Fun Rocks

For my job right now I am learning a language. I do it all day every day, except on Tuesdays. On Tuesday afternoon I have to participate in a part of my training called, "Area Studies." I get to learn, in English, about the culture, history, economics, you-name-it of the area of the world where I will be working when my training is done. My area is Insular Southeast Asia, which includes Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei, Timor-Leste, the Philippines, and of course Indonesia. Usually, it is just about Indonesia since most of us in the class are going there and it is the largest of the countries in the area. Mostly there are guest lecturers, but each of us also has the opportunity to do some research and present it to the class. Well, mine is coming up. I learned long ago that it is best if you pick something somewhat interesting to you when doing research, and I also had to pick something that relates in some way to my work and that part of the world. I am presenting on natural disasters in maritime southeast Asia. It is more difficult and time consuming than I though it would be however. It is very hard to put together, but I have had a couple of breakthroughs this week. If anyone has a good source of info to recommend, I would welcome it. The fun part is that I have to do research on something that I would like to know about but probably would not have enough time to research if I didn't have to find the time. I hope it goes well. I really want a good video of a volcano exploding or something to spice it up, but we'll see.
It was really fun to see my youngest son break some boards in his martial arts class this week. I have always wanted to do that myself. The closest I have come is when we were doing some remodeling in the house I grew up in and we got to destroy the wall between the kitchen and dining room. That was really fun breaking the drywall.

On Saturday as a family we went to a local National Park called "Great Falls National Park." We had a lot of fun looking at the falls, walking on the trails through the trees, going over bridges and rocks, and especially putting on our hats and hiking shoes and Camelbacks. At one part, we hiked down a little descent to a cove that was half sea shells instead of sand and was surrounded by really interesting rocks. Some of the rocks had holes in them filled with water. Some of them only had a little water and some of the holes were as big as me. We had a great time playing on them and jumping off some of the rocks onto the soft sand/shells. We had a bunch of complaints when we let the kids know we were going there, but I heard almost every one of them say that that was one of the best days of their life while we were there. They all want to go back. Funny how that is sometimes. Fun rocks.