365saturdays.org

Piggy came HOME!

Camryn (my age), Maggie (6), Jill (Mom) and Chris (Dad) Woods made our last days in Paris awesome. The parents chatted about endless super boring stuff while the kids played tons of games. The Woods were spending their summer in London and took a two hour train to meet us. We both stayed on the […]

After such a long trip, Piggy is relaxing on which island in the Seychelles?  Hint:  it’s the biggest one Send your guess by email to katherine@365saturdays.org

Piggy was in Kenya when she saw this special zebra that is rarer than the black rhino.  There are about 2000 left alive.  It is very big and has lots and lots of stripes.  Can you figure out what kind of zebra it is and whether she is in North Kenya or South Kenya? Email your […]

In Tanzania, Piggy visited an ancient gorge near a crater and saw footprints over three million years old!    Can you guess the name of the gorge and the crater? Email your guess to katherine@365saturdays.org

Can you guess which natural wonder Piggy is visiting in Zimbabwe? Send your guess in an email to katherine@365saturdays.org!

When you are a Bushman, you have to know how to live off the land.  We took a walk with some Bushmen to learn about the wild life of the Kalahari Desert. We learned how to hunt, and to recognize some useful plants and their properties, along with some other valuable survival skills. My mom […]

I pet a cheetah yesterday. His name was Chobee. He weighed about as much as me, and I sat next to him and pet him. It was super cool. He even purred, in the cheetah’s deep rumbling way. This was is in Cape Town at the Cheetah Outreach Center. Before we petted Chobee we had […]

It’s currently under construction, but where is Piggy and who actually sang from the balcony there? Send your guess to katherine@365saturdays.org

Today we went to a high school with goats. It was a high school for kids who were very poor and had troubles at home. From 13-17 years old you were allowed to attend and when you graduated you got a diploma in agriculture. You got this because the founder of the school thought the […]

“Ms. Wilcox, please report to the check-in counter for a message.”  I hear my name over the PA system as I am eating soggy pesto spaghetti in the airport in Guayaquil, Ecuador.  We are waiting to board our flight to Costa Rica. The four of us race to the counter, half-expecting a message from our […]

We made it to Quito, Ecaudor last night and will be taking a flight to the Galapagos Islands this morning.  We are hoping to find turtles, sea lions and dancing birds. Peru has been one of our favorite countries, and we are working on pictures and blogs to share the story.  You will not see them […]

      On April 20 we sadly bid farewell to the Asia/Australia time zones – our home for the past three months – and entered a new chapter:  South America!  We were all excited to see a new continent, but first we had to get there.  The itinerary called for a journey on April 20 from […]

We walked through the park watching all the couples dance by. Saturday mornings were when everyone local got together to dance at the park. You could see people of every age dancing in the main square, and more selected groups with private instructors. I watched as a group of old ladies did the most ridiculous […]

Our guide Lily said, “Here it is!” We gazed up at the memorial of Sun-yat-sen, the first official president of China. It was Sun-yat-sen who helped organize the revolution to overthrow Puyi, the last emperor. The walkway was lined with trees instead of the usual sculptures of soldiers. For Sun had not wanted armed men […]

We got out of the car and were immediately mobbed by old ladies waving guns around, shouting at us. My mom’s face went stony, and we tried to get away! They chased us until we were forced to stop and take out some money. Then we bought two of the first lady’s water guns and proceeded […]

We stepped in to a long glass and metal building, built around one of China’s treasures. Before us lay deep trenches running in a vertical direction. Inside these trenches there were hundreds of soldiers. These soldiers stared straight ahead, not giving us a second glance. There had clearly been some sort of attack, as smashed […]

The Great Wall loomed large in my pantheon of must-see destinations.  More than 2,000 years old, it is the single biggest man-made structure on the planet.  Someone once told me you could even see it from the moon.  While I believe that this assertion has been scientifically dispelled, having now visited, it remains larger than […]

Hello folks! It’s reporter K again! I’m here to tell you about my travels in Australia. Actually my colleagues will be covering most of the sites so I only have one to write about: The Great Barrier Reef. The Great Barrier Reef is the largest reef in the world. It is 1250 miles long and […]

     YEAH, C’MOOON DEMONS! WOOOOOOO! It was The Melbourne Demons versus the Sydney Swans! We were barracking (as the Aussies say) the DEMONS!!!! The Demons are a scrappy team, their fans are generalized as the “shout-out-mistakes-and-comments-while-glugging-beer-and-gobbling-chips” kind of people. But that’s just a few of them. Actually, pretty much everyone was shouting comments, myself included, […]

     THE LESSON We met our friends the Walters: Darin and Alison, and their kids: Oscar (12), Maya (10), and Hugo (5). Today, I was learning how to surf. Darin gave me a lesson on the beach. We used his surfboard on the sand instead of trying in the water. Darin told me several rules: […]

Our wonderful Japan guide Mimi came over on Wednesday morning and we stepped out into the streets of Tokyo. Brrr. First stop, Ginza for jackets. Then we saw the Imperial Palace and Asukasa with its many tourist stands and great Buddhist temple and Shinto shrine. We were so impressed with Mimi. She was impeccably dressed, […]

Why do so many Hanoi tourists suffer a jarring three hour drive through Vietnam’s endless rice paddies, just to spend an evening on the waters of Halong Bay? We boarded an (extremely well-appointed) old-style wooden junk to find out. The boat set sail at lunch and a few hours later we were gliding past startling rock formations jutting […]

Can you guess the name of the famous temple that Piggy is visiting today? Send your answer to katherine@365saturdays.org. Answers from February:  In Thailand, Piggy was at the Temple of the Reclining Buddha (called Wat Pho) in Bangkok.  In Southeast Asia, Piggy was in Singapore, about to cross the Malaysian border to board the Eastern […]

ประกอบด้วยแปลไทยด้านล่าง  (Thai translation at bottom) Rice has been eaten for thousands of years. For a while, people grew rice just like carrots; in a field of soil. Eventually, people found out that flooding the fields with water increased the quantity and quality of the rice. Farmers would plant seedlings in a non-flooded field, and when […]

As part of Road School, the kids are reading a textbook comparing eight major world religions.  In the Hinduism unit we read about an ancient Sanskrit epic, the Ramayana which means Rama’s Journey. We had never heard about this story, but it is just as important in the East as the Odyssey or Gilgamesh.  When […]

Eating in Singapore is a national pastime so compelling that more than 5 million tourists visit annually to participate. While some opt for the five-star tables, those in the know come for the street food. We were clueless and consequently delighted when we learned that the city was filled with “food courts” where hawkers selling […]

54New Zealand is a Mecca for outdoor lovers and, while I would never classify myself as a Nature gal, even I couldn’t help but be transported by the lushness and variety of the Great Outdoors quite literally outside my door. Russ, Giles, and I left the lodge at 11:00 am with the stated intention of […]

When we arrived at the hotel on South Island, the first thing we thought was: “is this the right place?” It was a beautiful stretch of land covering 2400 acres, and the only man made thing we could see (besides cars and roads) was a big yellow house. We rang the doorbell and were greeted […]

We had a red-eye flight into Hong Kong that proved easier than expected, due to the kindness of a Kingfisher employee who saw the kids and decided to upgrade our seats!  Thank goodness for a decent night’s rest. The goals for Hong Kong were simple:  first, to rest and rejuvenate after a couple of weeks of intense […]

We swerve to the left around a herd of cows, not too far because there is a grey horse lumbering just beside us, straining to pull a metal-wheeled cart stacked eight feet high with cow dung patties.  No matter that there is just one lane going our direction – the cows, the horse and our […]

The Indians are fantastic martial inventors. They invented many hundreds of things, but I have chosen the top invention of each main category that we saw. GATE DEFENSES A fort’s gate is its weak link, the easiest place to smash in and take control. In India there are bristly, natural, and gray battering rams know […]

To break up a long drive from Agra to Jaipur, we stopped first outside of Agra at Fatehpur Sikri, which was briefly the Mughal capital (long story) and contains an impressive palace complex. Further along, we visited Chand Baori – a step well.  Step wells are massive excavated stone cisterns that could store rain water, […]

This one is easy but we had to post Piggy here! Can you guess where she is? Bonus question: What was this place built for? Email your answer to me at katherine@365saturdays.org

Glossary Roti——-Nan-like bread. Flat and circular. To end our first day in India our guide, Majeet, brought us to a Sikh Temple. Before entering the complex, we had to take off our shoes and socks and cover our hair. My mom and sister already had scarves, and Majeet had a turban, but my dad and […]

Before us towered Edfu temple, one of the best preserved temples in all of Egypt. Dedicated to the god Horus, Edfu temple is 118 feet high and a fantastic but small sized memory of the Egyptian builders and engineers. The temple’s gate is lower than the pylons to its left and right. Symbolizing the Nile […]

Piggy enjoyed a quiet evening here. Can you guess the name of the town she was in? Remember to email your guesses to me at katherine@365saturdays.org!

We drove to a local Jordanian family’s house for a delicious dinner. It was a cool evening and thunder was coming from our bellies. As soon as we got there we quickly unbuckled and met our host. A smiling gray-haired man met us at the door and ushered us in to meet his wife. The […]

When the day finally arrived to leave Paris, we dried our tears and left home four hours early for the train station.  We knew there would be some sort of weather delay because heavy snows had already cancelled most of the Eurostar trains from Paris to London the day before.  We stumbled out of the […]

Nous sommes bien arrivé! Apartment perfect… quest for favorite local bakery has begun… touring Paris with family. Next week Road School resumes and settling in begins. We are looking forward to living la vie Parisienne for the next few months.