Sunday 15 August 2010

Your Japanese word of the week is...

"orora" オーロラ which is just the phonetic translation of "aurora", the famous Northern Lights.  The aurora lights, being an interaction of solar wind particles with the Earth's magnetic field, is a rather rare occurance since it can only be seen further north and in dark areas than, let's say, Vancouver.  So when the news said that a rather large solar wind was going to light up skies near the 49th parallel, I grabbed my camera and headed out of the city to try and snag a picture of it.

Unfortunately, despite what has been a rather awesome Vancouver summer, one of the few cloudy nights we've had was the same night I went up so there really wasn't much to see...  so in the end, I just took a few night shots with some friends and headed home.  I suppose if I was really desperate I could always venture further into the interior or take those "aurora watching" tours to Yellowknife but...  well, we'll see haha....

The other big piece of news is that I'm officially done my Bachelor of Education program!  It was an interesting 1 year and I certainly learned a lot...  the challenge now is to find work that will let me test out my skills haha... 

So come September, Pacific Spirit Karate will be kicking off again with the bar set slightly higher, I'll be able to update this blog more frequently (check back next week for pics from my upcoming trip to Yellowstone Park), and hopefully I'll be working and teaching so I can share my experiences about that.

Til then...