Paris is beautiful anytime of the year, but the fall colors make it extra special. I was only supposed to have a three-hour layover in Paris between planes. Instead, I decided to change my flight plans and stay for three days. How could I not visit Paris when I was right there? It sounded like a really good idea when I was in KL and made the changes. It was still a good idea when I actually got to Paris, but I must admit I was pretty tired by then.

Unfortunately, I was not prepared to be in a place where the weather was cooler. Every other city I visited had warm weather because they were all close to the equator. All of the clothes I brought from home were for warm weather. Winter was near when I arrived in Paris on November 1st and everyone else was wearing parkas and boots. I was wearing a thin sweater and sandals. That was a very bad idea!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the second day, my feet were warmer because I had traded my sandals for sneakers and socks. I thought I could be brave and just wear a light sweater on top of another sweater. However, I was riding on the top of the hop-on-hop-off bus. The wind was blowing hard and those layers did not do the trick. I was freezing! But then on one of my stops, I found a store where everything was a bargain. The first coat I tried on was warm and fit me just right. Best of all, it only cost $7.99 Euros which was US $8.61. I couldn’t believe my luck.

My luck continued when I found a coffee shop with hot miso soup, a cup of mocha and a flaky almond croissant. Everything was perfect. Then my luck changed.

My plan was to go to the highest hill in Paris, Montmartre, to take some videos. I decided to put my phone on the selfie stick while I was still in the coffee shop. I laid my purse down on a counter in the coffee shop for just a minute while I opened up my backpack to take out my selfie stick. As I hooked my phone onto the selfie stick, a young man came in and asked me if that was a coffee shop.I wondered why he was asking me such a silly question. He quickly left and I noticed he was talking on his phone. When I looked down, my purse was gone.

Then I realized that he asked the question to distract me while he took my purse. Many important papers and cards were in it, including my passport and my ATM card. I ran into the street and yelled. “I was just robbed. Someone stole my purse.” Of course, the young man was nowhere in sight.

The main language in Paris is French and I was speaking English. People just looked at me curiously. I went back into the coffee shop in a state of shock, trying to figure out how to get back to Minnesota without a passport and without my ATM card. A couple of people in the coffee shop were able to speak some English and tried to help me decide what to do next.

In about five minutes, another young man walked in and handed me my purse. He said (in French) that he had seen the thief throw my purse into a trash can and decided to return it. I don’t believe that though. How could another stranger find me in the coffee shop? The area was really crowded and there were lots of other shops and restaurants. I think he was a partner to the robber. They really only wanted the Euros and even though they took my money, at least they were nice enough to return my purse. I was so relieved that I started to cry, but I couldn’t cry for long. I had to go to Sacré-Cœur to take my video. (Do you notice that French accent mark above the e in Sacré?)

After all the excitement, I got back on the hop-on-hop-off bus. The bus driver told me where to wait to catch the correct bus to get me back to my hotel. Next came more bad luck. The driver on the bus I needed gave me a mean look and wouldn’t stop to pick me up, even though it was before the end of the day for him. It was too far to walk back to my hotel. I had to find a cash machine since my money had been stolen. When I got more Euros from the ATM, I went into a nearby candy store and asked the lady working there for directions to the train station. She was very helpful.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I had to walk to some stairs near this building below. The stairs took me down to the subway and I had to walk down more stairs to find my train. I was so glad that the candy-store lady had written down the numbers of the trains I would need to take. Otherwise, it would have been really tricky!

After I got off the train, I stopped for dinner. At the restaurant, I met some friendly people who were visiting from California. I told them the story of my day. Talking about it made me feel better.

I was really glad to find my way back to my hotel.

The next day was my final full day in Paris and it was sunny but cool. That is when I visited Luxembourg Gardens and the Louvre.

The whole time I was in Paris, I saw many families living on the streets like in the photo below. That is  because they had no other place to live. The things they owned were in plastic bags and they asked strangers for money and food. I wondered how they ended up in this situation. Did they come from another country where there was war or where things were worse? Had something else bad happened to them? I thought they were very brave. I was amazed that they could still smile and find joy in simple things. I counted my blessings and hoped that they would find a home and a better life.

Here are some things for you to think about:

• Does everything happen just the way you plan every day? Of course not! It is important to learn to adjust when things don’t go the way you like. That is part of life. Keep a positive attitude and things will be okay.
• When you have a bad day, does it help to talk to someone else about it? That’s much better than keeping your troubles to yourself!
• Do you ever think of ways to help people who are not as fortunate as you are?

Don’t forget to write comments or questions.

Ms. Barthelemy

 

The only reason I even knew about the city of Doha was because my friends live there. Of all of the places I visited, Doha was the one that surprised me the most for many reasons. In the 1970s, Doha had about 90,000 people. Then a lot of people moved there because of all the oil and gas found in Qatar. Now 1,500,000 people live in Doha. Can you imagine how many  construction projects it would take to build homes and business and schools for all of those people?

Until the 1990s, there was only one big building in the city, the Sheraton Hotel. Then the Sheik gave land to many of his family members and told them to build offices and apartments and businesses on the land. That is how the city sprang up in just a short time. There is still lots of construction going on in Doha. One huge project right now is to build a subway system throughout the city. There are no taxes in Doha because the government gets so much money from gas and oil.

One day we drove to a place called The Pearl. The Pearl was built on reclaimed land just like The Palms in Dubai, . It was built on what used to be one of Doha’s major pearl diving sites and that is how it got its name. (Remember in the video how James talked about pearl divers and showed you the type of boat they used?) The Pearl has lots of fancy houses like Palm Jumeirah does in Dubai. By 2018, they expect to have 45,000 people living on The Pearl.

Remember the photos of me by that gigantic horse? That was near a hotel on The Pearl.

Another surprise in Doha was seeing the falcon souq and learning about how the falcons are used. Falconry is a huge sport there for rich people. The best falcons can cost thousands of dollars. Falcons may even get their own passports to make sure they are not stolen or taken out of the country without the owner’s permission. Wouldn’t you be surprised to see a full-grown falcon in a cage sitting next to you on a plane? That is one way the owners transport their falcons for hunting!

Many Qataris (people who live in Qatar) spend fortunes on their falconry equipment. These can include radio monitors, 4×4 trucks, and other high priced items. The hunters want to be sure to arrive right when the bird is taking down its prey.

However, before the birds are ready for hunting, the owners must spend lots of time training the birds. One of the training techniques is keeping the bird on your arm for several hours a day. This is painful and someone who had a regular job would not have the time for that. They put hoods on the falcons heads to prevent them from flying until they want them to fly.

If someone goes hunting in the US, they would use a gun or a bow and arrow. In Qatar, the hunters use their falcons to catch the bustards and other birds they hunt.

Things to think about:

What surprised you most about Doha? What questions do you have about my visit to Doha?

 

 

The country of United Arab Emirates and the city of Dubai became very rich because of all of the oil in the Persian Gulf area. This is true for other countries in the Persian Gulf too, such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Although not everyone there is rich, there are a lot of people there who have a lot of money. Some of them made money from the oil, some from building things and others from selling things.

The Prince of Dubai wanted to make his city more appealing to tourists. He also wanted to add more beachfront to the city. His idea was to build some islands in the shape of palm trees. Can you believe that someone could build an island? The island I saw is called Palm Jumeirah.

The island was build on reclaimed land. There is also a lot of reclaimed land in Hong Kong. In fact, the airport and Honk Kong Disneyland are both built on reclaimed land. That is because they needed more land area than they already had.

Land reclamation means making new land from the ocean. They fill in the sea floor with large rocks or cement with steel. Then the area is covered using clay or dirt until it is high enough for what they need. Jumeirah Palm was built entirely from sand and rocks. No concrete or steel was used to build the island. That was how the prince wanted it. It takes a long time to reclaim land and it costs a lot of money.

Palm Jumeirah has apartments and villas, restaurants and hotels. The Atlantis Hotel is on the crown or top of the palm. There is another Atlantis Hotel in the Bahamas south of Florida. I didn’t have time to go into the hotel, but I rode near enough to take the photo below. If you saw my video, you will remember Rory talking about the fast roller coaster. His mom is the one who showed me the hotel.

I went to lunch at one of the restaurants on the trunk park of the palm.

It was fun to see these fancy places, but I could never afford to live or stay in any of them. I stayed with my friends near their school and not in any of those hotels.

If you went to Dubai, would you rather go dune-bashing and camel-riding or would you rather stay in a fancy hotel? Please write with any questions or comments.

 

 

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I don’t know if there are two cities more different than Mumbai and Dubai (even though they both end with the same three letters.)

Mumbai is crowded and buildings are older. Not everyone is poor, but poverty is everywhere. People set up temporary houses on sidewalks. Mumbai is more colorful and interesting.

Dubai is a rich country because of gas and oil and you see tons of new construction everywhere. It isn’t as crowded because it has fewer people and more space. The roads are newer and I saw more fancy cars. (I even got to ride in a Rolls Royce!)

One thing the cities have in common is air pollution. In Mumbai it is because there are just so many people. In Dubai, it is because of factories, big cars, oil refineries and dust storms. I was surprised to learn that in 2015, United Arab Emirates (UAE) was named the most polluted country in the world. It has over double the amount of pollutants in the air compared to India.

Omar is the man who drove the SUV when we went dune bashing. Do you agree that he has a great job? Imagine if your job was to take people out to the desert every day and drive crazily up and down the sand dunes. I tried to take a video while I was inside the SUV, but that was impossible.  We were moving too fast. So many times it felt as though we were going to tip over. You may have seen that on the video. Sliding down the sand dune on that wide ski was more exciting than it looked too. I watched the others in my group do it, but I didn’t think I would. Then, of course, I realized that I HAD to do it for my video. I didn’t want to let you down by missing out on something!

One night I went on a tour of an area in Dubai. The Hindu festival of lights called Diwali (or as some call it Deepawali) was happening soon. Everywhere I looked I saw colorful lights in homes to celebrate the holiday.

One of the most special parts of my whole trip was meeting the family from Iraq. I was supposed to meet a friend in the gold souk, but my phone didn’t work without wifi. I needed to talk on the phone to set up a meeting spot. I asked a bunch of people where I could find a restaurant or store with wifi, but everyone told me there weren’t any in the souk.

Then this friendly man heard me asking people. He told me I could use the hot spot from his phone. At first, I wasn’t sure if I should talk to him, because most of the people who approached me in the souk wanted to sell me something. However, I soon realized he was just being sincerely helpful. He invited me to sit on a bench with his wife and two sons while I contacted my friend. We started talking and I learned that he used to have a good job in technology in Iraq. However, there was so much fighting going on in their country, the family decided they had to leave in order to be safe. They all really missed Iraq, but they knew it was not a good place to be at this time.

Sadly, they didn’t feel welcomed in Dubai. Because of that they were going to go to Istanbul, Turkey. They had some family and friends living there already and someone had offered the dad a good job working with technology.

They had a car nearby and offered to take me back across the water to the place where I was going to meet my friend. On the drive we talked more and I learned about how difficult it was for them to leave their home country. They said they would write to me when they got settled back in Istanbul. They even invited me to visit them there. I don’t recommend that you talk to strangers if you are alone, but remember that I am an adult.

Do you know anyone who had to leave their home country because it wasn’t safe or because the parents couldn’t find a good job? Can you imagine how hard it would be to leave your home and all of your friends and relatives? Can you imagine how they would feel trying to settle in to a new country with different customs and a new language? Maybe you have a classmate who had to leave their country for one of the reasons I mentioned above. How could you make them feel welcome in Minnesota?

Please write with your questions or comments.

Ms. Barthelemy

When you watch my videos and learn about new places, do you want to travel yourself?  The world is such an amazing place with so many wonderful places to see and people to meet! I hope you get to learn that for yourself some day! Sorry that I got behind on my blog posts, but I didn’t always have a computer handy. Today I want to tell you a little more about Mumbai, India.

Mumbai has over 12 million people. It is definitely one of the noisiest, most crowded, and dirtiest cities I have ever seen. It is also the most colorful and the most interesting and most people who live there work pretty hard. As I showed you on my video, you would never run out of new things to see in Mumbai. The water buffalo and the calf I saw really surprised me and made me laugh. Both of them are bovines, which means they are cows or cattle. I saw a lot of cows roaming around the city, even in busy traffic.

 

The water in Mumbai and other big cities in India is full of pollution and bacteria. People who have lived there for a long time are able to drink the water because their bodies have gotten used to it and can fight the infections. My body wouldn’t have been used to it. Even at my friends’ home, I had to be very careful not to drink water from the faucet. I even had to use bottled water to brush my teeth and rinse out my toothbrush. If I drank tap water, I could have gotten very sick.

I felt very lucky that my friends had a driver named Ganesh who could take me around from place to place. Otherwise, I could have taken a taxi or a rickshaw, but that would have been tricky since I didn’t know where I was going! Rickshaws have three wheels. There is one seat in the front for the driver and the passengers sit in the back. I wouldn’t want to ride one in Mumbai because the traffic is so crazy with cars, buses, rickshaws, animals, and even people walking. One day a young boy walking home from school kept passing us up as we rode in the car because the traffic just wasn’t moving fast at all!

 

Do you have any questions about my video on Mumbai? Please write to me and I will do my best to answer them.

Ms. Barthelemy

 

Although I am staying with friends in every city, I often spend the day alone touring each city because my friends are at work. The wonderful part of that is that I get to meet new people in my travels. One day I took what is called a Hop On Hop Off bus to see KL and met a young lady named Maria from Spain.

While I was on my tour of the Petronas Towers, there was a family group from Brazil that included my new young friend Paulo. He invited me to hang out with his family during the tour and offered to take photos for me. Lucky for me that both Maria and Paulo could speak English, because I couldn’t speak their languages. Do you know what languages people speak in Spain and Brazil? Yes, they speak Spanish in Spain, but do you know what language they speak in Brazil? Do you know why?

Before I went to KL, I thought the only important thing about the city was the Petronas Towers. I was so wrong! KL is a wonderful mixture of languages, religions, people and cultures. They have a big variety of good food as you will see in my second video about KL. A lot of the people who live there are native Malays, but there are almost as many Malaysian Chinese and also many Malaysian Indians (from the country of India).

Nearly  half of the population are Muslims, so there are many mosques. Many others are Buddhists, so there are many Buddhist temples. There are also Christian churches and Hindu temples, although many Hindus worship at home alone or with their families.

Bahasa Malaysia is the main language spoken, but English is also very common as well as Chinese and Indian languages. As I walked through the city, I heard people speaking many different languages, but nearly everyone returned my smile. It almost always pays to be friendly and kind.

So far, I have found friendly people all over the world. I have noticed that people everywhere are proud of their own country. They show respect for their own flag. I bet you are proud to be an American and that you show respect for our flag.

Some students have asked me whether I will be visiting Japan or the Philippines or Vietnam, but I am not going there on this trip. I have been to all of those places before and I loved each one. After KL I still have four more cities on my list including one I added during my trip. The city I added is not in Asia, but on a different continent.

Thanks for all of your questions and comments. Is there anything you want to ask me about my trip to KL? Are there some things you can learn on your own about KL and the rest of Malaysia?

When I first visited Koh Samui, Thailand in 2001, I heard that one of the really fun things to do was to ride an elephant. Seeing an elephant up close and being able to touch one and feed it bananas sounded very exotic and wonderful. I paid to ride an elephant with the mahout or trainer leading the elephant along. If I had known then, what I know now, I would NEVER have done that.

In Thailand, there are 3,800 Asian elephants in captivity. Most of those are used as tourist attractions. Tourists pay to ride the elephants or to see them do tricks. The only way to make elephants do these things is to “train” them when they are little. Elephant calves are put in steel cages and tortured to make them “tame” by breaking their spirits.

Elephant Nature Park (ENP) in Chiang Mai, Thailand, was started to rescue elephants from being used to entertain tourists or from working in the logging industry. I would love to visit ENP some time. At the park, they care for 36 elephants on 250 acres of wilderness. People who go there can feed them fresh fruit, watch them play in the mud, go on walks with them and even get into the river to help give them a bath. That would be much more fun than riding an elephant. It is also good for the elephants.

Asian elephants are an endangered species. Experts believe there are now fewer than 2,000 wild elephants living in Thailand. Besides the elephants that are used for tourism, others are dying because they are losing their habitat or place to live.

You may have seen an Asian elephant at a circus in the past. In February of 2016, Ringling Brothers Circus agreed to stop using elephants to perform tricks. Instead, they are sending their 16 performing elephants to a nature preserve in Florida. That is good news for folks who care about how elephants are treated!

Do you think you would still want to ride an elephant? I am sorry I did!

I gave you LOTS of clues in my third video and I bet some of you were able to guess this city.  Hong Kong is near and dear to my heart for a lot of reasons. It is an exciting place to be with lots of activity, great people, wonderful shopping and a huge variety of restaurants and food. I also loved seeing friends I had not seen in years.

Remember in my video how I showed you the Ladies Market, the Flower Market and Bird Street? My friend Mrs. Beselt went with me.  To get there, we took several different kinds of transportation. (Transportation is a way of getting from one place to another.) When you go somewhere in Minnesota, you probably take a car or maybe a bus. I started out by taking a taxi to the bus terminus.

 

 

 

 

 

Next, we took a ferry across Victoria Harbor. If you can find a map of Hong Kong, you will see the harbor on the map.  The ferry I took was the Star Ferry. There are twelve boats in the Star Ferry fleet and they have been taking people across the harbor since  1888! That is over 100 years. Maybe you can figure out exactly how many years it has been running. It carries over 70,0000 passengers a day or 26 million each year.

There are other ways of getting across the harbor, such as a train called the MTR that travels in a tunnel under the harbor and buses and taxis that go on a bridge over the harbor, but the Star Ferry is still very popular and not very expensive at all. Since I am considered a “senior citizen” in Hong Kong, I was able to take the Star Ferry for only $1.10 in Hong Kong dollars. In US money that is only 14 cents!! What a cheap and exciting ride it was for me. For everyone who is not a senior citizen, it still only costs HK$2.50 which is only 32 cents. In my next video, you will see what the harbor looks like when you ride the ferry.

After we got off the Star Ferry, my friend and I took the train. The photo below was taken in the MTR station when my friend and I got off the train. It helped us know which exit to use to get to the Flower Market and Bird Street.

After we went to all of those markets, we ended up in an MTR station that was not very handy. Can we believe we had to change trains 5 times to get to Causeway Bay where we were meeting another friend for dinner!

Finally, we took a tram to a part of Hong Kong  called Happy Valley for dinner. Happy Valley is also where the racetrack is for horses.

So, on just one day in Hong Kong, I took a taxi, a double decker bus, the Star Ferry, the MTR and a tram. To get home from the restaurant, we took another taxi. Because I am a “senior citizen,”  I probably spent a total of US$1.00 all day except for the taxis. I must say I was pretty tired by the end of the day, but it was all worth it to get the photos and videos for my YouTube video about Hong Kong!

Which of these kinds of transportation would you like to ride most? If you have time in your class, maybe you could talk about them or maybe you could write about them in Writers’ Workshop. Be sure to post your questions or comments.

 

Hello to all of the students and staff at Diamond Path Elementary! I am so pleased to have you join my friends at Highland Elementary to virtually experience my trip around Asia.

Be sure to interact with me by writing comments and questions. I am happy so answer what I can about where I am. I would also like to see you do some research of your own when you have time.

For example, you can find the places on a map and do a little reading to learn more about them. Maybe there are books in your school library. Maybe there are students in your classroom or grade who have actually visited the same places. It would be great for you to share what you learn with your classmates. It would also be fun for you to share something you learn in the comment area of my blog.

Within the next day I will post the first video of my second stop. Everywhere I go, I take videos and photos to share with you either in my video, on my blog, or on my visit to your school when I get back to Minnesota in November.

I love hearing from each of you. Thanks to Mrs. Hernandez and Mr. Ryburn for making this experience available to all of you!

You saw my son in the video about the temple. He was reading my blog and noticed the questions from Ms. Youngberg’s class. He decided to answer some of them himself. He did such a nice job in the comment section that I thought everyone should see what he wrote in the main blog. The rest of this post is from my son. He even included some Korean characters. at the bottom of the post, I included some photos from a store in Seoul called Kakao, sort of like our Disney store with popular toys. To read about these characters from the photos, go here: Kakao Friends.

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영버그 선생님의 학생 여러분, 안녕하세요!

That says “Hello, Ms. Youngberg’s 4th grade class!”

This is Mark, Ms. B’s son in Seoul Korea. Right now it’s lunchtime Tuesday here in Seoul, but the Vikings are playing (they’re winning!) on Monday Night Football right now! How can it be daytime here when it’s nighttime in Minnesota? Well, Korea is on the other side of the planet! So when the sun is shining on Korea, it’s nighttime in Minnesota! If you try shining a flashlight on a ball, maybe you can see how part of the ball is in a shadow. That’s basically what’s happening on the Earth all the time!

Anyway, my mom answered your questions but I wanted to say something too.

“How long has your son been living in Korea? ”
Well, when I was in 5th grade at Highland Elementary, I had a chance to learn how to speak some words in Russian at a weekend activity at school. I thought that was pretty fun to speak another language and be able to talk to some other people I could meet in the world. Then when I went to Scott Highlands, I took Spanish, and it was REALLY fun because there are some Spanish language TV stations on in the Twin Cities, and after a while I could watch those TV programs and actually understand it! And, from those stations, I could understand how other people in the world lived their lives differently, and thought very differently, compared to Americans and Minnesotans. Well, I love America and Minnesota, but It’s really fun and amazing to learn about how other people live and think! Sometimes you can find fun and cool things that don’t even exist in America! When I went to college, I made friends with a lot of Asian Americans, and many of them were Korean. My Korean friend was born in America and he really wanted to learn to speak his parents’ language, so he took a Korean class, and invited me to take it too. So I did! And I have been speaking and writing and typing Korean since then!

Korea is very interesting. In some ways, they have things here that come from America, for example there are pizza restaurants and they love baseball. Students in 4th grade until middle school love to play Minecraft. However, there are many things that are not in America. For example, almost no one here likes American football. (Actually almost no one cares about American football outside of America!) Also, going to the doctor is WAYYY cheaper than in the United States. And here… students in 5th grade usually have about 3-4 hours of homework every night. And many of them go to after-school academies to study math and English for another 3-4 hours after school. They study like crazy and they are too tired! And no time for PS4! Anyway, there are many things I miss about America. But, it’s really fun and interesting to be in another country!

“How long does it take for Yoon to walk to school each day?”

One interesting thing about Yoon’s walk to school is that she never has to cross a big street to get there. In this part of Seoul, which is called Gangnam (maybe some of you know the song called Gangnam Style? It’s named for this area!)… there are really huge buildings and tons of people, but the blocks are really huge compared to in Minnesota or even downtown Minneapolis. If you walked just two blocks, at a normal speed, it would take you about 45 minutes! The streets at the outside of the blocks are very busy and there are cars driving very fast, with usually a 6-lane street. Inside the huge blocks, there are smaller streets with no sidewalk, where people walk on the same street where cars are. You can see in the picture of Yoon and her father that they are walking on one of these streets and there is no sidewalk. And at that moment there are no cars. So, on the outside of the block, it’s really busy, but as you get closer and closer to the center of the huge block, it’s very quiet and peaceful. Maybe you live in a place where your parents have to drive you to the store, or to a restaurant. Well, in Seoul, you really never have to drive because there are stores and restaurants within 5 minutes from your front door. This is pretty cool and convenient… but also there are TONS of people everywhere and the city is very dense. Almost no one has a house, and almost all people live in very tall apartment buildings. It’s hard to find nature around here… that’s one of the things I miss the most about life in America!

I’m glad you guys are interested in other parts of the world! Actually the most interesting places are outside of the USA because they are so different from what you would expect! Many of you have parents who were born outside of the United States, or maybe you were, and that is just awesome! I hope you can share some interesting things about that country and culture with your classmates. And I hope everyone has a chance to try some Korean barbecue, and other foods from different countries… the taste can be unexpected but it’s really delicious! Actually there are some Korean restaurants in Eagan!

Have a good day, everyone.

마크 (Mark)