Boston... Again- Thursday, May 1, 2025

    Well, I'm back to Boston again, less than two weeks after being there for the 250th anniversary of Lexington and Concord.   This time I'm with a two bus loads of 8th graders.  Neither trip is what I would call "relaxing."

     I've been on trips with the 8th graders before, but it's been a while.  I went three times to Quebec and a few times to Washington, but I've never been on one of the Boston trips.  I don't think I've been on one of these trips since before Emma was in 8th grade.  The last one that I have in the blog was in 2013, twelve years ago.  [Edit: I also went in 2015 to Washington, 10 years ago.  That was probably the last time.]

     I've tried to go on the Boston trip for the last three times.  Two years ago, I was the last chaperone to say yes, so I ended up being the first one cut when they didn't have enough kids sign up.  Last year, I was ready to go when I had to cancel because of Aunt Joyce and Uncle Gene's memorial service.  This year, I was ready to go and then Julie had her knee surgery scheduled at the same time.  She said I should go on the trip, so here I am, but I do feel like a jerk for not being there for her.         

    I got to the school at 5:45 AM, and we were on the buses before 7:00.  I realized early that I probably should have brought my watch.  I ended up buying one at the mall where we stopped for lunch, and still managed to snarf down some Wendy's before we left.

    When we got to Boston, our first stop was the New England Aquarium.  As we arrived, I wondered if it was a wise choice for our first stop, since the kids were getting restless after so long on the bus.  A different year, our chaperones witnessed another school getting kicked out of the aquarium when their kids were acting like knuckleheads and dropped something in the penguin pool.  We read the kids the riot act before turning them loose.  They were good, though they did tire of the aquarium pretty fast.  We were there for a little more than an hour, but most were done long before that.  I wasn't able to enjoy it because I was watching out for kids, but I did get to see a little of it.  We had visited this aquarium a long time ago, when Anna was two years old or so, but I didn't remember very much about it.  I remembered the penguins by the front door because they have a couple of big islands and a pool to play in.  There's a picture of Anna by them from 2002 or so.  Behind the penguins, is a coral reef exhibit that stands about 3 stories tall, and there's a winding ramp that takes you up and around it.  I spent more than half of the time being on watch at the gift shop. 

      It took a while for our buses to show up again- maybe because of traffic?  Our next stop was "Fire and Ice" for dinner.  I did not like it and would not recommend it.  It was chaotic and loud.  We were not the only large group there.  It was really hard to hear the directions (and I didn't like the idea that we needed directions).  You have to get your uncooked food in a bowl and take it to the middle of the place to be grilled, but it was crowded and  confusing.  I gave it a few honest tries, but there wasn't really anything that I wanted to eat.   I saw a hot dog with no roll, but I didn't want to get into the line and the jam of people for a single hot dog.  I didn't eat anything there, and instead I had another Atkins bar when we got back to the hotel.  

    Allegedly, we have two guides-- one for each of our buses.  The one that is supposed to be on our bus didn't ride with us.  We heard that the other bus got to hear some tidbits about Boston and the sites we were passing, but we didn't get to hear anything.

     We passed some "50501" Anti-Trump protestors at Boston Commons.  I don't know why it didn't occur to me as we were passing them, but it was the "May Day" protests on May 1st.  I had read about them in advance.   We couldn't tell just from the flags, but there may have been counter-protestors too.

    We got into the hotel and settled the kids in their rooms.  There are other people on our floor, and we heard one guy cursing at one of our students who knocked on the wrong door.  I don't know why a hotel would put a random person in the middle of a school group.  When we were done taping the kids in the rooms, I discovered that they charge for internet access.  That was disappointing, but I really wanted to check on some things and write this blog.

       Abby's preschool class was supposed to go on a field trip to a farm today, but they didn't post any pictures from it, sadly.