Sunday, July 17, 2011

A Van Down by the River

I'm feeling a bit alone in the world today as my Uncle Gary is in Tanzania climbing Mount Kilimanjaro (true story, I had to use Wikipedia to double-check that Mt Kili is in Africa...many thanks to my World Geography teacher--er...coach...who made us watch Saving Private Ryan and The Patriot repeatedly instead of actually showing us a map) and my parents are in Lima, Peru.

My parents are doing on a mission trip working with an orphanage there. I wasn't worried about them going until my dad called me the day of the trip and said, "Hola!" heavily pronouncing the "H" sound, and then giggling, "I'm practicing my Spanish for the trip!" He has probably offended most of the locals by now and ruined America's reputation with his butchering of their language. (Just kidding, America's reputation has already been ruined...it happened when we let Britney Spears make that awful movie, Crossroads.)Anyway, with all my family spread out over the globe, I'm getting by with a little help from my friends. Yesterday we floated the river. It was a perfect day--slightly overcast so that the four of us who are eggshell white didn't get burned, but still hot enough to enjoy the cool river water.

Here's a picture of our little group...
(And actually, I wrote the last paragraph before I looked at the picture...no offense, guys, but we all pretty much look pale in the picture. I don't want to hear any more jokes about Casper from you.)

We tied all our rafts together at the suggestion of Caleb, who is an actual History teacher (not one of the ones who makes kids watch Saving Private Ryan), and who told us that the best way to stay together is to form a flotilla. He swears this is a real term from the Spanish navy for a formation of ships. At one point the flotilla failed us, when my raft seceded from the union during a trip down one of the chutes and the Lee's raft began to deflate. Then we had a period of reconstruction and recovered, just in time to raise our legs in happiness for a photographer standing on the banks whose photo we stole online to post here.

Afterward, the Gristmill. Umm...delicious! If you like onion rings the size of your face, you should go there. If you don't, well, just keep enjoying your granola bars and sushi for years after we die of coronary artery disease.

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