Papercraft! Papercraft! Papercraft!

When Kathy's friend came over to play one day, she brought over a Minecraft creeper made of folded paper and tape. I am a huge fan of Minecraft, so I begged the friend tell us the name of the website where she had gotten the creeper. 

The creeper

The website is called Papercraft. It has a bunch of mobs and blocks you print out.  They're unfolded, like this:

An unfolded NPC (non-player character) villager 

Folding the mobs was pretty hard at first. I got so frustrated I cried! But later Daddy showed me a cool technique for folding and tape-adding, and now I am Papercraft obsessed.  So far I have made:

• A block of diamond ore
• A bed
• A furnace
• A crafting table
• A cake
• A TNT block
• A pig

My creations. From left to right: Diamond ore, the pig,
the furnace, the crafting table, the cake, the TNT, and
the bed.

Kathy folded:

• A bed
• A baby creeper

Kathy's bed and baby creeper. Isn't it cute?

The next thing I'm going to attempt to fold is the villager (above). Hopefully, I won't get too frustrated. =)

The Horse-drawn Carriage

When my family and I were in Bruges, we took a tour of the city on a horse-drawn carriage. I was so excited. It was a fairy tale ending to our trip to Bruges, riding around like a royal family.

We walked out to the Markt, which is the Bruges town center, in the evening. When we reached the carriages, a guide offered to take us around, and soon, we were off!

Our horse

We passed some interesting-looking trees. Their branches were bent at ninety-degree angles. That cannot be natural! Sadly, I don't know how the branches grew like that, since our tour guide didn't know, either. 

Earlier, we had walked around and found some of those trees. 

If your parents are desperate for a tour of a city, and it's your life's ambition to ride in a horse-drawn carriage, this is a great compromise. I just hope your tour guide is more helpful than mine!

Kathy and Daddy in the carriage

Kayla and me in the carriage

  

Where My Taste Buds Have Traveled

My taste buds have traveled to different places than I have. For example, last night they went to Japan. We went to a restaurant called Ariake. It's a Japanese restaurant that specializes in sushi. My favorite types of sushi are kani (crab cake), tobiko (flying fish eggs, or roe, if you want to be fancy), and California rolls (I don't know what they have to do with California, but they're really good). They're filled with avocado, cucumber, and kani.

There were also appetizers. Kathy and I each had our own bowl of miso soup, which is cloudy, tan broth with scallions and tofu. The temperature of the miso soup was perfect--not so hot you'd burn your tongue, but not so cold you wouldn't want to eat it. We shared fried shumai, shrimp-and-onion balls covered in dough and deep fried. The shumai was crispy on the outside and the dough came off when I ate it. So much better than American french fries. Even better than Dutch vlaamse frites. It's a close call. 

For dinner, I ate California rolls and kani, and Kathy got tobiko and ikura, salmon fish eggs. Mommy got a different kind of sushi, the special of the day. Daddy got shrimp tempura, which is deep fried shrimp dipped in batter, arranged in a pyramid on the plate with the tails sticking up. There is a fried onion ring on top holding the shrimp tails together.

After dinner, Kathy and I ordered dessert. She chose green tea and red bean mochi (ice cream covered in rice flour paste and sprinkled with more rice flour--really good), and I decided on black sesame ice cream (not mochi, just ice cream). It looked like this:

(Half-eaten) black sesame ice cream

and tasted delicious. There was a hint of chocolate, a hint of peanuts, and an undertone of sesame. It left a good aftertaste in my mouth. Mommy liked it too!

My taste buds really liked visiting Japan. Their favorite part was the black sesame ice cream. Someday I want to visit Japan for real, and find out if you can get shumai on the street.

Mostly Delicious Food In Amsterdam

I liked trying new foods in Amsterdam.

A box of the best chocolate sprinkles I ever tasted

They had chocolate sprinkles, called chocoladehagelslag. We call them "jimmies" at home. Chocoladehagelslag actually taste like chocolate. At home, jimmies are just waxy sugar sprinkles colored brown. Dutch people eat chocoladehagelslag on toast for breakfast. I liked that!

Also at breakfast, I tried yummy white cheese, whose flavor I can't describe. I call it "pepper cheese" in my head because I never found out its real name. It looks like it has bits of ground pepper in it. The Dutch eat this cheese on toast, too (although not with chocolate sprinkles!)

I enjoyed cookies called stroopwaffles. The "waffle" part is  
a thin sugar cookie made on a waffle iron. Then two waffles are squished together with a layer of caramel.  We always had some with us because they were easy to carry around and they made a good snack!

We wanted to try black licorice because we had heard it was good. When we finally found some in a grocery store, we thought, "Let's buy it!" It tasted like gummy molasses without the sugar. We were disappointed. I didn't like it that much. Neither did Kayla, Mommy, or Joy. Daddy didn't even try it! 

Delicious Dutch chocolates

On the other hand, Dutch chocolates are good--very good. In one chocolate shop, they served us our chocolates on little plates, and we sat down at a cafe table to eat them. Mommy drank an espresso with her chocolates. Joy and I had milk with ours. I had one that was flavored with green tea and lemongrass, and another that was chocolate and cinnamon. A lot of the chocolates I wanted to try had alcohol in them, though, so I couldn't eat them!  

More delicious Dutch chocolates

Lots of places sold a chocolate milk called Chocomel. That's yummy, too! It makes a good pick-me-up whenever you get tired. I had it at Keukenhof Gardens, Vondel Park, and with lunch while out and about. 

One night, we ate vlaamse frites -- Dutch for French fries -- for dinner! We had them with mayonnaise and Andalouse sauce, which is made with mayonnaise, ketchup or tomato paste, and spicy paprika. It was a good picnic dinner to eat along one of Amsterdam's many canals.