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After a full night of sleep, my alarm woke me up to start getting ready at 7:30am, I got ready in 10 min. then waited another 40 for Mia to get ready so we could go to breakfast, again at EuroPan. Then we all waited in the lobby ’till ’round 9:30am for the bus. And off we were to a country club to swim for the afternoon.

On the way there, we went through a tunnel, and I tried to hold my breath ’til we got out. I didn’t last. When we got out of the tunnel I found out the tunnel went all the way under the Hudson River.

We got to the pool around 10am and right away I jumped in the pool, I was the first one in. I swam for about 2 hours in the deep end, which was 8 to 10 feet deep, with two diving boards.

It was super sunny so when we were called in for lunch I grabbed some food and stayed in the shade talking to some new friends for about an hour.

Then I was back in the pool ’til we had to go, around 3ish in the afternoon.

Back at the hotel we had free time. I went up to the suite and tried to Skype home, but it didn’t work on my computer. I tried to get it to work but it still was wonky when we had to leave for dinner at Carmine’s, an Italian restaurant.

(The bathrooms at Carmine’s had mouthwash in soap dispensers and those little ketchup holder container things that you find in McDonald’s and Wendy’s to put the mouthwash in.)

Then we went to go see the Lion King, which happened to be right across the street.

We walked into the theater, and it was HUGE!! We went to find our seats, which, ’cause of who we were, the Sunshine Kids, we got good seats, we weren’t right up close like some of us kids would have liked, but we were close enough that we could still see the actor’s expressions.

The play was A·MA·ZING(said slowly and emphatically)!!!!!!!! The stage moved up and down and tilted and turned and the costumes were SO cool, and it was just like the animated version, just with people. My favorite of the main characters was Rafiki (though in the animated version it was a guy, and in the Musical that I went to it was a girl), and out of all the other animals were the cheetah, and the giraffes. I liked the giraffes because they stood on stilts and leaned on stilts, so they actually were tall, and I liked the cheetah because it had the best costume, the actor wore a head thingy that moved the cheetah head, and her legs were the cheetah’s back legs, and she stood so that it actually looked like how a cheetah stood and the actress held poles that moved the front legs of the cheetah and if she leaned back the cheetah would, like, stand on her hind legs (I don’t know how else to say that last one.).

After the play was over, we stayed in our chairs until everyone else was gone, then went up to the front and got a meet and greet with the cast. They said to ask them anything, so one of the kids from our Vancouver group asked, “What was the weirdest question you’ve ever gotten asked?” And the actress that played the cheetah answered that she once got asked what her favorite type of pasta was.

Then we got a tour of backstage, and the changing rooms, and we got to see where they kept all the costumes when they weren’t using them (most of them were kept up above everything, and out of the way).

And then we all got together and got group photos of us Sunshine Kids and the actors that were still there.

After everything was finished we headed back to the hotel and were told to go straight to our rooms and that we should get ready to go to sleep. I was so tired that I basically put on my pjs, brushed my teeth and got in bed and I don’t even remember laying down before I fell asleep.

And I still had water in my ear.

To see all of the Tuesday Photos click here….

We woke up at 7:30am and went next door to EuroPan for breakfast. I didn’t sleep too good the night before. My foot felt okay, but still hurt from all of the walking and standing that I had to do at the airport the day before.

We met in the lobby of the hotel around 8 o’clock, piled onto the bus and headed out to the Empire State Building.

We got our own buses for everywhere we went. The Empire State Building has 102 floors total. We just went up the 86th Floor Observatory.

We looked around the Observatory and then went back inside and went down to the 80th floor where the gift shop is. I picked up some souvenirs there for my family. Then we went to the Skyride which is basically a moving chair and a movie but makes you think you are looking out of a helicopter. You see all the different tourist attractions around New York. They still include the Twin Towers because they were a part of New York and they don’t want them to be forgotten.

We went back to the main floor, piled back on the bus and went to Mickey’s Mantle which is a restaurant owned by a guy who likes baseball. There we were fed what I like to think of as a family style buffet, where they brought a bunch of food out in large quantities.

After that we were gonna go for a carriage ride, but it ended up getting too hot for the horses. So instead we went back to the hotel (our rooms were on either of two floors, 37 and 39, and there was a suite on floor 42 that was kinda like a common room area where there were TVs and board games and cards and couches and we could use our computers I later found out.) At first I went to my room and read while I iced me ankle, but then I got bored and went to the suite, where I played cheat, and won, then Scrabble, and won by like at least double everyone else. Then we had to clean up fast and head back to the lobby to go to a Chinese restaurant that I din’t catch the name of.

An interesting thing I saw when I was there was; there are McDonald’s EVERYWHERE!!! Like one on every block.

At the Chinese place we had another family style buffet type meal, then walked a block or two down the street to the Blue Man Group.

It was so AMAZING!!!

OK, so a few years ago in Abbotsford, in Elementary school, there was a group of guys that came to our school, they had all these tubes and bicycle wheels and tons of stuff that you’d find in a junk yard. And they’d found a way to use these things to make music. The Blue Man Group was like that only like 100 times better, and they found a way to add colour and to make it look kind of techno and add, like, a mime-ness to it, the Blue Men didn’t talk or make noise themselves, they used the tubes and pipes and things. They got the audience to go up, and they gave out paintings that they made right then, and near the end they had rolls of toilet paper attached to the roof and they got the audience to throw it foreword so it looked like really really long streamers while they used strobe lights, it looked SO SO SO COOL!!!!!

When the show was over we got pictures with the Blue Men, and I bought a t-shirt and a Blue Man CD to take home.

Then we went back to the hotel where we had to go straight to our rooms, it was like, 11pm, and get ready for bed. Me and my roommate, Mia, watched some TV, and ended up actually going to sleep around 1/4 to 1, and that was my first day at New York.

To see the rest of the pictures from Monday, click here!