Veedol Swimming Beach

Saturday, August 13 we decided to go exploring.  My arm was still hurting a lot so I didn't feel up to doing too much, but some exploration was definitely a good thing!  We drove around and found our way to Veedol Beach.  Apparently there are a few different Veedol beaches, one is for swimming and the others are not.  You're only supposed to be in the water if you're tethered to something like a surf board or boogie board and some friends of ours had a really bad experience a couple weeks prior because they didn't know that (thankfully no one died, but it could have easily gone that way).  

Anyway, we ended up at the swimming beach.  The wind was blowing like crazy.  I tried to get a picture of the sand blowing across the beach, so see if you can spy it.  We didn't come prepared for water play... when will we ever learn that this will inevitable turn into...

...this.

Jonas and Abe were the only ones who stayed dry and I think they were glad to be dry since we didn't go home to let anyone change before doing our other activities!

Washing off all that sand.  Like I said, the wind was blowing like crazy, as we left every time I closed my teeth they would crunch with sand.  Later I found sand in my ears, in my sling, and even in my bra!  And I just stood there watching the kids play.

When we left the beach we found a nice little park to play at and eat our picnic lunch. We bought some more grilled chicken like we'd had at Miss Veedol Plaza during our city cultural tour but we also tried something new.  We had no idea what it was, some sort of ball that had a topping of Japanese mayo and a dark brown almost barbecue sauce?  When we bit into it it was like it was filled with chicken noodle soup.  It was weird.  I think I've figure out what it was since then, its a Japanese snack called Takoyaki.  Rather than chicken noodle soup, it was probably filled with chopped octopus, green onions, and pickled ginger.  The dark brown sauce is called Takoyaki sauce and is similarish to Worchestershire sauce.  No one really liked it that much.  But maybe if we went in to it knowing what it was maybe they'd change their minds.  And maybe if we ate it warm?  We bought it from some Japanese cart at the beach so it wasn't warm at all.

But the park was a hit even if the food wasn't.

There was a feral cat hanging around and Eliza was so enamoured with it.

That jungle gym is the stuff dreams are made of.  So much fun!

We fed the cat the leftover Takoyaki that Bolton spit out.  He didn't seem to mind that it had been in someone's mouth before his.

When we left the park we drove around for a while longer exploring our new town.  We decided to stop at a local electronics store to see if they had a microwave we could get.  They didn't have anything in our price range, but Levi found what he really wants for Christmas.  A personal toaster oven with egg cooker.  He talked of nothing else for a couple days.  Silly kid.

Like I said, my arm was still hurting a lot, so I didn't feel up to being out with the kids all all day.  Ethan and I went home with them for a little while and then we went out to dinner.  There is an Indian restaurant right out the main gate and Ethan LOVES Indian food, so we decided to give it a try.  I tried a new dish and it was the most edible Indian dish I've tried.  I'm not much of a fan, but at least I found something besides Naan bread that I can eat if we go there again.