Mui Ne

We’ve been at the beach in Mui Ne, Viet Nam for about a week. It’s really nice! Our dad goes kiteboarding everyday and he’s really happy about that. We hang out on the beach, at the pool, and in our room watching tv (cable! Discovery Channel! Cartoon Network! ESPN! Animal Planet!). We met a really nice girl named Phoebe who we play with every day. She’s from California, but has lived her whole life in Pakistan. It’s been very fun to play with a kid who speaks English and is not our sibling. She’s leaving here today. We’ll miss her.


I've been boogie-boarding a lot. It's very fun. Me and my dad also rented a jetski. That was SUPER fun.



A few days ago I got two pretty - very pretty - dresses. One is red and has barely any sleeves. The other is blue and has long sleeves. Me and my new friend Phoebe played a game and in the game we wore the dresses. Here are a few pictures of us.



Yesterday, we all went to the sand dunes.


The sand dunes are giant mountains of sand with almost no footprints. It looks almost like yellowy white cement. There is also a lake there and a kind of oasis area. We got to ride horses there (but only for about 10 minutes). Then we played by the lake. We also got to play with a really cute monkey. When I squatted down, it came and sat on my lap. The monkey was on a chain. It seemed like they were treating the monkey pretty well, but it’s still kind of sad. It’s like the elephant at the internet shop. Kind of sad, but really neat to see up close.






We're here a few more days, then back to Bangkok and then the land. It'll be nice to get back to the land.

Vacation From Our Vacation

We're in Bangkok again for a few days. It's really cold in Phu Rhua right now - sweaters, jackets, hats, socks. So we're going to Viet Nam for two weeks to a beach called Mui Ne. We'll post more when we get back. We hope we can watch Mr. Obama's inauguration on satellite TV from there. love, all of us

I Hate Crocs

I hate crocs. They are plastic and they don’t feel good. So I made a boat out of one. Here it is. Like it?
-julie

Ever More Bugs

My parents know an entymologist who spent time in Thailand studying bugs. We know why he was here. Here are some more amazing bugs of Thailand. - arjuna

Blind Girl

I read a book about Helen Keller a few weeks ago. Here is a picture of her I drew. She is reading a book in Braille. My mom asked me to do some writing of if I were blind. Here is what I wrote:

Black as well as black. Nothing else to see in my dark enclosed world. I have found to feel vibrations. I have found to smell the plants to make out the different kinds.

In day it’s night, in night it’s night. All dark. No color when my eyes are open, no color when my eyes are closed.

I ask my mother, “What do you see?”
-julie

2008 - Particular Pleasures and Unexpected Boons

Dear Friends and Family -
Here's the Rogers' first ever Year-End Holiday Wrap-up Letter. Having never done this before, we basically sat around and talked about what stood out for each of us as highlights of the past year. Here's how it shook out:

Being outside every day. –Sankara/Mike

Having 3 puppies on the land. –Julie

Learning to drive on the other side of the road. –Gauri/Jill

Becoming friends with everyone in Ms. Owens’ class that I didn’t know from Caryn’s class. –AJ/Elliot

Hanging out with the workers building the retreat center. –AJ

Being surprised by little changes on the land – wind direction, flowers, different insects. –S

Reading Neal Stephenson’s latest tome, Anathem, about consciousness, time, religion, and aliens. –G

Making soil out of kitchen scraps and garden waste. –S

Emailing with Miya and Melina. –J

Having the experience of not living in the city. –J

Having the experience of being in one of the world’s busiest cities, Bangkok. –AJ

Homeschooling. –J

Buying our Chevrolet Colorado pick-up truck. –AJ

Having great circus teachers – Slater, Marina, and Jaron. –J

Learning to drive the truck (sshh – don’t tell anyone). –AJ

Homeschooling. –AJ

Reading Julie of the Wolves. –J

Seeing Julie understand long and short vowels, “soft-landing” ck’s, and the mysterious silent E. –G

Hearing Arjuna’s response to how positive and negative numbers combine (especially that subtracting a negative number from another negative number equals a bigger – not smaller – number): “That is sick.” -G

Listening to Beck and White Stripes. –AJ

Having our mom read us Anathem. –AJ

Having our own cook. –AJ

Making the Clay Zoo. –J

Having Thai grown-up friends. - J

The ever-changing skies over Phu Rhua. –G

Celebrating the 10th anniversary of our marriage. –G

Being high in a tree and trimming it. –S

Watching the clouds endlessly while mowing grass on the tractor. –S

Poi – our friend Nui’s new baby, born a week ago! –J

Tipping the tractor over and jumping for my life. –S

Eating all kinds of different fruit – dragonfruit, champoo, the best pineapple in the world. - AJ

Digging out the tractor and cursing. –S

Having a chicken who eats from my hand. –G

Holding hands with my wife and not saying a word. -S

Wishing you all happy holidays and much joy. Love, The Rogers

Lewis and Clark

Last month, we read some books we really liked – New Found Land (Allen Wolf), and Streams to the River, River to the Sea (Scott O’Dell). Both of them were about Lewis and Clark’s journey to the Pacific Ocean and about Sacajawea. We also read The Ledger Book of Thomas Blue Eagle, which has art in the style that Indians did when they went to white people’s schools.

Arjuna thought we should make a poster about Lewis and Clark and Sacajawea, so we did. Some of the drawings are in the style of the Ledger Book art.

Introduction: In 1804, Thomas Jefferson asked Meriwether Lewis to cross the country by boat, to try to find the Northwest Passage to the Pacific Ocean, and to see the lands the United States got in the Louisiana Purchase. So Lewis wrote to his friend William Clark, and they went on a great journey.

Here is our poster:






Here are some of the things that happened along the way:

Along the Ohio River, from Pittsburgh to St. Louis, Captains Lewis and Clark assembled their crew. In Pittsburgh, the crew contained 7 people and a couple of soldiers. By St. Louis, the crew consisted of 45 people.




Captain Lewis gave medals to all the chiefs they met along the way.



The meeting with the Teton Sioux did not go well. The Corps narrowly escaped an attack near the river.


Lewis and Clark were at a scalp dance. One of the crew was yipping and partying when he saw a slave woman and her child on her hip. She followed one scalp, one scalp only through the whole dance, as if it would grow back nto a man.




Lewis and Clark stayed at Fort Mandan and met a tribe of Indians called the Hidatsa. There they met a Shoshone girl named Sacajawea. She was married to a trader named Charbonneau. They would need her along the way. So a Shonshone girl was in the crew.





While the Corps was with the Mandan, they abandoned the keel boat and made six dougout cottonwood canoes. they would have to carry the men some two thousand miles.



Sacajawea was trying to give birth to her baby but she could not. Then Lewis gave her a cup of water with the rattles from a rattlesnake. And then there was the little baby, Jean Baptiste.


While they were with the Mandanas, the Corps went on a buffalo hunt. The Indians formed a circle around the herd and shot them. The crew did the same. There was plenty of meat, hide, and hump for everyone.



Seaman was swimming and chasing a beaver. He had almost caught it when the beaver bit him. Lewis could not stop the bleeding.He figured out that the beaver had bitten a vein. It took about two weeks to heal.



On the way to the Pacific Ocean, Sacajawea and the Corps needed more horses. They stopped at a Shoshone village. It was Sacajawea’s tribe. “There they were, my people, my people, my people. Now I can laugh, now I can smile, now I cry. Now I am me. Now I am home!”

At last they reached the Pacific Ocean! 

They stayed the winter at Fort Clatsop.

Pierre Cruzatte only had one good eye. One day on the journey home, he was hunting and thought Lewis was an elk and he shothim in the buttocks.

The next thing we're going to read about is early California history. Maybe we'll make another poster. Or maybe something else!