Lawson's journal for his trip to Turkey Day 3

Here is day 3.

Day 3: Today, we woke up at 8 to eat the “best breakfast in Athens”, guaranteed. Our 87 Euro deal included breakfast but it wasn’t suppose to be breakfast at the main restaurant downstairs which had the best breakfast in Athens, it was just…a good breakfast. The best breakfast in Athens is suppose to be 30 Euros per adult and 18 Euros per child/youth but we got it for free because there was a strike going on and the breakfast included couldn’t run with a few people so they sent us down to the main restaurant for breakfast. I was really excited to eat the best breakfast in Athens and I’m not gonna lie, it was an awesome breakfast but not the best I’ve had. That only concludes one thing; Athens doesn’t have good breakfast. After breakfast, mom, di, and I went down to the swimming pool. Mom knew that you could get to the pool from the lobby but a di, being brilliant saw that next to the 1 in the elevator, meaning level one (lobby is 0), it said “access to pool.” Once we got out of the “lift”, we saw a door that said, “pool access”. The funny thing was that right under that sign had another sign saying, “fire exit”. We were all afraid that the alarm would go off but I decided to man up and push on the door. I slowly pushed on the handle, the door opened, and the alarm went off…NOT! The pool was really cold, says a Di and mom. There was also no hot tub and I don’t like swimming so I went back up to the room. Once I got in, baba kicked me out and told me to go to the lounge to get something for him to eat and drink. I personally HATE riding elevators by myself because I always have that feeling that the elevator is gonna stop, lose power, just drop and not stop dropping. Thankfully, when I was waiting for my elevator, a Di and mom came up and I got a Di to go up with me. The lounge wasn’t opened yet when we got there because of the strike so we went back into our room foodless. Then, we decided to go to the Acropolis. Mom wasn’t happy because she wanted to go later. She doesn’t like the sun and at noon, that’s when the sun is the highest and hottest. He took the cab and had to walk up a hill and buy tickets. The line was really long and it was out in the sun. We first saw the ampli-theater, a really old stage that amplifies the sound without using a mic. Then we took at least 50 pictures at the entrance to the temples and got in 30 minutes later. We also saw our Hong Kong “friends” that we met at the airport and helped them take some pictures and they also helped us take some pictures. A lot of the columns needed support and there was a lot of construction going on so we didn’t get to see what it was intended to look like. Some didn’t have construction and it was just stunning. The Parthenon was a lot bigger in real life than in pictures. I could just imagine what it looked like 2300 years ago when it was still new, the marble must’ve been bleached white and smooth. Finally, we went to Mars hill, the beginning of Christianity in Greece. All in all, we were there for about 2-3-4 hours. Coming down, we saw the Sightseeing Bus and became interested. It was 18 Euros per adult and 8 per child/youth. We all wanted to but it seemed a bit expensive and unnecessary because we already had a car so we started walking away. Two minutes later, we decided to get on. We all agreed that it was a waste of money when we got off at the place where we had dinner yesterday. We were only on the bus for 20 minutes and don’t think we will get back on (24 valid receipt). I got a bottle of water for 50 Euros and baba got a gyro for 2 Euros. Afterwards, we walked to the main street and took a cab back to the hotel. We went up to the lounge and they sort of ate dinner. I was rice hungry so we drove to China’s. I slept once again on the ride. China’s is an Asian restaurant with a Greek owner, Greek Chefs, Greek Waiter, and a Filipino Waitress. She talked to us for a while about the business, economy and how the Chinese from China are rude. Kind of funny the way she said it. The food was the best I’ve have on the trip so far. I feel like a fob now, if I don’t get my servings of rice, I don’t perform well and get a feeling like I’m missing something or something’s wrong, anxiety? J On the way back to the hotel, a Di saw that I used the neck pillow but didn’t put it back in the case and just raged and punched my wiener for no reason. Strange little boy… That was it; today was a good day. I still haven’t seen the announced iPhone 5 yet. It sucks how we don’t have free wifi in this hotel. Today was a good day. 

Love 

Asian Occasion

Lawson's journal for his trip to Turkey Day 2

First, I would like to apologize for not putting as much thought into my post as Luke's trip post, or so it seems and for the record, I do not have anything against Middle Easterns.

 

Day 2: “Already?” Today, we woke up at 7 o’clock for breakfast because we had an early flight to catch for Athens, Greece. During breakfast, our waiter taught Baba some Turkish words like, “my friend”, “good morning”, “thank you”, etc. our waiter was a really nice guy that “touched us” a lot. It’s a Turkish thing, a friendly touch on the shoulder. Breakfast was not bad; it was a bit better than the ones at the inns (Days inn, Comfort inn).  We took a taxi to the airport and it was the worst taxi ride I’ve ever had. You may ask, “How could a taxi ride be good or bad?” It sucked because the driver, had some pretty major B.O. Yeah, and I sat ride behind his seat. The ride was about 30 minutes and I breathed in my shirt for 28 minutes. The two other minutes, I didn’t need to because the there was a sewer smell that covered up the B.O. I don’t think I can describe the smell but it was unbearable. We got through security and went straight to the gate 223 with an hour before we depart. Since we had so much time, we went to the duty free shop and almost got some Turkish Delights. The guy that worked there was very nice and social and also has Chinese cousins. He said hasn’t been to Greece and United States but he really wants to. I felt blessed that I could travel to so many places. We left the shop 30 minutes before the plane departs. We chilled at the gate for 10 minutes and my dad felt that there was something wrong; there were only about 10 people at the gate. He checked our boarding passes with another guy and it was the same. That could’ve only meant three things: there were only 10 people going to Athens, there is an unannounced delay, or there has been a gate change. Baba checked a TV that showed the departing flights and it turned out that there was a gate change. It was 213 instead of 223. Baba told the guy that we checked boarding passes with that it was 213, not 223 and everyone else in that room heard it so everyone started running to gate 213. We made it. The plane was only about ¾ full and it only took about an hour to get to the destination but we still got food. Not the best but it was food, a chocolate croissant and some cheese bread. I don’t know why, but when we landed, we got off the plane on stairs to take a bus to the airport building. On the bus, we met some Hong Kong people came here for Apostle Paul’s journey. We claimed our baggage’s at the baggage claim and them we went to get a car at Avis. We were originally driving a small car but we got upgraded to a small/medium car. The car’s “brand” is Oppo or Oppal. We had to walk about ½ a kilometer to the get the car and once we got the car, we started driving to our hotel, Athena Intercontinental. Just before a toll came up, we realized that we didn’t have any Euros. That made the toll 15 minutes to pass instead of less than 15 seconds. The penalty was, to pay when we come back, 2.8 Euros but they needed our passports and everything. I didn’t expect Athens to be so old but all the buildings are like 3-4 stories tall and they have cracks on the walls. The country is so undeveloped. It took us 30 minutes to get to the hotel and it took another 30-45 minutes to get to our room. We first looked at a normal room that we booked. (no extra charge) Then we looked at a suite on the smoking floor but no cigarette smell in the room. (87 Euros more which also includes access to the lounge for complimentary food for the whole day) Next, we decide to choose the family even though we haven’t seen it. (same price at the smoking suite) Finally, we chose to stay at the smoking room because it was the same price as the family room but so much nicer and it didn’t smell like cigarettes. We went to the lounge afterwards and they had glass bottled coke, shortbread, and much more. The best part was that we could eat outside and enjoy the spectacular view of the Parthenon. We then went to drive around the city, which is when a Di and I took our nap. When we woke up, we were back at the hotel and continued walking after walking back up into our room. We napped for another 2 hours and then took the shuttle into town. We walked to the congress building and saw these guards that just stand there and look of into nothingness for an hour every time, four times a day. It’s kind of a waste of life, everyday, you stand for 4 hours not being able to show any emotions or look at anyone or move. Then we walked to a book place that sold books in Greek. After that, we went to look for something to eat and found this Greek restaurant that wasn’t that good but better than Turkey. I didn’t get full from it though because there was no fricken rice. Then we just kept walking for about 2 kilometer and got to a place where you could see the Parthenon beautifully. At night, the Parthenon is just gorgeous; it looks exactly how I imaging Mount Olympus, the home of the Greek gods. Finally, we ended the night with a taxi ride back to the hotel for less than five Euros. Today was a good day.

Love 

Asian Occasion

P.S. I also apologize for not separating into paragraphs but i kind of just put down points. 

 

Luke's Trip to San Diego Part 1

Hello all,

Unlike Lawson this summer, I did not get to go on any "out-of-the-country" vacation trips. I instead went with my family to a one-week "vacay" in the beautiful city of San Diego (specifically in the area of La Jolla).

DAY 1

Let's get this straight, I was relieved to go to San Diego. The weeks before the trip were full of soccer tournaments, practices, and everything you could think of related to soccer. Just like Lawson, my dad woke me up at 4:15-4:30 AM and even though I was still dazed and tired, I was excited. Part of the reason we went to San Diego was also to attend a wedding for my Aunt. Anywho, my Uncle drove our whole family to the Sea-Tac airport and we flew Alaskan Airlines. Our family weighed our luggage, weighing up to a total of 100 pounds and passed through TSA like a wonderful summer breeze. Like an average Filipino household, we brought breakfast to eat (fried rice and sausage) at the airport so we could spend as least money as possible and save it for when we actually get to San Diego. We got on the plane, and because the non-stop flight to San Diego was only 2 hours, we had no personal TVs (Lawson you lucky man). The flight was extremely short, because I slept the whole 2 hours. 

We arrived at the San Diego airport at about 11:00 and claimed our baggage. Shortly after, we took the Enterprise bus to none other than.. Enterprise... We signed some boring documents and finally got to the fun part, picking out the rental car. There was a wide range of simple, to luxurious cars that caught our eye. Now you see, there was a nice, glossy black Porsche ONLY AVAILABLE FOR $5 DOLLARS A DAY that really caught my eye, as well as my elderly grandmother's eye. That day at Enterprise was apparently a huge summer savings day. INSTEAD, my parents chose a 2012 Toyota Corolla. Stereotypical Asians? That was us!



We were off, bumpin' in our Camry to Katy Perry music with the sunroof open. As we headed for the La Jolla Hyatt, we saw and heard the beautiful sights and sounds of San Diego. Filled with cultural Hispanic cuisines, tall skyscrapers, and cool adobe homes, San Diego was the place to be that day.

The La Jolla Hyatt was a grand-spanking hotel with a nice pool, spa, and sporting area. I was truly impressed. Unfortunately, the day was coming to a close as it went so fast. We ended off our day with a visit to a sushi place called "Samurai" with exceptionally well California rolls.



THE END OF DAY 1,

Love,

Luke

Lawson's journal for his trip to Turkey Day 1

Hello. This is my daily journal of my trip to Turkey. Here you go:

Day 1: Baba (dad) woke us up at 4:18 this morning. I was thrilled to go on the first trip of 2012; I jumped out of bed and got ready in a flash. The plan was to leave the house at 4:45 and get to a ma’s house at 5:00 so that she could drive the car back from the airport but we ended up leaving the house at a little after 5.

            When we arrived at the Delta door entrance to the airport, I was so excited to go on a plane again. We got in and had a self check-in. The computer asked if we wanted to volunteer our seat if the plane was too full from Seattle to New York, Baba said yes and (it was on a bidding system) they asked how much money would that cost them. Having previous knowledge, he said 900 per seat; the maximum was 400 so we didn’t volunteer. The next question asked if we wanted to give up our seat for the flight from New York to Turkey. He didn’t read it clearly and rejected. I was like, “WHAT ARE YOU DOING? THAT’S A FRICKEN 10 HOUR FLIGHT.” (you could get bumped up to first/business class if you stand-by) Baba said that we’d just go to the desk to change that, so he went and the “Deltans” said they didn’t need any stand-by’s. I guess that kind of made me feel better because if they did need stand-by’s and my dad rejected, I would’ve been so disappointed. We arrived at New York and went straight for the Sky Club. We got in because we were flying Delta and Baba had a Platinum Amex card. I tried Nutella there for the first time and it was soo good. They also had really good biscuits. Afterwards, I thought I might as well get a Snapple since we were in New York and both my brother and I were given 40 bucks to spend for the trip from our parents. When we arrived at the gate, I immediately ran to the food court to get a Snapple. Everything changed when I saw the price, $3.89 for a (I think it’s) 16-ounce bottle. I expected it to be no more than $2.50 so I left New York without a Snapple L. I peed at least 10 times on the flight, IDK why. The plane ride felt like FOREVER! The main reason was that there was no personal TV. This made the ride feel longer because we couldn’t watch movies (except from the shared TV’s). I was afraid to use my phone too much because I didn’t want it to use up all of my batteries. The funny thing was on our flight from Seattle to New York, there was a TV for everyone (737, 5 hours) but from New York to Turkey, a 10-11 hour flight, there was no TV. WTF!

            I started needing to go pee AGAIN, 20 minutes before we landed and because we were landing, the crew didn’t let me go. I went at the airport and it was so good. J We first had to get a “visa”. It was basically a $20 sticker. So what you do is you wait in line, you pay them 20 bucks and they put a sticker in your passport. After that, we had to wait in line to cross the border. There were at least 200 people in front of us. While we were waiting, my dad said something about the Bible and I told him to shut up because it was Turkey, a Muslim country, you don’t know what they’d do to you. We finally got to the crossing place and we expected another 20 minute wait there because we weren’t in the US so there were no orderly lines. Everyone just bunches up together behind a red line and the guy that gets people through the border picks the good-looking people to let them cross. If you’re like me, there’s no chance. Baba was smart and he took us to the farthest lane and OMG, it looked like Heaven vs Hell. The line was not perfect, but for there, it was… surreal. In that line, we met this guy that was digging for the ark, Noah’s Ark. It was pretty cool but we also saw something that was the opposite of cool. There was this lady that just cut the whole line and walked right through the border-like thing. The guy didn’t even give a crap. My dad was kind of making a big fuss out of it so I told him to shut up before we get involved, it’s Turkey, you don’t know what they’d do to you. We got into Turkey in less than 10 minutes. My mom, a picture freak, wanted to take some pictures of the ads on the wall with Turkish words so that when she posts up the pictures on Facebook, people wouldn’t have a problem knowing that we were in Turkey. We checked in our luggage’s to we had to go to the Baggage Claim to get our stuff. We found all our stuff and my dad said in a loud voice, “Praise the Lord!” I’m like, WTF, we’re in a Muslim country! We also had to speak Chinese because Middle Eastern, especially the al-Qaeda people hate Americans and we didn’t want to take that chance. J Soon, we went to get a taxi. We wanted a biggest van because there were four of us but some dude “forced” us into a smaller cab. The driver wasn’t very confident in knowing where our hotel was but I believed in him while my parents doubted him and complained like, “This old man is so bad, he needs to call the hotel.” In the end, he brought us to our hotel without any issues. We were suppose to take a two hour power nap but we were all so beat up, we ended up take a four hour nap. After we woke up, we walked to the big streets where everyone hangs out. It was kind of disappointing because we only saw like 2 Asian people and Turkey is suppose to be the mixing pot of the world (meaning there is every kind of person there). We saw this Iraqi with his friend and they, for some reason, wanted to take a picture with our family. I found that a bit strange but also cool at the same time. I had this, so called ice-cream, it was like Benihanna but instead of food, it was ice cream, super fun. We saw people renting these smoking machines that had liquid on the bottom, they’d just suck through a tube and breathed the  vapor/poison gas into their lungs. I’d say 89 percent of the adults in Turkey smoke. Baba replaced his back iPhone cover into a BMW cover because his outer lens was all scratched, which create glare for the pictures, quite lame. We discovered that everything tastes plain and Bland. Not like our Asian Food. We had a Turkish dinner. I had a “steak”, not really but it was like…tasteless, no salt, no nothing. We rushed back to the Hotel after dinner to swim but it was already closed (closed at 10 PM) when we got back. We weren’t tired so we went to a street-side café to “chill”. It was indeed chilly. J I had to peed really bad again and there were no restrooms there so I ran back to the hotel to pee. Later that night, when I was playing with the safe, I accidently locked our passports and some money in there. The mechanic came and worked on it for about 15 minutes before he fixed it. Then I started writing about the first day of my trip until now. All done, that’s the first day for you. 

Current Events #1 C

I know you've all been waiting for it, and I'm bringing it to you guys. It's not easy to run a blog and go to school. :) Today, I will be blogging about WORLD news. Our article of the day is..."Surfing 'the world's heaviest wave.' Here's the jizzt of the story: So Tim McKenna, a photographer takes some pictures at a place right off the French Polynesian island of Tahiti. This place is suppose to have the biggest and heaviest waves in the world. It is also very dangerous because of the RAZOR-sharp reef that is only a foot under the surface.

 Pretty cool. If you wanna see more pictures, click the link: http://cnnphotos.blogs.cnn.com/2012/09/07/surfing-the-worlds-heaviest-wave/?hpt=wo_t4

Love
Asian Occasion

Tell me, did you like this new series? If you did, why and if you didn't why? Thanks

Current Events #1 B

Welcome to the second part of the first Current Event. Up next, is...ba dum tss!!! NATIONAL NEWS!!! Today, I will be telling you about...hmm. I'm gonna go to CNN to look up some national news. brb. Ok, I'm back. I bring you, a video of an Army Hazing Incident. It is not pretty. Here it is:
http://www.cnn.com/video/?hpt=hp_c2#/video/us/2012/09/01/mi-soldier-collapses-after-army-hazing.wwmt
What do you think about this incident? How does it reflect our country's defense? Do you think the Sergeant deserves a consequence? If so, what should it be?

Current Events #1 A

Hello everyone, as you can see, we are back. I can't wait to continue blogging!!! I hope y'all are also very excited. If you're not, hopefully, this will get y'all pumped up.

Hahaha, that may have worked for you. It certainly did for me! :) Anyways... 

I am starting a new series of posts that will be about recent news; a.k.a Current Events. There will be three parts: A, B, and C. The first one will be from around here, local news, then something in our country and finally, something that is/was happening in our world. 

A: 40 Days Without Rain! Seattle 11 Days From Record Dry Spell.

It has not rained in Seattle since July 22nd! WTF, is this so called, "global warming" FOR REALZZZ?!?! Seattle's record of no rain is 51 days; that's a little over a month and a half and this is 1951 we are talking about. If you grew up in Seattle area, you know this doesn't happen very frequently; it has hailed in MAY! This weather is not very consistant. I know most kids don't like news, but I bet you were BLOWN AWAY when you read this. I didn't really notice it until I was told by my dad. 

http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2019042121_norain01m.html

There's part one for y'all. HMU with some feedback...(did that make sense???) :)

Love,

Asian Occasion