The Big Trip: Iceland

Back on The Big Trip, we visited (imaginarily) Iceland!

We stayed in Reykjavik and did day trips to go ice diving (yes, that's a thing!) and volcano spotting.




The ice diving was really cool.  Freezing, in fact!

You use a dry suit instead of a wet suit so it's a bit warmer than it looks, but it's till pretty cold.

The underwater rock and ice formations are amazing, though!

And then we sprang for a helicopter tour (it took two helicopters for all of us) of the local volcanoes.

This was amazing, as well as jaw droppingly expensive.  Between hotels, food, and tours, we spend over $20,000 in Iceland- not counting over $8,000 in plane tickets from Svalbard to Reykjavik!


That brings our running total to $122, 648. Good thing we can imagine a lot of money!

Back at home, we watched Julia Bradbury's Icelandic Walks, and ate smoked lamb. Yum!

Five Favorites: Educational Apps

 I'm not getting paid for any of this, but you can repay me by telling me your favorite educational apps in the comments!

 1.  Dragon Box  This is a game about why math is fascinating.  It's a puzzle game that teaches algebra.  Unlike a lot of the math games which reward you for doing math by letting you progress in the game, here algebra is the game, and it is seriously addictive!

I got the family pack, which was good because the younger kids finished the "5+" game and wanted to start the "12+" immediately!

 We all got sucked into this one, from Oob to Mom.  You start out with symbols like in the picture above.  The box wants to be alone!

You end up doing things like the picture to the right.  The box is hiding as an X, but it still wants to be alone.  Every few puzzles, the creature in the box grows a little bit. 

The family pack also included "Elements," a separate game that does geometry puzzles that teach you Euclidian proofs! (So I'm cheating, the first pick was three apps... but I hope this company makes a lot more games!)

2. Stack the States  (and Stack the Countries) And the second pick is two apps.

But so fun!  You answer question about states (or countries).  If you get the question right, you stack the correct state into a pile passing a particular line.  If you pass the line you "win" a random state.  Winning enough states unlocks other mini games. 

We mostly finished this a year ago, but when places come up in the news, Choclo and Oob tend to remark, "I have that state/country!" 

I found the states fun and the countries surprisingly challenging!  With both games you can select the kinds of questions you are asked which makes it usable for a wide range of ages.

 3. Presidents Vs. Aliens  Made by the same people as Stack the States, you answer questions about presidents.  Correct answers give you a president to aim at the aliens - you win by clearing all the alien invasion.  And you win presidents and unlock mini games.

Very fun, plus Oob really shocked an adult by knowing all about James K. Polk.

4. Letter Quest.  This is basically Bookworm as an app.  You build words to defeat bad guys and progress on your quest.  You can play the whole thing free, but we used it enough that I bought it. Great way to learn spelling.

5. Hungry Fish Very simple fun way to build number sense.  Your fish is hungry.  You feed it numbers that add up to the number on the fish.  You can pull numbers together to create larger numbers and, as you progress in the game, the numbers your fish wants get larger and larger.  I believe this game can be expanded to subtraction as well.

I got this for my youngest kids, but found that older kids who had a weaker number sense were drawn to it as well (at higher levels).  It seems to me that it's possible to progress in math without a good number sense (I know I did), but it does not seem possible to enjoy math without number sense.

And now you know why my phone runs out of batteries!  Please tell me your finds in the comments

The Big Trip: Amazing Australia

We had a fantastic time in Australia!  On Tuesday we said farewell to Sue and her lovely family (Happy Birthday, Sue!), and set off for Canberra.
I have to say that one of the great things about staying with real people (instead of hotels) is getting to see more of normal life.  I grew up in a forested area, and I am always fascinated by the ways that forests are different  (even where I live now) from the one I grew up in.  Seeing the eucalyptus trees in Sue's forest (bush!) was amazing - it smelled so different!!  Very fun!

Canberra is a lovely "planned" city.  Washington DC was planned in a similar way, but 200 years earlier, before there were cars.   I much preferred driving in Canberra- they have better traffic circles!  Also, they designed their capitol with more of an eye towards green space, something that wasn't really an issue when they started building DC in a rugged swampy wilderness.

We weren't there long, though.  We hopped a plane and flew to the center of the continent to see Uluru (Ayer's Rock). We had tickets for the  Overnight Uluru Safari.  It was wonderful: we loved seeing  the differences in the rock at sunset and sunrise.

An unexpected bonus was that we were so far from light pollution that we really got to see the southern constellations: the Southern Cross, and the Magellanic Clouds!

I can't describe what it's like to see different stars in the sky.

We hiked around a bit there on Wednesday (although we decided not to climb on Uluru), then flew overnight to Cairns, in the far north east corner of Australia, near the Great Barrier Reef.


We spent a day, relaxing and recovering in Cairns, then took an overnight sailboat tour of the Great Barrier Reef.  This was amazing!

 We slept, rocked to sleep by the boat - just lovely. We all learned how to snorkel!  We loved seeing the fish up close.





And then it was time to move on - we could have stayed in Australia for month, rather than the week that we were there!  But we had a wonderful time, thanks so much Sue and Bill, we hope we get to come back some day!

Saturday evening we flew from Cairns to Osaka, Japan.

 Total so far: $32,606

If you've just joined us on this trip, here's what you need to know!

Can We Come "See" You?

Excellent news!  We've come into a heap of imaginary money!  We've decided to use it to take a once in a life time imaginary trip around the world to see all the places we've always wanted to see! (I know it's a lot of exclamation points, but we're, understandably, very excited)

We are going to figure out how and when to travel where we want to go, where to stay, what to see, what to eat, and how much it's all going to cost.  If you live in any of these places, let us know in the comments what is fun to go and do or see, and if we can "stay" with you. If you live in a different country, let us know why we should come visit!

Don't worry, we aren't going to physically show up on your doorstep, you'll just be giving us a virtual tour of fun stuff to do near where you live.  That probably means just telling us in the comments (we'll find pictures online to post about our trip).  If you have a blog, you can post about our imaginary visit, and we can link to you.  Which I guess would make us your imaginary friends.  But just remember,there are eight of us, so it'll be an imaginary party!

Here are our plans so far:
Starting where we live near Washington DC, USA
Hawaii (can we come see you Annabelle? We'd like to see one of the volcanoes, and a beach)
Australia (what do you think, Sue? I'd like to see your gum trees. And blue fairy penguins, although I think they are south of you,and, oh, lots of Aussie stuff!  You live in Leena's favorite country!)
Japan (We'll have Mxyl show us around)
Mongolia (the land of the Great Khan: I still yearn for a yurt)
India (probably in the north, near New Delhi)
Svalbard (hoping to time it to see the polar bear cubs and northern lights)
Iceland (glaciers and hot springs)
Denmark (Choclo wants to see the original Legoland)
Germany (where I was born and Neuschwanstein Castle)
Spain (Tia and Tio!)
Switzerland (to see Angel and her husband and their new baby girl)
Rome, Italy (Vatican City!)
Jerusalem, Israel (Holy Land sites)
Egypt (pyramids, of course!  And we'd like to cruise on the Nile)
Ethiopia (the great stone churches)
Kenya (Safari heaven)
Zimbabwe (Great Zimbabwe)
Antarctica (penguins and southern lights)
Chile (cruise along the Andes, more penguins)
Peru (Machu Picchu and the source of the Amazon)
Brazil (Amazon river and Rio)
Guatemala (Seeing friends and Aztec and Mayan ruins)
Back home to Washington DC! 

Around the world in 80 days?  I think it might take longer...

Naturally, you're invited to join us on our travels by way of the blog!

Venetians

I almost forgot!  Leena did her presentation on Venice.

She was very funny, especially when talking about eating cuttlefish with "ink" pasta!

She did a great job, and her venetian cookies were a real hit.  We are thinking of making them again for Christmas.

A Million Roses for the World

I thought this was really cool!  The Family Rosary Crusade of the Phillipines  is sponsoring this thing where they are getting a million people (in the Philippines, but I want to do it, too!) to say the Rosary every day for 200 days, with each day being for a different country with the ultimate goal being world peace.

I heard about it in Zenit and the eLumen (Dominican newsletter), but I had a hard time tracking down which country was which day.  That information (and the website) is here.

To reach the individual countries, click on the region (e.g. they are starting in Africa, so click "Africa" to get the country list - it looks like they are doing everything alphabetically).  I think that the countries go Monday through Saturday and Sundays are set up to pray for your own country and for your family.

I'm thinking this would be a great ongoing Geography lesson.  We could do a little Wikipedia session on each country as well as finding it on the globe.  UPDATE: If you click on the country names, it gives you the flag and a bunch of information about the country (including what problems you may be praying for).

If you aren't Catholic, it would still be great to be united in prayer for peace with that many people.  I'm sure you could just pray for each country on that day.

If you'd like to say the Rosary but are hazy on the details, you can find it here.  The usual would be 5 decades (one set of mysteries - this usually takes about 20 minutes) a day, but you could certainly do more or less.

It is starting October 10th, just after the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, and ends May 30th on the feast of Mary, Queen of all Nations.  Wow!

Istanbul Not Constantinople

In case you have had this going through your head for the last few days/weeks/months/decades (for which we thank Organic Learning!), this video has a slide show of Istanbul with some stunning shots of the Hagia Sophia (high on my list of imaginary travel plans).

And here is an excellent explanation of why the name was changed to Istanbul. Yes, yes, I know it is nobody's business but the Turk's... The answer is long and complicated (well, um, it's Byzantine, actually), but it's worth it! I, for one, learned that the city had a different name for nearly a thousand years before it was Constantinople!

I also did not realize that the song was a cover from the 1950s. We watched a number of Jazz and Big Band versions on You Tube, comparing notes with the ubiquitous They Might Be Giants version (which itself must have a dozen videos). It was interesting to watch so many versions of the song and talk about different musical and artistic styles and interpretations: how and why do artists and musicians see the world so differently?