A time for change...

An amazing event in history has taken place and I am relieved and excited! The first Black man Barack Obama has been elected President of the USA. Equally importantly in my mind is that there were record numbers of voters that turned out for this election, and the new and younger voter numbers were on the rise. Some of those new and young voters were part of the first group of students I taught. This is a monumental event!
In the past I have overtly tried not to put political statements on my blog although there were many times that I wanted to, there were many reasons I have resisted. First, I had been taught if I have nothing nice to say than don't say anything at all. More importantly as a teacher I have learned from the teachers that taught me. I have had wonderful teachers in the past that showed me the value of focusing my efforts on the development of individuals and their ability to think and be creative so that they can make personal, thoughtful and ethical decisions. I feel ethically obliged to not persuade young minds politically or socially. I teach science and strive to be objective in my teaching. Because I am a public employee and role model I am very careful about the public persona that I present. And despite the fact that this blog is a private space it is open to public view. I will exercise my right to speak freely, I will always strive to be respectful!
Recently, I had a very eye opening experience that disturbs me about a portion of society. I gave up television because of it's commercialism years ago and I have been reading and listening to my news ever since. My position in the upcoming election was pretty strong and I have been surfing the web and blogopshere for contrary views. Doing this helps make me more informed and well rounded in my views and decisions. I posted a comment to a blog, (which I will not name, but you can get to it by following blog links on this page) happily the person who runs this blog published my comment with a response. I feel that healthy dialogue and debate can enrich all involved. Well the person refused to publish my rebuttal to their comments and instead posts a comments attacking me and worse accusing me of unethical indoctrination of the students I teach. This is based only on what they have learned from reading my blogs, which are overtly not political. They know nothing about my classroom or teaching methods. Realizing that this person is not interested in debate and is instead interested in deception, misdirection, fear and using personal attack and smear tactics, I decide to back out gracefully from the "debate" and ask them to remove the unfounded comment about my teaching practices. Instead I am attacked again. I suppose that I really cannot blame them when this is the example set by too many so called leaders in this country and especially demonstrated by the leaders they support.
The results of this weeks election have uplifted meAnother teacher I work with commented to me that Barack Obama represents a curiousity, strength, and willingness to make a best effort to improve this country. This curiosity was one thing that seperated Obama from McCain. Thinking about this comment I realize that America was founded on curiousity and a grand experiment. Over the past 200 years we have become complacent. Barack Obama shows that this experiment is still alive and going great! America did not like the course it was on and elected for Change! I truly hope that this new direction and curiousity overflows into the public reigniting the spirit that started this country! We need challenge whether we are Green, Democrat, Republican or Independant. Are we willing to rise to the challenge and work together to solve the problems that face this country? Are we curious about the ideas, beliefs, and strategies that everyone can offer in order to find the best solutions? I am reminded of the cartoon by Benjamin Franklin stating Join or Die.
Fifth graders got it now can all of America get it, I am Curious...
I will end stating that I have not be able to get John Lennons "Imagine" out of my head!

Castles, Cathedrals, and Ancient Monuments.

There is one thing that you really can only see in Europe...Castles! Of course while we toured England we went out to see the major sites and wanted to see some of these amazing castles.
The first Castle we visited was High Cliff castle. The cool thing about this one was it's renovations. It was destroyed in a fire and the local government has been slowly restoring it to draw in Tourists. The Castle was not really the Medieval idea of a castle but it was impressive in grandeur. One of the informational displays was about all of the Gargoyles in this castle There were some really neat ones. Again if you want to see more look at the picture on my picture page by following the link on the side.
We took a tour of the insides of the castle too where they have been trying to put together all of the rooms and reinforce the weakened structure. This was in teh kitchen that showed a history of all of the renovations that had occured during the life of this Castle. I really took the picture though to show off the stylish hard hats on Marika and her sister!
We also visited Westminster Cathedral. I had lots of time to take pictures here because Marika and her Mom and Sister went shopping so I was left to my Own devices. Unfortunately we did not see the inside of this cathedral. I did have fun playing with different angles and lighting in my pictures on the beautiful day we were out to see this cathedral.
We later went to see Windsor Castle. It is absolutely the most amazing palace I have ever visited. It is truly immense. I think my whole neighbor hood would have fit within the castle walls. It is unbelievable what the royalty of England lived like. Of course we could not take pictures inside of the castle. The decoration was incredibly ostentatious. There was one room, which looked a lot smaller than it probably was, that had carved wood paneled walls showing all different kinds food, lobsters, fish, deer, wheat etc. Speaking of food, There was also a room displaying the Royal China sets which were commissioned for the inaugural celebrations of different monarchs. On display was this amazing china set which actually put a company out of business to complete. It was an elaborate set that showed all of the vast variety if the British Empire at its greatest. The China set was not completed in time or the first celebration and was still not finished by the next crowing of a monarch. And like I said finally put the comissioned company out of business.
Inside the castle was the Cathedral of St George chapel. This was not a chapel in my sense of the word. The choir part of the chapel has elaborately carved with different seat representing all of the Knights of the Noble order of the Garter. Again the elaborate decoration was incredible.
I also took more pictures of gargoyles around the castle and the chapel. Again visit my picture page. I warn you though there are hundreds and hundreds of pictures.
Finally, we visited Stone Henge. It is really impressive the way that it just rises out of the field and countryside. It is surprisingly smaller than I expected. But to think that it has been around for Thousands of years and to think how it was built is really neat. Even though there have been many archeological digs and finds at this site they still don't know why it was built in the first place. They think that it is a big calender marking the solstices. I personally think that Merlin the Magician built it by enslaving giant aliens. That was not an option the gave on the tour but if you combine all of the myths and legends of Stone Henge that is what you would come up with.

I had to share this picture because again like to put flowers into pictures in unique ways.The last cathedral we visited was Salisbury Cathedral. We were actually allowed to take picture in this cathedral. We were not allowed to take pictures of the Magna Carta that is kept here though. It was really neat to see an original copy of that document. I did not know that the Magna Carta called for teh establishment of standardized systems of measurement especially weight to help improve fair trade of goods.

I hope that all of the loyal followers are enjoying the blog and following along with our adventures. The last blog from our trip will be about the short time we spent in London.

Happy Columbus day time to tell more of the England travel tales.

One thing I have to start to learn with this blogging thing is that sometimes less is more and to let the pictures to the talking. The next few days in England were relatively uneventful. We were living in a rather upscale hotel in Bournemouth (without free internet) lazing around. We did some wandering around and saw some sites, I have a hard time sitting around though.
Bournemouth had a neat little central garden area that you can see below. Bournemouth is a southern beach town by English standards. None of us were very anxious to spend time on the beach as the temperature was usually in the low 70s and it was windy, occasionally rainy and the sun was rarely out. But these conditions did not stop the British. They were out on the beach on all but the rainiest and windiest days.
The picture on the left is a view of the hotel we were staying at, it is the big white one. The picture on the right was colorful but it also showed all of the beach people.

From the hotel we could see the some of the white bluffs that make up the Jurassic coast and on the second day in the hotel we did a little boat tour where we got to see the coast. There was talk of renting Kayaks but I was skeptical about how everyone would be handling the kayaks in the stiff breeze and rolling swells, I would not have been comfortable bringing my camera in a kayak, and it was quite cool. We could have gotten a closer view of the Jurassic coast but I think we definitely enjoyed the boat ride.
There were some cool facts about the Jurassic coast that we learned on the boat ride. There used to be more pillars on the right in the picture above. During WWII the British pilots used them for target practice and whittled some of them down to little stumps. The picture below shows that on the left side of the cliff the layers in the rock are running vertically instead of horizontally as you might expect for rock layers. We this shows an exposed fault line where one set of rocks were being pushed over another set of rock. They said that this is one of the few exposed fault lines in the world.
I guess I should enjoy lazy days more I certainly can procrastinate and laze around on my own time, but when I am traveling I like to be on the move. We got to relax over these days and did get out to see the sights and we went to a British movie theater to see Mamma Mia (This wasn't our first choice but the others were sold out, the girls had a good time I was mildly entertained).
I hope to finish the rest of our foreign travel tales soon. We only had a few more days left.
Was this post a little better for length?
Happy Columbus day (a little perk for teachers getting these occasional three day weekends to update our blogs, play with the dogs, and do yard work)

First real day in England...

It has been fun traveling but I need to put a word of thanks and understanding out there to the sisters that helped host us in both our destinations. We came over and invaded their lives and expected them to show us around and we were all far too indecisive.
We all wanted to go out and see the sights but no one wanted to make the decision and instead tried to pass the decision making onto our gracious hosting siblings. That was relatively unfair. Despite this burden they both did a great job helping us to take in as much as we did in a whirl wind tour. So if you ever travel to visit relatives make sure you have in mind what you want to do before you get there. My experience now tells me that making decisions is really stressful on all parties. The larger the group and more closely related the worse it is to make decisions and the greater the likelihood that some body is bound to have at least a little feeling of not doing what they wanted to do.
So thank you sisters for hosting and doing the best job you could to show us around. We all had a great time!
Our first day in England we took a trip from the hotel by car to visit Swanage and from there to Corfe Castle. We had to cross Poole Harbor by chain driven ferry from Bournemouth to Studland and from their we drove to Swanage. In Swanage we took a restored steam train.
We were headed to see Corfe Castle. The train is run by volunteers and basically operates as a tourist opportunity The rail fee is used to keep the trains running along with government assistance. It was a little like a bunch of grown up boys playing with a really big train set. But it was fun and a great way to see the countryside. It was certainly a unique trip.
Corfe is a working medieval village that has only been renovated enough so that people can live and work there. The big attraction are the ruins of the castle. This is really something that can only be seen over in Europe!


I don't know what these guys were doing. This train could not have been transporting anything so important that it had to be transferred while still moving. I just think that the volunteers liked playing with their really big train set.







Here we all are at Corfe castle! There are a whole bunch of pictures of the castle on my picture page but this one tells almost the whole story of our visit.
They were encouraging these snails to live at the castle to keep the lichens from destroying the rocks and hasten further destruction of the castle.

We then ate a delicious lunch at the Greyhound Inn. I took several pictures and then learned it was the most photographed inn/pub in England. I recommend the lobster salad that is served in the shell.
We knew that it would have been great to bring our girls (Coralee and S.A.S.E.) They even would have welcomed them in the restaurant. If you can't read the sign, it says "Open for Dogs!"
The meal we ate was wonderful. Even the meat pies tasted great but three slices of meat pie was a little bit much and didn't measure up to the other dishes we got. This was the first meal we ate that started the trend of eating way too well on this trip. For the most part we ate really great tasting food but the quantity began to get ridiculous at times. I don't know if I would take it back though. Mmmmm! But my waist line is still recovering.
This picture was one of about 25. If you want to see them all they are all on my picture site, but I wanted to get a good picture of the train entering the station and the castle behind. The lighting was good and I set the camera on Rapid-fire. The resulting 25 pictures could almost be used as a time lapse film.

When we got back to Swanage we learned that we had illegally parked and killed the car battery with the SatNav. We waited for a little over an hour to leave but we had a good time taking in the scenery and enjoying the beach views of the English Channel.More of my signature flowers and landscape pictures. I still have not perfected it but I like adding the color to my pictures. I really enjoyed watching the sailboat race going on. I wish I could have gone out sailing on the Channel at some time.

We decided that we had a little bit more in us and went to see Durdle Door on the Jurassic coast. When we got there we learned that it was going to be more than a mile long steep hike over the coastal bluffs to get to see this famous geologic formation. Marika was especially excited to conquer this hike as it seemed easy compared to the hiking we had done in Austria. Marika's sister the dancer did the walk with the stamina of a mountain goat but Marika's parents, still tired from their travels, and not used to the hiking found this to be a very tiring journey. The site was well worth it though. We all made it!
It was a beautiful time of day to arrive there with the sun low in the sky. The only thing that could have been better would have been a blue sky but I gather this is a lot to ask for in England.
This view was amazing from the top of our hike. The sun was shining through the clouds and the lighting was wonderful.
That night we ate heartly at a wonderful Mexican restaurant called Corrianders in Bournemouth. The food was great but the decorations in the bathrooms were questionable, as was the size.
This was basically the end of our day one touring England. There will be more stories to come when I get the time.

In the meantime, Enjoy!

Reality

I have come to the realization that I will not be able to update this blog in real time. There is one big reason for this. Every time anything of note happens it is because I am notably busy. I will have to find time when I am not as busy to update this blog for all 2 or 3 of my loyal readers. I think this is quite evident when it comes to my Europe trip that I am still writing about, No I was not traveling for 3 months. Sorry for all of those people who are anxiously awaiting the next blog but I will do the best I can. Enjoy!

We all make mistakes...

Recently I had an interesting weekend of blunders.
It all started simply. We were picking up the house on a Friday night and M came across the Mazda Zoom-Zoom sticker I had bought her when she got her New Mazda Three about two years ago. I know... it took that long to put the decal in the car. Well it had been misplaced.
Anyways we came across the sticker, and before it could be misplaced again I was going to put it in the car. Here are the results:Well if it is not clear here is a closer look.
Yes my wife's car goes Mooz-mooz-mooz. She had me take the sticker out before she started attracting any cows. In my defense I thought the sticker was written backwards to go on the inside of the car. That was not the case.
Problem two of the weekend came when we decided to solve the moth problem in our cupboards. We had been seeing a few moths in the cupboard and decided that it was time to really solve this problem. It turns out they had gotten into everything, even sealed containers. We had to throw out lots of food from the cabinets to get rid of all of the larva.
I guess these moths are called Indian grain moths. They got into everything. The scary thing is I just found another two larva a week later in the last tissue in the tissue box. They were living in the tissue! I hope that we have sufficiently killed enough to keep the population small. But we learned a valuable lesson we need to be careful when stocking food in the pantry. There was some food in there that was rather old but we didn't think was going to go bad. We probably threw out enough food to feed us for a month.
The last blunder of the weekend had a pleasant end but a painful start.
I had written about our vegetable garden during the summer months well we had not seen a single zucchini from the zucchini plant. It turns out that the vine had produced one zucchini but it had hidden from us behind the planting box. Well it had gotten to be about 2 feet long and 5 inches in diameter. We thought that we would stuff it and bake it. We had made baked stuffed eggplant from our garden before and thought that this would work great with the zucchini too. We quartered the zucchini and carved out the seeds (We didn't eat them but if I had thought of it we could have baked them like pumpkin seeds). We diced up some tomatoes and eggplant from the garden and also got out some spicey Italian sausage. We were opening sausage casings and sauteing them in some olive oil when I accidentaly splashed the oil on my arm.
I am actually glad the picture did not come out any better because it would look a whole lot worse. It still looks pretty bad a week later. There were 5 big blisters on my arm 3 were the size of a dime. Oil Burns really hurt. I have been told that it might take a long time for the wounds to fully heal.
Now to end the story. We blended the sauteed sausage, eggplant and tomatoes with some bread crumbs and Italian seasoning. We also mixed in some soft crumbled goat cheese.
We stuffed it into the quartered zucchini and put spaghetti sauce and mozzarella cheese over it all. This picture is only half of it!
This picture was taken a day later of the left overs. It did taste good but the skin was a little tough.
We all make mistakes but at least this out had a tasty end.

Last morning in Austria... Off to Enlgand.

Austria was wonderful we had a great time. The morning we left we got up and took a Yoga class that My sister's Boyfriend was teaching then I went on a long bike ride looking for a geocache. I never found it. I took this picture on the ride.Now that we knew what to expect flying with Ryan Air we were not as worried about time at the airport or making our flight and to the final destination. We got a ride to the airport with my sister and her boyfriend. Made sure our luggage was going to be safe with the bottles of wine. And then went to wait in the non-air conditioned terminal. I have to say Ryan air is good in the sense that there were no wasted expenses the plane we flew on was in and out of the airport in 15 minutes.
Here is a picture Marika took of the little Klagenfurt airport was the plane was taxing down the runway. We have to go back!
A couple hours later we were back in Stanstead airport waiting for M's sister to pic us up. We didn't even have time to clean up and went right to a wonderful Thai Restaurant with some of M's sisters friends. It was a great night of food and family.
We were greated the next morning by Englands famous rain.
This is a view from M's sisters apartment where we stayed for one night before heading off to Bournemouth. The rain was nice but we expected it everyday that got little old.
We were now in the land of rain, afternoon tea and roundabouts.
More to come. Maybe this weekend since I don't have lots of school work to do I can update some more about our trip. And maybe tell about the visitor we have had for a week.

Last Hike in the Alps.

On our last full day in Austria we went on a hike in the alps in Slovakia. The hike was longer than our first hike but only went slightly higher in elevation. The views were amazing.
This is the view from the parking lot where we started. We did not make it to the tops of any of these mountains but they were an amazing sight. Yes the blur in the top corner of the picture is my finger I don't know how that happened?

We started out and had to cross over a stream that was flowing from the waterfall we would eventually climb to. The water in the stream was very cold and had an impressive frosty blue appearance. The water was also so clean that you could simply scoop it up and drink it. This pictures shows Thomas the guide and Em crossing the stream. This was only ten minutes into the hike.

M was just crossing the bridge on the right. We were hiking with a group from the hotel where Thomas worked. We were most definitely the only Americans. The sun was very bright reflecting off the rocks in the stream bed. The rocks were very bright white probably because they had minerals deposited on them from flooding.

I told you the water was a cool blue color.

There were really cool water falls all along the hike. It was nice to be in the valley because the sun was incredibly bright outside of the valley. This made it hard to get great pictures. There was just too much light contrast.










While I have no pictures of wildlife there was a really cool spider web that was very big and about 15 feet off the ground. I was a little worried about how big the spider was that made that web.










This just shows the grade of the hiking we were doing most of the time on this hike. The forest was very nice. I was interested to see that most of the plant life was very similar if not identical to CT.







We had one final crossing to do before we made it to the end of our hike. Marika is being helped by Thomas and the other guide from the Hotel. There was over a hundred foot drop where the water was flowing to the left in this picture. This is the water fall that we were greeted by at the end top of the hike. We had to climb up a crack that can kind of be seen in the left bottom corner of the picture to get up to the waterfall.
The water fall was far more impressive than Bridalveil Falls in Yosemite. At least here there was water flowing.



Thomas had amazing timing to catch this picture. But afterward he missed me dunking my head in the water.

I love to take pictures of the flowers I find on our travels. There are more of these shots with different focuses on my shared pictures account with shutterfly.Finally the sun was in my favor for these pictures. On the way back down from the waterfall which by the way is written Slop in Slovenian. we stopped at a hut where the people live all year round with no modern utilities. But they had running water provided by a hydrological pump. We filled out water bottles with fresh mountain water and enjoyed some soup made fresh in their outdoor kitchen. The people live here in the moutains and sell food and beverages to the people out hiking. The mushroom soup was made from wild picked mushrooms in the area. It was very good and really neat to see people surviving very well in the mountains with such limited modern equipment. The cows are wearing bells too!
Marika really wanted to do her Julie Andrews "The Hills are Alive" scene from the Sound of Music in this field.

At this point I have said all I really can about this hike. Afterward we went for a swim in Faaker See in Villach where Thomas who still was not tired at all wanted to make the half mile swim across the lake to the Island. I made it Marika and my sister did not and decided to turn back before they reached halfway there. It was a great day and really made me wish I could spend more time hiking in the moutains and taking in nature!

Day and a half in Vienna

Vienna Day 1
Austria has a great rail system. We met a train only a 20 minute drive from where we were staying in Villach. The great this about the train is that it was divided into rooms with six seats facing each other that can be collapsed to form three beds in the room. So, M, my sister and I got a very clean private room on the train for our 4 hour trip to Vienna.The train ride was quiet smooth and very efficient. It did cost us about $160 for the trip but it meant no one had to drive us into Vienna. The train did have a lot of people on it too. I would imagine during major travel times it was very full.We had a beautiful two days in Vienna. My sister showed us around a little and made sure that we were not going to get lost. She also showed us how to use the public transit system without getting kicked off our fined for not having a proper ticket. Then set us free. She was only a student in the city and knew a little bit about the Art Museums and how to get around but could not tell us much about the history or unique things about Vienna, So we were on our own.
Beautiful fountain in a small park in the center of the city.There was also a wonderful rose garden. M is drawn to roses anytime she finds them so I had lots of time to take pictures. The building is Rathaus. I don't know much more than that. We went to the plaza infront of this building for a video concert later in the evening. There were food vendors set up and lots to drink and a great big video screen with risers and chairs to watch a concert of teh Vienna Philharmonic. It was a great place to get a feel for night life in Vienna.
Vienna was incredibly clean by far the cleanest city I have ever been in. Austria in general made the US look very messy and I felt a little ashamed that in the country with all that we have we cannot be cleaner and take care of the environment and pick up after ourselves.



McDonald's is even in Austria but they are decorated to fit into the architecture of the area. I did not go into any of the McDonald's we came across but I am told they are a little healthier and also have different options than we have in the US. I just really am sorry that McDonald's is what we have shared with the world. Is this really what people in Europe think American eat?


The Cathedrals in Europe are amazing. I have not been in anything in the US that compares. This is the inside of Stephandome. The thought of these structures being built and the inspiration to build such elaborate and ornate cathedrals is beyond my comprehension. Part of me questions the purpose of, expense and time required to build such amazing structures. Then there is the part of me that is simply amazed by the ingeuity and beauty.

I loved how the light from the stain glass was shining on the ceiling in the cathedral. Unfortunately we could not go up in the tower at the cathedral

Gargoyles are really cool I have lots of other pictures of gargolyes from England and Austria on my Shutterfly site. The contrast of newarchitecture and very old was also really neat to see.



I found it really cool that there were sun dials on buildings. I took a couple of pictures of these. I would like to know more about what all the markings on these are for.

Vienna Day 2
We started off the day going to Visit Schonbrun Palace. This was the Home of the Austrian Royalty. The really amazing thing I found about this palace was all of the historical events that occurred here or were connected to major historical figures.
We went of the grandtour and saw pictures of Marie Antoinette show was related to Austrian Royalty and the rooms where Napoleon lived when he occupied Austria. Of course they don't allow you to take pictures inside but there was a banquet hall where Kruschev and Kennedy met that I think my entire house would fit in and there would still be room to walk around the house. The lives of Royalty must have been beyond imagination for us normal middle class folk in the 21st century.




We paid for the grand tour of the palace which included the building and gardens and some other extras like an apple strudel baking demonstration with samples.

The gardens were very well groomed and I love taking pictures of flowers. These Lilies were in the fountain and pond behind us in the picture above.





The fountain on in the gardens was amazing and gigantic. The top of this fountain was easily 40 feet tall. And elaboretly carved with gods, goddess and animals.


There was a hole through the back of the fountain that you could see the palace and the gardens. There was actually a line of people waiting to take pictures from behind the fountain.


M and I also wandered the maze in the gardens. Once you found the "end" there was an observation platform. M took pictures of me trying to find my way out again.

We got done visiting Schobrun and found ourselves with not enough time to really see much more in Vienna. There was lots to see at the palace. We went back into the heart of Vienna hoping that we could take a tour of an Opera house but as it happened they did not publish teh brochure we had that tours did not happen on Tuesday. We found that out when we got to the entrance of the Opera House. So we went to the Music Museum and saw wax figures of famous Austrian Musicians. We lost track of time and had to hurry back to meet my sister only to find that we had missed our train. We had to take an Italian train back to Villach an hour later. Italian trains as it turns out are not as clean as Austrian trains. We got back to bed around 00:00. We did get to sleep on the train. We knew that tomorrow was going to start early and be a great hike but long!