sunday post: mother’s day

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Life, Sunday Post

Sunday, May 12:  Today is Mother’s Day in the USA, and Jake has given us a challenge to post something in honor of mothers everywhere (Jakesprinter’s Sunday Post: Mother’s Day).  He writes: Mother’s Day is a celebration honoring mothers and motherhood, maternal bonds, and the influence of mothers in society. It is celebrated on various days in many parts of the world, most commonly in March or May.

Here are some mothers I’ve encountered in my travels.

a mother and her son in Pokhara, Nepal

A mother bathes her child in Bhaktapur, Nepal

a mother and her children at the Lalibela Saturday market in Ethiopia

Indian mothers at the Lotus Temple in Delhi, India

my Korean friend Julie and her two children

And finally, in honor of my mother, who died over 10 years ago: Happy Mother’s Day!

My father and mother and their four children (one was still to come!)

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weekly photo challenge: surprise!

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postaweek2012, weekly photo challenge

Friday, December 21:  The world is full of surprises, and i have run across many of them in my travels.  The WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge for this week is surprise: There was talk of some sort of apocalypse today, but so far, so good. Big surprise! In honor of the world continuing, show me some surprises! If you’re at a loss what to share, I bet many of you have surprises hidden under a tree or in a closet somewhere.

I was surprised to come upon this strange-looking prehistoric-like creature strutting his stuff along the shores of Lake Langano in Ethiopia.

the surprising Abyssinian Ground Hornbill

It was quite a surprise to find I could stick to a wall like a piece of Velcro in the Trick Art Museum in Daegu, South Korea.

surprise, surprise! I can stick to the wall like Velcro!

And yummy!  Isn’t it a wonderful surprise when someone serves up a head on a platter?

looks like quite a surprising meal served up on this platter

Finally, it was a fun surprise to come upon this Omani vegetable vendor taking a snooze in the middle of his vegetables at Nizwa souq.

what a surprise to find this Omani man sleeping in the middle of his vegetables

Expect nothing.  Live frugally on surprise. ~ Alice Walker

travel theme: circles

Friday, December 7:  Our new travel theme challenge for this week from Ailsa of Where’s my backpack? is Circles.  She writes: Circles have a similar effect to leading lines in photos – the eye can’t help but follow the line of the circle, usually tracing around it several times, which draws attention to both the circle and whatever it encloses.

Here are some circles from my travels:

a dinner of circles in Siem Reap, Cambodia

circular little thingies in a Japanese shop

a date palm, ubiquitous in Oman

wallpapers full of crazy circles in a Korean “Love Motel”

circular lanterns at a temple near Daegu, South Korea

miniature little flower balls

circular art from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Before I went to Korea, I ate my meals on one plate.  Maybe two.  But in Korea, they serve their meals on multiple plates and everyone eats off of them communally.  Every one of their meals is like this.  They do a LOT of dish washing in that country!

circles & circles (& ovals) of Korean food

I’ve posted pictures of my favorite place in Korea, Suncheon Bay before, but the ones I’ve posted were taken in December, when all the grasses were brown.  On this trip, taken October 2, the circles of grasses were green.

Suncheon Bay in South Korea in early October.

weekly photo challenge: geometry

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postaweek2012, weekly photo challenge

Friday, November 2: Today’s WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge is Geometry. This challenge is about the shapes and rhythms that make up the geometry of our world. Many photographs of any genre have an underlying sense of geometry, but it can be fascinating to make this the main subject of our work. It can be the most important aspect of a photograph’s success. This could be the patterns of the natural world up close and personal, or the rhythm of your local buildings.

Share a photo that means GEOMETRY to you!

a falaj at Birkat al Mouz in Oman

the Corinth Canal running between the mainland of Greece and the Peloponnese

a temple near Daegu, South Korea

the masterpiece rock-hewn church of Bet Giyorgis in Lalibela, Ethiopia

sunday post: city

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Sunday Post

Sunday, October 21: Jakesprinter’s Sunday Post challenge for this week is City.  He writes: A city is a large center of population organized as a community. The word city is derived from the Latin word civitas, which denotes a community that administers its own affairs. In ancient Greece such an independent community was called a city-state; it consisted of a chief town and its immediate neighborhood.

Here are some cities from different parts of the world.

Kalambaka, at the foot of the Meteora monasteries in Thessaly, Greece

Daegu, South Korea, near Keimyung University

modern Beijing, China

Hanoi, Vietnam

Varanasi, India

7 super shots

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7 Super Shots

Wednesday, July 25:  FrizzText (FrizzText: 7 Super Shots) nominated me to take part in HostelBookers 7 Super Shots.  It’s been 10 days since he nominated me, and I’m just now getting around to taking part in the challenge, 8 days before I leave Oman to return to the USA for one month! (But who’s counting?)

The challenge is to choose 7 of your own photos, one for each of the following categories:

• A photo that…takes my breath away
• A photo that…makes me laugh or smile
• A photo that…makes me dream
• A photo that…makes me think
• A photo that…makes my mouth water
• A photo that…tells a story
• A photo that…I am most proud of (aka my worthy of National Geographic shot)

Here is a photo that takes my breath away.  In Cappadocia, Turkey, we wake up at dawn for an hour-long hot air balloon ride.  As 40 balloons lift off simultaneously, everyone is silent.  The experience of rising, feeling the land pull away, seeing the multitudes of other balloons in the sky, all at different heights, of different colors – it takes my breath away.  It takes everyone’s breath away.  We are awed into silence.  The only sound is the blast of the fire overhead, the rustle of people moving around in the basket to search out the best view.

hot air balloons in Cappadocia, Turkey

As we relax into the ride, we make noises, exclamations of wonder.  We love the other balloons floating in the sky with us; they’re our companions.  Seeing them is the only way we can see ourselves.   Below are the white pinnacles of Cappadocia, the fairy chimneys, the pointed volcanic rocks, tufts of greenery.

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Here is a photo that makes me laugh or smile.  This is a picture of one of my closest friends while I lived in Korea, Anna S.  We all went to the Trick Art Exhibit in Daegu, South Korea.   Here is Anna, hanging on for dear life.

this photo really makes me smile! 🙂

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Here is a photo that makes me dream. This is a photo of Houhai Lake in Beijing, China.  This was such a peaceful and beautiful place; it made me feel all dreamy when I was there.  After a rickshaw tour, our guide Grace walks us over to the lovely Houhai Lake.  This is my favorite place in Beijing…the Summer Palace being a close second.  Houhai isn’t necessarily a tourist place, although it draws plenty of tourists.  It’s a thriving commercial area with funky and cool shops, restaurants with outdoor cafes and live music, weeping willow trees, paddle boats, bicycles galore, and a cool breeze blowing off the small finger-shaped lake.

Houhai Lake in Beijing: the stuff of dreams

My friend Suzanne and I wander around the lake.  It is so lovely, with a cool breeze sweeping the weeping willows on the lake’s edge, like soft woolen fringe on a Nordic sweater.  The lake is filled with dancing points of light, effervescent.

———————–

Here is a photo that makes me think.  Before I went to Cambodia, I read a number of gruesome books about the Khmer Rouge.  It really made me think about how, during the time millions of people were suffering under a cruel and murderous regime in Cambodia, I was living a carefree life as a teenager in America.  Visiting Tuol Sleng Prison in Phnom Penh, as well as the Killing Fields, really made me think about how oblivious we can be sometimes to other people’s sufferings.

At the Killing Fields, I face the entrance gate and a giant commemorative stupa.  I discover later that the stupa is filled with the skulls of 8,000 victims who were murdered here.  I go directly to the tiny museum where a film is in progress about the history of Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge regime and of this place.  The film is brutally honest and doesn’t try to gloss over the barbarity of this horrible regime.  I find often in my travels that museums try to downplay the despicable actions of their country or to gloss over history.  For example, in Musée de l’Armée in Paris, there is hardly any mention made of the Americans liberating Paris after WWII.  You would think when visiting there that the French single-handedly defeated the Germans.  Revisionist history.

the Killing Fields of Cambodia

The film here at Choeung Ek  is truly sickening and brings me, and many other tourists, to tears.  After the film, I collect myself, and walk around the grounds where I see some of the mass graves that were unearthed.  There’s a grave where only naked women and children were found.  Another grave contained headless corpses. Yet another only miscellaneous bone fragments. There is a tree where the regime would hold babies by the feet and bash their heads against the trunk.   Their rationale for killing babies was so that the children of victims wouldn’t seek revenge on the regime when they grew up.  One sign says that this particular tree held a loudspeaker to drown out the screams of those being bludgeoned, so as not to disturb the neighbors.

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Here is a photo that makes my mouth water.  This is warm goat cheese wrapped in pastry and smothered in cranberries at the Left Bank in Muscat, Oman.

cheese always makes my mouth water

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Here is a photo that tells a story. Here is a picture of the view out of the auto-rickshaw that pulled our broken-down car nearly 10km somewhere between Chandigarh and Rishikesh, India.   India was such an incredible hardship, especially on this day, which took the cake.  I love this picture because it tells the story of a grueling 14-hour day on what should have been a 3 hour drive from Chandigarh to Rishikesh, India.  To read more about this crazy day, check out: chandigarh >> to delhi (???) >> to rishikesh….14 grueling hours.

pulled by an autorickshaw about 10 km somewhere between Chandigarh and Rishikesh

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Honestly, I have a hard time coming up with a photo I am most proud of (aka my worthy of National Geographic shot).  I love many of my photos because they bring happy memories to me, but as far as being National Geographic-worthy, well, I’m just not that great a photographer!  I really can’t say I have a favorite, but I have some that I really like, similar to ones I’ve seen in National Geographic.  This one was taken when my son Alex came to visit me in South Korea and we went to Suncheon Bay.  This was one of my favorite places in Korea and when we went together, it was my second time there.  There are so many beautiful shots, but I think this one is interesting.

three boats in the Suncheon Bay EcoReserve in South Korea

Suncheon Bay is a coastal wetland with a large tidal flat, reed beds and salt marshes nestled between mountains and ribboned with rivers.  Further inland are glowing chartreuse rice fields.  I walk through the grasses along the wooden walkway and see fiddler crabs in the mud and some beautiful cranes.  It’s warm but a breeze is whipping the sea grasses around.  I love these grasses against the backdrop of the mountains and the rivers.

Here’s my post about my trip to Suncheon Bay: digging deep: edgy korean bus culture, tea bushes & wetlands, & the surrendered.

Now, I’m supposed to nominate 5 other bloggers to come up with their 7 Super Shots.  Here’s who I nominate:

Where’s my backpack?

the unbearable lightness of being me.

On the Go with Lynne

travelola

East of Málaga

a-z archive: q! challenge (quintessential [q]orea!!)

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a-z photo challenge

Tuesday, April 24:  I have to admit I’ve been a little stymied trying to find an interesting Q picture for this week’s a-z photo challenge.  If I had time, I would go down the east coast of Oman to photograph a town called Quriyat or to Muscat, where I could photograph the Qurum beach area.  The problem is, I don’t have time to do that in the next week.  I have other plans and they don’t involve anything with a Q… 🙂

This is my neighborhood in Daegu; it's the QUINTESSENTIAL Korean city block....

Besides, I started looking over my catbird in korea blog this week because that blog got nominated for the Versatile Blogger Award.  I have to admit, after looking through many of my pictures, a wave of nostalgia swept over me.  I discovered I miss Korea a bit, although everyone who knows me knows I didn’t care for it at all while I was there.  There was a lot of good about Korea though.  At least two weekends out of every month, just as I do in Oman, I went on adventures exploring all that Korea had to offer.  And looking back, it actually was quite a lot.  So, for this challenge, I’m posting a few pictures that capture Quintessential [Q]orea…. Don’t worry, I do know it’s really spelled with a “K.”  But hey, it’s the same sound, right?  Quintessential means: most typically representative of a quality, state, etc.; perfect; most typical…..

There’s no way I can really capture Korea in four photos, but that’s my goal and I’m stickin’ to it!

Donghae Yonggung-Sa Temple in Busan, South Korea ~ the quintessential temple in Korea

The thing I loved the most in Busan was Donghae Yonggung-Sa, a temple set on the rocky coast.  For some reason it was totally packed, possibly some Buddhist holiday we didn’t know about.  Though usually crowds like that would detract from a place’s appeal, I didn’t find it offensive.  I actually thought the crowd gave the spot a  “pilgrimage” ambiance.  The entrance is lined with large carved stone zodiac figures and stone lanterns punctuate the steps leading to the temple.  It’s such a pleasant setting all around, set on a rocky coast overlooking the East Sea with a pine-covered hillside behind it.  Buddha and bodhisattva statues abound and a huge pot-bellied smiling Buddha sits near the top.  Korea has hundreds of temples, but I see this one as the quintessential one!

Korea is known for its bright colors verging sometimes on the point of garishness. However, I loved the colorful lanterns at a lantern festival in Seoul.

one of many colorful lanterns at the Lantern Festival in Seoul, Korea

Finally, I can’t ignore the food.  I have to admit I didn’t care much for Korean food.  It seems among expats that we either love it or hate it.  There were some things I enjoyed, like bibimbap, and a few other dishes, but generally speaking, I dreaded any meal where I was forced to sit at a table with other Koreans who spooned huge helpings of bizarre chewy meats and seafood or heaps of kimchi onto my plate. Every time they loaded up my plate with food I didn’t like, they told me one health benefit or another.  According to Koreans, every single food in Korea has a health benefit.

One thing I generally did enjoy, however, was street food.  These are steamy hot accordion-shaped dumplings on a stick, made of some fish product (I think!).  It actually is quite tasty on one of Korea’s icy cold winter days.

Korean street food

Quintessential Qorea… in 4 little pictures…. 🙂

al alam palace in muscat

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Muscat, Oman, Travel

Thursday, April 12: This evening I visited Al Alam Palace, the most important of the six royal residences of His Majesty Sultan Qaboos which are spread around Muscat, Salalah and Sohar. I was really happy that I visited as the sun was setting; the colors were beautiful.

the pedestrian boulevard leading to Al Alam Palace

The palace, which has a contemporary Islamic facade of gold and blue, was built as a royal residence in 1972. It has two long wings centered on a colorful box-like central building.  Flared extravagant blue and gold columns support its overhanging roof. In front are ornate wrought iron gates and multicolored gardens.

the Sultan’s palace through the wrought-iron gates

the blue and gold Al Alam Palace, through the gates

a rainbow of flowers and the Sultan’s palace

the three watchtowers of Jalali Fort with a football game going on in the forefront

rainbows of flowers at the palace

Visitors are not allowed inside the palace, despite the fact that His Majesty normally lives elsewhere in Oman.  Nonetheless, it is an inviting area to walk and take photos. It has an impressive pedestrian boulevard framed by two arcaded colonnades.  Highly polished marble stretches as far as the eye can see.  Al Alam Palace is surrounded by the Mirani and Jalali Forts, built in the 16th century by the Portuguese, as well as the original city walls and three watchtowers up on a rocky hillside.

the palace as night falls

One of the colonnaded arcades leading to the palace, looking away from the palace

I love these cool bushes lining the pedestrian walkway

The Palace is used for official functions and receiving distinguished visitors.  In January 2012, the Sultan received Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands at Al Alam Palace during her state visit to Oman.  According to the Dutch Daily News: The visit “comes within the context of the advanced bilateral relations and reflects the keenness of the leaders of Oman and The Netherlands to foster the interests of their peoples”, a Diwan of Royal Court statement said. The Dutch Daily News: Queen Beatrix Visits Oman.

one of the flower gardens around the Sultan’s palace

I was happy to visit the Sultan’s palace.  I honestly didn’t even know there was one until some colleagues at work told me about it on Wednesday… 🙂

karma’s february photo hunt

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karma's photography scavenger hunt

Thursday, February 23:  I am now officially hooked on the WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge.  After looking through lots of entries in this ongoing challenge, I’ve happened upon some amazing blogs.  One of my favorites is called Life in the Bogs by a talented photographer in Ohio named Robin.  I am so mesmerized that now I read her blog every morning along with my coffee!  Today, I found through her blog a photo challenge by someone named Karma: Karma’s When I Feel Like it Blog: February Photo Hunt.  Since I have hundreds of photos from my travels, and I also went on a hike Thursday on Jebel Akhdar (Green Mountain) in Oman, I decided to try to find, or take, some pictures that match her prompts.  Karma’s challenge words and my photos follow.

1) flake(s)

a tree on jebel akhdar with its bark flaking off

Because Oman is a desert country, with little water, the few trees you see often look like they’re dying, or struggling to keep themselves together. I found this one Thursday on Jebel Akdar (Green Mountain), with its bark flaking off.

2) bow

at the Ho Chi Minh complex in Hanoi, Vietnam

For bow, I’m going with the definition of “a bend or curve.”  This is a pond at the Ho Chi Minh complex in Hanoi.  I love the bow of this large balcony over the pond.

3) mug

two crazy folks mugging it up in Busan, South Korea

For this one, I looked for the closest thing I could find to a mug shot, and this is the best I could do!

4) row

rows of fortunes (??) at a temple in Kyoto, Japan

I love how everything in Japan is so neat and orderly. I could have chosen so many pictures for row from Japan, I had a hard time deciding which one to use.  I love the colors and the Japanese characters on these wooden fortunes.  These are all over temples in Japan, but since I don’t read Japanese, I’m only assuming they’re either fortunes or wishes.  I really would love to know what they actually are!

5) bun

chicken & dumplings at a restaurant in richmond, virginia

Here’s the definition of bun I found: any of a wide variety of variously shaped bread rolls, usually leavened and slightly sweetened or plain, sometimes containing spices, dried currants, etc.  Ok, admittedly, dumplings are not exactly buns, but this is the closest thing I could find. They are a type of bread, right?  Anyway, I make mine with Bisquick, which one also uses to make buns.  A close cousin?

6) heart shapes (for the month of valentines)

a heart-shaped leaf at Daegu Confucian Academy in Daegu, South Korea

Beautiful heart-shaped leaves in Daegu, South Korea.  I love the color and texture of these.  I feel like they can’t decide whether they’re dead or alive, or whether it’s spring or fall.

Bonus word: leap (to celebrate leap year)

an Omani boy leaps into one of the many pools at Wadi Bani Khalid in Oman

This is at one of the many wadis in Oman, specifically Wadi Bani Khalid.  It’s always hot in Oman, so these pools are really refreshing.  This Omani boy leaps in for a swim at one of the many pools.  Ahhh, sweet relief.

Happy LEAP YEAR!!