This country is the last country we’ve visited. The last, but not the least. Yesterday, I’ve read an article on the website of The New York Times (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/madagascar/index.html) about Madagascar. It says Madagascar is one of the richest countries concerning nature.  Research has made clear that 80% of the animals and plants on Madagascar, exist on Madagascar only.  So nowhere else on the world.

This gives a big hint about how interesting it is for all people around the world to visit this Island, which is the fourth biggest one on the planet. It also means we’re not the only tourists here. Lots of Americans and Asian people, taking pictures everywhere they can. You would think it’s life depending for them. It’s very irritating, in my opinion. But at least lots of tourism is good for the economy of Madagascar. It provides the people with the money they need to keep them alive, and to protect their heritage. Because lots of companies are making abuse of lots of the precious materials that are available on this fabulous island.  The second day we started exploring this nature and his animals. The day after that, we saw the other side of the Island. We went to a place where some international companies started exploiting some of the fishes the see around Madagascar is ‘producing’. There are two sides of this story. The positive side is that people can take profit of it, because of the raise of industrial growth, which is only 5% in Madagascar. The downside is that there’s less and less fish, because these companies kill far too much fishes. The fourth day, we went to a small city called Toliara. It’s one of the bigger cities on the island, with about 100 000 people living there. It’s right next to a big national park, called Isalo,  and it’s right next to the sea. Concerning nature, it’s very beautiful here. It proves people can combine tourists (and thus economy) and nature, without causing too much damage to the beautiful nature of this island.

Thomas Decleer

06-05-2012 om 20:59 geschreven door BusinessEnglish1B  

The second week of our trip we traveled to Poland. It is a big country with 38 million inhabitants. After a short flight of about 1 hour we arrived at one of the 11 airports of Poland. The temperature was about the same as in Belarus, namely minus 5 degrees. Due to the large amount of snow it was difficult to get from the airport to our hotel. We arrived very late and we were so happy that we could warm up by the fireplace in the hotel. After seeing the many types of vodka, we decided to try one ore more…

The vodka with cherry is my absolutely favorite. But fortunately, polish people do not only drink vodka; we also drank coffee, soup and tea to warm us up. The next three days we decided to brave the cold temperature and went skiing in the mountains. We also went as a variety to skiing to Mazirië where an ice sailing competition took place. It is a sport by which different participants sail on the ice with special made vehicles. But we came not only to Poland to do sport. We visited with warm clothes on the historical center of Krakow and Auschwitz Bierkenau. The historic center of Krakow is situated on the Hill Wawel. On the hill stands a royal castle and cathedral with three towers. In one of the three towers hangs a large clock. That clock is even heavier and older than the Big Ben in London. In our hotel there also were regular activities such as the popular card game of Poland Bridge and folk dancing. We found the traditional meals of Poland rather unhealthy but tasty. The food consists of a lot of cheese, smoked meat and herring. Almost every meal consists of soup. For dessert, we could choose from a lot of sweets like cakes, tiramisu, pancakes, chocolate and fruit.

To finish this week we went back to the college town Krakow where we dove into the Polish nightlife. After a short night it was already time to travel to the next country.

 
Sarah Van Der Stock

Sources:

06-05-2012 om 00:00 geschreven door BusinessEnglish1B