Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Collecting Amber

It's been such a long time since I've posted a blog.  It's been a crazy couple of months with trips home to meet Bryson and see family and then vacation with 3 of the 4 kids in Thailand.  I know I need to finish up blogging about our Vietnam trip and then I want to tell you all about Thailand as well.  The trips will take me a bit of time but I hope to get to it soon.

I also want to start blogging more about life here on Sakhalin Island, so I thought I would do a quick post about our trip to the beach last Sunday.  It wasn't an actual trip to the beach to swim, but rather Max went fishing at the beach and I went along.

I'd heard about the Amber beach north of our city, Yuzhno, but this was the first time I'd been there.  It is actually the coastline about 70 kilometers north of Yuzhno near the little village of Starodubskoye.  Max's coworker, Oleg, went with us.  He and Max had also gone fishing at the same spot the day before.  Oleg told me how to find the amber along the beach.  He said you look in the line of debris among the sticks that have washed up.  I started looking and soon realized that the amber glistened in the sun and was pretty easy to find.

Below is a photo of the lines of sticks that I looked through to find the amber.  The beach is actually really pretty and goes for miles.  This was at a time when the tide was low and near an inlet so you can't really see how nice the beach actually is.  I didn't have a camera card with me so I could take only 4 pictures, three of which were of the fishermen and their catch.


Below is a photo I took of the amber after I got home.  Some of the stones are more red than yellow.  My favorite piece is the sort of large yellow stone at the top of the photo.  Oleg said he has a tiny drill bit and made his wife a necklace from one of the stones she found.  Maybe I'll do that someday.


I had so much fun finding the amber and am sure I'll do it again.

Oh, and Max caught 3 salmon on Sunday.  He also caught 10 salmon the day before at this same spot.

Love to you all,
Karen

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