Sterling’s Blog

Cast

Elephant Head (Elly)

Horse (Thunder)

Demon

Elephant with Rider (Titto)

Prince (Hindu)

A group of friends are having a party. Thunder gives Titto a flower and Titto gives Thunder a lotus blossom. Hindu and Elly also dance at the party. Then Thunder and Titto got into a fight over whose flower was prettier. Soon, the other animals joined sides. They were Titto and Hindu versus Elly and Thunder. They fought all day. While they were fighting, a demon attacked. They forgot all about the war and helped each other fight the demon. After that they were good friends and continued to have parties and exchange gifts but this time no fighting.

Check out the video of this excellent shadow play!

The Oriental Express goes from Singapore to Bangkok.  In 1869 Malaysia’s first railroad station was built.   Before 1918 you had to switch trains and tracks halfway through.  Now you can go without stopping.

Many parts of Malaysia were hard to get to but trains made it much easier.  Many important people, like the king, used to own their own train car.  In 1923 a bridge was made from Singapore to Malaysia.  The Oriental Express goes 1,262 miles from Singapore to Bangkok.  It takes about 60 hours.  Even though the starting station is in Singapore, Malaysia owns all the tracks.  Singapore wants to buy the land to build a new station but Malaysia wants to preserve it.

Lots of people in Vietnam are farmers, 70%!!!!!!!!!!  That is why farming is so important in Vietnam.

One of the major crops grown in Vietnam is rice. This is how it grows . . . It takes about one month after planting for the rice to grow. While it grows the farmer prepares fields and builds low dikes around the fields. All day, the family hauls water to flood the field without rice. When the plants are big enough they are moved from the dry field into the wet, flooded field. While it grows the farmers weed and flood the fields. Soon the rice will become tall and green.

When the rice is golden it is time to harvest it. They drain the dikes. Then they cut with a carved knife. They bundle the stalks and let them dry. Farmers then beat out the rice from the plant on a bamboo pole. This is called threshing. If they live near a highway they will take the rice and spread it on the road to dry instead of in a bundle. This way it dries faster. When cars run over the rice it helps with the threshing.

After it dries farmers will collect the rice, put it in baskets and pound it. This is called milling. This separates the grain from its shell cover. Finally they throw the rice into the air so the wind takes the light shells of grain. After, the shells are fed to the farm animals and the stalks are woven into mats. Last they ship the rice to other countries.

Next time you eat rice think about how hard the farmers had to work to get that rice.

We went to a blind school for children in Tibet.  This is what it was like . . .

The children were blind. Some looked normal and some were staring into space or had white eyes. There were 40 boys and girls. They are from age 4 to 21. Actually, they are supposed to be from age 8 to 14 but their parents lied about some of their ages.

There are a lot of blind Tibetan people because of sand storms, little vitamin D, the altitude, ashes from fires, and poor healthcare. People thought they had done something wrong because they had a blind child.

The school has a really bad playground with lots of junk and trash in it including old bicycles, wheels, beds, a heap of metal, and broken cinder blocks. It was really dangerous, especially for blind people.  The school had two classrooms for 20 people each. There was also a kitchen, dining room, computer room, and two dorm rooms.  One dorm was for girls and one was for boys. They had three-story bunk beds and lockers.

They used a braille typewriter, a braille tracer, and a braille computer. The kids learned lots of subjects, including math, English, computer braille and life skills.  After they graduate they get to choose what they want to do.  Some of them learned to be farmers and some work at the Braille School.  A group of them decided to start a massage business.

Blind people can do almost everything that we can do. You should go to a blind school to visit. They do a really good job of teaching blind kids in Tibet at the Blind School.

By Sterling

Once upon a time there were two pandas named Cloudy and Coco.  They lived at the Park Hyatt Hotel in Beijing.  They were best friends, and played all day and all night.  The pandas were among many other pandas so that they could be given to children that stayed at the hotel.  The thing they feared most was being given to children and leaving the others.

One day it was Cloudy’s turn, but much to her surprise (the China one child rule) her best friend Coco was picked up too.  So they got put upon the bed for hours and hours.  Finally, two kids came running in and hugged the two pandas.  Cloudy and Coco went everywhere with the children and had a great time.  A few day later they flew to Tibet.  While they were there, Cloudy and Coco decided to adopt a Mountain Goat — Everest — and a yak — Tibety Confety (TC).  They had a good time in Tibet and then it was onto the cruise — two pandas, two kids, a yak, and a mountain goat. 

On the cruise, Cloudy had babies!!!  Twins!!!!!!!!!!!  Because she knew they would not like being in the suitcase when they were newborn and might get squished, she sent them to the next hotel, the Four Seasons.  When they reached the Four Seasons, a terrible thing happened.  Bamboo (Boo) was there but Jacoby got lost!!!  Cloudy was soooo worried!!  The kids’ Mom had to ask the hotel manager to go look for Jacoby.  Finally, they found him.  “Hooray!!!,”  Cloudy shouted.  There were four pandas and a yak and a mountain goat.  There was a family. 

Everest’s Story

Once upon a time there was a mother and father mountain goat.  The mother was named Lily and the father was James.  They lived in Tibet.  One day, they were climbing around the base of Mount Everest.  Lily was saying, “What should I name my baby?  Is it a boy?  Is it a girl?   Yak yak yak yak yak.”  Suddenly they saw some climbers having trouble climbing, so they ran over and helped them.  After a week of climbing and helping, they reached the summit.  At the summit Lilly realized that she forgot she was going to have a baby so she had a baby at the top of mount Everest.  She named him Everest.  When the climbers saw how cute he was they snatched him up and took him away.  Lily and James were to slow.  They brought him to the store and sold him to a lady who gave him to the same child that had gotten the pandas.  Everest became their stepbrother.

Tibety Confety’s (TC’s) Story

Once upon a time there were two parents and a baby yak.  The parents names were Yak Jr. an Yacker.  Their baby was Tibety Confety.  They lived in Tibet.  One day when they were drinking water from a pond TC got stuck in a baby tiger trap to get pet baby tigers as stuffed animals.  He pulled and pulled and pulled all day and night but it just got tighter.  While he was pulling, two mountain goats  and some climbers walked by on their way to Mt. Everest.  Finally the farmer came and brought him home.  His parents had walked away as usual expecting me like always to run after them.  TC was very lonely.  Then, what seemed like years after, a lady came and bought him and popped him in the same bag as Everest.  He and Everest got given to the same kid that owned the pandas.  TC and Everest soon became the panda family’s step brother.

Ending

At first, Boo and Jacoby were scared of Everest and TC because of their horns but after that they lived happily ever after as a family.

The family.  From left to right, Coco, Jacoby, TC, Everest, Boo (little panda), and Cloudy.

You might not know elephants live in China but they do. The Chinese did not know they lived there in the wild until 1949 because the elephants were so rare!!!

The Asiatic Elephant and the Gaur are two of China’s largest land animals. The Asiatic elephants have lived in China for hundreds and thousands of years.

Since they had no text book or information, they thought the elephants had become extinct long long ago. Another reason that the elephants were not seen is because they moved away from the big cities to southwest Yunnan where there were lots of plants but not a lot of people. In 1986 over 230 wild elephants were found in southwest Yunnan!!!!

Elephants eat bamboo leaves, wisteria leaves, twigs, wild fruit, and other greens. Their food has to be easy to get because they eat 450-650 pounds of fresh food in just one day!!! Their gray color and ability to walk silently makes them very unnoticeable. The gray blends in very well with shadows deep in the forest.

We did not see a wild elephant in China, but I hope we will encounter one later in our trip, because they are such amazing, interesting animals.

Click on the drawing below to learn more Elephant Fun Facts:

One of the projects I did in Australia was to make brochures for the Great Barrier Reef and Bullo River.  I got brochures and cut pictures out of them, and then I taped them onto my brochures.  I also cut out pictures from magazines.  Then I wrote stuff onto the paper.  It was really fun to do.

These are the covers of my two brochures.  Click to get a bigger view.

If you went to a cattle station in Australia, this it what it would be like . . .

They have to herd cows off the airstrip when an airplane comes in.  You get to herd cows with a four wheeler.  When it is time to sell the cows, you herd them in a truck.  Sometimes the cows push and shove and to the wrong way because they don’t want to go.

Some things  to do during your free time are  hunt for snakes and lizards, go horseback riding or climb trees.     there are lots of good climbing trees in Australia.  It is  fun to go horseback riding near the river because you can see crocodiles.

On a cattle station, you home school.  Sometimes there is a teacher that lives with you.  You also have classes with another teacher on the internet.    

That is what it is like to live on a cattle station.

Dolphins are really interesting animals.  They are mammals and live in the water, which I find very amazing.  Dolphins are smart and they enjoy the company of humans.  One of the most exciting things I’ve done is come within five feet of a dolphin at Little Saint Simons Island.

Dolphins, porpoises, and whales are all cetaceans (whale-like animals).   Dolphins, porpoises and whales all have a blow hole at the top.  When they go up to the surface, only air spouts out of their blow hole.  Most people think water spouts out of a blow hole, but really condensation and water on the body of the whale are shooting up. 

Dolphins spend all their time in the water.  That is why their body is shaped like a torpedo so they can go fast.  They swim above a school of fish, and then they dive down and eat a fish.  They have sensors that sense the fish and they can locate a tennis-ball size object from over 100 meters.  They make clicking noises in the space below its blowhole and there may be up to 700 clicks per second.  To humans, it sounds like a creaky door.  The clicks come off the fish and come back to the dolphin, and tells it the location of the fish.

Male dolphins mate at 10-12 years old and females at 5-12 years old.  Females have one baby every two to three years.  They are pregnant for twelve months.  Halfway through the twelve months, the mother chooses another female as a midwife.  A baby dolphin is born tail first.  The midwife helps the mother have the baby.  The new baby weighs 25 kilograms (or 55 lbs.).  It is 1/6th of the size of its mother.  The mother has to lift it up and support it so it can have its first breath of air. 

Dolphins are very cool and I want to see some on our trip.  So far, we have been to two places with dolphins — China and Australia — but we haven’t seen any.  But we are going to some other countries that will have them and I hope to see them.

Fun facts about dolphins:

*  Dolphins have 100-200 teeth

*  Five types of dolphins live in fresh water and 26 live in salt water

*  All the species of river dolphins (or fresh water dolphins) are almost extinct

*  Dolphins are dying out because pollution, fishing nets, and trash being dumped in the ocean

*  Every year in Eastern Tropic Pacific, at least 100,000 dolphins die in nets used to catch yellowfin tuna