Where in the world is Turkmenistan....

After checking my blog stats the other day, I have discovered there are a lot of people all over the world with a lot of free time on their hands (thanks Coronavirus).  It is nice to see that I have quite a few international readers so I decided to give a few shout outs and learn a few new things myself.

Turkmenistan made it pretty close to the top viewers last week so thanks for that and look at all these amazing facts about Turkmenistan (a sovereign country) I found out.  This would be a great place to visit but apparently, it is very difficult to obtain a Visa to be allowed in.  I guess that is why Turkmenistan is one of the least visited places in the world.

Factoids:
~The capital and largest city is Ashgabat which translates to city of love/devotion.

~Turkmenistan comes from the Persian (Farsi) language and means land of the Turkmen.

~Turkmen is the language of the majority with Russian and Uzbek spoken as well.

~It is bordered on the northwest by Kazakhstan, to the north and east by Uzbekistan, to the southeast by Afghanistan, to the south and southwest by Iran, and the Caspian Sea to the west.

~More than 70% of Turkmenistan is covered by the Karakum Desert (black sand).

~Turkmenistan gained independence from the Soviet Union in October 1991.

~Until 2006, Turkmenistan was ruled by president/dictator, Saparmurat Niyazov (first president).

~Nivazov passed a few questionable laws during his time as president including no spandex, no gold teeth, no opera, no lip syncing at concerts, young men were banned from having long hair or beards, no dogs in the capital, and banning smoking in public places.  He also changed the names of the days of the week to match the names of his family members.

~The next president was Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow (formally a dentist) changed back some of those wacky laws and made a few of his own such as no black cars allowed, favoring white cars instead because white brings good luck.

~Speaking of white, Turkmenistan holds the Guinness World Record for most buildings made of white marble (543).

~Turkmenistan also holds the Guinness World Record for the largest indoor Ferris Wheel and most public pools in one place.

~Turkmenistan is home to Akhal-Teke breed which is one of the purest breeds in the world with a price tag of up to $3,000,000!  The Akhal-Teke horses are a national emblem of  Turkmenistan.

~The final factoid is the Gates to Hell as the locals call the Darvaza Gas Craters.  This is a deep crater fill with huge deposits of natural gas and oil.  In 1971, Soviet engineers lit the crater to burn off the excess gas.  They believed the process would take a few weeks to burn off; however, it is still burning today.

Thanks again to the readers in Turkmenistan!

A government board just recommended that 45,000 wild horses and burros be killed to make room for beef mega farms — and taxpayers are about to pay for it.

Here is a better idea, STOP EATING BEEF and then the wild horses can continue to run free and you do not have to clog up your arteries with disgusting cow flesh!

This is infuriating!  Read the entire article here.

Mr. Charlie

I never saw him once without this hat.

If you are a long-time reader of my blog, you will know that we are known for our pet population which has included a horse or two at some time or another.  We used to spend a lot of time at a local stable which was once used as an auction house prior to the 70s if I am correct about that, not 100%.  Anyway, we used to board our beloved horse, Rain, there.  She also gave birth in the back stall almost 8 years ago in May.  Whoa............  Mr. Charlie ran this old stable for horses, and everyone loved him a lot.  He always took time out to talk to us and anyone really.  He also told us that no baby  horses have been born in the stables since 1970.  We named the baby girl after him, Charlie Rose, and he was so surprised.  He said no one has ever named anything after him before.  He was touched but to us it was no big deal.  It just felt like a good name.

Recently, we have been noticing a lot of renovations at the old stables, actually the destruction of, so we wanted to check things about a little bit.  The good news, we did learn that a therapeutic horse clinic is going to be using the facility now.  They have a lot of beautiful horses, and they look like they take very good care of them.  Sadly we learned that Mr. Charlie passed away just last year at 91.  It was really sad to get the news.  I just wanted to post this in his memory.  Rest in peace, dear Charlie.

A plethora of pets

Doesn't everyone have this many pets?

After I did the blog post regarding the acquisition of  our 2 newest family members from the animal kingdom, I jokingly said we would be ready to board Noah's arc soon if we keep bringing in animals the way we have been.  So that is what prompted this blog post about our family pets.

This is Ms. Rain.  She is 13 years old now.  We have had her for 6 years.  She is the "Obligatory Christmas pony" that every little girl dreams of but does not usually get but my husband thought it would be the best present ever, therefore, they loaded her up in a trailer and delivered her.

What my husband did not know was that not only did he get them the greatest Christmas present ever, he got them  two of the greatest Christmas presents ever as she was about 5 months pregnant when we took her.

Charlie Rose was born in May and what a handful she was.  We did the best we could do to train her and work with her but it was really like the blind leading the blind since neither my husband nor myself has had any formal instruction in how to train a horse, let alone a wild baby horse.  We gave her to one of the local horse barns in our area because she was getting bigger and wilder by the minute.

Here is Shadow.  Shadow is the first feline I have ever had in all my years on earth.  I did not think I even liked cats until we brought him home.  He is devastatingly handsome and such a sweety.  I love Shadow.

Smokey, on the other hand, made me question again whether or not I like cats.  I don't know about this guy. We adopted him from a shelter for some reason that escapes me now since I was really happy just having Shadow but he is here now so.........  We never know what he will do next.  He acts like he owns the place chasing around and pouncing on poor Shadow day in and day out but if anyone rings the doorbell or even sneezes too loudly, he takes off so fast, you barely know he has gone by and he is nowhere to be found for hours after that.  He is scared of everything but still he tries to be the alpha male. He is more like the alpha idiot.  I think he has mental issues as well.  He is just different!  I think that is what I like about him and dislike about him.

Ms. Emily. This is the sweetest guinea pig ever!  She had a nice long life.  Emily is another one of our female pets that was already pregnant when we brought her home.  She had 3 babies and they all looked like big cotton balls.  They were so cute and little.  I did not realize how little baby guinea pigs are.  We raised the babies for 6 weeks, and they all went to good homes.

Ms. Danny.  Danny was Emily's roommate for 6 1/2 years.  She was more of a booger than Emily was.  She liked human fingers a lot.  Danny also had babies while she was here.  She gave birth to 4 little cotton balls, and they all went to good homes too after 6 weeks.  Do you see the pattern of pregnant female pets going on here?  Our new animal policy is NO MORE FEMALE ANIMALS!!!!

Hermit crabs.  I think we have had 5 total but I do not remember.  I am only vaguely aware of their names.  I think Coconut, Breeze, Sandy, Oreo, and Peanut.  Anyhoo, hermit crabs are not exactly warm and cuddly.  I think they are the kind of pets you just say you have but cannot really interact with them, like fish.  That reminds me, we can also add fish to the list of pets.  At one time, we had 2 beta fish.  One was attacked by Smokey and the other was washed down the sink when we were trying to clean the fish bowl.  Oh well!

Jink is from last Christmas.  He was quite a wild man he we brought him home.  A couple of friends left out of here with bloody, chewed up finger thanks to him.  I was pretty close to getting a replacement guinea pig because this dude was acting like a Tasmanian Devil for the first week and a half.  He was not playing nicely with his roommate Gwin either.  He has calmed down now.  Lucky for him since my husband wanted to put him out in the field and see if any hawks were around for lunch.

Gwin.  This is a nice little piggie.  He does not really cause any drama.  He is my kind of piggie!

Ms. Cookie Butt.  She is one of the strays that has adopted us.  I love Cookie!!!  She is spunky, feisty, playful, and sweet all rolled into one perfect cat.  I think she should be cloned. She is 3 now and has been

around since she was about 6

weeks old.

Cookie Butt had 1 litter of kittens her first year and since you know my kiddos are animal crazy, we raised them for 8 weeks and then found them a home.  Luckily, they all went together.

Inkie

Callie

Blackie

There was a 4th kitten born but sadly he was not breathing and Cookie was a little busy giving birth and taking care of the other kittens to help him out and since I am not proficient in newborn kitten CPR, he did not make it.  These kittens were crazy cute!  And yes, my kids were begging to keep them all but dear husband was not interested in funding food and vet bills for any more pets.

This is Ricky Bobby.  What a dumb name!  This guy was another surprise.  His mamma is Rain, that stunning bay pony pictured at the top and his poppa is Norman, that very unattractive donkey pictured below.  This little Ricky Bobby is also unattractive, well, ugly is a better word for it.  He was ugly when he was born.  He was cute for about a week, and now he is ugly again.  Poor guy!

Norman.  He is not ours, I am just including him since he is Ricky Bobby's poppa.   Only a mamma could love this face.  Blah!!!  I don't like Norman because he tried to eat A11's finger one day and almost succeeded.

This has been an exhausting blog post!  Finally, down to the last of the pets.
Percy and Finnick.  They have only been here 5 days.  So far, so good!  They just sit on their perches and look at us.  I think they are getting used to all the noise and the cats looking at them like they are dinner.  They are really nice birds.

So there you have it!
I thought it would be fun to see all of these animals together in one place but now that I am seeing it all laid out like this, there is a good chance that we could end up on episode of Animal Hoarders.

More horse resources

Just wanted to add a few more great horse resources. 
National geographic kids
Horse facts
Spirit
Draw a horse

Horse-opoly

We have been playing Horse-opoly all week.  It is a really fun version of Monopoly except it has a horse theme.  There is a lot of information about each breed of horse on the cards.  So when you buy a horse breed, you can learn all about that breed on the back of the card.

Horse-opoly is played with the same type of game board, money, and cards as the traditional version.

Horse sense cards have funny things for you to do.

Horse play cards.

Smokey was our banker for the last game.  Don't tell him but he was not the best banker.  He never paid me when I passed go. 

I am sure we will play this once more before we wrap up this unit which will be Friday, I hope.  Then we are going to canter over to a study of Marie Curie from Beyond Five in a Row.

Horse unit study resources

We are ready to get back to work after a much needed break.  We will start off with our favorite animal.  You guessed it, the horse and anything horse-like.  My kiddos already know a lot about horses just because they love them and wanted to learn everything about them but we have never taken on the topic as an official school topic so at the request of C12, we are now doing just that.  They started learning about horses when they received a horse for Christmas, not only did they get one horse, they got 2 horses.  YEP!  We adopted a pregnant horse.  What are the odds of that?  The birth of little Charlie Rose was a really exciting day and a day I know my kids will never forget! 

We will be using Amanda Bennett's Horse unit study as our main guide.

Here are a few of the resources that we have accumulated over the years.

We also have almost everything you can put a horse's picture on, T-shirts, mugs, blankets, notebooks, screen savers, pencils, pillowcases, picture frames, mouse pad, and I just cannot go on.  We have a playroom full of acrylic horse, plastic horse, stuffed horses, stick horses, painted horses, horse posters and calendars,  fuzzy horses, etc............  They even have used horseshoes as decorations in their rooms.  So, I think you can conclude that we love horses.  You may have figured that out just by the name of our blog. 

This should be a fun unit to work on.  It will certainly be an easy one for me to teach.