This past January I went on a school trip to Turkey as a member of Kids Against Plastic Pollution (KAPP). It was my first time traveling without my parents.

KAPP program

KAPP stands for Kids Against Plastic Pollution. This year, there are 4 countries in Europe participating in KAPP: Romania, Norway, Croatia, and Turkey. To join KAPP, I had to write an essay about my qualifications and why I care about the plastic problem. If it was well written and the leaders of the school group thought it was good, I would get called into an interview. I was the last to be interviewed because of scheduling conflicts, so I got called in on the weekend. I was glad that I was last, because it meant that I got the answer back only 30 mins after my interview. And the answer was yes! I opened up my phone to check my emails. and low and behold, the answer! To celebrate, we went to TGI Fridays for Beyond burgers!

Before the trip to Turkey, we prepared for months on presentations and videos which we would later show to the kids who gathered in Turkey. The first presentation was just about Bergen, where it is and other stuff like that. The second presentation talked about challenges that we did relating plastic and how our city deals with plastic.

For instance, we went plogging, which is a mix of jogging and picking up plastic. We gathered a lot of plastic, which was sad, but at least there was less plastic in nature. We also did a challenge relating to excessive plastic at grocery stores. We bought normal groceries, them removed all the unnecessary plastic and returned it back to the store. Then we took photos of the plastic and challenged others to do it on Instagram. Other kids from other countries did stuff like going a week without plastic, or saving up plastic bottles and returning them for money to give to a homeless shelter and stuff like that.

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We also were very lucky in Norway. This company called Oceans Bergen took us on a boat trip to drive an underwater remote control submarine with a camera. We used it to dive underneath Bryggen, which is a Unesco heritage site in the middle of Bergen. We found tons of trash! Giant piles of bottles and cans, plastic tires and ropes, and even two metal chairs that had been thrown into the harbor. One of them was standing up right! It was horrifying to see all of the stuff underneath the water. Above the water is one of the prettiest places in Norway, but below is not so pretty. We recorded with the camera and used some of the footage in our presentation. 

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After months of planning and preparation, the time finally came! We were off to Turkey for the big week!

Kapp in Turkey

We traveled to Turkey on January 12th and arrived late at night. We passed through Oslo and Istanbul and arrived in Antalya, a touristy part of Turkey. We then took a bus to the smaller town of Manavgat, where we spent most of our week long visit.

In Turkey, we did some things to help the environment and spent most days meeting with other students and sharing information about what the Bergen group has been up to and teaching them about where we live and what our country does to manage plastic pollution. We did some pretty fun things too. Here is a countdown of the top 7 things I enjoyed in Turkey:

7. Waterfalls and Water Treatment

Our hosts took us on a few field trips to see the local highlights. We got to see some awesome waterfalls. We visited the in Manavgat waterfall and the Düden waterfall in Antalya, which flows straight into the Mediterranean sea. It felt like we were on vacation. We also got to try goat ice cream there for the first time.

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We were lucky enough to go and tour a water treatment plant. I thought we would be visiting the plant that cleans the water so people could drink it, but it turns out that they deal with the water after it has been used (by toilets). We learned that they filter 3 tons of plastic out f the water every day, and that they are just one of 5 other water treatment plants in Manavgat. This was an eye opener in a way, because you never really think about where all of the waste goes after you throw it away, but in reality, nothing goes away. It just goes into the environment.

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The head Turkish teacher surprised us with a special boat trip! After touring through a little village with shops we went down to the docks, and there was this beautiful wooden boat. We sailed over top of half of the old roman village (I’ll describe later), because it had sunk down in to the water. In the summer you can actually take a diving tour and look at all of the statues. The boat had speakers on the second deck and the captain played the Titanic music (Celine Dion) and people took photos standing up front. I had never been to the Mediterranean, so it was a very special memory. The sunset was heavenly.

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6. The bazaars

The bazaars in Turkey were mazes that went all around the city. I could live there my entire life and not see every shop. It winded down alleys and main streets, libraries under bridges, and selling everything you could imagine, from popcorn to jewellery. Even birds sometimes. They have giant tea stores, and they are better than the English at making tea. They are especially famous because of there apple tea, which I read about before I went, and had to take some back. I bought a hat called a Fez. I was on a mission to find special Turkish souvenir called a Nazar Boncugu or evil eye. It is made out of white and blue glass and defends you against bad spirits. On my last day in Turkey, me and my new Turkish friends spent the whole day looking for one and we eventually found a shop that sold it. We also bought some Turkish delights and some popcorn, which we are still using up back at home. It cost 2 lira for 1 kg of popcorn! It was sooo cheap!

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5. Meeting new people, including governor of Manavgat!

One of the greatest parts of my trip was the fact that I got to meet a lot of new people from all over Europe and Asia! We had lots of fun, exploring shops and cracking jokes. The Turkish people were very polite and quite funny. Unfortunately, because this meeting was based in english, the people who did not speak english were at a disadvantage, and I felt like they were left out a little bit. I learned a lot about what other countries are doing to manage plastic pollution. Norway, it turns out is quite advanced and it made me proud to represent it.

During our trip, we were lucky enough to be able to meet the governor of Manavgat, where he made a little speech about how glad he was that we could come visit him and how he has heard so much about our group. Afterwards we were able to ask questions, and I asked a couple. The teacher later said they were very good questions, which I was glad to hear. I gave the governor a Norwegian flag pin and I got to take a special photo with him.

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4.  The food!

In Turkey, I stayed with a family who had a kid in the KAPP group. I would sleep and eat with them and then I would meet up with my group at the school. The kid I lived with was named Yusuf, and his moms sister was a professional chef, so I got to try Turkish baklava and banana bread with orange zest in it (which I had never tried before) and other yummy treats. The family also had a garden where they grew their own beans, and they made a delicious salad with vinaigrette. and for the breakfasts, there would be a lot of bread and cheeses with olives and tomatoes on the side.

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One of their favorite fruits is fermented pumpkin, which was kind of slimy and sweet. The also sold a drink worse than possibly conceivable. It was called aryan, and it was yogurt mixed with lots of water and salt, and foamed up. Its was salty and bitter, and unfortunately everyone who was not Turkish did not like it at all.

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They also ate cake almost everyday! They loved their baked goods, such as bread, potato pancakes, cheese pancakes etc. They also never used cows to make milk, so all of their dairy was made from goat milk. The milk was ok, but it started getting weird when they would whip it into cream to put on coffee and hot chocolate. Also ice cream was very stringy and chunky, which was good that we tried it, but I don’t think I will indulge in it ever again.

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The shops sold a lot of lentils and rice in bulk, fresh fruits, and spices, which were very good. I noticed that the orange juice was very sweet and flavourful along with the apples.

Speaking of food, I was told to bring a gift for my fellow turkish student, and did so, but a couple things happened. we brought some candy that was like a taffy, called moam, and we forgot that muslim people can not eat gelatin! I also got some chocolate for him and his parents, but it turned out everyone who lived in that household hates chocolate, so all my gifts were quite pointless. Hopefully it’s the thought that counts!

3. Roman temples!

Another thing we got to do in Turkey was go and tour some Roman temples. We took a bus ride there and spent the whole day looking around and taking photos. There were lots and dogs and cats looking around for food, and as the sun was starting its decent. We learned that the ancient city we had visited was a place where people who were muslim, christians and jews lived in harmony and peace. Also we learned that a quarter of the city was under water, and during the summer you could scuba diva and tour it (see my note above).

2. Cleaning up the beach!

While we were in Turkey we organized a beach clean up, and tried to get people to come. We made posters for a little protest, then marched down to the beach. There were 30 of us and it took one hour to clean the beach. We were sponsored by a group for their reusable bags, which we used to pick up the plastic. In total, we gathered 8 giant black trash bags full of plastic and 4 smaller grocery sized bags. After we gathered all the bags, everyone was shocked, and I think the people from Turkey were a little bit embarrassed about all the trash.

1. The culture

We had a lot of free time to walk around the city, go to cafes, try new foods and other stuff like that. We had a nice cultural experience. One thing we all noticed was that every morning the Imam (equivalent of a priest of the mosque) would climb up in the Minarets (towers that surround the mosque) and would sing in Arabic. We actually found out he was not singing, but was actually saying that we should not be lazy, and needed to head out to the mosque. This would happen 5 times a day, because people needed to pray 5 times a day, and you should at least go to the mosque once a day. We got to take a tour of a mosque and it was interesting. The first floor was for men and the second floor was for women. We learned that people always pray in the direction of Mecca, the muslim capital of the world, located in Saudi Arabia. 99% of Turkey is muslim, and I had never been to a country like that before.

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The neighborhoods were a bit weird, because sometimes the road was torn apart with rubble and dirty, and sometimes they were really nicely done with tall buildings. There was a lot of diversity, and it was kind of confusing when we were jet-lagged and tired, trying to scope out the city. LOL.

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As I mentioned earlier, I got to live with a Turkish family, which was a very great experience. The boy I stayed with was Yusuf. He had a Mom and a Dad, 2 little brothers and a grandmother who lived with them (see the picture below). They lived in an apartment about 8 minutes from the school, which was much closer than anyone else in my group. They were very nice and caring. They made be feel at home.

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Overall, this experience was one of the funnest I have ever had. I got to go to a country all by myself without parents and I got to visit a new country that is 99% muslim. I got to make new friends and tour around trying new foods and coffees and drinks. I got learn a little bit of Turkish as well! Making new friends is actually a really great benefit of this experience. I have gained friends from all over the world, and become closer with my travel group from Norway.

And of course, I couldn’t return home without bringing my parents some Turkish Delight!

Stay tuned for my next blog from quarantine in Norway!

Thë íñtèrńâtīöñåł mõōšė!!

Hello! I hope you have had a Merry Christmas and a happy new year. I certainly have.

On the day of Christmas Eve, our family hiked up the local mountain, and and stayed overnight in a cabin we had rented. It is called the Tuba Kuba, which means Tuba cube (those of you who have seen my previous blogs already have heard about this cabin). It is called this due to its design. It was designed by the architecture department in the university, by students their. The wood is bent in, so it becomes a hole. At the end, there is a little hobbit hole door. When you get in, it is generally warm, because every day the cabin is booked, except on Christmas Eve (it seems almost unthinkable for some reason).

 But we have rented it 3 times on Christmas Eve. It’s become a tradition. We hike, then playing games, listening to christmas songs, and eat charcuterie or cheese fondu. On Christmas morning, when I woke up, our stockings were full. We had agreed to only bring stalkings up on the mountain. I got a cool flashlight, a GIANT box of Toffifees and a cute Niffler teddy bear (Niffler is a creature from Harry Potter that is attracted to shiny things, and is always getting in to trouble around banks or fancy places) When we got home, it was what I like to call a movie moment (movie moments include opening the hotel room door for the first time, christmas, or my birthday). 

I got three really cool books by Randal Monroe. He is basically this insanely smart person who takes questions from people and answers them, Scientifically. They are also it is super funny. I also got a really cool book that is about harry potter, and it’s got all sorts of history and magic and backstories. Then I got games such as Exploding and Imploding Kittens, Paramedic, Munchkin, Ticket to ride and a game called Carcassonne. They are all fun and interesting in different ways, and add to our collection for Sunday game night!

A couple days after Christmas we rented a car and drove to another cabin, this time near a ski lodge. The road trip along the fjords was nice and we even saw a really old (from the the year 1120!) stave church.

They had cross country skiing, which we did on the first day, and boy was it fun. But the days afterward were VERY icy, so we did not go skiing. We stayed in the cabin, with a toasty fire and doing puzzles. we would occasionally go for a car ride, or I would go outside and fight an army of snowmen. We also played a lot of games.

We also went downhill skiing. I thought is was fun. There was a really long T-bar lift that we had to take up a steep black diamond hill in order to get to the easier trails. But I would fall off, and then have to ski down a black diamond! Finally, on the 4th try, we were getting progress, but my ski hit a rock, and kind of got knocked off. I hung on and let the lift drag me because I didn’t want to ski back down again! Eventually had to let go. We walked a while uphill but downhill skis are super heavy and the boots are like wearing casts on your feet, so it was very challenging. Eventually a guy with skidoo drove up and stopped the lift so we could get back on. When we got to the top it was so fun!! It looked like heaven!! (see below).

But it eventually got steeper, and even though I was getting the hang of it, at one point it went from snow to complete ice, were you can’t stop. I had a pretty good wipeout and after I confirmed that I was fine, my mom took a photo for good measures. I was near the end but there was one last hill and it was ice and steep. I ended up rocketing down, and I could feel the wind trying to stop me. I have never been more scared! I had a pretty good crash and got quite a few bruises, but it made for an exciting finish to 2019. That night we rang in 2020, a new decade, hopefully filled with new adventures.

Happy New Year from the International Moose!

 This year, I got to spend my summer at my cabin, in northern Wisconsin. For those of you who don’t know where Wisconsin is, it is in the northern US, and is very close to the Canadian border. Our cabin is a large red building that is at least 80 years old and sits over a body of water called Lake Namakagon.  In the evening the cabin is mainly where people spend their time because it’s a lot bigger, but during the day, people spend their time working and swimming, taking one of our 17 boats, reading etc. Down the hill from us is our boat house, which has two floors (see below). We store the boats on the bottom floor and the upstairs has several bedrooms. The boat house was built by the Spitzer family very recently.

The Spitzer family cabin is in the middle of the woods, so you can imagine that there are tons of wildlife! That’s why we have a trail-cam.

Trail cam:

The trail cam is attached to a tree and is left for week or so. After we retrieve it, we plug the memory card into the computer and everyone gathers around the computer to look at the photos. We mostly see deer, but occasionally see turkeys or raccoons (and sometimes a wolf if we’re lucky). Once, I was going to check the trail cam, I saw a deer, walking 4 feet in front of me! My draw dropped! This year, it was my job to keep track of the camera. I tried putting it on the road, where the deer sleep, but it wasn’t taking photos. Then I tried the Witch’s Woods, and it was a great success, because it is confirmed that deer walk on the path we are working on and, it had a bunch of pictures of deer! Sadly, we forgot to get copies of the photos, but I will try to remember next year.

The witch’s woods are an area of a certain type of hemlock trees that block the sunlight, so there is no vegetation on the forest floor. Since it’s so dark, the myth is that a witch lives in that part of the woods.

Work projects:

The cabin is constantly needing repairs with 20 people here every summer, so everyone has their share of work. This summer I have been rebuilding a crate that covers the well. I reinforced it, painted it rusty red and added new screws to hold it together. I also have renewed 2 trails with the help of my dad and grandpa. I also went on the hot buggy road with my dad and dug rocks out of the road, which was really hard. Some of the rocks were pretty big! With the rocks we collected, we built the first firepit the cabin has ever had! We hope people will use it a lot.

 I think people give some work to kids so they can learn how to drive a screw into a wall, or how to paint or how to build a fire. I am proud of my work, and hopefully there will be more fun projects next year.

This year, my aunt Terry (My grandpas’ youngest sister) has been hard at work with her daughter Jessie recoating the canoe paddles or they will get rotten. They cover it with polyurethane and let them dry.

My grandpa and grandma are also figuring out the house plans for there are house across the bay, and i’m excited for the finished project

My cousins

My cousins Eleanor and Elliot got to visit the cabin this year, and it was a blast! I had never met Eliot before, and he was pretty fun. My cousin Eleanor I have met once before, and already got to know.

Eleanor and Eliot stayed a week with their parents Uncle Brian and Edwidge. We did lots of fishing, swimming and playing. We had a game of monopoly that lasted 5 days!!

Edwidge and Eliot both speak French, so got to talk with them a bit. I hadn’t talked with someone my age since before we left for Borneo back in April, so it was very nice to have him visit. My uncle Brian (My dad’s brother) and Eleanor are very nice and fun. Eleanor likes to go chipmunk hunting and Eliot and I like to go fishing we all love going swimming!

Puppies!

At the cabin, there are lots of people, which tends to be a lot of dogs, but unfortunately not  this year didn’t have that many, but I still had lots of fun with them. The dogs here are: Scout the black lab is a year and a half old. Rufus a border collie is 13 years old. Chewbacca the labradoodle is 6 years old and Ollie who is a  Husky Border Collie mix and is 11 months old. Whenever we would go swimming, the dogs would whine and jumping to try to save us, but would always scratch us. The first time i went swimming with scout, I was just diving around, looking for fishes, and suddenly I saw this big silhouette on the lake bottom, and and as I turned up to look at it, it pawed me in the face!this big black shape came and scratched me in the face! It turns out it was scout trying to save me, but it was impossible to be mad at her though, because she was doing it out of excitement and enthusiasm, not hate. You can see photos of them playing below.

Rufus is an old dog so with him I mostly pet and scratch. He has wispy black and white hair, and is always in a good spirit. He is almost 14, and does have problems going  Scout is a retrieving maniac. The only interest of hers is to swim and catch her frisbee. she has very dark black fur and it it is extremely pointy. She has eager brown eyes and is full of energy. Chewy has curly black hair and is full of anxiety. We sometimes cant find him because he blends in with rug so well.  Ollie is a puppy, so I tried and failed to use up his energy in running and biking. He has brown and white hair and has a pink nose. His eyes are yellow and look like a cosmos shape. He has a very big head too. 

Norway in Wisconsin

As some of you know, Europeans began coming to North America nearly 500 years ago. The appeal of farmland and escape from there poor lives was irresistible. In Wisconsin and Minnesota, many Norwegians have colonized in those states, and that’s what this blog part is about.

The Norwegians started coming in the late 1800s and kept on doing so for years to come, and that’s why there are a lot of people in Wisconsin that are Norwegian There is so much Norwegian heritage in these parts, they even have an American version of the Birkebeiner.

The Birkebeiner is a story in Norwegian history, about how a group of Norse people who safely transported baby Haakon Haakonsson, the heir of the throne, to a safe place while being chased by the present-at-the-time king, Eystein Meyla who actually was an imposter, and that’s why he wanted to kill the baby Haakon Haakonsson.

Fun Fact: People who live in Wisconsin wear cheese shaped hats to football games, because they were called that because it is a german insult (to have holes in your head) but the wisconsinites adopted the name and the insult backfired

Marks Desserts

It is summer vacation, and everybody needs desserts! Here are some of my favorites that I made this summer. Some of them are store bought so I didn’t have the recipe 😦 .

1. Brownies!
2. Cookies!
3. Cinnamon swirl cake
4. Rice Krispies Treats!
5. Blueberry Muffins!

I have asked people around the cabin what their favorite dessert was, and those are the stats I got from them.

Brownies were people favorite because warm chocolate with a scoop of vanilla ice cream is great for a summer night. I put the mix in an 8X8 pan and cook for 45 minutes at 325.

For cookies, I use the recipe on the back of the chocolate chip bag but add a bit more flour and vanilla then called for. They make delicious cookies! I also helped make chocolate espresso cookies. The chocolate chips had coffee in them. People also made Oatmeal Butterscotch cookies, which were so good!  They are called oatmeal scotchies if you want the recipe. You can find all of the Nestle Toll House recipes online.

Cinnamon swirl cake is fancier than the other ones on the list. You make the batter, pour half of it in the pan, then sprinkle cinnamon on top. Then add the rest of the batter and cinnamon on top again.  It’s sort of like a 2-layer cake.

Rice Krispies Treats are an old classic. Melt 40 marshmallows on a pan with 3 tablespoons of butter, add a bit of vanilla, then add 6 cup of Rice Krispies. Put them in a cake pan and let them cool. Yummy!

I knew the muffins would be good as I tasted the batter. You mix everything together add the blueberries and put them I the oven. After 30 min, voila!! Little muffins that are great with vanilla ice cream, or by itself as a snack.

Origin of cabin

In the early fifties, My great grandpa and his family bought a little cabin in northern wisconsin. It only had a little kitchen and a living room. This was the Cabin. Over 60 years, they built the  master bedroom, the kid bedroom, the bathrooms, the second master bedroom, the boathouse and then the porches! It is amazing that there are still bunches of things to do!

Boats and paddle board

One of, if not the best thing you can do at the cabin is take out the canoes and paddle boards! Once when my grandpa and I were in a canoe, we were drifting close to the shore to see ducks, when suddenly I spotted a deer, sleeping right in front of us! Canoes can get up nice and close to animals, and with paddle boards, you can race and go into the areas canoes can’t. It is also a good way to get away from noise.

That being said, we do have more than those types of boats. We have a sailboat called ‘Windigo’ and a mini sailboat called a snark. The snark is more of a one person boat, but is still pretty fun and fast. I am not especially good at it.  We also have kayaks, and those are really fast, but you get wet when your paddling! My dad is very good at kayaking.                                                                                                                                                                                                   

Canoe trip As I have previously mentioned, our cabin is built along the edge of Lake Namakagon which flows into a river that goes down into the Mississippi and down to the Gulf of Mexico. well that’s exactly what we did. We drove the canoes down to the dam, and started   paddling. We had researched that this section was very shallow, but we still had a great experience going down the rapids and steering away from the rocks. Sometimes, I had to get out of the boat and drag us past the rocks in the extremely fast waters, and every time we got stuck everyone was very stressed.  Imagine the screeching of an aluminum boat, going against the rock while I was dragging the boat over a rock! Once I was tugging the boat and it very sharply into my knee, and tumbled into the water and was soaked. I was sitting in front, called the bowman, and I had to tell the steerer (my dad) were i thought there was no rocks, but we always scrape the boat at least a little bit. You can imagine the bottom of the boat afterward! 

Running the road

During the summer break, my dad and I would go out running on the road every morning, and it was very annoying having to get out of bed and then run in a forest full of rocks and mud puddles, and you definitely did not want to stop, or else you would get eaten alive by the mosquitoes and horseflies. We would be so hot after, that we would jump straight into the freezing cold lake! The second you touched the water, you would get the wind knocked out of you because it was as cold as jumping into snow in your shorts, but it was always refreshing. 

Thanks for reading. Make sure to tune in for the next blog post!

The international Moose!

This year, we went to Stockholm on a long weekend and in this blog post, I will tell you about it!

On the trip to Stockholm, was initially just my dad and I, because my mom was in Tromsø at the time. We took a train from Bergen to Oslo, where we stayed a night. I recommend traveling by train if you ever are in Norway. In Oslo we went to the BANFF film festival, which is something we used to do back home in Canada. The next day in Oslo, we visited the Fram museum. We had already been there once before with my grandma and grandpa, but wanted to visit it again. We learned a lot of new stuff about the expeditions on the Fram.

We took another beautiful train ride, this time to Stockholm where we met up with mom, who was flying in from Tromsø. In Stockholm, we spent a lot of time just walking around cool neighborhoods like Gamle Stan, which is the old town, with narrow streets and neat shops. My favorite was the old candy shops where they made polkagris (old fashioned striped candy, like candy canes).

Of course the food was great. Similar to Norwegian in many ways. The special afternoon snack is called Fika. It’s cinnamon roll with coffee. There are little Fika shops everywhere. One had a dog outside that actually looked like a cinnamon roll (see below)

We walked around all of the islands, and I got try the electric scooters that were laying around town. It seems to be a new thing in cities. I really wanted to try them in Singapore. This time, my parents gave in! We just had to download an app and scan it the scooter, then you ride all you want! You find scooters in an app and leave them where ever you want. It was so much fun and seems like a really good way to get people to stop driving cars!

We also did some boat tours as well.We also did a tour called “under the bridge” where we went under several bridges (as implicated in the name) and even got to go from the ocean into a lake. There were salt-water locks, so we waited as the doors ahead opened and the doors behind us closed. It took a while, but we eventually went to the lake. As we sailed we learned about the vodka wars and how IKEA was invented!

We also passed the Abba museum, which is a Swedish band, if you didn’t know 😉 We thought it would be fun to watch Mamma Mia because it’s a musical based on ABBA songs. It was pretty ridiculous!

Visiting Stockholm was a great experience, and I recommend it, especially in the fall, but just remember to pack warmly! It is a very beautiful city, with a lot of funny history. It also has really cool mix of cultures, and has very good restaurants.

Thanks for tuning in for another adventure with the International Moose!

On this adventure, we have had some spectacular experiences, from snakes to spiders, crocodile’s and wallabies. Australia also has some of the most dangerous animals in the world. Here are some of the “close encounters” I had with Australian wildlife.

Snakes

Attack of the golden tree snake

It all started with my dad in the backyard. He was reading in our tree shaded backyard (perfect for a tree snake) when all the sudden, he heard a croaking noise coming from behind him. He looked back and did not see anything, but when his eyes focused, he saw a snake wrapped around the fence!

 When he got a closer look, the snakes head was in a crevasse, and it looked like it was trying to get into the house!  After we called the snake catchers we found out that it was a golden tree snake, and he had chased a frog up the hole. We suddenly thought of McRibbit and were very sad, because there was blood dripping down from the hole. But to our surprise, a couple nights later, we found McRibbit, damaged but alive! I was really happy knowing that.

Below is another golden tree snake that we encountered at a swimming hole. Before getting in, my dad made a joke about looking for snakes, and I did. All the sudden, a snake was slithering right at me! It was just another golden tree snake, but a lot smaller. He went down to the second pool eventually and we got to see him wait for a frog, then rocket down the hill at full speed and try to catch it, but fail. He did this twice, and we assumed that he must have been a baby snake, and was learning how to hunt.

Snakes of the deadly variety

We driving though Kakadu when suddenly there was a thump. We had run over a snake! And not just any snake, but an Western brown snake, one of Australia’s most deadly snakes! We did not mean to, and I was very sad, but the Australians we have talked to almost thanked us! The snake was not dead, but he was a little squished and very angry. Hopefully he’s ok.

Thankfully we didn’t encounter the deadliest snake of Australia in the wild, the Inland Taipan (below). We met this one safely behind glass in a reptile exhibit. Australia has lots of snakes. Most of them, thankfully, are not dangerous. I got to hold a few of them. Below I’m holding a children’s python and a giant olive python named Mrs Squeeze.

Monster spiders

Aside from deadly snakes, Australia is known for its deadly spiders and we’ve met a few of them. One day, hiking in Kakadu we were so busy looking for snakes that we didn’t notice that in the middle of the path, there was a red back spiderweb, one of Australia’s most dangerous arachnids! I was too short and didn’t see it, but my mom and dad walked straight into it. My mom suddenly screamed and my dad bolted and started doing what looked like the chicken dance. We learned a valuable lesson. Never go hiking in the morning before everyone else. Let others walk through the spider webs first! We didn’t get a photo of the red-back, but below are some creepy webs and a golden-orb spider, which we encountered a lot.

Another terrifying spider is the Australian huntsman. We’ve seen two of them. One in our backyard (see below) and one on a trail as were walking back from a swimming hole in the dark. We had just taken a second swim in the swimming hole in Umbrawara gorge (see below). It was in the evening, and we had decided to leave, or else we would be walking back in the dark. We must have underestimated the Oz sunset, so we ended up in the dark anyways.

 The trail was enclosed by trees, and every time you stepped, a low branch would rustle against your feet, making you think it was a creepy crawler. We came to a rock that jetted out into our trail and my mum jumped! Somehow in the darkness, she had seen a giant spider in the path! Now, we have had experiences with huntsman spiders before, so we knew how to identify them, but being in the dark is different. My dad poked it with my pool noodle, hoping it would get out of the way, but instead, it crawled up onto the big rock, right in the middle of the path.

My dad ran first across, after the spider would not budge, and successfully made it. I was next. I just bolted across, before people told me so, because I was not going to wait. Then my mom ran, and did bunny hop right over him. As we brushed past the bushes and branches, they all trembled and to be honest, so did we. We were relieved to get back to camp.

Bats (flying foxes)

The flying fox numbers in the Darwin are quite impressive, considering that it’s in the city. We have seen about 2000 now, give or take, and we know what trees they eat in. The feeling of standing in the grass and looking for bats while you hear them squabbling is quite exiting feeling. We have managed to get some pretty good looks at them with headlamps, and how the crawl around in trees like monkeys. It is very funny.

Bat Night!

Bat night is an event that happens every year here so that the public can learn about their local bats. We got see baby bats, black fruit bats, red fruit bats and bent wing micro-bats. The fruit bats use eyesight, but the micro-bats use echolocation, which means sending out a sound signal and waiting for it to bounce of the insect and back towards them. In Darwin, there are only 5 bat carers, (people who keep bats as pets, and rehabilitate them) and they are trying to recruit more bat carers. My mom says we would definitely be bat carers if we lived here in Australia.

The bats are in big trouble, with climate change causing heatwaves, that kill of thousands of them. One heatwave in Queensland (a part of Australia) killed off one third of the entire population of bats. Barbed wire is also dangerous for fruit bats (which use eyesight) because they don’t see it in the dark and get punctured wings or lose an eye. We saw one last night that had only one eye because of barbed wire. The good news is that the bat caring committee puts electrical tap on the wire, which reflects the moonlight, and bats can see it. They did a study at an airport, and the tape reduces bat catching by 95%.  The bats like eating grapes and mangoes and are some of the only mammals that can drink full fat cow milk. When the babies get older they start drinking banana milkshakes, which I think is hilarious.

‘Sleeping’ Bats

So bats are nocturnal, which means they sleep during the day, well sort of. When we were in Litchfield national park, we stopped in a place called Bachelor. The park was very nice, and overhead in the trees, in the middle of the day, were a bunch of screeching flying foxes (video below)! They were very loud and could be heard for quite a distance. We found out at bat night that they are so loud because it is mating season. They squabble in the trees over space and talk a lot to each other. I don’t know how anyone could sleep through that racket!

Killer Crocs                                                          

Crocodiles are notorious in the Top End for eating tourists and locals. They can feel anything that touches the water from a long was away, because of their special sixth cense. If you notice, on a crocodile, they have little black dots. They are little sensors, that help them know when an unlucky person moves in the water. To keep people safe they set up croc traps in places where people swim. The traps are about the length of a car. They bait the traps with chicken, and when the crocodiles come in the cage, the door snaps shut. Don’t worry, they don’t kill the crocs because they are protected.

While we were here, we visited Crocosaurus Cove, which is where crocodiles captured in traps get taken so they don’t eat people. One croc is a a very famous one named Burt. Burt was the crocodile in “Crocodile Dundee” (below). They also had a cage of death, which was a little plastic room that people go into and get lowered into the water, when the crocs are eating. I really wanted to do it, but you have to be 15 years old! We watched the giant crocs get fed and I got to feed some baby crocs with a fishing stick and a piece of meat!

In our most resent trip, we got to ride camels ayers rock! (see below) I got to ride a camel named Maddigan. My dad got to ride am camel named Norseman, which I thought was an interesting name! It was really high, being up there, but it was really fun!

Camels and friends

At the camel farm there was also a little petting farm. I had brought some seed over to feed the emu, but he wasn’t very hungry. But when the other animals saw the food, they went crazy! The water buffalo, the goats, the baby camel, the donkey and the ducks all wanted the grain desperately, so I spent quite a bit of time feeding them. I also got to pet the kangaroos! they are as soft as down!

We went to Kathrine gorge at the end of the trip, and we got to cruise around looking for freshwater crocodiles and cave art. The guide even said that there are several famous movies that were filmed there, one of which we had seen! It is called Top End Wedding. A great movie to watch if you want to get a good sense of the Northern Territory. Just before turning in our rental camper, we made a stop at the Territory Wildlife Park and see all of the national animals, like different types of wallabies, echidnas, tree rats, snakes, monitors, turtles, and tons of different types of birds! I really like the freshwater whip-tail rays. When the park guide feeds them, they are like puppies pawing at their feet. I also got to feed archer fish by holding out a small worm. The fish squirts water at your hand from up to 5 meters away. This is how they knock insects off tree branches and into the water.

Another spooky encounter 🙂

On our most recent road trip we came across a town famous for it’s alien encounters, the U.F.O capital of Australia! The gas station was decorated like an alien theme park and there were newspaper articles on the walls talking about all of the past encounters. Apparently they even have conferences about aliens there.

That is all for now! In a couple weeks I will be going to North America, so I wont be blog posting for a while!

Thë Īñtërńãtïóńåł Móøšė!

As some of you know, we’re spending the last few months of the school year in Australia (aka Oz). We are living in Darwin, in the Northern Territory, or as the Aussies say, the Top End. We are close to the equator so it tropical and hot here every day. Usually 33 degrees. Darwin is on the ocean. The beaches are very nice but not utilized because of all the salties (saltwater crocodiles). I love it here and home school is going great.

We live in a coconut. Well, not an actual coconut (That we be super cool if we did though) but a white structure that is called the “Cozy Coconut” (See below). We have a living room, a kitchen, a bathroom and 2 rooms. To access my room, I have to climb up a tall ladder.

The best place is the backyard. Its where we do most of our cooking (on the BBQ) and see a lot of animals. Every day, I have to leaf blow our backyard, and I notice that there is quite a bit of animal “droppings”. We have identified them, and they belong to the possums. The possums are nocturnal, and they must be the cutest thing I have ever seen. We have some pretty good photos. We call them Nifflers, which is a harry potter animal, based of echidnas, but look a bit like a platypus. They steal anything that is shiny, and since they are both cute, we call the possums, Nifflers. They are my favourite backyard buddies, along with the scrub fowl (kind of like a turkey) and the ibises (locally known as bin chickens) and a green tree frog I named, McRibbit.

On the weekends we explore the Northern Territory. Our first trip was to Kakadu National Park. We saw fantastic animals and interesting art sites. When we were driving, we spotted lots of wallabies on the side of the road, along with giant termite mounds.

The thing I liked the most about Kakadu, was the yellow water billabong. A billabong is like a marshy wetland, that is home to crocs and lots of birds. We took a boat ride on the Yellow water billabong to see close up crocodiles in their natural habitat and Azure kingfishers swoop into the water, and very majestically picking up fish. The cruise can’t be described in a sentence. Imagine a bird haven, where thousands of ducks, egrets, black necked storks, night herons, redwing parrots, sacred kingfishers, azure kingfishers, kites, cormorants, cockatoos, poem breasted jacanas and magpie geese all gather together in a billabong, and we are on this boat taking it all in. We saw 8 crocodiles and I spotted 1 fourth of them (2). We got some pretty good photos of birds too. (see below).

In Kakadu we got to visit some ancient aboriginal caves and see some cool rock art. I can see why they would live in these rock caves because they were shaded from the sun and provided shelter from the rain during the monsoon season. Below is Nabulwinjbulwinj (below left). He’s a spirt who eats women after hitting them with a yam. On the left is Namarndjolg (the fat one) who became the great saltwater crocodile. Namarrong, the lightning man is the smaller drawing on the left).

The caves also have a great lookout and view, which was probably good for hunting. The rock art showed a lot of kangaroo and wallaby hunts.

On our most recent trip we rented a 4×4 because on our last trip we noticed that a lot of roads up here are 4×4 only. You can see why from the photos. A lot of areas are flooded and trucks have snorkels on them so that they can travel through water.

Our trip started in Litchfield national park. We camped at Wangi falls, Gunlom, Umbrawara gorge, then at Florence falls. We had made a system, after exploring, we’d find a camp spot, set up, go for a swim (the most important part!), then repeat. We would also stop and swim at some other places during the day, because it was SO hot!

Gunlom was a little lake, that got poured into by a waterfall. Or so we thought. There ended up being a hike up the mountain so we hiked it. The hike was quite steep, and half of the time, you were climbing boulders, but the top all made up for that. It was an infinity pool, that came flowing beyond our sight, but close to us were a couple deep swim holes, so we decided to just hop in. It was very refreshing, and a great view.

Robin falls was the best place to swim, or so I think. It was a secluded 3-tiered waterfall at the end of an enclosed trail, with a lot of boulders. When we had reached our destination, we climbed up to the top pool. It was exactly what we needed to cool off.

So far we are surviving the heat thanks to air conditioning and lots of swimming. Next week we’re taking a trip into the dessert, which will be cooler temperatures compared to here.

Stay tuned for my next blog, all about close encounters with Australian wildlife including deadly snakes, monster spiders and you can watch me enter the cage of death with killer crocs!

Thē Íńtërńātíøñâł Moose!

⚡🎵Welcome to the jungle!🎵⚡

For my Norwegian friends: Skrull ned for norsk edition!

It was a dream come true! We went on a trekking adventure in the jungle of Borneo to look for wild orangutans!

Our trip started out of Kuching, where we met our guides, Edgar and Lemon. Turns out, we learned, they are capital ‘G’ great at spotting the hardest things to see (Monkeys, Birds, Orangutan nests, Birds Etc.)

We took a long car ride to a local market and looked around to collect fresh food for our trip. They had everything from bananas to fresh sting-ray, to Star Wars figurines. Most of the food was exotic, which I had never seen before. Unfortunately, they were selling some illegal things. We saw the worlds most trafficked animal, pangolins, for sale. They kind of look like an Armadillo, but scalier. I became really sad when I saw them dead in an ice box. That same table also had a dead Python for sale, which is also not allowed. To distract myself I went somewhere else to look at pineapples.

On the way, we stopped for lunch we stopped at a little café and tasted noodles, fried veggies, and other delicious local foods. After a total of 6 hours of driving out of the city, we came to a dock, but we weren’t there yet! We hoped into a longboat (see below) and traveled for another 1.5 hours across a long and a winding river.

The long boats were designed to navigate narrow passages and cut between floating logs. On the river ride we zipped over rapids and ducked under vines and swerved around rocks. If you closed your eyes it felt like we were on a race car track.

 We arrived at Nanga Sumpa lodge. Where we would spend our first night. The main lodge is high up on stilts with steps down to the river. It’s a great place to sit and relax and watch the river flow.

The first thing I noticed about the jungle, is that the air is heavy and thick. The humidity sits on you like a blanket, but you definitely don’t need a blanket when you are hiking. The river is also a great place to swim. The jungle smells like trees rotting and growing at the same time, as if life and death are one scent. The jungle is loud with sound of crickets and birds, and frogs.

The thing about Nanga Sumpa lodge, is that there is a village of Iban people across the river (you can access it by bridge) and they all live in this extended house called a long house. It has 20 little rooms for 20 big family’s. The Iban people are mostly hunters and gathers harvesting from the jungle, but they also make crafts. Each house has baskets and shields and jewelry and ornaments. We did buy a shield there (see below). The Iban people also run the guest lodge, drive out boats and cook our food. We were invited there to listen to how the longhouse works and the chief of the longhouse served us rice wine. I got try it and it tasted like strong sugar cane juice. We learned that when the community gets bigger they add new rooms to the end of the long house. If you get married to someone from a different longhouse, and you are a girl, you follow the boy, vice versa.

 Outside, there were hundreds chickens and roosters. The biggest roosters are used for combat, which is sad. They put razorblades on the rooster’s beak and claws, and then they battle.

The food we had was pretty simple. Veggies and some type of meat (sometimes 2) and rice. We also had fruit sometimes, like pineapple or papaya. In Borneo, we are not supposed to drink the water because of diseases like cholera and malaria. Even though we didn’t, we still had to take vaccines and pills against it. Even as I am writing this, we still have to take it.

That night, it was our first time sleeping in a bug net. I was too hot and could not sleep well, even though we were in a little cabin…and I thought that was hard! (see my comments below about the Mawang camp!)

The next day, we took a little trek around the camp and saw one long tailed macaque, 3 centipedes. It was training for what was to come. In the afternoon, we packed our bags and got going.

We began our trekk to the Mawang camp. It was a long hike, looking for orangutans, and crossing rivers, and getting stung by fire ants but we finally got there, and we were surprised. It was just an open shelter with a roof on top to keep us dry from the rain (my bed was right beside and active hornet nest. Thank god for bugnets!). The mattresses were thin, and the pillows were chunky. I loved it! The reason Mawang was simple and rustic, is because we needed a place to stay, but make it unnoticeable as possible, because we wanted to get closer to the orangutans.

At Mawang, we got try fresh pineapple and fresh dragon fruit and go looking for frogs at night! We saw:

1 Black spotted rock skipper

2 Bornean horned frogs

1 poisonous tree frog

1 Giant river toad

1 spotted stream frog

Tons of spiders

2 bats

And more!

The next morning, I woke up to what sounded like a battalion of people playing the drums on the roof. This of course, was pouring rain and a thunder storm. It was really cool, but delayed our trip for 4 hours, because we could not cross the river, due to it was flooded.

The hike began up an extremely steep and muddy slope and gradually, the incline decreased, but it was still a tough hike. We saw lots of centipedes. Man, those things are creepy! We got so close to tracking the orangutans. We know this, because orangutans make a new nest every night, meaning that if the leaves of the nest are still green, we are 1 or 2 days behind. We found freshly eaten Guava, an Orangutan FAVORITE (their number 1 favorite is stinky durian, so stinky that there was a sign in our Kuching hotel banning it!)

After two nights at Mawang and many attempts to find orangutans, we commenced a hike back to the Nanga Sumpa lodge, and slept one last night with the heavy air and the sound of geckos munching a cockroach.

The next day was one of my favorite days, even though it was our last day in the jungle. Some folks stayed back at the lodge to relax, while some went on a boat ride to a waterfall to swim (I think you know what I did). After the swim, we went hiking and tried to track down the Orangutan on our last day. We didn’t, but the swim was amazing, and I even jumped off the waterfall twice! (see below), and the hike was great and scenic. I would love to do it again. We hopped on a longboat the next day and headed back to Kuching.

Here is something funny:

The reason Kuching is called Kuching, is because a British soldier named James Brooke found Borneo in 1841. He met some locals and pointed to Kuching and asked what that was called. The locals thought that he was pointing toward a cat, and they said Kuching, and he called the city Kuching. I just wanted to share that because I thought that It was hilarious. That’s also why there are weird statues of cats all around the city!

I know this is becoming long, but I still have one very special story left. It is about the orangutan sanctuary that we visited in Kuching.

When we got picked up by our guide, we were glad and surprised that it was Lemon, from the jungle. Lemon drove us to the sanctuary, and while we waited for the feeding to start, we saw a crocodile that had been rehabilitated, but could not live by himself, so was at the sanctuary.

These orangutans are wild but have been relocated to the sanctuary grounds because they lost their homes to deforestation for growing palm oil. I am 100 percent against palm oil and refuse to eat it to not contribute to deforestation. They come in for food assistance once in a while, but live free lives.

When the feeding started, a pregnant female orangutan swooped down and grabbed some bananas. We were awestruck and watched her break open a coconut by banging it on a tree. Then after we had taken lots of photos, we moved on to the feeding platform.

The feeding platform was a little wood bottom and some ropes connecting from tree to tree. We learned that the orangutans came naturally and were not forced to come. We saw 2 orangutans there. A mother and a baby. I called them Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong, because they kind of looked like them. We got to see them swing around, and the baby trying to steal a coconut from his mom. They were very acrobatic and flexible. They are fast in the trees but slow on the ground. The ranger has to keep a distance or he might get hurt.

Since I have wanted to see orangutans for while this was really awesome! I loved the orangutans a lot, and I had raised a lot of money, so I adopted the baby orangutan we saw, Sem. Sem’s moms name is Angelina.

That’s all from Borneo! Here are a couple of final photos from Kuching. I hope you enjoyed!

Tune next time to hear about crocodiles, dingos, and wallabies in Australia!

Thè îñtérńåtįōnāł Môóšë!   

 

 ⚡🎵Welcome to the jungle!🎵⚡

Det var en drøm som gikk i oppfyllelse! Vi dro på et trekking eventyr i jungelen i Borneo for å lete etter vill orangutanger!

Turen vår begyntet i Kuching, hvor vi møtte våre guider, Edgar og Lemon. Vises, vi lærte, de er hovedstad “F” Flott til å spotte de vanskeligste tingene å se (Aper, fugler, Orangutan reir, etc.)

Vi tok en lang biltur til et lokalt marked og så oss rundt for å samle fersk mat for vår tur. De hadde alt fra bananer til frisk sting-ray, til Star Wars-figurer. Det meste av maten var eksotisk, som jeg aldri hadde sett før. Dessverre solgte de noen ulovlige ting. Vi så verdens mest ulovlige dyr å selge, pangolins, til salgs. De ser litt ut som en Armadillo, men mer scalier. Jeg ble veldig trist da jeg så dem døde i en isboks. Det samme bordet hadde også en død Python til salgs, som heller ikke er tillatt. For å distrahere meg selv, gikk jeg et annet sted for å se på ananas.

På vei stoppet vi til lunsj vi stoppet på en liten kafé og smakte nudler, stekte grønnsaker og andre deilige lokale matvarer. Etter totalt 6 timers kjøring ut av byen, kom vi til en brygge, men vi var ikke der ennå! Vi håpet på en langbåt (se nedenfor) og reiste i ytterligere 1,5 timer over en lang og en svingete elv.

De lange båtene ble designet for å navigere i smale passasjer og kutte mellom flytende logger. På elvekjøreturen vi zippet over styrk og ducket under vinstokker og svingt rundt steiner. Hvis du lukket øynene, føltes det som om vi var på et race car bane.

Vi ankom Nanga Sumpa lodge. Hvor vi skulle tilbringe vår første natt. Den viktigste lodge er høyt oppe på stylter med trinn ned til elven. Det er et flott sted å sitte og slappe av og se på elven.

Det første jeg la merke til om jungelen, er at luften er tung og tykk. Fuktigheten sitter på deg som et teppe, men du trenger absolutt ikke et teppe når du er i jungelen. Elven er også et flott sted å svømme. Jungelen lukter som trær råtner og vokser samtidig, som om livet og døden er en duft. Jungelen er høy med lyd av siriser og fugler, og frosker.

Saken om Nanga Sumpa lodge er at det er en landsby med Iban-folk over elva (du kan få tilgang til den med bro), og de bor alle i dette utvidede huset, kalt et langt hus. Den har 20 små rom for 20 store familier.

Iban-folkene er for det meste jegere og samler høsting fra jungelen, men de gjør også håndverk. Hvert hus har kurver og skjold og smykker og ornamenter. Vi kjøpte et skjold der (se nedenfor). Iban-folket kjører også gjestegarden, kjører ut båter og lager mat. Vi ble invitert til å lytte til hvordan langt hus fungerer og lederen av longhouse serverte oss risvin. Jeg fikk prøve det, og det smakte som sterk sukkerrørjuice. Vi lærte at når samfunnet blir større legger de til nye rom til slutten av det lange huset. Hvis du giftes med noen fra et annet langhus, og du er en jente, følger du gutten, omvendt.

 Utenfor var det hundre høner og haner. De største haner brukes til kamp. De legger razorblader på hannens nebb og klør, og da dreper de hverandre.

Maten vi hadde var ganske enkel. Grønnsaker og en slags kjøtt (noen ganger 2) og ris. Vi hadde også frukt noen ganger, som ananas eller papaya. I Borneo skal vi ikke drikke vannet på grunn av sykdommer som kolera og malaria. Selv om vi ikke gjorde det, måtte vi fortsatt ta vaksiner og piller mot det. Selv som jeg skriver dette, må vi fortsatt ta det.

Den kvelden var det vår første gang som sov i et bugsnett. Jeg var for varm og kunne ikke sove godt, selv om vi var i en liten hytte … og jeg trodde det var vanskelig! (se mine kommentarer nedenfor om Mawang leiren!)

Neste dag tok vi en liten trek rundt leiren og så en lang tailed macaque, 3 skolopender. Det var trening for hva som skulle komme. På ettermiddagen pakket vi våre poser og kom.

Vi startet vår tur til Mawang-leiren. Det var en lang tur, leter etter orangutanger, og krysset elver, og ble stakk av brannmyrer, ( de gjore veldig vondt) men vi endelig kommet dit, og vi ble overrasket. Det var bare et åpent hus med et tak på toppen for å holde oss tørre fra regnet (sengen min var rett ved siden av og aktiv hornhytte. Takk Gud for bugnets!). Madrassene var tynne, og putene var klumpete. Jeg elsket det! Grunnen til at Mawang var enkel og rustikk, er at vi trengte et sted å bo, men gjør det ubrukelig som mulig, fordi vi ønsket å komme nærmere orangutangerne.

På Mawang fikk vi prøve fersk ananas og frisk dragefrukt og se etter frosker om natten! Vi så:

1 Svart flekkete rock skipper

2 Bornean horned frosker

1 giftig tre frosk

1 Giantantisk elvpadde

1 flekkete stream frosk

Tonn edderkopper

2 flaggermus

Og mer!

Neste morgen våknet jeg til det som hørtes ut som en bataljon av folk som spilte trommene på taket. Dette var selfølgelig hevende regn og tordenvær. Det var veldig kult, men forsinket vår tur i 4 timer, fordi vi ikke kunne krysse elva, på grunn av at det var oversvømmet.

Turen begynte opp en ekstremt bratt og gjørmete skråning, og etter hvert reduserte hellingen, men det var fortsatt en tøff fottur. Vi så mange skolopender. Vi fikk så nær å finne orangutangene. Vi vet dette fordi orangutanger lager en ny nest hver natt, noe som betyr at hvis bladsene på den nest er fortsatt grønne, er vi 1 eller 2 dager bak. Vi fant ferskt spist Guava, en Orangutan FAVORITE (deres nummer 1 favoritt er stinkende durian, så stinkende at det var et tegn i vårt Kuching hotel banning det!)

Etter to natter på Mawang og mange forsøk på å finne orangutanger, begynte vi en tur tilbake til Nanga Sumpa-hytta, og sov en natt i natt med den kraftige luften og lyden av geckos som spiste en kakerlakk.

Neste dag var en av mine favorittdager, selv om det var vår siste dag i jungelen. Noen folk oppholdt seg tilbake på hytta for å slappe av, mens noen gikk på en båttur til en foss å svømme (jeg tror du vet hva jeg gjorde). Etter svømmingen gikk vi på tur og prøvde å spore opp Orangutan på vår siste dag. Vi gjorde ikke, men svømmetur var fantastisk, og jeg hoppet selv av fossen to ganger! (se nedenfor), og turen var stor og naturskjønn. Jeg vil gjerne gjøre det igjen. Vi hoppet på en langbåt neste dag og dro tilbake til Kuching.

Her er noe morsomt:

Grunnen til Kuching kalles Kuching, fordi en britisk soldat som heter James Brooke, fant Borneo i 1888. Han møtte noen lokalbefolkningen og pekte på Kuching og spurte hva det ble kalt. Lokalbefolkningen trodde at han pekte mot en katt, og de sa Kuching, og han kalte byen Kuching. Jeg ville bare dele det fordi jeg trodde at det var morsomt. Det er også grunnen til at det er rar statuer av katter rundt i byen!

Jeg vet at dette blir lengre, men jeg har fortsatt en veldig spesiell historie igjen. Det handler om orangutan helligdom som vi besøkte i Kuching.

Når vi ble plukket opp av vår guide, var vi glade og overrasket over at det var Lemon fra jungelen. Lemon kjørte oss til helligdommen, og mens vi ventet på at spisning skulle begyne, så vi en krokodille som hadde blitt rehabilitert, men kunne ikke leve av seg selv, så var det i helligdommen.

Disse orangutanger er vill, men har blitt flyttet til helligdommen fordi de mistet sine hjem til avskoging for voksende palmeolje. Jeg er 100 prosent mot palmeolje og nekter å spise den for ikke å bidra til avskoging. De kommer inn for matassistanse en gang imellom, men lever gratis liv.

Når fôringen startet, suget en gravid kvinnelig orangutan ned og grep noen bananer. Vi var overasket og så henne bryte åpne en kokosnøtt ved å slå den på et tre. Så etter at vi hadde tatt mange bilder, flyttet vi videre til spisingsplattformen.

spisingsplattformen var en liten trebunn og noen tau koblet fra tre til tre. Vi lærte at orangutangene kom naturlig og ikke var tvunget til å komme. Vi så 2 orangutanger der. En mor og en baby. Jeg kaldte dem Donkey Kong og Diddy Kong, fordi de så ut som dem. Vi fikk se dem svinge rundt, og babyen prøvde å stjele en kokosnøtt fra moren sin. De var veldig akrobatiske og fleksible. De er raske i trærne, men sakte på bakken. Ranger må holde avstand, eller han kan bli skadet.

Siden jeg har ønsket å se orangutans for flere år dette var virkelig fantastisk! Jeg elsket orangutangene mye, og jeg hadde pantet veldig mye, så jeg fikk masse penger, så jeg adopterte baby orangutanen vi så, Sem. Sems mors navn er Angelina.

Det er alt fra Borneo! Her er et par siste bilder fra Kuching. Jeg håper du likte!

Still neste gang å høre om krokodiller , dingoer og wallabies i Australia!

For my Norwegian friends: Skrull ned for Norsk edition!

Welcome to the first phase of a big journey! We are visiting SE Asia and spending a few months in Australia this year. There will be many adventures to report. First stop: Singapore!

The first thing I noticed in Singapore was the buildings around me. Some were leaning over and some were tangled, like a page out of Dr. Seuss. I also noticed that most of the buildings had vines and flowers growing around, on top of, or hanging off the balcony. In Singapore, everything was different than in Norway or Canada. All of the architecture looked like a mix of alien and plant life.

I also observed that their food has some of the same elements as western food, but cooked and served completely differently. In Singapore, the food is a bit of a mix. There is Korean, Chinese, a bit of Japanese, Cambodian and Malaysian. Almost all the food I tasted was good (There were some really slimy things that I didn’t like).

We tried things like dim sum, ramen (the REAL stuff), and sugar cane juice freshly pressed! One thing about the food in Singapore is that it is not normally served in restaurants. It’s is usually served in a group of stands called hawkers. They serve everything from butter chicken, to shrimp fried rice, to French fries. I LOVED the fire-grilled fish tikka and shrimp dumplings.

For breakfast, the most typical food is dinner-like things (noodle bowls) or kaya toast with eggs. Kaya toast is white bread toasted with a sweet honey-like marmalade and butter. It is eaten with soft boiled eggs. It’s a little weird, but my mom loved it. I stuck to peanut butter toast!

The people in Singapore are extremely friendly and seem well adapted to the heat! They were kind to tourists and really helpful. After traveling a lot in Europe I expected people to aloof and inattentive. Instead, they were sociable and chatty, and they went out of their way to help us out. This was great because we were jetlagged and overheating. We spent a lot of time by the pool cooling off and trying to stay awake. I tried to convince my dad that I needed a giant banana pillow to help me through the jetlag, but he wasn’t convinced! Not getting it is my only regret of the trip! lol.

We visited the supertree grove, which is a group of artificial trees. There is a beet-red structure, and plants sprouting on them. They are the homes of birds, insects and maybe monkeys. The super grove was at the entrance of the Gardens by the bay.

Gardens by the bay is also an artificial mountain with tons of plants growing in and on it. There are all the carnivore plants, orchids, and trees. For fun, the made a LEGO model of a Venus flytrap! The thing that intrigued us the most, was that that there were posters everywhere that said that the flower dome was tulips (My mom’s favorite type of flower). It was really pretty! (see below). I really liked the pink and white ones.

We toured the Botanical Gardens as well. That was my FAVORITE part of Singapore! I saw Bamboo and Palm trees and my favorite part, the VIP orchids! They were so pretty! SO many colors! They had every type of orchid (see below). I also liked the Bonsai tree garden. They were also really cool. The Botanic Garden also is the home of the tree that is on their money.

We enjoyed Singapore a lot, especially because it was unexpected. We were using the visit to adjust and stage for the next phase of our journey, trekking into the wild jungles of Borneo!

Tune in to the next edition, where you will all about spotting orangutans and attacks by fire ants and leaches!

Singapore er ikke kjedelig!

Velkommen til den første fasen av en stor reise! Vi besøker SØ Asia og tilbringe noen måneder i Australia i år. Det vil bli mange opplevelser å rapportere. Første stopp: Singapore!

Det første jeg la merke til i Singapore var bygningene rundt meg. Noen lente seg over og noen var sammenflettet, som en side ut av Dr. Seuss. Jeg la også merke til at de fleste av bygningene hadde vinranker og blomster som vokste rundt, på toppen av eller hengende utenfor balkongen. I Singapore var alt annerledes enn i Norge eller Canada. All arkitekturen så ut som en blanding av fremmed og planteliv.

Jeg har også observert at maten deres har noen av de samme elementene som vestlig mat, men tilberedt og servert helt annerledes. I Singapore er maten litt av en blanding. Det er koreansk, kinesisk, litt japansk, kambodsjansk og malaysisk. Nesten all maten jeg smakte var bra (det var noen veldig slimete ting som jeg ikke likte).

Vi prøvde ting som dim sum, ramen (den virkelige ting) og sukkerrørjuice friskpresset! En ting om maten i Singapore er at det vanligvis ikke serveres i restauranter. Det serveres vanligvis i en gruppe staver kalt hawkers. De serverer alt fra smør kylling, til reker stekt ris, til pommes frites. Jeg ELSKET brann grillet fisk tikka og reker dumplings.

Til frokost er den mest typiske maten middagslignende ting (nudelboller) eller kaya-toast med egg. Kaya toast er hvitt brød ristet med en søt honninglignende syltetøy og smør. Det blir spist med myke kokte egg. Det er litt rart, men moren min elsket det. Jeg stakk til peanøttsmørbrødskål!

Folk i Singapore er svært vennlige og virker godt tilpasset varmen! De var snille til turister og veldig hjelpsomme. Etter å ha reist mye i Europa, ventet jeg at folk skulle avstå og uoppmerksom. I stedet var de sosialt og chatty, og de gikk ut av deres måte å hjelpe oss ut. Dette var flott fordi vi var jetlagged og overoppheting. Vi tilbrakte mye tid ved bassenget avkjøling og prøver å holde seg våken. Jeg prøvde å overbevise faren min at jeg trengte en gigantisk bananpute for å hjelpe meg gjennom jetlaget, men han var ikke overbevist! Ikke å få det er min eneste beklagelse på turen! lol.

Vi besøkte den store “super tree grove”, som er en gruppe kunstige trær. Det er en mørke rød struktur, og planter sprer seg på dem. De er hjemmene til fugler, insekter og kanskje apekatter. Super grove var ved inngangen til “hagen ved bukta”.

Hager ved bukta er også et kunstig fjell med tonnevis av planter som vokser i og på den. Det er alle karnivorplanter, orkideer og trær. For moro skyld gjorde den en LEGO-modell av en Venus flytrap! Det som fascinerte oss mest, var at det var plakater overalt som sa at blomkuppelen var tulipaner (Min mors favorittblomst). Det var veldig pent! (se nedenfor). Jeg likte de rosa og hvite.

Vi turnerte også den botaniske hagen. Det var min favoritt del av Singapore! Jeg så bambus og palmer og min favoritt del, VIP orkideer! De var så pen! Så mange farger! De hadde hver type orkidé (se nedenfor). Jeg likte også Bonsai Tree Garden. De var også veldig kule. Botanisk hage er også hjemmet til treet som er på sine penger.

Vi likte Singapore mye, spesielt fordi det var uventet. Vi brukte besøket til å justere og plan for neste fase av vår tur, trekking inn i villmarkene i Borneo! (med brann maur).

The Christmas misadventures of the Spitzer family:

Four days before we were to leave for Christmas Vacation, Airbnb canceled our cabin in Røros, a snowy village with lots of skiing and sledding. So we had to make a plan B and we ended up going to Barcelona, Spain. We flew to Amsterdam and then to Barcelona. On the first night, we went to a flamenco dance show ( see below). We first dined in a warm and little claustrophobic restaurant. They had traditional foods such as kinds of Paella, fruit salads, cured ham, warm dishes, and churros! (Dipped in chocolate!). Then we watched the amazing and dramatic show. It took about an hour but it was really cool and fun. we were so close that we could feel the wind from there skirts. It was especially cool that it was on my dads birthday!

Streetlife

Streetlife in Barcelona smells good, looks good and sounds good.  Las Ramblas is a famous walking street where people ramble along, watch street performers, eat and shop, etc. The side streets are narrow, made of cobblestone and dark and dank. They were filled with people during the day, but at night they were kind of spooky.

The Boqueria Market was a cool experience. It is filled with little shops that sell fresh fruit spices, meats, salts, and candy! (the candy was good ! see below). The colors of all the exotic foods and the variety of things was amazing! You can basically find anything fresh from around the world.

We spent a lot of time in a square called Placa Real. We ate dinner here a few times and were entertained by musicians playing the accordion, guitar and a little drum (See video). This is where I got to buy some glowing helicopters that you shoot into the air like a slingshot. They fly about 40 feet up and the air.

 

Food

in Spain they have a big brunch, an afternoon snack, then eat dinner at about 22:00. they also eat something called tapas. its where you go to different restaurants and eat “small plates”. its history is that when English travelers came in the 19th century, they would offer small servings of food, like ham and cheese and bread, or fried baby octopus. the reason why they would give so small portions is that few innkeepers could write and few travelers could read, so they gave them little amounts in case they didn’t like it, and could go on to the next plate. it probably can still be used today in foreign languages and countries. My favorite is the potatoes bravas (fried potatoes with spicy sauce) and Churros of course!

Christmas 

Christmas in Spain is very different than in North America. It is hot, sunny and beautiful (not to say North America is not beautiful). We went to the Basilica of Barcelona on Christmas Eve and a group of teenagers sang Feliz Navidad and other songs in Spanish (see below). after the little concert, we found a little tree in front of the Basilica and pulled a twig off it. we called Christmas twig because it was our little Christmas tree (see below). On Christmas morning I got a haircut (as you can see from the photos) and we also spent Christmas day in Park Guell. it had a lookout and 2 houses. It was made with smashed tiles. We had Christmas dinner at a French/Italian Restaurant.

I discovered that Spain has monk parrots! They are awesome green birds that live in the palm trees. I was so excited when this guy had one on his shoulder and was selling photos with it that I got duped!! I paid 5 euros to hold it, only to realize it was just a pigeon painted green. Oh well, I still liked the pigeon.

 

Architecture

There are a lot of beautiful buildings and there is a famous architect from Barcelona named Antoni Gaudi, and he made designed beautiful houses, cathedrals etc. (see below).  On Christmas Eve we went to see one of Antoni Gaudi’s buildings called Casa Batllo. It was made of broken tile and people think that some of it is supposed to look like animals like the windows were turtles and vents were fish gills. It was very beautiful and interesting (see below). he also created the cathedral Sagrada Familia, which has been under construction for 100 years and still isn’t finished!

Other observations… 

On Christmas day, I was picking out some earrings for my mom, and the people beside me was speaking Norwegian, so I talked to them, and they were shocked! I don’t think they expected someone to understand them. Another day, a street vendor came and we told him we were from Canada. He asked if I spoke French…  he spoke Catalan, and I found out that the two languages are pretty similar. Also, one night while playing with my glowing helicopters in the square, I met some French kids. We spoke French the entire time and they didn’t even know I spoke English. I was very proud. It makes me want to learn Spanish now so I can know four languages.

Orange trees!! This is the first time I’ve seen real oranges growing on trees. I wanted to pick one so badly but they were all out of reach. I could tell the oranges at breakfast were freshly picked. They were almost crunchy and so juicy and sweet. YUM!!!!!

Supermercats! hehe. In Spain, the supermarkets are called supermercats! I want to open a store that has a logo of a Mercat wearing a cape!!

Sights

We took a train to a place called Girona. It was beautiful and sunny. we toured around the town for a bit and saw the colorful waterfront along the river. We had some tapas in a little restaurant and then walked along the old fortress walls. Apparently, Girona has been under siege 23 times, but it has only been conquered about 9 times. they built the huge wall (see photos). The wall extended across the entire city and had gun holes in the wall and lookouts all over the place. It was built in the 1st century and then rebuilt in the 14th century under the reign of Peter III.

At night we explored the old Jewish quarters. It’s very sad, but in the 1400s they were exiled from there home. :-(. The Jewish quarters were well preserved and interesting to explore. Everything was made of stone.

 

On our last day, we explored Barcelona Beach and saw the worlds largest yacht! I got to collect some sand for grandma Wanda see the Mediterranian. I also found a funny looking palm tree that looked like I pineapple!

We finally arrived home after our great adventure in Spain and got to have a real Christmas celebration. I have been missing egg nog and they don’t have it here so I decided that we would make some ourselves, it was fun to make and tasted pretty good. As you can see, in the background of these photos, we didn’t have a real Christmas tree. My mom and I made one out of twigs and rope. We also made a Norwegian Christmas dinner: Ribbe, with mashed potatoes and vegetables.

God Jul og Godt Nytt ar!!

I hope you enjoyed this! Thanks for reading.

Thé íñtęrñātįöñāł Mõöśë

May – National Day!

This spring our friends Erin and Mark from Yellowknife came to visit us with their 2 kids Elliot and Felix. They were here for National Day. National Day celebrates the separation of Norway as a free country from Denmark (Denmark and Norway were one country until they split). It’s a big deal here. On National Day all Norwegians dress up and wear very expensive costumes (dresses and suites) called bunads. There is a huge parade, which I get to march with my school. In the parade, there are tons of marching bands and floats. It seems like every Norwegian activity group and organization is marching in the parade. Here’s a short video below.

After National Day, we took the ferry from Bergen through the Sognefjord (the second longest fjord in the world) and arrived in a small town called Aurland, the home of the original penny loafer (the shoe with a penny in it). Our cabin (hytta in Norwegian) had a big balcony and great view of the fjord. It was a neat old cabin with lots secret room and hiding places. We dug around and found old soap and coo-coo clocks and lots of old stuff. There were trap doors everywhere, but we weren’t;t allowed to go down them.

 

For Erin’s birthday, we had cheese fondue and made her a chocolate cake for Dessert. The next morning we went down to the dock to go fishing. Dad and Mark went kayaking and when it got hot, we went swimming in the ice-cold water of the fjord. My Dad and I have an ongoing challenge: He promises me a batch of chocolate chip cookies if I will swim out in ice-cold water. I swam out ten meters and went completely under water. It was definitely ice cold ❄️.

We visited the orchard/goat farm and got to hang out with the goats and saw them up close with their puppy 🐶 (herding dog), which was pretty cute. That night we made a fire and cooked at the dock, and did some fishing. I didn’t catch anything though, but that’s because the area was overfished and still is☹️.

We drank fresh apple juice made from the Sjkerdal orchard and tried two types of handmade goat cheese and they were the best things I have ever tasted! It super fun!

On our last day, we took a ride up to Stegastein viewpoint to get a good look at the Fjord.

Then heading back to Bergen, we took the famous Flamsbana (Flam Railway). We had taken the train once before, but this time it was even more pretty because it was summer and made the fjord and valley look incredible.

June Adventures

My auntie Kristin came for a visit to Bergen for two weeks in June and we had a great time. We explored old Bergen and the parks and did lots of hiking! We hiked two mountains in Bergen. Below are photos of our hike up Lovstakken, one of Bergen’s seven mountains.

 

We took a ferry south to a town called Stavanger so that we could hike the famous pulpit rock (see photos below) which was very beautiful and stunning.

We got to explore the city and stay at a neat little b&b in old Stavanger, where all of the houses are on narrow cobble-stone streets. We saw the famous rainbow road, which was really pretty. The thing is, is that in old Stavanger, they can only paint there houses white, but the rainbow road is special because a guy asked the government if he could paint a road with different colors, and they let him. In Norwegian, it’s called fargegata (the color road). We got back to Bergen by boat, and we spent Canada day in the park playing a Norwegian game named kubb.

Hiking Camp

I started my week-long hiking camp on July 2nd. As part of a gang of 11-12-year-old kids, we traveled for 1.5 hours by bus to the Voss county with huge backpacks. When we arrived our first priority was swimming!! We packed our day packs and went down to the lake and went swimming and kayaking. Then we set up the tents and we made chicken wok (I did most of the cooking) and that was good. The next day we did a 4-hour hike up to a cabin called Vending, another great place to swam. We played lots of card games and had spegetti from a can. When we hiked back the next day we went to the Alexander Grieg cabin (no he is a relative to Edward Grieg) and spent two days there. I learned a bunch of new card tricks and games. there we went for a nice long hike and came back and had fish burgers and hotdogs.

These past few weeks we have been hiking Stoltzeklieven (the mountain with stone steps). It had become our new favorite. It takes 3 hours, but it’s very intense. It’s flat most of the way into you reach the steps, then it’s straight up 722 steps! 3/4 of the way up you see a sign that says: Melksyren, which mean lactic acid!

Here’s me at the top!!

Stay tuned for more adventures this summer! I’ll be heading to the cabin in Wisconsin for 3 weeks starting July 30th.

Until next time, the International Moose!