How I spent my summer vacation ...

The Three have been back in school for two full weeks. Even though it feels as though summer is still very much with us (a heat index today of 100 F will bring the girlies home at noon), summer really is drawing to a close.



This weekend will mark the end.



And so, with so many pictures yet to post of our summer holidays yet to post, I thought I'd make a mad dash and effort in these fleeting (and hot) moments before Labor Day.

Iowa Roadtrip :: Old Capital Building in Iowa City

We're Going on a Bear Hunt ....

We really hoped to spot a bear or two while in Jasper.

{From the safe confines of our vehicle, of course.}

There was even rhythmic chanting from the back seat!

"We're going on a bear hunt,

We're going on a bear hunt,

We're not scared ....

The park service has warnings and notices of bears everywhere.

The trash cans are bear proof.

But despite going to all the known bear 'hot spots' ...

{The Miete Hotsprings, Maligne Canyon, and the Road to the Columbia Ice fields}

Despite my auntie having seen seven {seven!} at the National Park the week before ...

We didn't see any.

But that certainly doesn't mean the bears aren't there.

.... Check out this evidence!

Wildlife :: Jasper National Park

Just another day in Jasper ....

Going eye to eye with an elk.

Waiting for big horn sheep to meander across the TransCanada highway

{to the consternation of truckers and the awe of tourists,
including the three blond Americans
buckled into the backseat of our rental car.}

Watching caribou casually munch on grass and wild flowers.

It wasn't long after entering the park gate ...
watching the glacier water race by in road side streams
and the wild life creep out from craggy cliffs
that the girls fell in love.
They loved our mini vacay inside our vacay
{We took three days and headed West to the Rockies
during our visit with my parents and Canadian fam}

The Three are already talking about what they want to see "next year"!

Photo Credits :: Mr Johnson

{I was navigating around the wildlife behind the wheel!!}

Jasper National Park :: Jasper, Alberta Canada

Photo Credits :: by EHJ age 9.5

{Yellow Wild Flower and Blue Wild Flowers}

Summer Visitors ...

Last month,
we had the friends from Bean Town

This month, we had my sister from Canada

Love that these both of these guys

{Bean Town Pengyous and the Canadian Mei Mei}

are now just three hours away by plane, instead of 12 or 15.

{Three hours if United Airlines cooperates.}

{{United Airlines NEVER cooperates.}}

The Promised Book Reports

It's been a summer of memoirs for the Tai Tai ...
with tales set on three different continents ...

My Korean Deli was a book I previewed first on Kindle. This spring I read the first chapter for free (a nice feature Kindle allows), and then I sourced it from our local library's inter-library loan program. (It didn't come as a big surprise to me that our Midwestern town wouldn't have a copy of this niche memoir. This is however the same, Midwestern town where our dry-cleaners is run by an enterprising Korean American couple who have confided that while they think public education in the US is close to abysmal, they think American universities are second to none. They also have been helpful in helping us track town Asian groceries, a Korean-style spa, and Japanese restaurant run by Koreans, that will make Korean food to order if you know to say, "Cindy from your church sent me." They've also invited us to their Sunday church service, but warned it would be in Korean, but that kids Sunday School is conducted Enlgish!)

This book wouldn't be for everyone, but the author does a great job of describing the ins and outs of running a bodega in New York City. I loved the cultural angle of the WASP son-in-law's perception of a Korean American family. It wasn't a riveting read, it took me my full two weeks to read it, and I read other stuff in between, but solid writing and an honest telling of the challenges of their 'experiment in risking it all' made me glad I read it. (I'll have to see if Cindy has read it too.)

The Saturday Big Tent ....

Okay, so maybe I didn't only read memoirs. This slim novel is the most recent in a series of endearing books that have been long-time favorites. This it the 12th book in Alexander McCall Smith's No. 1 Ladies Decective Agency books, which are set in present-day Botswana. The stories are simple, the sentiments endearing. If you are looking for good, light reading that will leave you with a feeling of good will toward humanity and with knowledge of another culture, consider picking up any of the books in this series.

I love how McCall Smith closes each of his books in this series. With a simple repeated phrase.

Africa

Africa Africa

Africa Africa Africa

Africa Africa

Africa

Twenty Chickens for a Saddle kept me in Africa. Kept me even in Botswana in fact! This is an absolutely remarkable memoir of Robyn Smith growing up in Botswana in the 1980s and 90s. Parented by a couple who lived off the grid and on the fringe, her childhood memories provide a remarkable account of homeschooling (bordering nearly on un-schooling), homeopathic medicine, bush planes and lots of encounters with wild animals (snakes, hippos, unruly ponies). I really can't say enough about this book. It offers a sad portrayal of AIDS slowly and quietly ravaging another African nation. It tells the story of unity and strength of a nation that was largely unaffected by the racism and racial divides that so plagued it's neighbor South Africa ... It describes a landscape that varies greatly in different parts of the country ... I'm passing it on to MGJ to read next.

My Foremost Good Fortune will now gain a worthy place in our China bookshelf along side the likes of Peter Hessler and Pearl S Buck. Conley tells the story of her moving to Beijing with her husband and sons, and later discovering she has breast cancer. I can so relate to her Beijing experiences. She does a great job describing life as an expat, the challenges and privileges and the chaos of living in a thriving city during the ramp up to the Olympics. I will probably refer more to this book later, but would recommend it to anyone who has ever lived abroad or is planning to.

Animal Vegetable Miracle: A Year of Food Life is not a new book. Kingsolver (yes the same Kingsolver who wrote The Poisinwood Bible) tells of the adventures of her family's one year experiment as locavores. The book is a group effort, with her daughter constructing menus and recipes based on what is available at different times of the year, and her husband writing companion pieces on the state of various industries, practices and codes in the Untied States.

The Kingsolver-Hopps moved back to their family property in Virginia, from Arizona, raised livestock and vegetables, harvested fruit and bought only locally produced goods for a full calendar year. Their book helps challenge thinking about food. (And when you consider both the volume of food consumed and the intense processing it undergoes in this country, it seems Americans aren't really doing enough thinking about their food.) We have so distorted our view of food and eating in the United States that doing what Kingsolvers did (which was ultimately done for the purpose of creating a book on the topic) seems as strange as packing up and moving to the other side of the globe. (Maybe that's why I loved it!)

Mr Johnson told me to stop fretting about what was in our freezer, as I read selections aloud, and contemplated twenty chickens of my own :-) If you read this book, you will never think of bananas or grocery-bought chicken in the same way. (Consider yourself warned)! You may reconsider buying strawberries in January, or may begin to consider the carbon footprint on a number of items in your deli.

But, to be fair, Kingsolver's book is not about being an alarmist. It's about thoughtfully considering the resources around you, the season for produce, and what fruits, and especially vegetables should really taste like. We have created food that is perfectly shaped, able to be shipped, and can last for weeks in your fridge. But we have given up taste, and the sweetness of limiting exposure to fruits and vegetables to their normal growing season. Nor, is her book about becoming elitist. To eat well, you don't have to pay alot. She drives this point home, many times throughout her treatise.

Now, go water your heirloom tomatoes!!

Summer Reading

One of the things we longed most for in non-English speaking Asia was English books.

Teachers and book lovers often encourage others to read by explaining that a book can take to you far away places. But, the reverse is also true. Sometimes, when you are in a far away place, all you really want is a good book to take you back home again. When I was living far away I read lots of novels with American settings.

I also read as much as I could on China. Delving into Peter Hessler's true accounts, Lisa See and Amy Tan's fictionalized ones, and any resource material I could find on living abroad. Expats loved to read titles banned in China, and tattered copies of Wild Swans floated around among playgroup mums and coffee klatches. (The Chinese government also curiously banned any book, however innocuous, that contained maps that indicated Taiwan as a separate country and/or government from the mainland.)

Each Home Leave we would load up a suitcase full ... fifty pounds of reading material in a roller case. Eventually, a small English language book store opened in QD, for which we were grateful, but the selection was somewhat limited. Mr Johnson and I would download books from Kindle onto our iPhone, risking carpel tunnel as we flicked each read paragraph from the minuscule screen. But at $10 a pop, it grew expensive.

What I longed most for was a library. And, when we landed last December, securing library cards was one of the first priorities on our list!

This summer we've all been enjoying our local library's summer reading program. MGJ, in the youth category, marks the books she has read on a slip to be added in with the slips of other readers her age. She won the first week's drawing for her age group. (She's now saving her slips for the final drawing where the grand prize is a Nook.) The younger girls are plugging away, earning a 'golden coin' to be used at the Medieval Faire at the culmination of the program. Earlier this week we learned that both EHJ and MGJ won the book mark design contest. Soon the library will generate copies of their designs for distribution to the community!

I've enjoyed reading too... picking up a number of books that were so good I thought they'd be worth mentioning here. Book report post coming soon!

The First of July ...

July. Really? It does seem a little hard to believe!

Our June proved full, and eventful, and satisfying... in a summer kind of way.

Nice weather. Day trips to the city. Yard projects. Playing in the yard.

In June we

wrapped up soccer

hung a bird feeder

caught lightening bugs

and roasted marshmallows

all joined the summer reading program at the library in an effort to way to remain literary during school holidays

had visitors!

{We loved the short weekend visit from the Canadian Grands and a long weekend visit with our Besties from Boston -the irony was not lost on us that we took our friends from 'Bean Town" to Chicago's famous 'bean' in Millennium Park.}

June also was

time with cousins

a shower for another cousin soon arriving

and camps

{Nature Quest for MGJ, "Bug Out" for EHJ and VBS for all three}

I was chatting with some teachers today. They said that July 4th is the beginning of the end. After the holiday the remaining parts of summer sail by. June is done. Only a wisp of summer left. While I understand and appreciate their perspective, with all due respect I would counter that we have quite a bit of summer left. For the Johnson's it will involve a long weekend jaunt to Michigan, a visit from a favorite Canadian auntie, and a trip later in the month to The Land of the Maple Leaf. (We'll be boarding a plane and using our passports ... after six months of car-only trips! We can hardly wait!!)

Happy July! Hope you're enjoying your summer so far!