Experimental movie

This is a short (22 seconds) video we shot while riding in downtown Karachi. We hope it works for you.
Watch for the two donkey carts and notice the 3-wheeled taxis!

We might put on some of the really scary ones!

Miscellaneous

Many people have kindly asked about our safety since there was a major earthquake here in Pakistan. We are fine and didn't even know about it until we saw the TV news. This picture is from GoogleEarth and the yellow line shows how far we are from the epicenter (366 miles). If it helps you to visualize it, that is about the distance from the Washington coast to the Idaho border. In other words, we were a loooong way from it. You can click on the picture to make it a lot larger so you can see it. The lat long of the epicenter in Quetta, Pakistan is about 30°12'35"N 67°01'21". If you use GoogleEarth, you can search for Quetta. Our house in Karachi is about 24°53"00"N 67°05"10"E. If you donate to disaster relief, that region of the country really is in need of help.

End of October and it is still quite warm and humid. You have noticed the current temperatures here, haven't you? The Middle School had their Fall Social at the pool 24 October afternoon/evening.

Here we are with Scott and Nikola Johnson all dressed up for the Marine Ball at the Karachi Consulate last night. We all taught together in Jeddah and now all teach here in Karachi.

This is one of the many ads put up by the "Tolet Corporation". They do a LOT of advertising around here and seem to have a strong business presence all over the city.

It is hard to tell what their product is.

It actually took Jim a while to figure out that "tolet" is just local spelling for "to let". Any empty advertising space has something to make sure you know you can rent the space!

Goa in India

Goa is not actually a town or city. It is the name of one of the states in India. Once you realize this, it makes a lot easier to find hotels!
Since Pakistan is on the "Asian sub-continent", we decided to make our first trip to India.

This is what Jim did a lot of during the vacation. Lying by the pool and relaxing. Alonda was in the next chair doing the same thing.


We stayed at an actual Holiday Inn. It was at Cavelossim Beach along the western edge of India. We didn't recognize any of the names of the entire area except for Bombay where we changed planes. They are also a little unclear on the name "Bombay" since the name was officially changed to "Mombai" but everyone talks about "Bombay". Do not ever, under any circumstances whatever, go through this airport if you can help it. It was frankly horrible.

This is the "Wedding Pavillion" at the Holiday Inn. An Indian wedding is a huge, multi-day affair. Some people will rent the entire hotel for a week.


This is the beach about 200 meters from our room. Very clean with nice water. Like a warm version of Ocean Shores (Washington).


People do different things at the beach. We shared the beach with some random cows.


Other people enjoyed more "touristy" pursuits. This is NOT us! Jim broke a leg a loooong time ago parachuting and refuses to risk it.


We went out and did a tour of the region. This is the Manguesh Temple. It is the oldest Hindu temple in Goa and is in the middle of a renovation. They do that every hundred years or so.


This is the tourist shopping as you approach the temple. A lot of ladies sell flowers to people going in and other people sell T-shirts to people coming out. Alonda bought flowers on the way out. They were jasmine and smelled quite nice.


We have never been in one of these three-wheeled taxis, but they are common in India and Pakistan. The roofs on the little taxis in India are much more substantial than the ones in Karachi. We think it rains a lot more in India.


This is one of the old cathedrals put up 400-500 years ago when the Portuguese were ruling this region. This one is in the city of Old Goa. The oldest one in the state is across the street, but it wasn't very photogenic.


We went on a harbor cruise in Panaji. It was all delightfully hokey! Cost of the ticket was about $3 US and we were out for over an hour. A beer was $1 US and not many takers. It was very much a family cruise. They did some folk dances from the time of the Portuguese and did the usual dance contests.


As it got dark, the harbor got better looking. There were actually a lot of river cruisers and the city was quite busy. The river is the Mandovi. There were no mosquitoes during the entire trip.


This is the standard roadside scenery in Goa. Lots of farming and animals among the palm trees.

Like a lot of tropical areas, Goa has a lot of Art Deco colored houses. They look good in the tropics.

Here is our traditional sunset on the beach! We had a very relaxing time in Goa and would recommend it if you want to relax.

October Break

We have had a lot of time off. We had five days for the Eid Holiday (Muslim celebration after holy month of Ramazan). Now we are on a 12 day Fall Holiday. We will go over to India and visit the district of Goa for a few days.

In September we hosted a Game Night at the Droege's. This is not a picture of our front lawn, but a jigsaw puzzle we collectively worked on for game night. Can you find the five missing pieces?
We didn't lose the pieces. We think customs confiscated them!

This incredibly intelligent bird-watcher is Simon the Cat. We were originally scheduled for a different house, but we had agreed to adopt Simon and he refused to move. We moved in to his house. He watches birds and TV.

A sport we have started enjoying here in Karachi is golf. This is a par-3 course on one of the local Navy bases. The school has an arrangement so we get to go there. The course has a two level driving range, large pro shop and three 9-hole courses. The price for 18 holes on the par-3 is $1.46 per person. We pay the caddies $6.33 each and are considered very generous! The real courses are $12.66.

This is the infamous "dirt hole" on the par-3 course. The sand is really slow, so smack it hard!

More from Karachi

You know you aren't in Saudi Arabia anymore when you can dress normally (westerner style) at a media event to kick off an environmental program. We were at the Marriott Hotel and wound up sitting next to the mayor of Karachi (a city of 16 million!! people).

Independence Day does not always occur on July 4th! We got two Independence Days this year. Pakistan celebrates on August 14. This was their 61st birthday of independence.

More truck art!

We got a guided tour of the Agha Khan Hospital and University. Agha Khan is our closest hospital and easily the finest medical facility in the entire country. This is a close-up of one of the exterior walls. When they built it, they designed it to be in a tropical climate. The bumps (called "tears") actually cut the amount of solar heat absorbed by around 40% or so.

The Karachi American School Parent Teacher Organization held its annual "Welcome Back" potluck by the school pool.

The school owns what is considered to be the best pool in the entire city.

We arrived in Karachi!

We have arrived in our new home in Karachi, but we still remember Bremerton! Here is a picture of one of the "tall ships" which visited the area for the 4th of July festivities. It is a replica of the "Bounty" and was used for the movie, "Mutiny on the Bounty". The ferry boat in the background should give an idea of how small the "tall ships" really were.


Here is the front door of our new townhouse. There are three of them in a row and an identical set of three behind ours. We have a walled garden in front and we inherited the gardener. Thank goodness! Keeping up with tropical plants will keep you jumping!


Here is the view out the master bedroom balcony. It is in front and you can see the parking area. To the right is the next townhouse. The small building on the left is the guard shack. With the heavy vegetation, you can't see the road at all.


If you have a front, you have to have a back! This is the view from the back bedroom (there are actually 3 bedrooms upstairs, kitchen, dining, living and study downstairs). Very tropical in the vegetation area! The spiral stairs on the left are the outside entrance to the servant's quarters. We haven't been in since it is locked and we have no key. No one living in it, either! Oddly, there is NO way to enter the house from the servant's quarters without going outside. In the monsoon rains, that must have been a real problem.


Here is "Simon the Cat". He came with the house. We were originally assigned a different house but we had agreed to adopt a cat and Simon refused to move. So, they moved us instead. There are a lot of cats around. They have all been spayed or neutered and they keep them to make sure there are no strays and no rats.


This is "Fountain Court" on the school campus. This is view across the walkway from Alonda's room. The campus is very good looking, but very hard to take pictures of. It was completed in 1966. The school was founded in 1953.


We have been on one quick trip shopping and tried to take some traffic pictures. With all the bumping around, this is the only good one Jim managed to take! This is an example of the decorations they do on the trucks and buses. We will put more pictures on as we get them. Pakistan is famous for the decorations. Pakistani drivers around the world like to decorate their vehicles. They don't like the newer vehicles since the plastic bodywork is hard to decorate.

More later. We are busy waiting for our shipments and getting ready to teach!

Home for one (!) month

We are finished with Saudi Arabia. منتهى (We think this is Arabic for "finished". They say that a lot.)


One of Alonda's students is a member of the Saudi royal family and gave her a nice plaque to commemorate graduating from high school. He gave a different plaque to each of his teachers.

We were the co-advisors to the Class of 2008. Their slogan was "Super 8" and they used the Supereman type logo. We liked the Superman logo on this Leipzig lion. Not everyone you meet on the street takes really good pictures!


We had a nice stopover in Germany for a couple of days before flying home to Bremerton. We visited the teachers we worked with for years as part of the German-American Partnership Program (GAPP). One is going to Geneva to teach German and the other just had a baby. The third teacher is now the German advisor for Western Canada and the Pacific Northwest.

We are home for a month (cell phone 206-369-9258) and then are flying out to Karachi. We start school in Pakistan the first week of August. This also means that school ends in May.

Summer coming!

We are leaving Saudi Arabia for home and will be going to Karachi, Pakistan in July. Enjoy the summer!

Jim won the "People's Choice" award for one of his pictures at the Historical Society. The picture is the one of the young girl dressed up at the museum. Scroll down to see it!

We will be putting up pictures of the summer and Karachi as soon as we get to it.

Refrigerated rooms in Abha?

A friend of ours, Judith LaRue, wrote us about the rooms sticking out on the side of the stone museum in Abha. Here is what she said about them:

Possibility #2 (and I think the most likely explanation): Many large, multi-story stone houses in Yemen had a "refrigeration room." This stuck out of a corner, usually very high up on the building (5th or 6th story or higher). It usually had a small window on each side. Ceramic jars of water were kept there for cooling. Cheese could also be kept cool there, and some fruits and vegetables could be kept longer, especially during the hottest months of the year. I actually went "inside" (well, it's really tiny and low, so you could say I sat on the edge of the door frame) a "refrigerator" on the 7th floor of a city house in mid-July in Yemen, and it was impressively chilly! I drank a glass of cool water from one of the ceramic jugs (and the communal drinking cup...). Many ancient, hot-climate cultures used thick ceramic vessels and shaded areas with good ventilation to create coolness. Alonda, you probably understand the "science" of this, but I'm pretty sure it's kinda' like the human body's sweating. Anyway, I don't know much about the climate of Abha, but consider the refrigerator idea...

Thanks, Judith!

Abha

This is the view from our hotel in the city of Abha. The city is up at about 2000 meters (5000 ft) and is much cooler, greener and cleaner than Jeddah.
We were up at the highest point in Saudi Arabia.
There is, of course, a park there.

There were quite a few baboons in the area. They have apparently come over from Africa and are considered native to Saudi Arabia. We saw a rather large group coming around wanting to be fed.

The group took the cable car down into the valley. During this trip, we were actually on three different cable cars.

Here is the official sign at the top of the cable car showing the altitude as 2717 meters above mean sea level (8830 feet). No wonder it was cooler than Jeddah (sea level).

This is Marwan, our guide, exiting the car at the bottom. He has been our guide for Madain Salah and Schweber Beach trips, too. He is a Saudi Arabian and wears a thobe and ghuptra (traditional costume) when the group is traveling but wears western dress for actual touring. A very nice guy! He is looking for a western wife if you are interested!

This is our token secret policeman in the follow car. He followed us wherever we went to protect us. Notice the sunglasses which he never took off!

This is the Rejal museum. It is mostly unoccupied but was once a thriving community. We think they built it like this as protection from the heat. There was a rather spirited discussion about the wooden structures which stick out. Some maintained they were bathrooms but gave up when it was pointed out that they are all on top of the other! The guides tend to give out almost no information about anything. We are not sure why.

This is from the interior of the museum. It reminded Jim of museums about the 1930’s in Kansas; pretty much whatever they could find is suddenly “historic” and is put in the museum.

This is the gold souk (market). The shops in the background look like a strip mall, but that is exactly what the old traditional markets have become. The shops are small and air conditioned; not like the old black and white movies! The guy on the back of the truck is hawking whatever he had in the truck using a loudspeaker system. We don’t speak Arabic, but he was obviously saying things like: “This price is so low, I’m practically giving it away!” and “If the price was any lower, I would be giving the money to YOU!”

This is a typical gas station. Notice the marble floor! Notice the lack of prices. Gasoline is a state controlled business and the prices are all the same everywhere in the Kingdom (about $0.70/gal). About 5-10 years ago, the price was $1.50 per fill up. It didn’t matter if you needed 5 liters or 500; the price was the same!

This is a house built to show the historical style. The rock walls are easy to understand. The mud walls were built with flat stones inset to act as a rain gutter and push the water away from the wall. Easy concept and it definitely shows you that it rains here!

This tent roof shows how colorful they can be on the inside. This is actually inside a large party hall.

This is the group of musicians who were hired for the night. We weren’t there for the party (a group of Abha businessmen hired the entire complex for the night!), but we got to watch their dress rehearsal.

This is the edge of the escarpment where we rode our second cable car down to the “hanging village”. Like the cliff dwellers of the American Southwest, they were very difficult places to attack.

This is part of the village seen from the cable car.

Here we are having tea with most of the traveling group down at the village.

This little Polish girl (Katrina) was dressed up by one of the guys at the local museum! Jim has entered the photo in the annual Historical Society photo contest (results later!).

Notice the solar panels for the cable car. They power the emergency radio and lights in the car. The cable car system is powered with plain diesel generated electricity.

Typical picnic area at one of the national parks near Abha. Notice the actual grass growing without a sprinkler system. You probably will never understand how rare this is in this country!

This is an example of the terracing used to make maximum use of the rainfall. Without it, most of the area would just be a brown desert.

Typical view of the city of Abha. Definitely greener and cleaner than Jeddah.

Nice art deco colors of part of the city. We were in our third cable car when we took this photo.

Saudi family picnicking. Notice the lady reading a newspaper!

We were trying to take the sunset, but the ladies kept peeking at us and taking our pictures with their cell phones. They had probably never seen that many bare headed women in their lives! The men were seated at a separate table to the left. We were, of course, seated men and women mixed and the women were not just MBO’s (Moving Black Objects).