We are studying spanish a lot....

We have been taking Spanish lessons every week day for an hour each day. 
And studying in some of our free
time. We are getting better.

I have been sick for the past few days, even though I don't know what I was sick with. Nothing really interesting has happenend, and I am having troublt thinking of things to put here. Oh, Well

Thanksgiving

For those of you who actually read this occasionly, sorry for not posting more often. I have been lazy. Well yesterday we had Thanksgiving dinner in the marina. There was a ton of great food, and plenty of people to eat it. There was dancing and live music, not typical of Thanksgiving, and the place was decorated for Christmas. It was really fun though anyway. I got in a miniature food fight at the end of the table. Once again, I am to lazy to wright much, so comment if you want me to wright more.Save as Draft

Halloween and Recently

Lots of boats have been coming in recently. We two boats anchor right next to us, and then move later, but that wasn't much of a problem. I don't think I talked about how the Halloween party went yet, so I will do that now. I dressed up as a headless guy, which I thought was pretty good, except my costume fell apart (a bit) halfway through the party. Heather was a old man, except she wore her mask backwards to fool people(second picture, 2nd from the right). My dad was a "Little Dingy"(1st picture background), and my mom was a flame. Their was a ton of dancing at the party, and it lasted a long time. Unfortunately, we didn't get much candy. I am kind of sleepy right now, so that is why I am not writing much descriptive content. If you are wondering why I am tired, it is because I woke up last night, twice during two different storms, and asked my parents if they would need my help during the little storm.

Bad Weather on Halloween

This morning we had quite a storm. There was plenty of wind, and the boat in front of us dragged. Are dingy was hauled out of the water at the boats side, and we had to get it back into the water if we wanted to move the big boat. My dad went out into the rain and tried to lower it into the water, and I offered to help. So I stood out in the freezing painful rain and I was actually shivering, something I haven't done in a while. O yeah, there is a US Naval ship in here now, that makes us feel slightly safer. For Halloween we aren't doing much. We are having a party in the marina which will be nice, but we aren't going trick or treating. Colombia is #1 in kidnappings, and we don't think it would be wise to trick or treat at night here. We may get a few pumpkin seeds in terms of candy. I am being a headless person for Halloween, and Heather is being a Old Man, but she wears the cape and mask backwards to fool people, it really works!

....

Tonight went okay. We had dinner at the pot luck in the marina, which was nice. Then after that Heather and my mom danced for a little while with a whole bunch of other people to really noisy music. We were about leave when someone walked up and told a lady something then the lady broke out crying. We decided to wait out of curiosity and see what happened. She lives here in Cartagena, and works in the marina. We couldn't immediately figure out what she was saying because she speaks Spanish, but then someone told us what happend. Her son died. He was shot.

And that is most of what we know. I may write more tomorrow, because now right now I feel sick talking about it.

Brief Summary

I have been lazy updating this recently, so I will provide a brief summary of what has happened recently. First we went to a botanical garden where we looked at peaceful pools of crystal clear water with out any disturbances and fish with beautiful tails swimming gracefully through the water. Then we threw a soccer ball in the water. There was also plenty of neat plants, and a monkey who chucked sticks at us. We returned fire. Our tennis ball unfortunately missed.

We also had a few windy incidents. One where I had just woken up and Heather ran into the room and said "Ian could you close the hatch" I don't think I had even opened my eyes yet, yet I decided to close it any way. After that my mom calls out "Ian could you help me with this" Of course what she wanted me to do involved standing in the rain for about five minutes. That was fun...

We have also gone to the fort again, and explored deeper into the tunnels. We stopped when the water on the floor got up to our knees. Oh yeah we also went to a nearby dance performance. Keep in mind if you comment on my blog, and ask a question, I will return with a answer in the comments section.

Last night we had a little storm, nothing to worry about, but it came with wind and rain. We were worried the wind would make another boat's ancher drag, possibly towards us. what I minded was that we have to close the boat's hatches when it rains, making the boat incredibly hot. We have no air-conditioning, and only a few small fans. All of you people who read this ashore probably like the fact, that storms are at night, and not during the day when you can do things. Well let me tell you, I don't like them at night. Also they are a lot scarier at night. At least the rain brought cloudy weather with it, so the temp is down today down.

For the past few days, we havn't been doing anything exciting. There are no open spaces here to play sports, so I find myself using the computer most of the time. Yesterday I saw a skiing event on TV, and it made me want to go skiing. Oh well I won't be doing that for a while.

Mud

Yesterday we went to the "mud volcano" the mud volcano is a hill that you can climb to the top of and then float in a jacuzzi sized mud bath. It is so hard explain, but I will try my best. You float in the mud, and you can't sink at all even if you try. I could only dunk my head if I leaned forward, or if I grabbed the edge and pulled myself down. The mud also presses in on you much harder than water. It was a really neat experience that is impossible to describe. Also a neat fact is that the mud we were floating in went down 2000 feet.

Last night we had a interesting event. It happened like this: I decide to get a drink of water, so I get out of bed and walk to the kitchen. While I was walking my foot came in contact with a container of screws and bolts creating a huge sound. My dad instantly leaps out of bed, my mom thinking somebody has climbed onto our boat screams louder than I thought human vocal cords were capable of(Heather compared it to a rooster). And I fearing for my life quickly said "Its me, Its Me!" I feel kind of bad about that, but I won't say who left the bolts on the floor.

We visited the Fort again...

We visited the fort again, and found a tunnel into the fort we didn't find last time. This tunnel was the longest of all the tunnels, and seemed to go on forever with endless passages and tunnels. We went on untill there was about a inch of water on the ground, then we turned back. I had my camera with me this time, so I took some neat photos of our trip.

I'm testing the image upload system... and it works! Fast too.

The Circus Was Neat

We made it to the circus, and the circus was pretty good. There was a few clowns, a tiger tamer, a couple horse riders, a elephaunt trainer, a few motorcyclests in a sphere, a gymnast, and a group on the flying trapese. Oh yeah, and there also was a few kids on a trampoline. It was really neat, and I got to eat cotton candy. I also managed to go into town without being pestered by a sales person. My mom went to a ballet instead.

We dedided to go on a walk yesterday to get tickets to a Mexican Circus that is in Cartagena. We accidently took a wrong turn and ending up walking for about three hours on a walk that would normally have been much shorter. We got the tickets and walked back in 15 minutes, the right way. We are going to the circus today, It better be worth it.

Following my campaign for Picasa, I will provide a image of Picasa's simplistic layout.
Dowload Picasa by clicking the button that says "Get photo software from Google" in the box to the right.

Picasa, which I recommended earlier in this blog can know be downloaded by clicking the link to the right. It is rated the best photo organizing program by many websites and magazines, and is entirely free. It is a small download. I see no flaws with Picasa, try downloading it, no harm will be done if you don't want to use it.

Oh yeah, please comment on my blog to make me feel like people exist beyond this screen that read my blog.

Cartagena

We went into the old town of Cartagena a few days ago. The old town had a variety of old historical buildings, and plenty of people trying to sell us stuff. The street venders are so persistent. THEY DRIVE ME MAD. "Would you like a hat?"I say "No, thank you" they respond "Here, try it on,... see it looks good on you" I say "It looks, ... okay" "So you will buy it?" "No thanks, I don't need another hat" "No comprendo senor" I now have a new hat and glasses, the glasses are falling apart. We went to a really neat fort, with tunnels and caverns that go underneath it. I am trying to get more photos of the San Blas in the photos section, but the connection is slow and unreliable.

We have entered Cartagena

We Left the San Blas and made it to Cartagena. Cartagena is a large Columbian city. It has many interesting forts and old buildings, next to high-rises. We are pretty happy, because there is grocery stores here that are US quality, and well stocked. The internet from our boat, is sadly not reliable enough to put many photos online, but I somehow managed to get one photo into my album. Follow the link in the bar to the right, dubbed "photos" or "photo album" or something along those lines, and you can see one photo of a man with his "ulu" and a kuna hut in the background. Sorry for the weird layout of the previous updates, but I don't know how to fix that. Expect more in the following week.

The Kuna Festival

I saw an interesting Kuna festival today, it was a girl's coming of age
festival. It involved most of the village going to the "Chicha Hut" and
drinking "chica". Chica is a alcoholic drink that the Kunas drink
container after container of in the festival. We stood outside the hut
peeking in occasionally through the holes between the walls to see what
was happening. Many of the Kunas were drunk. Later today the dancing part
of the ceremony will occur.
When we were in another area of the San Blas we met a family, and Heather
gave the daughter a stuffed animal. Well when we came here we discovered
that the family lives on this island. They were happy to see us, and
showed us their house. They gave us some beautiful shells, and a coconut
for each of us to drink. The family had quite a few pets including a dog,
two parakeets, and a baby tortoise. We have left from the place we were in
the last update, and moved on to the place where the festival has taken
place.-9/2/06

We have left the swimming pool, and checked out of the San Blas in
Porvenir, the Kuna capital. We left Porvenir the same day and came to the
Chi Chime keys, which are still in the San Blas. When we got to the Chi
Chime keys, before we even anchored we were bombarded by Kunas in their
ulus(canoes) trying to sell us molas, sell us fish, sell us lobster, and
sell us crab. After we told them "barco no liesto", which we think means
"boat no ready", we anchored then let them try to sell us things. For a
few hours we looked at what the steady stream of ulus had to sell us. The
Kunas here have better molas than in the rest of the San Blas The designs
of the molas are more intricate and traditional. We bought a bunch of
molas and crab, partially so we could keep the Kunas happy, and partially
for the food and art. One of the Kunas was very nice, and gave us a fish,
which divided among us amounted to about one bite per person.
Yesterday us and some people from another boat went to a tiny island,
with about five palm trees squeezed onto it. The island looked like the
type of island that occasionally goes underwater. The island will probably
suffer the same fate as Atlantis in about ten years if the predictions
about global warming hold true. Anyway, we built a little fire, that
occasionally would be splashed by the spray of a wave crashing. We put the
fire out by splashing it with water from the beach. I am really regretting
that we didn't buy marshmellows before we left the US. We've made tons of
fires, and yet we have no marshmellows so the fires never quite feel
complete.
We plan on heading to Cartagena next, then we have no clue what we are
doing. Some of our friends are staying in Cartagena, and we told them we
would meet up with them. I am told Cartagena has interesting old ruins,
and yet is a big city with plenty of stores. I hope we can get
marshmellows there. I am also told we can get ice cream there, which I
really really want. I never realized how much I would miss things like
that until we left the US. We should also be able to get fast internet
somewhere in Cartagena, so I can frequently update this blog with photos
and such. I have lots of neat photos of the San Blas that I want to put
online. We should be leaving for Cartagena in a day or two, but the
weather is slowing us down.
I do not like the weather. BOOOOOOMoooom rooom
OOMoooommm. As I write this thunder rumbles not-so-quietly in the
distance. Its tough surviving the heat down here, but it doesn't help that
whenever it rains we have to close the boat, limiting air flow. Every day
it rains ( owwww...... my ears… that last boom was LOUD) at least once
usually accompanied by thunder and his close friend lightning. ( I'll
resume this update later, I am getting too nervous to continue with all
the lightning, okay I'm back, ten booms and ten flashes later, or about
half an hour) Honestly, the weather down here is annoying.
Here is our GPS coordinates, for anybody trying to locate us on Google
Earth.

"09 35.220'N 078 52.969'W"

The San Blas islands may appear as a few smudges. That’s it for this
update, Adios!-9/1/06