Since school had started I was already counting down the days until California. For the PLP field trip this year we went to California for nine days. We visited San Diego, San Jose and San Francisco, We went to so many amazing places and had so many amazing opportunities. It was definitely a trip to remember. Our theme this year is disruption and through out the field trip, we were learning how technology can act as a disruption.

While we were in a California we had a task to complete a book about California. Our teachers had made a book for us, almost like a diary that we had to fill in. There we all types of tasks, reflections, pictures and videos. We were told that our final copy had to look completely different from the book our teachers gave us.

Let me take you through the highlights from our nine days in California!

Day1: Fun on the plane

Our first day was a very long day! It started off by waking up at 3am to get to the air port for 4:30am. I was so excited I didn’t even feel tired. The first plane was  a 45min flight to Seattle and Robbie already left his wallet on the plane!!! Then we had another 2 hours ish to San Diego. Non of us were dressed for the sunny San Diego weather. We were all wearing hoodies and long pants and it was around 25 degrees outside! The first thing we did when we got out of the airport was get into our car groups.

Our first stop was at Torrey Pines Natural reserve. Torrey Pines is home to the oldest pine in North America and endangered species of plants and animals. Simon and I were filming our disruption video at this destination. We interviewed some of the staff members and got some great footage for the video!

La Jolla was our evening stop. La Jolla Cove was so pretty and we got there just at sunset. There was a huge grassy field and Alex bought his frisbee so we had a game on the field. Down by the ocean there were seals lounging on the bay! We got some instagram worthy pictures at La Jolla Cove!

First Mexican food of the trip,

Day 2: A grand day at the zoo

A high light of the day was the daily cheetah run. Cheetahs run at a speed of 70 miles per hour and they ran a long a 330 foot track. The cheetah running was Shirley and the San Diego park is the only Safari park where you can watch a Cheetah run off the leash running at top speed. We had to get to the area fast because there was so many people watching and the run goes so fast!

Another highlight from today was the hotair balloon ride. From the top we could look over the whole of the Safari park and you could almost see Mexico! The hotair balloon went higher that the Statue of Liberty!

A really cool opportunity today was we got to watch the Elephants have their check up. This involved cleaning of the feet, checking the whole body of the elephant pretty much.

Day 3: Exploring San Diego

I really enjoyed visiting the Midway. This was the second time I went and this time was the best. I found it really interesting talking to all the veterans from the carrier because they could gave us real stories from the carrier.

The highlight from the USS midway was roaming around the museum we were given an audio tour, so we listened to it while walking around. Also while we were walking around we have some challenges to do from our books. It was a lot of fun filming our videos. My favourite section of the museum was the hospital and dentist. It looked so realistic.

My favourite challenge:

After the museum we went to the Old Town San Diego. The Old Town was the birds place of San Diego. There was a lot of Mexican Vibes, I almost felt like I was in Mexico! The restaurant we went to was Cafe Coyote. The food was so good there!

Old Town: The birth place of San Diego

Day 4 and 5: Back to school (High Tech High)

These two days were definitely highlights from the trip! I had so much fun at High Tech High. My partner and I bonded right away and I got to meet all of her friends. Check out my HTH blog for more about the school!
On the last day of HTH, we were off to San Jose! On the way to the airport we went to In and Out burger. The plane ride was around 1:30 mins, and as soon as we arrived, we went to the hotel and went to bed.

Day 7: The tech day (Silicon Valley)

Today was a very Tech day. We went to Google followed by Apple, the Intel museum and then interviewing Brendan and Scott and bowling. Outside of Google, they had all the statues of the Android updates. All of the names of the updates are dessert names (hence the reason the stautes are all desserts)!

The Apple visitor centre was so cool. The building was like a glass box, and we got to test out all of Apples products. We got some of the employees to show us how to take the best pictures with the IphoneX.

After interviewing the Tech giants, the whole class got to go bowling!!!
Another highlight of the day was going to the Sonic Runway and the whole class running through it. It was basically a long stretch of lights and the lights would move with the speed of what ever went through it.

Day 8: Visiting my dream university

In the morning we visited the computer museum, luckily we didn’t have to get up too early so we got to sleep in a bit. It was very interesting at the computer museum to go through time and see how much computers have changed. I also got to go inside the new Google self driving car.

Stanford was also so fun! We walked around the whole campus and now I really want to go to Stanford! I was so happy because I bought a Stanford hoodie. It was pretty funny because almost everyone bought something from Stanford so when we were walking around the next day with our Stanford hoodies on, we looked like we went to Stanford!

The other Highlight was I got to sit inside a Tesla and now I really want a Tesla!!! It’s going to be my future car (hopefully).

Day 9: Train to San Francisco

Our final destination was to San Francisco and we got a hour train from San Jose. We dumped our bags at the hotel and got a tour around Twitter HQ. My favourite part of today was going to the Golden Gate Bridge! I have always wanted to visit the bridge. We got lots of photos!

Day 10: Wild Wes walking tour and Alcatraz 
The tour around San Francisco was definitely a highlight of the day. We got a tour of the Castro and Mission. Our tour guide was also a lot of fun, he carried his guitar around and sang songs he wrote about each place.

The other highlight from today was Alcatraz. A long with the Bridge, I was also really looking forward to exploring Alcatraz.

We were given the audio and it was amazing. As we walked around the museum we were being told stories from Alcatraz. It was really interesting to walk through the prison cells and we even got to go inside them!

Day 10: Home rebound

The whole last day was our journey back home. It involved two flights. I think most people were excited to go home. I was happy and sad at the same time. I wanted to stay because it was so much fun but I was also so tired and needed a good night sleep. Let’s just say I had the best sleep in a long time!