We are on our final countdown! One more day at work to go and then I will be otherwise known as Mrs. Vacationista.
I have already told you what will be on our agenda the first few days. Now, I will tell you about the excursions we have chosen. We have elected to book everything through Princess rather than go off on our own. It is more expensive this way, but you have some self-assurance that you will be safe and well-taken care of in an unknown environment.
On Sunday, we will be in Aruba. I am a little disappointed at this stop because it is only a half day stop, and I was really interested in touring this little island. And, since the island is Catholic and the stop is scheduled for Sunday, most of the stores and attractions will be closed. But, this little inconvenience will not deter us! Travis selected the Atlantis Submarine Expedition. The Atlantis descends to a depth of 90 to 120 feet where we will see several sunken boats and an airplane along with general marine creatures. Much cheaper than scuba lessons!
Monday is our stop at Cartagena, Colombia. This was my pick. We are doing a historical tour of the city which includes tours of a monastery, a 17th century fort, a naval museum, a church, and shopping.
Tuesday is the Panama Canal transit day. I have read on the Cruise Critic boards that the place to be when you first get into the locks is up on the very front of the ship. There is apparently a ‘hidden’ overlook on the Caribe deck where our cabin just happens to be. The instructions say to go all the way to the front and through the doors marked ‘do not enter’. You are apparently end up right below the bridge area and get a true first-hand look of the ‘Bridge of America’ gateway and also of the ship tenders that come and hook you up.
We ride through the first part of the canal on the cruise ship and end up in Gatun Lake. Our excursion this day is the completion of the canal through the Pedro Miguel Locks to the Pacific Ocean.
Wednesday is Limon, Costa Rica, and we are zip-lining through the rainforest! We will go through nine traverses – the longest being almost two football fields long and the tallest almost 150 feet in the air! WOW!
Thursday is a welcome break with an at-sea day. Should be filled with some laying around by the pool time, some reading, some bingo, some casino time, and some eating at the all fabulous places to eat on board!
Friday is Jamaica. I have been to Jamaica before and honestly did not care for too much. It is beautiful with lovely beaches – as long as you don’t stray into the non-resort areas. The vendors are very pushy and have no problem invading your personal space. This is the primary reason we elected to do a tour rather than just walk around. I don’t like being accosted.
We are doing a mini-boat scenic coastline tour from Dolphin Cove to Dunn’s River Falls. We will do the Falls climb and then take a shuttle bus back to the Cove.
Saturday will be another at-sea day and then home on Sunday!
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I received an email from my awesome sister-in-law this morning that simply stated FIVE MORE DAYS!!!
It is a rare occurrence when Rita uses all caps and multiple punctuation marks, so I know she is overly excited for us.
I think she might actually enjoy vacation as much as I do. Might.
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The Cherry family is getting back into the swing of things after Hurricane Ike struck. Riding out the actual Hurricane itself wasn’t bad – crazy wind and rain – but the aftermath is a totally different story.
I won’t dwell on it too much since I am frankly tired of dwelling on it – Ike is all we have talked about at home, at work, on the local news, etc for almost two weeks.
Our house sustained some minor damage (shingles off, fence down, water leaks from the windows) especially compared to others in our family – Travis’s mom has major issues with her roof and subsequent water seepage, my nana lost her roof entirely, and Trav’s aunt and uncle have a tree in their garage.
Now, we all get to deal with debris-lined streets, streetlights out, major traffic snarls, repair contractors, power outages, and fights with the insurance people.
On a much much much brighter note, guess what?
In exactly one week from today, right at this very moment in fact – I will be logging in to Southwest.com to get my boarding pass to Fort Lauderdale! Woohoo!
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I came across this article on The Chronicle’s website this morning. The Texas legislature ordered the education system to come up with a uniform system of calculating a high-school student’s grade point average. Apparently some districts provide credit for extra-curricular classes like choir and art, and some don’t. Some districts are on a 4.0 scale, and others are on a 6.0 scale. Yes, I agree there should some standardization across the state on how the GPA is calculated, but that really shouldn’t be too hard of a task.
However, the basic premise of the article is that our illustrious leaders in Texas education are considering doing away with the ‘bonus’ grade point for honors and Advanced Placement classes in Texas high schools as part of this standardization plan (i.e. a 95 in a regular class is a 3.5 on a 4.0 scale, while a 95 in an AP class is a 4.5).
Now when you were a high school kid, which option would you choose if the incentive for taking the AP class disappeared?
It is basic human nature to take the path of least resistance. If at the end of the path was the same chocolate-chip cookie, would you take the winding path over a bed of hot coals, or the straight path through the flowering meadow with a frosty beverage in hand?
Despite knowing that I would get a ‘better quality’ education in the AP class and that I was more than capable of passing it, I know what my choice would very likely have been at the time. Don’t forget that the state law in Texas enables the top 10% of a graduating high school class a guaranteed admission to all state colleges and universities. Why would I risk my 10% standing by taking the much harder class?
(Let’s pretend just for the sake of argument that my parents would have actually given me the choice. They wouldn’t have, because they were engaged in my education, knew what I was capable of, and set their expectations high for my brother and me. Thanks mom and dad for that!)
‘Regular’ high school classes are a complete joke and no way prepare anybody for success in the real world.
Prime example: I took Honors and AP English through my junior year of high school. I studied very hard, did my work, and earned mid A’s. I successfully passed the AP Exam and therefore placed out of college English. So, I elected to not take the senior AP class because it was one of the hardest classes at school with one of the ‘meanest’ teachers. (I was already accepted at my college of choice, thus only need to pass senior English to graduate and go to A&M.)
In the regular English class, the teacher literally wrote out the term papers and reports on the blackboard with fill-in-the blanks (yes, just like Mad-Libs). All you had to do was copy the paper word for word and viola – there is your report with a pretty red 100 on the top. And there were kids in this class that were still failing! This was a senior-level English class people! Half of the class probably couldn’t distinguish a verb from a noun!
When you keep lowering that bar of expectation, most people will naturally lower their performance output as well. I did – I copied that paper straight from the board and accepted my A-plus, all the while knowing that I was better than that and capable of much more.
And we wonder why our education system is considered to be sub-par compared to other industrialized nations. Students need to be further encouraged to take these advanced classes, not have the incentive taken away.
If the encouragement involves a grade incentive, a dual credit, or letting them out of class early on a Friday or giving them ice cream coupons so be it. I don’t care what the incentive is – Keep the kids in these classes! Prepare them for the future!
Bottom line – The standards and expectations are higher in an advanced class. Thus the student should get what they deservedly earned – the higher grade-point.
I will now step off my soap-box. Thank you for your attention.
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We had a fairly uneventful weekend which was nice considering we have had something on the calendar practically every weekend since mid-April – no exaggeration either!
This Friday, we went down to Angleton after work and had a nice visit with Travis’s Granny and Pawpaw. Carissa knew exactly where she was – she ran right up to Granny and requested the bucket of toys be brought down from the back room’s closet.
Carissa had a great time, especially when her Granny was demonstrating to her how to hop around on one foot! I don’t think their little dog Molly was sad to us go though… If a dog could turn green with jealousy over the attention that her ‘people’ gave their great-granddaughter, then Molly would still be green next week!
Saturday, Carissa and I hit a garage sale on our street and luckily walked away with nothing. She really wanted to go back to the house for ‘her money’, but I convinced her that a walk to the playground would be much better!
Also on Saturday I told Travis we really needed to clean out our closet. He – very grudgingly – agreed. Just from the shelves, he managed to have one full bag of trash, about seven empty shoeboxes, and one full bag of donations done by mid-morning.
After Travis finished up his task, we took Carissa over to my parents. They were going out to Kingwood to celebrate my cousin Cameron’s birthday. I wanted to go but begged off with the reasoning that I still needed to do my side of the closet. Very poor excuse I know, but I was determined to get it done this weekend. You know how it is when you set your mind on doing something, especially something as awful as closet cleaning – it had to get done this weekend, or it was never going to get done.
With both Travis and Carissa out of the house (Travis was playing poker with friends), I have a literal mountain of clothes and sixteen pairs of shoes on my bedroom floor for a garage sale or Goodwill…. But, I also now have a rather barren closet and shoe rack that needs to be filled back up!
Sunday, we were slugs and watched football all day while eating chips and queso. We cooked up some bacon-wrapped shrimp and boiled up the rest with corn and potatoes for dinner and had chocolate cake for dessert. (Carissa had the cake as her appetizer!)
Thanks again Pawpaw for the shrimp – they were yummy!
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