Couchsurfing American Family

They arrived on Sunday and left today. I just want to tell you what couchsurfing is in case you don't know but most people do know I would think. What it is is a place you can write to other people on the website if you think they are nice from their profile if you want to stay at their house for a few nights because you are visiting the place or country that they live in. You can also meet people at cafes through couchsurfing. I am writing about an American family from Couchsurfing who stayed at our place. The father of the two children is Keith and the mother is Georgeta and the daughter who is about my age is Amelia and her big brother who is my sister's age is Owen. Owen was nearly always on his iPod.

Well, I liked playing with Amelia. When I went out I left my Barbie and I don't like the fact that she played with it when I left the house. I played pretending to be games when we pretended to be animals, at first cats and then monkeys . Anyway, I enjoyed their visit. Today I did my last punching fight with Owen which he called a Karate fight which involved punching each other and blocking and me trying to kick him between the legs. Today I went to a museum with them but because I hadn't had breakfast and I had these crackers on the train which made me thirsty, and I was hungry and tired, it didn't turn out to be the best thing.

On their third day they spent a couple of hours at my sister's school and I went with them. I didn't do much at the school. Me and Amelia watched them play rounders during PE.

We went to the green area near where we lived a few times which my Dad called the Alien Field. We climbed the tree and walked on the big log, and Owen kicked a football around.  My sister played football with Owen and her tooth came out while we were there. Amelia taught my big sister Jamila the hip-hop dance.

Keith made some burgers from scratch and they just tasted so real, I mean like were delicious like my siser said.  Georgeta put some nice salty Turkish cheese in the salad.

Camping

We went to a campsite which was a farm called Bouncer's Farm. On the first day there, we met Charlotte and she is five years old. She came into our tent. It was not full that day because we just arrived and had not unpacked. There are two pigs called Wagtail and Wilbur. We can feed them our leftovers as long as we didn't feed them potatoes, oranges and meat. There was a pony called Goldie at the farm, two horses called Pearl and Pebbless. We made fires every night and ate marshmallows from sticks, I made friends with girls called Suki, Amelie and Emma, with a big dog called Connie and small dogs called Monty & Alex. My sister Jamila gave me some math questions. My sister is really good at making fires because she is a scout and she made lots of them.

One day we made a trip to Mersea and had fish and chips. My sister said it was strange, because Mer means sea so Mersea means Sea-Sea. We ate some samphire. Later  we went to pick out own strawberries from a farm and picked too many which was good because we could share them. We tried to roast them with the marshmallows and it wasn't very nice. My sister made Smores. Do you know what they are? If you don't they are roasted marshmallows sandwiched in between two chocolate biscuits. In one night the most I had was two.

I got a small electric shock from the fences. There was a swing on a willow tree and we played on it every day. Our parents let us stay up really late and some nights we put ourselves to bed while they satyed up and chatted with the other adults who were friendly. The day before we left there were some mean boys and when we were going to make a fire in the shared fire pit they came and told us we were too young and asked for our lighter and they made their own fire there so we moved and made another fire near our tent.

On our last day Jamila was really tired because it was really hot. We had to take our things back to the car in the wheelbarrows. Jamila took one too. I want to go back to that farm

Garden haiku

Sweet honey in spring
playing on the tire swing
I love my garden

Sit in our garden
wishing a happy day today
me on the swing

Toulouse

I went to Toulouse to visit my cousin and her friend last week. When we had to go to France I woke up at three in the morning and when we arrived I was very tired, really tired.  On the first day I liked the crepe with banana and chocolate sauce. We went to the Sunday Market at Jean D'arc (it was called Marche Cristal) and bought delicious strawberries. On the second day, we went to a Japanese garden and there was a cute cat there. It buried its face in my mummy's cardigan. I bought a fountain pen and  a magnifying glass from a supermarket called Auchan. And I watched a movie called Wendy Wu (It was really goooooooooood!!!)( :  U :)

We went to the Natural History Museum there. There were wonderful peacocks in the garden. And peahens that were brown and white. I saw a lizard too; it was brownish gray and green.

On the day we left we had granita which was lemon flavoured, and I walked around.  I ate two pain au chocolates in one hour. My invisible friends from my sister's world joined us while we were in Toulouse. I had chicken nuggets in KFC and me and my sister played a detective game with my magnifying glass.

There were a lot of homeless people in Toulouse. My sister showed me them making a little shelter out cardboards. I saw them queueing for food or soup. Most of them had big dogs. They used brick walls as toilets. My mum said not just homeless people used them. They are called pissoirs.

A Woodpecker

I saw a woodpecker in the garden, on a birch tree. It's tail was white with black spots on it and it had some red feathers on its tail and on its head there was a little bit of red too. I got my camera and it was gone. My Dad showed me its picture from the computer so I took a photo of the photo in the computer. It was a Great Spotted Woodpecker.

This is a haiku:

birds in my garden
they are in the trees today
my golden feelings

Citylit Foundation Show 2011

Last night I went to an art exhibition at the Citylit where my mother studies. I liked one with paper clouds. It's paper which has bben cut around with little curvy bits and there were big ones cut up. They were hanging down in a roomish space and at the back there were two videos. One was of rain and the other was of clouds blowing by.

 And there was another art work with tiny buildings on the floor and there were white lightbulbs which were not on hanging down from the ceiling and also there was a surface on the wall with wires that were lit up to spell electri city.

There were mints served by one of the artists and I liked that very much.

Here is a haiku -- guess what it's about:

I climbed it today
swishing swaying in the wind
staying standing strong

I have been busy doing art, in journal pages. The best thing about doing them is that I can get my sleeves messy with paint and not get told off for that because normally like when I have food and I get my clothes messy I get told off.

My First Haiku

Yesterday, while waiting for my sister at Circus Space I wrote a haiku. I know it's spring and the clock just went forward, but I wrote about...guess what?

cold, glittering soft
sugar dust drifting frozen
sparkling in the light

Then I wrote another one. It wasn't as good:

wrinkled grey heavy
picking trees in the jungle
I long to ride it

It is very hard for me to count syllables so I have to ask for help. Today I asked my sister's friend for help. We were sitting on the shed in the garden, and I wanted to write about my sister. I'm going to name it 'love' even though my mother says that haikus don't have titles:

my sister loves cats
she loves to play hide and seek
I love her today