Safari

We recently went on a Safari in South Africa.  The Safari was in Kruger National Park. My favorite parts were the elephants, zebras, and hippos.

When you see an elephant in a photograph, it looks big.  Maybe the size of a car.  But, when you see an elephant standing six feet away from you…well, the older ones are easily twice the size of a car.  Our guide, Chris, told us about the horrors of elephants.  Say that someone walked into a restaurant and just came and sat at your table.  You don't know them.  So you don't want them there.  Elephants are sort of like that.  If you go to close to an elephant, they WILL flip your car over and smash it like you smash a small soda can.  It was really interesting, though, to see the elephants up close.

Before coming to Africa, I had only seen zebras in photographs, films, zoos, and those charts in classrooms with all the letters of the alphabet.  We saw lots of zebras on the safari, which I enjoyed.  When you look close at zebras, they actually have some brown in them, as well as black and white.  It was great seeing zebras, even if they were far away.

Hippos are the animals that have killed the most people in Africa.  I'm not saying this to scare anyone. I'm just stating the fact.  The few times we passed hippos, they didn't seem too dangerous. They did have HUGE pink jaws. They were really fat and heavy. But, they didn't seem too threatening.  In the daytime, hippos mostly slept in the water.  In the night, however, they were eating up on land.  I guess I expected hippos to seem mellow and small.  They were huge roaring animals, though.  Fun to see in real life… as long as you're not too close.

 

Leaving South America

We've been in South America for six months now.  Today we fly from São Paolo, Brazil, to South Africa.  Even though it will be sad to leave South America, I'm super excited to go to South Africa and Hong Kong.  Here are my top ten things that I will always remember from South America:

1.  Our river rafting trip on the Futaleufú river in Patagonia, Chile.  All of the extreme sports were so exciting, and that was definitely a highlight of South America.

2.  Machu Picchu, Perú.  Machu Picchu was so interesting.  We got to see so many cool Inca ruins.  Even though around Cusco, we saw other ruins, Machu Picchu was the greatest. 

3.  The Galapagos Islands in Ecuador.  The Galapagos was one of the places where it seemed like the fight to conserve the environment was actually winning.  There were so many exotic animals, I can't name all of them. It was so cool to just see a bird land two feet away from you, and not have them being scared of you.

4.  Torres del Paine, Patagonia, Chile.  This national park is at the end of South America, and we spent five days there, hiking.  Even though it was cold at points, the hiking was amazing.

5.  The Salt Flats of Uyuni, Bolivia.  These salt flats were AMAZING.   You had to wear sunglasses because the ground was so shiny and white.  All you could see for miles, was white salt and more salt.

6.  Climbing Volcán Villarica in Chile.  Climbing a Volcano is something that people dream of doing.  I'm so glad that I got a chance to, a d that we found a company that would take eleven year olds up to the crater.

7.  The violin workshop in Buenos Aires.  When we stayed in Buenos Aires for two weeks, my mom and I went to a violin workshop in Spanish.  It was a bit difficult to speak Spanish all the time, but it was a great experience.  I hope that sometime, I can go back for another workshop.

8.  Our four day biking tour in Ecuador.  This biking tour was hard at parts, but overall exciting and fun.  It gave us a way to see non- touristy places in Ecuador, while biking.

9.  The Otavalo animal market in Ecuador.  I didn't blog about this, but the animal market was so exciting, and I figured out that I need a pet pig.

10.  Being in all of the big cities in South America.  I loved all of the cities in South America, and will miss them.  We visited Quito, Santiago, Lima, Buenas Aires, and more.

Looking back to when we were in Ecuador, it seems like so long ago.  I hope to come back to South America sometime.

Violin in Spanish

Recently, my mom and I went to a four day violin workshop in Buenas Aires. The workshop was for teachers to learn how to teach book seven of Suzuki.  Since I'm not a violin teacher, I was one of the students in the master class and group classes.  

There were people in the class from Paraguay, Brazil, Argentina, and of course from New York.  I thought that the class would seem totally different from ones in New York, but it really wasn't.  Of course we talked in Spanish, but everyone knew all of the pieces in the Suzuki books.

The first day was a bit overwhelming.  I had a lesson in Spanish in front of eleven teachers, all taking notes.  Oh, and one more detail, people in Argentina speak VERY fast.  It was helpful, though, to have a lesson.

The second day, I got to the studio earlier, to practice with the other students.  We played fiddle pieces and more.  We also all had the same pieces memorized, which we played together.

The same day, we all had lunch together, which was fun even though it was hard to know what everyone was saying.  We also had a group class that day, where we played Suzuki songs and our duet pieces again. When that day was over, I was already looking forward to the next group class day.

The third day was basically same as the first.  I had a lesson again which was slightly easier than the first.  I was able to understand what was said, by a mixture of Spanish and what was being played on the violin.

The last day, I only got to the studio half an hour early, to rehearse the same duet pieces.  After that half hour, we played in the same group class, and duets. My favorite duet was the one called "Cripple Creek" which was a really fun fiddle piece.

If someone asked me what the highlights were of the workshop, I would say meeting new people and having a violin lesson again.