Jack’s Posting Time #1

My name is Jack and I live in Fairbanks Alaska.  I am fifteen years of age and my birthday happens to be July 29th.  I have three sisters and two brothers.  In about 23 days my family and I are leaving on a trip to South America. We are bringing our two dogs and possibly our two cats.  I am excited about leaving and look forward to mastering Spanish language, also I have always wanted to ride a llama and I hope to accomplish this on this trip.

We are driving a van with a camper trailer down through Canada and then heading south towards Texas where we will pause for my older brother Ryan to take his SAT.  After our brief side track in Texas, we will head down through Mexico stopping along the way.  After we complete our Mexican exposure we set sail for Guatemala. Once through Guatemala we will continue southern through Honduras and then Nicaragua and then Costa Rica and finally Panama.  Panama marks the end of the Central American part of our venture.  We will have to find a ferry to take our vehicles over, otherwise we will have to fright them across which would be expensive and require lodging.  Once we make it into Colombia we head down into Peru.  All through this there will be loads of fun, shopping and other stereotypical American touristy ventures and hopefully a little bit of monkeys.  The next place we get to is one of the main milestones of this trip and that would be the country of Bolivia but Bolivia is not the end of this journey, for a matter of fact we are considering going as far as Ushuaia.  I kind of hope we go to Ushuaia because penguins live that far south.  After all that we come back to Alaska.

I will be taking with me some clothes and a jacket or two.  I won’t have cell reception but I will still take my phone for entertainment and such.  A few books will also be accompanying me. I play the bagpipes but because the bagpipe is a very expensive instrument I will only bring my chanter for fears that the journey might destroy it.  I have software called Celtic Pipes that allows you to play bagpipe sheet music on the computer, I will be using this as well as a few weekly check ins with my teacher via Skype.

I have most wonderful mother ever, she’s willing to home school me during an epic trip to South America; that gives parenting points.  My mom and I have been through a lot together, I remember when I broke my arm and my mother stayed at the hospital all night while I had surgery.  I also remember the first time my mom let me walk our local fair alone, I was so happy that day because I finally could go be a kid with my friends.  I make sure to stay out of trouble so my mom and I will continue to have a healthy relationship. I love you mommy.