By Eva M.
Sameera P. has traveled to many interesting and captivating places! Some of these places include Iceland, Greece, and Trinidad.
When Sameera was seven years old, she and her family went to Trinidad. Trinidad is a small island to the northeast of South America. “It is so small you can see it from the air!” she says. She said that there were many mosquitoes, which irked her mom. Sameera remembered that it was “It was extremely humid, and a lot like Florida.” The island is dotted with sandy beaches and jungles with bending rivers. She got to visit her family there: her aunt, uncle, and three adult cousins.
While she was there, she was able to take a boat ride on a swampy river. She went with one of her cousins, Swetha, her mom, and her sister. It was evening, and there were many mosquitoes. They rowed down a river through the jungle, which she found kind of scary.
In Trinidad, Sameera was able to witness a sea turtle lay eggs on the beach. She was woken in the middle of the night by her cousins. She and her family all went to the beach, where a tourist lady and a lot of tourists were searching for a turtle. When the tourists found a turtle, they let her go up in front. “The funny thing was that the turtle completely ignored us,” she says.
The next big trip that Sameera took was to the cultured country of Greece. She went there with her family when she was nine years old. One thing she learned in Greece is that they do not have root beer. The major attractions she visited were Delphi, the Parthenon and Santorini.
Delphi is “pretty much on the side of a cliff by a valley”. Sameera says, “It was very pretty and had a lot of ruins, which was crazy to see.”. The city was made for the Greek god Apollo, god of the sun, medicine, music and many other things. There was an extremely tall pillar in the center of the ruins called the Pillar of Prusias II. It was standing upright, and she was surprised to see that the pillar was still standing.
Sameera also got to see the Parthenon, a huge ruin of a Greek building dedicated to Athena, who is the goddess of wisdom. Her dad went there before when he was ten or eleven. The Parthenon was built in 447 BC, and it is crazy to think that it’s still standing after all this time.
While she was in Greece, she visited Santorini, an island. It has many tourists, and one unique thing about the buildings there is that they are painted white and blue. Another cool thing is that the streets are made of brick.
The most recent place Sameera has been to is Iceland! Iceland is an island to the west of Europe. She went there with her family when she was eleven years old. She watched in horror as her mom ate a puffin, and also went to a volcano museum called the LAVA centre in the city of Hvolsvöllur.
Sameera saw stunningly beautiful scenery, with rolling green hills and towering glaciers. “There were a lot of waterfalls there,” she says. When most hear about Iceland, they think of freezing ice, but Sameera said that it was actually very green there.
An activity she was able to do during her trip was walk on a glacier. She and her family used “spiky shoe things” called crampons and pickaxes to keep them from falling. The guide led them to places where holes had been carved when the ice melted. There were giant holes that looked like slide tubes. “They were pretty, but then I got close to them and felt like I was gonna fall in!” The holes were created when the sun had melted the ice. There was one tunnel that was safe to go through. The guy kept teasing Sameera about how the tunnel could collapse at any moment, but she said it was “definitely worth it”. In the tunnel, the ice was solid, but there was a blue glow from the light peeking through.
Sameera was born in Loma Linda, and lives in Calimesa. She has two older siblings named Erik and Serena. She also has two cats named Leo and Ms. Puffin. Her parents got divorced when she was six years old. Her parents are both doctors; her dad is a psychiatrist and her mom works in primary care.
Sameera’s nicknames are Sam, Sammie and Sam Ham. She aspires to be a computer programmer or software engineer someday. Some facts that not many people know about her are that she likes sci-fi and can play the otamatone by ear very well. Sameera likes pop music, and her favorite books are The Girl Who Drank the Moon and Doomsday Book by Connie Willis.
In conclusion, Sameera has learned many new things from her travels. She says, “I feel my travels and trips have opened my eyes. It’s surprising how unique all the places I’ve been are!” She learned how every place is different in many ways. Sameera also learned how often she took her own home for granted. She is grateful that she was able to travel, and hopes to keep exploring new places in the future!