Recently, our Family and the Baers (from SoCal) drove out to Safari West near Santa Rosa for a couple of days. About 30-45 minutes NW of Napa, we took our time getting there, stopping at a few wineries to kill time and relax before check-in.

Safari West is an 'African Wildlife Preserve and African Tent Camp'.  They have over 400 acres of open spaces, lakes, trees, dirt roads, and all that. They also have on-site lodging... big family size tents with all the frills (shower, sink, bed, electricity). I don't think there is air-conditioning and the space heater leaves a lot to be desired on a cold night, but there are plenty of blankets. No cellular service is available either (good).

Throughout the park are around 700 critters of roughly 80 species, including: giraffes, cheetahs, rhinos, cape buffalos, blue wildebeest, lemurs, gazelle, porcupines, zebras, and lots of birds. Many, if not most, of these are born at Safari West (most recently a new giraffe).

A highlight of Safari West is the three hour tour, part walk and part open vehicle ride around the Preserve to see the larger animals. The Preserve is divided up into a few large sections by necessity as some of the animals just don't get along all that well (apprently Zebras are rather mischievous). You don't have to spend the night at Safari West to take the tour, the public is welcome to make reservations for the tour alone.

In addition to the animals, the tour, and the accomodations, there is an excellent buffet lunch & dinner available (reservations required), a snack shop with sandwiches/salads, and the service throughout the Preserve is first rate. No sulking unhappy faces around Safari West. No surprise as it seems like a great job to have. I'd highly recommend Safari West for a family, or romantic,  getaway. Kids will love the critters.

More pictures here.

I've been tossing out PC-related junk over the last year.... obsolete keybords, mice, cords, etc. Anyone who's worked with PC hardware over the years has tales of the unbelievably inadequate hardware they used to work with... at least by today's standards.

External Data storage is one the most easily quantifiable areas of change with which to bring home how far things have come. When I started playing with TRS-80s at school we had cassette tapes and 5 1/4 inch floppy drives. There were also 8 inch floppies around. After that, the 3.5 inch floppy reigned supreme for many years, mostly available with 1.4MB of storage. Eventually the re-recordable CD became the standard with 600MB or more, then re-recordable DVDs with 4GB (4000MB) or more, and now any number of USB & Firewire devices are cheaply available. For less than $30, I can now carry around 32GB on a drive no larger than my thumbnail.

There was a short point in time though (1999ish),  between the dominance of the 3.5 inch floppy and the re-recordable CD, where the next big thing was not so clear. There were a series of portable external drives that were quite popular. In fact, some PC manufacturers (like Dell) bet on the Iomega Zip drive and let folks configure new PCs with an internal version (I have one of these). 

Pictured here are three drives Buffy and I went through during that time, the Iomega Zip (100MB), the Syquest SyJet (scsi 1.5GB) and the Iomega Jaz (scsi 2GB).  I don't miss them or the two pounds of cabling and power cables that you needed to carry around with them.

For those that don't know, the 'Kancho' is the bane of the ALT (Assistant Language Teacher). You take your hands and clasp them together with both index fingers pointed out. Your hands should look like a gun, the index fingers being the barrel. Now you simply wait until one of your friends has their back turned, then ram your index fingers into their butt and yell "Kanchoooooo!". In the States this would be considered sexual harassment or even assault, in Japan this is considered a hilarious joke.

School age children do it to each other all the time and sometimes they do it to their teachers. I have been unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end of more than one Kancho. This is by far the worst part about being an ALT. On the other hand, there is a feeling of acceptance because the students don't do this to random people. If you are Kancho'd then it means they consider you a friend. This is simply part of being a foreign teacher in Japan and is a right of passage that all ALT's eventually go through.

The Kancho is not the only thing in my students' arsenal of physical and mental assault. Several students have slapped my butt, caressed my chest, and tapped/poked my groin. Last week one of my students managed to slap my taint then drag his hand back between my buttcheeks. I never thought I would have to use that much self restraint not to strangle a 13 year old boy. For reasons that I cannot explain, it is always the boys that do this, which is one reason I tend to enjoy talking to female students more.

Another thing students enjoy is saying dirty words in order to get a rise out of me. This is better then being physically assaulted, by far, and the first time a student says "special penis" is even kind of funny. But after being asked "Do you like big bust?" for the tenth time that week by the same group of 12 year old boys, it gets annoying. Another question that they have started asking is "Do you have big penis?" to which I mentally respond "bigger then yours" or "your mom doesnt seem to mind".

A few weeks ago I planted rice with the 1st and 2nd year students at my Junior High School. The field was about 4 or 5 blocks from the school in a seemingly random area surounded by houses. I am not sure if the field belongs to the school or is privately owned. The students went in 2 goups (1st years, then 2nd) out to the field. Of course, before they went to the field the principle gave a speech (I have learned that speeches will happen before every event) and then a farmer told them the finer points to rice planting. Each group spent about 1 hour planting rice and then cleaning up after. I went with both groups and forgot my sunscreen, I was rewarded with a minor sunburn.

The students each took a small clump of rice plants, which contained about 40-60 small stalks of rice. They would break off about 2-4 stalks to stick into the mud. They kept the plants in nice rows by planting along a string which the teachers moved when the students where done with that row. Most of the girls screamed when getting into the ankle deep mud or whenever they saw an animal crawling threw the muck. Some of the boys started minor mud fights, getting incredibly dirty. Overall it was a hilarious spectackle.

More photos are here. Some videos: Getting Muddy - Planting Rice - Getting Clean