Photo Recap

Apparently I am a little behind in the photo posting department but here are a few.

Images of Halloween, Homecoming, Thanksgiving and Christmas.

The exchange

(To see more click the picture above)

ESL more like English as a common language

At school Aya has been doing mediocre, she is passing her class - though I feel sometimes the teachers are going easy on her as not to fail her completely.

There are two other ex-change students at the school, both of whom seem to be adapting very well. The one girl from Thailand "Gahm", wants to be a doctor one day has gotten all A's on everything she does. Her spoken English is very well.

Aya told me she asked Gahm (which is her nickname, as her real name is very difficult to pronounce) how she does it. Gahm stated that she is taught Thai-English at an early age there (reads/writes), plus she has stayed abroad in the U.K.

In general I beleive the Japanese are behind in their English and the world has passed them - making it even harder to effectively communicate. Though Aya's willingness to learn English waning.

I think the country is beginning to feel the pinch and wants to increase their education - but I think too little, too late. Here is blog link with new on that: Japan's push for more education

Sub Artic ((Burrrrr))

Northeast
Snow, sleet and freezing rain will assault the northeastern
U.S. tomorrow. Accumulating snow, locally heavy, will coat Pennsylvania and New
York state, then push into western New England late in the day. Snow may begin
falling in NYC late in the afternoon or early evening. Snow and sleet should
arrive in Philadelphia during the afternoon, then change to rain during the
evening. Farther south, freezing rain and sleet seem likely to threaten
northeast West Virginia, northwest Virginia and western Maryland. Rain showers
can be expected over the remainder of Virginia and the Delmarva Peninsula. High
temperatures are predicted to range from the teens in northern New York and far
northern New England to the 50s in eastern Virginia.

You know it's going to be a rough week when:

1) Your car doors are stuck shut and they are unlocked.

2) 45 mph gusts nearly topple you on your walk into work.

3) You get put on the schedule to work overtime during anticipated snow
storms.

4) Your first week day drive home from work results in a 1 hour traffic delay due to a Semi-Truck fire in the middle of a 3 lane highway, blocking all
exits.

5) And your wife calls tell you, you need to stop by Wal-Mart and pick up thermometer covers to check a daughters temp because she's coming down with a
fever - only to find Wal-Mart has none in stock.

6) Car heater stops throwing heat while stuck in traffic

7) Come home to colder home, because you felt it wasn't necessary this year to spend a little time winterizing it because Summer was so nice and you were lazy. (Heat bill through the roof).

- Raising the white flag here.

Today's activity: Volcanic

My youngest has a project due at the end of this week and its content reminds me of an old Brady Bunch episode when they built a demo-Volcano.

She of course will need to enlist my help in building her a working volcano. (Baking soda comes to mind)



Oddly enough by in 1988, when visiting Japan my Uncle took me around Kyushu we stopped and climbed part of the base of Mount Sakurajima (pictured left) near Kagoshima and another time we traveled quite far near Nagasaki to Mount Uzen and climbed it, at the top we couldn't really see the surrounding cities or town because of a errie fog that was either the weather or the steam emitted from the mountaint top.

There was this small pond at the top of the mountain that was bubbling and smelt of sulfer gas. My sister and I built some type of circular rock formation that we'd seen left near the top. We weren't sure what it was all about, but thought it was ritualistic to whoever comes up here makes one out of the small volcanic rocks.

Later we learned in 1991, there were fourty-odd people who died in an erruption from this mountain including volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft (pictured below) and Harry Glicken.(go figure), they died from a pyrocastic cloud consuming them I presume.


Gives you a creepy feeling to say you were there and to know people died up there and it could have very well been you.


Going to do a little web research as in how to make a safe volcanic that she can demonstrate for her science class students.


I think I will try using this link and a few others:
http://www.ehow.com/how_7938_make-volcano.html

Demolition New York

The family was bored this Saturday, so I decided to take the children to the movies.

The flick that we were aiming to see had only 2 showings a 12:30 and 18:55, which meant I would have to pick up my youngest from Basketball practice and shoot straight there. To add to this Murphy's Law showed no mercy, for it was snowing quite heavily enough to cover the roads.
Needless to say we showed up all but 5 minutes behind, which usually means we only missed the 15 minutes of previews. My youngest daughter is in love with the movie "National Treasure", not sure why but may she has a crush on Nicolas Cage.

Of course my goal was to surprise her and take her to "National Treasure: Book of Secrets", Aya didn't care either way she just wanted to get out and do something since she's always bored. Apparently for a movie that has been out for a few weeks now and movied from the largets screen to the smaller ones - it was Sold Out! (Panic set in)

The line behind us for a snowy Saturday night had grown long; we has to make a quick decision - wait for the 20:30 showing of "Untraceable" or catch the other movie that stuck in my head as want-to-check-it-out movie was "Cloverfield" and we coughed up the 38 bucks to see it plus the over-priced snack foods.

[Choice #1: See a movie about a killer on the internet]

[Choice #2: See a movie about a killer in NYC]

Simply put, with a 10 year old in tote, I chose one with the least likelyhood to occur.

My personal take on this - was the movie was filmed entirely on a hand-held digital recorder and it was WAY to shakey for my taste.

SPECIAL EFFECTS: 7 / 10
ACTING: 8/10
PLOT: 5/10
VISUAL ENJOYMENT: 2.5/10 (Due to the extreme herky-jerkiness)

We entered the theater and had to take nearly the front row seats, becaue it was nearly full to my surprise, this exagerated the big screen shaking.

Kids reviews:

- Youngest thought it was pretty good, but shakey.

- Aya: Gave her a headache, hard to watch

- Oldest daughter: She had to keep her eyes closed most of the movie to prevent severe nausea from due to the wild camera movements.

- Me: As I play video games, I was able to watch it from start to finish - it still made me dizzy.

Super Blunder Sunday

As Aya’s American High School Football team has a unbeaten record, she has heard a lot about sports after the Sox Victory in October and now her attention was turned toward the New England Patriots.

To be honest, I am a 49’ers fan – but my alternate group is the N.E. Patriots. Aya told me a lot of boys where Patriot’s shirts and hats this time of year.

So we hunkered down with all the goodies my wife prepares: Cheese dips, chicken fingers, chips, some kind of pesto cheese thingy that was also good and watched the game.

As the game seemed to stagnate after the score was 7 and 3, then all hell broke loose when it seems the Patriot’s offense couldn’t do what they have been doing all year and the Giants Defense were doing what they do best.

Of course there were some questionable calls in the Giants favor, but overall the Giants played well.

We were hyping up Aya’s stating that see you are lucky to be in a state where the baseball team and the football team have been elites. (I obviously inserted my foot in mouth on the later).