andave's place

Well, my family's back from San Diego. We had a really lovely time. Saturday night we played charades with two teams against one another and that was a scream. Highlights:

My team picked the art word "chiaroscuro" for one person from the other team to act out. The person picked to act it was my Mom and she had to have the term explained. She went berserk, trying to act it out. First, she mimed the word "key" and then somehow managed to get "aro" across. Then for the "scuro" part, she was flabbergasted, waving her hands and trying so hard to make them get it. But she did it! Her team got "chiaro-obscuro" and that was that.

In retaliation, that team picked out the name of a not very well known Lebanese politician for me to act out. His name is "Alaa id deen Tarouk" with a silent K. I'm not very fluent in Lebanese even though my parents come from there. "Alaa" is about the same as the Lebanese word for higher. My team got the "id deen" part and then for "Tarouk" I mimed palm reading, which I thought was called tarot. It wasn't until later I learned that tarot is cards, not palm reading.

That team picked the word "blitzkrieg" for my sister to act out and that took us a LONG time! Finally they relented and told us the meaning. Thankfully, my history lessons hadn't entirely deserted me and we won the point.

Yesterday before we left we lunched at a Thai food restaurant and that was gorgeous! We had avocado and red curries, seafood, beef skewers, tingling hot papaya salad, Thai chicken, chicken salad, fried squid, soup, rice, vegetarian curry for my sister, fried ice cream, mango and sticky rice, and fried bananas.

Then finally, the drive back home. It took us about nine hours but we made it back by around midnight. Of course, books and music sustained me and my sister throughout the trip.