It's already the third day of summer, and I am already doing things, on vacation! I was hoping to relax a little after the stress of exams, but I'm actually really excited for all that is planned for this vacation. Let's back up a bit and recap. Last week was my last week of school, so on Tuesday to Friday, I was taking my final exams. Luckily, because of the schedule and since I had already taken my exams for AP Chemistry and AP Biology, I only had one exam per day, so I could devote my study time entirely to that subject. Except for my French exam, which had vocab words that were NOT on the vocab sheet, all my exams weren't too bad. In AP Biology, we ate popcorn and watched Ferris Bueller's Day Off and in AP Chemistry, we ate breakfast, played Guillotine (an awesome card game, not the actual machine...), and attempted to watch Monty Python's Quest for the Holy Grail, which wasn't too stressful. The only annoying thing was that apparently, someone didn't calculate the time we were in school accurately, and we were 40 minutes below the state requirement, so instead of realizing this before the last week of school, and spreading it out, they tacked the extra minutes on to the last day. Shows what geniuses run our school district... Luckily my teacher let me go to another class after the exam, and instead of watching Ferris Bueller's Day Off again, I went to a tea party with my friends. After school, being the faithful recycler that I am, I stayed after for Green Group to recycle. Let me tell you, there was no shortage of things to recycle. Even though we got out at about 11:30, we didn't finish until 2 PM, and since the paper bin was already full when we started, we had to stack bags up around the outside. I ate a lot of food that day, for I got a scone at the teaparty, a donut from my friend, another from a teacher, some ice cream from the math department, and afterwards, we all went out to Dairy Queen. As you can imagine, I was full that day.
Since my sister was graduating on Saturday, Aunt "Rose", Uncle "Frank", and all his dogs came up on Thursday. Once again my sister made lava cakes, which were very yummy. Right after getting home from Green Group, my aunt, uncle, sister, mom, and I all went to the performance of Merry Wives of Windsor outside at Nichols Arboretum, where my mom, sister, and I were ushering. My aunt and uncle went to get food from Zingerman's, and luckily arrived just in time to get the food without a wait. Because we were showing where the people had to walk for the performance, we missed the first scene because some idiots arrived to a 6:30 show at 6:30! It didn't negatively impact the rest of the play, but it probably would have made more since had we seen it. Unfortunately, since the play ran late, we missed the arrival of some of my other relatives in for my sister's graduation.
Saturday was the day of the graduation. We all got dressed up, my sister curled her hair, and we were off. It was a little annoying that we had to drive 40 minutes to get to the venue, but when I saw how many people were there, I understood why we couldn't have done it on our football field. The graduation itself was pretty good, but since I have never been to any, I have nothing to judge it against. There were a few snafus: there were a few off key singers and the speeches were a bit cliché. Also, somehow someone had snuck in beach balls, and were throwing them around when people were receiving their diploma. When the security person took them away, people booed, which I thought was incredibly rude for the person walking across the stage. From that little stunt, we can now see who will succeed in life and who will amount to nothing. We rushed home, thinking that we had lunch reservations at 2 PM, but when we got there, we realized that it was actually 2:30, so we had to wait. Luckily the food was delicious, and it made it up for that fact. That night, we had a grad party where only family friends and family were invited. I say it was a success - there was salmon and steak, tons of fruit, and for desert marzipan cake, pie, and ice cream cake, all very good. The only bad part was that I was forced to play the piano, which I don't like doing in front of people.
Now onto the vacation, which, if I didn't mention before, is to the Northeast. In the morning on Sunday, Aunt "Rose" and Uncle "Frank" left with all the dogs, including Kingsley. It was sad seeing him go, but we couldn't take him with us. We packed the rest of the day, and planned to leave at 3 PM, which didn't work out as planned. Instead, we left around 6 PM, not sure what to do with all the leftovers from the night before. Since we all had our passports, we drove through Canada to get to New York, which is where we were spending the night. Both border crossings were surprisingly fast. At the very end of our transit through Canada, we viewed the Niagara Falls all lit up at night, which was very cool. The only thing that distracted from its natural beauty was all the garish neon lights of casinos and hotels behind it. It was here that I think I lost a sleeping face mask :( We got into the hotel at 12:30 at night, and just fell asleep.
This morning, the plan was to leave Henrietta, New York at 6 AM, waking up at 5 AM, but the alarm we thought we set didn't go off, and we actually got up at 6. Luckily, we still arrived at Amherst, Massachusetts in time to eat lunch at Judie's, a restaurant that my parents remember from 20 years ago. They are famous for their popovers, so I got that with my meal. Little did I know that my meal of chicken and ravioli was huge, as was the popover and everything that we ordered. Let's just say that we had a lot of leftovers. Afterwards, we went to Amherst Books, a local bookstore. There were so many books there, that it was a little overwhelming, and I just gave up looking. They did have a cool rolling ladder on one of the bookshelves, which is something I want in my own house. Finally, we drove to Concord, where we are staying at North Bridge Inn. Right after arriving, we walked over to Minute Man National Park, the starting point for a biking tour around Concord. I didn't know what to expect, but it was pretty cool and I learned quite a bit about the battle during the Revolutionary War. I didn't know that all these famous writers - Nathaniel Hawthorne, Emerson, Thoreau, and Louisa Mae Alcott all lived in this area, as well as famous people today. Who would have thought? And that national park was quite picturesque; seemed like a nice place to take walks. Tomorrow, we are exploring Concord a little more. Until then!
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