Three Hours with Three Kids...

...at the Fruit and Spice Park.

I've been to the Fruit and Spice Park before, but not like this! Today Rob had a station event, so the kids and I went to the Asian Culture Festival which was held at the Fruit and Spice Park in the Redlands. The Redlands is an agricultural community north of Homestead, but south of Miami. It is pseudo-rural, in that it is all green, but extremely crowded with farms. Still, if you go down the right roads, you can see some real old Florida homes and buildings.

The Asian Culture Festival was pretty vast. There were booths from many many Asian countries. The kids got a "passport" and visited the booths to get stamps. There were also a huge number of food vendors and a stage with performances. The kids also got these hats...from a beer company.

At the Japanese tent the kids got to make origami. I have a origami folding guide at home, so sometimes I make birds or whatever for the kids. Caleb himself can make a very kitchen-sink-worthy paper boat. But the volunteers would only let the kids make dogs (super simple). Caleb, as he typically does, protested that he preferred fish, but the volunteers were adamant that they make the dogs!

I thought the Iranian display was very nice. I told a woman there that I had been to Iran and she said, "Oh you have an Iranian husband!" and I said, "No, he's from Ohio!" I thought it was kind of funny that she thought that was the only reason I would have gone.

There were several displays of carved gourds, squash, and melons. I think these were in the Thai tent:


When we hit the food vendors, I didn't want to pick things that were variations of things we eat in America. We made 3 choices: Pomegranate soda (liked by all)

Pancakes Thailand from Laos (liked by me and Annalise, too foreign for Caleb to get past the exterior)
This is how they made them:

And Turkish Delight (a disappointment to Caleb)
but liked by Annalise:

And three hours of pretend globe trotting wore Miss Natalie out :)