July 10, 2009 -San Francisco

Hello World!

Today was our final day of our amazing trip to the West Coast! We can't believe that it is actually over so soon. So lets party before we leave our hearts in San Francisco!

This morning we had to split our group after breakfast. One group headed to the Golden Gate bridge. We soon found out that it was not golden, but in fact it is red. haha everyone already knew that. We didn't luck out that much with the weather. It was very chilly but we enjoyed the view anyway. Tons of pictures were taken as we walked across the bridge. We will never forget this amazing San Francisco walk.

Our bus was waiting to take us to the beach to enjoy the beautiful cold San Francisco fog. Our awesomeness took us to the Golden Gate Park with 2 museums, which were magnificent (of course). Afterwards we headed to the Pier 39(again), to eat lunch and go to the boat that took us to Alcatraz. We have to say it was scary, interesting, dreadful (Desiderio came up with this word) - thats how we would describe it. We went on an audio tour throughout the prison cell. It was so interesting to hear the stories that were told.

At 7 pm we rooooooocked the Hard Rock Cafe and I (Maros) met a girl from Slovakia, yay! Now we are having a party!!! With our own DJ. Our last hours are going to be lot of fun! This trip was amazing and we all wish it was forever and ever. So please go pick up your little kid at the airport tomorrow.

Post By:

Desiderio Berdini from Italy

Maros(Marian) Rehak from Slovakia

with help from Kevin and Carleigh and Alex

July 9, 2009 -Our last city, San Francisco

Hey everyone!

Today we had amazing and really early day! After great breakfast we started our first full day in San Francisco. We went to famous Pier 39 around 9 am. At the Fisherman's Wharf we saw sea lions and did some shopping. (By the way... sea lions are pretty loud! ). Few hours later we got to ride the cable cars! We were divided into 3 groups, each one on their own cable car so we could enjoy more room and have a better view.

There was a lot of yelling, swinging and picture taking going around. We stopped at the cable car museum to see how they work and then we were off to the Union Square. There we had few hours of free time and guess what we did?? Yes you were right! We shopped some more. People had lunch in all sorts of different restaurants, from typical Burger King to Brazilian, Thai and Mexican food. After getting back on our busses there was a new person waiting for us.

Our tour guides were there to answer every possible question we had about San Francisco. First stop on our tour was City Hall. It was huge and full wit art as well as politics. It is also famous from the movie Milk. During the day we also saw the amazing view from the Twin Peaks and did some more shopping at the Hippie District. During the drive to the most crooked street(Lombard Street) we saw the location where the famous TV show Full House was shoot. Of course, when we got to the street we walked down and there were our busses... waiting as always. We all knew that our dinner is going to be in Chinatown and that was our next location.

On the way there we passed the Castro district, known from the movie Milk, and a big Italian district. Chinatown was another big shopping spree possibility. Of course, most of us bought at least one little thing. Dinner was not an ordinary dinner. Once it started we thought it was never going to finish. After 10 different plates and a desert we were finally finished. All tired and sleepy we went back to the hotel. It was hard to go on the bus because we knew that tomorrow is our last day. During the ride home we were talking about the day.

I was thinking about the fortune cookie that said : Life is a series of choices. Today yours are good ones.

And they were. :)

Post By: Anja Petkovic and Andreja Piskac from Croatia

July 8, 2009 -Yosemite to San Francisco

How are my pals doing today? We sure had a good day!

Some of the people decided to sleep in today but the more adventurous and hardcore people like us chose to go on a super exciting and amazing day at the great Yosemite National Park, California. The weather was good and we were able to choose the activities we wanted to do. Some people hiked, some swam at the pool and others such as ourselves just chilled next to a waterfall laying down and singing, playing guitars and had THE time of our lives!

After that, we all ate lunch in the park and started to get ready to leave to San Francisco. The bus trip wasn't bad at all, even though we spent almost 5 hours in there, there was a lot of entertaining going on including a hilarious talk from some Brazilian guys. Some people wanted to listen to country music, but it just did not happen. *cough* unfortunately the vote could not be swayed on the bus.

We finally got to San Francisco and our fancy hotel. We got to our rooms then went to eat supper. The food was good and we celebrated the birthday of our friend Renata, singing happy birthday in the language of all the countries represented by the students.

To end the day we got us some free time. A few of us went to play soccer, or teach others soccer, (for the Brazilians). Others went to the pool and some worked out and we don't know what the not mentioned ones did...haha...Well we both know ya'll are tired of us so we'll go swim for a little bit and go to bed, because tomorrow we'll go into the city of San Francisco.

Peace,

Enzo Caram (Brazilian and Tennessean, heck yeah!)

Gustavo Calazans (Brazilian and Tennessean, heck yeah!)

July 7, 2009 - Yosemite National Park

This morning we left the hotel to go to Yosemite National Park. We were very surprised with the amazing views of the valley. The weather was perfect, not too cold neither too hot. We started by hiking from the bottom (of course) to the top of the mountain, and there we discovered this huge water fall. There we had a picture break with the group. After that, we went back. It took us 4 hours to hike but it felt like 2 hours of fun!

In the afternoon after some lunch we went rafting. It took us about one hour. We had so much fun while we competed with our rafting boats and we got soaked by little kids on a bridge. During our little expedition, again we had nice views of the water falls, the trees and the mountains.

Finally, we had a cook out at the Yosemite Bug: a nice BBQ, with chicken, baked potatoes, corn on the cob and salad. It was really good of course. We also celebrated two birthday today, Olimpia's and Diane's. They got two pieces of chocolate cherry cake! Yum! The ambiance was nice and it got dark so we had to go back to the hotel. We are all exhausted from such a full day of everything!

Post By:

Alex Gofflot from Belgium

Diane Deschenaux from Switzerland