The toilets in Japan have bum guns that you control buttons. The first two buttons are blue. The buttons show where it sprays. The third button is pink and sometimes it moves between your butt crack. Sometimes you have a button to dry your butt. And then, there are two buttons that control the water pressure and someother buttons that you shouldn’t touch. When we got off the plane we all needed to go to the bathroom. Mom showed me how to use the toilets. When I got out, Mom still wasn’t out so I washed my hands and went out and saw brother. He toldme the boys bathroom was full so we went into the handicaped bathroom and I showed him the buttons. Then mom came and we got a free ride to the passports control. Along the way we passed dad and then we went through passport control and then took a taxi to our new apartmen

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Little Boy is an atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima and many people died of leukemia. The United States dropped the bomb to show how strong they were. The Japanese were ready to surrender when the United States dropped the bombs. They actually dropped two bombs–the Little Boy and Fat Man–in two places. Fat Man was dropped in Nagasaki and Little Boy was dropped in Hiroshima, like I said. It dropped above a bridge and a building called the Prefectural Industrial Building in Hiroshima, and it exploded 600 meters above the ground. Nowadays, it’s part of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. When the bomb dropped, every wooden house within three kilometers would be blown over. 

People had many injurues. Their skin fell off and many children died, too. About 35% of the people in Hiroshima died that day. People did survive the bomb. Leukemia is an atomic bomb disease and it is cancer. People who were pregnant would sometimes give leukemia to their babies. Please read Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes by Eleanor Coerr. It’s about a girl who, 10 years after the bomb, gets leukemia. 
=I think the United States should have waited to see if they were going to surrender and I think they should have dropped the bomb on the Japanese army base and not on the public. 

When we were biking and kayaking in Cambodia, we saw stilt houses in the countryside by the side of the road, and I wondered, what are those for? 

Therefore, when there’s floods, the houses don’t get flooded because it floods a lot i mean a lot. Also they retreat under when it is hot because they produce a lot of shade. 

And when it rains really hard, they also retreat under these houses with their cows, tools, hammocks, rice bags, table and chairs and some other animals will be under it too like geckos and flies. And also if I ever lived in a stilt house it would be our house on stilts. I sort of like living in a stilt house because I’m sort of afraid of floods. And also if I ever put anything under my stilt house it would be like an art studio. But when it rains or floods I can just quickly pull up a rope and then all the art stuff comes up and they don’t get wet. 

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When we were in Phnom Penh we did not get bitten one bit because we had aerosol on. As mom mentioned in one of her blog posts but luckily we didn’t have to buy it because there is some in the flat where we are staying right now.

Here are some facts about mosquitoes. One, they make diseases like malaria, yellow fever and the Zika virus. And, they also transmit diseases. They have a virus in their blood and then they give it to people. They use saliva to numb your skin and then they bite you and when they are taking out your blood they infect you!

You can stop mosquitoes by using bug spray and having mosquito nets around your bed.

One more fact: only the females bit you. Not the males.

Me and my family got bitten in Bali and Australia. I’ve been bitten five or four times. Nobody got sick, too.

Also you are probably wondering: do Cambodians use bug spray? Well, no because when they are kids they catch the fever and then they build up an immunity when they are adults.

Here’s what a mosquito looks like:

 

 

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please read my moms post 🙂

thank you

We left Australia leaving on a midnight flight to Bali that dropped us into Denpasar around 1:30 am. We crawled into our beds and passed out, but not before I almost used the tap water to brush my teeth, only stopping when the girl yelled out upon hearing me turn on the tap! I wasn’t used to not just using the tap water, even though I was the one who gave multiple lectures to the kids about water rules in Bali! 
Bali is a popular tourist destination for much of Europe, Japan and Australia. Our first night we stayed in Kuta, conveniently near the airport, but is an area which is overrun with partying Australians. It’s crowded and assaulting – every two minutes someone is asking you if you want your hair braided, or to come in their shop, or to take a taxi, or something else. The boy found this to be very sad – he perceives it as people having to beg for their livelihood, which isn’t entirely inaccurate, and he found that degree of inequality unjust. We liked walking along the beach and the kids played and jumped in the unpredictable surf, sometimes getting unexpectedly drenched and having a great time. 

I had decided to stay in Ubud instead for a quieter and more relaxed experience and we took a car there in the afternoon. I  expected a small village with a few shops and quie

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streets, and I couldn’t have been more wrong. Ubud is smaller than Kuta but there are no fewer tourists millling about. Some of this is due to Ubud’s popularity after Elizabeth Gilbert found Love there after Eating and Praying her way through the world, but even without that there’s plenty of people here. Still, the overall feeling here is very different. While it’s a tourist center people here are genuinely very nice and the shops and restaurants are inviting, not overwhelming. I wish I’d gotten a good picture of the streetscene, but I was too focused on not getting run over by the hordes of motorbikes and cars on the narrow streets. Here’s one Eric took of us:



I booked a place a little ways out of city center in the village of Tengalagang, and we were all delighted. Inang Villa, where we stayed, was a tropical oasis nestled among rice paddies and was a fantastic place to retire to after hot sweaty days of walking. Given that its surrounded by farms there is the constant daytime music of roosters crowing, ducks quacking, and the loud hum of the cicadas. At night you hear the croaking of frogs and the gentle crickets. Add to this the sound of flowing water from the stone fountains which empty into the pool, and you feel like you’re in another world here. 

The following day we made a plan to start at the Ubud palace, walk down the aptly named Monkey Forest Road, check out the shops, visit the monkeys and then head to our spa treatments. Yes, that’s right. Here in Bali you can get nice treatments for next to nothing, so why not, especially after all our road time? On our way out, Kadek, our villa owner said that we should go check out the cremation that was happening. I asked if it would be okay to take pictures, and she said, “of course! That’s what most people are doing anyway!”Ah! Culture! I thought. We must go check this out. 
Now, while this may seem like an odd attraction, cremations in Bali are a big deal. I later learned that because cremations are very big and expensive ceremonies, communities save up money for years to afford them. The person, of course, has been dead this entire time. Upon their demise, they are wrapped in a sarong and buried in a sacred place to await exhumation for when they can be properly cremated. 
In our case, she marked the area of the cremation on a little map I had and told us it would start at 11:30. We didn’t get a sim card for Bali as we’re here such a short time and wifi is plentiful, but that did mean that for unguided excursions we had to just look at a map and couldn’t rely on our friend Google, and I hadn’t yet thought to take screenshots of the maps for future reference. Unfortunately, maps are not to scale here and we spent over an hour trying to find the cremation site and took what ended up being the longest route possible. Along the way we would ask people on the street “cremation?” and they would point us up the road, since everyone in the community clearly knew about the event. Theentire time the kids were googling at the roadside stores teeming with touristy souvenirs, and continually asking me if they could buy this or that. My vocal chords became worn out forming the word “No” over and over again. 
We arrived at the site tired and hungry and sweaty and only to find a confusing layout of large papier mache animals and nothing else really happening other than many dressed up Balinese taking selfies in front of them. The animals were really cool, and I suspect we would have appreciated them more had it not been for the aforementioned hungry state since I find myself struck by this picture now. 

The men were all dressed with a sarong on their bottom and varying shirts on top. Some were western tees with random sayings and some were natty collared shirts in a lightweight cotton. The women all had on a sarong, a tanktop, and over that a brightly colored lace top with long sleeves held shut with a long sash in a contrasting color. Given that I didn’t know what was happening and it was billed as a cremation, I did’t think it would be okay to take closeups of people in their clothes. Eric asked someone when the cremation was going to start, and they said maybe at 1pm! Thus sometimes does time run amok in nonwestern cultures!  We skipped going to the monkey forest to see the cremation, and I have to say this was flop. But, I told myself, we’ll surely have time for the Monkey Forest on another day. The upside was however that we had a good sense of orienting ourselves around the town of Ubud given that we walked nearly the entire way around the center. 
We made our way back to the main road for lunch, which was incredible. I had Nasi Champur, which is a cup of rice surrounded by veggies, tempeh, tofu, boiled curried egg and served with a cup of peanut sauce and crispy mung sprouts to mix it all together. Heaven. 
We made our way back to the villa for some chill time and booked a driver and tour for the next day, before going out to dinner at a small outdoor restaurant with more delicious indonesian food. This time: Mie Goreng, fried noodles with veggies and tempeh in a tasty sauce. Water and the plastic bottles it comes in are a real problem here. I do my part for the environment by just drinking recyclable glass bottles of Bintang beer whenever possible. We all have to make sacrifices where we must, no?

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In Bali I have notice cats walking around and catching mice and I call this Pest Patrol! They don’t kill the cats because they are sacred in Bali. 

So you are probably wondering what pest patrol is. Pest patrol is cats doing patrol to see if there are any pest around. Do you know what any of those pest are? The pests are mice! You are probably wondering why they need pest patrol. They need it because if too many mice come, they might make a problem. 😬 The problem they make is that, if it’s a restaurant, if the mice get in they could gobble up all the food. But if the cats get the mice, they are gone. Or, if mice go into clothes stores, they could nibble on the clothes or make holes or dents in the products they might sell. 
The cats are usuallly skinny with a long skinny tail that curves up a little. And they are mostly black and white. Unlike Bobby, who is my friend’s cat at home in Denver, these cats in Bali have long tails. Bobby was born without a tail. And Peeps, the other cat of my friends, is all black, but is chubby. No offense to Peeps. 

How do we control pests at home? We usually just set out mouse traps, but I don’t know about everybody else. And, we don’t get many mice either.

I feel like this is a good but also a bad idea. It’s good because it’s good for all the Bali people so that they can sell their stuff and not have to be poor. But it’s bad for all the people who are allergic to cats. 

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Croc tour
When we went on a croc tour we saw all these crocs jump.

So a croc tour is like when you on a little blue boat, there’s also a bigger one but we’re talking about the small one today and where the people guides feed the crocodiles and when they’re feeding them they make them jump and tempt them a few times and then finally let them eat it. And you’re probably wondering, what type of crocs live in the green algae water? There’s both types of crocs in the river: saltwater and freshwater crocs. The difference between saltwater and freshwater crocs is the freshwater will always run away from you and the saltwater will come and eat you. Well most of the time. But if you try to run off in a zig zag they will fall off balance and not chase you. You’re probably wondering about how I felt when I saw the crocodiles jump.

 There’s many reasons to be scared of crocodiles, but here’s my opinion. Well I was scared because there were tons of crocs and I know how dangerous they are. And they also fed buffalo meat to the crocodiles. I think it’s one of their main things to eat. Did you know that crocodiles were born in tall grasses? Male crocs grow slowly their whole entire life. 
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A swag is a tent but it’s actually just like a little bag that you sleep in and it’s really nice. You could sleep in it like a tent or sleep it out in the open and it’s much better in the winter since there’s no scorpions or snakes. When we slept in our swags I was up most of the night so I got to see the moon and the stars. I will tell you about them. Sometimes the moon was surrounded by clouds and sometimes I would pop out of my swag and look into the moon and see it surrounded by clouds and the clouds were moving so fast it looked like the moon was moving but it was staying in the same spot. And when I was up late I was up reading but sometimes I fell asleep like once or twice and that gave me enough sleep to get through the day. 

Here are three facts about the moon:

1. The moon is like this plain ball and it doesn’t light up one bit but the sun reflects off any position it is and that is how the moon shines

2. The moon is made made out of Quartz, aluminum oxide and lime and four other things I picked the top mass thing. It’s mostly made out of Quartz 45.5%. 

3. The second full moon of a month is called a blue moon.
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When we were at the rainforest, Mom spotted a cassowary! It was the coolest thing ever! We stayed our distance and some people were way too close. When I saw the cassowary I felt excited and glad. You probably want to know why I am glad because it is rare to see. And these are some facts about the cassowary. 1. They’re the most dangerous bird in Australia because it has an inner claw that is a foot long. 2. It’s food is berries and plants.  3. They are flightless.
And after that we went to get ice cream. My friends would like the vines in the rainforest because you could climb the vines and see the rainforest.

 

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