Thanksgiving '08

Images of Thanksgiving 2008. That's what Thanksgiving is to me: family, raspberry pie and playing cards.




Before & after.

practicingasianlanguages

Since being back in the States I've tried to keep practicing Laos and Japanese language.

One of the reason Asian languages are difficult to learn is that they do not use spaces between words.

haveyouevertriedtoreadasentencewithoutspaces?

Not so easy is it? It makes looking up words in the dictionary a little bit challenging.

Laos language has the additional complication that sometimes vowels are written before the consonant even though the vowel is pronounced after the consonant. It takes a little getting used to looking for vowels before, above and below the consonant. If you have Laos fonts installed on your computer (probably not) you can see a sentence written in Laos:

ເຈົ້າມັກກີນເບຍລາວບໍ່?

Written Japanese is complicated by the fact that there are three "alphabets". Two are phonetic; hiragana is used for native Japanese words and katakana is used for foreign words. These are relatively easy to learn. Kanji, the pictograms related to Chinese characters, are the real challenge to all foreigners attempting to learn to read Japanese. The sheer number presents a major task - several thousand need to be learned to read the daily newspaper. But a single kanji character may have several pronunciations and meanings depending on the context. oiyoiyoi. If you have Japanese fonts installed on your computer (probably not) you can see a sentence written in Japanese:

あなたは、日本に行きたいですか?

One of the things I learned in Asia about myself was that I actually enjoy learning foreign languages. After spending four years in high school attempting to learn Spanish and a couple years in France attempting to speak French both with limited success, I thought I just wasn't good at learning languages. I realized I'm not an auditory learner, I'm a visual learner. By learning the foreign characters I was able to learn the basic language much quicker than in the past.

Prize for the first person that can answer my questions.

mallory cave

Jason and I took a quick hike up to Mallory Cave today in the beautiful weather. Photo of Jason doing his curious squirrel impersonation:

lest we forget

Today is the 90th anniversary of the end of WWI. At the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918 the Armistice Treaty came into effect to end the first world war. Take a moment to remember.

Carving Pumpkins

Mom and I spent the afternoon gutting pumpkins, cooking pumpkin seeds and carving our pumpkins. I tried to carve a pumpkin of my sinister sister since that was the scariest thing I could think of...

Hahaha

Back in CO!

My first homemade meal in Colorado! Mom rolled out some Italian pizza rolls to remind me that I should stay in Colorado longer...

Look delicious don't they?
Artistic presentation of an Italian pizza roll about to be devoured.

some stats

Some travel stats from traveling around Asia:

677 hand written pages in journals.
161 blog entries.
4234 photos, about 10 good ones.
4 countries - Japan, Thailand, Lao PDR, Nepal.
417 days = 1 year, 1 month and 20 days.
9991 hours from Denver takeoff to Denver landing.

Okonomiyaki

Okonomiyaki has become one of my favorite foods in Japan. I was trying to learn how to make it on my last night in Japan. Quality okonomiyaki is all about the facial expressions.

. . . . .

enoshima

Some photos from an afternoon in Enoshima with Mariko.

Tsukiji Market

The world famous Tsukiji Seafood Market with warehouse after warehouse of Styrofoam boxes of fish and row after row of fishmongers. Rubber boots, fish saws and the smells of fresh fish abound. Mariko took me there later morning so the craziness of the morning shipments had worn off and the vendors were happy to chat with us.

There is some political pressure to move the market to a new location so I was glad to see it before it moves.

As anyone who has been to the Tsukiji Market knows, the real beauty of the market is the sushi shops nearby with the freshest sushi in the world. So of course we stopped for lunch. Amazing doesn't do it justice. Wow that was good sushi.

A great way to spend my last full day in Japan, thanks Mariko.