Goodness! I can't believe my trip to San Francisco's over! I had such a fun time!
For more infomation about the hotel I stayed at contact...
Holiday Inn - San Jose North (408-321-9500)
777 Bellew Drive
Milpitas, CA 95035
The bus ride was terrible! I sat next to Allison Lemos the whole way up to Milpitas, but she didn't talk much. I tried listening to my discman, but the batteries were already dead. I tried doing my homework, but I ended up watching "The Story That Never Ends." Much to my relief, we did stop at a restspot with a large variety of convenient stores and fastfood restaurants. Of all the luck, this enabled Allison to purchase a coke that would later spill all over my backpack after we had switched seats.
Picking a room was somehow difficult for everyone. Grant Adams and I found that our room wasn't finished being cleaned yet and looked over at Fernando DeGuzman who had a room all to himself! Somehow, we ended up rooming with him. I found it amusing that Fernando was so anxious to decide which part of the closet and dresser he wanted to put his stuff in.
It seemed like everyone was going to do something except me. Fernando had a date with Becky Weirick and Grant was going to see Phantom Of The Opera. Grant didn't even have a plain, white shirt and was going in an ugly gray-striped shirt that barely fit around his neck! I, on the otherhand, wore one of my fashionable butterfly collared shirts. We met up with the rest of the choir in the lobby and headed out to the busses. Mrs. Graeve changed the original plans of having dinner at Marie Calendar's to an outdoor shopping strip.
I was pretty much a loner until Becky and Fernando told meeh to dine with them at Macaroni Grill. It was a nice Italian restaurant. We couldn't finish our meals and boxed them for later. They had some other cool places in that plaza, but Fernando was particularly interested in GNC, not like we don't see much of those in Simi. We headed back to the hotel while the other bus headed out the play.
I was pretty interested in the "Great Mall of the Bay Area" by the hotel, but Fernando dragged me out to the pool. I wondered why so many people were in the pool, it was pretty cold and windy. After a while, I agreed to get in the spa (I'm not much of a swimmer).
I was kind of disappointed the mall was closed by the time Fernando and I got out. We went to their cheap fitness center and watched the first half hour of the Lakers/Blazers game.
After we finished our workout, we went across the street to the Milpitas Plaza. First, we stopped at this cool anime shop there. It had a lot of familar toys in stock and some cool unfamiliar toys, especially Ultraman! Fernando decided to go shopping for Becky and ended up buying some Sanrio-type keychain. A little further down was a flower shop. It took a while for him to get some flowers for Becky because I kind of had to translate in Chinese for him.
Right when we made it through the main enterance of the hotel, we ran into Becky. Fernando ended up just handing his gift to her and we went upstairs. I watched the rest of the game and ate. Fernando left to see Becky again before lights out. Grant didn't get back from the play until later. When they got back, we all talked for a while and I ended up being the last one awake. I let them have the beds, because I forgot to bring my hairspray and my comb, so I didn't want to mess up my hair. Sleeping that night was pretty uncomfortable.
After Grant had taken a shower, he woke us up. I remembered not to take a shower and simply got dressed. On the other hand, Fernando wasn't even up yet. Grant and I tried to wake him up by beating him with a pillow and stripping the blanket off of him (If he wasn't so tired, he would have took on both of us). But we ended up letting him go back to sleep for another fifteen minutes. We woke him up before we went downstairs. But since there was nothing to do we went back up to check on Fernando. He said he had to iron his shirt before he left, so we went back downstairs and Mrs. Graeve screamed at us for being late (Funny, how you're early and you go somewhere else and then you end up being late).
We went out for breakfast at the same plaza the evening before. Getting breakfast at McDonald's was impossible, so I went to Starbucks with Connard. Both of us ordered iced mochas and we ate breakfast at Taco Bell. I brought the rest of my meal on the bus.
We went through a quick tour of the Bay Area including the Goldengate Bridge and stopped by this museum which had this beautiful Japanese garden. I picked up a cool Chinese ceremonial mask there.
When we finished our sight seeing, we went back into San Francisco and took the Trolley over to Fishermen's Wharf. We spent a long time roaming around there. By this time, I lost hope of going to NIKETOWN which was on the other side of the city. Connard, Grant, and I helped this lady move her table further down the street and she gave a beaded necklace for each of us (You might be able to see me wearing it in some of my pictures). She was really nice. There was a lot of interesting things to look at. There was this guy who pretended to be a bush on the sidewalk by covering himself in tree branches and scared all these people that passed by. He cracked me up. For the rest of our time there, we hung around with Jana Jones, Kristi-Lynn Nicholas, Sarah Parry, and the rest of their group. And when the whole choir gathered together we headed out to dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe.
One of the first things we did at Hard Rock was hump the Hard Rock cow. It took us a while to get in there. But when we did, I was able to buy my Hard Rock shirt and get seated at a table with my stuff. Grant, Becky, and Connard sat on one side and Nathan, Me, and Fernando sat on the other side. The only thing all of us could afford to order were hamburgers, because their merchandise put some major dents in our wallets. Our meals were good, a bit too small for what we paid for. I noticed the signed NIRVANA guitar they hung over the bar and I immediately thought of my buddy, Tim Ramirez.
When everyone was finished we had to wait for our bus to pick us up. It was going to take them a while so some of us went to the big ROSS store next to Hard Rock. It had two floors! They didn't have much for me though but that was okay.
I expected the choirs there to be much better than what they really were. There was a women's choir there that sang "A Girl's Garden." It reminded me of my days in junior high when Choral Ensemble sang that song. Our Women's Ensemble was better, though.
When the festival reached intermission, our choir went out for lunch but I decided to change into my regular clothes before I left. And when I headed out to the parking lot, I couldn't find the bus until I saw it driving away out of the corner. Luckily, I was close enough to calmly walk over to bus and have them stop for me but I was pretty embarrassed when I got on. We ate at Carl's Jr. and headed back to watch the rest of our choirs to perform.
Our choirs electrified the stage. I don't remember any other choir coming close to our performance. We were confident but we still had to worry about the performances of bands, choirs, and orchestras that we didn't hear.
When we got back to the hotel, everyone headed out to the pool. Pretty funny how the other people staying at the hotel got out as we got in. I snuck off across the street to pick up a cool Ultraman car decal that I saw earlier and took a shuttle to the "Great Mall of the Bay Area." I spent about an hour over there and went back to the hotel to get ready for the awards ceremony at Paramount Great America.
The awards ceremony was pleasant. It was in this multipurpose room. They had a buffet, but it was more like an indoor barbeque. After we finished eating, they presented the awards. There was this fag who kept standing up and acting all bad in front of the whole audience everytime his school's women's choir won an award. We were really nervous because they presented all the little awards first, but we ended up winning everything even beating out the bands and orchestras. We were celebrating throughout the whole awards ceremony and back at the hotel.
Fernando and I went to the pool area only to find it closed so instead we started fooling around and talking to other people from different choirs on different floors and started jumping up and down on the elevators. It was pretty fun until the security guy yelled at us and made us go back to our room.
By the time we reached our room, Fernando and Grant immediately went to sleep. On the other hand, I was still wide awake and watched Escape From LA while I packed all my stuff for the next day.
Halfway back to Simi, we stopped in Bakersfield for a few restroom breaks and phone calls. I forgot to make plans with my parents about how I was going to get home once we reached Royal. And rather than asking anyone for a ride home, I tried calling from a payphone but no one picked up. Oh well, other than that problem, I had a great trip!
