I'M RICH!

When we were going into Zambia, a guy sold us this money for a souvenir. There is a 10 billion dollar note and a 50 trillion dollar note from Zimbabwe. When you look at the 50 trillion dollar note, you might think I could buy 50 houses and a ship. But, actually, this money is worth very little.

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Early in 2009, Zimbabwe took 12 0's off their currency. That means that the 50 trillion dollar note became a 50 dollar note (Zimbabwean dollar). According to today's exchange rate, 50 Zimbabwean dollars is worth US$0.13. Thirteen cents!

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Zimbabwe's economy is even worse than the US economy, which is why their money has lost its value. That's a big thing. No one will take Zimbabwean money, because it is worth nothing. Everyone wants American money.

Sports Day at WIS

This is a video of my Sports Day at Windhoek International School (WIS). WIS students are divided into three 'houses' (lions, leopards, and cheetahs)--just like in the Harry Potter movies. Sports Day is when the three houses compete against each other in athletic events.

One event is team walking which is when 5 people stand on two boards with a rope to hold onto. You have to step together to make the boards go forward. Whoever gets to the finish line first wins. When my team (Leopards) did it, we came in second because our boards overlapped and we had to straighten them out. We almost caught up with the other team, but didn't make it.

We did an obstacle course where you have to step into 4 tires, go over a hurdle, go under a hurdle, and go over another hurdle. Then you go around a pole and come back. The cheetah team did not have enough players, so I played for them, sadly.

Then there was a race in which three people from each house raced. I got a late start so I ended last. It was a 40m dash.

There was a wheelbarrow race in which a person got into a wheelbarrow, and the other person pushed him. When you got to the finish line, you switched places, and you came back to where you started. I was with Lushano, but I was too much of a weight for him!

The last thing I did was a tug of war challenge against the other teams. We lost the first round against the Lions because one of the Lions' dads helped them pull. But, we faced the Cheetahs and won that time. When all of the other grades had gone (the Leopards won many of those) the entire house (all grades) came together and pulled. The parents were invited too. We lost because the other teams had about 20 parents on their side, and we only had my dad and Lushano's dad on our side.

At the end of the day, they announced which houses had won. The contest was divided into primary and secondary. I'm in secondary (Year 7 and up). Primary is Year 6 and down. The primary Leopards got third place, but the secondary Leopards got first place. When the added all of the scores together for the overall prize, the Leopards got second place, and the Lions got first place. We only lost by 119 to 113 points. Just 6 points, which is very few.

This is a picture of me and Jose holding the first place Secondary trophy. But, we didn't get to keep it. It gets displayed in my PE teachers classroom. His name is Mr. Beukes and he put the day together.

The overall day was very fun, and I liked helping my house get first place in the Secondary.

My school field trip to Harnas

These are photos that I took at Harnas. It is a wildlife rehabilitation sanctuary near Gobabis, Namibia. My class was taking a field trip there. We stayed overnight in tents. We used the money from our "Make it Sell" unit to pay for the Harnas trip, so the games that I made helped pay for the trip.

This photo is the lapa, which is the place where you can buy drinks and food.

These are mongoose that live near the lapa. People call them out and feed them pieces of meat and they all charge over there in a huge group. These are taking a drink from the pool that was there.

When we walked to the campsite we were greeted by a giraffe that sniffed my mom's hand. We got really close to it and petted its head.

My friend Abvi's birthday was the day that I got there. We had cake and celebrated.

These are bat-eared foxes that we looked at and we got to pet one. It was really soft. They live in burrows and they had started to collapse the building near where they had their burrows because of all the tunnels they had dug under the house.

This is a spider monkey. They had one loose near the lapa. It climbed up on me and stole my glasses. I got them back because it dropped them.

These are two small baboons that were in a cage together. We saw them groom each other and look for ticks that they ate.

This is one of the 4 brother lion cubs that are almost grown up. They were feeding them when we were there. A dog took in the 4 brothers and raised them as her own.

So, this was my trip to Harnas. I liked it a lot and I hope we can go back.

My favorite parts of our trip to Kunene

We went to Kunene, a region in northwest Namibia, on a vacation with a student from Polytechnic, named Uapii. We were going to Uapii's farm, and these are my favorite pictures from the trip.

These are some rocks that a guy was selling near the first stop of our trip at Brandberg. He got them from a mountain nearby.

This is me holding a baby sheep at Uapii's farm. It is the farm where his brother watches the sheep and goats and cows.

This is me on top of the hill by our first campsite. It was very easy to get up there because you can't see it in the picture, but the edge on the right goes down to the ground and you can just walk up.

This is me by a sign that is not usually found in Nebraska. We saw elephants later in the day.

This is a big lizard that I found at our third campsite at Palmvag. It is some species of girdled lizard. I was the first one to spot it and stood still while I took its picture for a long time. I think it was a model!

This is me riding a donkey at Uapii's home farm. It was fun, but very hard to get up on it.

Uapii and me holding goat meat that we are about to cook. For bringing Uapii back to his home farm, his family for a gift decided to kill a goat for us, and that's how we got the meat. It was the first time I saw an animal butchered, except for helping my dad with deer and birds.

The swimming hole at Uapii's farm. We are about to go back to Windhoek. It was about 6 feet deep in a stream that was very clear and had about 5 turtles in it.

This is the very big view from our last lodge that we stayed in. I took about 20 pictures of it. I liked it because it was very big. It was at Grootberg Lodge.

A mountain wheatear at Grootberg Lodge. It was outside our cabin, and Dad and I were sitting on the porch. It flew up on the railing, and I had the camera with me and I took a picture of it.

These are my most favorite pictures of our trip. I hope you enjoyed it. I thought it was very fun, and I would like to do it again.

My friends and class

The picture on the right is a picture of my friends. The one to the right side of me is Lushano. He is my partner for our class project, and he is from Namibia. His grandmas grew up here. The one below me is Max. He is from America and likes to play Yu-gi-oh with me at break. His dad is also doing a Fulbright. The other person is Ahbi. He is from India. He also likes to play Yu-gi-oh. All of us like to play volleyball at break, sometimes. They are very fun to play with.

The other picture is a picture of my class. There are 27 of us in the class. The teacher on the right is my teacher, Ms. Angatha. The teacher on the left is our assistant teacher, and her name is Ms. Jolene.

One of my friends is from Egypt. My class here is more talkative than my class back in the US. Sometimes the teacher gets annoyed. I am usually very quiet.

I want to say hello to all my friends in Lincoln. I miss you.

The school here is pretty much the same as my school in America. Something funny is that in America we have only two minutes to do a time test for math with 50 problems. In my school here in Namibia we have 15 minutes to do 50 problems.

Rocks in Namibia and an update

There are a lot of different kinds of rocks in Namibia. They have a lot of rock shops and a museum that has the world's largest piece of quartz. This is a picture of that largest piece of quartz with me standing in front of it. The museum is in Swapokmund on the coast, and we were there two weeks ago.

I've found and bought a lot of rocks that are really cool. I bought some amethyst, tourmaline, aquamarine, and quartz. I bought some of them at a market on the side of the road and I got 3 stones for about US$8.

I am doing baseball and track and a play that is called "Fiddler on the Roof" here at school. In track I am doing shot put, which is when you throw a metal ball as far as you can. It's 4 kg, which is about 8 pounds. I went to a track meet and we competed against other schools. I got 5th out of 8 people. I threw it over 5 meters.

Baseball just started, and my friend Max's dad had a bunch of gloves mailed over from a team in the US. At the first practice we did basic things, because few kids knew how to play.

I'm going to play the butcher, Lazar Wolf, in Fiddler on the Roof. I have to sing, but not a solo. I'm also going to help make the set.

At school, we're doing an exhibition project. We work in pairs, and we have to make something and sell it. We have to come up with a marketing plan. My partner and I made a golf tee game, like the one you can play at Cracker Barrell. We had to cut the wood and drill the holes, and now we have to come up with packaging.

Thank you for reading this.

Big cats

We went on a safari to this place where they have a lot of big cats, like lions and cheetahs and leopards. To see the lions and leopard, we stood on a balcony and watched them eat meat that people put out for them.

For the cheetahs, we just sat in the truck and a guy put up food for them. They didn't come close to the truck while they ate, but one did come about one foot away from the truck. But it didn't attack us, because it was scared of us. We drove a little bit more and the cheetahs followed us. We stopped and the driver pulled out a big zebra leg and threw it to the cheetahs. We watched them eat it right to the bone. I looked at them with my binoculars the whole time, they were really close up! Then, we drove back to the lodge and had hot cocoa because it was rainy and cold.

The lions ate the bone with the meat, because they could crush it. The leopards and cheetahs just ate the meat and not the bone, because their jaws can't crush the bone.

4th and 5th days in Namibia

On our fourth day in Namibia, we went for a game drive, which is known in America as a wildlife drive. We saw a lot of cool animals there, and I picked up a lot of the rocks that looked cool. We saw warthogs (below), kudu, and oryx. The rocks I found were all quartz. One was very big, the others were kind of small.

On the fifth day, at 7:30 a.m., I went to my school to take a test to see where I was. Regular school starts at 7:20 and I will get out at 1:40. I was there today for 2 hours for the test. The classrooms are divided in the outdoors in different buildings. Instead of fifth grade, they call it 'year 6'.

The first few days have been very exciting. I have tried a lot of new food and met new kids. The things I ate that were kind of weird were: kudu, crocodile, and some new fruits (pears that tasted kind of weird). The Pepsi Light does not taste the same as Diet Pepsi. They have different kinds of chips. At night, there are barely any cars, so you can sleep pretty well at night. Windhoek is pretty quiet.

The London Eye

We rode London's ferris wheel today (New Years Day) and it is called the London Eye. It is the biggest ferris wheel in the world, and we rode inside glass capsules. It looks like a giant bicycle wheel, kind of, because it has spokes.

The capsules rotate in the holders, so you don't go upside down at the top, although that would be pretty cool! We had about 15 people in our capsule.

When you got off and on, it didn't stop--it was still moving. You had to make sure you stepped over the crack, or you might fall down.

It was fun to go on, because you were very high up. When you looked down, it was a long way down and you kind of freak out sometimes.

There was a long line to get into it, but the line moved quickly.

We also saw the New Years Parade and went inside a big church that had a lot of dead people buried in it. We listened to the church choir. Our feet got sore, because we walked everywhere. We also took the subway.

Japanese restaurant

There are a lot of cool restaurants in London.

On New Years Eve we went out for dinner at a Japanese restaurant. One of dad's students was with us, and she is from Japan. I learned how to eat with chopsticks. They were very messy. I was suprised that I would eat Japanese food in London on the way to Africa.