Sunday, 25 November 2012

Living with Monique and Philippe's house

We are staying with our friends Monique and Philippe.  They live in a small village about an hour from Paris.  They are really good people, I like them a lot, they have 2 cats.  Philippe is really funny and we play and laugh a lot.  They dont speak English all the time but they are very good speaking English, and they get better with us. They are helping me to speak French.

Philippe is a gardener and he has been teaching me how to cut things in the garden, I want to go to work with him one day i think it wold be fun.

We are sleeping in a bunk room, I still have to share with lily but this week its my turn on the top bunk!

We went to the Palace of Versailles it was really interesting, we had a picnic, it was cold but it was fun.

Next week we are going to Paris for 5 days, I hope we go up the Eiffel Tower!!

I will put some photos on next week I hope.

Monkey Mountain

With my family I visited monkey Mountain, a place where they look after 200 Barbary Macaques monkeys.

The monkeys live in a special open air park not like a zoo.  There are no cages and the monkeys are free to walk around and swing through the trees.  The park has a big fence around it to keep the monkeys from escaping.

There were adult and baby monkeys at the park.  We got to feed them some popcorn.  Then we watched the keepers feed them some fruit and vegetables.

The monkeys are originally from the mountains of Morrocco and are here to breed and make sure there are enough monkeys left in the wild.








Tuesday, 13 November 2012

The World War I sites in the Somme

We are staying in a part of France called The Somme.  In the early 1900s this was where some of the worst battles of WWI were fought.  We have gone to the Australian sites at Villers-Brettoneaux and Fromelles and to others for England and Canada.

At some of the sites the trenches have been left as they were and we were able to walk through them and imagine what it would be like to be there.  It was cold in the trenches, the wind was cold and strong and it was really muddy and wet.  I think it would have been really scary.  At night here its really dark and foggy and misty and it would be really scary and spooky out in the fields.

I also learned that lots of boys who weren't 18 lied about their age to help their families by earning money, some of them died and some of them were hurt, losing arms or legs.

The schools at Villers-Brettoneaux and Fromelles had Australian names and kangaroos and flags of Australia and the school at Villers-Brettoneaux had a sign in the playground that said "Don't forget Australia".  This was because the Australian soldiers in the War freed their towns.

We were here on Remembrance Day and we went to a service at a town called Pozieres.  There was a service at the French memorial and then we walked to an Australian memorial and they laid some flowers there as well.  The Australians also helped to save Pozieres.

the school at Villers-Brettoneux



the Villers-Brettoneux memorial



some of the trenches


the British memorial at Thiepval

Frommelles




the school at Frommelles


a wall poster near the school at Frommelles

Monday, 12 November 2012

Legoland Germany

My family and I visited legoland in Germany.  We stayed in the lego village in a pirate house for 2 nights.  We spent a whole day and a half inside the theme park.  I got to ride on lots of different rides.  My favourite was the Experiment X ride and the Flying Ninjago.

We also saw mini lego world where we got to look at models of famous places in Germany and Europe like a huge soccer stadium and an airport with planes going up and down the runway and a fire station with moving fire trucks and sirens.  There was also a Star Wars section with models of all of the star wars movies and life size models of Darth Vader and Darth Maul.  There was also a Ninjago world made of lego.

I loved legoland, I want to go back.  It was really good fun staying at the village, the playgrounds were really great and we played till late at night even though it was really cold.  There were lots of other kids there and it didn't really matter if they spoke English or not, we all played.  We also went lego bowling which was lots of fun, i won the first game!

Things I learnt about lego:

Lego have made 400 billion blocks in the last 50 years!
Lego comes from Denmark and means 'play well' in Danish.
There are 6 legolands in the world but there are none in Australia.

the main playground at the lego village

the pirate houses



the experiment x cars 

me logo bowling

lego venice



lego Allianz Arena home of Bayern Munich FC



Experiment X!

my dad and I on a ride



my dad and I on Flying Ninjago at the back



the playground outside our pirate house

the main playground at the village


our lego pirate house

Saturday, 10 November 2012

Lego Land!!!!!

We finally made it to Lego land - it was fantastic, i loved it and I want to go back!!! I am writing a report which I will put on the blog, but here are the photos

the lego pirate house we stayed in at the lego village


the main playground at the village

the pirate playground outside our unit

dad and I on the Flying Ninjago ride - in the back row

lily in the adventure playground



legoland from the tower

dad and I on a ride


Lily lego bowling

mum dad and I on the Experiment X rides

mini lego Allianz Arena - the home of Bayern Munich FC it took over 4,000 hours to build




me lego bowling

mini lego Venice



the pirate houses and lego village

the main playground and lego village