Well, I was certainly glad when I made it to room 17. The students had been waiting for me, not knowing what to expect. Their teacher kept calling me the “surprise visitor from Tasmania”. My first stop with the class was to the library. I had perfect timing. They were going to read my blog to learn more about me!
Here we are. The photo is a little blurry.
After visiting the canyons we headed towards Salt Lake City to visit Gara. On her last trip to USA, Miss W tried to visit Gara but their schedules didn’t work out. So this time she is determined to meet her chat room friend. We didn’t realise that Thanksgiving was Thursday; we thought it was Friday and had planned to leave then so it would not interfere with Gara’s plans.
Instead, we were invited to Gara’s son’s in-laws for a real Thanksgiving meal. I took a photo of the meal that Miss W ate. It included turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, candied yams, green bean casserole, stuffing and cranberry sauce. (OOPS, forgot the devilled eggs which Miss W really liked) Then for dessert there was a choice of pies: pumpkin, cherry, apple, key lime as well as cakes decorated to look like Pilgrim hats and turkeys. A lovely fruit punch was also served.
While the meal was being organized, Miss W was asked many questions about our trip. We also watched some American football on the TV. Miss W learnt a new game from Stevie called “Chopsticks”. She will have to teach it to her students when she gets home.
Also while in Salt Lake City, Miss W had to visit the FamilySearch Library. This is the most famous genealogical library in the world and all genealogists want to visit it some day in their life. Four storeys tall, with Australia and British on one floor including computers, microfilm and books. Unfortunately, Miss W didn’t find out anything new about her two brickwalls – her English grandfather and when he arrived in Australia or her Samoan great great grandfather’s native name.
After a fantastic time with Gara and her boarder, Hannah, we headed back to Las Vegas for a couple of days before visiting the last stop on our trip, Los Angeles.
Have you ever done research on your family? Do you know about your grandparents and what their childhood was like compared to yours?
WOW! I am so far behind in my posts. Miss W and I are having such a great time speaking to chat room friends, visiting schools and meeting teachers and students that we are exhausted at the end of the day.
After leaving Kansas City, our first stop was to meet Britta, a chatroom friend, at a lovely little cafe in Lawrence called Aimee’s Coffee House. Delicious drinks there both hot and cold. Britta and Miss W chatted for over an hour but sadly, we had to leave as we had quite a distance to travel that day and the weather did not look too good. Through Topeka and the beautiful Flint Hills to Salina.
It was here at the Kansas University that we met Billgx as he is known on twitter and his daughter, Science Girl Em. Bill is a great follower of the student blogging challenge which Miss W runs twice a year and Em has taken part in many of the activities. While there, Em interviewed Miss W and you can see her post on her blog. Well done, Em.
Bill and his students showed me a game they were creating. It was great to see that the students were finding lots of information on the web so they could include bits of code into their game. Why re-invent the wheel??
By this time it was pouring with rain and we wanted to get to Wichita that night and as the motel was on the southern side of town, we needed time to find our way there on the highways and in the dark. Why did we need to be at that particular motel?
Only a couple of miles away was another chat room friend that Miss W had organized to visit. Sadly, it was too late to meet that evening so we organized to meet Tom at his house the next morning and head off for breakfast at a beaut little cafe that had only opened recently. Tom was originally from Colorado when Miss W first knew him in the chatroom. Wonder if he will go back there again?
We had planned to stay in Wichita for the day, but with bad weather coming again, Miss W felt it was better to keep driving and hopefully miss that bad weather. Yesterday and during today, there had been tornadoes near Wichita and earthquake tremors from Oklahoma City.
Do we want to be caught in some of them? No way, so off to Amarillo we go.
Make sure you check out the images from my photostream in Flickr. They are all creative commons so feel free to use in your posts.
Please leave a comment if you have ever been caught in some form of natural disaster like a hurricane, cyclone, tornado, earthquake, bushfire etc. What did it feel like? How did you survive?