Pajama & Reading Marathon

Yesterday, Aleena's class had a pajama and reading day.  The second grader's wore their pajamas, and brought pillows, blankets and stuffed animals to spend the day reading together.

Crazy

Tuesday was "Crazy Hair" day at ISB Elementary School.  Jacob is now in middle school, and Nalin went to a friend's house to fix up her hair, so my only model was Aleena.  Aleena was not happy with the "craziness" of her hair.

Moving On Ceremony

Nalin had her elementary school graduation ceremony today.  When she returns to ISB next fall, she will join her older brother in middle school.

She is looking forward to middle school, but a few friends are leaving, and I think that she is really going to miss them.  Fortunately, a couple of her best friends are staying, which should make things a bit easier.

In addition to the handing out of diplomas, the celebration included the students singing a few songs and a slide show of photos of the kids throughout the year.  The kids seemed to have a good time.  After the ceremony ended at about 9:00 a.m., they spent the rest of the day at the pool, having a party

Dance Recital

Nalin and Aleena had their dance recital last week.  They both did a great job, Aleena with her jazz performance, and Nalin with jazz and street funk.

Gymnastic Meet

Aleena had her BISAC gymnastic meet today at Harrow International School. She was on the level one junior squad for ISB as they competed against four other schools. The ISB junior level one squad placed third as a team.

 Aleena, for her part, performed much better than she did at last year's ISB Black & Gold gymnastics meet. In addition to being better at the different events, she didn't stick her tongue out at anyone while she was being scored on the balance beam. It is still accurate to say, however, that she is there to have fun. I think that she enjoys socializing with her teammates more than actually performing. Still, as long as she is having fun, its fine with me.

 I took a lot of photos of the level one junior and senior ISB squads. I didn't have explicit permission to cross the barrier and take photos with the professionals hired to take photos for the event, but I stayed out of everyone's way and no-one asked me to leave. Between today's gymnastics meet and the two Panther Paw events this weekend, I am going to have a lot of photos to go through.

 While most of the photos from today have not yet been edited, I did make a first pass of some of Aleena. In some cases, I am going to go back and clean these up more.

Father Daughter Dance

Saturday was the Father/Daughter dance here in Bangkok.  It's been a popular tradition as long as I've been here, but almost fell apart last year when the Girl Guides were no longer around to sponsor it.  The PTA took the reigns last year to save the day.  This year the Girl Scouts were involved with the dance, although it was not an official Girl Scout event.

Some of Aleena's friends, Nyla, Kaylee and Trinity came over for some photos before the dance.  Oh, and they brought their dates too.

This year's dance as hosted at the Dusit Thani hotel in Bangkok.  The ballroom looked nice and the food was decent.  For the girls, the stars of the event are not the food, the ballroom, and certainly not the dads.  They just really love dressing up and dancing and frolicking with their friends.

Once again this year I left my camera at home.  Well, I took a small camera, but only took a few photos.  I haven't even loaded them into my photo organizing software.

Disney Sea

On our fourth day, we visited Disney Sea.  There are two Disney parks in Tokyo, Disney Magic Kingdom and Disney Sea.  We only had one day scheduled to visit Disney, and since we had visited Magic Kingdom in Hong Kong and Orlando (when Jacob and Nalin were little), we choose Disney Sea.  It was no surprise that the kids really enjoyed the park.

Dancing

Out of the Frame

Playing Around with Photoshop

Sunsoji Temple - More Photos