Art

We have been doing art this week.This is mine that I haven't quite finished yet. In art we are learning how to shade and tint with pastel and paint. Tinting is making it go lighter and shading is making it go lighter.We are drawing maori birds which have korus on them.The landscape behind the bird we are going to paint.The sky  we are going to tint or shade.The landscape includes mountains,rivers,fields and clouds. I really enjoy art;
its my favorite subject!

CHAMONIX

After a long trip in the car we finally go to the airport. We were soon in our plane. We were going to Switzerland which is very close to France.  So we were going to drive to France then Chamonix.  Vrroom the plane was taking of, it was sprinting up the runway and up it went making me push back into my chair.  We arrived in Geneva and hired a rental car.   Dad had to drive on the other side of the road and the steering wheel was on the other side.
After a long drive we got to our friend's house in Chamonix.  They have a dog called Coco who loves to lick!  We did lots of things in Chamonix.   We went for a walk up the mountain and mum could not make it because she was scared of heights and we were very high up.  The path was made out of huge rocks big and small.
Our friends have a baby who is 6 months old, his name is Charlie.  He laughed a lot and smiled all the time, he was so funny!
Our friend's house was next to a lake, we took Coco there and threw sticks in the water for her to fetch.  She likes swimming a lot! At the edge of one of the lakes there was an old church and if you went into the church there was a little staircase leading into the water.  Next to the lake was a big forest that had an Accro park - it had lots of challenges like monkey bars, flying foxes, walking wires, planks.  You needed to wear a harness and a helmet to go there.  Also at the park there was a huge cliff where people went rock climbing.  My sister did the rock climbing up the cliff.

Singapore 2 - Singapore Zoo

I peered through the trees to see a tiny Cotton Top monkey. On their head they have fluffy white hair. I call it a cotton Afro. I carefully glanced through the grass and saw... a Proboscis monkey, the monkeys with the humongous nose. They have big hands and hairy grey fingers. Their colossal feet are just like colossal hands. They cling on to the branches with their feet.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw a reddish figure swinging above my head. It was an orangutan! There was a huge wooden playground for the orangutans.  On one of the platforms was a mother orangutan with her adorable, tiny baby.  The mother was covering herself with a sack and baby was playing with palm leaves.
We walked onto the next enclosure, everybody was very quiet and taking pictures continuously.  Sooner or late I started taking pictures too!  It was a white tiger!  It had creamy white, thick fur with black stripes as black as licorice. Below them was a man made pond.  One of the tigers hopped in the water playing with a stick, the other tiger tried to get the stick off it.  The white tigers were my favourite because they are the biggest cats in the world and they are endangered.
Around the corner was a terrible smell....baboons! That enclosure was crawling with baboons.  Their bottoms were not that pretty.  There were a few babies who were very cute.  Some of the baboons were enormous and had sharp teeth.  There were a lot of flies in this enclosure.
I think that Singapore Zoo is the best zoo I have ever, ever been to.  The Zoo is better than the Night Safari, we did this as well.  We had to wait an hour to get on a tram to go around and it wasn't that interesting.

ENGLAND

We drove to Falkirk, Scotland in our rental car.  We were going to Falkirk to see Mum's friend Violet.  We went on a walk to see the Kelpies, a Kelpie is a mythological water spirit from Scottish story tales.  It is often appears as a horse that lives in the water but it is not a nice spirit, it can make a flood to sweep people away.  But the Kelpies we saw were not real they were collossal metal horse heads made by an artist called Andy Scott from Glasgow. They are 30m high.  I thought they were stupendous!  I peeked through a gap in one of the Kelpies and saw a lift that went up into the Kelpie's head.  It was closed but I wish I could have gone up there.
The next day we drove to another friend's house who had 3 dogs, 4 cats and 3 ponies.  The house was in a beautiful village called Tetney in England.  On the road to her house we saw 5 peacocks coming out of a driveway.  It was really funny because our friend had told us that she had peacocks this morning in her garden. We went for a walk with the 3 dogs, Tattie, Bear and Jasper AND the pony Tinkerbella!  The next day we went to an outside pool and it was at a campsite area.  We stayed in the pool for the whole day. That night for dinner we went out for fish and chips and went to the seaside to eat them.  We played arcade games afterwards which was so much fun!
Our last stop was to go and see Mum's friend Karen whose daughter had a baby who was only 2 weeks old.  Her name was Avelaina.  She just cried and slept.  Karen cooked a really nice scrumptious curry.  The next day we went for a walk at the country park.  There were heaps of ducks and swans that were swimming in the man made lake.  Then we went to play on the playground which had an enormous swing.  After that we went on a huge walk right around the colossal lake.
I thought England was much warmer than Scotland and the people had a different accent.