Laurel's Travel Summary... so far

Hi, I'm an alien. 

No, I'm actually not, I just need to familiarize you with my complete and utter randomness.

So pardon my randomness when I tell you about the last two weeks.

It had been two, three weeks after school let out (and I miss you Burke's girls like crazy, especially the ones who I will not mention but you guys know who I'm talking about). New York was hot and muggy, something I was dreading about the east coast. Ugh. I'd have preferred the drizzling rain of San Francisco any day.

So anyway, I was being awesome and minding my own business, when it hits me like a lightning bolt: I'm here. I did it. We're in NYC, baby! I always like to sit in the hotel and play on my phone when we first arrive at a city, but dad likes his little 'I'm-going-to-walk-somewhere-and-get-lost-and-then-walk-in-the-direction-that-I-think-the-hotel's-in' thing. Somehow, we convinced him to stay and look up restaurants on Zagat while we unpacked and played games.

So then we went to some Italian place, and I honestly don't know what I got, 'cause, remember, this is like two weeks ago. But I do remember my dessert was a Nutella Panna Cotta. Nom nom. And then we did something else, which I also forget what it was, and then went to bed. Good night.

Next day, (July 4th) we went to Times Square. Craziness, my friend. All the electronic billboards were flashing stupid videos for skin cream that smelled like pineapple and M and M world. So we walked around a little in the thick, 90 degree air, before needing air conditioning and a potty break.

So we ducked into M and M world, a giant M and M store selling a ton of useless M and M junk. There was M and M printers and M and M statuettes with the ugly red thing dressed like the statue of liberty. He didn't look very happy. After actually finding the loo, we tried to find Rockefeller center, a hidden gem in the noisy, polluted, littered-on city. As you can tell, New York was not my favorite place.

After walking in circles for half an hour (Thank you, dad, your map reading skills are extraordinary), we finally found the Lego store, which signaled the fact we were in Rockefeller center. Bryce whooped something that made people stare at him like he was stupid (which he is) and raced towards the revolving doors, making sure he went around a few more times than necessary. I, being a normal person, walked around the door once and stepped into the building stacked floor to ceiling with plastic lego containers. There were many lego sculptures scattered about, and a dragon looped through the walls. Us kids rushed to the model of Rockfeller center, and in the middle were two star wars characters dancing. Yes, as Bryce said, it was Leia and Darth Vader. What the heck? Weren't they, like, enemies? Since when did the DID (damsel in distress) dance with her least-liked person?

After the LEGO incident, we tried to find the Pokemon store and accidentally walked into a bank twice. Soon we found out that Nintendo World was actually on a side street, in Rockefeller center. My bad.

So we went into the Pokemon Center, my favorite place EVER. There were poke dolls and pokemon games and pokemon everything on the bottom floor of Nintendo world. While Bryce went off to do whatever he did, I took out every cute poke doll (most of them, except the Trubbish. It's no coincidence that it's called the Trash Bag pokemon) and poked each of them of the nose.

"I love you, and you, and you, and you, and you!"

Then I air-kissed them. After all, who would want a poke doll with my spit on it?

Hey, don't laugh. They were really cute.

After I  put the poke dolls back, I talked with the attendant about White version. I had beat White the day before. Apparently he had been into pokemon when the first game came out (Yellow) and had played every game ever since. We dragged Bryce away from his beloved Woobat (he's obsessed with those things. One time, I covered up Woobat by turning the page of the game guide and Bryce went nuts and punched me) to climb the stairs to the top floor, Wii. No surprise, he went straight to the racing games. After five minutes, we dragged him out again to get lunch, He cast a loving look at his "Little Wooby" before heading out.

We found a small cafe somewhere and had empanadas. Then we went to central park and had ice cream, and then back to the hotel where we swam until dinner.

And don't ask me what the dinner was. I can't remember.

Plane flight to Africa next day was so boring, you'd fall asleep if I even told you what we did, which was nothing. I did nothing. My phone ran out of battery. My DS was already dead. And my kindle was on half. This was all after ten hours, so I slept the last four hours. Are you asleep yet?

WAKE UP!!!!!!!! You can't bail on me! Oh no, you have to hear the whole thing. After we disembarked, we went through customs (also terribly boring). I used the last of my Kindle battery to play Subway Surfers. Then we got to the baggage claim, and there was none of our baggage! So we made Dad stay while we got settled in our rented apartment.

When he came home without any bags, everyone was disappointed, but we managed my sharing the toothbrush the airline gave to us and sleeping in our clothes. Meh.

Two days later, when the bags came, the first thing I did was change. Then we explored the city on a red bus with my new friend Arwyn, who would be the only girl roughly my age when we went on Safari. We went to world of birds, where we saw the most ADORABLE owls. OMG they were soooooooooo cute!!!!! : D

We found a kids channel on the bus to listen to, and it was hysterical. See, it was a seagull talking to you, with a lot of "Brrrrrrrr! It's fur-eeeee-zing!" and "Yeeeeeee-uck!" sort of things. Every time we heard the seagull, who was named Salty, say something stupid, we would start laughing so hard we would cry.

I think Dad has been keeping you posted on Cape Town, which is good for me, because my memory needs something to make it bigger. Like just yesterday, I forgot to do my homework! : (

So anyway, I'll skip that part because I forgot most of what went on in Cape Town.

When we arrived at Simbavati (it's Simbavati, no matter how many times Bryce will say it's Simbavita. I'm right in front of a big sign that says Welcome to Simbavati) these okay orange juice things were waiting for us, along with a British woman named Hailey who worked there. And if I say an orange drink is okay, it's super good. I just say it's okay because I don't like oranges.

So Hailey told us the basic rules: If you go outside at night, you need a guide because the wildlife literally goes through the camp. Last night we were ambushed by a family of warthogs. We had dinner, a yummy chicken dish with rice and for dessert, lemon cream pie. Delicious.

Bryce woke everyone up at 4 with cries of "Mommy! I just got sick!!!!!!". Of course. He never eats chicken, but last night he had six pieces. I tried to go to sleep, but Bryce kept on waking me up to use the restroom. Someone knocked on our door at 5:30, a guide to wake us up for the safari. Bryce wasn't feeling well enough, so Dad stayed with him and they promptly fell back asleep.

So I crawled out of bed, unwilling to leave the electric blanket, and got dressed in:

A cami

My underwear

A long, warm shirt

Heavy pants

A winter jacket

Jeans

Gloves

A scarf

And a hat.

And while we were safariing in open-top vehicles, I was cold. It was 32 degrees, and the wind blowing in your face made it drop even lower. At one point, we chased a pack of wild dogs, and everyone in back was looking green as we ran over rocks and trees and bumps. And to make it worse, we didn't actually see the dogs. They had passed over the western border where the Simbavati jeeps couldn't go.

That day, we saw a herd of elephants, a pride of lions, hyenas, and a whole lot of impala. According to the tracker, impala were basically the pigeons of the savannah. 

The jeep is pretty much like this: A seat built on the passenger side of the hood for the tracker, who looked at footprints and broken branches and stuff to find animals and direcst the driver to it. The driver was on the driver side for the UK and the passenger side for the US. There are nine seats in back for people like us.

That night, we saw a leopard eating its kill, a kudu. Mason, another kid on the safari, caught a video of it eating the antelope. He's going to post it on YouTube.

Next day was warmer, but still cold. We saw an adorable rhino, hippos, and the lions again.

That night, Arwyn's jeep broke down in the middle of the safari and we had to go rescue them. They were out on the road, and their axle was kinked. We brought some parts to them and headed back to Happy hour. I had a Grapetizer (fizzy grape juice. And my best friend Jackie, who will be reading this, knows the best way to drink it), and Bryce had an Appletizer. Good stuff. Dinner was chicken again, and Bryce stayed away this time.

Dessert was chocolate fondant with ice cream. Marshmallows to roast. We pyromaniacs had fun pouring the fondant into the fire (Only Bo did that, I ate mine before he could get to it) and then trying to replicate the Spanish Inquisition with marshmallows. We speared them on a skewer, and then stuck the skewer, marshmallow at the pointy part, into the fire. The goal was to get it to stand up perfectly straight and watch the marshmallow drip down into the fire. No one accomplished this until we realized there was a much faster way to destroy marshmallows; stick them in the 'incinerator'. It was a hollow log in the fire, and intensely hot. What we did was stick a marshmallow on a spoon, and then stick the spoon (with the marshmallow) into the incinerator. Then we tipped the spoon over, the marshmallow fell down and burnt to a crisp instantly. Fun.

Someone dropped a teabag in the fire, and Arwyn's dad and I had fun watching it burn and making dumb jokes about it. I won the round with a witty British "How would you like your tea? Crisped to a cinder? Burnt beyond recognition? Or maybe incinerated to ashes?"

This morning, we also got woken up at 5:30. On safari we saw giraffes, a warthog, hippos, and baboons.

Lunch is in two hours. Wonder what it'll be? Smells like brownies. Mmmmm…..