Goodbye St. Louis

The big day had arrived. Essentially I've never lived outside of Illinois, Missouri, or Japan. And here I was about to pack all of my belongings into a truck and drive them across the country to live on the west coast. I was sad to leave St. Louis. I first moved here in September 2010! St. Louis did its best to make the move less painful though by dropping that dead guy on my doorstep a few days ago. That was a nice parting gift that I definitely will not have nightmares about.

Our living room was so damn big they had to put power outlets in the center of the floor.

I remember this basement parking being terrifying at first but by the time we left I could park going about 30 miles an hour. 

Goodbye my sweet sweet Jacuzzi bathtub.

Once the movers had finished loading it up we hopped in and headed down the alley outside our now former apartment one last time.

We had some St. Louisy Lion's Choice famous roast beef sandwiches on the way out of town. I assume it's nothing but soy burgers and wheatgrass where we're headed so I wanted to taste one last flavor.

We made it all the way to Kansas City on our first day of driving before stopping at this charming hotel.

Maldivian Eating and Dancing

We spent plenty of time beach bumming around Meeru Island on this trip as you might expect, so meals were the main structure of our day. It was fun that it was a buffet so I could take more risks and try some weirder stuff.

The poor neighborhood. These poor souls had to walk numerous feet if they wanted to get to the beach. Life isn't fair, I don't know what else I can tell them.

Each of the overwater bungalows had a big pot filled with water and a ladle made out of a coconut shell on a stick in order to wash your feet.

I read a lot about how the water situation works here. I guess there is sort of a groundwater situation happening below the islands but that the seawater is also in contact with it, and maybe the two waters just don't naturally mix very well so there's sort of a natural protection for the freshwater below the island? It seemed like a precarious situation to me.

I feel like there's a shell ecosystem here where the snails grow the shells and then the hermit crabs wear them.

It was Maldivian night at the buffet so I was pretty excited to try some exotic stuff.

There is a lot of Indian influence in Maldivian culture. Here a guy was baking naan in a cylindrical tandoor oven. 

After dinner we headed to a nearby sand floored building to watch a Bodu Beru performance.

Bodu Beru literally means "big drums" in Dhivehi and there is plenty of big drumming to go around. It was less organized that I had expected, and ended up being drumming with a lot of random freestyle dancing. The tempo started slow and then grew faster and faster with dancing to match.

On the walk back to our Jacuzzi Water Villa the snails were having a little buffet of their own.