Sri Lanka for Spring Break

We went on a ten-day trip to the island of Sri Lanka. You may remember the place as the former island of Ceylon where they grew all that tea. Or, you may have seen it on the news where they finally ended their 30-year civil war! We were very happy with our guide, Ranga. He speaks English and German and can arrange tours/hotels/etc. [email: sydstours@gmail.com].

One of the first things we saw was a Buddhist temple on a lake in Colombo, the capital city.

This is the Galle Face Hotel, and it was pretty grand. It is on the beach in Colombo, the capital, and is one of those fine old hotels in the British tradition.

The Galle Face Hotel is very popular for weddings. It is now surrounded by newer and taller buildings, but this is still THE place to get married. It is not unusual for the hotel to host two or three weddings a day. These are the traditional dancers who were here for one of the weddings. We saw this group do two weddings in one day. Other tourists were not as shy as we were about walking up and taking pictures of the bride and groom!

This is a Hindu temple. All of the Hindu places we saw were lavishly decorated and they seemed to all be well used.

This is the hotel in Kandi. Kandi is well known since it is a little cooler than other places and was the earlier seat of government.

The cultural show was fun with a lot of drumming and dancing.

The golden roof stands over the Temple of the Tooth. This is very famous in Buddhist tradition. It is supposed to house an actual tooth that was picked up after the cremation of the Buddha.

This is one of the many, many images of the Buddha in the Temple of the Tooth. The Buddha has many forms, since each statue is simply a representation of an idealized being. It doesn't have to actually look like him.

This is part of the Peradeniya botanical garden. It was started some time before 1800. Very nice and very clean. Sri Lankans seem to appreciate their natural spaces.

The sign pretty much says it all. Be sure to notice how long it took them to find out where they came from! (Click on the picture and it will be bigger.)

This is the Grand Hotel up north. It really WAS a grand hotel. Very British. We sat on the lawn and drank tea.

Hakgala botanical garden. Started by King Ravana and expanded under the British. The little pond is in the shape of the country.

This elephant is supposed to have the largest tusks of any living elephant. Indian elephants have solid tusks; African elephants have hollow ones. This "tusker" cannot have larger tusks unless he grows some longer legs!

This one is cuter!

The local cricket team won!

The rickshaws (Tuk-tuk) were fun and we thought the sign was cute.

This is how they grow tea. They grow a LOT of it. The "pluckers" will carry a stick and the overseer will show them how low they are allowed to pick. If they didn't do that, they would just strip the bush since they are paid by the pound. If they strip the bush, their will be no more tea to harvest!

Alonda was sorry she didn't stop and see this guy. She assumed he was just painting as a hobby. She realized too late that he was a professional and was selling his paintings.

This bridge is the only access to a small village on the other side of the river. This is the same river they used when they filmed The Bridge Over the River Kwai.

This is the Bentota Beach Hotel. Very relaxing and the beaches were spotless. We didn't see anyone cleaning them, they just don't throw any trash on them!

We are at the Brief Gardens. Locally famous for the guy who designed and owned the place. He was a renowned architect and garden designer in Sri Lanka.

This is the largest Buddha statue in the world. It is down near the tsunami area. You can only go up the first two stories on the inside. Be sure to notice the people standing down in front of it!

The interiors of many of the Buddhist temples would have VERY extensive displays of scenes from the life of the Buddha. This one was about 25-30 feet high.

This is the lighthouse at the entrance to the harbor at Galle on the southern coast. It is in a corner of the old fort which controlled the entrance.

There was a whole flock of Buddhist monks touring the fort. They had some children (monks in training) with them and the entire thing was a school trip!

There is a world famous, private turtle hatchery on the edge of the ocean. The place has been in "National Geographic" and "Reader's Digest". It was completely washed away in the tsunami and has had to rebuild from scratch.

We went to dinner in a Tuk-tuk. The name comes from the sound of the old two-stroke motors.

We really enjoyed our trip and would gladly recommend Sri Lanka for a vacation. Of course, from the US it is a loooooooooong trip!

Pakistani Cultural Day

The official Pakistani Day is on 23 March, but since school was closed for two weeks for Spring Break, they did it early. Right after the opening speakers, the students all went out on Palm Field and release baloons with messages to the world. Notice all the baloons are green and white, the Pakistani national colors.


Here we are posing with a Tik-Tik (ricksahaw) wearing our traditional Pakistani outfits (shawal khamiz). Jim looks a lot like one of the groups up in the Northwest Tribal areas. Several Pakistanis have commented on it.


These are the two drummers who were hired for the event. They are part of the traditional music and merry-making.

This is actually a chalk drawing. The way they do it is to take a flat piece of metal and make holes with a nail in a pattern. They then put powdered chalk on it and shake it over the concrete. You can make some pretty amazing patterns with this stuff.

This is a short video showing what the opening ceremony looked like. Jim panned around with the camera so you can see the size of the tent.

In the past, the Pakistani Day celebrations have lasted as long as a week!

Christmas 2009

We went to Barcelona, Spain for the Christmas season. We like going to a Christian country for the Christmas holidays. The weather was very mild. It rained one day of our eight and we spent a lot of time wishing for lighter jackets. The food was excellent with lots of choices. The people were friendly and helpful. The coffee was simply outstanding, just like in Italy! The only difference was that Spain knows what decaffinated coffee is. The restaurants were clearly labelled as Smoking or Non-Smoking.




This is the Sagrada Familia cathedral. They have been building it for over a hundred years and it is obviously not finished! The architect was Gaudí. He was famous for trying to make all his buildings look like natural shapes.

This is a shot of some of the windows from the inside. Very impressive colors.

This is what most of the interior looks like. The entire church is one big construction zone. We are pretty sure they don't have services here yet.

This is the "permanent Nativity Scene" on the outside of the church. We were looking for something at ground level and completely missed this the first time we walked by it.

Barcelona could be called the "City of the Nativity Scene." They are everywhere and the markets have lots of things to let you make your own personal nativity scene. This one was in the square in front of City Hall and was so popular, they had fences and police to keep the lines under control. Amazing!

The streets were all decorated with lights. The Rambla (mile-long pedestrian walking zone from Catlunya Square all the way to the sea) had a very nice set of lights on the trees.

Jim did a lot shopping.

This is one of the local markets. Simply beautiful!

Even the candy displays were special.

Speaking of candy ... We visited the Museu de la Xocolata (Chocolate Museum). They had some truly wonderful chocolate sculptures and display scenes. We didn't take pictures since they were all in glass display cases. We were disappointed that they had no postcards! The chocolate was truly excellent.

Barcelona is justifiably famous for its beaches. We walked along them in the beautiful, warm weather on Christmas Day.

We rode the cable car up Montjuic. This is a mountain right next to the city on the sea. It was the site of the Olympics when they were held here and it has a lot of museums and parks.

This is the castle on top of the mountain. It was built to defend the port, but is now a museum.

This shows the view from the same place looking in opposite directions. You may remember the divers in the Olympics looking like they were jumping over the entire city.

This is one of the city parks. It reminds us of the Trevi Fountain in Rome.

This is Alonda sitting on a life-size mastadon. There was almost a line to take this picture!

This is the cable car up to Montserrat. It is about 60 Km from Barcelona. We went up on the train.

The cable car was built by the Germans just in time for the Great Depression followed by the Spanish Civil War followed by World War II. Great timing for a tourist attraction!

This is Jesus and the 12 Apostles on the wall of the Basilica on the mountain. The interior of the church is wonderfully decorated. Lots of paintings and carvings. It was worth the trip up the mountain.

This is the special attraction. The "Black Madonna" is what you have to stand in line for. The line was about the same length of time to get into the Sistine Chapel. This Madonna carving is probably the reason for the monastery being built here.

This is the view from the monastery. There is another 100 m of mountain above you from this point.

We went to a flamenco dance show. Very impressive.
Next time, we might try touring by Segway!

We had a wonderful time and recommend Barcelona as a tourist destination.

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.