1975  Back to Thailand

After two years in Indonesia, my father's job was transferred back to Thailand, where I was born.  We were enrolled at Bangkok Patana School, where I experienced school uniforms for the first time.  We were only in Thailand for one year, and therefore I don't have as many memories as Indonesia.  I do remember though that one night someone was banging on our door, and after inquiring, my dad scrambled us all out of bed.  We were only allowed to take one toy, and then quickly get into the car.  Our neighbor's house was in flames, and we needed to evacuate.  I remember being in an urgent dilemma.  I was eight years old, and I had to choose which one of my favorite stuffed animals could go with me.  That was very difficult.  I chose Mutley, my large black and white Snoopy dog, and obeyed my father promptly.  We spent a long night at our Danish friend Hilka's house.  She is the friend that had a swimming pool and introduced us to lemon meringue pie.  We were not allowed to eat sweets growing up, and my parents were strict enforcers of that.  But we got to have lemon meringue pie at Hilka's house, oh, it was like a piece of Heaven.

Another time, we were dog sitting Hilka's pregnant poodle, when she suddenly gave birth to four adorable puppies.  I watched the whole birthing process, and it was amazing.  As an adult, I have allowed my own children to experience our cats having kittens three different times.  Unfortunately, the last puppy, also the runt, could not breathe, so I quickly fetched a straw and blew into his tiny mouth with the straw, and brought life back to him.  As a thank you, we were allowed to keep the runt puppy, which of course became our favorite.  We named him Ludde, a typical Swedish name for a dog.  And anyone who has ever had a puppy will relate to the massive work involved with night crying and morning clean ups.  But we loved Ludde of course.

At school we had Show and Tell, and I brought in a large cow's vertebrate, that I had found in the yard, from one of our other dogs.  I thought it looked exactly like a dinosaur bone, so of course that is what I said it was.  All the students believed me, and I became quite popular for my stories.

In Thailand it rains quite a bit during the monsoon season, and one month it rained so much that our yard flooded.  My brother and I took out our rubber raft and floated around in our yard.  We caught cat fish that had managed to escape from the fish market, and ventured all the way down the flooded streets and into our yard.  I am sure we must have had a bar-be-Que that night.

At school, I had to go to reading tutoring with a selected group of "struggling" readers, and following our remedial reading passages, our tutor would read to us from "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory."  Oh I loved hearing her read to us everyday.  I don't think my English comprehension was so good at the time, because I never really quite understood the point of the story until I saw it as a play as an adult.  And then add to the fact that I was never allowed to eat chocolate or candy for that matter as a child, I didn't really know what wonderful treat I was missing.  Then as a teen I snuck into my room with a large chocolate bar, and ate it in secrecy, as if it was a huge crime.

In the mornings our teacher would take the lunch order and milk orders for the day.  The three choices were chocolate milk, strawberry milk, and regular milk.  I was not allowed to have anything but regular milk.  So everyday, I would announce my order that I was having regular milk.  But oh I dreamt of that strawberry milk.  One day I could stand it no longer, and I announced that I was having strawberry milk.  My teacher was rather surprised, since that had never happened before.  So during lunch time, I drank my wonderful strawberry milk, but quickly got a stomach ache from all the guilt associated with my deceptive purchase.  And of course, my mother found out somehow, and I was back to regular milk.

I was usually not the kid that got into trouble, my eldest brother could take credit for all that.  However, as an eight year old, I seemed to follow the crowd, and before I knew it, I was caught in a mess.  A few of us decided to climb up the vines and go on the roof of the restrooms.  The principal saw me and brought me to the office.  There I had to wait for my parents to pick me up.  It was the longest wait, and I was devastated.  My brother on the other hand just laughed and thought it was funny.

As I sit here by the computer and reflect back on my life, trying to remember the details of Thailand, I smile.  I was a child with a vivid imagination.  I pretended all the time.  I wrote stories all the time.  I am now a teacher, and my love for pretend in my teaching makes our days wonderful.  When we study history, we go back in time, and take on the roles of the past.  Our school building has been everything from a large ship, to a skyscraper and we are on the 14th floor, and the back packs are our parachutes, because the elevator is broken.  Or our classroom has been one of the thirteen colonies and we have declared our independence from our principal, also known as the King of England.  Our hallways have been transformed to the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, and we have charged taxes for the passengers that pass through to get to the drinking fountain, with out classroom economy.  One time we invaded the other fifth grade teacher's room as we were Sir Francis Drake and his ship, robbing the Spanish of their gold, and taking the other classroom's class money.  We have used the street between the elementary campus and the secondary campus as an imaginary river, whereby we were slaves escaping to the north during the Civil War.  Our bearded custodian became General Robert E. Lee and another teacher was quickly Christened General Grant, and the peace treaty was signed before our eyes.  This year with the 100th anniversary of Titanic, my students each were given the names of a real Titanic passenger, and they had to live out that role for a whole week, while we pretended our school was the Titanic ship in 1912.  By the end of the week, they found out if their passenger survived or died, and we had a small memorial service in the classroom.  I became a British lady Mrs. Turpin during a whole week, with an accent and clothing of the 1912's.

Next time I write, my family will move to Papua New Guinea, and the year will be late 1975.

Jakarta, Indonesia six and seven years old.

We moved to the capital of Indonesia, Jakarta in the early 1970's.  When I look back on my childhood, it is here that I probably was the happiest.  I rarely remember anything bad that happened, even though I was unaware that we lived in a country that had quite a bit of political unrest.  It was not uncommon that buses or cars were lit on fire as a demonstration erupted in the streets.  However, those are not necessarily my memories.  My parents have shared things with me later in life, or I might have read about it as an adult.  Instead, my days were filled with play and adventure for a six year old.  Our house had an inside garden, with net covering the top.  Inside this garden, we had two cockatoo parrots, an macaw parrot, a blue and yellow smaller parrot that somehow managed to hang himself accidentally on his chain, and my mom resuscitated him back to life, but he was never the same, and seemed brain damaged.  We also had a large fish pond, where we used to watch our spider monkey swim laps and time how long he could hold his breath.  Along with a monkey, we also had a grey hound dog who was not much of a watch dog, since we were broken into one night, and he never barked.  The same burglar had broken into our neighbor's house, but he had unfortunately woken up, and been shot in the arm.  We were fortunate enough to only have had our cassette tapes and cassette player stolen.  Since I am mentioning about all our pets, we also had a Sumatran sun bear cub!  I have always loved bears, and I would draw bears all the time.  And then one day my dad brought home our very own, live bear cub!  I was the happiest six year old that lived on the face of the earth.  We played with him, and put him on my brother's bike and pushed him around.  He used to climb the mango tree, but had a hard time climbing down, so my dad often had to rescue him.
Another time my dad did something amazing, other than bring home a live bear and monkey, was when we went to a French restaurant.  They served young rabbit stew, and I was so sad to discover that truth.  So my dad ordered in French, and for dinner the waiter brought on a large, covered silver platter, four live, baby rabbits!  My dad had asked the cook to not cook four of them and instead we got to take them home as pets!  It was unbelievable.  We each received our own rabbit that we also put in the inside garden.  I loved my pet rabbit, for as long as I had it, until our no good grey hound dog managed to sneak into the house, and killed all four rabbits in a bloody after school massacre.
In November of 1973, something even more extraordinary occurred.  My baby brother was born!  Oh, I loved that baby, and even if he is 39 years old today, I still love him as much.  When my brother was fussy I would stroke his gentle head and sing to him in Swedish.  He got to hear everything from Noah's Sunday school song to the Swedish National anthem in his crib.  I loved to read, and play school, so he of course became my first pupil, and Richard Scarry's great book of pictures was his first school book.  I even made him little report cards, that I have saved to this day.  I am about to see my brothers for Thanksgiving in a week, and plan on giving my youngest brother the report card that I found buried in my diaries of past.  We are all flying to Washington, to my middle brother's house, from all corners of the world.
Well, back to Indonesia....
My parents were always very good about taking us on what they called family field trips.  And these were no ordinary trips.  As a seven year old, we flew to the Indonesian island where the famous volcano of Cracatowa rises high above the island.  I vividly recall walking over the hanging bridge, as I looked down into the mouth of the volcano.  I picked up a little lava rock, stuck it in my pocket, and I have it still after almost 40 years.  My two little brothers may not remember being there, but they were there!
Back home in my yard, I would on occasion climb up on our flatter roof and eat mangoes from our overhanging tree, pour sweet soy sauce on top of the mango, and throw the seeds onto the snarling, barking neighbor dog, which only made him bark more.  To my dismay, the neighbor (the one that got shot in the arm earlier) saw me throw the seeds, and I had to go clean up dog poop all afternoon.  My parents thought that was fair.
Our street had wiring for television, so we had the opportunity to watch in black and white on our little T.V. "I Dream of Jeanie" and "Bonanza" on Friday nights.  Our best friends down the street would join us every Friday for this big event.  They had wiring for a phone, so if we needed to make a phone call, we had to go to their house.  The trade seemed very convenient to both households.
In school, I had to go to a reading tutor, because my English reading was poor.  "Run Dick run" and "Go, Jane, go!" I would read over and over, and oh it bored me.  My favorite all time book was "The Fire Cat" and I was so impressed with my friend's reading skills.  She read that "hard" book fluently, and I made it my goal to be just as good as her.
It was not uncommon for diplomatic families such as my dad's to have servants working for them.  We had two, but one I remember very fondly, Rasita.  However, my parents also felt it was extremely important that we kids learned responsibility and emphasized chores heavily.  My biggest job as a seven year old was to iron mountains of laundry.  Driers had yet to be invented, and everything in the 70's had a tendency to wrinkle.  I remember ironing for hours, or what seemed like it.  I loathed that chore.  As I got older, laundry responsibilities followed me everywhere, washing, hanging, folding, ironing.  I was so done with laundry by the time I was an adult, that when my own boys reached the age of ten, they had to be responsible for their own laundry.  My daughter had to take over hers by the time she was nine.  I have owned one iron in my whole married life, and it broke, and I have not owned one since.  The drier is my iron.  If it needs more, then we borrow my neighbor's iron once in awhile.  You may have detected my slight hatred for ironing.
There was so much that happened in Indonesia, but that will be all for this blog entry.
Next time, we travel back to Thailand, when I am eight years old.

1970, Apia, Western Samoa

My first solid memories occur in Western Samoa.  We lived in a two story house that had the name of Hansesn's house.  I remember it being white, large and a lot of greenery all around it.  We lived on the edge of a banana plantation, and sugar cane grew all around our property.  My parents chose to not allow us children to have any sweets, like cookies, cakes or candy, but I would grab a sugar cane once in awhile, and suck the sweetness from the cane.  I turned five years old in this house, and I remember fond memories of my father singing to me playing his guitar, by my bedside at night.  We had a couple of dogs, Rusty and another name I cannot recall.  We would bbq pig in the backyard, Polynesian style, and a lot of people from my father's United Nations office would come over.  It was in Samoa that I experienced having terrible embarressements  like worms and lice.  My eldest brother had to have his head shaved, but I had my hair washed over and over.  At the time they sold DDT shampoo for lice, which people insisted  killed the lice very nicely.  My mom was a head of her time, and refused to use this shampoo, which a few years later was discontinued, due to it causing brain damage.
It was also in Samoa, that I experienced the devastating consequence of pretend playing that my cat Nahina was a tiger, and my brother and I tied her to a tree.  I was only five and my brother seven, and we walked off and forgot about her.  It was days before my mother asked if we had seen our cat.  My stomach turned a thousand knots, and a sick feeling came over me.  After dinner we all searched for our tied up cat, and to my deep dismay, we found Nahina alive, but her neck was worn down to the flesh, and she was covered with larva and flies.  My mom was a nurse, and did what she could to save our poor cat, but unfortunately too much damage had occurred.  She died a day or so later, leaving behind four motherless kittens.  I remember the feeling of guilt and sadness and shame so well, I have never forgotten that horrible moment.  My first experience with death though, was when I found our dog "sleeping" on the garage cover floor.  I tried frantically to wake him up, but it was of no use.  He died of ring worm, which was a common killer for dogs in Samoa.
Another traumatic time was when my seven year old brother climbed to the top of a coconut palm, and fell and hit his head on the driveway.  He was unconscious and there was so much blood everywhere.  After returning from the emergency room, his head again was shaved, and had a patch work of stitches.  This would be the first of many falls that my brother would have out of trees.  Personally, the only fall I had out of a tree, was when I had acidy ants in my eyes, and I could not see.
When we lived in Samoa, on the anniversary of Robert Louis Stevenson's death, there would be an annual march up Mount Via, to the top, where the author of Treasure Island is buried.  Here he lived his last few years as he wrote that famous book.  I have a photograph of me standing next to his grave, at age five.  I always loved that author, especially his book of poems.  On the march up the mountain, the villagers would sing a song that had his words from one of his poems he wrote.
On another occasion, our weekly gardener used to boast about how much he would swim in the ocean, and encounter sharks.  One day he did not show up, a shark got him after all.
I have mostly good memories from Samoa, but they are laced with sadness here and there.  Carol King was a popular music artist in the seventies, and my parents would play here music record on the weekends.  One night however, her song, "You've got a friend" was blaring in the background, as beer bottles were broken in the kitchen sink.  My mom was crying and packing a suit case, and I sat next to her on the bed, asking why she was so sad.  I was too little to understand what my mom had just gone through. Years later I learned that my father had had an affair, and was terribly drunk, and my mom wanted to leave him and return to Sweden.  It took fifteen years for me to like Carol King's songs again, I associated them with so much sadness. The circumstances changed, because we did not return to Sweden right away.  My mother would finally leave my dad, when I was fourteen, after yet another affair and drunkenness.  Why did my dad drink so much?  Well, I think it was a social thing at first.  There were a lot of U.N. social gatherings, and there was alcohol everywhere.  People smoked and drank, and it was just what they did.  My dad however became dependent on it over time, and along with all the pressures of his diplomatic position, perhaps escaped to alcohol to cope.  It unfortunately would cause problems in my family for all the years we were together.
On a happier note, my parents always encouraged us children to be independent and try new things.  I remember my brother and I traveling with our babysitter Solianna and her daughter, my best friend, Peppe, on a small 4 seater plane to her home island of Pago Pago.  We spent a few days there without our parents, and had one adventure after another.  I have often looked back on that, and thought how brave my parents were to send us off at so young of an age.  You might think it to have been reckless perhaps.  However, my early experiences of independence, and adventure, has helped mold me how I am as a parent today.  I have sent my children on trips to relatives, like my middle son, age eight, on a flight to Washington.  Or our teenage boys to my little brother in Maui, and my daughter age twelve to a friend in Colorado.  All three of them went with a school trip to the east coast as eighth graders, and I did not worry as many moms might do.  I love the confidence such a trip builds in one self.
We spent about a year and a half in Samoa, before we left for Sweden for the summer, then headed to our next destination, Jakarta, Indonesia.  Stay posted, next Sunday, I will write about the two years in Indonesia.  It is there that my baby brother was to be born.  Until next time, happy travels.

Bangkok, Thailand      April 1967     Ann was born during the Vietnam War


         My life starts with my parents life decisions.  Both of my parents were from Sweden, and met in Stockholm in the 1960's.  It was a popular time to travel to other European countries and sell language courses, so that is exactly what they did.  They were engaged to each other at the time.  So off they went to Italy.  My mom loved art.  She was a nurse by profession, but painted and drew as a hobby.  My father was talented in many languages and loved to write.  When they were getting ready to return to Sweden, they saw an advertisement for a ship to go from Italy to Algeria.  They both had a heart for adventure, so instead of flying home to Sweden, they boarded the ship bound for Algeria.  It is here that they got married.  My mom did not understand the vows that were said in French, but she answered yes in French, and so did my dad.  Algeria had recently been through a devastating civil war, and there was extreem povery among the locals.  My father started working at a French radio station, since he spoke French.  By 1964, my eldest brother was born.  All the little children called their fathers" Baba" on the street, so of course that is what my brother came to call his dad.  This tradition carried through to the rest of us siblings.  We still call him "Baba" today, instead of "dad".
By 1966, my father was offered a position within the United Nations in the Congo, Africa, due to his excellent language skills.  He would eventually acquire seven languages to his linguistic skills.  Plans changed however, almost last minute, and his assignment changed to Bangkok, Thailand.  The Vietnam War was raging, and their neighbor flew across from the Thai border to Vietnam dropping Agent Orange.  I was born in the spring of 1967, and my birth certificate is written in Thai, with a U.N. translation into English.  Since my parents were Swedish citizens, and the Thai laws are different than the U.S. I acquired Swedish citizenship, but was also considered a Thai national.
We lived my first four years in Thailand, and my very first memories are faint but occur right about age three and four.  We had two monkeys, two ara macaw parrots my parents bought from a flea market, two large turtles we could ride on, an amadillo, and a cobra trained dog named Joey.  We were not allowed to go play in our cobra infested back yard,  unless Joey our dog was with us to protect us.  My brother and I learned to speak in Thai.  My first language was Swedish, my second language Thai.  English would be my third language, a few years later.  By 1970, we had another brother.  My parents gave us all Swedish first names, and our middle names were from the country we were born in.  So my eldest brother had an Algerian middle name, and my little brother and I had Thai middle names.  My youngest brother would eventually have an Indonesian middle name.  Sometime by early 1971, we moved from Thailand to Western Samoa, out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.  We took a large cruise ship named Himalyia to get there.  Oh, just to add to the confusion of my background, my parents went on a trip to Nepal when I was one, where I learned to take my first steps.  We also visited Sweden when I was one, before returning back to Thailand.
Next Sunday I will continue my life's journey, and write about the next place we moved to, Samoa.

Summer 1978, our return home to Sweden after our escape out of Afghanistan

           Our escape out of Afghanistan in 1978, led us through the countries of Iran, Turkey, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia (which is what it was called then), Hungary, Greece, Austria, Czechoslovakia (the name of the country at the time), Germany, Denmark, and finally a ferry over to Sweden.  We traded duty free cigarettes for gasoline, which was a more valued currency during the gas shortage of 1978.  After returning home to Sweden for awhile, our parents enrolled us in Swedish school again.  It was during the fall that I found out that I desperately needed glasses, and the whole world became clearer to me.  I never knew that the birds I heard were actually visible on the tree branches, and that stars in the night sky were not supposed to be a blur.

By the end of 1978, my father had acquired a position in the northern territory of Australia, and we were off again on another adventure.  Now I could translate sentence by sentence from my journals at the time, but I have decided to instead look through the journals, and summarize to you what happened.  However, before I tell you about our two years in Australia, I have to summarize for you where it all started.  You see there was a me before my journal in Afghanistan, even if it was not in the form of a journal.  So here goes...  A flashback to the beginning of my life.
I will enter it as separate blogs, to organize my thoughts.

October 13, 2012
RETURN to my blog, sorry about the 3 year absence

Dear Readers of my blog,
Last night I went to see the movie ARGO, about the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis.  It inspired me to return to my blog writing.  Seeing the scenes in the movie, as the "film crew" tried to drive through the bazaar in Teheran, reminded me of my family and I driving our Volkswagon station wagon only a year before that, after escaping war torn Afghanistan, and driving into Iran.  Foreigners were not very welcomed, and even if we were Swedish, our nationality was not written on our foreheads, only on our passports.  It was a frightening time driving through the land.  Yet my parents tried to still teach us the Persian culture as we entered the land, and we visited magnificent mosques and persian ruins and palaces.  I don't think I realized as an eleven year old how dangerous of a place we were in.  I have realized this as I have grown up, and now looking back, after seeing ARGO the movie.
Since I wrote in 2009, my principal Mr. Eberhart of Ahlman Academy has passed away.  It has been almost a year now.   Mr. and Mrs. Eberhart did incredible good things.  They helped sponser their Afghan neighbors, and provided for them during their first time in America, after escaping Afghanistan.
Since I wrote in 2009, my own life has been an interesting journey, and I will update for awhile daily.
Good night,
from thetravelsofann

12th entry Yugoslavia, and beyond...

15 July, 1978 We went to camping Hellas. At 5 P.M. we came to Yugoslavia. We stayed at Camping Varda at 9 P.M. On the morning of the 16th of July it was very windy. We left for Skopia then Beograg, and then we camped again in our big green tent. I have gotten really good at rolling sleeping bags, since that is one of my jobs. We slept really well, it was so comfortable.

18 July, 1978 We left and drove to Hungary. The border check was difficult. We camped at a petrol station, we were the only ones there. Then when my big brother had put up our tent, we had hot dogs at the restaurant. (Drawing in journal of us eating).

19 July, 1978 We rolled our mattresses and my big brother took down the tent. We saw old buildings and nice bridges. This town looked like it was buit a long time ago, like Stockholm in the 1200's. The ladies had short skirts. We saw an old fortress by the Donau river. It is called the Sittadel. The city is named Budapest. There were large holes in the walls of the fortress where they put cannons through a long time ago. (Note from the present: The river I'm referring to which is misspelled in my journal is the Danube River, in Hungary. Here thousands of Hungarian Jews were marched to their death, shot and thrown into the Danube River during the last part of World War Two. Raoul Wahlenberg, who was a Swedish diplomat working secretly with the Americans, was able to save 10,000 Hungarian Jews from the Nazis, right at the location I visited in my journal).

AUSTRIA (Osterike) Later on we arrived in Austria. A kind old lady and man said we could spend the night in their house. All the hotels were too expensive. And we could not find the camping place we were looking for. July 20th in the morning we had breakfast. Then the lady went to a school where she was a teacher teaching people French. In the afternoon there were no people around. All the restaurants were closed. All but one we found! We ate there. Then we found a camping place for the next night.

21 July, 1978 Mammi, my little brother and I we all went to take showers. If you wanted warm water you had to put in 5 Shillings in a machine. But there was only a little luke warm water that came out, and just as I had shampoo all over my hair, out comes freezing cold water!!! It was also very cold outside. It was aweful! Then it started to rain all day. On July 22nd we left the camping place and arrived in Wien. (Vienna) Mammi and Baba (my parents) made us lunch. Then my three brothers and I picked raspberries, but then Mammi said we were not allowed to, they belonged to someone else. We went to a small play ground instead. On July 24th we went on a walk and we saw thousands of fruit trees. They all looked so good. Apple trees, pears, cherries, red berry trees, olives, peaches, apricots and plumb trees. (Journal shows drawings).

25 July, 1978 We all went on a railway car. When we were in town we met Ibrahim and Chantall. They were going out for a drive in their car. Then we went back on the rail way car to Camping West number one, and we went to sleep. On July 26th we went to one of the world's biggest built churches and we listened to the organ music. It was really beautiful. (Years later in 1980 and again in 2009, I would be in Seoul, South Korea where the biggest church in world is today, with the largest congregation). When we had finished listening to the organ music, we met Ibrahim and Chantall and their sister. We were invited to have coffee and tea with them. When it was all over we took the rail way car home (sparvagn). Chantall's sister was engaged with a man from Sweden. Baba was going to help Ibrahim get a U.N. job. He found a job he could do. He had to fill out three yellow forms.

27 July, 1978 Praten, Austria. We went to Praten, which is like Gronalund! (An amusement park). We rode on the world's biggest ferry wheel. My big brother and I went on a roller coaster. It was terribly scary! I pulled my whole neck muscle (sendrag) and could not straighten it for hours. When we were going to go home, there were no more rail cars, we had gotten there too late. (I'm not sure what we did, the journal doesn't say).

28 July, 1978 We went to a restaurant. Baba ordered a dish he didn't know what it was. Then Mammi ordered something that looked like sweet pallt with powder sugar on. (Pallt is a traditional northern Swedish dish that you either love like me, or hate). On July 29th we drove into Germany (Tyskland). We had to drive quickily through Germany. (I'm not sure why, unless we were in East Germany perhaps, and my parents did not want trouble there). We stopped at a place and bought some bread and something to drink. By July 30th we drove into Denmark. We got a new license plate for the car. There was a nice man there that gave us ice cream. We drove all the way to the harbor and by 4 A.M. we were on the ferry to Sweden. We arrived in Goteborg, Sweden at 7 in the morning. (Since I mentioned about World War Two earlier, I want to point out that the trip from Denmark to Sweden, three hour boat ride, was also the escape route for thousands of Danish Jews. They would be hidden on Danish fishing boats and taken to Sweden and taken refuge in Sweden until WW II was over).

31 July, 1978 We are at Goteborg's harbor, back home in Sweden. The vet checked out our parrot Efraim who had been traveling with us the whole time. The vet said he was healthy and we were allowed to bring him into Sweden. We drove in our car all the way home to our house in Balsta. My grandparents met us there. They had been taking care of our house while we were in Afghanistan. It was still summer in Sweden and warm.

Notes from the present: This is where my first journal ends. The second one picks up when I am in school in Sweden. I am still trying to put photos on the blog. Technical difficulties.