Thursday, August 27, 2009
Last Post
Well, my awesome experience in England is over. But I have created a new blog targeted to Englanders at www.fuzzy feline.blogspot.com. Thanks for reading!
Sunday, July 12, 2009
New World Record! Quickest City Tour
Our last hurrah for our European adventures was a trip to Croatia. Our tour agency was called Huck Finn and was focused on kayaking and rafting. There were some city tours as well, but we didn't get to see much, because they were ultra fast. The reason why: in Croatia, there are strict rules about touring in cities. You have to have a license in order to be able to give tours, and the fine if you are caught touring without one is 25,000 kuna, or 5,000 dollars.
But other than the light-speed tours, everything was pretty good. The river-kayaking was very fun, and rafting on the river river Cetina was the best for me. Mom thought that the guide in our boat was very strict, but he had to have some control over the boat, because some of the steering required the other rafters to do some work steering as well, in order to avoid the branches on either side of the twisty-turny, narrow-ish river.
The Krka National Park waterfalls were really cool. We went there on the third day(?) and we went swimming near the waterfalls, walking on a boardwalk trail where we could see the beautiful waterfall (everything in Croatia is beautful!)up close and we bought some delicious dried figs at a little stand. They were probably the best figs I've ever tasted.
But other than the light-speed tours, everything was pretty good. The river-kayaking was very fun, and rafting on the river river Cetina was the best for me. Mom thought that the guide in our boat was very strict, but he had to have some control over the boat, because some of the steering required the other rafters to do some work steering as well, in order to avoid the branches on either side of the twisty-turny, narrow-ish river.
The Krka National Park waterfalls were really cool. We went there on the third day(?) and we went swimming near the waterfalls, walking on a boardwalk trail where we could see the beautiful waterfall (everything in Croatia is beautful!)up close and we bought some delicious dried figs at a little stand. They were probably the best figs I've ever tasted.
Monday, April 20, 2009
Flowers and Bikes
For our school break, we hopped on a plane to Sciphol Airport in Amsterdam and took a hotel shuttle to a hotel in which we have stayed before, the Owl Hotel, which is famed by us for it's hot cocoa. After a day or two, we rented some bikes, to the joy of me, for I love biking, so I had a great time. We visited the fascinating but slightly gloomy Anne Frank House, lots of excellent restaurants, and beautiful flowing canals.
However, it was very dangerous on the roads, with lots of speedy bikers zooming out of corners, guided trams with their cheesy bells, and many motorcycles pretending that they are just bikes and speeding all over the cycle paths. Helmets seemed to be extinct there.
On the last day, we went on a bus which took us the the stunning Tulip Gardens. The soft aroma there was so refreshing, so honey-like. There must have been every single kind of tulip in those brilliant gardens. There was very color imaginable in there. My sister had fun in the hedge-maze that they had.
On the bus drive back to Amsterdam, the tour guide told us that 80% of the worlds tulips are grown in The Netherlands. Therefore, the stats say that the tulips in your garden are probably originally from Holland. I found that amazing.
The train to Germany was very eventful. After we had changed twice, there was a half an hour delay that caused us to miss the train that we were supposed to go on. Luckily, there was another train right across the platform that said it was for Kiel, which was where we were going to see our friends. However, we still had arrived late. Of course, then things went completely berserk. Dad had forgotten to write our friend's mobile number down, so we asked the information office to look at a phone book. That didn't help since our friends weren't in it. Dad then asked (or rather, tried to ask, in German) for an internet cafe. The man gave him the directions and off we went.
We only found a shopping mall on that tiny walk, and it didn't have any internet access. Dad asked one of the shopkeepers what the operator's number was in Germany, and Dad tried it, but that didn't work. Then Dad went down the street while the rest of us waited at the station. It turns out the guy at the information desk said "left then right" but Dad interpreted it as "right then left". So Dad had gotten the number from his email and written it down, so he called the friends. The father of the family said that his wife was there at the station. Hence, Dad and my sister and I circled round the parking lot searching for ladies with blonde hair and glasses. No one looked familiar, so Dad searched inside. Then we finally found her, realizing that her hair was now brown. She told us that she wasn't in the phone book because they lived about 10 metres outside the border...
However, it was very dangerous on the roads, with lots of speedy bikers zooming out of corners, guided trams with their cheesy bells, and many motorcycles pretending that they are just bikes and speeding all over the cycle paths. Helmets seemed to be extinct there.
On the last day, we went on a bus which took us the the stunning Tulip Gardens. The soft aroma there was so refreshing, so honey-like. There must have been every single kind of tulip in those brilliant gardens. There was very color imaginable in there. My sister had fun in the hedge-maze that they had.
On the bus drive back to Amsterdam, the tour guide told us that 80% of the worlds tulips are grown in The Netherlands. Therefore, the stats say that the tulips in your garden are probably originally from Holland. I found that amazing.
The train to Germany was very eventful. After we had changed twice, there was a half an hour delay that caused us to miss the train that we were supposed to go on. Luckily, there was another train right across the platform that said it was for Kiel, which was where we were going to see our friends. However, we still had arrived late. Of course, then things went completely berserk. Dad had forgotten to write our friend's mobile number down, so we asked the information office to look at a phone book. That didn't help since our friends weren't in it. Dad then asked (or rather, tried to ask, in German) for an internet cafe. The man gave him the directions and off we went.
We only found a shopping mall on that tiny walk, and it didn't have any internet access. Dad asked one of the shopkeepers what the operator's number was in Germany, and Dad tried it, but that didn't work. Then Dad went down the street while the rest of us waited at the station. It turns out the guy at the information desk said "left then right" but Dad interpreted it as "right then left". So Dad had gotten the number from his email and written it down, so he called the friends. The father of the family said that his wife was there at the station. Hence, Dad and my sister and I circled round the parking lot searching for ladies with blonde hair and glasses. No one looked familiar, so Dad searched inside. Then we finally found her, realizing that her hair was now brown. She told us that she wasn't in the phone book because they lived about 10 metres outside the border...
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Wales
For a week in the break after Lent Term in school, our grandparents visited and took us kids up to Wales for the week. It was quite fun, getting lost on the roads. We'd be going in the right direction, and then the road would look like it was the wrong direction, so we'd turn around and ask someone, whether they be a pedestrian or someone at the gas station, for directions and find out that we were going in the correct direction, so we'd turn back round the right way and make our way to our destination.
On the night we arrived in Newport, we drove up to a town called Caerleon, where we had dinner with our distant relatives. One of them was my fourth cousin, in fact! They had extremely generous hospitality to offer to us. They even led us to the B&B that we were going to stay at for the night. Before dinner, they showed us around the nearby Roman ruins, which were spectacularly preserved. There was even an arena which was apparently the only Roman arena in Britain, and they, as a town, had kept it as their own little secret.
The B&B was very nice, run by a hospitable middle-aged lady called Charmaine. Apparently, it was a farmhouse, and it was a farmhouse with an amazing view over the town of Caerleon below. You see, it was in the mountains, very much out of the way. Our rented car made the steep drive up the hill, though.
On the day after, we had a drive up to a village northwest of Abergavenny called Crickhowell, which had, nestled in the middle of the town, our 2nd B&B. However, when Joanie rang the doorbell, no one answered. Whilst Joanie and I tried all the doors to see if they were open, my sister found a slightly demolished trampoline, so she bounced around on that. We then used the extremely handy spare cell phone that Dad had lent me for the trip to call the owner. She said that she would be back in half an hour.
While we waited, we went for a hike up Table Mountain, which was a climb with exquisite views over Abergavenny and Crickhowell. Surprisingly, it only took us two hours to get up and back, and our grandfather, Carey, was deeply satisfied with that trek. His goal for the trip was to walk up a mountain of a significant height. The highlight of the climb for the kids, though, was going down. The actual walk was going through fields and climbing over stiles, so coming down, my sister and I would starting running downwards, and then we would start going faster until we were completely out of control, and it was too much effort to stop, so we just kept going, laughing hard all the way and we would fall down near the stiles so as not to crash into them. Of course, then we'd have to wait for our grandparents to come down too before hopping over the next stile.
Next day, much of the morning was spent driving down to the Gower Peninsula with much difficulty. As I said before, we always got lost when going the right way. Again, the owner of the B&B was yet to arrive, so we called them, and the owner's teenage daughter came. To make the matters even more difficult, when she called her mum, her mum said that she didn't have us booked. She came along to the rescue, looked at our bookings, and decided that they looked alright. Phew.
Since the rooms were still to be made, we drove all the way to the other end of the peninsula to Rhosili beach. It was the very first time that we hadn't gotten lost, but it was just a straight road until it dead-ended by the beach. That was the biggest expanse of sand any of us had ever seen. The cliffs overlooked the low tide that day, yet not making shadows, because the sun set in the sea. I could just imagine what high tide would look like, lapping water on the bottom of the cliffs, threatening to go upwards.
For dinner that night, we went to a pub that we saw by the beach called The Worm's Head. After much giggling and discussion over the name, Carey told us that worm was the welsh word for a dragon, so they were really talking about a dragon's head. Anyway, the food was delcious and the sunset was spectacular. The sun was orangy-red, almost pinkish, and it made the cliffs farther down the beach silhouettes overlooking the calm ocean.
On the way back to Newport to get our train, I thought about the various breakfasts we had at the B&Bs. They were all the same, with bacon, sausage, egg, hash browns, tomatoes and mushrooms, with the exception of a mere Welsh pancake that my sister had at the second B&B. It must be a UK thing, because when we visited the Lake District, we had the very same thing.
Also on the way to our train, we stopped at the Museum of Welsh Life, which took houses from all four corners of Wales and put them together in an outdoor museum. I thought it was very good, and I especially admired all the varieties of architecture that they had. It was a very good end to our visit.
On the night we arrived in Newport, we drove up to a town called Caerleon, where we had dinner with our distant relatives. One of them was my fourth cousin, in fact! They had extremely generous hospitality to offer to us. They even led us to the B&B that we were going to stay at for the night. Before dinner, they showed us around the nearby Roman ruins, which were spectacularly preserved. There was even an arena which was apparently the only Roman arena in Britain, and they, as a town, had kept it as their own little secret.
The B&B was very nice, run by a hospitable middle-aged lady called Charmaine. Apparently, it was a farmhouse, and it was a farmhouse with an amazing view over the town of Caerleon below. You see, it was in the mountains, very much out of the way. Our rented car made the steep drive up the hill, though.
On the day after, we had a drive up to a village northwest of Abergavenny called Crickhowell, which had, nestled in the middle of the town, our 2nd B&B. However, when Joanie rang the doorbell, no one answered. Whilst Joanie and I tried all the doors to see if they were open, my sister found a slightly demolished trampoline, so she bounced around on that. We then used the extremely handy spare cell phone that Dad had lent me for the trip to call the owner. She said that she would be back in half an hour.
While we waited, we went for a hike up Table Mountain, which was a climb with exquisite views over Abergavenny and Crickhowell. Surprisingly, it only took us two hours to get up and back, and our grandfather, Carey, was deeply satisfied with that trek. His goal for the trip was to walk up a mountain of a significant height. The highlight of the climb for the kids, though, was going down. The actual walk was going through fields and climbing over stiles, so coming down, my sister and I would starting running downwards, and then we would start going faster until we were completely out of control, and it was too much effort to stop, so we just kept going, laughing hard all the way and we would fall down near the stiles so as not to crash into them. Of course, then we'd have to wait for our grandparents to come down too before hopping over the next stile.
Next day, much of the morning was spent driving down to the Gower Peninsula with much difficulty. As I said before, we always got lost when going the right way. Again, the owner of the B&B was yet to arrive, so we called them, and the owner's teenage daughter came. To make the matters even more difficult, when she called her mum, her mum said that she didn't have us booked. She came along to the rescue, looked at our bookings, and decided that they looked alright. Phew.
Since the rooms were still to be made, we drove all the way to the other end of the peninsula to Rhosili beach. It was the very first time that we hadn't gotten lost, but it was just a straight road until it dead-ended by the beach. That was the biggest expanse of sand any of us had ever seen. The cliffs overlooked the low tide that day, yet not making shadows, because the sun set in the sea. I could just imagine what high tide would look like, lapping water on the bottom of the cliffs, threatening to go upwards.
For dinner that night, we went to a pub that we saw by the beach called The Worm's Head. After much giggling and discussion over the name, Carey told us that worm was the welsh word for a dragon, so they were really talking about a dragon's head. Anyway, the food was delcious and the sunset was spectacular. The sun was orangy-red, almost pinkish, and it made the cliffs farther down the beach silhouettes overlooking the calm ocean.
On the way back to Newport to get our train, I thought about the various breakfasts we had at the B&Bs. They were all the same, with bacon, sausage, egg, hash browns, tomatoes and mushrooms, with the exception of a mere Welsh pancake that my sister had at the second B&B. It must be a UK thing, because when we visited the Lake District, we had the very same thing.
Also on the way to our train, we stopped at the Museum of Welsh Life, which took houses from all four corners of Wales and put them together in an outdoor museum. I thought it was very good, and I especially admired all the varieties of architecture that they had. It was a very good end to our visit.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Visit to York
Over the weekend before I had my second hockey tournament, my family and I visited the city of York for a night. It's a great city, with diverse restaurants and a rich, Viking based history.
Whilst visiting the Viking Centre, we went on a rather cheesy ride, which is kind of like the haunted house rides you get sometimes at funfairs. However, this one informed visitors about Vikings, and they had figures of Vikings built that, apparently, were based on Vikings' skeletons that they found in York.
Soon afterward, before we went to check into our hotel, we visited the famed city wall, which was the slightly demolished city wall surrounding the old city of York. Of course, the city has been expanded very far out of those walls.
The wall itself had little slits in it for archers to shoot arrows out of. Since they were so thin, very rarely did an enemy's arrow get through. Interestingly enough, some of the slits were longer than others. I suspect this was because some were for powerful longbows, and some for the highly accurate, but smaller, crossbows.
After we had checked into our hotel, I remembered that the final of the Six Nations, Wales v Ireland, was on, so Dad and I turned on the tube and watched that for a while. Once Ireland had won the Grand Slam, we had some dinner at a Chinese buffet (much to the disappointment of Mum) and went to bed.
In the morning, we groggily picked ourselves up and went down to breakfast at the hotel. The hot food did not seem to be open, so we munched on cereals, toast and rolls, and drank coffee and hot chocolate.
We would have liked to stay for lunch in York, but then we wouldn't make the tournament in time. So we drove back to Cambridge and settled back down into our normal, daily routine.
Whilst visiting the Viking Centre, we went on a rather cheesy ride, which is kind of like the haunted house rides you get sometimes at funfairs. However, this one informed visitors about Vikings, and they had figures of Vikings built that, apparently, were based on Vikings' skeletons that they found in York.
Soon afterward, before we went to check into our hotel, we visited the famed city wall, which was the slightly demolished city wall surrounding the old city of York. Of course, the city has been expanded very far out of those walls.
The wall itself had little slits in it for archers to shoot arrows out of. Since they were so thin, very rarely did an enemy's arrow get through. Interestingly enough, some of the slits were longer than others. I suspect this was because some were for powerful longbows, and some for the highly accurate, but smaller, crossbows.
After we had checked into our hotel, I remembered that the final of the Six Nations, Wales v Ireland, was on, so Dad and I turned on the tube and watched that for a while. Once Ireland had won the Grand Slam, we had some dinner at a Chinese buffet (much to the disappointment of Mum) and went to bed.
In the morning, we groggily picked ourselves up and went down to breakfast at the hotel. The hot food did not seem to be open, so we munched on cereals, toast and rolls, and drank coffee and hot chocolate.
We would have liked to stay for lunch in York, but then we wouldn't make the tournament in time. So we drove back to Cambridge and settled back down into our normal, daily routine.
The End is Near
Already, 2 thirds of the year have gone by and it seems like the first day of school was yesterday! All my lessons, sports matches, and days off have been a blur, and now I just have the Summer Term left to enjoy school. It's always like that, isn't it. When you are doing something in the present, it usually seems very long. Yet once you've finished doing that something, it seems like a blink of an eye.
Friday, March 6, 2009
House Points and Discipline
At school, we have these things called house points. It's where if you do something very good or excellent, you get a house point. The reason that they are called 'house points' is because all of the house points that your house earns altogether is added up at the end of term and whichever house has the most wins. We would never get anything like it in America.
According to my sister, you can also lose HPs. In our year it never happens, but apparently it does in Year 3. She was on a field trip recently, and apparently, one of her classmates had lost 2 HP for throwing a rock at some cows. He got 'told off' for that. I really don't understand why being told off is so horrible. I mean, you just get some sort of lecture from a teacher and that's it. You don't have to sit out for a while or anything.
However, the funniest story that I have heard from my sister about discipline was when her class was doing PE. The same boy was talking out of turn repeatedly, so the PE teacher sent him to change back into uniform, sit down on the bench and do handwriting practice. I really do find that consequence, especially for PE, strange.
According to my sister, you can also lose HPs. In our year it never happens, but apparently it does in Year 3. She was on a field trip recently, and apparently, one of her classmates had lost 2 HP for throwing a rock at some cows. He got 'told off' for that. I really don't understand why being told off is so horrible. I mean, you just get some sort of lecture from a teacher and that's it. You don't have to sit out for a while or anything.
However, the funniest story that I have heard from my sister about discipline was when her class was doing PE. The same boy was talking out of turn repeatedly, so the PE teacher sent him to change back into uniform, sit down on the bench and do handwriting practice. I really do find that consequence, especially for PE, strange.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Chocolate and Graffiti
For this half term, we visited Belgium for 3 days, just because we are in England and we want to cram as much of Europe as we can into this year.
Some of the things we saw in Brussels were chocolate, Tintin museums, and lots of EU buildings. These were very much expected. The chocolate was wonderful (I mean, what else could it be in Belgium?), with lots of shops sprinkled about the city. We would usually come in, try to pronounce the chosen variety of chocolate in as best French as we could, pointing to the kind we wanted. On the second-to-last day of the visit, we made an excursion to the grocery store, where we stocked up on as much chocolates as we could get our hands on.
We then had a taste-test for the kids, which was comparing whether we kids liked the hand-made Neuhaus chocolates, which were much more expensive, and the machine-made chocolate from Leonidas. We threw a couple of grocery store chocolates in as well, just for more fun. We were blindfolded, just so that we wouldn't see which chocolates we were eating.
Our (my sister and I) genes may be similar, but our taste buds are very different. She ranked the hand made chocolate as the best, whereas I ranked it as the worst. It was vice versa with the machine-made chocolate. Did Neuhaus not do particularly well with their chocolate? Or is it just that I have bad taste?
One thing that we don't see in Cambridge a lot, and in which we were not expecting too much of in Brussels was graffiti. This is highly exaggerated, but I think there was more graffiti in Brussels than in the whole of Manhattan!
The artists must have been really desperate to find space for it. As in, extremely desperate. Someone scribbled some letters onto a bush!
Also, I often saw the same graffiti artist's design/word around town. For example, there was one guy who would put "Doug" on various walls around the lower part of the city. Another person put "Artist..." in the same areas of Brussels. Also, the same spots round and about the city were used, making the people who made the graffiti almost dog-like (no offense to them) in a way, in the fact that they marked their special design/word around the city.
We then had a taste-test for the kids, which was comparing whether we kids liked the hand-made Neuhaus chocolates, which were much more expensive, and the machine-made chocolate from Leonidas. We threw a couple of grocery store chocolates in as well, just for more fun. We were blindfolded, just so that we wouldn't see which chocolates we were eating.
Our (my sister and I) genes may be similar, but our taste buds are very different. She ranked the hand made chocolate as the best, whereas I ranked it as the worst. It was vice versa with the machine-made chocolate. Did Neuhaus not do particularly well with their chocolate? Or is it just that I have bad taste?
One thing that we don't see in Cambridge a lot, and in which we were not expecting too much of in Brussels was graffiti. This is highly exaggerated, but I think there was more graffiti in Brussels than in the whole of Manhattan!
The artists must have been really desperate to find space for it. As in, extremely desperate. Someone scribbled some letters onto a bush!
Also, I often saw the same graffiti artist's design/word around town. For example, there was one guy who would put "Doug" on various walls around the lower part of the city. Another person put "Artist..." in the same areas of Brussels. Also, the same spots round and about the city were used, making the people who made the graffiti almost dog-like (no offense to them) in a way, in the fact that they marked their special design/word around the city.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Snowfall
There was a huge reaction at school about the snow today and on Monday, mainly because no one had ever seen much of it before. What was seriously surprising, though, is that at break, the teachers let us have a gigantic snowball fight in our uniforms, and yet in America, they didn't even let us set a toe onto the snow in our regular clothing. There are some things I really don't understand about my hometown.
However, the snow made biking much slower, especially on Tuesday, when all the snow from Monday had frozen, along with the bike-prints, just like footprints in hardened cement. This made the ride
a) slippery; my sister fell down once on Wednesday
b) bumpy, because of all the bike-prints
c) slushy, when the melted ice mixed with the mud
But of course, when we came home from school Lydia and I were rewarded by playing in the snow, making a snowman and an attempted snow fort, although there really wasn't enough snow the make one of those.
However, the snow made biking much slower, especially on Tuesday, when all the snow from Monday had frozen, along with the bike-prints, just like footprints in hardened cement. This made the ride
a) slippery; my sister fell down once on Wednesday
b) bumpy, because of all the bike-prints
c) slushy, when the melted ice mixed with the mud
But of course, when we came home from school Lydia and I were rewarded by playing in the snow, making a snowman and an attempted snow fort, although there really wasn't enough snow the make one of those.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Cirque de Soilel
For this special treat, we tromped up to London for the day and noodled around in Hyde Park before entering the Royal Albert Hall, Albert being Queen Victoria's husband. There are many, many elaborate memorials for Albert, all built by Victoria, in that particular area of London.
The actual circus was great from the first second, with a range of acts, including a man rolling around in a hamster wheel-like contraption around the stage, to innocent people from around the audience having to perform a romantic scene. I would highly recommend going if you ever get the chance, but tickets are quite expensive.
The actual circus was great from the first second, with a range of acts, including a man rolling around in a hamster wheel-like contraption around the stage, to innocent people from around the audience having to perform a romantic scene. I would highly recommend going if you ever get the chance, but tickets are quite expensive.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Ski trip
Wow. That trip to Austria was better than I expected, yet worse in some ways. Bad news, the line for the ski lift was absolutely horrible! In Britain, everyone's all polite and 'after you' -ish, but here, if you don't push, you don't get anywhere.
To tell you the truth, it was worth it when we got to the top, with generous amounts of snow all week. There was poor visibility on Thursday and Friday, but good enough so that we wouldn't crash into people too often.
Evening entertainment consisted of a variety of activities, ranging from bowling in town to picking a small box up with your teeth, which got smaller every round. All of the activities were entertaining indeed, but some of them not the most, um, hygienic, we'll say. Some of them don't need mentioning, so I won't talk about them. Anyway, if I gave the evening activities in general a mark out of ten, they would rate at a 8.5, 1 point taken off for the slightly disgusting activities, 0.5 for some of them that did not involve many children at all.
So you're thinking, "Oh, this kid's had a pretty nice ski trip." Think again. The journey to and fro Austria really was terrifyingly uncomfortable. I could never get decent sleep on the bus because the lights would stay on till about 10 or so, and I could never seem to find a comfortable position. The DVDs that the teachers played lasted pretty late as well.
So if I gave the whole ski trip a mark out of forty, it would be 32.5. 2 for the journey, 8.5 for evening activities, 9 for the skiing, 3 for the queues, and ten for everything else combined.
To tell you the truth, it was worth it when we got to the top, with generous amounts of snow all week. There was poor visibility on Thursday and Friday, but good enough so that we wouldn't crash into people too often.
Evening entertainment consisted of a variety of activities, ranging from bowling in town to picking a small box up with your teeth, which got smaller every round. All of the activities were entertaining indeed, but some of them not the most, um, hygienic, we'll say. Some of them don't need mentioning, so I won't talk about them. Anyway, if I gave the evening activities in general a mark out of ten, they would rate at a 8.5, 1 point taken off for the slightly disgusting activities, 0.5 for some of them that did not involve many children at all.
So you're thinking, "Oh, this kid's had a pretty nice ski trip." Think again. The journey to and fro Austria really was terrifyingly uncomfortable. I could never get decent sleep on the bus because the lights would stay on till about 10 or so, and I could never seem to find a comfortable position. The DVDs that the teachers played lasted pretty late as well.
So if I gave the whole ski trip a mark out of forty, it would be 32.5. 2 for the journey, 8.5 for evening activities, 9 for the skiing, 3 for the queues, and ten for everything else combined.
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