Up up and away March 2017 Welcome - Karibu Hello everyone from Elisa. I can t wait to tell you all about my time here in Tanzania. This photo shows me being Miranda the Explorer, she is a little girl who travels around the world in her hot air balloon. In my newsletter I will take you for a ride in my hot air balloon. I will also tell you about my new school and Lake Manyara. I hope you like my newsletter! - 1
My New School I go to a new school called Kennedy House. I m in Year 2 and my teacher is Mr Jefferys. He is the clown teacher of the school because he is funny and plays lots of games. In Year 2 my friend s names are Daisy, Megan, Milly, Faith, Junior Sammy, En Hyul, Micheala, Graham, Quinton, Brian and Tommy. I like science. We are learning about rocks. There are three types of rocks: igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic. We celebrated book week. We had some competitions like extreme reading, Staff shelfies and Design the new library. Extreme reading you had to put yourself in an extreme position and read a book, like me and fluffy here. Staff shelfie competition was all the staff had to take a picture of their bookshelf and you had to guess whose was whose. Design the library was you had to design the new library. We had dress up day and you could dress up as someone from your favourite book. It was so colourful. Normally everyone has their school uniforms on but on this day there was Harry Potter, Robin Hood, Where s Wally, Rupunzel, Little Red Riding Hood and many many more. - 2
Lake Manyara We went to Lake Manyara and we were hoping to see a lion but we didn t see any in the end! When we first drove into the park we saw lots of monkeys and baboons. Look - here we are surrounded by crazy baboons. One even tried to steal Matteo s apple - we had to quickly close the windows. There is always a big alpha male - he is the boss and the others scratch his hair. I think they do it to be nice to him. The babies climb onto the Mum s back and walk around riding on their backs. I think it looks like fun. We saw hippos in the lake. We haven t seen them anywhere else. I had been wanting to see hippos for a long, long time. You have to look closely in the photo to see them. They were rolling and yawning and fighting in the water. When they yawn they open their mouths so wide and they have two very big teeth on the bottom of their mouths and lots of teeth in between and on the top. I think they were yawning because they were tired. Maybe that s because they are most active at night when they munch on grass. Did you know they can eat around 35 kilos of grass in one night - that s more than I weigh! Woah!! They get so big on all that grass - the males can grow to 3.5 long and 1.5 metres tall and weigh 3,200 kilograms. I like the hippos - they are one of my favourite animals. They wibble and wobble and hang out in the water just like I do! - 3
Up Up and Away. I hop into my hot air balloon and fly up into the sky and this is what I see. I can see Usa River markets, they are so busy and there are so many colourful dresses. There are lots of stalls of fruit and vegetables. I can hear them calling tatu bei" which means the price is three. I see the busy bumpy highway with the slow trucks and zooming piki pikis. I can see the police stopping the trucks but they can t stop the piki pikis because they zoom past. I can also see the people hopping into the dalla dallas. I see a woman squeezing in with her big basket of tomatoes. I keep flying and I see lots of fields growing corn. I fly all the way to Arusha, there are busy roads, there are busy shops and lots of things. I speed as fast as I can over Arusha and then I go up, up, up and away to Mount Meru. I can see zebras, buffalo and wilderbeest eating grass, baboons having fruit, birds flying around, and giraffes sticking out their long tongues eating spiky acacia trees. When I get to the tippy tippy top of Mt Meru I am in the clouds and it s really misty. I land my air balloon and have a snack. Mt Meru is a volcano but luckily it is a sleeping one. It erupted a long time ago. - 4
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