E is for Effort: Alaska Trip

Wong Family 2009 Summer Vacation!

I apologize for (lack of) photograph quality in advance; I shot in JPEG the whole trip unknowingly.

Day 1: (Arriving, At Sea)

This day ran rather smoothly. I was unable to eat my kimchi ramen in the morning because my mom turned off the water and gas. John Wayne airport was relatively uncrowded and fast. One guy at security thought my mom was my wife ("Is this your wife's bag?"). What a nice compliment to my mom. In the airplane, I read Native Speaker by Chang Rae Lee, a well written, depressing, Asian American book assigned from a list of choice for AP English. Matt was drawing Totem poles and doing some anatomy study. The extended family united at the airport in Seward.

From there, we took a bus towards the place where we would board the ship. I sat next to Daniel and we talked about Bikes and Yo Yo's and ate warheads. How absolutely delightful! On the bus ride, we saw some white mountain-goat things on the side of the road. The scenery in general was really cool. We rode past some extensive flat, sandy thing that is suppose to get gigantic waves every once in a while.

Arriving on the ship wasn't too bad. A lot of showing passports and stuff, but not too bad. This was our first glimse of the empire of hand sanitizer that reigned in the ship. From this day until the conclusion of the trip, we would be using a lot of sand sanitizer at the stations conveniently dispersed throughout the ship. We soon found our rooms and settled in. My parents, my brother, and I shared a room. I chose some top bed out of the way of everything that comes down from the roof. Small, but comfortable, and hard to get out of to pee at night sometimes.

Our Dinner time was designated as 8 PM. I think this day I ordered Penne pasta and grilled chicken, but am not quite sure. Dinner was very nice. For the first day I sat at a table for four with my immediate family.

The remainder of the day was spent walking about the ship for me. Dinner consistently let out relatively late for us, so after dinner a lot of times people were pretty tired.

Randall is so cool he's blurry. At the airport.

Mei-guo! At the airport.

On the bus to the ship

Day 2: (At Sea)

At 6-ish, we passed Glacier bay. My dad and I woke up, got early breakfast, and viewed these glaciers. Very fabulous! Being a day at sea, this day was pretty relaxing. I taught some people how to play Go, which I brought along. Unfortunately at this point of the trip, Matt is feeling a little bit sick (not sea sick at least). Dad and the cousins question whether the Captain and his rrrrrrrrrrrrolling r's is real or a voice actor. Either way, he sounds pretty cool. I think this is the first day I went without listening to Korean Pop music for a long time. It was either this day or the day before that Noah and Daren shared about their intern experience under Ye Ye.

Dad looks at glaciers

A glacier :D

View of the ship (Holland America : Statendam) near dark. It gets dark really late up North in the summer!

Day 3: (At Sea)

The days at sea were my favorite because they had the most time to relax and spend time with people. On this day there was more wandering of the deck, playing of games, and eating of food. I think I went swimming too in the ship's pool. Outside was pretty cold compared to Southern California.

We saw more glaciers as well.

Day 4: (Haines, Alaska)
In the morning, Dad and I walked around the city a bit, and then came back and left for our river boat excursion after with Mom and Matt. It was very beautiful, very cold, and we did not see much wildlife besides a few bald eagles from a distance, but the environment in general was very nice.

Day 5: (Juneau, Alaska)
Here most all of the family went Whale Watching. My parents were very excited about seeing wildlife. It was good to see them so enthusiastic and positive. I played a lot of ping pong with Daniel and Randall. Family meetings were discussing Ye Ye's upcoming party and general sharing of the grand kids. If you want something that tastes really good but isn't very healthy, but a scoop of ice cream between two cookies.

Day 6: (Ketchikan, Alaska)
Black Bears are overrated. We took a float plane (expensive!) to this salmon hatchery. This hatchery itself was pretty interesting. Salmon to me seem much more amazing than bears. Such a struggle and an epic journey of life to death... they're pretty muscular too, jumping all over the place.