My baby brother got married!

A Few More Pics of the Vacation...

This is the dirtiest I think my feet have EVER been!














These are some beautiful flowers in the yard of the people who owned the dolphin watching business. They are so pretty that they look fake!

Port Louis, the capitol of Mauritius
I love lizards and geckos! (Especially little baby ones.) These were everywhere in the houses!

This is what the streets of Port Louis look like around Christmas Eve.

There are THIS many kinds of sugar??? Heaven! We toured an old sugar factory.

Christmas with some neighbors. the guy on the left was interested in me for a few days...but Padmini took care of it for me. :)

Bus stations were chaoric, but we managed to get where we needed to go when we needed to be someplace. Whew. (No bus books or schedules, etc.)

A beautiful waterfall...the name of which slipped my mind...

Sega dancers in traditional outfits. Pretty cool!

Lichis--yum! First you peel them, then you eat them...then you spit out the seed...oops, these pictures are reversed!!

We met an octopus hunter while walking along the beach. He told us about octopus hunting--well, he told Padmini and she translated for me. Smaller octopi travel alone and you catch one by gaining its trust and letting it kind of crawl up your arm after tickling it with a stick. Then you wait patiently until the last arm is out of hiding and "whamo!" Grab the whole thing! Larger mature octopi are mated and travel in pairs. If you see one, you had better catch the second or it will come out to defend it's mate! It will trip your legs and then strangle you! I think we can learn a thing or two about loyalty from our tasty friends the octopi.

I took a picture in the mirror of the back part of the saree in hopes that it would help me remember how to wrap one.

Padmini's mom dressing me in the saree.

This was the island we went to for lunch on our dolphin-less dolphin swim. We saw some, but other boats were aggressive and chased them away. :(

Us in the Indian Ocean

This is me snorkeling

A sugar stack from an old factory. There are several of these still left even though many of the factories have been shut down.

This was so beautiful, I thought it looked fake! The ocean is in the distance and there is a "tree stand" for hunting deer in the closer foreground. This picture does not do the green its justice

Beautiful sunset

Inside my shack in Africa. I slept here the last night. The other two nights I slept in a room attached to the main building. All I have to say is that I am VERY glad I bought this huge dodo bird beach towel while in Mauritius! I would have died of hypothermia had I not had it! I also used three of my large scarves to help insulate. It was even summer there...

This was inside one of the shanty shacks in Soweto. I might add that there were many very nice houses in Soweto, too. I thought they would all be like this one. Nope.

I'm not really sure what the stuff is on the walls. It reminded me of labels that had not been cut or glued onto products.

Shacks from the outside

This is a large photo of the event that began what was similar to the civil rights movement in the U.S., only for S. Africa. During a peaceful protest against having to learn Afrikaans (the "white" people language) in school, a kid was shot and killed. This picture is that incident. The girl running beside is the boy's sister. The kid being carried is the one who died.

The houses on the left are more modern. The buildings on the right were like apartments for workers during apartaid. The latter have no electricity and no plumbing of any kind. People still live in them!

I just have to have this cool picture online again! (It's also on my FB.)

Feeding a giraffe. Their tongues are long and nasty!

So when I checked into the hostel in Africa, there was this spider behind the check in desk, just hanging out. We came to find that it is deadly! It's somehow a relative of the black widow and has similar markings on the tummy. Then one day it was gone---scary thought! I was hoping it wouldn't just "appear" somewhere else where it could be harmful to people!

I slept in a tin hut while in Africa--I mean really, how many people from the U.S. can say that???

This is the darling hotel I stayed in near Johannesburg on the way over to Mautitius.
It had flava!

The experiecne wouldnt' be complete without the electric fence and tall wall...(around my hotel)

These pics are out of order--sorry! This is back in Mauritius.

Me, Deva and Padmini worked on a sand fort. (Lena did too, but she is taking the picture.)

A cool mountain in Mauritius--darn intrusive power line!

Mauritius is a volcanic island. This lava part pictured here was MILD compared to the jaggedness of other parts. It was QUITE a challenge manuvering through in wet flip flops! (This is a small volanic island off of a pebble beach.)

"The Seven Colored Earth," or the 8th natural wonder of the world! The picture does not come close to doing it justice!

More beautiful Mauritius

Mauritius and Africa--more to come...

I climbed a ladder and got this coconut down and drank the coconut water!

This is me dressed in a saree for the Hindu wedding.

Cool coral out on the reef. As you can see, there wasn't much water because it's a pretty shallow area.

This is how I spent Christmas! We (my friend and I) paddled out to the reef. Isn't the coral beautiful?

Garden Update

Well, unfortunately, I had to use the flash so it washed out some of the color. These are the little spinach plants. The carrots aren't as exciting--you can see a few in the foreground. Pretty cool! They are doing pretty well, I think. I left to work at the temple today and when I got home, I could tell they had grown just a teeny bit while I was gone! Amazing!

My "Garden"

"The Box" My one foot by 2 feet box on my porch. This is the only space I have, really. The basil is on my back porch. It's pretty exciting to see some little plants growing! It's been about 25 years since I've participated in a garden!
These are my spinach sprouts!
This is my basil plant that I planted a few weeks ago...maybe like a month or more ago.

Finally! Alaska pictures!

This is a stuffed musk ox at the Anchorage Museum. He's a greeeeeaaat kisser! ;)

Me with Anchorage in the background. I'm standing at the edge of Earthquake Park where 75 houses once stood but got destroyed in the 1964 earthquake. The ground is still all lumpy, but that is behind me and you can't see it here.

Alaska didn't have a temple back in 1990 when we left, but now there is one there! It was fabulous to do work inside, when so long ago, the nearest temple was 3 hours by plane!

Blueberry! Delicious and wild! Mom and I went on a hike and picked a few. Mostly they had already been picked, so we mostly gleaned...

We hiked to Byron Glacier and took some way awesome pictures! A glacier is a "river of ice" made from compacted snow. It turns blue on the inside and is very pretty.

Byron Glacier. It looks like only a little way up there, doesn't it? It's a LONG way, I promise. The perspective is deceiving!

Mom and I went clam digging at Deep Creek by the ocean. This is called a clam gun.

Fishing in the Ninilchik River, the only river I fell into when I was young!

Eagle River Visitors' Center Center. One of my greatest fears is BEARS!

Anchorage Museum exhibits. This is a replica of a Native dwelling and a woman making a basket.

Protage Glacier, a place we used to go when I was younger.

Marc and some tasty halibut---doesn't look all that tasty in this bloody, smelly state!

Gateway to Prince William Sound.

Me tasting shark meat for the first time. Delicious! Melts in your mouth!

Another Anchorage Temple shot.

Cottonwood trees rot from the inside out...is there a lesson to be learned from this???