We started this trip by visiting our cousins Noel and Lily in New Jersey for two days. While we were there, mom and I went to see the broadway play Matilda. Going into a broadway theater surprised me. My expectations were a large theater with a couple of stories of seats. It was completely different. It was a small theater with only two stories of seats. The bottom story must have sat about five hundred, while the top probably sat about the same amount of people. The theme of the set was Scrabble pieces. Most of the theater was covered in fake Scrabble pieces of different fonts and sizes. Some of them spelled words, while others were just random letters, and other had music notes on them instead of letters. The children in the musical were absolutely amazing! It seemed like each of them were unique, which I guess they were. It must have been hard to cast the children, but who ever did it was amazing at their job. The children were very good, but my favorite character was ms. Trunchbull. She was played by a man, who was amazing at playing her. He wore a short skirt the whole time. He did some very funny things during the musical that mostly had to do with the fact that he was playing a girl. He sang some really good songs. The children also sang some really good songs, in fact my favorite song from the whole musical was sang by the children. My favorite song was the very first song, Myricle, though I absolutely loved the whole musical!
Hank: Differences between countries
Nadine: Differences between countries
The three main differences in all the places I have been are the toilets, the wealth, and the food. The toilets were different in two main ways, where they are and if you can throw toilet paper in them. How the wealth was different is pretty obvious. The food was mostly different in the diet but it was also different in the taste and texture. Many other things were different, but those are the three main things.
Toilets
Not many people think of toilets when they think of other countries, but that is one of the biggest things that I think of. Most people think of toilets as something in your wall that you do your business in. Some people think of a toilet as a hole in the ground. Others think of it as having to go outside and pour water in the back of the toilet and then having to find more water to wash your hands with. I have witnessed all of these kinds of toilets and have a feeling that I will witness even more types of toilets.
Wealth
When someone says the word “Wealth” the first thing most people would think is money. The question is how do you know how much money someone has without asking? In Europe most people have running water and cupboards to put food in. In Central and South America it is sometimes the same and sometimes different. In Central and South America you are either wealthy or poor. The pore people do not have such luxuries. Another way to tell is how large and managed the houses are. These are good ways to tell how wealthy countries really are.
Food
Food is different in every city. Because of that, food is even more different when it comes to different countries and continents. China had the weirdest food in my opinion. The weirdest thing was probably that you got puffer fish before every meal. They even left the teeth in. The other countries had weird food too. In Nicaragua you might only eat dry cereal and a banana for breakfast. In Africa they have surprisingly good Asian food. That has been one of the biggest surprises yet. All of the places I have been so far have had different food and now I will get to try even more.
These are my three main differences in all the places I have been and I can’t wait to witness even more.
Hank: Galapagos Islands
The Finch Bay hotel on Isla Santa Cruz is like paradise for the average American tourist which can either be a good thing or a bad thing. In our case it was a very good thing. It had a pool and a nice beach. You can go on excursions every day snorkeling and hiking or you can just choose to relax. We chose to work our selves ragged by riding to other islands each day on a big motor yacht with a bunch of other tourists. Boy it was just exhausting.
The food was delicious. The last night we had fresh tuna that I caught and for any one who knows tuna they know it tastes the best when it is just barely cooked. They made it perfect!!! I would recommend the Finch bay hotel to any one and every one who comes to the Galápagos Islands. It is a great way to see all the wonderful wild life around here.
We saw a lot of wild life. There were sea lions every where and we saw blue footed boobies. Yes you heard me right. I said blue footed boobies. Their feet were really really blue!!! There were also these cool crabs that were bright orange and yellow and red and they sort of looked like a little bitty sun scuttling around on the rocks. We saw lots of cool looking fish. They were all colors and all sizes and all shapes while snorkeling and some times the sea lions wanted to play but at that point you were supposed to get out of the water because they were really big and supposedly kind of dangerous to play with but to me they all just looked like really big dogs with fins. We also saw some iguanas that would happily mingle with the birds and not tear them to shreds. Kind of disappointing in that regard but it was still cool I guess.
We saw some turtles that were swimming because turtles swim and tortoises walk on land. The biggest tortoises that we saw were 500 pounds. We even learned some science. It was mostly about Darwin and evolution and all that stuff so that is what I shall tell you about. Evolution on large scale does take hundreds and thousands of years but evolution on a small scale takes just one baby organism. For example if there is a family of tortoises who in habit an island in the Galapagos and all the trees were one yard off the ground and the tortoises could only reach 9/10 0f a yard off the ground then what would happen? If you are thinking that they would be forced to eat second hand grass off of the filthy and un sanitized ground then you are absolutely correct. Now say a tortoise is born with a neck that is 1/10 of a yard longer than its peers and is able to eat more delicious first class tree leaves than its little tortoise buddies. So now you hopefully understand that small scale evolution can happen at any random time as long as babies are still being produced. This process all has one big fancy name and that name is NATURAL SELECTION!!!!!