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Elephants, and crocodiles, and leopards, oh my! That is what I thought while we were in South Luangua. We stayed at a lodge called Mfuwe Lodge. It was extremely cool and our guide was awesome. The guide’s name was Manda. He kind of resembled a nature book; he knew all of the scientific names for the animals that we saw from the baboons to the birds. The food at the lodge was also great. My favorite was the BBQ chicken that we had the first day. Some days we would be driving around and the lodge would set up a giant picnic with tables and fires that they make the food on. Our joke about the food was that we would leave looking like a warthog. The two animals we saw the most of were impala and puku. They were kind of like deer. The impala were white, tan, and black, whereas the puku were tan and white. Manda said there were a lot of crocodiles in the water that would drag other things into the water to eat. We saw 27 elephants next to a salt block once. We also saw a pride of twelve lions. Both things were kind of scary, but really exciting. We went to a bush camp for two nights and it was amazing because we were the only ones there. They had tasty drinks and I emptied the stock of ginger beer single handedly. The safari rides were fun and we saw a lot of baboons. We also saw a leopard with two of its cubs. It was great and I can’t wait to go back.

Mallorca was a very fun place. There were a lot of beaches and cafés. We stayed in two cities while we were there. The first city we stayed in was called Palma and the second one was called Soller.

Palma was a walled city. It had this giant cathedral in the center of town. The cathedral had a pond in the front that had swans in it. The architecture of the cathedral was absolutely amazing. Palma and New York were both artistic. New York was bigger, but I think Palma had a larger span of personalities, though I do not know which one I liked better. There were a lot of really nice beaches in Palma. There were bike paths that went along the water. You could rent bikes and ride down the whole path, which is fifteen kilometers. My mom met one of her friends from elementary school there. We spent a lot of time with her. Her name was Alice. She was really nice. She was also an amazing artist. We had a little apartment that had no windows and the bedrooms were kind of small, but other than that it was really nice. Mallorca was first settled by prehistoric peoples who built stone structures that included the Great Wall of Palma which other conquerors of Mallorca, such as Romans and Moors, kept in later years.

Soller was a cute beach town. It had an amazing port, and there was a really nice beach there. There were a lot of little cafés along the water. My favorite place was a little ice cream shop with really creamy ice cream. Personally, I think my favorite flavor was strawberry. In Soller proper there were a lot of really cool hikes. The first one was my favorite because it had a canopy of trees that made a tunnel. There was also a train that went from the port to Soller proper. A different train went from the port to Palma, and yet another went from Soller proper to Palma and back. Mallorca was really fun and I can’t wait to go back on another trip.

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!