My Birthday

To me, my birthday felt like any other day. Not very special. Maybe without the excitement of having all your best friends over, playing your favorite games together, getting a big chocolate cake, and unwrapping lots of presents. It isn't the day you look forward to for a full month. Sadly most of the above aren't possible here in Egypt. Friends are back at school in America or Romania, therefore we can't play all those games together, big chocolate cakes aren't found easily in Egypt, and traveling with as few things as possible means our bags don't have room for a present. Unless its a iPod/iPhone/iPad mini. But I already have an iPod so I don't need another one.
When everyone wakes up one by one, they tell me "Happy Birthday!" Instead of cake I got meringues. I gladly accepted them. While going down to my regular breakfast, I made a little rhyme: "Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me. I am 103, without the zero in between."

Good morning and Happy Birthday! here is your present...

We ate breakfast (the hotel didn't know it was my Birthday) and we talked a bit, then we played a short game. All this (plus waking up late) - it was already 12:30.

Breakfast

I went downstairs to use the Internet and at 2 my head was hurting so I went back upstairs and took a break. I washed my face and then I stayed in bed. At around 2:40, feeling better, I went down again.

Making an effort to feel better

My head started hurting more and more, but I wanted to do a few last things. At 3:30 I went upstairs and stayed the rest of the day in bed, SICK. With a raging headache. The kind which explodes through your upper head with each step you take. I felt cold, I was weak and tired, I wanted to sleep, but my family was turning on the lights and kept coming to check on me. My parents wanted to force feed me and I didn't want any food.

The sky on my birthday

We ran out of water, but everybody sacrificed their last drops for me. I fell asleep many times, eventually I just retired for the night. I managed to swallow two halves of some pill that my father wanted me to take. Talk about chocolate cake!

A couple days later I was able to enjoy my present!

The Big, Small, Little and the Dascalus

Getting to Africa is a big step in our journey, it is the 9th month and a whole new continent. We are on our way to Madagascar but because we arrived Sunday and the only plane tickets to the island were on Saturday, leaving us with 6 nights and 5 days, we decided to go to Kruger national park. A brilliant choice.

Cheetah

In Kruger, having only three days to see all we can, we look around
for the evasive cats, we start at the north where there are fewer animals and fewer tourists. Fewer animals means it is harder to see what you want, but when there are less tourists that means that if you do find the animal then you actually get to see it (this will be explained later in the blog post). The main attraction here is the big 5, Lions, Leopards, Elephants, African buffalo, and last but not least the Rhino. There are two types of rhinos, the more common white rhino, which is slightly bigger and likes more open places, and the black rhino, the one that is actually rare due to overhunting for the horn - people believed it has magical properties.
Now there are little 5 i.e. Ant lion, leopard tortoise. The small 5,which are the baby big five. I think the leopard baby is the cutest. I have only seen them in post cards sadly. Then the Dascalu 5, Mihai, Ileana Ruxandra, Maria, Ileana lily, Ioan.
Now this park is 70-90% luck, you have to be in the right place and right time when the animal decides to cross the road or walk next to it. All the camps have boards about where people saw the big 5 (except Rhinos so they won't be hunted) today, and yesterday. But that might be four hours old and the animal might have left in the direction of no road meets.

We look and look for anything, the first thing you should see in Kruger are Impala, a book we took says 135,000 impala in Kruger, other resources say over 200,000. We get to the northernmost camp "Punda Maria" I don't remember what we saw on which day but as I remember we didn't see much except a yellow billed hornbill, it looked exotic then but it was quite common in Kruger. At the camp we buy adapters for the plug of South Africa, really different from anything else we encountered. We sit around for the remainder of that day, we will wake up early to go to some ruins in a guided tour.
We didn't see much on the tour; some old African buffalo, expelled from the group, they just want to stay next to water, no more moving with the herd for them. They also do not like the voice of humans. We saw a couple more animals. A thing I have noticed with tours made for animals is that if you don't find many animals, they will start explaining about the trees and the plants.
Guides around the world for almost all subjects love this line "this is an eucalyptus" not all of them, but usually if we walk or drive past they will say this line, though I still have to find out why it is so great the eucalyptus.
We arrived at the ruins. This being our first full day here all animals are very new, the guides take their guns and scout ahead for any dangerous animals which might be lurking around. There are none, we don't know if that is bad or good. If we see one we are all happy, but we don't want them to be shot if worst comes to worst. I would be very happy to see one Lion/leopard/Cheetah instead of the ruins.

All there is around the area is some leopard scat. So we advance up the trail, they tell us all about the culture, answer questions etc. we are near some baobab trees, I wanted to climb one. Unlike the other blog posts, what really happened is I asked permission to climb it, I spotted a hole in the center and said so, only once I got down did they tell me leopards like to hide their young inside trees. It made me wish I didn't just glance inside it. All was well, on the way back we spotted some elephants I did the best to get some good pictures.

We drove around for the next 2 days. Eyes getting sore looking at a bush, wait that bush is a leopard!!!! Whoops no sorry that was a rock, glad I didn't say anything. A Lion!!!!!!! Wait just a tree trunk. Now you might think its us going crazy, but actually that bush leopard had a rock behind it giving it the appearance of spots, and that lion trunk looked just like a lion sitting down, full of dust, giving it a more yellowish color. But when you see the real thing it's much different, it stands out nothing like a bush or a trunk (though the similarities were quite amazing).
Just on our last day, seeing no carnivore, we looked and looked, not too far from the exit. Only a couple more kilometers, what's that?! Breaks come into action (we can only go 50 km/h), a small spotted genet crosses our path! Everyone gets excited, pictures are taken. We feel more accomplished, we talk about seeing this carnivore they don't have tours to see, but of course they have tours to see the lion and leopard. 

Now even fewer kilometers to go a leopard crosses our path. The camera clicks the camera is passed on. The leopard turns, looks at dad then walks on the side of us and disappears into the grass. The whole family is crazy about seeing a leopard :D I felt as if my family was much happier than I was, at that time I felt as I was missing out on the good part of seeing a leopard, but now I think it was just because I was tired and a bit mad. (Most likely from the fact that when a song that I really liked came on my sisters would want to skip it and my mom in control of the music would listen to them as she also wanted to skip the song. But when a song came on that I wanted to skip NOOOOOOO!!!!!!! Comes the deafening scream from my sisters. And they would of course sing to the whole song.)

My sisters (when no animal is present) look on the window shortly before losing interest, they would look, then start reading, or writing. What interests them. Ileana likes listening to music and looking out the window, but if you start thinking about other stuff you start to zone out. Things pass you by and you don't realize, I know as this happened once or twice to me.
Even if she was looking for the animals and concentrating I wouldn't trust her, except with a predator. Real quotes "oh, I saw that bird but I didn't want us to stop" and later in another park Mom: "Look a rhino!" Ileana: "You didn't see it?" Mom and Dad: "well why didn't you say anything?" Ileana: "my mouth was full!" (we were eating apples) after we left the rhino I said okay my mouth is full, I took a Big bite from my apple and said "HMMM, MMMM! IT'S A RHINO!" dad stopped the car just in case I was serious, but I wasn't - we all had a good laugh.

But now we leave Kruger, we all decide we want to come back. So a month later we came for 8 days with astounding better luck.

We see all sorts of animals, but as I am not sure what happened on which day. On one day we cross a bridge, we are taking pictures at some kingfishers and then a car comes up, rolls down the window and says "there are some lions up the road." It was almost nonchalant. We started the engine, got to where the lions were. We couldn't see anything, we looked, but no lions. Cars were all around so they had to be there, but we couldn't see anything. We waited our turn and some people left and then we had the best spot. We then saw the lionesses by straining to see through the bushes. We waited, saw them playing with the flys, then one lioness would get up, and sit down. Then the second one got up and started to leave, and the first one after a while also got up and followed the second one, our patience was rewarded. We got to see the lionesses walk away, rather than just the tail.

Later that day we saw some rhinos (white) and on the other side of the car some of the smallest birds I have seen. Not much farther up there was a far away water hole even farther, looking hard through binoculars, we saw four more lionesses, hiding in the shade. Some impalas were walking very slowly to drink then would run a bit away. One very thirsty impala wouldn't run away completely. It would go, come back, go, comeback, go and finally a new team of impalas came and some would watch and the rest would drink. It was a nice show but it was getting late. And my sisters were impatient so we went to our camp.

Next day, we took a longer road to our next camp, after half the way there, we got blocked by a huge herd of African buffaloes. It didn't look like they were in any hurry. A big line of them told us we were going to be here for a while. After about 10 minutes we turned back up the road, we were going to be late at this rate. We then stopped for two giraffes who had their necks wrapped around each other. They were two males, one looked like the bull male, and the other looked like a young adult. It could grow another foot I think. It was a nice show but we had to get to the camp and they were blocking the way! We got closer but instead of going away the bull took a more defensive position.

Now you would think giraffes are pretty helpless creatures in battle. Not so. We had watched a free video at one of the camps, about some young lions. Some 4-5 lions attacked a giraffe bull, even though they attacked its blind side the bull gave some really hard kicks. Because of his awkward galloping and kicks the lions could not get on his back and give the finishing blow. The bull won the fight but lost the war. It was going to die from thirst. Because of the wounds, it would not be able to bend it's body to get to the water!

So we backed up, but we couldn't stay there till midnight, so after a few more pictures we honked and got through. Not long after a leopard was walking along the side of the road! We followed it in reverse for 10 minutes when it then crossed the road and hid in the bushes. We were all very happy we turned around but we had to get going!



On the last day we saw a cheetah! It was hiding in the grass, my mom who had the front seat looked ahead and saw it first. It got up and walked to a different spot, convenient for us. Within 30 minutes we had a big crowd all around us. But we found it and had the best spot. We considered taking people's cameras and taking good pictures for them as we all took the same picture 10-20 times, for a price of course. It yawned a bit before it repositioned its self and hid so well that it was really really hard to see. I would have wanted to stay there in till I needed the bathroom and was very hungry, or in till the cheetah left. We weren't going to sleep any more days in Kruger and I really liked being there.
Now I said I would explain about why having less tourists is a good thing, it's true that when you see five cars parked at the edge of the road you know an animal is there and therefore you drive past it. But those five cars prevent you to see the animal and allow you to get pictures that Nat Geo would want to use.

Here are some pictures of my favorite animals:

The lilac breasted roller.

Cambodia

We arrive to Cambodia's small airport in Siem Reap where there were only two planes (including ours). The entrance to Cambodia was fairly simple we took our visa applications, filled them out and handed them in to be checked, and after that we left the airport taking two tuk tuks to our hotel.

These tuk tuks are very different from the ones in India. In India you would have three seats in the back in which we got on each others lap. Now we have three seats in the back and two in the front. But because we had our bags, we had to take two.
When we arrived at the hotel we went to our electronics for most of the day, except that we slept four hours, ate lunch,and dinner.
The next day we had the morning off and ate pancakes for breakfast (well, at least us kids did) and I was driven to boredom from playing the games on my iPod and Maria not giving me the computer(because she has to finish all of her super overachiever self-set goals). I went to the pool alone where I discovered how to work the jacuzzi. After about half an hour I came back to the room to find mom and dad also dressed for the pool. Too late. I had already finished with the pool. So in the end I was the only person who went to the pool that day. After that we ate and left for the museum which was about Cambodian art and the Khmer empire.
The next day we bought the three day tickets for visiting any of the temples that were there. We began day one at the Bayon temple which was very special for some reason. Throughout the day we visited numerous temples and returned very tired, with sore feet.
The numerous temples continued the second (fourth day of Cambodia) day too. The temples were very nice, lots of details. Every now and then there would be these rows of sculptures of either elephants, humans, horse men, and some dragon/lions. Sometimes the humans would be slaves and sometimes they would be warriors or horse warriors and the elephants were sometimes attacking and sometimes peaceful.
Last of all that day was Angkor Wat. Angkor Wat had many things that other temples didn't have. For instance the outside of the temple walls, not the huge walls of the moat those are too big, but the ones which hold the temple, had sculptures telling a story of two great generals fighting to win something or the gods attacking humans or each-other. And on the inside was also very nice, there were a lot of sculptures, but the tower which allowed you to see the grounds of Angkor Wat were closed for cleaning. We happily decided not to stay for sunset, as we were too tired.
The next day was our break day of the temple days. We gladly stayed home but when we went out to eat that night and we had a fish massage, it was wonderful. One dollar for one hour per person. There were three tanks, one was to ticklish, one was to pinchy, and one was juuuuuuussssssst right.
On the third day of visiting temples we revisited Bayon and then we went one hour with the tuk-tuk to visit a temple, after that another hour back to Angkor Wat where we visited the tower where the view up there was amazing, the line to get up there was also amazing. Having re-seen Bayon and Angkor Wat we happily finished that day.
On the second to last day we went at the land mine museum; we learned a lot about them. We had a tour by an American volunteer who told us about the history of the famous man who cleared 50,000 land mines, and how the Khmer Rouge army would use children to place land mines, but they also found other objects for instance a rocket lancer which shot down commercial airplanes and learned many people would pay thousands of dollars just to have them destroyed.
And that is it for Cambodia!

Asian TRAFFIC

We have had a hard time dodging Asian traffic.

It is crazy, except in Japan. There you get nice drivers who pay attention to the rules. You can wait for a long time for the traffic light to change. Most people in Japan wait through this, even if there are no cars.

Then you get in China and you feel like people don’t care if they run you over. They just want to get to their destination, but of course they care that they might break their car. In some parts of China they have built bridges where you can go over traffic, YAY!

That's just some. In China and Tibet (which is in China) the traffic wouldn’t stop, so we usually followed the locals, or time really well, and RUN!

Nepal was mostly the same with narrower streets and so is India. Here we jumped into a bus while it was moving, because the drivers don’t stop, they just slow down.

If you are reading this, it means we are ALIVE!

Japan by Ioan

We have arrived in Osaka after a 14 hour plane ride of which 3 I slept.we waited for dad to find train tickets.and we took two hour train ride.and arrived at the train station and me and Maria raced at a jogging pace which was a tie.Maria usually faster had the disadvantage she had the 20 pound bag and I had the 10 pound bag. (we both slept 3 hours)

We met the person who owns the apartment and we got here!!!

(a couple days later)
We bought some deer food at the wrong place because there were a lot of deer right where we bought it. Maria who had taken the package was surrounded by deer and I stepped out of the horde and saw a deer eating a part of a student thin transparent coat made out of plastic(it was raining lightly and there were a lot of students)so I didn't go back to feed them but then I saw that that was only once and started petting them and then one nice person gave me some of the deer food to feed the amazing deer.(we saw the biggest Buddha in Japan) 29th October PRESENTS: we looked at the city and went to the fish market which had some cool fish and some disgusting ones(fish isn't my favorite)but it was pretty cool in the end then we looked through the city and found a apple store(where i wanted to stay longer)it was cool to see computers the size of a tv.As we left we saw a line waiting for the iPhone the line had at least 60 people. Then we went to meet some friends and to a park.the park was ok I didn't look at it much because I was talking with our friends then we went to a restaurant where I eat a pizza (which was great) and a food which had vanilla ice cream chocolate powder and I think some brownies I thought it was a le-crépe but it was actually pizza crust and it tasted great!(there is a normal version under)5:00 am we leave Tokyo in an hour then go with the subway until the air port and fly for four hours and take a taxi for around an hour and arrive and stay

Today was awesome!!! but before I say that I'm sorry to say you won't get every day that happens out of me because I don't really have time to write everyday(for instance while I was writing I had to clean the table so we could eat)

back to TODAY WAS AWESOME we went to Nara I don't know exactly where but it was awesome there where deer everywhere the picture on the right is taken from my iPod but what I liked was petting them.

30th oct.We met our friends again today and hiked a mountain we talked mostly again then after that we went to the beach for around twenty minutes because it started raining as we went on the streets I saw a lot of hawks I tried greatly to catch one in mod air with a camera I failed. In these days I've been trying to find some yen coins on the ground and I found one around three days ago it was one yen but it was a yen. Anyway back to today we went to another restaurant I ate some spaghetti we played the alphabet picnic and got to FOURTY LETTERS and it took us around 40 minutes!

1st Nov mostly break day for my sisters they woke up at 1:00AM while yesterday we stayed mostly at home because of nano(Maria has probably explained this) but we went to this building which had museums of architecture and how future Japan was supposed to be. It was really cool! But I have to finish Nov.4th today(actually 11/4/11 6:34 PM)

2nd November Says BYE BYE JAPAN

Please read my next blog china