Busy day today. We're preparing for a visit from Gena's friend Gwen and her daughter Amba, driving from Bend, OR this evening. But prior to that, we had the opportunity to gather with old friends from Arizona days - Jeff and his wife Manchu and their daughter Charlotte. We met Jeff and Manchu through Gena's directorship of International Friendship House. Jeff came to faith during his time there, and he moved to Portland about five years ago, married, and they now have a two-year old daughter. It's fun to get to connect with another piece of our history.
We caravaned with them to Sauvie Island, just outside of Portland proper. It's an island in the middle of the Columbia River, basically, and is primarily given over to agriculture. We went to a farm they were familiar with to pick strawberries and a few random rasberries. The weather was cooperative - warm but overcast. The kids had a blast looking for strawberries. They enjoyed searching for good ones more than picking them. But they really were drawn to picking rasberries - which was unfortunate since the vast majority of them were not ripe. But we got a few.
Afterwards, we went closer to downtown Portland to Trendy Third St. NE. Lots of little shops and restaurants. They wanted to take us to lunch at a sushi place where the food comes by in little dishes on a conveyor belt. As in Japan, you just take plates of food off the conveyor belt as they come by and suit your fancy. Each food item is on a colored plate, and the colored plate lets you know how much that particular dish is. At the end, they count your colored plates and derive your total. Pretty cool.
Amazingly enough, the kids really enjoyed themselves, particularly Alec. He's still much inspired by the Travel Channel's Man vs. Food guy. He tried several brand new dishes based solely on how they looked. He tried a sesame seed dough-ball with what I suspect was a sweet bean paste in the middle. He tried a barbecued chicken on skewers. He even tried a California roll, which he wasn't very fond of at all. I was very impressed with what he was willing to try, however!
Afterwards we had gelato, which the kids were very happy about. What a great morning and early afternoon!
Then it was 'home' to clean and prepare for guests. And to discover, to our horror, that the kitchen sink was not draining. We hadn't done anything odd, but all of a sudden it was backing up. It's an awful feeling when something goes wrong at someone else's place when you're staying there. You can know in your heart that it wasn't anything you did, but there's always that dread that it will be attributed to your stupidity or carelessness somehow.
We bought a plunger, I disassembled the plumbing underneath the sink. All to no avail. It's a great way to greet your guests, in the midst of plunging a kitchen sink. Gwen and Amba made it safely over the mountains, and soon it was bedtime.
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