audiotour or read some history to see how many world-changing figures came from or lived in this city: Galileo, Da Vinci, Americo Vespuci, Donatello, etc. We enjoyed some delicious Tuscan food every day of our stay in Florence and Pisa.

Finally, we took a day trip to Pisa. The leaning tower and the Field of Miracles is beautiful as imagined in any postcard. Overall however, the main tourist attractions takes less than one day to cover in this city.

On our drive back from Tuscany , we stopped by the Mediterranean sea at a small town of Cecina.
Our trip back was tiring (arrival after midnight!) but overall it was a wonderful trip.

We are glad we were able to make a come-back trip to this wonderful country.

Nice and Settled

2011-12-03T09:35:00.000-05:00

We are now on our three-month mark since we arrived in Serbia. We each feel at home and comfortable in this country. After a while, the kids develop a certain routine which is part of settling into a new home.

Celine enjoys school and is doing very well. She enjoys writing essays and particularly reading fiction. She is taking horse riding lessons and truly loves it. This has been a passion for her for years which she had placed in hiatus while in Bangladesh.

Austin is loving kindergarden and is blossoming in his writing and reading. He's quickly learning to write his letters and putting some simple sentences together. He's a joy in our lives as he brings so much energy and enthusiasm to everything. He's at an age of discovery in which everything is "Why?"

We have a family tradition of weekend family sleepovers in which we pick a good movie and watch it together. As you can see Austin and Mambo (our Havanese bichon) are inseparable even during sleep.

Tyler is also having a great time in school and has made a good number of friends. Here he's using the laptop provided by the school to all middle-schoolers. We have been happy to see how technology is so fully integrated into every class and assignment.

The search for a perfect Thanksgiving dinner Overseas

2011-11-23T12:33:00.001-05:00

Every year families around the United States gather on Thanksgiving day with family and friends to celebrate this very important Holiday. For Americans this is probably one of the most important holidays as it is one of the few occasions in which families living hundreds of miles away gather together for this feast.
Equally, Thanksgiving is an important day for U.S. Embassy employees and American expats spread around the world. This dinner sometimes is one family, although often it is an occasion to invite either another American family or close local friends. The making of this meal is always a moment of great pride: every family has some secret turkey recipe or a special pie from grandma. However, searching for the right ingredients can be a major challenge for those stationed abroad. Turkey, although very popular in the United States, is often a lesser-known bird in many countries. When we were stationed in Bangladesh for example, finding a good roasting turkey was very difficult locally (i.e. next to impossible). Thus, our embassy commissary (small shop that is able to import various hard-to-find American products for embassy employees overseas) had a large order of frozen turkeys and hams coming all the way across the world, specially ordered for this occasion.

This year, Julie and I had a hard time finding sweet potatoes (lpomoea batatas), the type we commonly eat in USA in this occasion. Some like them as a sweet potato pie, while others like it as a soufflé-like recipe. Although there are many excellent Green Markets in Belgrade, with some of the best produce we have ever seen, finding those darned sweet potatoes was hard. First of all, how do you call sweet potatoes in Serbian? We did a quick online translation and put sweet potatoes and out comes out "indijski krompir" or "Indian potatoes". So with this information we went to the market to ask for them. As we did not see any, we asked the farmers selling the regular potatoes for some "indijski krompir". One laughed and said in Serbian "we only have Serbian potatoes, not from India". We quickly realized we either had the wrong translation or people just did not eat sweet potatoes here. In a few days we found out from our Serbian-language teacher that it was both: people just do not normally grow this variety, and the actual name is "slatki krompir". We got lucky that the embassy commissary came through for us and had imported some of this precious cargo this year.

What are other hard-to-find Thanksgiving products overseas? As mentioned, a plumpy American-style turkey is often hard as well as those delicious sweet potatoes. Also cranberries and blueberries can be hard to find, and depending in the country also a good Ham.

We are Thankful for another wonderful year and blessed every day is so many ways. We hope your Thanksgiving is equally great.

Tyler's trip to Moscow

2011-11-21T13:46:00.000-05:00

Tyler had a unique opportunity this last week to travel with the Speech and Debate team from his middle school at the International School in Belgrade. This was not only the first year he joined this group, but also the first time he was flying to another country without the rest of the family.

His initial email back was brief and to the point: “I got to Russia. It is already snowing here and it is cold. I am having lunch now. Bye”. We were not quite sure if this meant he was having a good time or not.

He made it back fine, and Julie and I were happy to see our elder son back. He had great stories to tell us about how cool Moscow was, how cold the weather was as well and how nice the host family was with him. He had a wonderful time at the Speech and Debate tournament and did well for his first year. He’s already talking about next year’s competition.

We are happy to see this wonderful opportunities for our children as we live in this very mobile and multi-cultural environment. This is yet another reason we love working for the Foreign Service and the many international experiences we each enjoy.

Tyler at St Basil's in Red Square

Fall in Belgrade

2011-11-19T12:02:00.000-05:00

As Fall is now in full force here in Serbia, and the weather has gotten considerably colder, the leaves have changed colors and have started to fall. It had been many years since we had enjoyed Fall season, as we lived in Bangladesh and in Florida. Our children are eagerly looking forward to the first snow. They have had brief encounters with snow, but have not lived through a full winter season.

We’ve had several foggy days (or "froggy" as Austin calls it) in the last few weeks and it gives the city a mysterious look. The picture above is in Kosutnjak, the forest near our house, which takes a very different look during this season as the trees look beautiful in the bright yellow colors and the fog gives the whole place a very surreal look.

Today we did some vegetable and fruit shopping at one of the many Pijacas, or green market, which are so common in this city. Here you will find some of the most delicious vegetables and fruits one could imagine. We have been amazed at the difference in taste and quality as compared to the mass-produced ones back home. Although the variety is less so now as the cold weather has arrived, the choices are still wonderful.

After the shopping, we stopped at one of the many small restaurants in and around Kosutnjak forest for a wonderful lunch.

We continue to enjoy being back on a four-season climate. It will be interesting to see the changes with the first big snow.

Vienna

2011-10-22T01:59:00.000-04:00

After our short stay in Budapest, our next stop was Vienna. It only takes about 2 1/2 hour drive from Budapest to Vienna. Since both countries are members of the European Union, crossing borders is as easy as going from Florida to Georgia back in USA. If the thought that comes to mind when visiting Budapest is "gorgeous", then the thought you have when visiting Vienna is "elegant and magnificent". Vienna was at the epicenter for many centuries of the Habsburg Dinasty which dominated a large part of this region. The opulence one encounters is magnificent and is noted in every corner of this beautiful city. It was amazing how just taking a short walk would take you from one famous location to another.

Multiple palaces are found in this area. We visited a couple of palaces. The one above is Belvedere Palace, which was built by Prince Eugene of Savoy in the late 1600s.

Belvedere Palace houses an exquisite art collection. We were not allowed to take pictures inside but if you go to Vienna, it is worth the visit even if going with kids.

Since we did not know Vienna well yet. We bought a ticket for the Hop-on-Hop-off Bus. We've taken multiple similar buses in other cities around the world and sometimes you come off thinking it was not worth the money (such as the Hop-on-hop-off in Singapore). Anyway, this one was really worth it as it included three different loops you could choose. The main gathering place for all three loops is the Opera House, picture below.

As I mentioned earlier, just taking a short walk in Vienna takes you from one famous building to some famous monument, etc.

Here's Robert's dad with a monument to Mozart

St. Stephen's cathedral is a beautiful church in Vienna built in the 1300s. It has a tower with over 300s steps which we climbed to get this beautiful view of Vienna. We were joking that Robert's father is in better shape than everyone else in the family and was panting less than anyone after the climb on this claustrophobic set of steps.

Celine is our animal lover and really wanted to take a carriage ride. These elegant carriages take you on a 30 min or 60 min ride around the center of Vienna. It was a beautiful crisp Fall day for a carriage ride.

We visited yet another Palace, called Schonbrunn. This was a 1400s Summer home of the Habsburg Monarchs. My personal opinion is that this is a more impressive place to visit than Belvedere, although both are really worth visiting for different reasons. The audio tour was very nice in Schonbrunn and it was offered both in English and Spanish which was perfect for Robert's dad. It was cool to be in the same room where these monarchs lived and where Mozart played for them for example or where Napoleon Bonaparte slept when he invaded this region.

Our tour guide in the bus told us Vienna is the 5th most visited city in the World. We could easily believe it by the large amount of tours we saw everywhere we went (despite this being low season). This does take away from the beauty, but still Vienna is a great place to visit.

Budapest

2011-10-20T13:36:00.001-04:00

We had a fun road trip to Budapest, Vienna and Zagreb to coincide with the kids Fall vacation. It sure is nice to have our minivan with us again to make these long trips. We embarked on our 1500 Km giant circle. I’ll blog a little about each major spot over this week. My dad is visiting us for a few months and was very eager to visit these cities.

Our first stop was Budapest. We had heard from so many others that this was a must-see city and they were right. The city is crossed by the Danube river in a magnificent way. The west side is commonly called Buda while the East side is Pest. Buda is older and hillier with many of the famous buildings and palaces being on this side, while the Pest side is flatter and has a more city-like feel.

Castle Hill Palace can be reached by a funicular which was a fun way for kids and adults to reach it. At the top you have a gorgeous view of the Pest side of Budapest, perfect for a great panoramic picture.

You can cross to the Pest side over several bridges with beautiful ornate architecture. The night view from the Pest side is amazing as you can see.

We lucked out in finding a rather nice cottage-hotel at the outskirts of town. This golf resort has various cottages they rent out and the place apparently has horse back riding and during the summer a pool, golf and tennis courts. We may just have to return for a reprise in the Spring or the Summer.

We definitely stayed too little time in this city!

Zlatibor Mountain Resort

2011-09-30T15:05:00.000-04:00

We decided to take a longer trip this last weekend to the beautiful mountain resort of Zlatibor. It took us about 4 hours to get there form Belgrade and it is rather close to the border with Bosnia. The area is gorgeous as it is full of beautiful mountains with canyons along the way.

The town of Zlatibor is famous as a summer and winter resort for Serbians, and its waters are famous for their purity. We rented a log cabin that reminded us a lot of "Little house in the Prairie" from t.v. It was perfect for us since we were six people all together.

In Mokra Gora you can also catch a train called the Sargan 8, because the rail has a shape of a number 8 if viewed from the air. The tourist train takes you through some twenty tunnels and many beautiful canyons and deep-green forests. It was truly beautiful!

The nearby town of Mokra Gora has some very interesting sites to visit. Among them is Mecavnik, which is a small wooden replica town built by a famous movie director from the Balkans.

Where Should We Go Today? Topola

2011-09-18T12:16:00.000-04:00

Visit to Topola, Serbia

Where should we go today? We had initially planned a trip to another location but then realized it would be too far away for a one day trip. Maybe another weekend. Thus, I looked on my list of "must see places while in Serbia" which I have gathered over time while reading about this country. What about Topola?

How nice it is to just be able to pick up and visit so many historical sites on a whim. We took the one and half hour drive from Belgrade to the small town of Topola which is south of the capital. The drive is beautiful as you are able to see the Sumadija region with all the rolling mountains along the way. The most interesting site to visit while in Topola is Oplenac, the Mausoleum for the Karadordevic Royal Family. This place was built by King Peter I to house the remains of his grandfather King Karadorde (Black George) who is famous for organizing the first Serbian uprising against the Ottoman Turks in the early 1800s. He's considered the founder of modern Serbia. The remains of King Peter I himself, as well as several other members of this family are located in this mausoleum.

The Mosaics inside this mausoleum are astonishing and the level of detail is amazing. We were told by the guide that were around 28 million pieces of mosaic tiles. Many of the scenes shown on these mosaics are replicas from mosaics or paintings found in many other medieval-time Orthodox Churches throughout the former Yugoslavia which no longer exist as they were long destroyed. Thus many of these mosaics are the only remaining samples of these drawings.

The mausoleum is full of symbolism. Many important battles are represented, and even the upside-down crown-shaped chandelier in this picture symbolizes the loss that the kingdom had for five centuries against the Ottoman empire.

The surroundings to Oplenac are beautiful and the weather was perfect to just take a stroll with the kids.

The region is also a fertile one, and one can see many vineyards along the way.

All in all, this is a place I highly recommend for any expat or tourist wanting to learn a little about the Serbian culture and heritage and for anyone wanting an interesting one-day trip outside Belgrade.

Living in a 220 volt World

2011-09-09T13:26:00.000-04:00

Argh! That was my first reaction as I immediately knew the big mistake I had just made. I had just plugged my beautiful new color laser printer into the power socket and it made a giant “pop” sound and smoke came out. Since this was not my first time making this mistake (Yes, you would think I would have learned by now!), I immediately knew I had just plugged a 110 volt item into a 220 outlet and had just burned it to a crisp. Julie took a look at my frustrated face as she knew what had just happened.

In a world that is getting smaller by the day, it still baffles me why we have a 220 vs 110 volt world. There is some very interesting history in this regard. As you can see in the map below, actually most of the world is 220 v, and the 110 v people are mostly in the New World with a few exceptions. Early in the history of electricity use, Thomas Edison championed a 110 v DC (direct current) type of system, but the system that later became standard in the USA was that championed by Nicola Tesla (originally from Serbia) who worked for the Westinghouse Company to use the AC (alternate current) system which was more efficient. Most of Europe was also 110 v early-on, but after World War II, most European countries switched to the 220 v as this is a more efficient system for electricity delivery. Since infrastructure had been so devastated and many people did not own too many electrical devices, it was easy to rebuild with a new system. USA’s infrastructure was largely untouched by the war. It was considered to switch to 220 v but then decided it was too costly to switch this huge country. As a compromise they switched the delivery to the home to be 220 v but then it gets split down to 110 v prior to use inside, except for stoves and electric clothes dryer which are still usually 220 v. Interesting, eh?

I’m usually pretty careful, and most electronics nowadays accept both 110 and 220 v. However, every now and then some manufacturer still makes a 110 v only item such as this laser printer. (Why?) Sometimes the artifact in question takes either voltage but you have to manually move a switch in the back of the artifact PRIOR to plugging it. Otherwise, the result is the same “pop” and waste of money. (That is how I burned an HP computer in Bangladesh).

As we traveled to multiple countries, one of the things I have to research ahead of time is not only the 110 vs 220 v issue, but also the myriad of plugs that are used throughout the world, sometimes for rather capricious reasons. You don’t want to get stuck in Australia not using your computer just because you forgot they have such a unique plug. To make it more complicated, sometimes our embassy housing uses a particular plug that is UK style in countries where they use the continental European style. That was what happened to us in Bangladesh. Needless to say, we have bought all kinds of plugs to connect our many electric items but we still find ourselves having to buy more when we move to our new home. Just imagine how many things you have connected to a plug in your house? Now imagine every one of those now will not accept not only your voltage but also your plug.

Just when you thought we were done with the 220 vs 110 and the multiple plug issue, you also need to consider 50 vs 60 Hz frequency! I don’t want to make it too complicated or make this an online electrical engineering class, but it usually does not affect you much except when using certain specific items. For example, I could never get any electrical timer on the 110 v coffee machine or my 110 v alarm clock to work correctly in Bangladesh even after connecting it to a 220 to 110 transformer. Apparently it has to do with the fact that electricity is 60 Hz frequency in USA, while it is 50 Hz in Bangladesh and many other countries. It is just easier to buy alarm clocks and coffee makers that are made for 220 v 50 Hz systems.

Electricity is rather stable here in Serbia. However, in Bangladesh we also had a big issue with power outages. We would sometimes lose power 10-15 times/day (no kidding!) We were lucky that our house had a giant diesel generator, but we still needed APS units to give a back-up power for about 1-2 minutes while the generators kicked-in. Our house was full of converters, APS units and plug adapters.

Most people only have to deal with one power voltage and one type of plug all of their lives. However, our lives are rather different as we move our household every 2-3 years and travel a lot in the region. As a cup half-full type of guy, I find these eccentricities of life amusing. Today I did not find it so amusing since it was a costly one after burning my printer. Ask me tomorrow, and I’ll be able to make a joke about how I burned a computer in Bangladesh and a laser printer in Serbia. What will I burn in my next post?

A few Sights Around Belgrade

2011-09-04T13:22:00.000-04:00

Belgrade is a city full of amazing places to visit where history and beauty often meet. We continue our discovery of this city one weekend at a time. This weekend we chose to stay in Belgrade and take a look at some of the attractions closer to home.

St. Sava Cathedral is at the heart of the city. It is the largest Orthodox Christian church in the Balkans and it was built 300 years after the burning of the remains of this Saint. You can read a lot more about the history of this beautiful Cathedral following this link

The cathedral inside is still in a remodeling/reconstruction condition, but the outside is beautiful.

Near the Cathedral to St. Sava, there is a Green Market called Kalenic Pijaca. This is the largest green market in Belgrade, but there are smaller ones all over the city. The farmers bring their freshest vegetables and fruits. We had tasted some of the most delicious grapes, nectarines and pears at these green markets.

The following day we took a short drive to Mount Avala which overlooks Belgrade. There is a large TV tower with an observatory.

Monument to the Unknown Soldier at Mount Avala

Celine with our new puppy Mambo!

View of Belgrade from the TV tower at Mount Avala

The TV tower at Mount Avala

On our way back from Mount Avala we had lunch at the Stari Majdan Restaurant. Somehow we were able to figure out the menu despite our very limited Serbian. However, we did not know that each plate could feed a family!

The food was delicious and the plates were gigantic

To finish our weekend, we took a tranquil walk at the beautiful park near our house called Kosutnjak. This large city park has many wooded areas and plenty of cafes or restaurants in the periphery. It is a great place to take a walk or simply relax on a bench.

We find so far this city to a very livable and relaxing city. We were lucky to get here at the end of summer and enjoy the last few weeks of nice warm weather.

Trip to Fruska Gora Forest and the City of Novi Sad

2011-09-03T07:57:00.000-04:00

Last weekend we took our first trip outside Belgrade. With the help of our GPS, driving is rather easy around Belgrade despite the fact that we do not yet know enough Serbian nor are the signs easily found. It was time to give it a try outside Belgrade.

Our family loves to take long walks outdoors, so a trip to the Forest of Fruska Gora seemed like a good choice. It is near the city of Novi Sad, which is about 1 1/2 hours north, half way between Belgrade and the border with Hungary.

I read a little on our Bradt Guide about the region and, as expected, it is full of history. During the Ottoman Empire invasion of this region, many monasteries were established in this forest where the Serbian Orthodox monks could seek solitude.

The pictured monastery is Novo Hopovo. It was actually very small, but the frescos inside of religious paintings were really beautiful.

We visited as well the monastery of Krusedol and walked in the well-maintained paths of Fruska Gora.

Unlike many places in the New World, we find every corner has some historical relevance worth exploring.

On our way back from Fruska Gora forest, we stopped by Novi Sad, which is the second largest city in Serbia. Compared to Belgrade, it is considerably smaller and has about 300,000 inhabitants. It has a charming old-style look and has a very impressive fortress as its main sight called Petrovaradin. The original fortress was built in the Roman Empire time, but the current one was built many centuries later when the Habsburg empire was strong and trying to defend against the Ottomans in the south. It used to be a small city-fortress and had up to 200 houses at one time. Just like in Belgrade, there are restaurants and cafes all over, and we enjoyed a nice dinner at one of the many outdoor restaurants.

Central Plaza in Novi Sad

The sight of the Danube river and Novi Sad from this fortress are spectacular.

Signing-in from Serbia

2011-08-24T15:14:00.000-04:00

Our family arrived in Belgrade last week for our next post overseas. They say first impressions are everything, and so far this promises to be a great place to call home for the next few years. We arrived on a sunny summer day and were eagerly eyeing the city from the airplane as it landed. Our sponsor helped us to our new home and had even cooked some spaghetti for us. Our family took a collective: wow! when we saw our house for the first time as it is superb. It has five bedrooms, five bathrooms, a gorgeous gigantic yard that fully envelopes the house with evergreen trees and play area for our children. Our sponsors and neighbors have told us this neighborhood is very much like ours was back in Florida where children can go out to play on the street and visit each other. Needless to say, day one in Belgrade started great.

We were a little wiser with this move. After all, this now being our second post with the Foreign Service, we have now learned a few lessons from older and wiser career diplomats. First of all, we bought a car from a departing diplomatic family so we would have a car ready for use on day one while we wait for our minivan to make the long trip across the Indian and Mediterranean Oceans from Dhaka to Belgium and then to Belgrade. The seller even threw-in his GPS with the price which has been God-sent for a newcomer family. Belgrade has a very good transportation infrastructure, so taking the bus to work is no problem, but it is always nice to have a car for daily shopping and sightseeing.

Within the first few days, we have been to two barbecues by other embassy families and to various shopping and entertainment areas in this town. The food promises to be very tasty and the variety of vegetable and fruits is great as well. They tell us that meat products are big in this land, and indeed the pates and cured meats have been wonderful. The local Balkan wines and Rakijas (local spirit made from various fruits) are excellent and I look forward to visiting some wineries in the future.

We love taking walks, and there is a huge forest-like part near our home called Kosutnjak, where we love to take strolls and explore the neighborhood. This park has a small ski hill for winter, but also multiple outdoor pools, tennis courts, basketball courts and restaurants nestled within this large 300 hectares (800 acres!) urban park.

As we don’t like to stay idle, we also visited Ada Ciganlija. This is an urban island-park at the heart of Belgrade. What a great idea! This park offers a bathing escape for the locals along the Sava river and has multiple restaurants and bars where to order a drink while you watch your kids swim on the artificial beach. You can rent bikes or roller blades to go around the park, bungee jump or takes water-ski lessons. I can see this will be a place we’ll return multiple times over our post here.

Belgrade promises to be a city full of history. It sits at the confluence of the Sava and the Danube rivers and has historically been an important transition between East and West. We already visited Kalemegdan Fort, which is an ancient fort initially built by the Romans and destroyed and rebuilt multiple times over the centuries. This fort has been visited by empires such as the Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman as well as going through two World Wars and many other fights in between. It offers a magnificent view of the Sava and Danube rivers from the top of the hill and it has a military museum with interesting armored relics from the 1930-1940s era.

The people of Belgrade are very welcoming, and my staff at the clinic are particularly helpful in every step of the way. Since we still not know hardly any Serbian (we hope to start our classes soon), the younger generation here appears to know enough English to help us at the mall or at the local grocery market.

Finally, the kids started school this week. Austin is now in kindergarten, but his transition was rather easy as he had already attended pre-K last year at the same school as his siblings while in Dhaka. All three are eager to meet their teachers and classmates. We hope they have a great school year.

So, we start our discovery of this region and particularly of Serbia. From our initial exposure this promises to be a great gem not yet fully discovered by many in the West.

End of Summer

2011-08-13T15:52:00.001-04:00

All good things come to an end, and so does our time in USA for Home Leave. During these four weeks, we had a fun time visiting friends in Florida and family in Kentucky.

We spent some of our final days in Floria dipping our toes on the warm waters of Sarasota, Florida. The white beaches and the beautiful villa were a perfect combination for a relaxing time.

We finally came back full circle as we returned to Tampa Bay, to spend a few more days with friends prior to our big departure to Serbia.

We leave to Serbia today. We look forward to an exciting and challenging new home. Many places to explore and people to meet. We'll keep you posted.

Summer Fun in USA- part 1

2011-08-07T07:12:00.000-04:00

Our family has a successful trip back to USA for our Home Leave. This is the transition period we are allowed to "repatriate" in between posts. The actual trip back home from Dhaka was rather painful as it involved stops in Singapore, Tokyo and Washington DC prior to getting to Florida. To make things more complicated, our flight connection was poorly planned by our travel agent, putting us for a very short amount of time in Singapore. We missed the connection and had to spend a night there. Our poor cat, Khalo was being transported as "checked-in" luggage and we had to ask the workers to bring him out to feed him. We all made it to USA after about 48 hours of traveling!

So far we have had a wonderful, and uneventful Home Leave. We reconnected with our great friends in Florida and have spent many hours of hanging out by the pool or visiting some of the great amusement parks in Orlando. Robert's brother and family came to Orlando and we spent some fun days in Disney and Sea World.

We also have spent some great days with Julie's family in Kentucky. The kids had a blast playing in the country and the adults had wonderful bonding time taking long walks.

Robert's dad has united our gang as he'll be visiting us for the next few months. We plan to take him to visit Serbia and stay there for a few months.

It has been two years since I personally spent more than just a few days in USA. We note many things being the same, and some having changed considerably. In Florida, we still love the blue sky and the nice neighborhoods. We do note a sense of great economic anxiety in the daily news and conversations. We have been rather isolated from the economic upheaval going on in this country for the past two years.

We feel a bit like nomads at present time. My facebook account still say I live in Dhaka, and my aunt reminded me I should change it as I don't live in Dhaka anymore. But what place shall I write? I guess it will have to wait until we make our move to Serbia. Meanwhile, we'll continue having some fun in our remaining days in USA.

Abar Dekha Hobe Bangladesh (See you later Bangladesh)

2011-07-08T18:58:00.000-04:00

We come to the end of our tour in Bangladesh. We have called this country home for almost two years, and we have had a great experience. This was our first tour with the Foreign Service and look forward to many new experiences. We leave this country with beautiful memories of great people and places we visited. This picture above is at the American Club, at the same spot we took our first picture in Bangladesh almost two years ago.

From day one upon arrival, it is obvious to any Western expat that your senses will be exposed to a plethora of stimuli. We arrived with few preconceptions and open to meet new people and embrace our new lifestyle in the Foreign Service. At the time we were still tentative if the family as a whole would adjust well.

Life in the Foreign Service

Since this was our first post, we were not only testing the waters in this very different environment, but also testing a new job and lifestyle. We have learned that we love it and see many new posts ahead of us. Prior to joining the Foreign Service, most of what you read in books or the news is very sketchy and brief. Some people warned us that the kids would have a very hard time, while others just looked at us bewildered why I would give up a nice lucrative practice and a beautiful home in Florida to plunge into this rather different way of life.

Life in the Foreign Service is not easy, but that is the whole reason one joins it. It is not for those that like the same meal, the same routine or the same town for their whole life. We envisioned exposing our children to various cultures, and we could not have done better at any other post. The American International School in Dhaka is a wonderful amalgam of cultures. Our kids have friends from every corner of the world, and from some countries who are typically enemies of each other. Yet, they have become close friends with many. They learned to make friends quickly, yet their relationships do not seem to be shallow. For adults that is harder, and the relationships are more casual since you know people will part their different ways soon.

My work is wonderful. I truly love the job, as it is a perfect mixture of my passion in medicine and travel. The environment at the embassy is collegial and the team is made of highly skilled people who devote countless hours for their work. When people casually criticize the government workers as a blanket statement on the TV news back home, I wish I could showcase some of the people we have met over the past two years. Most of them are professionals with excellent credentials, who could make much more in the private sector. Yet, they have chosen this career they truly enjoy.

Our family has felt welcome every step of the way by our embassy folks and this was possibly the biggest reason our transition from USA to Bangladesh was so effortless.

Life in Bangladesh

As I mentioned before, from day one in this country you are confronted with sights that challenge some of your preconceptions about life. Life is very hard for many here, and you feel like you need to do something to help but feel overwhelmed at the great needs you see every day. Yet, the people from this country are hard workers and have a stoic personality. They are warm people and very curious about foreigners. The most common question they had was “What country are you from?” and they loved to look at our children. Dhaka is dense and is never a quiet place. Yes, traffic is horrible but thankfully we had a great driver and our home was very close to the embassy and the American Club. When we traveled into the villages, people made us feel like we were royalty. This is always a little awkward for us, coming from a typical middle class background.

Julie embarked on a self-driven volunteer project to teach English to some of the employees at our embassy who had the lowest levels in our language. She has not only made a great contribution, but also found a calling. I am proud of her for her big heart. The little boy Palak whom we mentioned in a previous blogpost had his heart surgery in India thanks to the compassion and help of many at the embassy and I am happy to say is recovering at this moment from this successful life-or-death procedure.

Expats as a group tend to stay close to each other in Dhaka. There are various expat clubs including the American Club (our second home!), the Australian, the Canadians, the British, the Nordic and the German clubs. They all have activities in which they invite each other to keep the group together. We have met wonderful people from many embassies or other foreign groups. It no longer feels strange to rub elbows with ambassadors, other diplomats or local members of the government. They are really just like anybody else and have wonderful stories to tell from prior experiences.

The Bangla food is delicious. I will personally miss the great spicy foods such as Chicken Bhuna, Chicken Biryani, Kichori, Dhal (lentil soup), all kinds of curries, chowpatti (flat bread that look like flour tortillas), and of course some buttered Naan Indian bread. Who cannot miss the delicious mangoes and lychees?

We will miss Mary, who has taken care of our house cleaning and cooking and more importantly our children many times. She loves Austin in particular whom she calls her Shuna dada (beautiful boy). She’s a warm person with a perennial smile and great work ethic. Our driver Benjamin, who was able to magically navigate our large Honda minivan through the most unbelievably crowded and chaotic streets we have ever seen.

Life outside Bangladesh

Expats in Bangladesh tend to travel extensively outside the country. It is partly due to the lack of a strong internal tourist infrastructure and partly due to the amazing regional experiences one can enjoy. We have taken full advantage of our new home base and traveled to many interesting and some exotic locations. We have gone to India, Nepal, Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia, Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand as a family. Robert has also traveled to Dubai and Turkey. We have seen amazing temples in Nepal and Cambodia, beautiful scenery in the Himalayas, the Taj Mahal in India, the Sunderbans in Bangladesh, and petted Kangaroos and Koalas in Sydney. Asia/Oceania are amazing continents, and the food, sights and experiences are both exotic and alluring. We still feel we have barely touched this continent and will need to make a comeback.

Life after Bangladesh: Serbia

After a one month "home leave" trip to USA, we'll be onward to our next post: Serbia. They say that you will always remember your first post. That will certainly be true for us. We embarked on this odyssey two years ago, when we began our blog and it has been amazing. We leave with interesting stories, wonderful memories and some painful ones. I hope we all have grown from this life in Bangladesh. Our next home is Serbia and we could not be more excited. We already have lots of information and it looks like the places and the people will be wonderful. We’ve always been interested in exploring the Balkans and Eastern Europe in general.

Every new post will have challenges and enjoyments. That is what keeps life interesting. I am sure we will be posting many new sights from our future home.Again, we'll have many interesting stories, wonderful memories and some painful ones. As long as we embark on this journey together as a family, it will continue to be worth the adventure.

So, it is Abar Dekha Hobe Bangladesh meaning See You later Bangladesh, as you never know if one day I’ll be back for some work-related or personal reason. We’ll keep this country in our memories and our heart forever.

Pack Out Day

2011-06-18T07:30:00.000-04:00

Crazy, hectic, chaos! How many synonyms can you have for pack out day?

The Monestel family is currently going through this process which is a necessary difficult step at the end of every post. Our days are coming to a close here in Bangladesh as we have now less than one month left. Wow, time has gone by so fast. It seems like yesterday that our sponsors were taking us to the American Club for lunch and we took this lovely picture -- our first in Bangladesh.

We have had a great time in our first post. It has been exciting, challenging and eye-opening. It has been in every aspect exactly what we hoped and expected and then some more. Julie has devoted a lot of effort not only to her work as part-time CLO (helping other Americans at the embassy feel welcome and helping with newcomers), but has also answered her inner-heart call to help by volunteering on her own time teaching conversational English the employees at the embassy with the lowest levels of English. The kids loved their school and made many friends from all over the world along the way.

I expect we’ll feel this ambivalence when it is time to leave every post. We feel that we have barely gotten started here and will miss the people that have become part of our lives. For example, we’ll miss Mary who has been our Ayah (nanny) and cook for the past two years. She’s not only a great cook but a trustworthy woman with an eternal smile on her face. Austin loves here.

At the same time, we are excited about our next post: Serbia. We have been lucky as we already know our future house and have seen the beautiful pictures. The kids have even carefully picked which room will be theirs. We have also lined-up a used car to buy when we get there (which will be waiting for us at the garage at our new home with dip plates already in place!), a nanny and even the internet service will be ready from day one! Talk about hitting the road with your shoes on.

Still, pack out is pack out. It is not fun and it is the great equalizer: everyone from the Ambassador to the first tour consular officer has to endure it. The folks that came to do it were great and really took their time and care. They listened to our suggestions and made it as easy as possible. Their service was definitely more costumer-oriented than the ones that did our packing in USA when we were getting ready to leave, and likely made a fraction of what the others did.

For those not in the Foreign Service, we have two main shipments: HHE and UAB which basically are what goes by boat and what goes by air respectively. What goes by boat has a much higher weight allowance and is fairly flat regardless of family size (that does not seem fair -- especially for a family of five), and the air allowance does take into account family size. We have to be VERY careful with not going over any of those weight allowances unless you want to pay a hefty amount of overweight charges. I was sweating it this time. We had recently bought a new parabolic dish antenna to catch the Armed Forces Network (great little perk given to State Department folks typically only for the military families) but were dismayed to see that the dish was HUGE! Thus, I was keeping close tabs on each box’s weight and keeping tally in this two-day ordeal of packing. At the end of the final day, I breathed a big sigh of relief when our final weight was about 200 lbs lower that our maximum. Hey, we may even buy a few more things (just kidding).

We still have UAB (air shipment) packing day to go. This we’ll do two weeks prior to leaving. Then we’ll be living on bare necessities. Thankfully the GSO (the office that takes good care of our houses overseas) provides a “transition” kit with sheets, pillows, cooking/eating utensils and even a small tv to bridge those last few days. You gotta love a well-oiled machine such as GSO. However, you still have to live without some comfort things for a few weeks such as your beloved desktop computers, large tv and kids toys.

All of our stuff will go to Serbia. Typically the air shipment makes it there anywhere from 2-4 weeks after arrival, and the one by boat takes much longer anywhere from 8-10 weeks. Our trusty minivan will take about that long too, but we are less worried about that now that we know we’ll have a station wagon waiting for us. We’ll have 4 weeks of Home Leave in USA, which is a requirement by the government to repatriate folks after every post. We’ll be making many stops in Florida, Kentucky and other places in between. We are excited to see dear friends, family and places we miss. Furthermore, my dad will come from Costa Rica to join us in USA and then go to Serbia for a few months. My brother and his family will also join us for a few days in Orlando for our kids to get together and have some fun. This month of fun will ease the transition into our new home in Serbia.

So, time is ticking and we anxiously await the big changes ahead for us.

Our Girl Turns Ten

2011-06-16T20:28:00.002-04:00

Wow, how time flies! It seems like yesterday that we welcomed our beautiful little girl into this world. I was privileged to actually deliver Celine into this world, and remember vividly what a vivacious girl she was from the first minute of her life. She had beautiful pink lips and a hearty cry.

Celine has a unique spirit. She has a joyful soul and has a giant heart. She has a passion for animals and this has demonstrated from very early in her life. You will notice that many of the pictures in her collage include many different animals, from dogs, to butterflies to horses. She loves them all!
Celine also share a passion for the stage. You will see many pictures of her dancing or acting. She’s a natural in this matter. We continue to be amazed by her ongoing transformation into a young lady and one day she will be a beautiful woman.

We had an early birthday party for her this year, as many of her friends were leaving Bangladesh as soon as school finished for the summer. She’s excited about her move to Serbia but at the same time sad to see many of her friends leave.

I have made a collage of pictures of Celine from birth to present. Enjoy
(If you click on the pictures, it will take you to Flickr and you can see each picture in a larger format or as a slideshow)

Raising Hope

2011-06-15T10:18:00.000-04:00

Believe it or not it's Julie blogging this time. I know. I have no business blogging. I rarely facebook and barely e-mail. But I just had to blog about Palak. His story has touched me and many others beyond words.

As I taught English to many of the facilities maintenance staff here at the Embassy, I’ve gotten to know some of them pretty well and some have begun to see me as a mother figure that they can take their problems to, at least for a listening ear.

A little over a month ago, one of my students brought to my office one of his distressed colleagues. The man, through translation from the student, informed me that his eight-month-old son, named Palak had a hole in the wall of his heart and a dysfunctional valve. The baby needed open-heart surgery for which he needed to fly to Bangalore, India.

After consultation with the hospital in Bangalore and calculating travel costs, they would need nearly 1,000,000 taka (about $14,000 – it would be 10 times that in the States) to proceed, of which 700,000 taka would need to come out of his own pocket. Where would it come from given the fact that Palak’s dad only earns 13,000 taka ($180) per month)? He, like millions of people around the world, live hand-to-mouth. There is no property for collateral for a loan. There is no rich uncle to help him out. There is nothing. There was no hope for Palak and you could see it on his father’s face.

Upon hearing the sad news, I and several others at the embassy took on a campaign to raise the money to create hope. But how could we possibly raise $14,000? The embassy is not a large embassy. We placed drop boxes in several key places that expatriates frequent. We published his story in our embassy newsletter. We forwarded his information to everyone we could think of. And we hoped for the best. Part of the problem is, though, that in a country with such overwhelming suffering, in some places that I wanted to promote Palak’s story I was met with reluctance as they also had their own staff with similar stories of suffering and we wouldn’t want to take away from money raising activities for these individuals.

I have been personally touched by this story because over twelve years ago, my nephew was born with the same two conditions (plus one) that required emergency surgery shortly after his birth. His life was saved without the question of money. After a very rough beginning to his life, my nephew is now a thriving fifth grader who has blessed his family and friends in so many ways. I can’t imagine the world without him in it. And yet, who is he or who are we that God blessed our family with the location and time of his birth? Is this baby or this family any less worthy just because of the circumstances in which they were born?

Until you’ve been to this part of the world, you cannot imagine how many Palaks there are! You don't have to look very far to see children and adults in even graver situations. In many street corners you are greeted by people with disfigurements as a result of birth defects or accidents. These people have little access to health care and they are on the street to see if someone will drop them a little money for meals that day. With this in mind, you can see that Palak’s family is actually very fortunate here because his dad has a stead, good job that keeps them off the street. Palak’s story has touched all of us at the embassy, perhaps because he is just one baby but represents millions of children.

Even though the task of raising so much money seemed daunting, we had to try. How could we let a stroke of bad luck take this precious life? How could we let this beautiful baby, part of our embassy family, fall the way of so many others here? I am elated to report that 5 weeks later we have raised nearly 900,000 of the estimated 1,000,000 taka. We raised hope!

Palak and his parents are leaving for India tomorrow. I pray that everything turns out well for this boy and his family. With open-heart surgery looming there are still so many unknowns. Regardless of the outcome of the surgery, I’m thrilled that so many people gave from their hearts to make this one story of so many sad stories a happy ending. I pray that 12 years from now he will be a thriving adolescent like my nephew.

A Lost Art

2011-05-21T03:39:00.000-04:00

We were able to join a trip organized by the embassy to go to the Hindu village of Dhamrai, about one and half hour away from Dhaka by car. We had really wanted to go on this tour before, but every time the embassy organized one in the past we had some other event.
When I traveled to Nepal and Cambodia, it is common to see many statues made of bronze and brass. I was tempted to buy them but did not mostly because I was holding out for this trip and buying a piece there.
Dhamrai is a Hindu village in which a group of casters keep an ancient system of making exquisitely complex brass and bronze pieces, instead of the mass-produced pieces seen elsewhere. These hand made pieces are full of detail and are unique, as the mold used is destroyed in the process.
I'm going to walk you through the process we witnessed.

First, the master artist comes up with a shape he wants to make. He carves this shape on a special type of black wax, working for hours to give the detail needed to each piece. Here you can see him working on an elephant.

After finishing the wax model, he covers it with a fine layer of special clay. They let this fragile piece dry and then cover it with further layers of clay, sand and jute. Each layer has a different purpose which was beyond the level of what they taught us.

After working on each layer for days and letting them dry. These finally have an outer appearance of large clay eggs with one or two openings in which to pour the hot metal.

The oven to place the pieces is prepared. Like many things in Bangladesh, this process is excruciatingly manual. First a man (whom Tyler said had one of the toughest jobs he could think) gets inside the already hot oven to get the pieces carefully placed. He did this while barefooted, and we could see the rush and pain he had trying to get all the pieces before he would burn himself.

After placing the pieces in this ancient-style oven, the fire is brought to a 1000 celsius temperature which takes about another two hours. The hot metal is also melted in these ovens inside special egg-shaped basins. The pieces are carefully brought one by one outside and place on the ground and the hot metal is poured into the port holes that each clay egg has. The color of the metal varies from fluorescent green to bright orange.

The owner told us that the combination of copper and tin he uses varies depending on the color and type of piece he's making. Each piece is now allowed to cool-off anywhere from 20 minutes to several hours depending on the size. He told us it is not good to wait too long nor too little because if it is too little the hot metal can break-off and if it is too late the fine detail is lost on the top layer. He has no way of knowing when it is just right. It is only by experience.

Once the piece is ready, he breaks it just like cracking an egg. The new beautiful piece is revealed. Here you can see a piece showing a Bangladeshi man playing the drums.

Their display had hundreds of beautiful pieces. I was surprised by how heavy each piece was, since they are made of solid metal. They were considerably heavier than the pieces I saw in Nepal and Cambodia. The detail was exquisite. Look at this Indian chess piece set. He told us that chess originated in India about 1500 years ago and the pieces are different. For example, the reason the castle piece moves only in straight lines is because originally it was an elephant, and elephants move slowly. The reason the bishop moves diagonally is because it was a camel and they tend to be more erratic on their walk.

Some pieces don't survive the process and break during the cracking or did not receive an even amount of hot metal. These pieces are laboriously recycled to use the metal for new pieces.

After some deliberation. We settled on one beautiful medium-sized piece for our living: this beautiful elephant!

Here are some other beautiful pieces we saw. Some were too expensive for us, but I'm sure will make a wonderful adornment in someones showroom.

Lastly, we took a short walk to the rest of the village to witness the Hindu temple and the local market. It is always fun to see the locals and we bought some delicious lychee fruit.

How we love Skype!

2011-05-14T02:12:00.001-04:00

As a family working for the Foreign Service, we have come to appreciate certain services dearly. One of those has been Skype. No, this is not a paid commercial, but rather a simple note from someone whose families are separated by thousands of miles. In this picture you can see Austin showing his school project to his grandma in Costa Rica.

We have been using Skype for years, as we routinely communicated with Robert's family in Costa Rica. Robert moved to USA during college, many years prior to Skype or even the world wide web. During those years, international calls were also extremely expensive. Since Robert's family was not rich, and he was in USA thanks only to a full scholarship for college, we limited our phone calls to Costa Rica during those days to about 10 minutes every month! Robert's brother eventually saved enough money to buy a second-hand amateur "ham" radio and got his license; and Robert found a family in Williamsburg Kentucky who was willing to share their amateur ham radio time for us to communicate monthly with Costa Rica for free.

How small the world has become since those days. With the advent of the internet and VOIP (voice over the internet protocol), something that was so complicated to accomplish just in 1988 is now easy and basically free (except for the access to the internet). Although image is still sub par, we can't complain as we remember those days of using the Ham Radio and the constant radio-call checks you had to do, the poor quality of speech (did he say cheese or sneeze?), and how weather-dependent the conversation was. I am able now to video chat from the other side of the world from Dhaka, Bangladesh with our families not only in Costa Rica but also Julie's family in Kentucky and our friends in Florida.

When I travel for work to other regional countries, I again am relieved and perplexed as to how easy it is now to be lounging in front of the pool in the evening after work at the Yak & Yeti hotel in Kathmandu Nepal, over a wireless network with my ipad, and see video of Julie and the kids in Bangladesh and keep up how their school day went today. Indeed it is a small world!

Where does it go from here? The world will continue to get smaller. All levels of communications are merging and the companies that are jumping on this band wagon are bound to become very rich. I just heard that Microsoft is likely to buy Skype for $8.5 billion! Those companies that resist these communication transformations will become obsolete. TV and movies are quickly merging with the internet and companies such as netflix and hulu are being smart, but will still need to expand to capture a world market instead of staying bound to U.S. markets. Phone companies are quickly becoming mostly wireless service companies and landlines will become obsolete. We are often amazed how here in Bangladesh just about everyone has a cell phone, even your humble Rickshaw driver. In many countries you are able to pay your car parking, your bills and make restaurant reservations with your cell phone SMS. It is hard to predict, but twenty years from now you will likely have one device for your phone, computer, organizer, tv, radio and monetary exchange.

For now, we marveled at the simple fact that we can keep family ties despite living so many thousands of miles away from both sides of the family. Thanks Skype.

Discovering Cambodia

2011-04-27T19:22:00.000-04:00

We decided to have one last major family trip outside Bangladesh prior to leaving South Asia this coming summer. Although we have been very lucky to visit many amazing locations in our short two years here, we still have many other places we would love to visit. Of course, Asia is a huge continent and we have only so much time and money to travel. We tell ourselves that we will definitely need to come back on a future post to Asia. So, we decided to take a short visit to an emerging tourist spot of which we had heard amazing stories from seasoned Foreign Service Officers: Cambodia.

Cambodia, and more specifically Siem Reap which is the hub of the tourist attractions, is an amazing place to visit and experience ancient history. The city of Siem Reap is close close to a series of ancient Hindu and Buddhist temples from the Khmer Empire called Angkor, dating as far back as to the 900 AC days. These are a huge series of temples in various condition states built back where this huge empire once had their capital. It is not often that you and your kids can not only sees historical temples but actually "climb" on them and touch them. The prices for a tourist are unbelievably cheap in most aspects. Our hotel was the Prince D'Angkor, which we found via tripadvisor.com and booked for a great price.

This hotel would have easily cost us 3 times the amount anywhere else, but in Cambodia the prices still range typically $50-70/night for a nice hotel which included two double beds per room, balcony view, free buffet breakfast and a nice large salt-water pool.

We started by hiring a Tuk Tuk, which was easily done upon arrival for again a great price of $15/day. The kids loved riding on it and it felt great to have the wind on our faces as the weather was rather hot. Our first day we explored Angkor Wat, which is the most famous of all these temples in Cambodia. Pictures do not offer the full spectrum of how majestic and huge these structures are. It was amazing that a pre-industrial society was able to accomplish this level of craftmanship. Angkor Wat was built around 1350 AC by King Suyavarman II. As you enter the temple, you get a glimpse of what a huge structure this will be just by looking at the size and width of the mote around it: it is huge! It must have taken thousands of people working for years to build such a structure with the given technology of the time.

Many of the temples have partially collapsed over the centuries and some restoration has been done. It is great fun for the whole family to walk around and climb "rubles" which in reality are historical relics.

We also visited Ta Prohm temple. This temple was apparently abandoned for many centuries and nature reclaimed the area until it was re-discovered during the last century.

Many trees are still growing on top of the structures which gives this temple a very "Indiana Jones" type of feeling. As a matter of fact, this temple has been used to film movies such as Two Brothers by Disney and Lara Croft and the Tomb Raider with Angelina Jolie. This place is truly undescrivable and it was one of my favorite locations.

Yet another famous and amazing temple is Bayon, which is inside a yet large series of temples known as Angkor Thom. One fun thing to do in Bayon is to take an elephant ride that takes you around the temple. The kids (and the adults) love it!

We saw many other temples and ancient structures such as The Elephant Terrace and Banteay Kdei.

We asked our Tuk Tuk driver to take us outside Siem Reap for a day of sightseeing. We went to another temple, called Banteay Srey. This structure is smaller than the others in Siem Reap, but it is very interesting as the carvings are very well preserved since they were built with pink sandstone. This location was built in the 10th century and it is the only one built not by a king but by a wealthy Brahman who was counselor/tutor to the king.

During our trip outside Siem Reap, we also traveled to the Tonle Sap Lake, which is the largest lake in Cambodia and feeds into the Mekong river. Many tourists flock to the boat docks from where you can take a fun trip to the floating village of Chong Kneas. Some people call it a "tourist trap", we call it fun time for the family. You see here people living their regular lives on the water. Houses, shops, gardens and even schools are all floating. It reminds you a lot of the movie "Waterworld". Much of the economy now is around the tourists and you get a good number of kids in boats approching your boat selling soft drinks, post cards, etc. We found this kid with a snake around his neck who quickly asked me for $1 when he saw I snapped a picture. Very savvy.

Floating School

Child using a large pot as a boat

Siem Reap is a tourist paradise when it comes to souvenir shopping. You can find oil paintings, fine silk, shirts, intricate wood carvings and many other exotic items for a fraction of the price you would pay in most other places we have visited. We just wished we had more space to carry stuff in the plane as there were so many "I-can't-believe-it-is-this-cheap" moments when shopping. You do need to be a good bargainer, but we feel we have gotten pretty good at this, often knocking down the prices 2-3 times cheaper than the original price.

Just when we thought we had done enough in this short vacation, we were also able to take a Helium baloon ride in Siem Reap which gives you one glorious look of the whole region. You can easily see Angkor Wat as well as various other temples we visited.

In summary, Siem Reap is a jewel which is increasingly being discovered. It was a great family trip in which our kids learned history and culture with all of their five senses. It is still mostly visited by expats living in the region, or by history/culture aficionados. We saw many Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Australian and European visitors, with a fair number of Americans as well. The prices are still unbelievably cheap, but this may not last for many years. It is a must visit for anybody stationed in the South Asia region.

Shuvo Noboborsho (Happy Bengali New Year!)

2011-04-14T09:02:00.000-04:00

This week we celebrated the Bengali New Year. It marks the first day of the calendar that is traditionally followed in Bangladesh and the West Bengal part of India. It coincides with some other New Years celebrated in various Asian countries.
In Bangladesh, most people follow the Gregorian (western) calendar for practical reasons. So, for example if you work at an office, or read the newspaper, it would say April 14, 2011.

You can read more about the history of this New Year by following this Wikipedia link.

We had a great celebration at the U.S. Embassy this year. The association of locally employed staff organized a fun series of activities for the family, including concerts by local bands and staff at the embassy, pony rides, and other rides. Families from both the American and Bangladeshi employees attended and it was great fun. You may notice that most people are wearing red or white. It is tradition to wear these colors for this New Year celebration. You would see many children on the streets wearing their beautiful new red and white clothes and women with new red saris. Julie got a new sari for the event as you can see.

Austin had a blast with the man-operated Ferris Wheel. This ferris wheel is literally moved by sheer human power and I'm not sure how the workers are able to do this hard work for hours and hours.

The staff from my clinic were present as well and we were on standby in case someone got sick. Thankfully nobody required anything major.

Even Mickey Mouse paid a visit!

Istanbul

2011-04-12T11:27:00.000-04:00

I had the great experience of traveling to Turkey for a medical conference. This was an opportunity to talk to some of my colleagues spread around the world and stay on top of the latest in medicine. It was also a great time to see some friends which are now in such various locations like China, Egypt, India and Madagascar.

I had a stop in Dubai, where I did a very brief tour of the downtown area. I was rather impressed but the amount of new buildings either being in the process of construction or just recently finished. I don't know how so many new offices will need to occupy this amount of space, but the developers do really seem to be sure there will be a demand for this office space. The city is beautiful and full of modern buildings.

I was able to visit the Burj Khalifa (Dubai Tower), the current tallest building in the world. We had a quick stop as well at the Atlantis Hotel, which is located at the very end of the famous man-made "Palm Island". I had visited the other Atlantis Hotel a few years ago, when we visited the Bahamas.

Off to Istanbul. The conference was very well delivered and had excellent topics to discuss. For physicians stationed all over the world, it is important to stay abreast the medical changes as otherwise we would become obsolete very quickly.

Istanbul is a beautiful city, with an interesting mix of cultures and great history. Our hotel was near Taksim Square, which is a very popular place for locals (especially young people) to shop and have a visit to a restaurant. Many street vendors had aromatic nuts being roasted on little carts.

It was great fun to do some shopping at the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul which has been present since the 1400s. There are hundreds and hundreds of vendors, from rugs to bronze and just about everything you could imagine. You have to be very good at bargaining as often they start the price 2-5 times above what I actually ended up paying.

Istanbul is right at the borders where Europe meets Asia. A cruise on the Bosphoros Straits is a great way to see both sides of this historical city. Our group took a night dinner cruise, which was great fun and I would greatly recommend it for anybody visiting.

On my off day, I did some sightseeing of the famous locations in Istanbul. The Blue Mosque is majestic with a mozaic in blue colors that give the distinctive cast when it is sunny.

The Hagia Sophia, is an amazing structure which has been a Christian Church, later a Muslim Mosque and now it is a museum. It has structures, paintings and mozaics belonging to both periods and religions. Pictures don't do justice due to the sheer size of this building.

It was too bad Julie and the kids could not come for this trip. We are hoping to do a repeat visit with them next time when we move to Serbia next year.

Professor Yunus visits the American International School in Dhaka

2011-03-23T08:39:00.000-04:00

We had the wonderful opportunity to meet and listen to a speech with professor Muhammad Yunus, recipient of the 2006 Noble Peace Price, at the American International School in Dhaka where our children attend. This was as part of a project jointly coordinated between several schools and the Yunus Center, to start a “Social Business Initiative” competition among the students. The upper level students presented projects proposing businesses in which the goal was not to maximize profits but rather bring business opportunities to population sectors that would otherwise typically not be considered by traditional banks.

As you may know, Professor Yunus was the driving initiator of the concept of micro-credit. He developed this concept in the late 1970s early 1980s and was the reason for his winning the Noble Peace Price in 2006. He explained this concept in his speech to us and how he came up with the idea. He noted a vicious cycle in which people with very low income were not eligible for standard loans to finance their business due to the lack of collateral. They had to turn to “loan sharks” who would charge exorbitant fees for their services. His goal was to eliminate the concept of “collateral” in loans and giving very small loans, in the ranges of about $10-15 to these people. That may sound like a miniscule amount of money to most people, but to these low-income workers meant the difference between sheer poverty and a better future. Experts predicted these loans would have a very high default percent. However, this was not true and the system became self-sustainable.

The three projects that won today’s competition were fascinating; two in particular caught my attention: One involved giving small loans for banana plantations with the purpose of using the banana leaf to make paper and souvenirs. The actual bananas were donated back to the village, but the system would become sustainable by the selling of the more environmentally-friendly paper. This was actually proposed by a 13 year girl!

The second project that won was to finance loans for Rickshaw drivers so they could own their own rickshaws as opposed to renting them as many do and thus making very little profits. The way to finance these loans would be by allowing companies to pay for advertisements on the surface of the rickshaws.

It is inspiring to see novel concepts being embraced by youth and developing them into even more novel projects. The speech by Dr Yunus was fascinating despite blistering hot outdoor conditions.

Tyler is turning Twelve

2011-03-20T10:56:00.000-04:00

This month we get two birthdays as both Tyler and Julie celebrate them. As a coincidence, this weekend we had an embassy-sponsored trip to the Dhaka Planetarium. The show is typically in Bangla, but since we had about 100 people going in our trip, they closed the facility and had the show in English for us! The planetarium was modern and had a rather good show, much like those of planetariums back in USA.

For his birthday, Tyler opted to have a sleepover with his closest friends from school. This basically meant getting some pizza, playing video games all night, playing ping pong and crashing late at night while watching a movie. They had a blast. I am fascinated by the variety of nationalities and cultures represented in Tyler's friends. We had kids from USA, Argentina, Bangladesh, India and Pakistan.

Tyler has grown a lot in the 1 1/2 years we have been in Bangladesh, both physically and mentally. He has been exposed to many cultures, seen many fascinating places as well as seen a lot of poverty and sad situations. He has had a keen interest since very young in learning about history and geography. Tyler is often the one that knows about a particular culture or tradition when we go on a trip to a new place or country. He has truly enjoyed Asia and really wants to return to another Asian post in the future.

Since a very early age, Tyler asked the deep questions of life: Is there a God, where do we go when we die, why is there poverty and injustice in some places even though the people did not do anything bad? It has never been easy to answer, but I have always enjoyed my long talks with Tyler in these topics.

Tyler's interests are diverse and sometimes he says he will be an economist, sometimes a businessman, a lawyer and sometimes a diplomat. I can easily see him in any of those areas and we encourage him to keep exploring his interests.
Here's a collage of Tyler's pictures over the years.

An International Melting Pot

2011-02-26T02:06:00.000-05:00

Every year the American International School in Dhaka celebrates an International Fair. It is basically a day in which groups of children and parents from common backgrounds set up a booth with food and information about their country. Some groups also practice a dance, music, art that is related to their home country and show it to others. It turns out to be a rather fun day for the kids and parents alike.
We are blessed to have our children in an environment such as the one provided by AISD. This school is truly an international school. You don't have to wait for the international fair to come-by to realize this. All of Tyler, Celine and Austin's friends are a melting pot of ethnicities and countries. I have mentioned in previous blogs how wonderful it is to see my children playing with people of different skin color, ethnicity or backgrounds and not have any second thought about it.

The food was wonderful, I particularly enjoyed the momos from Nepal (which I tend to make a point of purchasing every visit to Nepal), the Butter Chicken from India and the Falafel from Egypt. They had many other dishes available from as varied origins as Indonesia, Sweden, Norway, Canada, USA, etc.

The kids dressed beautifully for their presentations. Celine and Austin gathered with the Hispanic group since we are of a Hispanic/American background. Julie baked some apple pie for the American booth and some Flan for the Hispanic one. Celine dressed with a beautiful Costa Rican traditional dress and Austin with a Mexican Mariachi outfit.

This Fair made me wonder about the other children's story. It is as varied as their country of origin.
Why would a group of Sudanese people be at an international school in Dhaka? Well, several of them are here because their parents work for the United Nations.
Then, there is the large Korean representation among the expat community in Bangladesh. Their reason for being here often is related to the garment and other manufacturing factories, as they are often owned by Korean companies.

Tyler, Celine and Austin also have many Bangladeshi friends. These tend to be from the upper strata of the local society as the cost of an International School tends to be prohitively expensive given the dollar exchange and purchase power parity.
There are many other nationalities represented at their school, as most parents from the embassies and transnational companies send their children to our school.

So, it does not matter if you are from adversary countries, or if you are black, yellow or white. Kids at the school become friends and learn that there are many amazing aspects to each kid's culture.

Our “Big boy baby” Austin turns Five

2011-02-07T18:30:00.000-05:00

It is hard to believe that our Austin is turning five today. Each day he’s less of a baby and more of a big boy. Sometimes we make the mistake of calling him baby Austin, and he corrects us that he’s a “big boy” now. So, sometimes we call him our “big boy baby” Austin.

Since Austin is the youngest of our three children, he’s in many ways the savviest. He’s always tagging along with Tyler and Celine and he wants to be part of their playing groups. Tyler and Celine, since his birth, have been very protective and caring of Austin and they have a very close relationship.

Austin’s imagination is vibrant. For example, he truly believes for the past one year that when he turns five he WILL become Spiderman. He was particularly excited when a spider bit him while we were traveling in Nepal because that meant he would turn into Spiderman soon. Instead of crying from the bite, he was thrilled! He says he’ll get his webs in his wrists when he turns five. He asked me today if after tomorrow I should call him “Peter Parker” (Spiderman’s secret identity) or still “Austin Monestel”. I told him we could chose depending on whether he wanted to be incognito or not.

Austin is full of energy and always has something to say. Some would say he never stops talking. What I would say is that he is just trying to explore and explain the world he is discovering.

Here are some of our favorite pictures of Austin throughout the years (from most recent to birth):

Who's taking your picture?

2011-02-03T07:04:00.000-05:00

We have had great fun in the last couple of years traveling to many exciting and sometimes remote areas in Asia. As typical western tourists, we carry our camera everywhere and take many pictures. It is my particular interest to take pictures of local people doing their daily activities. Kids are always eager to have their picture taken, and they make the best models. Adults with traditional dresses also make great sources for pictures.

But what do you do when you are the one being asked (or often not even asked) to be the model for pictures?

Well, that has happened to us many times in the last two years. It is very often that we are happily seeing some interesting village or doing some other touristy thing, that others come to take pictures of us. Sure, no problem we say. After all, we do it to others all the time!

Take the folks in various places in Bangladesh. We felt a little awkward at first when we saw people grabbing their phone with a camera (ubiquitous here) and snapping a quick picture of us while we were simply taking a walk in the park. No we are not royalty, movie stars nor dress fancy. Little by little it dawned on us: we are the unusual ones here! We simply stand out. Often, they love to take pictures of our kids and particularly Austin, our 4 year old. They simply love his smile and curly hair. It has never been malicious, just curiosity. To whom would they show these pictures? Well, probably the same question passes on peoples’ minds when we take their picture in some little village in the middle of nowhere in Nepal, or in the big city of Dhaka.

For example, there was a Chinese group of tourists visiting Kathmandu and staying at the same hotel we were: The Yak & Yeti Hotel. This hotel is frequented by tourists from many countries as a first stop on their amazing Nepal tourist trip. Many tourists groups from China are frequently seen in Nepal nowadays. There were two ladies in particular that asked to take about 20-30 pictures of us. First just Austin, then all three kids, then the whole family, then them with us, then them with Austin. It was hilarious. We felt like we should have charged a fee for the modeling! We have had countless similar experiences in Bangladesh, India, Thailand and Nepal and other places. Tyler and Celine feel a little strange posing for them, Austin has never given it a second thought.

So, next time you are somewhere in the world and take pictures of local folks, just think how you would feel it they take a picture of you. It is not a problem with us. How about you?

Wedding Day

2011-01-30T10:31:00.000-05:00

This weekend we had the opportunity of witnessing a traditional Bangladeshi wedding in a village. Our nanny's niece was promised for marriage and the big event took place in their hometown, which is a tiny Christian village outside Dhaka. The area is set on an agricultural setting, among mustard fields and rice paddies. The homes are simple and the people are hard workers. Many of the husbands have gone overseas, typically to the Middle East or USA to seek one-two year jobs as cooks, laborers or other similar jobs to support their families back home.

The weddings in Bangladesh, particularly out in the country, are a three day event in which the families from both the groom and the bride get deeply involved. It is truly a happy occasion, and much dancing, singing and eating is done during this day.

The first night there is a big feast at the Bride's home. The house and its surroundings are brightly decorated and loud music is played. There is no way to miss which house is the one where the party is happening! The bride sits on a equally decorated altar with beautiful clothing.
Family members and friends, one by one, come to the bride and paint her face with a Turmeric paste and feed her a small candy.

This is to symbolize the person wishing her good luck. Everybody eats and parties all night long.

The following day is the actual wedding. This was a Catholic wedding, thus the actual ceremony is somewhat similar to other weddings except the outfits and the music is very different.

That night, the young couple spends the night at the bride's home, sleeping with many members of the family in the same room.

Just when you thought the ceremony was over, it still has one more day to go. The following day, there is again a lunch at the bride's home. People then go to the groom's home for the final dinner and music at which point the couple is officially declared married. It is not until this night that they spend their night together

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Transportation in Bangladesh

2011-01-19T19:40:00.000-05:00

Ever since we arrived to our new home in Dhaka, Bangladesh, I have been wanting to write a little piece about transportation. Growing up in Costa Rica, I had ample experience with public transportation. In USA, public transportation takes a back seat in most places as private vehicles are king in most cities except for a few of the largest cities. As a kid in Costa Rica, I rode the public bus every day for all of my years in high school and had to be "stuffed" into very congested spots to be able to make it on time to my destination. During my years of elementary school, I walked every day on my own, dodging cars as needed. People in Costa Rica joke that driving there is one of the most agressive anywhere.
Boy, was I for a surprise on transportation when we got here! Here you have the conversion of having one of the highest density population in the world, narrow streets, slow-moving rickshaws everywhere and reckless driving.
First, let's give population density some perspective: Bangladesh is slightly smaller than the state of Iowa, but the population is about 168 million people, compared to Iowa's 3 million or even New York state's population of 20 million! For my friends in Costa Rica, it is about twice the size of Costa Rica, while this latter country only has about 4.5 million people. Dhaka alone has 14-16 million people. You definitely feel that you live in a 14 million-people city as soon as you get out of your house. There are people everywhere! It is definitely not for the agoraphic.

It is very interesting to see the myriad of people walking to work, hanging-out, asking for money, riding in the bus and ON the bus (I mean the roof), rickshaws, CNGs (baby taxis), etc. It is never a boring place. No picture gives a good perspective as you would need a 360 degree view with audio.

Narrow streets: The city grew in population so fast in the last few years, from what my Bangladeshi friends tell me, that the city's infrastructure never caught-up with the changes. Unfortunately, now you see multi-story after multi-story building with very little parking space. This means that many people going to those buildings either have to double park and make the congestion worse, or have their driver go around and around the block until you come out.
The use of human power takes a whole new meaning here. Muscle-powered risckshaws are everywhere and their drivers endure carrying the oddest cargo you could imagine under the blistering sun and the humid atmosphere. The rickshaw is not only used as a passenger carrier (which by the way are designed to carry a max of 2 adults but are often used to carry 4-5 people), but also for all kinds of cargo from sacks of grain, furniture, building materials, etc. The flat-bed rickshaw is used to haul even heavier items.

Buses are used abundantly, as it is in many countries I have visited. However, there is no space in the bus that is wasted. Once the bus is so full that people are literally hanging-out the door, it is then time to send the brave ones to the roof where there is typically a luggage-rack from where they need to hang-on for dear life. Bus drivers are very aggressive in the driving and often get in accidents. Each bus is then usually so full of dents that it appears it was made of cardboard.
What do you think is the results of the convergence of all the factors noted above: GRIDLOCK! The rule here is if you were there first, then you have the right of way. It does no matter which way you are turning, if there is a red light or if common sense would dictate that it is better to let a car through to give you more space to pass. Benjamin, our driver, is amazing at effortlessly squeezing our large minivan through the most difficult spots. I truly think I would have to take antihypertensive medication if I had to drive on my own.
A popular form of transportation for those that want a step-up to the rickshaw is the CNG. This is basically a motorized tricycle with seating for two. They are called here CNG because they all run on clean natural gas. Most of the public transportation in Dhaka runs on natural gas, which helps to minimize air contamination in such a dense city.

I often joke with Julie that we are going to feel lonely in our next post no matter in which country we live, as we will not have this plethora of people and sounds everywhere we go. This is another reason I find our new home an interesting place, and another reason we value the opportunity of experiencing new places and cultures.
Here are some other random daily scenes in Dhaka:
1- School Rickshaw 2-Truck carrying cattle 3-Destroyed bus, ready for recycling 4- The Monestels having fun