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.

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!