For those who don't know, this is a manatee.

Aren't they cute?!

August 17th 2011, America

OK! wow, today was just...cool. So, we woke up early...again

BECAUSE:

WE were going Kayaking in the mangroves!

So, the drive was about and hour and 8 minutes but took a bit longer to get there because my dad had to stop and pick up stuff for our lunch as well as our breakfast. After this it was easy breezy, except for all the tolls we had to go through. At least I was asleep through all of it ;3

When I did actually wake up we still had a little bit to drive and so I did what anyone would do:

Eat a Doughnut.

ha!

When we arrived we got changed into our swimsuits and met up with our tour guide, Ric (an old hippie who has been living in florida as well as kayaking all his life, and that's the way to go when it comes to tour guides!). He was really nice and actually had a sense of humor, which is ALSO a good thing when it comes to tour guides, so, all were happy! As we set off, he showed us

many different birds and trees, but we wanted to see some manatees! Those things are ADORABLE!! They are so fat .

^ ^

{-…-} -That was an attempt at a manatee.....

After a while of paddling we had seen some really pretty storks, herons, Tons of fish jumping out of the water (one almost got into my Kayak!!), Pelicans (GAH!!! My favorite!!!), egrets and eagles, we came to a bunch of houses looking out onto the mangroves (I was thinking to myself: "psh some tour! what are ya' a real estate guy?!"), and by those houses was an air conditioning pipe with fresh water running off into the salt water (this is ok, it doesn't harm anything because under the salt water are actually fresh water deposits (or whatever they're called :3), and manatees, being mammals, drink fresh water, so Ric took us here to see if there was any...and there were. There were 2 of them, a mom and her baby, and both of them were drinking. We were able to see their whole head slurping away, the mom saw us and swam away, hiding herself completely (which is crazy because they are so large) but the baby continued to drink like a pig, slurping and spraying water everywhere, it was really funny ><. Then the baby went down and we could see a swirl in the water (this is caused by there tail when they are moving because it is so strong) coming right toward me!!! Then, the manatee came out of the water and sniffed my kayak with his enormous nose:D I got so scared, because you feel so helpless in a tiny kayak! It could knock you out at any minute! But I stayed still until he went back underwater. I was a bit shaken :S As we kept going, we didn't see very much wildlife, but pretty sights. I was able to pick a seed pod off of one of the trees and still have it, it looks like a rusty orange green bean. Ric took us across an area he calls "the playground" or something like that because it's where the parent dolphins go to teach the young dolphins how to fish, unfortunately we didn't see any, but a ton of fish that were jumping out of the water, because the dolphins were pursuing them. Finally, our trip was coming to an end, and in the last few minutes we looked over and saw another manatee grazing on grass under a dock, he was eating a lot... I know now why some call them sea cows :3moo. He wasn't very interested in us, so we started paddling back after he swam in the opposite direction. All of a sudden, Ric says "Look he's coming back! Fast!!" I looked and once again all the huge swirls were coming towards ME. A huge manatee back came slowly out of the water and bumped against my kayak. He then poked his head out and nudged my hand onto his nose, as he continued to smell me! It was the coolest thing ever!! They are so gentle and kind!! My sister even pet his belly! They are like dogs! Our tour was done and we spent the rest of the day at the ocean. It was great.

Pictures from Disney!

Smile, smile, smile, smile... no. Me and my attitude, I was at the beginning of getting grumpy :D . Gotta love it!

This was when we were on a train that takes you around the park which read "stay in you seat!" It should have been: "Don't get up and dance (or it could possibly be a seizure... the world may never know!)

On the ferry/yacht going to our car, we were doing a titanic reenactment, I always have to be the man...

The little girl side coming out

Happy!

Disney Souvenirs •_-

Bask in the glory of... MICKEY HAT.

I think this is awesome beyond belief, I just wish they made them for bigger heads, because people, one size doesn't exactly fit all.

I love this T-shirt! Sometimes mens t-shirts are the coolest! Mickey looks so focused (just hope it's good music he's playin')

My cool bag ^^ I love graphic art and stuff like this!

Yea!

Wednesday, August 16th, 2011, america

WHOOP! So on this day, we went to: Disney World! We did the task ;B (that smiley is a winking hillbilly by the way)

This, for so long has been one of my many goals *tear tear*. And finally we were able to do it! Our day went like this:

~Woke up at 7am, which wasn't the most fun it could be, but I got over it.

~Out of the hotel by 8am, since t

he park opened at 9am.

~drove 5 minutes to Disney w

orld

~Spent the day!

~Got very tired and left at 9pm.

~Went swimming

~Sleepy time

So, while AT disney, it was crazy fun. We parked and only walked a short way until we reached these buses to transport us to the monorail and then rode that into the park. When me and my sister first saw the castle we said (extremely loudly) "OH MY GOD THERE IT IS!"!! Yea, we got stared at...eh, who cares, it was awesome! The very first ride we went on was my dads childhood favorite "Space Mountain". This ride was THE coolest ride I'd ever been on!! Basically you go into a dark tunnel and there are tons of cool planets and light shooting past you, then you hit hi

gh speeds and zoom on through the dark. Although my dad was holding the cooler with our lunch in it and I thought it was going to fall out, so I was nervous about that...

ha! Then we went to a ride called "the haunted Mansion" and the special affects on this one are amazing! There are holograms that look freakishly real and it's creepy as well as very fun! Then the other rides we went on are:

Mad tea party teacups

The people mover

Carousel of progress :}

swiss family robinson tree house (it wasn't really a ride though but very cool :)

Thunder mountain

Thunder canyon log chute thing (this one was almost 7 minutes long and cute because it had all these little robotic animals singing :D)

And of course cool things I saw like "It's a small world", Dumbo ride, Walt and mickey statue and much more!

That's all I can think of now actually, but we all decided we would go back again someday and finish what we hadn't! Disney for sure is expensive though, I found small lollypops for $6.00!! what the heck man! It's cheap candy! But people buy it, so they keep the prices high! I did get some cool stuff though which I will put pics up after this!

Towards the end of the day, I was starting to get grumpy because I was tired and overheated (it was like 110 degrees!) , and we were about to go, but then the disney people and all the characters got in the streets and started singing, me and my dad were like-- no...just no. and my mom and sunday JOINED the dang thing! They were singing and dancing to the Hannah montana song that was blasting and me and my dad were lugging behind hahaha. As we got on the ferry-boat (a.k.a a huge yacht) We were very content and happy and watched as the castle got farther away. Then when I jumped in the pool later on, I felt like a bird caught in an oil spill that was being cleaned with Dawn® (hahahaha.) I could fell the grime and sweat coming off my, it was gross but very refreshing!

That's all for now!

Oh, I just remembered, we went to the hall of presidents, but only for the air conditioning, not much to see in there...

I can't explain it...

NOTICE!

Read the blog from the bottom, up!!

In the hotel, with the fam.

Fake smile :)

Coffee at the lobby starbucks!

In the elevator, I love them :D

My responses to this

These pictures speak for themselves!

The lutherans

The big sign

I am approaching them.

If I do recall they were saying "speaking of the holy grail..."

The one where...Winter sees some Lutherans that are too nice

Well, my lovely morning consisted of relaxing in a pool and having a delicious coffee and bagel <3

Today was our relaxing day *little birds tweeeet*

But nobody's life if perfect...

So, there are 4000 lutherans at this thing. Smiling, laughing and discussing their religion.

a.k.a

opposite of the definition of me.

You see I am not the happiest of happers, of course sometimes I am, but not 24/7

these people...ARE.

So, I got a mission from HQ to snap a secret picture of what the dorkiest looking lutheran looked like and I haven't found one yet (except mother of course ;) haha) but I do have some pictures *nasty sly grin* >:3

I am good at blending in though, so as we went a' walking through the augsburg fortress bookstore I proceeded to start laughing very fake like and say "OH hahahaha! Who knew God went bowling, HAHAHA, oh what a funny joke!" eh, got in only a bit of trouble for that one (from the mother of course, everyone else bought it, cause it's the norm' around here o.0)

Other than happy fields of people it's been a very good day!

August 14th, 2011, america

On this day, we drove an hour and a half to Orlando! YES! So, we get there and the FIRST thing we do is go to the beach. But, on the way to said beach, we just so happened to almost get in an accident because there was a... go on guess... a TORTOISE crossing the road. Holy crap he was bookin'!! It was the fastest I'd ever seen any ind of tortoise or turtle move, yea he was causing some ruckus. I just hope it wasn't a suicide mission, but I don't think it was. Then, when we arrived at the beach, of course, we drive in the wrong area and get our car stuck in the sand... But luckily a bunch of GOOD looking, tan guys hang out on the florida beaches ;) so they helped out my dad while me, my mom and my sister watched. Turns out we drove onto a baby sea turtle nesting ground -_- oopsies.

Finally we were able to swim in the ocean (we were the whitest people on the beach), and it was SO much better than any wave pool! We are talking about HUGE salty ocean waves flinging you up in the air and, gosh, it was so much fun even though I got pretty sunburned! (I am pretty tan too)! Especially when they crash OVER you! After about 2 hours of this, we drove to our HUUGGEE hotel (it is really big) There are 30 floors (i'm pretty sure) and all of them have a TON of rooms! We are at the Marriot world resort if you wanted to look it up and see! Although, the moment we walked in I saw a huge sign that said "FREED in CHRIST to SERVE", 'Oh no, no, no'. I thought to myself. At east it was sanitary and clean. Pretty much the rest of the day consisted of swimming in the pool, eating and sleeping.

MORE

In the florida welcome station

Florida welcome sign

Our delicious Georgia BBQ

Yep, A HUGE confederate flag, they don't like us yankees

Sun eating a moonpie

More pics

Happy in the car with a bottle of water! (sung to lady gaga's "so happy I could die")

I told you!

Sunrise at 6am

I guess there's 2 of these...

Pictures from the above 2 posts

Sasquatch Beef jerky stick.

Bored

Do you SEE this!>!?!?!

Tired as crap

Secret under covers pics

More on the way!

Saturday August 13th, 2011, America

Today has been one of my favorites. We woke up at 4am, I was NOT hyper. Surprisingly, my parents were and woke me up with too much energy for me to be very happy. Once in the car, I had more energy and couldn't go to sleep. I then told my parents about my fears of giant boulders, werewolves, creepy people and fog. Then we passed by a prison and went onto the subject of those when my mom busted out "look where we are and look what we are talking about!". So me and my dad talked about cooking. I missed all of Kentucky except for the welcome sign because I was asleep and was soon being woken up (again!) because we were in Tennessee. This was my favorite state and the whole family agrees with me, even though so many people were looking at us and one lady even said "oh look, there's those dang yankees"(my dad said this would happen) but, you gotta' love the accents and other than that EVERYONE was so polite! I was scared and confused...! We stopped to eat breakfast at a place called- The Loveless cafe which is very famous and has had so any singers, celebrities and chefs eat there (I can see why!) It had the best Ham, biscuits, grits and fruit preserves i'd ever had, plus I got An RC cola and moon pie (some southern thing I guess?) along with a t-shirt. Let me tell you though, the suburbs of this place are LOADED with $$$, Every house is a mansion (they call them plantations) with columns and a pool! As we kept driving we saw huge mountains that i'm sure about 3000 totoros live in and super cool foliage. Once in Atlanta Georgia, the traffic was HORRID but a blown up semi contributed to that, haha. By 6pm we everyone was just starting to get hungry again (we ate at 10am) except for me, I was hungry at 12pm :S. So you know it's Georgia! We want real southern BBQ, so we stopped at a place called like "The pit stop BBQ" which was So good! We continued on our way and were less than 200 miles away from Ocala, Florida when my dad busts out singing along with 'Kiss' (the band) and "The place" by talking heads... geese. Then finally after a few unsanitary gas stations with dish soap in place for regular hand soap, and a few rest stops we arrived at out destination- The howard Johnson hotel. It was much nicer and the New florida air smelled like Camp snoopy but better (in my opinion, you know, how it's like a tropical sort of smell)! That was the end of day 2. We had been on the road 19 hours today, but we did it.

Oh, yea. They are REALLY religious in the south, the one of the first things we saw in Kentucky was a HUGE (bigger than a windmill) white cross. yep. I know what I'm getting into.. sort of.

August 12th, Friday, 2011, America

Well, I had no idea it was the 12th but now I do. The car ride was so long 5am we woke up. I was So hyper. Then, after a fair amount of fit and active and cliff bars, we were ready to go at about 6. Then, we stopped A TON. But, you can not ignore the beckoning call of your bladder, so that was that. While driving we listened to some of my favorite songs, and some of my least... The worst songs I have heard on, well forever, were when my parents turned on the country station, I cannot stand country (except for the original stuff) but- my parents wanted to get to know the music of the area or as my mom said "get acquainted with the Hillbilly's". ha. The lyrics TO these songs were enough to keep us laughing and have our mouths drop, these consisted of the following: "If you got a daughter, you better take her to her tea party's and give her piggy back rides, or you'll regret it", "God is good, beer is great and people are crazy" and lastly "I can't fix a window and I can't fix a shed, but I sure am good at drinking beer"(where the man proceeded to open a beer at the end of the song...). On this day we went through Wisconsin and Illinois. We were supposed to stay in Kentucky, but by 6pm we were exhausted and so we stopped to stay in Mt. Vernon Illinois at a super 8 my mom picked out. Oh.No. NEVER again! It had used to be a smoking room so you could smell must, mold and cigarette smoke. Along with An unsanitary bathroom, smelly sheets (I was afraid I would get fleas O_O), stained carpet, etc. But, nevertheless it was a bed and so we were happy even though the matress sunk amost to the floor when we at on it ;). After seddling in we went to the "New China IV" buffet and the food was actually good AND they had free ice cream! We each went up 3-4 times and walked back to the hotel full and sleepy, watched children slap each other and cats go crazy on america's funniest home videos and went to bed...Except me and my sister, we hadn't gone to sleep by 8 all summer! So we took 'secret pictures' under our covers. Until... my mom yelled and us and we then we fell asleep to a loud motorcycle zooming up to the hotel, We made sure to use every lock of the door.