A Quick Jamaica Account

Hey everyone,
I just got back from a missions trip to Jamaica yesterday. It was an experience that I am never going to forget. My relationship with Jesus Christ has exponentially grown stronger. I'm sorry that I can't write much, but I only have today because I leave for Italy very early tomorrow morning. I will write about that and more about this when I get back.

Here is a picture of my team and me.

The Egyptian Way!!!

Over winter break I went to a place where people don't normally go for an everyday vacation. I went to Egypt and Jordan. We stayed there for two weeks and even stayed for Christmas. It was kind of different but it was still really cool to do.

     So the Places we went were: Cairo, Abu Simbel, Aswan, A Cruise on the Nile, where we stopped at several places along the way; and Luxor, which had a lot of places to go to also. Today I am going to talk about Cairo.

 YYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

     Cairo, in case you didn't know is the Capitol of Egypt. It is rather large, but it is not like the big cities we have in the U.S. One of the coolest and most interesting things about Cairo is that the traffic is so crazy and the pedestrians just walk right through like there is nothing to it. But of course the coolest part of Cairo is Giza. Where's that? That is where the Pyramids are. The biggest things in the whole world in the Ancient Days, the things that were so incredibly built that people thought aliens came down and built them, the massive structures that made scientists believe that maybe the Egyptians had technology almost as advanced as ours... Yes those Pyramids!!!! They are one of the coolest things you will ever see in your life. And they are one of the few remaining ancient wonders of the world. I really thought they were cool.  We got to ride a camel by the pyramids too. My camels name was Charlie. He was a cool camel.

He liked too eat out of my hand. By the way this was the other camel named charlie, it wasnt my camel this was my camel.

 Also in Cairo, actually right outside of Cairo, there was the Step Pyramid, the very first pyramid built by the father of the one who built the Great Pyramid. It was really cool, but not even close to as big as the other 3 pyramids were. Over by that pyramid I got to ride my horse, Amira; which means princess.

Isn't she a peerrrrrrtyyyy one?

 Oh how could I forget to mention the most important part of our trip to Cairo... Our guide!!! Ahmed!!!!!!!

Best Guide Ever!!!!

We also went to the Museum in Cairo. The coolest thing there was that it had a whole section on King Tutankhamen. Way cool!!!

The museum is in Tahrir Square, which is where all of the protests have been and it is also where the revolution started.

This is a burned out government building right next to the museum. 

Although there had been problems in Cairo, we felt completely safe and we had no problems with protestors or anything like that.

See ya'll later when I talk about the rest of my Egyptrip.

Amboseli day two

Amboseli was the last place we went to. Our second and third days were a little bit different than the first. Early in the morning the second day my GRANDPA/DAD and I went on a nature walk with a couple Masai men who knew their stuff about the area they live in. I learned many interesting things and saw some really cool stuff, for example:

we learned that Dik diks, on right, leave a little black thick fluid that comes from their eyes on different plants, or something like that, to mark their territory.
Here is one doing what I just explained they do.

We also saw some footprints of Aardvarks, porcupines, and elephants. We also heard some really cool bird sounds and looked at different spider's webs.

Later that day we went on an all day game drive where we stopped for lunch later on at the top of a hill. We drove around looking for things when we saw a big group of elephants with hyenas hanging around them.

They kept creeping up to the elephants, but the elephants chased them away. It turned out that there was a dead hippo behind the elephants that the hyenas wanted to get to. The elephants chased them away because they thought that the hyenas were going after them. We sat there watching for who knows how long. When nothing else happened for a while, we eventually got bored and left.

A little while later we saw hundreds of more elephants in the distance. It was just a huge line of them that never seemed to end.

Driving along some more we happened to come by a couple of ragged looking lionesses looking for water and food. They looked like they were exhausted and could not go on much longer. I had to feel sorry for them, they looked like they hadn't eaten in years.
They did not do very much, but since we had the best seat in the house, meaning we were the closest to them, we stayed and watched for a while.


We headed off to lunch and on the way we saw some hippos and elephants in the swamp water. On top of the little hill we were eating lunch on, we could see birds flying in the distance, hippos in the water, and some little sandstorms in the distance. After I was done eating I still had some leftover bread from the sandwich that I had so I was able to feed the birds around me. There was one that liked me and was brave enough to eat right out of my hand. It was cool because, one, I love birds, and two, they are wild birds not pets or ones from a zoo or something.
After that we started to head back to the lodge. We drove by a pond with storks and spoon bills in it.

Awww, isn't that cute. Those are spoon bills, the one behind them is a stork.

That is it for now everyone, I might not be writing for a while because school is starting tomorrow.
see ya

Amboseli day 1

We drove to Nairobi to an air strip and took a plane that only took four people. The ride was very bumpy because the plane was so small.

The view was amazing, I could see some animals from where we were in the plane. A funny thing is that the bumps were so big, that I thought we were going to fall all the way sometimes, but we didn't.

We landed in the middle of nowhere on a dirt air strip with someone waiting to pick us up. His name was David and he had some drinks and snacks with him for us to have.

I took this. Scherzo.

We drove to the lodge, on the way seeing some Maasai Giraffes.

Notice how the pattern is different than the Reticulated one in Samburu

We also saw some Ostriches. When we got to the lodge, they had warm towels to wash our faces off with and they had some watermelon juice for us to drink. The first night we stayed in a cabin, even thought we were supposed to have a tent which we ended up getting the next day anyway. It was very nice, the whole thing was like it was made by hand, or most of it anyway.

We had gotten there early so we went to the Maasai village near by, which we were going to do the next day. We went with a nice young women named Kimberly, who was from Island of Jersey. She works with the local people around the lodge.

We got there and we were greeted by the Chief, who was very young, because he was voted by his village to be the Chief.

The people greeted us with a dance and then showed us the houses, or huts, that the people lived in, then they showed us how they made fire, and then finally we went to look at some of the jewelry made by the women. We got some things as presents for some friends and I got a bracelet.

After that we went back to the lodge and relaxed for the rest of the day.
I will not be talking about Kenya on my next entry, instead, I will talk about my week in Big Bear Mountain.
bye

Kenya

Hi everyone sorry I have not written in so long I was busy with stuff I needed to do and plus, I got to go to Kenya for 2 weeks and it was fun and even more amazing than you can imagine. We first went to a place called Samburu which was a in a tropical sort of place which had monkeys and a few antelope called Kudu that came around every once and a while. I kept a journal so I wouldn't forget about everything. All the animals are:

• Wildebeast all over in the Masai Mara because of the great migration
• Zebras same thing as the wildebeast
• Giraffes
• baboons
• Rhinos
• Chimps
• Elands
• Topis
• Elephants
• buffalo
• monkeys
• dik diks
• impalas
• thomsan's gazelles
• grants gazelles
• hippos
• crocodiles
• vultures
• eagles
• secretary bird
• ostriches
• cheetahs
• lions
• hyenas
• mongoose
• jackals
• hartebeast
• oryx
• maribou
• warthogs
• storks
• spoon bills
• and much more

and many birds that were beautiful in color and that we saw many times so we could appreciate how pretty they were.

 This is Wafula--does he look familiar? I was given an African tribal name by a Kenyan man I met. It means Rainy Season which is a good time for Africa. It is a time when everything grows and animals are nourished.

This is only the intro to everything. My next blog entry will be about the first days in Samburu National Reserve.

It's Time

Guess what everybody--it's tomorrow. We're leaving for Italy tomorrow.

First we're going to fly to San Francisco. Then we fly to Frankfurt on a 747 like we did last time. I love the 745 because you lay completely flat when you want to sleep. And each seat a big TV screen that you can play video games on and watch TV. I'm going to be upstairs in business class. That's where I was last time. And also last time I was facing backwards. The plane was going forward but my back was facing that way. My papa has a lot of frequent flyer miles. That's why we get to go business class.

These is a picture of me sleeping and a picture of the TV screen.

I'll give pictures of this time, too.

From Frankfurt I fly to Nice, France. In France we're going to see our friends there for the first couple days. Then we're going to go to Arles and that's where I will be on my birthday. I'm going to be 13--psych--11.

And then, finally, we drive to Italy but we go to Bologna for two days. Then we go to Sant Antonio for a week. And then, FINALLY, we're going to Greve where all my friends are. I'm anxious to see my good friend and sister, Camilla

Well, gotta go.

Bye

Promotion day

Yesterday was the last day of school. It was also Promotion. I was being promoted to 6th grade. I made a slide show of pictures of promotion. When I got home from school there was a treasure hunt and at the end there was a big surprise. Wait till you see it.

Now, I'm a Middle Schooler.

The Fast Track

IT'S THE FASTEST. IT'S ALSO THE SLOWEST RIDE IN THE WORLD. GET READY FOR THE FAST TRACK!!!!!!!!!!








Would you like to come and ride it with me for only $ 0.25?

Christmas Eve

It's Christmas Eve, everybody. Just one day till Christmas. I'm ready but it seems like just yesterday I was in Italy swimming in a pool. But now, it's too cold and it's almost Christmas and I'm not in Italy.

I hope it snows tomorrow, which it probably won't because it doesn't snow in San Diego. But, I wish it did.

Have all of you gotten trees already? We have a really nice one and we have about
50 presents under it. That's too much. I think I should give some of them away--just kidding. A lot of them I bought for my grandparents, my mom and my uncle. My Uncle after he comes back from work he stays with us on Christmas eve. Then in the morning of Christmas, my uncle and I both open our stockings in bed. And then I get my grandparents stockings and bring them over to them.

I always have a lot of fun on Christmas and on Christmas eve.

On Christmas evening we go to the Christmas Eve service at church and listen to the story about Jesus, the one who started Christmas. As you see, the word Christ is in Christmas because Jesus is the Christ and he was supposedly born tomorrow over 2000 years ago. Sometimes people forget that.

Also on Christmas eve, at night, before I go to bed, I get to open one present. The rest I have to save til morning.

Have a Merry Christmas.

Ho Ho Ho

Bye.

This is our sausage Santa. He's always been one of our favorite decorations and as you can see, he's already for Christmas dinner.

My Teacher

Hi Everyone, this is my teacher Mrs. Johnson. I really like her. She is really fun and nice. She teaches me really good and I learn a lot from her. She teaches 4th and 5th grade seminar kids which is an advanced class. She teaches math the best but she teaches other things good, too.



We just had a big project due last week. It's called the Above and Beyond project. Mine was on Leonardo da Vinci. I did a model of one of his boats. Here's a picture of my project.



I also did a poster board with his inventions and paintings. And I did an example of the way Leonardo always wrote backwards with backwards writing. I also had to do an oral report and Mrs. Johnson said I did a really good job. Here's a picture of me doing my report.


Ooh ahh ooh, gotta go. Bye.
Next time, it's "It's Starting to Look A Lot Like Christmas--American Version"

I Sent My Letter to President-Elect Obama

Yesterday we sent my letter to President-Elect Obama--My Hero. You can see it down here below. I also put a copy of the blogs about him in the envelope.

Can you pray that it will get to him. If it gets to him, I'm hoping that he'll invite me to the White House and that I'll get to meet him and the new puppy that he's going to get for his girls. (I love dogs!)

I pray for Barack Obama every day that he'll be safe.

You can click on the pictures to make them bigger and easier to read.

Mr. President

Here's Our New President
I'm So Happy

I'll be in Washington D.C. at Barack Obama's inauguration. I can't wait. I wonder if I'll get to meet him? We already have our plane tickets so who wants to come with us.

YES WE CAN! YES WE CAN! YES WE CAN! YES WE CAN!

Off to school now. Bye, Bye.
Zooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooommmmm