I was gone between February 2nd and 9th. You can probably guess where if u have seen the title of this post. I went to California, more specifically San Diego, San Jose and San Francisco. I went there with my class becuase, my unit in humanities is based around disruption, and California has a lot of examples of disruption.
The first day I woke up at 3:15am becuase I had to be at the airport at the wonderful time of 4:30am. We got to San Diego, went and had lunch then went to Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve. The reason why people made a state reserve for pine trees is becuase that is a pine tree that only grows in that spot and one other. We the went to La Jolla Cove and played frisbee until the sun went down, mainly because we could’t see the frisbee anymore.
Torrey Pines
La Jolla Cove
The next day we went to San Diego Zoo Safari Park. We got to see tons of different animals, we even got to go behind the scenes in the elephant enclosure and got to see how they take care of them. Probably the coolest part about that day was we got to go up in a hot air balloon. I got some great photos as I could see for miles.
Elephant Enclosure
View from Hot Air Baloon
The next day was one of my favourites as we went to the USS Midway. If you don’t know what that is, its a massive aircraft carrier that has been turned into a museum. It took all day to see it as as there were so many different parts of the ship, plus we talked with a couple veterans on the ship. The coolest part of that day though was being able to talk to a WWII veteran.
Sunset on the USS Midway
The next day we went to High Tech High. It’s called High Tech High, because it is a charter school that takes a different approach on teaching the students, for example the students are given more freedom with decorating the school, and everything they do is through project based learning. It was very interesting as every person in my class got paired with one or more students from HTH. HTH is very different compared to most schools, they don’t have lockers they don’t really have sports, but almost everybody there is very focused and hard working as they had to apply to get into the school. After we were done at HTH we went to the Cabrillo National Monument. It was very interesting there as we learned about Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, and his role in exploring the west coast of the US
We went to 5 Guys for Lunch
Sun Set at the Monument
The next day we went to HTH again. We got to be a able to witness what there normal school life was like. It was very different from what I have but at the same time they were just normal high school kids who like to goof around. After we were done at HTH that day we hopped on a plane and left San Diego and enetered San Jose. We got there at night time so we just had dinner and went to the hotel to get some rest.
The next day was really cool as we got to go and see Googleplex, AKA Google HQ. We didn’t really have a tour or anything so we acted like we were meant to be there, and we got to see just what kind of work environment Google employees work in. That day we also got to go to Apple Park. Apple Park is the most incredible building I have ever seen, although we didn’t actually go inside the main building, we did go to the visitor centre right next door which had a pice of aluminum worth $1,000,000. Not just because it was a hunk of metal, but because it was able to create an amazing expierence with a custom made iPad. We also went to the Intel Museum and learned about how Intel has changed through the years.
Random Dinosour at Google
Cool Aluminum
The day after that we went to the computer history museum which was very interesting. I was very engaged while I was there as I learned about how computers progressed from being the size of a room to fitting in your pocket, and becoming way more powerful. That day we also went to Stanford, which has now become my dream university to go to. It was so cool to see one of the top university’s in the world in academics and athletics. That same day we also got to go to the birth place of Silicon Valley AKA the HP garage.
HP Garage
The next day we woke up and drove out to the apple garage, before we got on a train to Oakland. If you don’t know me I am an Oakland Raiders fan, so I was very happy to be able to see their peace of crap old stadium. We then went to San FranciscoThe coolest part about that day though was the fact that we got to go into Twitter HQ even though we missed lunch because of it. We got a tour around the building and got to see how things operate at Twitter. Later that day we went and saw the Golden Gate Bridge which was super cool.
Twitter HQ
Golden Gate Bridge
Oakland Colliseum
The next day we went down to Golden Gate Park, and started a walking tour. The walking tour was based around the history of San Francisco, for example The Summer of Love, Gay Rights movement etc. We learned about things from Smoking Bananas to Charles Manson. It was very interesting and really eye opening of how much really happened in San Francisco. To end the trip, that night we did a tour of Alcatraz. It was really cool as we got to see one of if not the most famous prison on the planet. It was really cool as we saw what the living conditions for inmates at Alcatraz were like, and how the guards had to deal with them. One of the guards while we were there even locked me and a couple of friends of mine in a solitary confinement cell which was pitch black.
The Mission District
The Rock
View from Alcatraz
The next day we flew home to our families. I told the story of our journey to my family, and realized just how much I had learned on the trip and how much I had done.