Christmas 2014

Merry Christmas to all of you!

We will be spending Christmas visiting family in Texas. We will also do a short trip to Cancun, Mexico.

Summer & Fall in Seattle

Deep fried Oreos? "Crispy Creme Bacon Cheeseburger"??! When Jim saw this sign, he knew he was "back in the USA".

Multiple colors of cauliflower? We were used to plain, white cauliflower at about 1/20th the cost. Of course, we were buying it from a cart in the middle of a dusty street.

Alonda got ambitious and made pretzels! Surprisingly easy when she has a bread machine to make the dough.

We watched our neighbor's Fourth of July fireworks display from our dining room window. It was cold and rainy outside, but we were nice and cozy and comfortable.

We entered two events in the West Sound Senior Games. This was a much bigger deal than we thought. There were actually people who came from Canada and Louisiana to compete. Apparently, you have to win local to compete at state and then at national levels! We won Bronze in Badminton Mixed Doubles. Jim got a Bronze in the 25Km Bicycle Time Trial.

We went to the Kitsap County Fair. We have never been since it happens at a time when we would have had to be in Pakistan. This is a real, straight-ahead, small-town feel county fair. Kitsap County has a population of about 280,000 people. We have been living in a city of 22,000,000 people. Alonda got to meet an alpaca. They are really cute and soft.

Alonda was gardening on the patio. She grew basil, sage, parsley, chives, tomatoes, spinach, tarragon and rosemary. She had to bring the tomatoes into the house to ripen. During the day, the west facing patio is too hot during the day and too cold at night for them to ripen.

We live in a Navy town. The Bremerton shipyard does light and medium level maintenance on all kinds of ships. The USS Stenitz is being upgraded and the USS Nimitz will come in soon for maintenance and upgrade. They also have a few ships and subs in mothballs and some are sent here to be stripped of weapons and equipment before scrapping. The picture shows the former aircraft carrier, USS Constellation. We and several hundred other Bremertonians watched it being towed out of the harbor on its way to be scrapped in Texas. They will tow it all the way around the southern tip of South America and then all the way up into the Gulf of Mexico. It will take about 8 or 9 months. The ship is simply huge. The photo doesn't even show how big it really was. 

This is part of the Olympic Sculpture Park in Seattle this summer. It is a new, outdoor sculpture park we had not seen. This was an audio sculpture.

We went to a language teachers' conference in southern Washington in October. This is the bridge crossing the Columbia River from Vancouver, WA to Portland, OR. Alonda caught the lighting just right!

Jim hosted 18 exchange students and their two teachers from Tuttlingen, Germany in October. They were here for 2 1/2 weeks and we will go to visit them this summer. One of the field trips we took them on was in Seattle and they had to get up and catch the foot ferry over from Port Orchard (where Jim teaches German at South Kitsap High School) to Bremerton. This is the foot ferry arriving from Port Orchard. We were waiting on the Bremerton-Seattle ferry for the students when we took this picture of their arrival. This is the foot ferry Jim rides to work. 

In Seattle, we took the students from Germany on the Ducks. The Ducks are WW II vintage DUKW 5-ton front-wheel drive tandem axle amphibious vehicles. There were a lot of them made and some of them are still around. Most of them are in Alaska where they use them to resupply fishing trawlers. The Germans were fascinated! They have nothing like this in Europe.

We took them on a weekend field trip to visit the grave site of Chief Sealth. He is the Native American chief who helped the early settlers in this area.

The last field trip was to the Pacific Science Center in Seattle. Here are some of the students relaxing on the BIG chairs. They loved the Ripley's Believe It or Not! exhibit and the other hands-on stuff.

This is one of the trees outside our dining room window. We have not seen fall colors in a decade!

Marseilles March 2014

We enjoyed our trip to France in October of 2013 and decided to go back to the south of France in March. We stayed in Marseilles. Most people don't think of staying there, but that is where the plane connections worked. We originally planned to go to Nice, but it was almost impossible to get there!

We stayed at an iBIS Hotel next to the train station. This is the view from our window towards the west. The train station is the large building on the right. A couple of times while we were there, they were shooting a French soap opera in the square.

This is one of the two forts that protected the entrance to Marseilles harbor. The forts were built of brick and would have collapsed very quickly. When you go to Europe, you have to see the forts, chateaux and castles.

This is the famous Chateau d'If. The Man in the Iron Mask was set here. There is, of course, no truth to the story, but tourists love it.

This is the cathedral which hangs over the entire city. This is what the Notre Dame de la Garde looks like from the square by the train station.

This is what Notre Dame de la Garde looks like from the port.

This is what Notre Dame de la Garde looks like from the bus on its way up the hill. 

You finally get to look back down on the city. From this perspective, you can see how visible the cathedral is from every point of the city.

This video pans around a bit from the cathedral. The view is really spectacular.

 We got out of Marseilles by riding the train down to Toulon. This is the cable car which went up the hill behind the city. The weather was far from the best and we had to sit around for an hour during the lunch hour before we could ride up.
 Looking back down into Toulon, you suddenly realize that 60 % of the French Navy is here.
 The cable car was not quite as beautiful and romantic as the advertising posters!

Another city we visited was Avignon. Very nice, friendly city with a beautiful castle across the river. The city was crawling with high school kids speaking very bad French. They were on exchange tours!

This is the Pope's Palace. During the time when there were two (or more) Popes at the same time, France and Italy were fighting over who had the "real" Pope.

This is the bridge to nowhere. Apparently, it was never meant to actually cross the river. We didn't get it at all.

Here are two more of the many cathedrals we didn't visit. There are a LOT of these things all over Europe.

The coffee was really good. Alonda did not expect that!

This was a little museum/store with "santons". Originally, these were always little Nativity Scene figurines. Today, they make just about anything.

The level of detail in these things is amazing. The most common size was less than about 6 inches high.

This stainless steel roof is exactly what it looks like. It is basically a mirror you can look up at next to the harbor. Tourists had a lot of fun taking their pictures of themselvesl

We are now back in the USA!!!

Alonda has retired from teaching. Jim is looking for a new position teaching English as a Second Language or German or Traffic Safety or something.

Chennai track meet, March 2014

 We spent three days in Chennai, India.
Chennai used to be known as "Madras" and is the largest and most important city in South India.

Our neighbor, the track coach/Athletic Director, came to us frantically searching for reliable adults with visas for India. Two of his coaches had been denied visas to go with the track team to the meet in India. We have ten-year visas for India and he asked us to go.
  We put together sub plans and flew over. We actually spent three days keeping an eye on the track team kids. We made sure they rested, drank lots of water and Gatorade and made it to their events on time. No tourist time! The bus left the hotel at 6:30 in the morning and we got back around 8 or 9 at night.

This is the track field. The building in the back is part of the school buildings.

 Athletes ran on grass with painted white lines. The school doesn't actually have a track like you may be used to seeing in the US. They ran around a 200 meter oval. A normal track is 400 meters around. The 3000 meter run was 15 laps!
 

This is the awards area.

This is the view from our hotel. The buildings are part of the school complex. It was literally across the street, but because of the security walls, we had to take an 8-minute bus ride to get there. The roof of the building that looks beat up is being re-finished to put the tennis courts back on it. The weather is so hot, they only play on them at night. 

You can see the pollution. Straight up SMOG.

Athens Christmas 2013

Here it is! The Acropolis! This is the one thing in Athens that everyone knows about. Maybe you should ask yourself where you are standing when you see it like this? We will show you later ...

The Acropolis is in the throes of its fourth (or fifth or sixth) major renovation. It was blown up a couple of hundred years ago when it was being used to store gunpowder. It actually had walls just inside the columns. They are going to put most of the walls back in this time. Most people won't recognize it when they finish.

This is one of several theaters you see on the walk up to the Acropolis. Not really different from the ones on Cyprus or in Jordan. A lot of that ancient Greek/Roman stuff looks a lot alike.

Temple of Zeus seen from the Acropolis. Not much left. You can see how the columns were made by noticing the pile of "slices" where one of the columns fell.

Hadrian's Arch to honor the Emperor Hadrian. He had started a "new neighborhood" in the city! This is about as deeply as we dug into the historic aspects of the city. Since it is so close to the Acropolis, you get an idea of how small the actual city was. We tend to think important cities are large. If you go this far back in history, they were very small.

The hill with the tower is where we took the first picture from. It is the tallest spot in the city and has a wonderful view.

They are trying to do restoration all over the Acropolis. Here is what they have to work with. It is an incredible bunch of unrelated pieces of stone that they try to reassemble. There are, of course, no pictures to work from. No one, of course, really knows what it looked like.

This looking down on the old market area. The temples tended to have the same "look" to them.

This is a swing around with the camera from the top of the tallest hill. It is pretty amazing how large the city has become. We had to ride the tram about 45 minutes to get past all the wall-to-wall houses.

Christmas Day Mass at the Aga Dionissios downtown. We went because it was the closest English language service. We sort of messed up by arriving on time. The place was packed with expats! We had to stand during the entire service.

This is Syntagma Square. It is across from the Parliament and is the center of all celebrations and riots in Athens. The entire place was decorated for Christmas and New Years.

The night we went down, it was absolutely covered with people. We weren't even there for New Year's Eve.

This is an old industrial area they used to generate coal gas. The entire area has been renovated into a children's play area and exhibition hall.

This was just about the only thing open for Christmas Day. Lots of kids and families.

This was a clock in the subway in Syntagma Square. We took the Clock Tour in Seattle so we tend to notice the clocks.

We rode the trams out to the beach. It was winter and not very many people were around. A few people swimming, but not a lot.

We visited a Car Museum. The cars were wonderful and, since it was in Greece, we saw a lot of car brands and models we were not familiar with. The entire thing was actually a private collection.

Alonda with a pink Cadillac.

Alonda loved the dashboard.

She thought the little serving trays were wonderful. They are better than on the airplanes.

 This is the ferry boat we took out to one of the islands. Everyone talks about the Greek Isles.

This is the island of Aegina from the ferry boat. The boat backs up and parks against the concrete. We are used to the double-ended ferries like they have in Seattle.

We didn't take the hydrofoil. It only saved about 20 minutes and cost a LOT more. The whole "visit the Greek Isles" thing was very expensive. We visit islands and ride boats all the time, so we were not that excited.

This is the harbor on Aegina. Quite picturesque. Cafes and tourist shopping with motor scooters so you can circle the island.

This is Kolona, the archeological site. It's name means "single-column". They call it this because they made an entire museum based around the single, lone column still standing after centuries of earthquakes and wind.

This is what loading and unloading is like in Athens. The cars, trucks and people all go on and off at the same time on the same bridge.

When in Greece; cook Greek. We signed up for a Greek cooking class.

This is some of the stuff we used to prep everything. Alonda learned to make Greek pastries. They are actually very good!

The cook/teacher cheats and has everything pre-cut before she starts to put it together.

We didn't learn to make this, but a chocolate crepe is actually excellent!