We left on a Wednesday morning. We finished packing and I got lunches ready for everyone, including me and Robyn since we planned to only buy one meal a day. (I'm very proud that we almost made that goal.)
We got to school and boarded the bus right away and off we went. Pretty organized. It is a LONG drive but not terrible. We had Mark as our bus driver—same guy who happened to drive the Jazz Band to St. George the week before. (I chaperoned for that as well.) So I knew Mark. He is a bit weird, but very nice.
The bus is like this: Read, eat, sleep, repeat. I finished a book, ate snacks, slept some. Mr Steadman (Sam, the jewelry teacher) brought She’s the Man to watch. I haven’t seen that movie for a long time. It was/is pretty funny. Lucky for me, my bus buddy was Robyn. So I didn't mind the long drive.
We stopped for lunch in St. George. Robyn and I already ate our pasta salad so we played cards and talked Bart (art teacher) into playing Mau with us. He’s never played. I won, so I added easy rules like yelling ART TOUR BABY, or saying Fandango when the suit changed. Robyn did the slap rule. Bart didn’t win so I wonder what he thought of the game.
The only stop we did besides bathroom stops was at the Seven Magic Mountains. How have I not seen those before? They are huge boulders stacked on top of each other in seven very colorful pillars. We all got out and walked around and took pictures.
There was a lady doing a photo shoot there. Her hair was super done up and she had thigh-high snake boots. I was trying to figure out what was going on with her hair when I realized she had on a sheer black shirt and nothing else on top. Totally could see her naked torso. Bart said, “That’s not part of the art tour.” Hah! Some kids noticed, others didn’t.
I enjoyed the time stretching and taking pictures with Robyn. Her nails happened to match one of the pink boulders.
Then back on the bus. A group of kids bought Shrek when we stopped for lunch, so we watched 1 and 2. Then someone interceded (thank you) and we watched the Batman Lego movie. (I think that was Mark actually.) You know the bus ride is long when you can watch that many movies.
Finally, we got to Anaheim. We got our room numbers and took all our gear to our rooms. I was with Karol, another of the chaperon moms. She was so nice and really interesting. She used to be a Spanish journalist in New York. Our keys were the only ones that didn’t work but we fixed them.
I was in charge of two rooms of girls. Often I didn't have to watch them at all. The kids were allowed a high level of independence. That meant a lot of responsibility. That evening, they were told to go get dinner somewhere and be back to their rooms by 11 pm. Spoiler: My girls were all so good (except one). It was easy to check in on them and keep track of them. For dinner, I grabbed Robyn’s room of girls and we went to eat at Mimi’s Cafe. We were so close to Disneyland (where we were going the next day.) There were tons of places to eat near the hotel, so we didn't walk far.
The food was so good. Robyn ordered half a chicken. Yum. I got Mushroom chicken pasta. Delish.
This was my last hurrah with braces. They were scheduled to come off in a week. The trip would have been better without them, but I didn't get to choose.
We got back to our rooms and the girls went to the hot tub for a little bit. On the left is Julia. She is not actually in my chaperone group. She just happens to be in Robyn's room. In the middle is Robyn, of course. On the right is Jazmin. She hung out with us for the whole trip, so you'll see more of her. Fun fact: Her younger sister Leslie was one of my office aids last semester at school. It's a small world.
Got to head to bed now. Tomorrow is Disneyland.
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