What I ate in Singapore

I have been busy traveling around Southeast Asia, and I have lots of pictures to show you and stories to tell you, but I haven't quite had a chance to type up my posts yet. In the meantime, I just wanted to answer the question that my friends in Mrs. Williams' class asked about what there is to eat in Singapore with a picture. Here is a picture of a restaurant that sells crocodile palm. Do you think it looks good to eat?

--Benny

Bobbe's trip to Morocco, part 1: Ifrane

Bobbe is spending this spring living at a university in Morocco. This is the first in a series of posts about what she has seen, done, and experienced there. As for me, I'm traveling in Southeast Asia at the moment. I will hope to have my first of several posts from there very soon. --Benny

Greetings from Morocco! I am now living in a town called Ifrane high in the Atlas Mountains. Ifrane is just a little town, but it is a very beautiful place. The high altitude means that it gets snow several times every winter. Lots of people come to Ifrane to go skiing in the nearby mountains. Some people even call it the "Switzerland of Morocco." Who could ask for a more pleasant place to make my home this spring?

Ifrane is home to a university called Al Akhawayn University. "Al Akhawayn" means "the two brothers." In this case, the two brothers in question are the former king of Morocco and the former king of Saudi Arabia. They weren't literally brothers, but they were close friends so they called each other brothers. In 1993, there was an oil spill off the coast of Morocco. The king of Saudi Arabia decided to give $50 million to the king of Morocco to clean up the oil. As soon as the king of Morocco received the money, the wind shifted and the oil all washed away from the coast. With $50 million in his pocket and no oil spill to deal with, the king of Morocco decided he needed a new project--so he founded a university.

Bobbe's Trip to New York City

Bobbe recently took a trip to New York City. Here is her post about her adventures there.

I recently visited New York City. Over eight million people live in New York, making it the most populous city in the United States. New York City is in the state of New York, so it can get confusing sometimes when people say “New York” to figure out if they mean the state or the city--but I will use it to mean the City. I visited Manhattan Island, which is actually only one of five “boroughs” in New York (Queens, The Bronx, Brooklyn, and Staten Island are the others). Manhattan is not very big, but a lot of people live there and even more work there. Manhattan is a little smaller than Bainbridge Island near Seattle, but only about 20,000 people live on Bainbridge Island and 1.5 million people live on Manhattan. For a comparison, the City of Seattle has a population of about 620,000 people--with a lot more room!

One of the first things I noticed about Manhattan is that there are so many high-rise buildings. Most of these buildings have offices and some have condominiums or apartments where people live, but some of the tall buildings have other functions. Since I like to visit other countries, one of my favorite sites in New York was the United Nations Building.