Elizabeth’s Blog

Well, here I am in Auckland- I know the movie was ?Sleepless in Seattle? but I am currently ?Sleepless in New Zealand? trying to get on the correct time zone.

We had the most wonderful time in India. I never would have guessed that our family would have been captured by its magic. We never really had an urge to go there and several times it was almost nixed from the itinerary. I am so glad we left it in!

New Zealand is total culture shock for us. No holy cows, camels etc. blocking the roads, no trash strewn areas, no street peddlers or beggars and no dust. It makes India sound horrible but it was not and we loved every minute of it.

Traveling in Bhutan and India was more challenging and the roads were much worse than any of our previous destinations, so doing school work in the car was difficult to impossible. One thing that Ted did on the bumpy roads was prepare a music appreciation class on classical music. They listened to a piece, rated it and then learned about the composer and what he was trying to express or how it fit into history. The highest ranking pieces were Beethoven?s 5^th and 9^th symphonies.

Reading

In Charleston the kids and I were part of a Mother / Son and Mother / Daughter book clubs. I had not realized how much I missed that format and group until our family all read a book and then Gibson led a book discussion on Dawa: The Story of A Stray Dog in Bhutan by Kunzang Choden. It is the story of an extraordinary dog that goes on a journey and finds enlightenment. It is Buddhism meets Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz. It may be our favorite book of the fall.

Gibson continues to pour over every page of the animal guide books we get in each country. He knows every mammal, reptile and bird in Bhutan and India. Yesterday we picked up books on bugs, birds and mammal of New Zealand. He is disappointed that there are not many reptiles here and no snakes at all.

We continue to read both fiction and non fiction. Sterling read the diaries of the princess whose father built the Taj Mahal. They both read the story of her father and building the Taj. They also both read Gandhi and then the next day saw where he was shot.

The life of Buddha was helpful for them to understand the art in all the temples we saw.

We were given some Indian comic books that were folktales with a moral that were fun and different.

When we arrive in a new country the kids always read an article on proper etiquette and customs. In Bhutan they wrote spoofs on characters that did everything they should not do. They were very funny and quite irreverent.

Science

Unbelievably enough we found a great book store in Bhutan that had a series of science workbooks for kids. Sterling got water experiments and Gibson got how the body works. We have starting going through them. However, compared to everything else we are going they seem a bit mundane. It is a little hard to get energized about them when you are learning about tracking tigers and seeing their habitat first hand ? not to mention the actual tiger. Yesterday we went to the Auckland zoo with our dear friends Greg Neil and Jayne Tankersley (many of you may remember that they lived with us in Boston for four years while getting their masters & PhD?s and helped take care of Gibson and Sterling). Well, it was such a treat to see them moved home and now as amazing parents to three young children. It was a lovely day but the difference from seeing a cheetah lying next to the glass in the zoo verses even just a glimpse of a tiger after looking for it for three days in the wild is amazing. The tiger search was a huge adrenaline rush and you could see how people would get hooked on hunting for animals (with a camera). We learned about poaching, tiger statistics and how they are manipulated (sadly, over-estimated), park management, habits, personalities and diet.

Math

Ted continues to do ?Everyday Math? with the kids and we finished the Abeka Math books for grades 4 and 5. The kids are doing speed tests and Mathmania Puzzles until we get home at Christmas and get some new books. Although Gibson is now a wiz at metric conversions I would like to get a workbook for Sterling to use for next year.

Interviews

Our kids tend to be on the shy side with new people (I know that may surprise some of our long time friends). So we are going to have them do a series of interviews of people we meet. Look for some of their write ups in future blogs.

China / India

The kids are also in the process of writing a comparison of these two countries which are so different and yet so important to the world in the coming years. Their insights and understanding of these two cultures will help them as they grow up and hopefully make them more compassionate and informed citizens of the world.

Vocabulary and Spelling

We continue to do spelling tests and have vocabulary books and flash cards. I am always looking for fun ways to practice our words so if you have any suggestions, let me know.

Charities

We have seen so many great organizations this fall from Tasmanian Devil Rescue Centers to Aids Counseling Centers. We have asked the kids to choose three and write a description of why that organization deserves assistance.

Educational Field Trips

They continue daily. Highlights would include:

The Bhutan National Museum for costumes, weapons and artifacts housed in a Ta Dzong (watch tower)

Dzong?s of Bhutan. They are the forts/ monasteries with monks as young as 8

Jama Masjid ? largest mosque in India

Humayun?s Tomb- predecessor architecturally to the Taj Mahal

Bhangarh- abandon medievel town

Taj Mahal- I only need to add that Gibson lost a tooth there-

Agra Fort- where Shah Jahan (builder of the Taj Mahal) was under house arrest for the last years of his life

Tiger hunting with a naturalist for 3 days- we finally saw one on our last day

Pushkar Camel Trading Fair- complete with snake charmers

Walking down a street in India is a field trip and experience in itself.

Questions

If you ever read one of our blogs and have a question for the kids, please feel free to send it to us. If we do not know the answer, it will be fun for them to research it and get back to you. We love hear from our friends!

As a ?teacher? / Mom I was afraid that we might let the school work slip, either by getting lazy or being overwhelmed by the teaching process or travel pace. I am incredibly proud that after 10 weeks of travel we have not missed one day of school (7 days a week). On a rare occasion we have not gotten all the assignments done but we have been incredibly diligent and focused. The quantity of work completed astounds me. The thing we have not focused on is typing skills and a foreign language, either Latin or Spanish. If anyone has a recommendation on a great Latin vocabulary program, please let me know. It is something Gibson has expressed a repeated interest in but I have not found the right workbooks yet.

Newspapers

Newspapers are a luxury. When we do get them I love to read and cut out articles on places we have been, are going to, or are in the process of mapping. Yesterday we mapped Yemen and then I told them that the coordinator of the bombing of the US Naval ship had been let out of prison and then put back in prison after a protest from the US. There was another story about new automobile horns being sold in Hanoi that sound like animals (i.e. roaring lion, neighing horse etc). In a city of constant horn honking, this new product was not a surprise and we could understand how it would be a hit there. However, the article said people are getting frightened from the sounds and are sometimes having traffic accidents. The government is talking about outlawing them.

Mapping

We have continues our ?mapping the world? project. ?Baseball geography? has been a fun way to learn the locations. They get a single, double or triple depending on how hard a location they map correctly.

Vocabulary

Vocabulary has been a big focus. Gibson has a fantastic book, Vocabulary Building, in which each lesson focuses on a different subject area ranging from business to space to World War 2 etc. Sterling?s book does both phonetics and vocabulary. The non-fiction books we had on China, Vietnam and Cambodia had glossaries in the back and we turned them into flash cards. Our final resource for words is the little pad I keep in my purse. Whenever someone asks what a word mean,s I jot it down. The most recent words include some that would never be in a traditional vocabulary book. They were also brought up in some unusual locations including Hoa Lo Prison in Vietnam and the Opium Museum in Thailand. Here are some examples: mortar, pestle, initiate, obese, interrogation, addictive, diabolical, guillotine, propaganda, buttress, sedentary, produce, smuggle, heroin, opium, cocaine, provocative, riot, anomaly, congregate, conjugate, meteorologist, diversity, a la mode. You can see that a lot of heavy topics and issues are being discussed, but we do end up with learning about ice cream!

Writing

The kids are doing lots of writing assignments. Many of them can be seen on their blogs so I will not go into much detail. They love doing fiction stories set in locations we have visited. A highlight for them was writing the shadow puppet play and then acting it out. They have also written some funny stories trying to utilize as many current vocabulary words as possible.

Reading / Animal Husbandry

Their favorite Vietnam books were a series by Quang Nhuong Huynh and Jean & Mou-sien Tseng about Tank, a water buffalo, and his master, a small boy, during the Vietnam War. In Thailand, Sterling liked Silk Umbrellas by Carolyn Marsden. It is about a girl who learns from her Grandmother how to paint umbrellas. Her sister, who is not as talented as she is, ends up going to work in a radio parts factory. Boom the Street Walking Elephant was Gibson?s favorite fiction book (based on a true story and the fate of many elephants). It is about an elephant that is abused and has to earn money for his owner by working in a dump during the day and doing tricks outside bars and nightclubs all night.

By far Gibson?s favorite books would be the technical guide books we have gotten on shells, reptiles and animals in Asia. He pours over them trying to identify the last skink or shell we saw. He is writing reports on animals and trying to compose his own guide book because he is not happy with the ones we have. He loves to read and research animals as well as look for them on any walk we take, whether it is just around the hotel, or in a forest. Gibson is our research / photography hound and Sterling is our mighty hunter. She can catch anything. Together they are a ferocious combination for the poor tadpoles, hermit crabs, millipedes, frogs, lizards, and snails that they catch on a daily basis. They do nightly walks hunting for wildlife. Reptiles seem to be the most interesting species for the moment. We have a friend in the United States that is getting his PhD in Herpetology who is kindly consulting via e-mail and sharing his stories of traveling and collecting snakes.

Educational Experiences:

Aids Center in Ho Chi Minh City

Cu Chi tunnels from the Vietnam War

War Remnants Museum

Lacquer Factory

Marble Factory

China / pottery making village

Orphanage with Agent Orange children

Lake Tonle Sap ? saw boat people who may never go on land and who live in extreme poverty with terrible sanitation

River Kwai Museum and Cemetery dedicated to all POW?s and ?slaves? who built the railway

Received a blessing from a Buddhist monk

Learned how to train & bathe elephants

Well as you can tell, I am not the prolific blogger in the family. However, I did want to add some schooling updates.

In China we focused more on reading and writing (you can see some writing examples on their blogs). We had five work books on China and lots of other resources. Unfortunately we will not have as much great material on other countries until we reach India. Some of the topics we covered included: Chinese Magic #Squares, Chinese inventions, poetry, Chinese etiquette, history of the terra cotta warriors, Chinese folk tales, the Zodiac, oracle bones, bronze production, the spread of Buddhism, Chinese science advances, and burials traditions.

The kids read up a storm. I had some fabulous fiction books set in ancient times and during the Cultural Revolution. From the Dragon to the Eagle traces a bolt of blue silk on its journey along the Silk Road from China to Rome. Chinese Cinderella, in addition to the usual saga, describes a girl who helps some American pilots who were shot down over China after bombing Japan. Tiger is a story both kids loved about young kung fu fighters set in ancient China. Gibson read TinTin in Tibet. I do not know if he learned much from it but he giggled out loud when he read it. I also had several non-fiction books about China including: culture, history etc. By the end of our China visit, we had either mailed or given away all our China books and we were able to delete one whole suitcase!

In Hong Kong the first place we went to was Victoria Peak. In the mall (there are malls everywhere in Hong Kong) at the top of the peak we happened upon a Children?s Educational bookstore ? with every book in English! We bought a whole new batch of work books that are wonderful. We got books on grammar, vocabulary (we had just finished the Wordly Wise books), comparative religion for children, phonics and reading comprehension. I never expected to find so many perfect books ? we really hit the jackpot. Then Gibson and Sterling found a snake facts and activity book that they have had fun doing together.

Our mapping project is progressing. They can map all the countries and major bodies of water in Asia. Tomorrow they begin the capitals and then we will move on to major land configurations. When we watched the Special Olympic opening ceremony on TV (we were actually in Beijing and offered tickets at the last minute but did not get the message ? It broke my heart not to be there live!) the kids were pointing to their maps all the places they knew, tried to find the countries they did not know, and figure which countries we will go to in the future. It was fun reinforcement.

A few of the educational activities we did were:

Tai Chi class by a master

Calligraphy lesson from an artist

Chinese writing lessons

Tour of Opera Training School, watching part of a dress rehearsal

Tour of Tibet Museum, General Stilwell Museum, Shanghai Museum, Ancient Postal History Museum, Ancient Chinese Pharmacy Museum

Sturgeon Fish Hatchery tour

Lesson on acupuncture

Tour of a silk embroidery boutique, showing all stages of production (from baby silk worms to finished dresses)

Tour of Three Gorges dam

The most intense and meaningful cultural exchanges we had were either from going to private homes, visiting schools or meeting baseball players. We are invited to see a number of people?s homes including an artist whose family has been in the same house for 400 years. We also went to the home of a very poor Tibetan family who barter for almost everything and live in extreme poverty. Other amazing opportunities were visiting a Braille School in Tibet, meeting a Beijing baseball team (for baseball and then a banquet at a neighborhood restaurant in our honor!), going to a Buddhist nunnery (the women were absolutely bald and incredibly kind and sweet to the kids, offering them their lunch, having them sit on their prayer mats, and asking great questions), meeting a group of Chongqing high school kids who wanted to practice their English (we invented a new type of Frisbee football with them), going to the new home of the matriarch of a relocated family along the Yangtze River, hanging out with some great Shanghai college kids who play baseball (I kept expecting the keg to come out).

I know Ted and the kids have written about many of these experiences but when you see the list all together and add the orphanage we went to today where a big group of the kids are maimed and crippled because of Agent Orange, you realize what a remarkable experience this has been so far, and how vastly different peoples? life experiences are. This is what we have wanted to show our kids.

Thanks for your interest in our continued adventures! I promise to write you back if you e-mail me at elizabethhazard@yahoo.com

Love to you all-

Elizabeth

I forgot to mention the debate we had in Uluru (Ayres? Rock) about the color of the rock there. It has a magical ever-changing hue that was very difficult to describe but here is our attempt to capture the essence of the color: cinnamon, cooked pumpkin, ochre, tan/orange, old She-Oak pine cone shredding color, rust, brick, little league baseball field red dirt colored. We never quite felt like we had the right word to share the mystique of it