Last week a friend of my host moms came to visit. Since it was a special occasion and there isn't much to do in Willich (sorry friends who live in Willich but you know it's true) we decided to go to the Krefeld zoo. Wait side note, what is someone who lives in Willich called? A Willich-er? Willich-ian? Willich-ite? Adding those endings might just be an English thing so I'm just going to make up a name myself. I think Willian is cool because in German the W is pronounced like a V so it's like villain just with the a and i switched. My name is Kaeleigh James and I am a Willian. I will rob you in my super stealthy house shoes. Did I take it too far?

Now back to the point, Krefeld zoo. Just my host sister, host mom, her friend, and I went. The weather was cold but sunny so I wasn't complaining. The first animals we saw were two camels...and they weren't fenced in. The only thing separating you from them was a one foot wide and deep trench. My first thought was this is Thailand all over again. The animals are going to be within reaching distance, I can put my hand in a hippos mouth again, maybe I'll get to feed a tiger a raw slab of meat from a stick. Those are all things that I actually witnessed in the Chang Mai zoo just a few years ago. But unfortunately my tiger fantasy did not come true. On the plus side, I did get to see monkeys and penguins up close. I'll post a video of the monkeys on Facebook.

The zoo was small but we still saw a lot.

All the signs in the zoo were written in german as well as english. This somewhat surprised me because it's not a very big zoo but it was interesting to see the difference in english to german names. The funniest name I saw was for the pygmy hippo. In german it is called a Zwergflusspferd which literally means dwarf river horse.

As you can see above I took a picture inside a tortoise shell. I was actually forced into taking this picture and then was laughed at as I attempted to remove myself from it. A video exists of this event but you will never have the pleasure of watching it for the sole reason that it is horribly embarrassing.

It was a short adventure but still a fun one.

official zoo explorer, kale