Minnesota: Sight-seeing around MSP

After spending a wonderful week in my hometown, we drove our rental car five hours south to the Twin Cities.  We have lots of friends there that we wanted to visit, and we wanted to do some regular vacation-y things, since we never go on vacations other than to visit family.

So, here are a few things that we did!

First off, we went to the big Hmong festival.  It's the biggest Hmong gathering in the world!  We went with some friends, and we only saw one other white family while we were there.  Ha!  But I didn't even think of it.  I felt so at home among all those Asians.  And I looooove Hmong food.  I've been dreaming of purple sticky rice ever since!

I've heard of this sport before from Nate (he taught Hmong people on his mission for our Church, and he speaks fluent Hmong), but it was something else to see it in real life:

It's pretty much volleyball, but using your feet.  Insane.  I was impressed.

We saw a few other things (like their spinning top competition), but I didn't get any other pictures.  Why?  Probably because it was insanely hot and crowded and we had two antsy children in their stroller.  But it was fun still.  And now I want more purple sticky rice and Hmong sausage.  Mmmmm....

One of the most anticipated parts of our trip was the cherry on the spoon.  Caleb asked about it for weeks leading up to our trip.  It seems so simple, and yet it did not disappoint!

How could we not??:

More great Minnesota experiences to come.  :)