On Saturday, we took the train down to Long Branch, New Jersey to indulge in a day of Burmese food and photos with Olivia's cousins. It was held at Patti & Scott's house, and most of the cousins (and their partners) who accompanied us on the trip were there, as were many of the other cousins who couldn't make it on the trip.

Sam, Tasha, and Patti were very enthusiastic about their Burmese cooking, and it paid off. There were plenty of dishes, including some great flat noodles, the name of which I have since forgotten, but the highlight, of course, was the deliciously unhealthy stuff deep fried in batter. The boothi-jaw (deep-fried gourd) is far more delicious than I ever would have believed, though it is not quite as good as the heavenly corn fritters, which I could have just eaten for days (and I'll be making some of my own now).

To walk off the food, some of us went off to the Jersey Shore, which was only a few minutes away, and walked on the beach. It was a lot nicer than I expected it to be, though we were told that the area has just been redeveloped in the past couple of years, so it's considerably nicer than it was not too long ago. Windy of course, but very nice. We spent some time gathering some shells and stones from the beach - and Tasha found a nice piece of smoothed glass which she handed to me with the message "Welcome to America" - and then decided we were too cold, so we headed back.

We did a bunch of group photos on the front porch, which I can't show you right now as they were all taken by remote on Sam's camera, and she hasn't sent them to us yet.

After that we retreated indoors once more, and looked through everyone's photos on Patti & Scott's impressively big HD screen. Uncles Lu & Kyi stopped by towards the end of the evening to catch a bit of the photo-wataching.

At 10, Tasha drove us back to the train station to catch the last train for 1.5 hours. She got lost. Eventually she found her way again, but as she zoomed down the road, we saw the train shoot by. She took a side road and tried to catch up with it, as it was just coming in to the station, then she zoomed right up to the train (at that station, you board at ground level). We came dangerously close to running down the other passengers trying to board the train, or at least seemed to from my perspective. But we managed to climb aboard just before the train left, so all was good.

There are a couple of small photo galleries to go with this: