Why is there a city called Cape Town??

Ms. Hoffman got to visit a city called Cape Town in South Africa. This city was first started in the 1600s by the Dutch. Dutch people come from a country called the Netherlands. The capital of the Netherlands is called Amsterdam. You can find it on the map here.

The Dutch people had a company called the Dutch East India Company. The company used ships to trade special spices from Europe to a country in Asia called Indonesia (Batavia). Look at this map of how they went.

Can you find Cape Town on the map? Why do you think they started this city called Cape Town? Why did they need a city there?

What is a Castle? (Part 2)

Check out some pictures of castles that Ms. Hoffman has seen on her trip. Do they look like what you drew?

What is the same about all of them? What is different between them?

Did you notice that many of the castles are on a hill? Why do you think that is?

Did you notice that the castles had big walls around them? Why?

Did you notice that many of the castles had water (a moat) around them? Why do you think that is?

Did you see that one of the castles had bears in the moat? Why?

Castle in Cape Town, South Africa - Castle of Good Hope

Prague Castle in Prague, Czech Republic

Cesky Krumlov Castle in Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic

How to Convert Czech Koruna to Us Dollars

In the Czech Republic, Ms. Hoffman uses Czech Koruna to pay for things. She found out that about 20 Czech Koruna = 1 US Dollar. So, to figure out how many dollars something is, she has to find out how many Czech Koruna it is, and then divide by 20. She thought that dividing by 20 was actually a hard thing to do in her head. For example, she thought it was difficult to divide 368 by 20 in her head. But, she finally though of an easier way...

Instead of dividing by 20, she would make it easier. First she would divide by 2 and then she would divide that answer by 10. That was a lot easier to do in her head.

Does her new way make sense? Will she get the right answers? How do you know?

What is a Castle?

Think about a castle. What is it? What does a castle look like? What are the important parts of a castle?

Draw a castle and write about the things that are important for a castle. Check back in the next post to see some real castles that Ms. Hoffman has seen on her travels.

Answers: Using up Czech Money

Ms. Hoffman needed 120 + 28 Czech Koruna which equals 148. She had 180. She had enough and she has some left. To find how much is left, you can subtract 180 - 148 = 32. She has 32 Czech Koruna left.

What should she spend it on??

Using up Czech Money

Ms. Hoffman has only one day left in the Czech Republic before she moves to her next country: Poland. They use a different kind of money in Poland so Ms. Hoffman has to get rid of all of her Czech money.

On her last day in the Czech Republic, she wants to go to a soccer game which costs 120 Czech Koruna. She also has to save 28 Czech Koruna for the ride to the train station. She has 180 Koruna left.

Does Ms. Hoffman have enough to get the things that she wants? Will she use all of her money before she leaves the Czech Republic?

Lessons Learned From the Past

Ms. Hoffman has had a wonderful time in her travels. She has seen some amazing things and beautiful places. She has also tried to learn a lot about the places that she has visited. Learning about the history of a place is really important to understand the place. Unfortunately, one thing she has learned is that a lot of places have some sad things in their history.

Ms. Hoffman visited South Africa first. She learned a lot about apartheid. Apartheid was the government's law during the late 1900s. Do you see a word that you know in apartheid? 

If you said the word "apart," then you are right. Apartheid was a series of laws that were designed to keep people apart. The government believed that people with different skin colors should be kept apart. They made a lot of rules to keep white people and black people apart from each other. The worst part of this was the the white people believed that they were better than the black people and treated the black people very badly. Black people were not allowed to live in the cities, they were not allowed to own land, and they had to carry a pass all the time in order to not be arrested by the police. 

Then Ms. Hoffman visited the Czech Republic in Europe. There were many beautiful old buildings here and a lot of history to learn. One of the things she learned in the history was how Czech people (who were mostly Christian religion) treated people who were of the Jewish religion quite badly. Jews had to live apart from the rest of the people and were not given the same rights as others. 

Ms. Hoffman started to think about how sad she was to hear that so many places in the world had history of treating groups of people badly. But then she started thinking about how important it was that she learned about these bad things. What can we learn from studying some of these bad parts of history? Do you agree with Ms. Hoffman that it is important to learn these things even if they make us sad? Why or why not?