Pre-Christmas Events

This Thursday night, the Elementary Winter Concert took place. Both girls had a great time with their friends. Tonight is the LAS party at the director's house= more cute outfits, gifts, singing and fun. It's wonderful to realize we are 1 week away from the warmth of Thailand!

Besties: Xenia and Talula

More Besties: Maria, Anastasia and Mahnoor

How did ours get to be the silly one? (Randy?!)

Peforming "Christmas Bells" song

Looking sweet during their "Christmas Eve" song

October at a Glance

One fine, fancy morning before school

OCTOBER=Eid break, Talula's Birthday, Halloween and SAISA volleyball in India

OPTION 1: skip to the photos
OPTION 2: read Christine's ramblings and then look at the cute photos

The blur that was September and October is almost complete. I (Christine) have been coaching high school girls' volleyball until 6pm three nights during the school week, leaving Randy with lots of Anastasia/Talula time with only the weekends as recovery and catch-up periods. It's been crazy but I'm enjoying the play.

We had a nice little respite over Eid holiday at the beginning of October. We took one of the mornings to show the girls Lahore Fort which Randy and I had visited last year. It was a nice morning, the girls opted for fancy wear and thus we got a few cute pictures.

The weekend after we had 4 girls over for a playdate. Talula chose her best friend, Xenia, and Roshany and her sister came.  Anastasia had Maria over because we had been to Mahnoor's the weekend before. They had a good time drawing, dressing up and playing kitchen. Maria's mom stayed for a little while, but otherwise each mother/driver dropped off their daughter with a nanny. The adult:kid ratio was greater than one, so it was a very pleasant occasion. The reason for the playdate= avoidance of the full-out birthday party that is the norm here. I was not up for the bouncy house-magician-catered food-goody bags extravaganza that would be anticipated by every member of her class that would have to be invited. Talula didn't seem to mind :)

Halloween this year involved (past tense because Muharram is next weekend and we can't overlap the observed days) a trial dressing on Monday, an assembly on Thursday, the parade at school on Friday and will conclude with a Halloween party at Maria's compound.  Talula was a "sweet" Dracula and Anastasia was a fruit bat- although to most they probably simply appeared as a vampire and bat.

I was quite happy that Halloween was celebrated early because I will not be with the girls or Randy on the real day. I'll be with 11 LAS girls and my teaching/coaching partner in Mumbai for the SAISA (Southern Asia Inter-Scholastic Association) Girls' Volleyball tournament. I was getting a bit stressed because none of us had a visa for India until today. (I hugged our athletic director when she told me!) It would have been a major letdown to practice for 2 months and then...nothing. We played earlier in Islamabad against some other international schools in the area and WON! (check out Lahore American School on Facebook for some photos of me and the girls) I do not expect to win this coming week, but I do plan to have fun and watch LOTS of volleyball.

Waiting for the water to go down

This little album includes photos of the rain, the girls' new bed and them doing various silly things.

Glowing soft-toy saves the evening

It rained ALL night Wednesday night, so we kept waiting for an SMS from school to say something like: don't risk flooded streets, stay in your warm beds and we'll see you tomorrow.  But no message ever came so we got ready for school as always.  The drive to LAS was up to mid-tire for about 25% of the trip.  Upon arriving, we were turned away by the guards outside the school with the superintendent and high school principal standing at the front door waving glumly.  NO SCHOOL!  They promised to let us know by that night about the next day.  The message this time: School for our shortened Friday workday (kids leave at 12:20) is on.

And then it starts to rain again during first block the next morning.  E-mails begin arriving: After-school professional development has been cancelled but let's meet in the canteen to eat all the potluck food we waded in with.  Then a message to scratch that.  Ultimately the last message says everyone go to Advisory now, your parents have been sent an SMS to come get you now.  Wait until your driver texts you to say he's here.

I grabbed Anastasia and Talula so my all-girls advisory could visit with them (and get them off their teachers' hands).  By the time we were ready to go, Khalil (our driver) still hadn't made it.  We grabbed a ride with my teaching and coaching partner.  Water was up to mid-calf as I tried to put all our bags in her trunk, raising to knee level with the wake of passing cars.  A bit insane! When we arrived home 10-15 minutes later, I think all of us released a sigh of relief that we hadn't stalled anywhere along the way.

Once home, electricity went out within a half hour.  We were without for about 6-7 hours.  Our back-up battery that runs a few lights and fans died shortly after 5 hours just as the sun was fading.  Thus all the photos with candles and the battery-powered butterfly from Great-grandma Baker.  The girls found it all an adventure but I am quite happy that the various leaks near doors and windows are not demanding my attention anymore!

2013-14 School pictures

"Now I know why they're free." [my first thoughts upon seeing the photos below]

School pictures at the Lahore American School were different than AISA (Abu Dhabi) or what I had experienced growing up. They were not being sold; the entire purpose was the for the yearbook and various admin and academic computer programs. Upon asking, I was told the digital versions of the photos would be available later in the year. Thus toward the end of last school year, I found these on some drive that allowed access to teachers.

I really think the art students might have done a better job with lighting. Talula's whole class had re-takes and the one below is the second and better effort. Oh, well... here they are:

Anastasia in Pre-K; Talula in Pre-School

Summer 2014: Indiana and Illionis

All of us- looking in the same direction!

We finished the summer with a whirlwind of fun!  Click here for the photos!

Tallulah Gorge State Park

Tallulah Gorge State Park is located almost midway between SC and IN.  Talula liked the idea of meeting another Tallulah, so we stopped over briefly on the journey north.  Here are the photos!

Summer 2014: Florida and South Carolina

Great Grandma Baker with A& T

Better late than never, right?  Click here to see FL & SC photos

Springtime has come and gone

Last week was low 90s, this week we've been hanging around 97 and next week's forecast is in the 100s on most days. I guess spring is gone!

Those moving boxes are still great sources of fun! 
The most recent project involved finger-painting the outside and then writing on the box "No cats, yes children."  This morning I saw almost 10 of them spread all of their bedroom with odds and ends in many of them.

Easter = Easter eggs, bunny masks, colorful dresses and book club. 
Some colleagues kids' hid the eggs in the yard repeatedly while the adults had book club inside.  My mom actually jumped when first coming online for Skyping due to the somewhat creepy bunny masks.

We had been looking forward to these little guys for quite some time.  First-time mom "lost" them after only one day.  The girls stared at them for a lot that one day, but we're pretty sure a tomcat must have got them right off the back porch last night.   The girls have rebounded, but Randy and I are still a bit sad.

RED (shimul trees) and WHITE (zoo animals)

Laid back spring break= lots of blog posts. Here's a few pictures from the last few days of flower-gathering and zoo-going:

Shimul tree flowers are dropping everywhere!  They're huge and red= FUN! 
The shimul tree is also known as the red cotton tree and I read that some people even use the blooms' fibers to make pillows.  Anastasia and Talula tried them out at the zoo as bear toys, gazelle fodder and ornaments for the duck ponds.

Wording of the signs pictured (including use of capitals):
"Whoever is kind to the creatures of ALLAH is kind to himself."
"Sure, they're happy to see you.  To them, you smell like food."
"Whoever is merciful even to a sparrow, ALLAH will be merciful to him on the
DAY of JUDGEMENT." 

Anastasia loves red (see flowers above) and WHITE?! (see animals here).  Every white animal at the zoo got special preference.  She even argued that the "normal" tigers and peacocks were "boring."  I was repeatedly instructed to take photos of all white animals. [Weird kid?!]



Playing with Abandon

The girls have been making the most of the yard now that the weather is very pleasant.  Here's some of their ridiculous play:

Talula likes drawing on walls, doors and floors- so far it's been all outside!

a new favorite play-spot: among briars, bugs and tumbling rocks

Hide-and-seek is the latest obsession

Discovered in the toy/garden shed

Anastasia was surprised to see that her underwear
showed while doing this move on the swing

Talula thought Anastasia's underwear picture was cool

She's a monkey- the shirt confirms it!

Crawling under the swing

Hanging on for dear life

Trapeze artists in the making

Talula's latest favorite game in the sandbox- filling her shirt

Our guest wasn't interested in getting that filthy,
but she was not hesitant to help out!

Sand monster in profile

Out of Lahore

A few images from rural Pakistan:

Rice patty

Cattle and buffalo are common

another view of the lot

hand-pressed cow patties drying on walls and houses



the ears, the ears!! (this is the norm, not an exception) 

common mode of transport: ching ching
[after the CNG (compressed natural gas) that powers most]

lounging in the village

Talula at a cucumber greenhouse- this was one of 20 or so houses (all of cucumber!)

playing in the floodplain's thin clay layer above the sand

playing under the seat in the van while waiting for fresh fish

To Lemon for Christmas

Sana'a and Socotra Island, Yemen: 22-29 December 2013


One of the many only-found-here species found on
"the Galapagos of the Indian Ocean"

Follow this link to see the album.

Christmas in Yemen

By Randall D. Ball

Sunday, 22 December 2013, we flew from Lahore to Sana’a via Dubai, which was uneventful (for us, that sometimes feels rare—no one getting sick, or passing out, or missing connections and spending extra nights at airports or hotels where you get food poisoning, or losing your luggage, or suffering from mysteriously cancelled flights, etc.), arriving mid-morning.  We had a brief tour of the old town in Sana’a, which is also where our hotel was.  We enjoyed a good, very big lunch with various breads, salads, beef stew, chicken, rice, and yogurt topped with honey for dessert—and mint tea, of course.  We would drink a few gallons of tea on this trip.

The next day had a rough start—there was a strike at the airport.  A fellow tourist commented to us that he had imagined a lot of possible bad things happening to him while on holiday in Yemen, but he hadn’t pictured this.  While we waited at the airport, Anastasia and Talula shared their stickers with another little girl, and we talked to her parents, both Yemeni, who commented that they were ashamed of their country right now and apologized.  We ended up back at our hotel, which was a better option than waiting around the cold airport.  We sat on the rooftop terrace overlooking Sana’a, enjoyed some tea, and relaxed.  Then we got the call:  the airport was open!  We made it just in time to board our flight to Socotra Island.  Apparently, some Italians were booked for the same flight but missed it;  they were not able to get a flight to the little island off the Yemen coast for another four days.

The flight on Yemen Airways was nearly uneventful, except for the Scandinavian woman in front of me who accused me of putting gum on her armrest.  Two hours after boarding the delayed flight, we were on the island, which is part of Yemen but is actually closer to Somalia.  It’s called the Galapagos of the Indian Ocean, and one of the world’s most unusual places.  We were excited to be there.  Our guide Shehab and our driver Ali picked us up at the airport and drove us to into town.  After a very tasty fish dinner on the island, sitting outside with goats wandering around us, we settled into our hotel room for the night.

The next morning, we drove up into the mountains to see the famed dragon’s blood trees and other unusual flora and fauna, including bottle trees, cucumber trees, and some large, white Egyptian vultures around Dixsam Plateau.  Then we headed south, bisecting the island, arriving at an isolated, sandy-white, dune-filled beach in Nojed Omaq.  The girls had a terrific time playing in the sand and in the surf.  Then we stopped at Dogub Cave, where a shepherding family offered us a goat for sale.  We politely refused, but we did share some fruit with them.  On the way back, we were invited to lunch with some locals on a hilltop, where we enjoyed goat, rice, tomatoes, and Pepsi (and tea).  I had some goat brains, which were pretty good.  I declined the offer of goat stomach;  the memory of chewing sheep stomach at a Chinese hole-in-the-wall hot pot restaurant in Abu Dhabi is still fresh in my mind. 

Following our meal, Christine and the girls joined the other women and attempted to communicate, while I sat with the men, smiled and laughed and made hand gestures, and drank tea.  Anastasia turned into a dainty princess as she walked slowly and carefully through the grass;  she was afraid of prickly bushes.  This overly-cautious movement was in stark contrast to the way she had behaved at the beach, when she fearlessly played in the waves, or when she plowed through sand dunes undeterred by rocks, animals, or vegetation.

After lunch, we drove into a protected wilderness of dragon’s blood trees, where our driver demonstrated how to cut into the tree to get to the sap, which is used for makeup and for medicine as a blood coagulate.  Dinner was around the corner from our hotel, another outdoor affair with fresh fish, beans, and bread, with goats wandering about us.  Anastasia and Talula alternated between chasing the goats away and feeding them bits of bread.  Some of the other diners would offer the girls bits of bread to feed the goats as well, so there was entertainment for everyone.

A visiting Saudi man who had to order extra bread because he kept offering it to the girls as goat food, asked Anastasia, “Where are you from?”

She answered, “Abu Dhabi.” 

He laughed and shook his head.  “No, really.  Where were you born?”

“Abu Dhabi.”

He looked at me and I nodded.  “It’s true;  they were both born in Abu Dhabi.”

“Where do you live now?” he asked Anastasia.

“Pakistan.”

The Saudi diner shook his head again.  I don’t think he believed us.

Actually, both our tour guide and our driver in Socotra asked me several times about Pakistan, asking if it was safe and obviously thinking otherwise.  Of course, before we left Lahore, our friends in Pakistan asked the same question about Yemen. 

The next morning was Christmas, and with the girls singing Christmas carols, we drove eastward along the coast to Irsel and Arher (my favorite spot on the island), where we stopped at a perfect and remote location at the foot of a mountain, in a lush green wadi that led to the ocean.  We walked through the surprisingly warm water of the little creek in the wadi, climbed part of a huge sand dune (and slid back down), and spent time at the beach.  The girls played in the sand, chased ghost crabs, and wandered about.  It was a beautiful day. 

We then had a late lunch at Dihamry, right on the rocky coast—more fresh fish, followed by a walk along the shoreline around some very red rocks where the girls found some goat bones to play with.  Talula had a leg bone, and Anastasia had a jaw bone.  They took their bones back to the hotel with them, and I caught Anastasia putting one of the goat’s teeth under her pillow.   We had to explain to her that the Tooth Fairy would only accept her own teeth.  That evening, we took a break from fish at dinnertime, opting for chicken as the girls fed and chased the goats.

The following day, we did some serious off-road driving.  It started with a bumpy trek along a dry, rocky riverbed, which led to a very steep, very rough mountain road.  Once we were up the mountain, though, we were first provided a view of a scenic plateau full of frankincense trees, and then a little further up another mountain, we reached the campsite at Homhil, where we would have lunch (pasta—and tea, of course) and hike to a natural pool.  It was a little too cool and cloudy for a swim, however—very unlike the first few days, but up in the mountains, it is supposed to be cooler and wetter.  It didn’t stop our guide from jumping in the water, though.

Dinner was more fish, again with the goat entertainment.  Anastasia was really into the fish by now, and to have her eat something besides pasta, bread, and Cheerios is an achievement.  Besides, we didn’t mind ordering the fish—it was good, it was fresh (and it was the whole fish—so you can play with the “fishy face,” glassy eyes and all!). 

The next day, we headed to the western side of Socotra Island, to Qalancia Beach and Detwah Lagoon, where we waded across the shallow lagoon to a little beach and the girls played in the sand and chased more ghost crabs.  They also found a few hermit crabs that they took with them to our lunch spot (another camp site—no regular restaurants are around the island besides the main town of Hadibo, where our hotel was located, but at each campsite, there is someone in charge who prepares food and cleans up).  They returned the crabs to the beach after playing with their new friends.  We returned to the hotel early, mid-afternoon, because the beach was just too windy and conditions in Hadibo were a little better anyway.  It was nice reading on the hotel’s second-floor porch outside our room.  We returned to our usual evening restaurant for dinner.  The staff certainly knew us by then.

On our last day on the island, we visited Adeeb Nursery, a small plot of island full of interesting plants, and then our driver took us to his home to meet his family.  We enjoyed tea, bread, tomatoes, and beans at his simple dwelling, and his kids along with some neighboring children had fun with Anastasia and Talula.  He had some goats, so that was fun for them too.

Then it was time to leave.  I can still see them out the back window of the Toyota Land Cruiser:  a group of about ten children smiling and waving at us, yelling “goodbye.”  It was a special time on Socotra, and what was left of our trip would be anticlimactic.

We had an uneventful flight back to the mainland, with a brief stop in Al Mukalla in southern Yemen right on the Gulf of Aden coastline before reaching Sana’a mid-afternoon.  We had dinner with no fish at the hotel, and then we flew back to Lahore the next day.  We did enjoy some pork and decent beer at the airport in Dubai, two things that are hard to come by in either Yemen or Pakistan.  Our driver Khalil met us at the airport in Lahore, giving the girls a big hug before leading us to our car and back home after a satisfying trip.

[P.S. by Christine
On the two occasions when we dined with locals, the girls and I always sat with the women/girls and let them stare at us.  One of the more memorable/embarrassing moments was when Anastasia joined us under a tree on the Dixsam Plateau.  She was wearing a skirt and didn't like the tall, scratchy grass.  She looked like a princess from  a foreign planet as she cautiously and ridiculously made her way to us.  On this occasion, everyone asked what lotion I used to keep my skin so light.  I told them I liked their browner skin and made the joke that we always want what we don't have.  (There was a man there who could mangle my English into their Arabic.)  Talula hid her face in my shoulder and Anastasia shook a few hands.

On the last day at Ali's house, same situation but now with little girls mostly.  Talula hid her face again; she finds the stares and attempted petting (especially aimed at the littlest blonde) overwhelming.  Anastasia once again stepped up to the task and performed "Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer", the alphabet and counted.  They really just want to hear the accent.  One braver Yemeni girl responded with the alphabet in English.

I'm sorry there are no photos to share these colorful experiences with you.  In both instances, the ladies/girls were garbed in bright, beautiful clothes.  All women had their faces covered throughout Yemen.  I always admire others' "local people" shots, but generally can't do it.  I'm not an anthropologist and don't want to make them feel like a studied object.  If I could come up with a reasonable way to ensure that those I took pictures of could receive a copy, I think I would be game.]