Sophie's Journal Page for Africa..

 

March 1st, monday

So lets see.. Whats been happenin'...... Well yesterday I had an awesome birthday. (A REAL ONE!) But I COULDN'T SLEEP ALL NIGHT afterwards. So I'm kinda tried right now. umm I mean tired. See? I can't even type. (Loud weird yawn). (-_-)zzzz. Sorry, so we had a REALLY good lunch (mmm-mmm chicken) and then we went to the MALL! it was so fun. I didn't get anything though. BUT I didn't have to! because we're going to Kruger National Park to look at animals for my birthday also. Right now I have two birthday cakes. One from yesterday's dinner. It's very good and I got to eat it for breakfast because it has a lot of eggs in it. The other cake I baked this morning. I still have to put frosting on it, and sprinkles. The other day we went to Table Mountain, and there was a couple things called D-, umm, a D-, I'm trying to get Valerie to say but she won't tell me because she says I'm lazy. Anyway whatever they were they looked like Pikas and apparently are related to elephants. (Go fig. they look like rodents to me). My mom says they're really rock hyraxes and that Valerie needs to tell me they're called Dazzies here. Oh and last week we went to a place called "World of Birds" and we had a lot of fun. There were other things there too. Like Penguins and Squirrel monkeys. Another cool animal place we went was the aquarium. They have Really scary things there. like HUGE, HUMONGO crab things that look more like GIANT spiders. They had Moray Eels, and cute little baby crocodiles that I really wanted to pet and hold. Even though they'd probably bite my finger off. They had REALLY SCARY jellyfish. And may I present to you........................................

 

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DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

 

 

 

(JAWS THEME......................)

 

DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN DU N DUN.........................................

 

DUN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

a BIG REALLY SCARY, no wait, 7 REALLY SCARY sharks, and ONE REALLY scary stingray. Sorry, I may have over exagerated. but they were scary. Am I icthyophobic? and they were really cool too.

Other stuff during the week - My parents' friend Peter Lamb, we went to his mom's birthday party. She turned 83, and she is still in pretty good shape too. We also went to a Fish Braii? I'll just call it a fish roast. So the people hosting the party were very nice; and they also had really cute dogs. Max and Molly. Molly was a very quiet and non-yippie shnowser (I don't know how you spell it). Max was aparently from the pound, and he was a very cute, playful, adorable dog. There were two girls my age there, Lisa and Kelly and they were very nice too. We played cards with them and also played Sharks and minnows. Then we had a GREAT fish for dinner (Snoek), and we talked mostly about weird Japanese cartoons. At the end Kelly, Lisa, and I watched a bit of Pirates of the Caribbean. That's about all I can remember about this week. I'm happy and doing well (Except for the fact that I am Missing home, Missing friends, and Missing pets.) Look at my Africa pictures! Now if you excuse my I am going to Frost my cake and eat it too.

March 7th SUNDAY,

We just got back from Kruger, and we saw tons of really cool stuff. We saw all of the Big 5, Lions, Leopards, Elephants, Buffalo, and Rhinos. The first drive we saw 2 leopards, and those are really hard to see and get a good look at. The first one was in a tree, and before I could get a good picture of it, it turned around and jumped off. The second leopard was bigger, and he crossed the road and then disappeared into the long grass. Leopards are really cool. The Lion we saw was really a Lion-ess and she was just sitting in the road. We saw a bunch of Elephants, some of them had little babies. The buffalo we saw was all the way on the other side of a river, but we couldn't see any other buffalo, at first we thought it was a bear/log. We saw the Rhinos up by a mountain. There were a lot of really cool animals. We even got a good look at a Cheetah!!! Last time I saw a cheetah before that, it was WAAAAAAAAAAY farther away than where we saw this one! Other animals we saw were Zebras, Giraffes, Impalas, Klipspringers, Waterbuck, Elands, Eagles, Turtles, Go-away birds (really annoying!), Kingfishers, Hippos, Crocodiles, Dwarf mongooses (or is it mongeese?), Kudu, Side-Striped Jackals, etc. etc. etc. You get it. We bought an ostrich egg and a really cool drum! We were seeing the animals with another couple, Lisa and Dean. They were very nice people. Apparantly they hadn't seen very many animals before we came. They were on they're honeymoon, and had been married for about 2 weeks.

Before we went to Kruger we went to Robben Island. Robben Island is a place where they had a jail, but they didn't put people who were necessarily bad in the jail. The jail there was for people who protested against the government. Against apartheid (A-par-tide, not a-par-thee-ed, like I thought.) Apartheid was worse than what happened in our country when black and white people were treated differently. People of different races got treated differently in South Africa because of the laws. People were separated into 4 different groups, Hindu, Black, White and Coloured (people of mixed race or other races). In the prison you weren't aloud to talk to other people. Nelson Mandela (first
South African President after apartheid) was released after eighteen years in this prison. He finished his term in 1999.

This is my last day in South Africa! Waaaaaaaah! Next we go to India. South africa has been a very fun place. It has beautiful beaches, friendly people, and cool animals! Today
we are going to a mall, and we are doing internet, getting some stuff (like a crystal for me!) and my dad and little brother are getting haircuts. Talk to you in India!!!!!!

~Sophie~