June 11, 2011
Bus day! That's right, a whole 14 hours on our tour busses. (Le Bus was the bus company we had, and we had two of them) So we had to be at the American Herritage school by 5:45 AM. After saying goodbye to my dear mother, we departed at 7:00. About 3 hours into our drive, the bus in front of my bus suddenly got a surprise tailgater. That's right, a police car, lights and everything! Heh heh. They were speeding. The funny thing was that my bus was going the same speed, but I suppose they were first so, bummer. We arrived in Redding, CA at 9:20 PM local time. Longest ride of my life. Oh my gosh. To make it worse I only got about half an hour of sleep!
June 12, 2011
The host family I stayed at were the Cobabes. And it happened to be one of their 5 sons' birthday today! His name was Ben, and he was a bacon fanatic. So we had that for dinner! But I'm getting ahead of myself. Their church was at 11:00 so that's when we went. After church we played games like UNO and such. At 5:30 we were back at the church to get ready for our fireside that started at 6:30. Unfortunately, not everything exactly "flowed smoothly." Although, it did flow smoothly out of my nose! That's right. Another one of my famous bloody noses a half hour before our fireside that night. So I hurried to the bathroom and stopped it, but unfortunately the blood got all over my shirt, tie and jacket. Fortunately my jacket was dark enough to conceal the blood so that it wasn't visible, and the jacket covered up the blood on my shirt, but my tie was another story. Good thing Mr. Swenson (choir director) allowed me to use his tie for that night! He just grabbed somebody elses. Then about halfway through the fireside, a kid standing right in front of me passed out. No joke. He swayed, and then just fell over! He got up after about 10 seconds, but sat for the rest of the fireside. It was scary and funny at the same time. After the fireside, the Cobabes took us to see the Sundail Bridge in Redding. It's a foot bridge that has a sundail on it! But it's only accurate on June 21. Bummer, I know.
June 13, 2011
We went to the Jelly Belly factory! Woot woot! Haha the bus drive from Redding took about 3 hours until we got there. When we did get there, we went on a tour inside the factory and found out all about how they made their jelly beans. It was... an experience. Too bad that they didn't let us take any pictures on the tour! Another disappointing thing was that the factory was in its annual 2 week check up. So there were no machines running. We just watched semi-lame videos instead of the actual real deal. But I found out another cool thing! Jelly Belly makes candy corn and a bunch of other candy too! Fun fact. After our tour we had deli sandwiches in front of the factory, then we got on the bus again and rode another couple hours to a secluded beach where we got off and streched. Then we drove over the Golden Gate Bridge! It was really neat actually. When we got to the hotel that night, we went with our excursion groups to find a place to eat. Our group wandered a long time, finding nothing decent. It was starting to get dark, so we just walked into a place that looked good enough. The moment we walked in, we realized that this was probably a bad place to be, but the bar attendant had already spotted us and was walking to greet us. So we stayed at the sports bar & grill for dinner that night! Wow...
June 14, 2011
I woke up with a very satisfied tummy. The dinner last night had actually turned out to be pretty dang good, and as far as I could tell nothing was spiked. But anyway we drove down to Fisherman's Wharf in San Fransisco and wandered around there for 4 hours. It was quite fun! We first went to Pier 39 which was pretty much an outdoor mall on the side of the sea. After Pier 39 we went exploring a little bit more and found a submarine and a huge, HUGE battleship, or something! It looked like a battleship. Right next to these was an old fashoned arcade that we went into. They had an old photo booth, a hammer/bell thing, and an arm wrestling machine! Just to name a few. After Fisherman's Wharf we went to a chapel next to the Oakland Temple and performed there.
(And oh yes. The new Owl City album came out today. Gosh dang it I had to wait until I got back to listen to it!)
June 15, 2011
We woke up a whole hour early, thanks to Walker. He had set his alarm according to Utah time, not California time. After waking up an hour LATER, we got all dressed and about half of our choir went to the Oakland Temple and performed baptisms for the dead. The temple was so pretty! After baptisms we went back to the hotel and grabbed everyone else, and headed back to the temple to take a group picture. After our picture we had lunch on the temple grounds, and went into the visitor center and stuff. We later departed to our next fireside location and sang. After our fireside, the host family we would be staying with that night picked us up and we went to their house. And from 9:00 - 10:00 we watched "Through the Wormhole - With Morgan Freeman." And may I just say, this is my new Wednesday show. Not that I have regular shows on any given day, but this is my Wednesday show. Mostly just cause it has Morgan Freeman.
June 16, 2011
We woke up, packed a sack lunch for the day, then headed out on the busses to Old Sacramento. The first place we went to when we got there was the Railroad/Train Museum. And I didn't know that train museums could be interesting, but alas! This one was awesome! They had life sized trains and everything! Well, except the toddler area with the Thomas the Train sets. But it was cool! After the museum we had our sack lunch, then explored the rest of Old Sacramento. The town looked like one of those towns you see in old western movies. Eventually we came across a school house. With a pump organ! And a rope that rings the bell on top of the school! I pulled it. It was quite fun. After Old Sacramento we departed for the stake center and got picked up by our host families about an hour after we arrived. Our host family this time was the Kartchners, and they had a REALLY nice house! They even had a pool! So guess what Steven (my bunking buddy for the night) and I did for 45 minutes? Yep. You got it. Fed the homeless.
. . .
Hahaha no I'm kidding we swam. It was quite... hmmm how do you say it... AWESOME! Yep. That's the word. After all that we went back to the stake center for our fireside, sang, and came back to sleep.
June 17, 2011
So after waking up we packed our sack lunch for that day, and drove to the Sacramento Temple. We soon came to find out that Mr. Swenson got married there! It was also a really pretty temple. After the temple we went to a rest home for seniors. And we sang 5 songs from our program to them! It was surprisingly spiritual for not being in a chapel. I think I might have actually felt the spirit stronger there than I had at any of our firesides prior! Strange. But definitely a great experience! After the rest home we went to a cemetary and had lunch, and wiped off and weeded around the tombstones. When we finished with that we went inside a building next to the cemetary, but was still part of it, and went into a moseleum where we sang two of our songs acapella. Since the room was practically all marble, the acoustics were amazing! When we finished singing, we went into a chapel inside the building and had a testimony meeting for an hour, and THAT was amazing! Talk about spiritual! Wow. That was what our tour was all about. For our fireside that night, we performed in Sparks, Nevada. And wanna know the neat thing? A youth conference was going on, so we where supposed to perform for them, and their youth conference theme was temples. Just like our choir tour theme. Without any planning between the choir and the Sparks stake. And I'm sure that this was more than just a convinient coincidence. Anyway, after that fireside, (which was probably our best one in my opinion) there was a stake dance happening! So we went to that and boogied!
June 18, 2011
Oh boy. The bus ride home! Well, there really wasn't anything exciting that happened this day. Just another 10 hour drive home. (It wasn't 14 hours this time cause our departure location was Sparks, not Redding) But nonetheless, we still got back at 9:00 PM. Anyway, all in all, a great tour! Amazing spirit, and great friendships. I'm so grateful that I got the opportunity to go. It was awesome!So, if anybody read all of that word for word, give yourself a pat on the back from me. 'Cause that was no lite reading! Anyway, 'till next time!
-Trevor
