Merry Chistmas from Karachi

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all!

We are going to Barcelona for Christmas and will, of course, post photos from Spain sometime in January. We hope you, your family and friends enjoy a restful, joyous Christmas and a hopeful and prosperous New Year.

We have had little trouble finding Christmas decorations since there are approximately 3 million Christians in Karachi.

The Middle School students went to the beach last week. The weather was beautiful. Here are a couple of the camels they got to ride! The camel ride cost about 60 cents. The High School students had final exams ...

Turtle Watch

We went on a Turtle Watch organized by Alonda and her Green Team (student Community Service group at school) to the local World Wildlife Fund (WWF) site near Karachi (we have mentioned them before.).

The first picture shows the beach at night. The lights in the background are where the beach curves and the white light on the right is from the porch light two houses down. The green-white of the waves is caused by the bioluminescence of phytoplankton which emit light when they are tossed around by the waves breaking on shore. We had a barbecue here for the kids. We don’t show the students, nor speak overly much about the school due to security concerns by the US consulate. See us next summer!

This is Alonda holding a one-day old Green Sea Turtle. The WWF guy brought in a bucket full of them to show the students. We later took them all down to the ocean!

This is a full-grown turtle laying eggs on the beach in the dark. The turtles come to lay eggs starting at about age 15-18. They come about three times every season to lay about 100 eggs each time. The entire process of coming ashore and digging and laying and covering up and getting back to the ocean can take all night. The WWF guy says that about 6-8 turtles per night are coming ashore on this particular stretch of beach.

This is a freshly laid egg. The shell is not hard. The eggs bump around and get covered with sand, so they need to be flexible. The babies will hatch in about 45 days.

The beach was crawling with baby turtles looking for the ocean! It was kind of scary to walk around without a flashlight; we were afraid we would step on them. The kids had a lot of fun picking them up and putting them in the water.

After the turtle finishes laying, she spends a lot of time covering them up.

Mom looks tired!

This is the site as seen by GoogleEarth. You can use the lat/long to go to it on your own computer. The holes on the beach are what the turtles leave! Yes, you CAN see them from space.

Italy in October

We spent a week in Italy in mid-October this year. This was our first trip out of Pakistan for this school year. We stayed at a place called Il Roseto (the little rose) in Tuscany near a town called Grosseto. Alonda didn’t do it a lot, but she enjoyed sitting in the rose garden.


The place is a farm with a couple of renovated buildings with guest rooms. There are a lot of these (http://en.agriturismo.com/index.asp). We would recommend this as a very relaxing holiday. Only reservation is that it is very much a summer activity. The house had no heat! Most of the restaurants were closed in the evening. The season was over!


The countryside reminded Jim of where he grew up in Kansas.


We rented a car and drove around Tuscany. The day we went to Pisa (first stop, of course!), it was raining. We had no city map, so we drove around looking for a leaning tower. Italy has a serious lack of tourist signs! We finally stopped for directions and found out we were on the wrong side of the river.


When we got there, the sun was shining under the clouds and the light quality was absolutely amazing!


They actually let people go up the bell tower. Jim wouldn’t have gone up if you paid him!


This is a detail on one of the bronze doors cast in the year 1180. The Duomo (cathedral) isn’t all that old; it burned down several times.

! This picture is from inside the church. The light quality was wonderful!

The next day, we went out to look at Tuscan hill towns. This one is Volterra.

This is looking back down to where we drove up. The hills aren’t as green as most of Italy. They have been mining alabaster here for thousands of years.

This is San Gimiagno. It is considered the most famous of the Tuscany hill towns because of the towers over the red tile roofs.

This is the front of the Duomo in Sienna. This is an example of a great Gothic style cathedral. The library was really special, but impossible to take pictures of. Sienna is considered one of the prettiest of these smaller towns in Tuscany.

Our last day in Tuscany was spent on the coast. We tried to go to the Isle of Elba (Napoleon was exiled there), but no ferry were running. We don’t know how you get there if you live on the island! The tourist season was definitely over. This town was Follonica.

Piombino was where the ferry was supposed to leave, but there weren’t any. This is a bell tower in the middle of town.

We went back to the beach near our agriturismo place for sunset. Wonderful sunset!

We caught the train in the morning and went to Rome. We checked in to the hotel and walked over to the Trevi Fountain. Alonda got an excellent picture of it. It is hard to photograph a lot of stuff in Rome because buildings have been built all around the antiquities. Lots of tourists and you can’t back up because you will bonk into a building.

Next morning we did the Vatican (“the smallest country in the world with the largest church in the world”). This is San Pietro across the square. Since the tourist season was mostly over and it was starting to get cold, the crowds weren’t too bad.

This is one of the many clocks we photographed. One time around Seattle on the Clock Tour and you start taking clock pictures

This is looking out from the entrance to San Pietro. Jim kept complaining about the crowds. He was here 35 years ago and remembers no lines, no entry fees, and no crowds in San Pietro or the Sistine Chapel.

To get through to the Sistine Chapel, they now run the lines through the Vatican Museums. Wonderful museums if you have the time to look at them. It is silly to try to take pictures of the Chapel. If you want to look at it; buy the professional shots.

Jim in front of the Pantheon. Inside was beautiful, but Jim remembers being almost ALONE in it 35 years ago.

The “Wedding Cake”. This name was given by the American GI’s arriving in 1944. It is really the “Palazzo delle Esposizioni”.

You can’t visit Rome without seeing the Collosseum! We greatly enjoyed Italy. Food was great and the sights were beautiful. Good place to vacation!

Summer 2009

Here are a couple of things we did over the summer.
We went to the horse races when we were in Dallas-Ft Worth visiting Alonda's sister and dad. Jim got the biggest win. He went by one of the automatic machines and noticed that someone had left their winnings on it, so he pushed the button and won!
We went to a semi-pro baseball game between the Ft Worth Cats and the Grand Prairie Air Hogs. Jim managed to get his picture with the mascot. He likes the logo enough to be a fan (if he lived near there!)
It sure looked like the Air Hogs were going to win, but the Ft Worth Cats pulled it out in the last two innings and won.
This is what a "pork project" looks like. Representative Norm Dicks with Govenor Gregoire (in green) and the Secretary of Transportation are all doing the ribbon cutting for a 200 meter tunnel in Bremerton. It makes it easier for the cars to leave the ferry boat and head for the freeways.

This will be the only time in history that pedestrians will be allowed to walk through the tunnel.

They put some money into decorating the insides. This will give the drivers something to look at as they whiz past all that art work on the walls.

The local classic car club brought out all their old iron for a car show. The tunnel looks pretty nice, but you are not allowed to stop and look at it!

We had a pretty quiet summer. Toured clocks in Seattle, hung around our condo, visited relatives in Texas and Illinois and stopped off in Toronto on the way back to Karachi.

Toronto

We spent a few days in Toronto en route back to Karachi this summer. This will be our second year teaching in Karachi.

We took a city tour and one of the things we went back for was to visit the Sugar Shack.

Sugar Shack. This is a ship parked next to the storage area for the Redpath Sugar Company. They make so much sugar, they have to store the raw material in an extra ship parked next to the warehouse. There is a very nice, free museum run by Redpath. We learned a LOT about making sucrose and why and how it is in so many different forms.

Police Station. No, we weren't in any trouble! We visited this police station because it is also where the free Police Museum is located. It was actually pretty interesting to see the changes over time of what policemen and policewomen wear and how they operate.
Clock tower. Since we took the Clock Tour in Seattle, we have been noticing all the clocks in cities. Toronto is well endowed with some very nice clocks placed for public view.

Market. Every large city has a Farmers' Market and Toronto is no exception. As usual, when we visit a market, it is closed.

The Gold Building. This building is actually covered with gold! Actually, the glass panes on all outside surfaces contain small but visible amounts of gold. They put it in as part of the insulation and it worked so well, they have actually make a profit by covering their building with gold.

City Hall. This is the Reflecting Pool and garden area just outside City Hall. We didn't get to tour City Hall because all city employees are on strike. The city didn't have that "clean" look we have come to expect in Canada. The employees on strike included the garbage workers! We had no trouble waking past the picket line. We just announced we were "tourists" and everyone got out of the way!

Clock tour

We spent a lovely day in July walking around Seattle doing the Clock Tour. The web site is: http://www.zombiezodiac.com/rob/ped/clock/map.htm. Alonda's sisters found this tour last October when they visited the condo (we weren't home!). They liked it so much, they recommended that we go, too. These are from the pictures we took. We have not posted all of the clocks. You will have to go to the web site if you want to find out about all of them. You will also find out a lot more information about the clocks.

This is the first clock on the tour. It stands over King Street Station, the AMTRAK station in Seattle.

This clock isn't on the tour, but should be! We happened to know about it since we had been inside this building before. This clock is in the large waiting room across the street from King Street Station. We had looked over the building years ago when we were looking for places to have a Junior/Senior Prom.

This clock is down in the Pioneer Square area of Seattle. This is the part of the city where all of the Klondike Gold Rush business was taking place over a hundred years ago. Very picturesque!

This clock is inside the bus tunnel. The city has just added underground streetcars to the tunnels they built for the buses. The clock is made from tools and parts used in the construction of the tunnels!

This is the Pendulum Clock. The clock doesn't actually have a pendulum, but it looks like it should.

Alonda's sisters never found this clock! The web site instructions missed the actual location and direct you to the wrong garage. Yes, this clock is inside a parking garage.

Here is a shop that is not afraid to advertise. They also have a very nice clock outside their store ...

This is the Question Mark clock. What do you think the question is?

Tiffany's has, of course, a large clock decorated with gold and marble. We don't know what Tiffany's has to do with Atlas holding up the world ...

Bergman's has been a fixture for dedicated suitcase seekers for decades.

This is the shot of Seattle that everyone remembers. The Pike Place Market, but not the clock, is world famous for flying fish. This is the place they mean when you read the book Fish!.

This clock is at Colman Dock. This is where the ferry boats come into Seattle. The clock has been here, in various forms and locations, for over a hundred years.

These clocks are not on the tour. They hang outside the REI store in Seattle. They are too far away from the other clocks to make a convenient walk, but if you patronize REI, you don't want to miss them.

This is the last clock. Notice that Mt Everest has its own time zone?