Goodbye Summer :'(

As you guys know, I haven't had wifi for the last week and a half and that was because my family and I went on a cruise to Alaska. So, since that's where I've been lately, I guess I'll just update y'all on that.

The boat left from Seattle and because of a mix up with our plane tickets, we had to take two flights to reach the departure port. On the first flight, there was a good amount of turbulence and at one point the plane just started falling through the sky. It only lasted for at most five seconds but it was pretty unexpected. It felt like that feeling you get on a rollercoaster when you go down a big slope. And then we landed in North Carolina. We were late for our connecting flight so we ran through the airport until we got there. It was like we were on the Amazing Race! Our second flight was not as crazy, thankfully.

The journey to Alaska took three or four days but they had things to do on the ship to keep us all preoccupied. We ended up going to a lot of trivia and "name that song" type of games. They even had a ship-wide Clue game which was pretty cool (it was Miss Scarlett with the rope on the Lido Deck btw). One night, they also had a hypnotist perform and he used people from the audience as his subjects. He had them do a whole bunch of things but my favorite was when he made them believe they had "lost" their belly buttons. And then he sent them to go look for them.

Alaska itself was beautiful. From the ship we got to see some glaciers and places where glaciers used to be.

There used to be a glacier in that valley!

Here's some ice that was a glacier that blocked our way to the rest of the glacier

Then, when we got to Alaska, we stopped at three major cities: Skagway, Juneau, and Ketchikan. In Skagway, we went on a bus tour with a man named Boston Joe. He had a really good radio voice and lots of dad jokes. He also knew a lot about plants and was teaching us about their different uses.

In Juneau, I saw this mural called "Suzy's faces" which I loved.

Overall, Alaska was amazing because of how vast it is. But there wasn't too much to do there. I don't know if it was because we were in the tourist sections or if there just isn't much there. I definitely want to go back though one day. I just have so many questions about what it's like on a day to day basis.

That's also how I felt about the cruise ship in the sense that I just wonder what it's like to work on one. Like one day, my mom won this free haircut and deep condition session and because she didn't want it she gave it to me. And I was surprised that they even had hairdressers on board because the cruise was only a week and a half, and I don't know it seemed weird to me that that's something they'd need to have. The haircut itself was pretty good, but I can't imagine what it'd be like cutting hair on a moving ship.

The other thing that I thought was interesting is that they had these employees called "The Fun Squad". Everyone in The Fun Squad had multiple jobs on the ship. So some of them were dancers in the night shows, some of them hosted trivia, and things like that. But whenever they had an event where they wanted people to participate and dance, they would have them flood the dance floor to encourage others to dance. I thought that was pretty smart because it sort of tricks people into thinking that other people are just having fun but it was really just The Fun Squad doing their jobs. I don't know if I'm explaining it in a way that makes sense, but I would love to see a buzzfeed video about cruise ship workers talking about what goes on behind the scenes.

Since our trip, I've mostly been chilling. I'm trying to adjust my sleep schedule before school starts because my body still thinks it's four hours behind the actual time. But other than that it's all good. My next post will be in Northampton...eek!