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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!

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!!!!!

I have been looking forward to this part of the trip for months. I might have been sad when I had to leave my mom, but when I got here I knew that it was all worth it. There are beautiful plants and flowers and everybody is so energetic. There is not just plant life, but there is also a lot of animals. All of these wonderful things are at the Mariposa Spanish School in Nicaragua.

There is one sound that you really have to get used to while you are here. You have to get used to the sound that wakes you up every morning. You have to get used to the sound of the green parrots. In fact they do not only wake you up, but they squawk all day. There are other animals here too. There are lots of other birds, one black bunny, and four really cute monkeys. The bunny lives in a cage in front of the hotel. There are a lot of cages at the school. Personally, I think that the bird cage that is beside the monkey cage is the biggest. The majority of the cages here hold birds because the majority of the animals are birds. The biggest cage holds the toucans and ducks. My favorite bird is probably the whistling duck, but the toucan is also really cute. The birds are all really nice, and are a large part of the beauty of la Mariposa.

I think that my favorite animals here are the monkeys, actually I think that my favorite animals anywhere are monkeys. You can feed the monkeys bananas and other fruits, one of their favorite things is coffee beans witch is a little weird because I would never think that a monkey would like coffee beans. In Spanish monkey is mono, in fact one of the monkeys names is mono. All of the monkeys have names. The monkey’s names are Mono, Legwan, Shima, and Cutie. Mono and Cutie are the nicest, while Legwan is a bit mean, and Shima is very shy. They are usually very nice and fun to play with at la Mariposa Spanish School.

We do not get to hang out with the animals all day, though I wish we did, we have classes from 8:00-12:00. We only have classes on the week days so we get to hang out with the animals all day on the weekends. After breakfast they ring a bell that signifies that it is time for class. I have two classes and I have different teachers for each class. My first teacher changes every week, but the second one is always the same. My first teacher and I will translate read and write Spanish in till ten o’clock. We have a small break at ten and then the bell rings again which signifies that it is time for my second class. My teacher for the second class is named Mosese. We will study in a really nice out door classroom in till noon. At noon we have lunch and then we have home schooling in till three o’clock. Next we have the rest of the day free. All of this cool stuff is at the Mariposa Spanish School.

This is why everybody would love la Mariposa Spanish School. They would love it for the people, the animals, the plants, and the education.

The best beach in the world is the Agios Ioannis beach out side of hotel Eden. You don’t even need to go under water. You can see the bottom just as well from out side the bluish green water. We swam and swam and swam. The last morning we got up very early and went to watch the sun rise. It was very pretty. Instead of sand the beach had small pea sized white pebbles. My theory of why the water was so clear was that the sun reflected of the pebbles and up through the water thus brightening it. Our first couple of nights we stayed in Hotel Eden. A medium sized hotel about one and a half kilometers down a tiny dirt rode. The people who owned it were very surprised to see us because they said that only greeks ever come. Fortunantly they only had rooms till Friday and we moved to a different hotel on Friday. As we found out on Saturday Hotel Eden turned into a mad house on weekends.

While we were in Vourvourou we met our friends the Seremetis’. they took us to a crepe place the first night where me and my dad got a chicken, mushrooms, and olives crepe. It was delicious. Me and my dad went on a hike with them which took three hours. It was really fun but I was very tired when I finished. One evening me and dad and Nadine and George, Laurie (the parents) and Alex who is the youngest of two. That was very fun and two days later we went on a kayaking tour with two guides. They took us to three beaches that were only accesable by boat. At the second one we ate a delicious lunch of sandwiches and following that was a super sweet mellon. I ate three pieces. We also kept finding these cool little hermit crabs that would crawl on to your hand and tickle it.