(Mostly) Wordless Wednesday: The Big Trip, London Edition

London: $4,271.35
Running total: $126,919.35
Total miles: 27,818

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!

Poem of the Week

No Man is an Island

No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thy friend's
Or of thine own were:
Any man's death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.

John Donne

 

HT: Poem Hunter 

Photo: Svalbard Archipelago by Wayne Lynch

The Big Trip: Postcards from Svalbard Round 2

One of our favorite things about being in the Arctic Circle is the northern lights!

This was a gorgeous and easy project from Kathy's AngelNik Designs.  Kathy seems to be one of those art teachers who posts rarely, but everything she does post is a gem!

 The bottom mountains and river are oil pastels.

The sky is all chalk pastels.

You start with covering the sky with dark blue.

Then you draw swirly lines in medium green and blue. Moving dark to light, draw swirly light green and blue lines over the medium lines.

Add a bit of red near the top. 

The green and blue are from excited nitrogen atoms (wheeeee!).  The red is from oxygen, which is rarer because it takes much more energy to fluoresce.

Next gently blend the lines with your finger, finishing with brushing the light upwards.

Lastly add a few stars with oil pastel. 

Beautiful!  And fast, which means you can do several and experiment with different auroras.

We are also watching Frozen Planet, and I have a snowflake project planned.  We'll see if I get to it!

The Big Trip: Postcards From Svalbard 1

 Getting to Svalbard from Delhi was interesting: we had to go through Dubai and Oslo.  I thought that was curious because Oslo is Sweden and Svalbard is part of Norway.

At any rate, we landed in Longyearbyen, and took off on a cruise around the island.  It's not for nothing that Svalbard is called the Realm of the Polar Bear!

 The island has the highest number of polar bear maternity dens, and this is the time of year when the mothers and cubs have emerged.

 The art project is from That Artist Woman.

You paint the sky purple and sprinkle it with salt.  This was supposed to make snowflake patterns as the salt draws water from the paint, but in our case, we left the salt in place as stars.

The moon is made by removing a circle of paint using tissue over a cup. Leena painted hers black to make an eclipse.



The land is blue and white paint overlayed with plastic wrap.  When you remove the wrap, you get a neat icy crystalline effect.

Oob wanted a daytime sky.




The bears are stencils.  I don't happen to have any polar bear stencils, but the author (presumably thinking she was speaking to competent art teachers) suggested making one out of thin cardboard.

I have to say, it challenged my skills, but I discovered that minor mistakes aren't very noticeable.

The trick with all stencils is to pat the paint in with the brush instead of wiping it on.  An up and down motion gives you a clean outline, side to side tends to get under the stencil.

I had forgotten how much fun I have with art projects!

We also watched Spy on the Ice.

Zoomlians in India

Wrapping up India, we really did eat a lot of Indian food - very yummy!

In our imaginary trip we stayed one day in Agra,  We took a bike tour and saw the Taj Mahal and the Red Fort- so awesome!  We also splurged on a photo safari -so we got to see wild elephants, a tiger (from pretty far away), and (my favorite) rollers!

Non imaginarily,  we watched Jodha Akbar, a movie I love.  It's the movie Klenda mentions, and we recommend it to people who want to try foreign film.  It has something for everyone: war, romance, intrigue, opulence, singing, dancing, elephants, history, and some really excellent sword fights. Plus part of it takes place in the Red Fort!  And the movie really is quite long.
Also our Indian friend made a welcome string with the kids.  That's what Choclo is holding in the video.  It's a pretty string of birds, pom poms, and bells, that hangs in the doorway of many homes (many people leave their doors open).

The Zoomlians made this video after many takes.  Trust me, the other takes were even sillier.

Total spent thus far:  $56,153.  (Good thing we can imagine a lot of money.)

Total distance traveled: 21,000 miles!

The Big Trip: Japan

Backtracking a bit as we catch up with our home videos, here's one from our trip to Japan!

The Big Trip: India

We have started up our Big Trip again!

When we left you last, we were in Mongolia.  The Zoomlians have been kidding me that we haven't moved on because I love Mongolia.  In reality. life was too crazy- fortunately, in an imaginary trip, you can easily take a break!



So we are visiting northern India, mostly Delhi and Agra.  We've been eating lots of Indian food!  And, of course, touring the Taj Mahal. Hence last week's Poem of the Week.



Did you know that there was a persistent legend that Shah Jahan (who built the Taj Mahal for his beloved wife Mumtaz Mahal) had built a second Taj Mahal in black stone for his own grave?

He is buried in the actual Taj Mahal (by the son who overthrew and imprisoned him the last years of his life), but he clearly did not intend to be buried there.  His grave (and cenotaph) are the only things in the entire Taj Mahal complex which deviate from it's perfectly symmetrical design.  By "perfectly symmetrical" I mean every last leaf and flower on every wall are mirrored on the opposite wall.

Perfectionist doesn't begin to cover it!

Archeologists have recently uncovered the "Black Taj Mahal!"  But it's not a building.  It's an octagonal reflecting pool (built of  black marble) in the ruined gardens across the river from the actual Taj Mahal.  These were the gardens which Shah Jahan used to visit his wife's grave, and he could see both the white splendor of the actual building and it's ghostly dark reflection.

But what did Shah Jahan intend for his own grave?  We don't know - he never designed or built another tomb. 

Poem of the Week

Shah Jehan

You knew, Shah Jehan, life and youth, wealth and glory, they all drift away in the current of time. You strove, therefore, to perpetuate only the sorrow of your heart...Let the splendor of diamond, pearl, and ruby vanish like the magic shimmer of the rainbow. Only let this one tear-drop, this Tajmahal, glisten spotlessly bright on the cheek of time, forever and ever.

O King, you are no more. Your empire has vanished like a dream, your throne lies shattered...your minstrels sing no more, your musicians no longer mingle their strains with the murmuring Jamuna...Despite all this, the courier of your love, untarnished by time, unwearied, unmoved by the rise and fall of empires, unconcerned with the ebb and flow of life and death, carries the ageless message of your love from age to age: ‘Never shall I forget you, beloved, never.’

- By Rabindranath Tagore (translated by Kshitish Roy) from One Hundred and One Poems by Rabindranath Tagore (pp. 95-96).

HT: Sheridan Libraries

Zoomlians in Mongolia!

More Mongolia

 We've been having more fun with Mongolia.  We've found we really like Mongolian food!  These are Grilled Mongolian Pork Chops - yum!

And Leena built me a yurt!  She made the walls out of the red bricks, the central pole out of our carpet sweeper, and the canopy out of a sheet.

It was big enough for several small people to play inside.Just like in a real ger, sunlight filtered in through the canopy, so it was fairly bright inside.




We also watched this great video of a real ger (yurt) going up.  They call it an instant house, and, I have to admit, it's more like a house than a tent.

The Big Trip Lives!

And we are off from Japan to Mongolia!
 
I had a friend who was actually getting to go to Mongolia, and was ...not excited that she "had" to go.  When she found out how excited I was for her (after she realized I was not being sarcastic) she asked me why she should be excited about going to Mongolia. Here's why:

Five Awesome Things About Mongolia

1. They have gers (also called yurts).  They are like tents, if tents were real houses with stoves, lights, and comfortable beds.  If I had a ger, I would be actually happy to go camping.

2. My Dad used to bring me bronze Mongol arrowheads when he was passing through various areas the Mongols had conquered.  I ended up with a collection that ranged from very old, leaf shaped sand cast arrowheads with an imperfect alloy, to shiny, sleek, triple edged, barbed ones. It sparked an interest in Genghis Khan that lasts to this day.

He's probably the person that I most interested in that I would not like to meet. I'm not applauding that he conquered a third of the world and came close to wiping Europe off the map, but the forging of his nation and his brilliant military and political mind are fascinating.  Something like a third of all people in Mongolia are descended from the Great Khan, making him the Father of His Country on many levels.

3.. I've always had a keen interest in falconry.  In Mongolia, they still hunt for with birds of prey.  But they aren't using falcons to hunt rabbits.  Oh, no.  In Mongolia, they use eagles.  To hunt wolves.  I kid you not.

4. Two hump camels.  Have you seen The Story of the Weeping Camel?  If not, it's really worth seeing, for the camels, of course, but also for the beautiful insight into the lives of a four generation family of nomadic herders. It started out as a National Geographic special on camel herders, but then something extraordinary happened, and they caught it on film.

 Also caught on film, the breathtaking beauty of The Land of Blue Skies.  But, back to the camels: have you ever ridden a one hump camel?  If not, can you picture yourself perched up on the hump?  Now think of riding a two hump camel.  Nuff said.

5. There are other great things about Mongolia: the horses, archery, art, and so on, but, for me, it's comes down to this: it's the ultima thul, the farthest "far away" place.

Whenever my Dad parked in the furthest spot in the parking lot (as he was wont to do) and I complained (as I was wont to do), he told me it wasn't Outer Mongolia.  That's possibly true (it was really far away) but Outer Mongolia really is Outer Mongolia!

So far, we've arrived in Ulan Bataar and we will be going out to tour part of the steppe, watch a horse race, and stay in a ger.

Total cost to date: $42,878

Gigantic Tiny Trees

We are getting back on board with The Big Trip!  I had not forgotten, I had just gotten steam rolled by summer.

When I did our home school interviews (this is me interviewing the Zoomlians about the pleasures, disappointments, hopes and lost regrets of home schooling as we know it), one thing that came up repeatedly was that the kids wanted The Big Trip to be more immersive.

So, picking up where we left off in Japan, we went off to tour Japanese gardens and gigantic tiny trees at the Arboretum today.

This gigantic tiny tree was started in 1625!

This grove was my favorite.

And this one, I think, looks like an Ent.

Can you see it?

Besides the bonsai, the gardens were lovely.  There's really nothing like the tranquility of a Japanese garden.

Choclo was fascinated by the lanterns.

We also visited the Chinese Pavilion with their gigantic tiny trees.

In China, they are called penjing, and they often feature interesting rocks to make miniature landscapes.


And then we went home to make Yakitori Chicken for dinner, and watch a bunch of Star Blazers!

Guest Blog by Mxyl: The Big Trip: 日本!

So sorry I used two colons in the same sentence. 

Hello, everyone!  It's been a while since we've blogged about our Big Trip!  Right now, we're in of one of the places I was most exited about returning to (and the only place I've been to before)--Japan!

After we landed in Osaka (which I've never been to before), we went to Osaka Castle!  That was quite fun.  We also saw a Bunraku play--kind of like a Japanese puppet show, only intended for adults. 


Sono ato, Miyajima ni ikimashita.  Totemo tanoshikattadesu.  Are de, shika wo mita! 

Sorry, did I start talking in Japanese?  Of course I did After that, we went to Tokyo!  There, we saw Tokyo Tower and even climbed Mt Fuji!  I've seen it before, but never climbed it in person!  Here's a view of the Tower during the latest giant monster attack:

It took the Prime Minister's Jaeger and some extra hired help to fix the problem.  After that, we went to Kyoto and then Hokkaido, but there'll be time for that in another blog post.  Videos soon to come!

Seven Quick Takes: Great Book Combos, Cake Fails, and Shark Teeth

 1.  My friend Bill pointed out that you rarely see The Agony and the Ecstasy and Electronics for the Evil Genius on the same shelf.  I suppose he's right. 

I feel like there's something about this book shelf that encapsulates my life.

Big Enough

2 .  I am always on the look out for spots with poor drainage so that when we get a few days of rain we can have a Ducky Day.

This involves putting on rubber boots and hunting down the biggest puddle we can find... After a thorough soaking, we head home for baths, popcorn and hot chocolate!

We started this when Mxyl and Klenda were toddlers, but if you get a big enough puddle, everyone still wants to play!


3. Joy!  Rapturous delight!  This year I used my birthday money to buy a tree peony!  This is a long term investment, but, over the next 50 or so years this graceful plant will get about 6 feet high and 8 feet wide with progressively larger flowers.

This year I get three blossoms this size (8 inches of petals that look like they are cut from iridescent purple silk).

 4. Have you ever made something you were sure was going to be wonderful, and right about the time you are finishing, you suddenly realize...

That it's a terrifyingly creepy dinosaur cake that looks like it's planning to eat your head?

Yeah.  I know. We all go through that.

Fortunately the cake was for Choclo, and he declared it his favorite cake ever.

Trekking to the beach at Purse Park

 5.  It's shark tooth season!  We live in Maryland, in a spot that was covered with a shark infested sea (30 million years ago).  Yes, some people probably would try not to think about that too much.  But we find this wonderful: since each shark has thousands of teeth throughout it's life, our soil is embedded with millions of fossil teeth!

From Bayfront Beach

Fortunately, we don't have to dig for them.  They are continually washed out of the soil and found on the banks of rivers and the Chesapeake Bay.

Which means, on pleasant spring days, we spend the day at the beach,  playing in the sand and enjoying the water collecting fossils.

These are teeth, ray plates, and bone fragments (from whales and dolphins) from our latest day off scientific expedition.

If you're wondering why this is seasonal, I have two words for you: jelly and fish.

6. We finished our model rockets this week! We will meet one more time on Sunday to launch at NASA Goddard (I really do love saying that!) and we are done with our Astronomy and Rocket classes.  Hooray!  So fun!


7. If you are wondering what happened to The Big Trip, we are still traveling in Japan, although we will be leaving soon for Mongolia.  Blog posts coming soon, I promise.  We just got snowed under with birthdays, anniversaries, and end of year craziness.

If you are wondering what the heck that's about, the short answer is that we came across a truly enormous pile of imaginary money, and we have been using it to take a once in a life time trip around the world.  You're free to join us, and/or if you live someplace we will, or should be going, to have us "stay" with you!

Happy weekend!  More fun with Jen!

Guest Blog by Mxyl: Videos of Our Trip!

Hello, everyone!  On our trip discovering the world (although you'd think, being on this planet for 7 years, we'd already know something) we've shown you pictures, written blog posts, and described in detail where we've gone, and even showed you some videos of the trip and attractions.  There's one thing, however, that you have yet to see: us!

Here, recorded in stunning Super HD, is one and a half minutes of digitally remastered, optically digitized, full-fledged, spectacular, Han-shot-first amazingness of Zorg, Klenda and my reactions to Australia:

Allllright.  So maybe I exaggerated a bit. 

Anyway, I'm pretty sure we've forgotten someone else: our most hammy actor, Oob!  Here he is in Hawaii in an even more spectacular video!!


Lots of thanks to Ms. Anabelle for the leis and other Hawaiian things!

Mata atode,
ミクシェル　ヴォータパーズ

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!