Labeling the Giant Map of Africa

Remember our big map of Africa, up on the living room wall? It's still with us!

We left off working with it for a bit when I started homeschool boot camp, but even though Willow is still really struggling with focusing on her schoolwork, she does love geography, and she does love complicated projects, so it's come back into rotation.

My first thought was to use map labeling as copywork practice, but then I decided that I'd rather have the children doing copywork at the sentence level so that they could practice grammar, and using primarily common nouns or really important proper nouns so that they could practice their spelling, and THEN I purchased the Africa pin flag maps from Montessori Print Shop, and discovered that the set comes with two sets of country labels, WAY too big to use with the pin flag maps, still too big to use with the Montessori map puzzle that the instructions say that the labels are for (if I print them 1/4-size, perhaps...), but just right to use with our big map of Africa.

Labeling the big map of Africa involves several steps, all of which Will did independently:

First, she cut all the labels out, a task that I spread out over a couple of days, since Willow doesn't enjoy cutting. At some point while she was doing that, I drew in the two countries, Eritrea and Djibouti, that our Megamaps map of Africa doesn't include. This was very easy, since both countries are inside the former border of Ethiopia.

Willow spread all the labels out, chose them one at a time, compared each one to the map master until she found its location--

--then used a glue stick to glue it to the proper country:

I had expected to spread this activity out over several days, but Willow enjoyed it, really focused on it, and finished it in two:

If you wanted to make this activity repeatable, you could laminate the labels, and use tiny bits of Velcro on the backs of the labels and on the countries. I finally decided to splurge on pin flags, however, so we'll (and yes, I do mean WE, since I don't know these countries, either!) be memorizing the countries with those, and I plan for our Africa map to become so vastly cluttered with other information that leaving space to re-label the countries numerous times simply isn't practical.

For these labels, which we can now print as many times as we'd like, I have other extension activities in mind:

• using them to practice alphabetical ordering
• using them as headers for individual country pages in a handmade Africa book
• if I print them quite small, I'm toying with the idea of gluing them to the backs of the pieces in our Montessori Africa puzzle
• if they're legible when printed VERY small, we can use them to practice labeling the pin flag map at times when getting out the pin flags would be impractical
• and, yes, probably we will eventually get to using them for copywork and to memorize the spellings of the countries

A Big Map of Africa

Lisa over at 5 Orange Potatoes got us WAY hooked on Africam. It's a set of 24-hour webcams located at watering holes in South Africa--our favorite is located at Tembe National Elephant Park.

The first thing that I do in the morning is set up one of our laptops to the Tembe camera, where it sits all day on the living room table; the last thing that Matt does at night is shut that laptop down. In between times, birds and bats and animals of all sizes come to visit us through the camera--someone is forever and always shouting out "Giraffe!!!" or "Elephants!!!" or "Hurry, lion!", and we'll all run over to see. We've seen a lazy lion lounging on the dirt like a giant kittycat, and a baby wildebeest tromping along behind its Momma, and once, late at night after the girls had gone to bad, Matt and I totally saw two elephants have sex.

As such things always do, the Africam has inspired an educational foray into all things Africa. We checked out lots of African animal encyclopedias, because we wanted to identify the animals at the watering hole, and we checked out some children's atlases, because we wanted to see where the watering holes were located, and then, since we already know Egypt and the Fertile Crescent and thus already have a little context for Africa, I decided to go whole-hog into an Africa study.

For that, you need a map. A BIG map.

I'm forever going on about Megamaps, I know (it's because they're really GOOD!), and this is another shameless plug for their free site, since our big Africa map is a 4x4 map printed straight from their site. Willow put it together like a puzzle--

--I taped all the joints from the back side, and then we duct taped it right to the wall, because I'm from Arkansas and I duct tape EVERYTHING.

I asked Willow to color in Egypt and draw the Nile River, but she was so excited that she colored all the countries right then, matching the colors to our children's atlas:

She also drew the Nile in wrong, so we'll have to fix that tomorrow. Oops! I needed to do some fact-checking, anyway, to make sure all the countries and their borders are still accurate.

Syd had the job of painting the oceans:

 I imagine that we'll keep our big map up for at least two months (it'll be a handy ready-made project for our homeschool group's International Fair later this Spring--yay!), and I have lots of ideas of other things that we can add to it, if the girls are willing:

• Fertile Crescent and other locations from The Story of the World volume 1, which we're also studying
• all the locations from our Ancient Egypt studies
• the locations of the Africam web cams
• images of the typical animals found in various locations
• thumbnail-sized images of the picture books that we'll be reading that are set in Africa
• thumbnail-sized images of the chapter books that Willow reads that are set in Africa
• labels of all the countries (which is good handwriting copywork!)
• copies of the short book reports that the girls are beginning to learn how to do
• the Great Rift Valley, and images/info of the best finds from that area

Okay...we may have this map up longer than two months!

My Kid Can Recite All the Countries of Africa: 2012 International Fair

Having done it both ways now, I've decided that I like it much better when my children present a project that they've already been working on for their various homeschool academic fairs, rather than coming up with a particular project especially for each fair. I feel like their projects show more depth, and are completed in a much more relaxed and enjoyable manner when they're presented simply as a chance to show off an area of interest that's already being studied.

With that in mind, our homeschool group's recent International Fair was my favorite one yet--my kiddos have been studying Africa off and on for months now, so they knew right away what areas they wanted to focus their reports and presentations on, and what projects they wanted to elaborate on to display at the fair.  Honestly, the biggest debates centered around what NOT to bring!

We did not bring the girls' salt dough maps of Egypt, but Sydney, who intended to discuss the ecosystems of Africa and their respective animals, created a salt dough grasslands watering hole, and used some carved wooden African animals that my mother gave her for Christmas in the display:

I brought my computer, set it next to the girls' display, and streamed our favorite Africam webcams through it throughout the fair. Matt's special job was to keep a constant eye on the webcam, so that he could turn it off if the elephants that were lounging around the watering hole started to have sex again.

Willow discussed Egypt in her report, and brought a Styrofoam block pyramid that she built:

We did not bring our Montessori Puzzle Map of Africa (I was afraid of losing pricey pieces), nor the pin flag map (I was afraid of toddlers getting ahold of the sharpy-sharp pins); the main display item is our giant map of Africa, which has been so colored on, labeled, pinned upon, and outlined over the months that, while it may be unrecognizable in some aspects, it is certainly kid-owned.

Syd outlined the main ecosystems of Africa in drippy school glue mixed with acrylic paint--I should have laid the map on the ground for her to do this, in retrospect, and then the paint wouldn't have run:

See? DEFINITELY a kid-created project!

After the Biography Fair, when Sydney burst into tears in the middle of reciting Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," I have a horror of asking her to recite, so her oral presentation consisted of telling the audience about the ecosystems of Africa, already drawn onto the map, and some examples of animals that live in those ecosystems, with pictures of the animals already glued next to their ecosystems, and I still thought that she was going to cry for a few seconds there, before she pulled herself together and nailed it.

Willow has yet to cry during an oral presentation, so she prepared a special feat. I purchased the "Countries of Africa" rap from Rhythm Rhyme Results, and she practiced it over and over and over again--

--until she had memorized all of the countries of Africa:

Have I ever told you about my dark history of helping children cheat at their academic fairs? After college but before grad school, I had a job with Score! doing private SAT tutoring. Score! charged outrageous fees for this tutoring (One-on-one in YOUR home! All our tutors have the highest SAT scores!), which meant that all of my tutees were outrageously wealthy. Although you were supposed to arrange all of your tutoring through Score!, all the families knew that while Score! paid their tutors well, they didn't pay us nearly as much as they, themselves, paid Score! (seriously, families paid Score! something like 10x the average tutor's average fee, and I'm telling you, Score! already paid us well), and most families would ask for extra off-the-books tutoring at a price that surpassed our regular salary but also undercut what they'd have to pay Score!.

Of course, helping a kid with their English class is a different animal than helping a kid prep for the SAT, and in most of these families, "tutoring" a kid in a particular subject actually meant that you were supposed to just do the work for them. I tried to at least sneak in some learning, at least for the younger kids whom I tutored, but in one pretty common example, as I was in a child's playroom leading her by the nose through her multiplication homework, her mom walked in to consult with me about the appropriate punctuation on the poem that she was composing for her child to turn in for her next day's English homework.

I earned buckets of money with that family, "helping" their younger daughter with her History Fair project (I designed a display board that had a giant cardboard cut-out of an original-style Coca-Cola bottle on one side and a contemporary Coca-Cola bottle on the other side, and in the middle had a wheel you could turn so that one window would pop up a year, and the other window would pop up a trivia fact about Coca-Cola from that year. At least the kid helped me with the construction!) and their older son with his Science Fair project (I designed a giant poster with cut-outs from magazines of popular icons and images, he did an experiment at school in which he timed kids looking at the poster and then recorded what they remembered, and then we did this big 3D bar graph out of spray painted Styrofoam rods to represent the results of the experiment). I spent entire weekend days with these children, eating restaurant take-out lunches with them, taking breaks to watch "Full House" re-runs with them, driving them to the big-box crafts store for more spray paint and Styrofoam, getting paid by the hour. They went to a fancy-pants private school in Ft. Worth, Texas, and I kid you not, out of an entire gymnasium full of elementary school projects, there was not a single one that looked like a child had even been allowed to touch it.

And that's why I can tell you that my absolute favorite thing about our homeschool academic fairs is that it's perfectly clear from looking at the displays--

--listening to the presentations--

--and watching the confidence of the children as they talk about their areas of expertise, and the pride on their faces as they show off their work, that these are kid-owned, kid-created projects.

And that's so much more empowering for the kiddos.

Earning the Girl Guides of South Africa Tourism Badge

Yes, you can wear a Girl Guide badge as a Girl Scout. But no, you cannot wear that badge on the front of your Girl Scout uniform. Even though both you and the Girl Guides of South Africa are members of the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (WAGGGS, lol), you are not a member of the Girl Guides of South Africa.

Fortunately, Girl Scout uniforms have just the place for a "non-official" patch: the back! And that's how Will's brand-new Tourism badge from the Girl Guides of South Africa is now happily ensconced between her voting fun patch and the patch she earned for donating some of her fall product prizes to the sloths at the Indianapolis Zoo, instead, and on top of that Wildflowers of Ohio patch that we had so much fun earning back before the world went nuts.

I miss road trips!

I own a few Girl Guides of South Africa badges, but this is the first one that Will has worked through. I really love the different perspectives that another country's Girl Guide badges offer: the South Africa paddling badge is SO hard-core that I don't know how on earth I'm going to help Will earn it, and their baking badge, which the kids worked on this summer, required them to memorize enough terms to discernibly improve their cookbook literacy. 

The Tourism badge is one of the most interesting. It makes sense, because I'm sure that a LOT of tourists to South Africa take guided tours in some capacity during their visit, and when we were in Greece, our tour guide there, Militsa, told us just some of the strenuous education and certification required to be a Greek tour guide. It's an impressive career option if you live in a place with a thriving tourism industry, and it's just so interesting to me that it's a career that doesn't really exist in the same capacity, or nearly the same frequency, in the US. 

I rewrote the Tourism badge requirements a bit, but I couldn't decide if I wanted to treat the badge as a study of the way that international travelers view the United States, or as a useful primer on planning international travel of one's own... so I sort of did both. Here's my take on the badge:

GIRL GUIDES OF SOUTH AFRICA TOURISM BADGE

1. Browse through 2-3 US guide books marketed to visitors from outside the US (hint: search Overdrive for USA guide books!).

2. Make a list of qualities/characteristics/areas of expertise that a visitor from outside the US should look for in a tour guide.

3. Read and be prepared to discuss the following article: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/06/welcome-to-america-please-be-on-time-what-guide-books-tell-foreign-visitors-to-the-us/257993/

4. Research at least three tour companies and the group or guided tours that they offer. For each company, choose one tour that YOU would like to go on.
5. Create a chart that compares/contrasts the following information about each tour/tour company:

1. Cost of tour vs. value of tour (YOU determine what makes the tour a good value!)

2. Type of tour/quality of tour (eco tour, luxury tour, adventure tour, etc. Give each tour a category that you create!)

3. Tour amenities, evaluated on a scale that YOU determine based on what is important to YOU

4. sites/activities/adventures on each tour

5. Additional costs--is travel insurance included? Airfare? All meals or just some? Extra visas required?

6. You are a tour guide and have a visitor from overseas. Plan a 2-day trip around your state showing off its natural beauty, history, and culture.

• This trip should include several highlights and places to visit, including iconic sites, engaging activities, and interesting places to eat.

1. Sites to see and what they cost (eg. entrance fees)

2. Transportation and cost (are you driving and will need gas? Taking a bus or train? Uber?)

3. Restaurants and copies of their menus, if possible

4. Photos of places being visited, with appropriate attribution

5. Accommodations, their amenities, and costs

6. Itinerary/timetable for the trip, including accurate transportation times

1. Research a 10-day African tour for our Girl Scout troop.

• Include travel dates, costs, accommodation, modes of transport, destinations, etc.
• Write a complete and detailed itinerary, including the same information from Step 2.

1. Research the different types of passports and their costs.

• What information is required to apply for a passport?
• What countries might one travel to that have additional requirements?
• Find your own passport and examine it. When do you need to renew it?

For the comparison of tour companies, I was interested to see that Will chose to compare Greece tours. Very sensible, as the only time that we've taken a guided group tour was our trip to Greece! Here's some of her work:

PRICE vs. VALUE

1. Odysseys Unlimited Ancient Greece
• $385.15 per night. Meals included. 12 nights in fancy accommodations. Small group size. Many interesting sites. Good value.
• Athens monuments and museums, Delphi, ancient Corinth, Mycenae, Nafplion, Hydra, Heraklion, palace of Knossos, olive farm, Santorini town and sites.
2. Cosmos Greece and Aegean Islands Cruise
• $166.67 per night. Meals included. 14 nights in fancy accommodations. Unknown group size. Many standard sites. Good value. 
• Athens, Mycenae, Citadel of Mystra, Olympia, Delphi, Meteora, Aegean cruise, Ephesus, Patmos monastery, Rhodes, Heraklion.
3. Expat Explore Best of Greece
1. $163.75 per night. Meals included. 12 nights in acceptable accommodation. Large group size. Many standard sites. Neutral value.
2. Athens, traditional art workshop, Kalambaka, Delphi, Trizonia, Olympia, Mycenae, Nafplion, Mykonos, Santorini.

This turned out to be a useful project, because price vs. value is entirely dependent on your own priorities. Do you prefer to make your own way through a country, figuring things out on your own, or do you prefer having your itinerary and the details of travel arranged for you? What budget do you need to set, and what would you rather give up to meet that budget? What do you absolutely have to see, and what do you not give a flip about seeing?

Even though I always feel like I include the kids in my travel planning, I definitely make all of those price vs. value decisions for us, and I probably never even told them that we were deliberately staying in lousy hotels and eating packed groceries to save our budget for sightseeing, and we were wearing all our clothes and carrying just backpacks onto planes because the hundred bucks that we don't spend on checked luggage is the hundred bucks that we CAN spend on experiences. So it was interesting to see what Will prioritized--she seems to care more about hotels and meals than I do, but I was glad to note that what you get to see and do, and not just how comfy you are while you see and do them, is also important to her.

After that practice researching and evaluating other group tours, it was time to ask Will to create her own. Here's half of Will's 10-day African tour for a Girl Scout troop. We're going to explore Namibia!

Day 1:

10:00  Fly into Windhoek

           Rent a car

           Drive 30 minutes

11:00  Check into UrbanCamp.net

11:30  Visit National Museum of Namibia

           Eat at rooftop restaurant

           Drive 20 minutes

7:00  Have dinner at Xwama

         Drive back

Day 2:

9:00  Go to Lemon Tree for breakfast

         Drive 30 minutes

10:30 Go to Namibia Craft Center

           Drive 20 minutes

1:00  Horseback tour with Equitrails Namibia

         Drive 15 minutes

7:30  Dinner at Joes Beerhouse

Day 3: 

9:00  Check out

         Breakfast at Royal Kitchen and Take Away

         Drive 3 hours

1:00  Visit the Cheetah Conservation Fund

         Drive 40 minutes

7:30  Eat dinner at Crocodile Ranch

9:30  Check in to Out of Africa

Day 4:

9:30  Go to Bean Tree Cafe for breakfast

         Drive 2 hours

11:30  Erindi Private Game Reserve

2:30  Lunch at Camp Elephant

4:30  Erindi guided safari

7:00  Dinner at Camp Elephant

Day 5: 

9:00 Packed breakfast

11:30Drive back to Windhoek

Packed lunch

7:00 Take flight to next destination

I love that we're going to spend half the time glamping, and that we get to go horseback riding. It's a very whirlwind visit to Namibia, but I think it would work well combined with visits to at least one or two other countries in Africa--I mean, you're going to spend all that time just getting to Africa; might as well stay for a while!

This ended up being an interesting and unique badge to earn, with some practical, real-world activities that Will hadn't ever tried out before. You could argue that this Tourism badge, or at least the way that I rewrote it, is similar to the Senior Traveler badge, but I'd argue that while the purpose of the Senior Traveler badge is to plan an actual trip for the Senior Girl Scout to actually go on, this badge was a way for Will to dream big and research trips anywhere in the world, and in particular places that we definitely aren't going to anytime soon.

Although, to be fair, at this point in the pandemic we aren't even in the position to take that two-day tour of Indiana that Will planned for Step 4... One day, when we're all four vaccinated and safe to travel, may I never again take for granted our ability to actually go on the trips that we plan!

Here are some of the resources that we used for this badge:

Geography with Montessori Pin Flags

My own schooling in geography was woefully inadequate, so among the benefits of this rigorous study of geography that we've been enjoying is the fact that I'm finally learning my geography, too! Would you like to hear me recite the 53 countries of Africa?

I know, I know...it's much cuter when the seven-year-old rattles them off.

Obviously, the plan is to eventually cover the entire world, and we have been studying U.S. geography, as well, since the girls are interested, but seeing as Willow already has the names of the countries memorized, I'd like us to be able to physically locate them before we relegate Africa geography to regular practice and move on fully to new areas of interest.

I worked VERY hard a few weeks ago to build up enough of a surplus in my crafts/homeschool budget to purchase the entire pin flag and geography map collection from Montessori Print Shop. The prices are affordable enough to let me feel like I didn't have to do the design work myself to create my own pin flags and map keys from scratch, although I nearly reconsidered when I discovered that, although I could purchase all the  map keys I'd need as one bundle, I'd have to pick through the shop for nearly half an hour to find every individual pin flag set for every single continent and the United States--blech!

To use pin flags, you need a corkboard or foam core base, and a paper map to put on the base. The map package from Montessori Print Shop includes labelled and unlabeled, colored and blank maps. I printed and laminated one copy of the colored and labeled maps to use as a reference, and several copies of the blank labeled maps, because the girls enjoy coloring them in their correct map colors as part of their schoolwork.

To make the pin flags, you first need to print the flags (I did print ours in color, although coloring them in yourself would be another enjoyable, if lengthy, task). You cut each flag out, fold it in half--

--spread glue from a glue stick on one inside half of the flag, and also put a dot of Elmer's glue on both sides of a flat-headed sewing pin:

Fold the halves together, smoothing them over the pin--

--and repeat ad nauseum:

So far, we only have Africa and the United States completed, so I store both sets around the edges of the corkboard work surface. However, I do plan to eventually cut down a piece of corkboard to size, paint squares on it to delineate the area in which each pin flag set is to be placed, then cut a cardboard box to size so that the entire pin flag collection can be stored without poking anyone or getting in the way.

To play with the pin flags, lay the paper map flat on top of the corkboard work surface, and simply stick each flag where it belongs:

It's absorbing work, as you can see, and quite enjoyable. Although Willow has the names of the countries memorized, memorizing their locations this way, rather than in order along with the names as she recites them, will allow her to call up the location of a specific country without having to first get to it in the order of recitation.

In a more casual manner, as we organically begin to spend less time with Africa and more time with, say, United States geography, and the U.S. presidents, and Base Ten computation, we will also nevertheless begin to work on our ability to draw the continent of Africa, first by tracing it with dry-erase markers on a laminated map, and then by drawing it freehand with a model by our sides, and then by drawing it from memory.

I'm Pretty Sure I Saw Every Animal in the San Diego Zoo

And that's a low count, because I saw most of them twice, some of them three times, and a few of them four or more times because we could not figure out a single workable path to see everything the most efficiently and we kept finding ourselves in Africa Rocks. I swear to all the gods that if a zoo would ever just draw me a nice map of the shortest walking path through all their sites, I would make that zoo my entire personality.

Anyway, here's our first pass through Africa!

Here's the California Condor. My partner had to write a report about the California Condor way back in elementary school, and he should look that teacher up and thank her because he still remembers the whole thing. DDT was so bad!

Fun fact: a couple of weeks after this zoo visit, my partner, the older kid, and I went on another trip to Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon--we've packed in so much travel this summer, yay! Anyway, while we were at the Grand Canyon, the kid and I were SURE we saw a California Condor flying overhead, and we were so excited. Unfortunately, upon further examination of my photos, we decided that what we actually saw was most likely... a turkey vulture. 

Ah, well. A real Grand Canyon turkey vulture is also a good get!

I don't really love zoos as a rule, although thanks to my kid who loves zoos THE MOST I feel like I have been to every zoo in every city we've ever visited, but honestly? I kind of loved the San Diego Zoo. It has so many animals, and most of them genuinely seemed happy as clams, calm and content or busy doing animal stuff. 

There were also so many really terrific animals, like California condors and giant pandas and capybaras!

There was an entire herd of capybaras just bopping around doing their own capybara business, and I was obsessed:

I feel like we passed maybe 3-5 different flamingo habitats, though. It's like everywhere they had some empty space, they just put some flamingos in it. That's a decorating hack for you!

There IS a non-zero chance that there are not 3-5 separate flamingo enclosures and it was just me circling the sole flamingo habitat five times, though. I kept getting so lost and somehow I always kept finding myself back at Africa Rocks!

Every time I see a cheetah now, it reminds me of the time the kids and I missed by just a couple of days being at the Indianapolis Zoo when a cheetah escaped. I couldn't find a news source that reported all the details I heard, but the local story is that the zoo had just introduced two new cheetahs (from the San Diego Zoo, of all places!) into their cheetah habitat, which is below the level of the walkways and relies solely on high walls to keep the cheetahs inside. 

That was fine for the resident cheetahs, but apparently one of these new guys, after getting the lay of the land, simply hopped up the wall and settled in for a snooze in some bushes next to the walkway. A visitor actually alerted the zoo staff but their alert was more along the lines of "It's so sweet that the cheetahs get to roam free! Are we allowed to pet them if they come up to us?"

The staffer was apparently all, "Um, tell me more...", upon which they were led to and shown the contentedly snoozing cheetah, upon which they issued a zoo-wide lockdown until dude was put back in his area and now the high walls also have a high fence on top of them.

But that's just the story that I heard! Anyway, look for me in the news as the first person to have their face eaten off by a cheetah if I ever see one snoozing in some bushes in a zoo, because I'm convinced that they're gentle. They have dog friends! They walk on leashes!

I'm sorry to say that this jaguar did not look particularly happy. I've read that a lot of big cats don't do well in zoos, but I've also read that if an animal is ever in an unsuitable zoo environment long enough to develop a coping behavior like pacing, then even if it's later given an environment that theoretically meets all its behavioral and sensory needs, it will still exhibit those coping behaviors. So you can't really just walk up and evaluate an animal's habitat without knowing its history. 

Anyway, stop poaching jaguars and turning their habitat into farmland, I guess, and then they can all live in the rainforest and hunt those adorable capybaras like they're supposed to!

The koalas were also doing absolutely fuck-all with their day, but honestly they seemed thrilled about it:

The Asian leopard also seemed happy hanging out on its catwalk:

Found a dinosaur tree! I love myself a cycad:

Back at Africa Rocks for the umpteenth time, this bee-eater got itself a mealworm:

I loved the level of educational signage here. I've been to a couple of zoos that didn't even have the Latin name of each animal posted--gasp, right? Extra annoyingly, the first time that happened I had actually arrived armed with a giant stack of DIY animal info cards that I'd laminated and ring-bound and planned for the kids to use for one of those giant, all-day homeschool projects we used to do... except that the whole thing relied on each animal having its Latin name. So much for binomial nomenclature as the backbone of scientific classification, I guess!

This zoo had alllll its scientific names locked down, and had other cool signage telling us stuff like how they chose the plants for some exhibits and what animals lived in Southern California 12,000 years ago:

You can't escape those flamingos!

I really wanted to scritch this Galapagos tortoise under its chin:

I've never seen a Komodo dragon so busy! It kept moving between investigating the big kid--

--and energetically tearing apart a pig carcass:

At the hippo habitat, three literal grown-ups were having the biggest fight about how many hippos there were. There actually are two hippos in this below photo, but every time a hippo would pop its head up out of the water it would also look kind of like that and then some of the grown-ups would try to count that as two hippos while another grown-up said there was only one hippo but couldn't explain why it looked like two hippos, and then another hippo would pop its head up and mess their count up even more, etc.

The kid was all, "Some people never learned about refraction and it shows."

Another thing I liked about the San Diego Zoo is that our basic admission ticket included stuff that you'd have to pay extra for at another zoo. Earlier in the day we took a double-decker bus tour around the zoo, which was honestly kind of meh but it was nice to sit down for a while. Late in the afternoon, though, the big kid and I finally got on the aerial tram, and omg that's where we spent the rest of our entire day. It was SO GOOD!

Not only did we finally get a hint of a breeze--as well as that glorious sensation of sitting down omg yay--

--but it turns out that seeing the zoo habitats from above is delightful beyond words. Here's the panda!

Looks like he wants to get back in his travel crate and go home for the night, lol:

I think these are mountain lions? I'm not even sure if you could see this perch of theirs from the ground:

I have decent zoo stamina, but after we'd been at the zoo for approximately nine hours (it was open for eleven!) I was staggering, and the overpriced zoo ice cream was starting to look better and better. Since we'd seen all the animals by that time (and all the African animals about four times), we decided that if we were going to have overpriced ice cream, we might as well have overpriced ice cream from a gourmet ice cream shop in San Diego proper, so we left the zoo and did just that:

Tomorrow, we go to the waterfront to see the historic ships!

And here's the rest of our trip!

• Day 1: Cabrillo National Monument
• Day 2: Palomar Observatory and Borrego Springs sculptures
• Day 3: San Diego Zoo
• Day 4: Maritime Museum and Somali food
• Day 5: Sea lions and San Diego Padres
• Day 6: La Brea Tar Pits and Beverly Hills
• Day 7: Aquarium of the Pacific and a DIY food tour

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!