The  Mall of America - "mega-mall" to most Minnesotans - shoots up from the side
of Highway 494 like an American flag.  The mall's wavy, star-spangled red-white-
and-blue sign   looms out of the night, or on days like today, out of  the snow, of
Bloomington, Minnesota.  Some people say that there are as many types of places to eat at the mega-mall 
as there are types of people. For most of US, it's fast food that reigns.  A  couple
dozen fast food places in the Food Court on the third floor content anybody looking 
for a quick, inexpensive meal - from baked potatoes (yes, a whole meal of them) 
to Burger King,  Chinese to Italian. There are bigger, sit-down restaurants, too, 
like Planet Hollywood and The Rainforest Cafe. 

Fourteen movie theaters are  located on the fourth floor, all with "surround
 sound"  movies playing day and night.   Also there are hundreds of stores -  
besides the anchors of Bloomingdale's, Macy's, Nordstrom's and Sears, there 
are other well-known American stores (Abercrombie, Banana Republic, Old 
Navy, Ragstock, Eddie Bauer, The Gap...).  But most of all, people seem to 
love the  small stores:  there's one dedicated just to things dealing with the 
human skeleton - there are skeleton-like T-shirts, and dolls, refrigerator magnets, 
and even skeleton banks.  And there's another that holds everything Irish - 
leprechauns, linen towels, dishes, and scarves. There are stores just for stamps,
another only for coins, and one just for  Christmas.  Some people say it's like 
having all the boutiques of a European  or Asian city under one roof.  We don't 
think that much about it, though, because here in Minnesota, it's  winter for six 
months of the year, so we more or less think of it as  just a giant place for us to 
go and hang out.     

Just about every kid's favorite place is Camp Snoopy.  In the center of the 
mega-mall, this indoor amusement park  has a rollercoaster that goes around the 
whole park, and a log-shoot where you sit in a log and swoosh down a water hill.  
There's also the Screaming Yellow Eagle that it's hard to keep quiet on, it goes 
so fast and so high.  In the Mystery Mine ride, you sit in a chair and watch a film -- 
and shake and roll with the scenes in the film. 

A fairly recent addition to the mega-mall is Underwater World.  Here, cool, 
humid air hits your face as you walk through doors into a Minnesota forest.  At the e
end of a long path, you walk under a stone archway into an aquarium, holding 1.2 
million gallons of water and hundreds of varieties of fish. It's like being in a tube, 
only you're actually surrounded by glass cases, and moved by conveyor belt, from 
place to place.  Underwater World recreates different habitats: fresh water, salt water, 
and tropical. After you leave the tunnel you can visit little stations and actually 
touch some of the aquarium life, like star fish and  jellyfish.  There are other fun 
places in our 
mega-mall, 
like the 18-hole 
golf course 
(a hilly putting green) 
called Golf Mountain, 
but for little kids 
the best place is LegoLand, where 
there are over 
sixty huge models.  
The most 
complicated one 
we've seen recently 
is the model of a 
blimp, which they say is composed of 138,240 Legos.  At LegoLand you can also 
have the chance to build your own models, and  when it comes to this part, the 
interest here isn't   just  limited to LITTLE kids.  If any of you  reading this ever happen to fly  into the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport, 
here in Minnesota, in the U.S. of A.,  and you have a couple hours, be sure you catch 
a bus - it's maybe 15 minutes from the airport to the Mall of America.  We'll  meet 
you at Camp Snoopy, or Planet Hollywood, or LegoLand, or... Mrs. Briel's 10A 
class, Totino-Grace. 

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