Even More Haikus

Okay, so I really like writing poems. I might be posting them a lot.

The Brentford Bees won!
Got goal from penalty kick
The score was one nil

England winning game
Of rugby against the French
Three minutes are left

Waited for a bus
Ended up getting taxi
Shared with four others

Saving Bees tickets
Will put them in my scrap-book
I have two in all

News about Libya
Many people killed, injured
City in chaos

People injured, killed
By the earthquake in Christchurch
Thankful I'm not there

My Poems

Here are some poems that I have been writing in my free time. All of them are haikus. They relate to what has been happening since I posted last, and what will happen soon.

Going on airplane
Ears are popping all around
Slowly we descend.

Plump pigeon pecking
At the crumbled, soggy bread
Left there in the rain

Get good gelato
So many different flavors
Chocolate hazelnut

Soccer- Brentford Bees
It is raining outside now
Covered stadium

Rugby game in town
Un-defeated- England, France
Hope that England wins

Orchids on table
Deep rose color, beautiful
Thirteen blooms in row

Oyster cards for bus
Though they're not really oysters-
Open, close like one

My Last Post From Ghana

Hi! Sorry I haven't been posting in a while. I have been doing a lot and I've been so busy that I didn't have the time! On the 16th we went to an adinkra village. The word adinkra means goodbye. People used to only wear it at funerals. Each stamp has a different meaning. We got to stamp some cloth and saw how the ink is made. The ink is made of bark that you pound with a large stick. After it is pounded you add water and boil it. The stamps are made out of carved gourds. Both my mom and I used red strips of cloth. I used three different stamps in the very simple design. Then we went to our hotel and swam. On the 17th we traveled to a town called Nkoranza. We traveled by tro-tro, a large van-like vehicle. We stayed at a community called Operation Hand in Hand. Operation Hand in Hand is a home for mentally disabled children. It also has guest-houses. We stayed one night. The next morning we took a mule ride and a tour around the grounds. Then we took a taxi up to a monkey sanctuary. We went to the village with a guide and got bananas for the monkeys. It was one of my highlights of this whole trip. The monkeys ate out of your hand and they lived in the wild! They were SOOOO CUTE! Sadly, we ran out of bananas so we had to leave. The next morning we went again into the woods, this time carrying all of our luggage over the roots and ditches. Yes, we were going to see the monkeys again, but we had to catch a tro-tro in town, too. Also, the fetish priest had invited us to his house the night before. So we dragged our luggage to his house and we talked for awhile, about everything from his job to maple syrup. We saw the monkey shrine. I expected it to be in the woods somewhere, but instead it was in his house. The room smelled like eggs and had an altar and lots of religious objects. After that we went to see the monkeys one last time. Then we caught a bumpy, overcrowded tro to Nkoranza. There were 15 people in it with a lot of bags and luggage while it normally fits 12 people with no bags comfortably! I had to sit on my moms lap with our backpack on my lap while someone was sitting on either side of us and another person was sitting, facing me. Then we got to the tro station and took a more comfortable van. Unfortunately it was going to Kumasi, land of the traffic jams where we would take an STC bus to Accra. The ride was fine until we entered Kumasi, where we sat for about 15 minutes. We got to the STC station and, miraculously, were just in time for an STC bus. You have no idea how lucky this was. If we were even 10 minutes later we could have been waiting the whole night! It took something like 5 or 6 hours to get to Accra. When we got to Accra we discovered that the hotel we wanted to stay in was booked to the brim, full of Danish history teachers. We asked the receptionist where we could stay that had a pool and he said Novotel. As it turns out, Novotel is a fancy, expensive place that you can find literally everywhere. My mom and I just needed to have a short break from Ghana. We had dinner and went to bed. The next morning we woke up and had a really good breakfast. Then I swam in the pool and we went on the Internet for a tiny bit. We swam again in the afternoon. The next day we went to the Volta Region and also saw a bead factory called Cedi Beads. This is not your polluting, huge machine run factory but a small, pleasant workplace where you can see how the beads are made and buy some of the beads themselves. My favorites were made out of recycled chips of broken glass that were different colors. We then went to a hotel called Aylos Bay and stayed there the rest of the night. Yesterday we went, hoping to see how the Volta Dam works, only to find out that weekdays are working days. We got a taxi to bring us to the dam to see it from a distance in the front and back. We took a lot of pictures, but that was it for the day, other than swimming at the hotel next-door. After we swam we just went back to Aylos Bay and played Boggle. Today we came to Accra. We traveled by tro-tro. 10 minutes into the ride, our tro broke. We had to wait for an additional 10 minutes for a different tro to come to bring us to Accra again. It was a smooth ride until the tro-tro crashed! Yep, I know. Luckily, neither I nor my mom or even anyone else of the 3 cars is sitting in the hospital, though. The worst injury of our car was a bruised knee, and everyone else is fine but the cars. We were pretty shocked! Thankfully, a Dutch guy who was on the same tro-tro as us shared a taxi with us so that we could get to our hotel. Sadly, we leave Ghana tomorrow night. Boo-hoo!

Even More About Ghana

Hi everyone! I will now tell you even more about my travels in Ghana. On the 12th my mom and I came where we are now, Kumasi. Kumasi is the second largest city in Ghana, after Accra. The ride here was very long and boring. We took an STC bus, which is pretty comfortable, but the ride was 5 and a half hours, so... Once we got here we were really tired, so we just stayed here and rested for the rest of the day. On the 13th we went to a place where they make brass objects. It was really cool! At the end we got a ton of brass pendants and a couple gold weights and things. That was our only excursion of the day. On the 14th we went to the largest market in all of West Africa, Ketejia(Ke-ta-jah). It was very overwhelming and crowded, but we managed, although we couldn't have with out our guide! We got beads, beautiful cloth and a set of gold scales for my mom's classroom. After that we went swimming, much to my relief. Yesterday my mom and I went to a kente(cloth)weaving village. It was pretty cool! We started the tour by looking at a lot of cocoa trees(I know, not weaving). There were a lot of chickens there, poking around in the leaves. Our guide opened a pod for us and let us have a seed from it. They are slimy, but sweet, like melon, not at all like regular chocolate or even really dark chocolate! Then we went and saw all the weavers weaving. It was really cool! We then took a taxi back and stopped to swim. There were a bunch of annoying people there who were all there because it was Happy Tuesday!(buy one drink, get one free!), who were amazed by me because I did an underwater handstand, which they hadn't known was possible. So I was just trying to swim, and they'd keep bugging me. Some of them even asked me if I could teach them how to swim, while only one of them couldn't. Meanwhile, when half of them were in the pool, the rest were asking my mom "what is her name and how old is she?","do you have an e-mail, facebook etc.?", "where are you from?" or others. Finally, we escaped and came back to our hotel to chill out. Today we will go to a adinkra stamping village. Goodbye!

More About Ghana

These are some of the things that I have done since I last posted. After I went to Cape Coast Castle my mom and I went to Kakum National Park, a canopy walk/rain forest sanctuary place. We shared a taxi with a family that had a really cute 3 year old girl named Alex. She was adorable! After we did the whole Kakum thing we went to where a family made palm oil(on the same day, in the same trip). It was smoky because they had to boil the palm nuts that they used twice. After we saw that we went to a really touristy hotel for lunch where they had crocodiles. When we had finished lunch we went outside and pet a crocodile because the older ones had grown used to humans! One of the hotel workers somehow froze it(like a snake charmer, I think). The next day we went to Elmina Castle and came to Busua, a small fishing town. Elmina Castle is the same kind of place as Cape Coast Castle except it is bigger, was established earlier and was run by the Portuguese and later the Dutch, not the English. After we finished our tour we just came to Busua and did nothing really, really exciting for the rest of the day. Yesterday we justed stayed in Busua and did small things such as playing pool, swimming in a pool, walking on the beach and reading. It was overcast the whole morning and poured the night before. Today we went to a village on stilts called Nzulezo(In-zoo-lay-zoo). It is literally a village that is built on top of stilts. After we got to the destination we would leave from we canoed for a bit less than an hour. When we got there we met with the chief and he told us some of the history of the town. The people originally came from Mali and a magic snail(yes, I'm serious)told them where to settle. After that we went and walked along the main street. We stopped at a school and gave the children presents. After, we met with the vice-chief and gave a small donation for the school. Then we canoed back and took a long taxi ride to our hotel. Bye!

Ghana!

Hi everyone and sorry I haven't been posting for a while! Right now I am in GHANA! In case you don't know Ghana is a country in West Africa. I have been here since the night of the third of February. If you are in the Eastern Time Zone then I will tell you that Ghana is 5 hours later than where you are now. I will be in Ghana for 3 weeks, London for 3 weeks, too, and Israel for 10 days. Only my mom and I are going on this trip. I am being pulled out of school for 2 months and my mom is homeschooling me. I was in Accra with my mom for 3 nights and 2 days and now I am in Cape Coast. My first and favorite field-trip so far was going to the National Museum of Ghana. I drew things such as gold weights, adinkra stamps, a bow and arrow and a xylophone. There were many groups of school-children there at the same time as us. We arrived in Cape Coast yesterday and when our bus stopped a taxi driver came on, grabbed me, and insisted that we use his taxi. It was intense! Today we went to the Cape Coast Castle. It was pretty gruesome because basically the whole tour was of the dungeons where they kept hundreds and hundreds of slaves. Other than that, the trip has been wonderful. Right now I'm on a timed computer and I have to go. Bye!