Our Trip — Conclusion
On our trip this year, I have changed in many ways. I now really like looking for, finding, and catching reptiles and amphibians. I also like birds and mammals more. Another way that I have changed is that I now understand how big the world is and what it is like.
I had a lot of fun on the trip but some of my favorite parts were the safaris in Africa, herping in Madagascar with Chris, running around at Bullo River, Australia, seeing the tiger at Ranthambhore, India, the Pantanal in Brazil, and seeing the penguins and whales in Antarctica. I also liked camping in Australia.
On our trip we saw a lot of amazing animals. In some places we were lucky and saw a lot (Australia, India, Brazil, Jordan, most of Africa and Madagascar), but in other places, we didn?t see as much as we hoped to see (Amazon, Argentina, and Lukuba Island). Some of my favorite animal sightings were: Kangaroos in Australia, Boyd?s Forest Dragon in Australia, tiger in India, frogs in Phuket, whales and penguins in Antarctica, Anaconda in Brazil, Giant Anteaters in Brazil, toucans in Brazil, agamas in Jordan, lions, leopards, and cheetahs in Africa, and the herps in Madagascar (especially the Madagascar Tree Boa and Parson?s Chameleon).
While we were traveling we also met 11 baseball teams in 10 countries. In each place we would give all of the kids and coaches Red Sox hats and some equipment. Many of them were really poor and couldn?t even afford baseball gloves. Usually we would have lunch or dinner with them afterwards. The best players we met were in Beijing and in Delhi. The players in Beijing even got to play on the Olympic baseball field!!
When we were traveling we had a ton of guides that helped us get around and show us things. Some were good and some were bad. My favorite guides were Trevor (Southern Africa), Chris (Madagascar), Rick (Cairns, Australia), Kallie (Namibia), Super (Namibia), Ida (China), Ignacio (Chile), and Mike (Antarctica).
Some of my biggest surprises were China, the Amazon, and Egypt. In China, I thought that everybody would be wearing silk clothes and triangular hats. I thought that in the Amazon, snakes would be every where, but in about 2 days, we saw ZERO snakes. I also thought that the pyramids would be clean and not have trash around them, but there was lots of it.
I learned a lot about other people on our trip. I learned that there are a lot of people who don?t even have enough money to buy clothes or food. I also learned about their cultures like what they live in, what they eat, what they wear, what their daily life is like, and much more.
Home-schooling was really interesting this year because we only had to do it for about 1-2 hours each day, but we still had to do a lot of work and finished our math book in November (2007, not 2008). We would usually do our home-schooling in the morning, but in Africa we had to do it in the afternoon since we usually did morning game drives.
On our trip, I missed a lot of things about our normal life. I missed Scallop (our dog), orange juice without pulp, consistent good food, artichokes, hamburgers and hot dogs, my bed, not having to go on so many plane trips, and sleeping in.
On our 10-month trip around the world we went to all seven continents, thirty-seven countries, saw 175 reptiles and amphibians, 166 mammals, and 1,204 birds. We went to lots of really cool places and I learned a ton of new things.