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

Holandes

We are still in the San Blas, but we have left Coco Banderos. At first we
went to one of the San Blas's biggest towns, Nargana. Even though this is
one of the biggest towns there is still no running water. The houses were an
assortment of tin roofs, and thatched roofs made from palm fronds. Many of
the house's walls are made from cane. There was one store we bought from
that even had a baby fawn wandering around the store. The fawn was the
perfect likeness of Bambi. We only stayed in Nargana about one day, until we
left for the Holandes. The Holandes took only two hours by boat to get to.
The Holandes is more sheltered from wind than Coco Banderos where we had a
few storms. During one storm six of the eight boats' anchors let go, and
they had to struggle to re-anchor or get their engine started before they
blowed onto a reef. Lucky for us we were one of the boats that stayed still
We have been in the Holandes for about a day, and have already gone
snorkeling. The reef we went snorkeling on had a variety of fish in all
shapes and sizes. The fish ranged from small triangular yellow fish to a
nurse shark. I myself didn't see the nurse shark here, but I did see one in
the Coco Banderos. Another neat fish was the jewel fish, which was a small
black fish with purple spots that appeared to glow like jewels. The coral
wasn't colorful, but was often large and reached out across the reef.
Unfortunately we don't have a underwater camera case so we won't have any
photos of the reef from below the sea. We may be able to get one when we
leave the San Blas. Where we are now is peaceful if you consider the number
of Kunas we have had trying to sell us molas. Molas are embroidary with
multiple layers, that are created by the Kuna Indians. Most other places we
would have women come out in conoes at least two times a day attempting to
sell us there work. Here we have only had men trying to sell us crab and
lobster. We will continue to explore the San Blas once we leave the
Holandes.

San Blas Islands

We have entered the San Blas, and have visited two of the islands so far.
The San Blas Islands are a group of islands with Kuna Indians living on
them. The Kuna government strives very hard to preserve the original
culture. The result? Thatched roof huts, dugout canoes, traditional
clothing, and many other interesting customs. The people here are very
anxious to sell us things, and everyday we have someone come out in their
canoes offering to sell us things. The women come out to our boat selling
heaps of colorful molas, bracelets, masks, and some of their other
creations. It is tough to say "No, we already bought some molas," and every
time they come to the boat we purchase more molas. They want $1 or $2 per
photo we take of them. The men come out selling crab, lobster, and bread.
Kuna bread is very good, and I have consumed far more than I should have
rationed myself to. I'm eating Kuna Bread as we speak. The San Blas look
like the scenes on travel brochures, except without any civilization. The
water is crystal clear, and is great for swimming. The sea floor is littered
with starfish. I accidentally stepped on them a few times.

About to Go

We are about to leave, we are saying goodbye to everyone.

We are leaving Colon today, because we have had our engine repaired. We are going to island hop to the San Blas.

Tadpoles!

Our tadpoles we adopted are becoming frogs! We have had them for around a week, and one of them has become a miniature frog (or toad, we don't know which) while the rest are still tadpoles. We have seen what they will grow up to be, and their final form is huge!

Photos

I recently updated this blog with a million photos. I regretted that decision, because it made this blog very unorganized. Now I have removed all the photos and put them here.

Here is a list of programs I think are neat:
Google Earth-useful
Picasa+Hello-useful
Google Web Accelerator-useful
StarLogo 2-fun

How I organize my photos.

Picasa is what I am using to manage my photos. Picasa is free, and even icludes some basic editing tools. I use another program "Hello" to upload my photos to my Blog. Picasa and Hello work very well together. Both are free.

I made this my backround on my computer for a while. It is of one of our friends boats leaving Providencia. This Photo was taken a few weeks ago.

Panther Warning!

Yesterday me, Heather, and two other kids were going to walk to a beach. The road to the beach led through a dense forest. Well when we got to the start of the we decided we wanted to go to a different beach. Everyone thought we were going to the forest beach. After we left my mom discovered that there had been a panther spotting near the beach we were originally going to go to. We had about three or four people looking for us thinking we were in danger. That was pretty interesting.

We paln on heading to the San Blas soon. When we get there I will probably be able to update this blog about once a week.

New Photos!!!

Sorry I randomly bombarded you with unorganized photos. By unorganized I mean that they aren't in the right order and they are all seperate posts.

These photos are of our entire trip so far. These photos are a mostly my own, but my dad and a few other people also provided me with some of these photos.

If you like any of these pictures post a message, and I will load more photos from the same place.

*UPDATE* I removed all photos from my blog and transfered them to here.

Huge Fish!

A friend of ours just caught about 4-5 4ft. fish. He also caught 2 red snapper. Every once in a while he will go out in the sport fishing boat and go fishing for the day.

Also the bannanas in the US taste much worse then they do here. I ate 5 bannanas today, and they tasted so good.

Currently we are having a debate over fans. My mom thinks we should get new larger fans, beacauce our computer fans don't do much. On the other side my dad is saying it will burn to much power, even though we arn't certain. I think we should get the fans, because it is really hot here at night and it makes it hard to sleep.

Riiiiiing!!

Every morning I have a alarm set so I can wake up early and have more free time. This morning when the alarm went off everyone got annoyed with me for waking them up.
Yesterday at a small party we met the creator of The Panama Cruising Guide. The Panama Cruising Guide is a great guide with great photography and aerial photographs.

Good morning.

Yesterday, I had a feeling that I had to play soccer(football for some of you). I realized that when I get back from our trip that I will be horrible at soccer. I have only played two matches in the 10 months we have been on the boat.

Also yesterday I downloaded two neat programs produced by M.I.T. that are really interesting. Well to me at least. I downloaded Starlogo 2, and Starlogo TNG. Starlogo 2 is 2D and is my favorite of the two. Starlogo TNG is 3d and I don't like it as much. These programs allow you to command turtles using simple programming codes. For example

to setup
ca
crt 10
ask-turtles [setc blue fd 10]
ask-turtles [seth random 360 fd random 10]
end


That code is pretty complex for me. It means "If you want to "Setup" clear the map of all tiles and turtles, create 10 turtles, ask the turtles to change their color to blue, move forward 10 spaces, ask the turtles to turn randomly between zero and 360 degrees, ask the turtle to move randomly between 0 and 10 degrees, that is how to setup"

Now you are probably wondering what turtles are, turtles are the "creatures" that can move around the map. Tiles are the tiles on the ground which can't move. That picture is the end result of what that line of code did. If you do download this program I highly advise you go through the tutorial.

I also got two useful programs called Microsoft Visual basic, and Microsoft Visual Web Developer. Those are both free, but I wouldn't advise downloading them, because the files are huge. Luckily the person who suggested them to me had it on a CD.

Every program I mentioned is free.

I lost my post :(

I just wrote a lengthy entry to this blog, when I got a message "Firefox has encounterd a error and needs to close" I'll post what I was going to post tomorrow.

I have to start School Work soon.

Sigh.... I have to start school work soon. The only upside to doing schoolwork is we get to go to a nice air conditioned room. My parents use a voice that I call the fog horn voice to say "SchoooooollWooooooorkkk". I find this voice very obnoxious.

Yaaaawwn....

Its 9:00 down here, and I actually thought It was 7:00 when I got up. I'm really sleepy... yaaaawnnn..... really sleepy. There isn't much left to say.

We just killed a cockroach!

I was just about to update this blog, and I had no clue what I was going to put here, when I heard "I killed a roach!". So in conclusion my dad just killed a cockroach. Actually this news has a bit of meaning, because cockroachs are the worst bug to have on the boat, and this tells us that in this area we are prone to them. You can see why we hate them by looking at the picture. These things arn't small either, they are about 1-2 inches in length. In other news it is burining hot here in Colon.

Picture of Me.

I wanted to update this page with a good photo of me, I hope I can find one.
Hmmmmmm......... There arn't many good photos of me.

Here it is:

O well, so there arn't any good images of me on this computer, actually, there arn't good images of me on any computer.

I have been using the computer most of the day. I was being given very good advice on filming and organizing the film on my computer, among other things such as good programs to get.

My sister Heather was just given a bracelet from a Kuna Indian, that he made for Heather. The bracelet reads "HEAThER". That "h" isn't a typo.
The bracelet has a Panama flag on one end, and a American flag on the other end. This was a really nice beaded bracelet, and probably took him a few hours to make. This bracelet was given to her free too.

My First Post Here

This is my first post in my blog. Someone advised me to start a blog, because they get many more hits. This may be more of just an advertisement for my website, and the posts here and there will be very similar if not the same.
Who are we? We are a family traveling on our sailboat "Minke". We have traveled down the east coast of the US, from Florida around Cuba and to a tiny island called Swan Island. After that we went to Providencia(Below), then Bocas Del Toro, then to where we are now, Colon, Panama.
Our marina is within walking distance of a huge forest, and each night we can hear howler monkeys "howling". The first time I heard them howling, they gave me the chills, they sounded like a pack of angry dogs. The forest also houses bats, ants, panthers, many many birds, and other animals I can't remember. Oh, speaking of birds, did you know Panama has more species of birds than all of North America?
Colon is the city at the enrtrance to the Panama canal, and is known for its crime. Lucky for us we are in a marina seperated from the city by the forest. Also we are near a naval, and coast guard base that guards the area. Our marina is called the Shelter Bay Marina.
That wraps up my first entry, check for more updates frequently. Download Google Maps if you liked those satellite images. Its free!