Seoul Mates

Finally Angkor Wat

2012-02-12T05:00:00.011-06:00

This post is way late but it deserves to go out. Our last full day of temple trekking we went to Angkor Wat. We figured it would be best to end with the most dramatic part. And without a doubt it did not disappoint. We started the day off bright and dark, our Tuk Tuk driver didn't show, but lucky for us another guy swung by and asked if we needed a Tuk Tuk. We waited for our original driver but after 10min, we figured we had to get a move on if we were going to catch sunrise over Angkor Wat. We were a little apprehensive about getting up so early for the sunrise because we have told before that run rise at other places is amazing only to be disappointed, this time we were anything but disappointed. From the entrance of Angkor we continued visiting temples until just about sunset. We ended the day completely exhausted but thoroughly satisfied. We got our temple fix. I'll let the pictures tell the rest of the story in more detail.

Sunrise over Angkor Wat, with the moon still showing.

I felt like I had to post two, since we took about 50. What you don't see however is the tons of people standing directly in front of us taking the same picture.

The morning fog starting to lift.

As we started walking into Angkor Wat.

Caitlin and I in the first courtyard area of Angkor.

Close up of us.

The outside of Angkor Wat was completely covered in massive reliefs, each depicting a different religious story.

This relief looked a lot like the Aztec origin story.

As we were tooling around we came across a tour group who had hired a couple of models to dress in traditional clothing so that they could take pictures of them on the ruins. We couldn't resist to snap a couple shots ourselves.

Posing as Lions. If you notice there were a lot of stairs, it was Incan flat.

Caitlin and I in the inner courtyard.

The center part of Angkor Wat.

Looking out from the top of Angkor Wat.

From the top looking down into a courtyard.

The back of Angkor Wat.

On the backside of Angkor Wat we encountered monkeys.

They didn't really mind being worked into our photos.

The next stop after Angkor Wat was Bayon. Bayon might have been my favorite.

Caitlin and I on the outer wall with still more relief.

Caitlin standing in a frame.

Close up of one of the faces.

The faces were on four sides of each spire.

Posing in one of the doorways.

Another view of the faces.

You could go up multiple levels to get almost even with some of the faces.

Me up by the faces.

Through a doorway looking at a face.

Faces everywhere.

I tell my students the hardest part of photography is choosing which pictures to share and I have to admit I am guilty of not narrowing them down, so bear with me.

The following stop was the Terrace of the Elephants, where the king used to watch ceremonies from the back of his elephant.

Caitlin with Mark and Gillian standing on the Terrace of Elephants.

Reliefs at the Terrace of the Leper King. This was right next to the Terrace of the Elephants.

We swung through the Kings house after the Terrace also known as Phimeanakas.

Caitlin with Gillian and Mark infront of the palace.

One of the hallways of the palace.

The back of the palace was made into a reclined Buddha by a later civilization

One of the doorways at the palace.

At the entrances to a lot of the ruins there were musicians playing. These musicians would frequently be injured from land mines. Cambodia was truly beautiful but its recent troubled past was very noticeable.

There was a fair amount of trees growing over Banteay Kdei as well.

The front of Banteay Kdei.

The back of Banteay Kdei which was impressive in its own right.

This was the back of the temple. This temple was a lot less touristy than the other ones we visited.

Ta Prohm was the next big stop.

Ta Prohm is famous for its trees growing out of the ruins.

In one of the courtyards.

Trees growing out of the ruins.

The power of Mother Nature.

Throughout the day we climbed every temple and set of stairs we got to. Caitlin was definitely a trooper and climbed everyone. This one got us to the top were we saw a whopping couple of bats.

The last temple we visited. It was small and less impressive then all the rest, but still a nice temple. We were a little too exhausted to truly enjoy it especially after seeing some of the most impressive temples in the complex.

The complex had a wall with these awesome gates that you drove through. This was the gate that we exited through.

Himeji Castle=Fail

2012-02-04T03:38:00.010-06:00

Periodically when we travel a couple things happen: One, I get over ambitious and two, something out of our control goes wrong. This past trip to Japan these two things came together in one single event. I had heard about Himeji Castle through one of my video games and thought it looked cool, I fact checked this on google. The only problem was it was pretty far from Kyoto so we thought it probably wasn't worth visiting on this trip. Then luck struck, Caitlin suggested we go to break up looking at temples in Kyoto, we knew it was going to be a bit of a hike but thought what the heck we'll do it. We headed to the train station and bought two tickets (not on the bullet train because dang those tickets are expensive) and headed off. We expected it to take an hour and a half like it said it would in the train station. I hadn't really planned out how to get to the castle besides getting on the train, since getting to Asia I have realized that I have the habit of not planning the small stuff because for the past 4 years I could ask someone along the way, now that I can't speak the language I am realizing this might not be the best way to travel. So after the train had taken an hour and a half, the supposed length the trip was supposed to take I got a little nervous. I looked on the map and there were two locations with Himeji in the name and neither one seemed to be close. I started to get nervous and realized I hadn't even brought a map of the area we were heading to. Around this time I saw an old white wall on a hill and told Caitlin that I thought that we should get out at the upcoming station. Caitlin didn't like this idea as it was not what he had planned and told me she would not be jumping off the train willy nilly. So we stayed on the train for another hour and then arrived at the station called Himeji. I couldn't see the castle but I asked a policeman who told me to head out of the station and go straight. So we did just that, we even managed to jump on a bus as the sign said to Himeji Castle. When we arrived at the Castle gate there was a foreboding sky as it looked like it was going to let loose any moment, this actually made for a nice back drop as the castle is all white. So I got my camera all ready to take some really cool pictures of a warehouse! The castle is under renovation until 2015 and in order to fix it they built a warehouse around the thing. We figured we would still buy tickets to head in and see what we could which turned out to be not a whole lot. And to top it off we had to pay extra to go into the warehouse to see the castle they were fixing. I couldn't believe no where along the way someone didn't tell us. So while while the trip was a bit of a failure Caitlin and I managed to laugh about it and make a bunch of jokes about looking at a drawing of the castle on a warehouse wall (I thought New Jersey could increase tourism if they started drawing UNESCO sites on their warehouses). It was one of those moments were you just have to laugh about it or you'll get too upset. So here are the pictures of Himeji Castle.

What its supposed to look like.(Taken from the Internet)

What it looked like for us. Notice the fine drawing on the exterior.

Oooohhh. Look at that galvanized steel.

Its hardly noticeable.

Some careful cropping.

Caitlin using my big head to block out the warehouse.

Some more cropping.

Samurai suits of armor on display. This was actually cool.

Caitlin in the warehouse enjoying the sign showing what it normally looks like.

The view of the castle under construction with a TV to show footage of them working on it incase you don't get enough construction action

World Culture Coil Pots

2012-02-02T06:19:00.000-06:00

Large-scale coil pots weren't the only thing my students worked on during 2nd quarter. They also spent time on what I called a "World Culture" project.
Each student chose a culture from around the world or from a time in history and researched the importance of ceramics in that time and place.
They were expected to create an informative poster with general information about the culture they chose and detailed information about the art of the culture.
In addition, they were required to create a piece (theoretically using the coil method, but I was pretty lax on that) that was representational of the ceramic work of the culture. This could be interpreted loosely as I was willing to have kids create pieces that were extremely similar to ancient pieces or to create a more unique piece that used similar techniques and methods.
On the posters, each student included a description of how they created their piece and how it relates to their culture. These descriptions have been my favorite part of grading the project. Even though I watched them go through the whole process, my high school students can be painfully quiet so it was interesting to read what they were thinking about when they created their pieces. Some were way more thorough then you would realize at first glance!

I had serious issues trying to narrow down the best ones to share on the blog so prepare yourself for a lot of photos...

Korean Chosun Dynasty

Pueblo

Persian Pottery

Oaxacan-Mexico

Oaxacan Pot

Chinese Han Dynasty

Han Dynasty Pot

Chinese Ming Dynasty

Ming Dynasty Pot

Etruria

Navajo

Navajo Pot

Nigerian Nok

Nigerian Nok Pot

Moche-Peru

Moche Pot

Mississipian and Japanese

Mississipian Pot (this is the pot with the shells in it!)

Ancient Egypt

Egyptian Pot

And for the full effect of the display....
I have 4 cases in the basement of our school outside of the cafeteria. I wish they were in a more traffic heavy location, but I'll take what I can get!

Display Case 1

Display Case 2

Display Case 3

Display Case 4

Ginkaku-ji: Second place (silver pavilion)

2012-02-01T07:00:00.000-06:00

The last day of our trip we went to Ginkaku-Ji also known as the Silver Pavilion. This temple was a the retirement villa of a a Shogun in 1490. He had planned to cover it in silver similar to the Golden Pavilion. However he never got around to it and so it got the nickname but none of the actual silver. The pavilion was then turned into a Zen Temple and has pretty gardens surrounding it. One of the parts that I liked the most was the stone garden in this one. We had gone to another rock garden but this one was more impressive in the manner in which they raked and arranged the gravel.

Caitlin in the entryway.

Some of the bamboo in the gardens.

The first raked sand area.

Second sand area.

Caitlin in front of the raked sand and the temple.

Me in front of the temple. Not a whole lot of shine on it.

Side view of the temple.

Overlooking the pavilion and the city from the top of the gardens.

Coil Pots

2012-01-31T06:45:00.000-06:00

It was not without some serious frustration (aka rebuilding of pots two, three, four times after they collapsed), but the finished coil pots my high school students made are really impressive!
They showed amazing patience and perseverance and created really beautiful large-scale work. Each pot is at least 30 cm. tall.

I tried to be organized and photograph the pots before the students put them on display, but once the due date hit, I missed a lot as they frantically tried to get all of their stuff turned in on time (they had another piece due the same day--post to come!).
It's hard to photograph the pieces in the display cases because of the reflection, but here are all of them for the full effect.

Soap Carving in Thailand

2012-01-30T04:25:00.003-06:00

So as we are backlogged on posting and our posts might seem a little random and out of order I thought I would continue with the trend. So here is a video of a woman carving soap that we saw in Thailand. We bought a few of these for gifts and in exchange for not bargaining we got to video tape her making one. Enjoy.

Wheel Throwing Demo

2012-01-29T20:54:00.004-06:00

Today, my Ceramics class got to see a demonstration by a famous professional potter here in Korea! At least, according to our supply manager, who helped organize his visit, he is pretty famous. He gave the demo in Korean, but my kids took notes in English so I'm looking forward to reading them.
He gave a great demonstration of throwing to the whole class and then helped my first group of wheel throwers (they are rotating every two weeks since I only have 5 wheels) get the hang of things. I will need to break things down and demo again next class since his centering technique was much more advanced than most of them are capable of (and he centered the clay for them when they struggled), but it was great to have the kids see such a professional demo right before trying it out themselves. Plus, his pots were really great and he left them all here so now I get to fire them and save them as demo pieces!

Grocery Shopping in Cambodia

2012-01-27T06:17:00.001-06:00

We definitely skipped a whole lot of posts about Cambodia and Thailand before starting on the cool stuff we saw in Japan last weekend so bear with us as things get a bit out of order. We plan to tell you all about both trips, you just may need to be able to mentally jump back and forth!

After the fun we had at our Vietnamese cooking class, I was excited to sign up for a Cambodian cooking class while we were in Siem Reap over winter break. Again, the class had the option to tour through the local market and I'm quickly discovering that this is my favorite part of any cooking class.

Our chef led us through the market just down the street from our hotel and pointed out all sorts of different local fruits, veggies, and spices, while also picking up some last minute ingredients for our class.

We made mango sticky rice for dessert so here she is buying the sticky rice:

Look at all those spices! I had good self-control and only bought a few to bring back to Korea!

This machine chops up coconut into the milk and the meat so that the vender can sell the various parts.

The meat section

I can't remember what's inside these leaves, but they look delicious!

The seafood section included these snakes...even the picture makes me shudder a little.

Each woman had her station spread out on the counter and then squatted behind it in order to be able to reach everything easily.

Lots of pretty veggies

Dragon fruit (or pitahaya according to Alex)

Chirimoya

Jackfruit

Winter melon

Green papaya

It's always fun to go through a market like this one with someone who knows what all the foods are and it's even better that Alex has a great memory and can remind me of all the different fruit names later!

Japanese Eats

2012-01-26T17:38:00.000-06:00

Japan is expeeeeeensive!

Which means we ate quite the random assortment of things during our visit. Meals in restaurants had the potential to be pretty pricey so while we had a few of those, we definitely mixed in some train snacks and street food.

We also found that we were pretty inept at ordering things at restaurants unless they had pictures or plastic demo food (which could be a great post if I had actually thought to photograph the demo food, it was amazing!). Although we arrived in Japan armed with a list of foods to try thanks to one of our students and several coworkers, figuring out where to order said foods proved to be much more difficult! There were many times throughout the weekend that we wished we had someone with us to tell us what to order or where to eat! Even though we didn't get a chance to try out all the foods we were hoping to find, we managed to taste some pretty delicious things.

Of everything we ate, I have to say that bento boxes on the train were my favorite. Roughly $10 each, they were some of the cheapest food we could find and were delicious. Once we figured out that we had to get to the stand at the train station before noon in order to get the boxes before they ran out, we had two days of awesome train snacks.

This green tea flavored cream puff was a good excuse to get out of the rain and warm up in a coffee shop in between sights.

Vanilla and green tea ice cream

Alex remembered eating this sticky rice snack as a kid although he wasn't used to the sauce it was dipped in.

Deep fried potatoes and onions on a stick...sounded great, ended up being kind of weird, but worth a try!

I don't remember what this was called or even most of what was in it. It photographed nicely though and actually looks tastier than it ended up being!

Shrimp tempura. Yumm!! My other favorite besides the bento box!

Sushi on Saturday night

Kooza!

2012-01-26T05:17:00.000-06:00

Traveling to Japan for my 30th birthday actually all started with my obsession with Cirque du Soleil. Lauren and Jess took me to two Cirque shows in Las Vegas several years ago and I've been dying to see another one ever since. Earlier this year when I was raving about Cirque once again, Alex looked it up and figured out that there was a show in Nagoya, Japan the weekend after my birthday (which also happened to be Lunar New Year and therefor a four-day weekend).

After a little bit of research, Alex figured out that we could fly into Nagoya, but that staying in Kyoto would allow us to do a lot more cultural sightseeing and thus the idea for our long weekend in Japan was born.

We flew into Nagoya Friday night and took a bullet train to Kyoto. It is crazy how speedy these trains are! What is apparently over 2 hours in a bus, took us 35 minutes in a bullet train! The price is steep, but definitely worth it with the time crunch of a four-day weekend.

After wandering through temples, pagodas, pavilions, and shrines all day Saturday and Sunday morning, we headed back to Nagoya for Kooza on Sunday evening. The show was a Cirque rendition of a traditional circus with performers like tightrope walkers, contortionists, trapeze artists, etc. Despite the fact that we didn't understand any of the Japanese dialog, we still had a ton of fun.

It was extremely hard to get a picture in front of this sign since there were so many other people crowded around. I was not nearly as gregarious as the group next to me which was both hilarious and distracting to the girl on my right.

Monday and Tuesday morning were back to sightseeing in Kyoto before we had to come back to Seoul for work on Wednesday morning.

The trip in no way curbed my Cirque obsession, but I've heard that there might be a show in Seoul next year so I'll have to come up with some other excuse to travel on a crazy whirlwind four-day weekend for my 31st!

Kinkaku-ji AKA Golden Pavilion

2012-01-25T00:27:00.013-06:00

While in Kyoto we had to visit Kinkaku-ji, popularly known as the golden pavilion. It was built by a wealthy statesman and would eventually be turned into a Zen temple. It was burned down in the 1950s by a monk who claimed he loved the building. The monk tried to commit suicide at the same time but ended up surviving. The authorities eventually caught him and found him to be mentally ill. The original building was not completely gold covered but had been intended to, so when they built the replica they followed the original design and intentions. The gardens and pavilion were nice to visit and had beautifully manicured gardens surrounding the pavilion. I can only imagine they would be far more impressive during cherry blossom season or the fall. Either way here are the pictures for your enjoyment.

Caitlin showing off the tickets.

The view of the Pavilion.

Us in front of Kinkaku-ji.

Yet another angle of the temple.Unfortunately they don't let you go into the pavilion.

The top of the pavilion.

A tree in the pond. One of the many islands. A bird underneath it.

A close up of the stork.

One of the shrines that people threw money at for good fortune.

A close up of the sweet.

Frothy green tea and a sweet with bean curd in it I think.

Caitlin taking a break from site seeing to enjoy some green tea and a sweet.

Inari Shrine

2012-01-24T07:42:00.016-06:00

This past weekend was a long weekend as it was Lunar New Year and since it was recently Caitlin's 30th birthday I figured what better way to celebrate than a trip. So Caitlin got a trip for her birthday and since it is fresh in the mind I thought I would start blogging about it to avoid all the other blogging that I have fallen behind on, I know it doesn't make sense but thats my train of thought. We headed to Kyoto Japan for her birthday and one of the coolest things for me was the Inari Shrine. The shrine is a large number of Shinto shrines to the god Inari.

The first gate to the shrine.

The gate looking out the entrance doors.

Looking through the gates.

Looking back at the gates. The writing is on the backside. Each gate is sponsored by an individual or a business.

Close up of Caitlin and the gates. 30 and looking good.

The outside of the path. Warning I took a large number of pictures as Caitlin got me a new camera for Christmas so bear with me.

It was a foggy day, so the orange really stood out.

One of the larger gates at the head of a path

A lemon tree growing by the path.

A sign warning what to do if you see monkeys.

We got to see a monkey.

So I did what anyone who had just read the warning sign, got closer to take a better picture.

Then the monkey attacked an old lady walking by. Apparently thats why you are supposed to pick up rocks and act like you are going to throw them. This lady had no rocks so she whacked him with her purse. He ran off after that.

A picture for mom so she knows the monkey did not eat me.

Caitlin posing in the path.

Because whats a visit to a Shinto shrine without a cake fish filled with cream and strawberries.

What's your blood type?

2012-01-17T00:07:00.002-06:00

I just got a new 6th grade class for 3rd quarter and as I'm going over their completed About Me Collages, I'm seeing a bizarre theme...the vast majority of them have included their blood type in their collage. I'm not sure if one student started it and the rest liked the idea or if it is something they've been covering in science class. Either way, it's cracking me up...and making me realize that at the age of 30, I should probably know my own blood type if a bunch of 6th graders know theirs!

Day two of the Angkor Complex

2012-01-09T04:10:00.007-06:00

On the Second day of touring around Angkor we went to the oldest temples. As one would expect these were in the worst condition of all the temples we saw, however they were still quite impressive and a couple of them had working monasteries that were built on the grounds. We took the same tuk tuk to go see the older temples. This was only about a half day of temples but was still enjoyable. We however did not take nearly as many pictures as the first day. We made up for that though when we went to Angkor Wat.

Caitlin and I in front of Preah Ko

The front of Bakong. The moat added a nice touch.

One of the lions at Bakong

One of the many doorway poses we took.

Caitlin up at the top of the temple. Who would have thunk she was afraid of heights.

One of the reliefs at Lolei. The third temple we went to. Still in good shape.

Another relief at Lolei.

Caitlin in front of Lolei.

After asking Moi (sp?) what she learned in school and quizzing her on her multiplication tables I felt like I had to buy something. Man I'm a sucker.

We finished the day up with a sampler platter of Amok made with different meats and a green mango salad served in a banana flower.

Amok with helpful little picture toothpicks to identify the meat.

Green mango salad.

A day in Bangkok

2012-01-07T02:19:00.006-06:00

On our way back from Kata Beach we had about 24hrs to spend in Bangkok. We have planned to go back to Bangkok at some point and see all the sights but we didn't want to just sit around our hotel. So we headed down to the grand palace only to find out it was closed. So we headed to our second place of interest Wat Pho, which has a huge reclining Buddha. Our friends Mark and Gillian had suggested we see it as it was impressive. It truly was impressive. So here are a few pictures to try to capture the whole shebang. After we toured Wat Pho we headed down to Khaoson Rd. to get some cheap Pad Thai and did some last minute souvenir shopping. We ended up eating 5 plates of Pad Thai as we knew it would be awhile till the next time in Thailand and bought 4 flip chairs, that I tried to walk down the street with at 9pm. I gave up on this attempt so I left Caitlin with the chairs and went in search of a Tuk Tuk driver who immediately offered his services at an exaggerated rate. I accepted without negotiating but told him he had to help me with a few things first. He thought I had a suitcase and his look when he saw what we had was priceless. He helped and we all packed into the tuk tuk more or less and were off. I think I got the better deal of it and he may be hesitant next time a tourist accepts his exaggerated rate without negotiating.

The outside of the temple. It was hard to get a picture that captured it all.

They were fundraising for a new roof. For a donation you could write a prayer on the underside of one of the shingles.

One heck of a door.

The reclining Buddha.

Most of the Buddha.

All the walls were painted as well.

The windows looked like frames, giving the idea that outside was the art and the wall was not. Not sure if that was the point, but cool none the less.

The bottom of Buddha's feet. All carved mother of pearl.

An upclose look at the carving.

The bottom of Caitlin's feet at the end of the day. You don't want the close up.

Caitlin ordering Pad Thai. This woman was out of spring rolls so she made more so Caitlin had to get another one. Super fresh and delicious.

Diving on New Years Eve

2012-01-02T09:28:00.001-06:00

To finish up 2011 I figured a few dives were in order. This has been the longest streak of not diving since I began the addiction/hobby. As luck would have it I went diving the 30th and 31st. This was not the first time I finished up the year with dives the only difference this time was that Dave was not with me. So in his honor I figured I would try to take as many pictures as possible and also to focus on the things that he would have paid attention to. So I'll let the pictures tell the story. (I've also included stuff that I focused on too.)

Razor fish. Literally so thin the disappear when they change directions. I thought I had the bends as I was trying to photograph these guys when they disappeared off the view finder of the camera.

My divemaster Serg was taking pictures as we dove. First time this has been the case. He was pretty stoked that I knew what I was doing and that he only had to worry about me since no one else had signed up. Part of me wondered if he was more of a dive buddy versus divemaster on a few of these dives. Needless to say he pointed out crazy cool stuff. Me infront of the wreck.

Hanging on to the rope. There was a bit of a current.

One of many nudy branches. These are for you Dave.

Ghost Pipe fish. This was taken by Serg. I had to include a few of his awesome pictures.

Sweetlips. Thats the name of the fish.

Another Nudy Branch for you Dave. Pretty proud of this picture.

Found him, another picture stolen from Serg.

Nemo didn't photograph so well for me. I need a little bit more practice diving I think.
Peacock Mantis Shrimp. Totally geeked out when we spotted one of these sitting completely out in the open.

From behind to see the bright colors.

Another Nudy Branch. For those of you who don't know Nudy Branches are ocean slugs. They are far better looking than land slugs.

Moorish Idol.

Another Moorish Idol.

A picture of all the soft Coral. A lot different then stuff I've seen before.

Me trying to take a picture of the turtle.

Another picture of the soft coral. It was really stunning. At points everything was covered in it.

One of the largest differences with diving in Thailand and the Caribbean was the large schools of fish that swam around us.

There were also huge fields of anemones. They created a cool landscape.

More cool coral colors.

A huge cuttlefish.

A cool looking coral parasite.

More Coral. I got a little carried away. It also let me get back into the swing of things with the flash.

School of fish.

An upclose picture of the school of fish. They were this close at times. This is with no zoom.

School of fish swimming over the coral.

A Cobia Fish. These guys live alongside Whale Sharks. This one was about 4-5ft. long which means the Whale Shark he was with is huge. Unfortunately we weren't lucky enough to find his companion. We came across a couple of Black tipped reef sharks but I couldn't snap a picture of them. I'll have to try my luck diving next New Years eve to see another Whale Shark I guess.

An Elephant for Christmas

2011-12-25T04:37:00.003-06:00

I was really excited about the prospect of riding an elephant while in Thailand. To the point where I spent all of the last week before winter break singing the All I Want For Christmas Is You song, but ending it with "is to ride an elephant" instead. Needless to say, I was pretty psyched to find out that it is possible to ride an elephant on Koh Samui where we are spending Christmas.

Alex and I headed off around 11am on Christmas morning in the back of a truck to the elephant trekking site here on the island. Once there, we boarded our elephant (her name started with a P, but for the life of me I can't remember it) and spend an hour wandering through the jungle on her. It was pretty entertaining to watch our driver try to steer her. He sat on her neck and rubbed his feet behind each ear to direct her one way or the other. There were definitely some times though that she didn't feel like doing whatever he was suggesting and just kind of did her own thing. The driver and the elephant seemed to get along well though. She was very receptive to the directions he gave when trying to get her to pose for pictures. And at one point she even grabbed the direction stick he had hung on her ear and handed it to him with her trunk.

After our elephant jaunt, we had some extra time to explore this waterfall before heading back to our hotel. Apparently on nicer days, it's fun to swim in the pool below the falls, but for today we were content just to admire the view.

It's always hard to be away from family at Christmas and the weather has been a bit rainy here on the island since we arrived so taking a trek on an elephant was the perfect Christmas gift to enjoy in between holiday Skype calls. Merry Christmas from Thailand!

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-24T20:13:00.003-06:00

Not quite Angkor Wat: Preah Khan, Neak Pean, Ta Som, East Mebon, Banteay Srey and Pre Rup, not bad for a days work

2011-12-23T05:54:00.001-06:00

Today we began our tour through the Angkor ruins outside of Siem Reap. We thought it best not to start with Angkor Wat as everything after it would seem like chump change. The guide book had mentioned that all the other temples around Angkor Wat are very impressive and would be star attractions anywhere else in the world but since Angkor Wat trumped them they do not get the name recognition. Either way we decided to head out today and see as much as we could on a Tuk Tuk (A small motorcycle with a carriage/wagon attached to the back of it.) We arranged for one to pick us up and negotiated our route and his fee. We then proceeded on our day. Both Caitlin and I were glad we wore sunglasses as the dirt flying into our faces would have hindered our site seeing. Based on the amount of dirt in my mouth the sites were impressive. We drove through the gates of ancient walls and over old bridges all with carvings that we tried to snatch pictures of. The driver took us from temple to temple and would wait for us as we tromped through each temple. The first day we managed to see Preah Khan, Neak Pean, Ta Som, East Mebon, Banteay Srey and Pre Rup. Each one was impressive and each one was different in some manner. The brief history behind these temples is that each king wanted to outdo his predecessors and so they built more elaborate temple complexes. Each temple complex would have had a city around it, these no longer exist as the workers houses would have been made of materials other than stone. The only temple that was an exception was Bateay Srey which was created by a lower noble. I am still reading about the history of each of the following places and I will try to add more on the next post but I feel like I am falling behind as we are taking pictures faster than I can blog or organize them. Needless to say it was a great day of trekking around temples and riding in the back of a tuk tuk.

The Entryway to the first of many. This one is Preah Khan.

So much of the ruins is covered in intricate carving. It was hard to capture it all at times.

One of the thousands of carvings on the Preah Khan temple.

Caitlin by a carved doorway that was on the ground getting repaired.

The center of Preah Khan. All the holes in the walls behind were from the builders. They were placed there in order to put sticks to carry the stones to the build site.

Trying to mimic the lion. Most of the temple entrances had some sort of animal guarding them.

Neak Pean was a series of pools with carvings in between them. We were unable to view them from anywhere but here.

The top of one of the gates to enter the temple grounds. I believe it was Ta Som, but I could be mistaken. We took too many photos.

Mother Nature taking over the ruins.

Cool relief of buddha I think.

The temples were lined up according to the cardinal directions, giving a cool effect when you looked down the doorways.
Caitlin posing in the ruins.

A view down one of the hallways.

Detail of some of the walls. It seemed like all the walls were covered in carvings or writing.

More posing in the ruins. Along with some architecture that looks like Greek ruins.

Looking down the hallways. Since the temples are lined up along the cardinal points they provide cool lined up views from end to end.

Another tree taking over. One of the coolest things.

Caitlin at West Mebon in a doorway.

Caitlin getting creative with the photography. Our attempt at an album cover.

East Mebon temple looking from the second level. There were elephants on each corner.

In the back of the Tuk Tuk. Enjoying the ride. Sunglasses were essential to avoid the dust. The tuk tuk was pretty much a carriage/wagon attached to a 150cc motorcycle.

More carving at Banteay Srey.

Caitlin in a doorway at Banteay Srey. The carving there was amazing.
The center part of Banteay Srey.

Awesome carving at Banteay Srey.

A view from the top of Pre Rup.

The Top of Pre Rup. We watched the sunset from here.

Caitlin at the top of Pre Rup.

The top of Pre Rup waiting for the sunset.

The sunset. It got better but we didn't wait so we watched it from the Tuk Tuk. That'll teach us to be impatient.

Fish Foot Massage

2011-12-22T22:42:00.002-06:00

After a long day of wandering through Angkor temples, these cleaner fish did a great job of nibbling all the dirt off of our toes!

How to get to Cambodia

2011-12-18T07:37:00.002-06:00

Today we took a bus from Bangkok to Siem Reap... Actually to be more specific we took a taxi to a bus, rode the bus for 4 hours, walked across the border, took a shuttle to another taxi, rode in that taxi for two hours and then transferred to a tuktuk before arriving at our hotel in Cambodia. It was quite the adventure!!

This pic is of us at the beginning of the trip before we were super gross and sweaty and tired.

Tomorrow we are planning a tuktuk tour of some of the temples in the area but we are saving Angkor Wat for when our friends Gillian and Mark get here.

More later when I'm not blogging from my phone!!

Impressionism

2011-12-12T18:32:00.002-06:00

From one of my 8th grader's websites, describing the Impressionist movement:
"Some hipsters decided painting stuff perfectly was too mainstream."

Rice Bowl Fundraiser

2011-12-11T20:33:00.004-06:00

As a fundraiser for flood victims in Thailand, I got to help organize a K-12 ceramics project this fall. Students were encouraged to donate 10,000won (approximately $9 with the current exchange rate) for the opportunity to paint a rice bowl. We then fired the bowls and gave them back to the kids, while at the same time donating the money to the Red Cross. All in all, we were able to raise 4.8 million won for Thailand!

Tons of 6th graders signed up to paint bowls. I had nearly 60 of them in my room at lunch one day! Luckily I had some excellent high school volunteers to help out. The kids had a really good time painting and I was really proud of how helpful my high schoolers were.

8th grade participation started out slow, but the homeroom teachers did a great job promoting how cool the bowls were and some kids came back several lunch periods in a row to paint extra bowls.

The teachers participated too, spending an after school session in my room painting bowls. It was a fun way for the staff to get together and create some art for a good cause.

I have fired the kiln what feels like a hundred times in the last month! This is just a small portion of the bowls kids painted. These are all covered in clear glaze and ready to go in the kiln. I had lots of helpful high school students to dip bowls in clear glaze and clean up the bottoms before firing.

Ceramics is always an experiment. Some bowls turned out really beautiful, while others were not quite what the students expected. I think everyone could agree though, that it was fun to participate and to know that their money was going to a good cause.

December/January Art Display

2011-12-11T20:20:00.002-06:00

Here at SIS, the art teachers have a central hallway to display student work. There are four of us so we set up a rotating schedule for the board in the main entrance/library/auditorium area and I am in charge of December and January. I have been saving student work all semester long so it is pretty exciting to see it displayed cohesively in one place. I am lucky to have some amazingly talented middle school students!

The Fine Arts hallway is outside of both of the auditorium and the secondary library and right inside the main entrance to the secondary school which makes it a great location for attracting lots of viewers.

I used one side of the hallway to display printmaking. The 6th graders made the Aztec Sun Stones, while my 7th and 8th graders created the Illuminated Letters.

The other side is a mixture of 6th grade O'Keeffe inspired oil pastels and 7th and 8th grade Impressionist Paintings.

The Best Bruise

2011-12-11T16:48:00.003-06:00

Back in the early stages of this blog, I slipped and fell down the stairs of our first apartment in Honduras. The bruise was epic...a huge reddish purple blob right in the middle of my derriere. In fact, we posted it on here, until our students found our blog and having my butt on the Internet seemed like a bad idea.
Last week, Alex tried to take over my reigning best bruise title by rolling his ankle playing basketball. His bruise somehow encompasses his entire ankle, the bottom of his foot, and his toes....gross.

It is slowly starting to heal (hopefully in time for all our Christmas travels), in the meantime he really needs to stop dancing on it!