June 20th - Alcatraz and Golden Gate Bridge... San Francisco!

Suuuup guys?!

 

Our last day started 8a.m. We broke up into two groups to the see the fabulous sights of San Francisco:

 

Bus #1 went first to Alcatraz the most famous prison in the world. Bus #2 headed to the Golden Gate Bridge. In Alcatraz we had a very interesting audio tour about old prisoners and plans to escape. We saw maybe the most beautiful view of the city. At the same time bus #2 enjoyed Thai chi at the Golden Gate park. After Alcatraz bus #1 went to Pier 39 to grab some lunch and buy some souvenirs. After lunch bus #1 went to golden gate and #2 went to Alcatraz.

 

For dinner we gathered to go to the Hard Rock Cafe on Pier 39. It was a fun dinner. After dinner we went to the shop to get one of the famous t-shirts as the last shop… (THANK U MOM AND DAD :) )

 

Later that evening we returned to the hotel to get ready for the farewell party.  We even had our own DJ and on the dance floor we had some fun competitions, like a Limbo competition. After the last song we started realizing that the end of the trip was close. We said goodbye, we hugged and we cried.

 

It was an amazing trip and we will always remember this wonderful time. Thanks a lot guys!!!  We wish you a wonderful trip back home and don't forget to add TONS of pictures on Facebook!

 

We really appreciated the time and effort that everyone spent on this trip, we will never forget you.

 

See ya'll and take care,

 

 

Alessandro (Italy), Magdalena (Austria), Riku (Finland) and Pekka (Finland)

June 19th - SAN FRANCISCO!!!

San Francisco...

June 18th - Yosemite to San Francisco

Hey guys,

 

After a relaxing night of sleep at the Miners Inn in Yosemite Park we prepared ourselves for the bus trip to San Francisco with good breakfast. When the buses left at 10am we could already feel the warm sunrays promising it to be another beautiful day at the West Coast.

 

The 169 mi/270km went by quite fast since there were movies to watch on the bus. The story of Rudy Ruettiger putting a lot of effort in achieving his dream of playing football for Notre Dame left the students on bus 2 with teary eyes. The students on bus 1 probably also had teary eyes -this time because of laughing while watching the comedy Baby Mama.

 

One and a half hours before reaching San Francisco we stopped at the little Orchards Store to supply ourselves with fresh fruit and drinks for the last part of the bus ride. The time went by pretty fast and after crossing the bridge of the bay we reached the city of SAN FRANCISCO! Yea!

 

Our bus drivers Mary and Ray drove us to the Mall safely and there we had about three hours to check out the shops. The Mall had nice stores (good deals for shoes at Foot Locker) and good possibilities to eat.

 

Everybody used that last big chance to shop in America to the fullest and around 5pm all the students came back to the bus with full shopping bags. Another twenty minutes later we arrived at the Crowne Plaza Hotel. After scaring the guests of the hotel by occupying the three elevators with 99 students from all over the world and reaching our very nice rooms on second and fourth floor we were all ready for dinner. The dinner at the hotel was very good.

 

Afterwards students had the chance to go to the movies or hang out at the hotel pool. Now we are getting ready for the city tour tomorrow and enjoy our second last day on this great trip.

 

 

Friederike and Ina from Germany

 

Hope you like it and you had a good time at the movies. See you for breakfast.

Ina and Friederike :-)

June 17th - Yosemite National Park...

We woke up at 7 to have breakfast and get ready to go to Yosemite Park in California.

 

We arrived at the park around 9:30, and started hiking up the mountains. We took the mist trail where we got to see the highest waterfall in North America, it was pretty impressive and we got wet from the mist coming from the fall.

 

We stopped to rest when we got to the top of the waterfall and took lots of pictures. After a while we headed to our way down, some people decided to take the long way and some chose the shorter one. 

 

Back at the bottom, we ate lunch at local restaurant, which was a little more expensive, but neat.

 

After lunch we went rafting in the very wild river, I lost my socks because we used our shoes to take the water out of the boat.

 

We did that because we were doing a splash war against the other boats. It was so much fun and wet.

 

After rafting we did other nature things like biking, riding the shuttle back, drying our clothes, all kinds of nature stuff.

 

Then we took the bus to go eat dinner out in the woods, it was like a picnic we had hamburgers and hotdogs.

 

We were really tired by the end of the day, we went back to the hotel and chilled out at the pool until midnight.

 

So we went to bed. After so much adventure at the park, I could only dream about trees.

 

Bye for now,

 

Felix, Johannes and Decio

June 16th - Los Angeles - Yosemite National Park

And some students had the chance to find a Hollywood star in Beverly Hills...