Today we got up earlier than we did yesterday, about seven or a little
after. We actually got to go to breakfast today! The food was good and
after the meal we had to decide what to do. Hannah and I went with Club
HAL to play ping-pong. And after we were done we played UNO for a little
while. Then Hannah went with Oma to a cooking demonstration and mom and
I went to hear a person talk about one of the ports that we went to. I
dosed off during part of it do I’d don’t really remember everything that
he said. Oh well. Next was lunch, which was very good, and then we
played a little ping-pong before I went to meet with the ladies for our
little iPad class. We didn’t have much of a class, only about twenty
minutes. This was because there was another talk that all of the ladies
wanted to go to so our meting adjourned and the ladies left. I decided
to go and find mom and Oma, who themselves were at the talk. I couldn’t
find them but we had arranged for everyone to meet in the room at about
four to get ready for diner. That was done and we went to eat at the
restaurant. I wasn’t feeling great, it was a little rocky. (I’m fine
now, it was juts over that one spot for a few hours that was really bad.
It wasn’t that bad though I just didn’t enjoy everything to its fullest
extent.) After dinner we went to watch the boats sings perform some
Broadway songs. I fell asleep for part of it, (I seem to be liking to
sleep through things… Oh well it doesn’t matter). We all went down to
the trivia show, it was pretty funny. We left a little early because
Hannah wanted to go to a room where someone was playing the piano. I
came to the room and am writing this blog. Well I should probably start
getting ready for bed. I’ll keep you posted!
We started out really late, nine o’clock or so, because we have such a
dark room in the interior of the ship and we don’t have any windows so
we were all just thinking that it was three in the morning and went back
to bed. Finally I figured out and looked at my watch. Oh well we had
some nice rest. We actually didn’t have breakfast because we were so
late getting started. Instead we got ready to go to this “Meet and
Greet” meeting hosted by this group called “Cruise Critic” (if you ever
want to go on a cruise check it out, I actually don’t know what it is
but it must be good or else mom wouldn’t have used it). Anyway Hannah
and I got ready before mom and Oma so we went up to the Crows Nest to
write yesterday’s post. The meeting, by the way was at the Crows Nest on
one side. We were sitting on the other side looking out at the ocean in
front of us. Mom showed up at the meeting late, really late, so late
that she missed the entire meeting. She did show up for the mingling
time after the meeting and somehow or another she ended up talking to
some ladies about the iPad and how they didn’t know how to use it. Well
she volunteered me to teach an iPad class. I had come over just as she
was doing so and I was just a little surprised. Well, I walked out of
the Crows Nest with an iPad class with four women at two o’clock in the
afternoon. We decided to go have some lunch and after we ate we went to
play ping-pong until time for me to teach the iPad class. The iPad class
went well, our progress: we made it to learning how to mass delete
photos! Anyway after an hour of class we decided that we would have
another class the next day at the same time two o’clock. Remember this
time, it will come in handy near the end of the day. After I was
finished with the class I joined club HAL for ice cream an then plagued
ping-ping with mom. Then Hannah and I went swimming for a little while.
Once we were done we went back to the room to get dressed for the formal
dinner. The formal dinner is a very formal occasion. I wore a suit and
tie. If you’re reading this Nic, thank you for the suit, it has come in
handy. Goodwill also helped out by supplying the shoes and tie. The food
was delicious, we had an appetizer, soup, an entree and a desert. All of
which were good. After our dinner we went to go see a pianist perform.
Before he started though, the guy announced that there would be a time
change in the middle of the day tomorrow, at two o’clock. There will be
no two o’clock tomorrow. He joked that he was going to work out from two
till three. Now remember that time I told you to remember? Well if you
remember I had scheduled my iPad class at two o’clock but tomorrow it
not exist, oops. Anyway the pianist was really good. I enjoyed the
songs. One of the songs was a medley of some of Beethoven songs made
modern, it was really interesting. It just goes to show that the
melodies are the same just the style, and instruments that the melodies
are played on change. After that show as we were going towards our room
we saw another thing set up. It was a game show. We decided to watch
that, they took some people form the audience that wanted to do it and
one of the guys from the staff asked the questions. One of ladies was
just not good at all but he staff guy made her feel fine. He asked all
of the other people to step back and let her get some questions for only
herself. One time when she answered a question “John F. Kennedy!” he
said, “Yes, also known as Jimmy Carter but you know he went by a lot of
things back then.” Anyway everyone had a good time and it was really
funny to watch. After that we came back to our room and got ready for
bed. I am currently writing his post and getting tirrrrrrrreeeeeeedddddd
oops, I think I held down a key on he keyboard, that probably means I
should go to bed.
Today was tiring at best. We started the day out in Ft. Lauderdale and
ended it out of site of the shore. We had breakfast in the hotel and
then went back up to get ready to check out of the room at ten. Then we
went to the port, Port Everglades. There we dropped off our bags and
went to the airport to drop off our car. We took the shuttle from the
airport back to the port and went through a very extensive security and
check in. Eventually we got to the jet-way. Oh wait, it can’t be a
jet-way, we weren’t going on a jet. It did look like it though. Anyway
when we got onto the boat it was really cool. It was really grand. We
were almost attacked with people with hand sanitizer and everyone was
very nice. Then we were told where to go to get to our room and there we
put down our bags and then we went to lunch. After a delicious buffet
lunch we explored the ships for a little while and then went back to the
room to get on our bathing suits to go swimming. After that we watched
the embarkation at about 6:00. There is a kids club and a teens club on
the ship. The kid club (called club HAL; Holland America Line) had a
meeting and so Hannah went to that for a few minutes while mom, Oma and
I went to go eat. We learned that I was one of two teenagers on the ship
and Hannah was one of about ten or so kids. We were going to try to eat
at the nice restaurant but the line was so long that it just wasn’t
worth it. We went to the buffet instead. After we had eaten we went up
to pick up Hannah. One of the leaders of the club informed us that I was
actually the only teenager on he ship. The other “teenager” turned out
to be 67 not 17. Someone had made a typo. Anyway Hannah came down to
have dinner and then we went back to the room to go to bed.
Can you believe it? Tomorrow is the BIG day! We are going on our cruise
tomorrow around noon. (Maybe before.) Anyway… Today was the last
minute shopping time. Such as Target, Walgreens and CVS/Farmacy (that
is the southern Walgreens.) Today wasn’t very interesting, but I’ll tell
you, in 7-9 days, there will be LOTS of news. Well maybe tomorrow will
be interesting. Why? Because I will probably tell everyone about and
what’s on the boat. It will be VERY exciting. Well I gotta go to bed
now, see ya’ll later!
Hi everyone, in just a few days (starting on April 30th) Basher Academy
will be going on another long field trip in which we will be seeing many
of the things that we are learning about in World History.
We will be going on a trans-Atlantic cruise to Europe. While in Europe
we will be going to many different countries and seeing many interesting
things from Portugal to Greece, Rome to Dubrovnik in Croatia, Athens to
Corinth. All of these places we will be seeing history right before our
eyes. Just going to Rome is a journey through history but going to
Athens, Corinth, Barcelona, and other cities will give us a taste of the
cultures of many different countries.
OK now I will tell you what I thought of the trip since that’s the
number one question that you ask people when they come back from a
vacation. It was great, I was able to see the lives of many different
people groups, from the Dao (pronounced: Zow) in Sapa to the Cham in the
Mekong River Delta. I got to see rice being harvested, planted and rice
fields that were already harvested. One of the sad things that I noticed
was that much of Vietnamese culture is based on Buddism. Well I have
thouroly enjoyed being able to share this wounderful, rich culture in
this blog. I hope that one day I can go back to Vietnam to see my
wonderful homeland once again. I’ll be sure to keep a blog that trip
too.
It was about a for hour trip to Shaghai and then we had an eight hour
layover. It was long and hard. We ate a meal and shoped and bored
ourselfs to death. Finally the gate opened and we checked our bags and
went to the plane. It was a ten and a half hour flight to San Fransisco.
I slept and worked on my blog for most of it. We had thought that all
the movies that they were playing were going to be bad. One of the ones
that they showed was Ramona and Besis. I would have watched it but I
thought that it was another of those bad movies and nobody told me that
I could watch it. We made it to San Fran and had a three hour layover.
Then we had another three hour flight to Denver. We bussed out to our
car and were a little worried that our car wouldn’t start. It did and we
drove to our house. Hannah slept all the way and mom and I dosed off for
a minute or so. Dad luckily didn’t dose off and we made it home safe.
So, we are back safe in Saigon. No problems on the plane, but the
transportation to our hotel was aweful. I guess the guy who was supposed
to pick us up, was wrong on the timing, so we waited for about 1 hour,
till mom decided to call the guy. After waiting another half hour, the
guy FINALLY showed up. He said, wait for 10 minutes, and I will get your
ride. But of all things, another guy,( the guy who picked us up at the
airport last time,) showed up and said to come with us. So we loaded up
the luggage in the taxi, and ALMOST started out agoin, but then, the
first guy said to wait another 10 minutes, and he would load us up into
a “big” van, the van was the size of the other car, but we FINALLY
succeded in getting to our hotel. We got a warm welcome, so that is all
to tell you what we did this after noon.
Today is our last day in Vietnam. We woke up and ate breakfast. Then we
hung out for a fem minutes to find things to do and work on the blog.
Then we went shopping for a while. We ate lunch at a place called Wrap
and Roll. In this restaurant you were served the food that you ordered
with some green vegitables, noodles and rice paper. Then you rooled it
all together. It was really good and then we went out and shoped a
little more. After that we went back to the hotel and asked if we could
have a small room for the night so that we could have a room until we
leave at one o clock tomorow morning. They let us and we moved to the
other room. Then we went swiming for a while to cool down. After we were
refreashed we went to the room and got packed up. Mom and Hannah slept
for a while and then I laid down to try to sleep for a while. I never
did but my body got to rest. By this time it was about time to fialize
out packing and go to the airport. We went down with out bags and got
into the car. We made it to the airport but the gate wasn’t opened yet.
Some people started to line up and we asked them if they were in line
for our flight to Shainghi. They were and so we got in line. I took
forever to get up to the desk and when we got there she couldn’t find
our tickets! Finally she found ours but she couldn’t find dads! After a
while she was able to locate dad’s ticket. Needless to say, we were the
last ones at the check in counter. Unfourtunentaly she couldn’t check
them to Denver so we would have to spend all of our time in Shanhai with
our bags. Then we went to our gate and got onto the plane…(Look at
the next post for the rest of the story.)
