Today was A’s first day of training. It was pretty easy to drop her off at the right building in the morning, but as I pulled away I realized she’d taken the directions with her! That’s what I get for letting her navigate! (Just kidding.) I managed to find my way back to the hotel, even though I had to take various exits and ramps to avoid ending up in the LAX parking lot. On the way, I passed a Budget Car Rental store with a sign outside saying “Don’t Get Lost, Rent a GPS” and I wished Hertz had that option too!

I knocked around in the hotel room for about an hour and then I got on the road to Long Beach. I was due to meet Maria at 11:00, and I got to the aquarium much faster than I had expected to! I talked to my mom on the phone a little bit, and then when Maria arrived we went inside. I think we were the only “tourists” there, but there were at least five school groups, so we ended up swarmed by children more than once. It was pretty cool though, because we got to pet rays and even a shark! I have never touched a shark before, though I did read Sevengill growing up, so I knew about the denticles. It was just a little bitty shark though, I think it was a leopard shark. But still, I got to pet a shark!

When we were done at the aquarium, we got lunch at a nearby restaurant and then hopped the free bus over to the Queen Mary. We had bought combo tickets at the aquarium, so it was inexpensive! I am a little bit of a ship geek, so I really enjoyed looking around, though I wish it had been a bit brighter so it would have been easier to read the displays. I would have liked to have gotten a book about her because there was a lot I think I missed - we saw the whole ship, but there must be more story that I missed. I find it strange that she is such an icon of ocean liner travel, when she really only sailed for 31 years, and for many years she was a troop ship during World War II. But the books were all expensive, of course, so I didn’t get anything. We did take a break and got smoothies at an on-board shop, which was kind of cool…but I know there was more story there that we didn’t get. I wish we could have spent a night in the hotel section on the ship, but it’s pretty expensive.

I made it back to El Segundo in about 25 minutes, and I waited 10 minutes, and then A came out, 30 minutes before I was expecting her! We had a boring dinner…just IHOP. I think tomorrow I am going to take the day off and just hang out in the hotel room all day. I can have my leftover Mexican food for lunch before it gets too old…it’s from Saturday night. I have been walking all day for six days in a row: (1) Disneyland, (2) Disneyland, (3) Sea World, (4) Tijuana, (5) Balboa Park, (6) Long Beach. It is time to sit and rest for a while. It was A’s idea, she said she feels reinvigorated after just sitting in a classroom all day. So I will probably do that. And at the same time, I will work on uploading photos from the past two days. The connection here is great, so it should be easy! Unfortunately A accidentally had the camera in her purse all day, so today’s photos were taken with my camera phone…better than nothing though!

Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the best way to get across the Atlantic Ocean was by passenger liner. Many thousands of immigrants came to America on ships like the Rotterdam and the Carpathia (the latter would become famous for rescuing survivors from the Titanic). These ships were usually utilitarian, as it was not until the late 1960’s that cruising for pleasure became popular.
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