Here is a great view of the India-Pakistan border as seen from outer space! The border appears as an orange line in this picture, taken by the Expedition 28 crew on the International Space Station (ISS) on August 21 and released on September 04. The border, which is a highly lit up fence for surveillance purposes appears as this orange line. The Indian cities of Srinagar in Jammu & Kashmir is to the left and Delhi is at the top centre while the Pakistani cities of Islamabad and Lahore appear at the bottom centre and at the centre near the border respectively. These are the bright spots seen in the photo.
The original picture and the captions can be seen here.
India-Pakistan border as seen from International Space Station
This amazing video which I got from the MSN website is a series of time lapse images taken from the front of the International Space Station at on it’s orbit around the world at night. The video, done by science educator James Drake can also be seen in his website Infinity Imagined. From the website:
A time-lapse taken from the front of the International Space Station as it orbits our planet at night. This movie begins over the Pacific Ocean and continues over North and South America before entering daylight near Antarctica. Visible cities, countries and landmarks include (in order) Vancouver Island, Victoria, Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, San Fransisco, Los Angeles. Phoenix. Multiple cities in Texas, New Mexico and Mexico. Mexico City, the Gulf of Mexico, the Yucatan Peninsula, Lightning in the Pacific Ocean, Guatemala, Panama, Columbia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, and the Amazon. Also visible is the Earths ionosphere (thin yellow line) and the stars of our galaxy.
School started today after a week-long break. This is the last term for the year and the most pressured one in terms of moms nagging at children. This is because of the spectre of the Semesteral Assessment 2 which will start from next month!
For me personally this is going to be a real intense 2 months as predictably BB & GG failed in the Common Test for Hindi. They take Hindi as their Mother Tongue language and now I am really worried! This next SA 2 is the make or break test for them. I just don’t know how to get them to learn and love the language. If they find Primary 2 difficult, then what will happen in P3 when the ante ups considerably?
God, if you are listening in or reading this blog, please help me!
On another note, here is an interesting article with a local flavour on the teaching of the English language.
Thank God It’s Friday! Today’s Friday and the start of a the weekend! While most people rejoice at the thought of two blissfull days of doing other stuff, my weekends usually entail doing the same stuff that I have been doing the rest of the week – in fact if I can say so, my weekends are even more busy!
On Saturday, I do have the luxury of sleeping for another 75 minutes and wake up only at 6 am compared to the 4:45 am that I usually wake up. Then it’s a flurry of activities to get BB & GG ready for their Mother Tongue classes aka Hindi classes. I have opted them to take Hindi as their Mother Tongue since here, you have to take an another language in addition to English and the other options with us – Tamil and Mandarin were not really options. Tamil, because even though we are linguistically Tamil speaking, I can’t read or write the language to save my life and Mandarin because we do not speak the language at home and so even though they’ve been learning it since Pre-Nursery, I was scared that when the higher levels of the language kick in, it will be difficult for them.
Coming back to the point, they are out of the house by 8 am and then I have some free time till they are back at 1 pm. After lunch and some rest (read afternoon nap), we then go for their music lessons at 5:30 pm. They are learning Carnatic music. Carnatic music is the classical Indian music more common in south India. They will complete one year of learning in October and this year during the Navratri festival, their class will be singing a song at a nearby temple. More about the festival and their performance later.
From tomorrow, GG has additional ballet lessons on Saturdays. These are special lessons specifically for the exams which her class will take sometime in the first quarter of next year. GG has been learning ballet since she was about 3.5 years old.
Sunday’s are relatively free with just GG’s regular ballet lessons. Normally S will take them both – and it’s just some days when he has to work that I take over. This weekend, being the last day of their semesteral holidays, we’re taking them to see the Smurf Movie. I love the Smurfs and it brings back memories for me too, so we’re all looking forward to it. I’ll review the movie next week!
Ok, I had written this yesterday and tried uploading it through my phone, but it didn’t go through! Now the WordPress app is giving me grief – guess I’ll have to delete it and reinstall it….
Week 2 was nothing to write about. The children are just settling down and getting to the business of studying. They had their first spelling test last week and both D&P got 9/10. Sigh! I expected perfect scores from both as they knew all the spellings!!
D has a bad cough today which was diagnosed as bronchitis by the doctor. She’s on a two day medical leave and a week off from PE. She just didnt want to stay at home today and had to be persuaded to stay back as the school would send her back home if she did go to school (that was my argument). We’ve decided to check again tonight to see if she can go back tomorrow. Since D was not going to school today, P also decided he was not going too! He argument was that there wont be anyone to sit with him in the bus coming back home!!
Memories and Such 