Trip to Tampa!

I know, I know. You all want to hear about Ireland. But all things in due time. First, I want to talk about the Junior class trip to Busch Gardens. I arrived at school at 4:25 a.m. That's in the morning. I was AT SCHOOL at 4:25 in the cotton pickin' morning! I clearly made a bad choice by going! But we pretty much have to do that, so we can maximize park time. You see, Busch Gardens is in Tampa, which is anywhere from 4-5 hours away. It took us about 5 to get there, with one breakfast stop somewhere along the way.

We stopped for breakfast at a Chick-Fil-A/Burger King and I chose the Chick. It was my second Chick-Fil-A experience, and everyone raves about it, but I've never found it that impressive. Ahh well, fast food breakfast is fast food breakfast, and there was a biscuit involved, so it wasn't so bad.

We got to the park around 11 or so, and had until 6 to explore. I'd never been before, and it was free since I was a chaperon, so it was basically all good. When I first entered the park, I was greated by this guy, one of many, many topiary throughout the place.

Now, Busch Gardens has nothing on Disney as far as story is concerned--I didn't really "get" the park. The three roller coasters all had these weird names, and there were all sorts of motifs happening as far as landscaping. This is probably my favorite. :)

We didn't get to ride much because we had to eat lunch and check in with the kids. Eating lunch wasn't so bad, but the kids take forever to show up and we have to wait for all of them, and call the ones who don't show, and give detentions to the ones who are late. Plus, the group of teachers I was hanging with was a bit too large to be conducive to productive decision-making, so we wasted time just deciding what the heck to do. I rode two roller coasters, one called Montu and the other called SheiKra (which I secretly called "Shakira"). They were both pretty intense, but SheiKra was the "new" one and it has, basically, a 90 degree drop, at the top of which they let you sit for a few seconds to ponder your life and make yourself right with God. But it was super fun. I've only recently gotten back into riding roller coasters; I was scared of them for a long time. But now I realize they're actually kinda great. Even so, the anticipation of the fear is always the worst... As you can see!

It turned out to be beautiful weather as well, so that was a blessing. I had a great time, even though I was exhausted and leaving for Ireland the next day and my life was not my own for about four days. I wanted to go on the trip last year but couldn't for some reason so I'm glad I finally made it.

Here's me on my way out of the park, by one last topiary. There are tons of them!


Okay, so I've been admittedly horrible about updating both this blog and my pictures lately, but I just made an album on Facebook with pictures from January-March of this year. If you're not on Facebook, you can view it here.

I'll update about my amazing Ireland trip soon!

Much love.