lifeofpi123

[lifeofpi123]

Alaska Trip

Boarding the Cruise Ship

A bright sunny day in the city of Seattle brought me and my family’s mood at a high. We were paired with my father’s siblings and their children to take a 7-day trip around Alaska.   

“All aboard!” The first words out of the captain’s mouth as me and my family start to board the Crown Princess cruise ship. It was definitely exciting as this vacation had been in the talks for months between my father and his siblings for months.

“Do all of y’all have your tickets?” my father asked me, my mother, and my brothers in intimidating tone. “I sent them to y’all a while ago.”

Everyone in my family quickly checked to see whether we had our tickets as god forbid if we didn’t, we wouldn’t know what my father’s reaction would’ve have been. We all nodded as we found our tickets.

As soon as our tickets got scanned and our luggage was checked in, we were amazed. We saw a bar and patio on the left, a dance stage right in the middle where a lot of people were dancing, and a buffet on the right serving some nice authentic fresh cut French fries and beef burgers.

The weather for this vacation was perfect as it was right in the middle of August. Me and my cousins ran towards the buffet immediately and to get ourselves a snack until our parents stopped us.

My younger cousin yelled, “we really are hungry why won’t you let us go the buffet?”

“Your cousin has been stopped at check in. He hasn’t boarded the cruise ship yet,” my aunt replies sternly as she feels her daughter is throwing around a tantrum.

Me and my aunt rush back to the check in and we see my brother who was in fact stopped at check in.

“What seems to be the problem?” My aunt asked.

“His ticket is already scanned miss.” The crew member replied. “That’s why we’ve stopped him.”

“But it clearly states his name on the ticket. So why should there be a problem?”

“Well we’ve confirmed that it’s the is man’s ticket we are just finding out who used his ticket and scanned through. It standard procedure that if the passenger’s ticket isn’t scanned we can’t let him/her board.”

With this consensus, me and my aunt decided to call all of our family members down to the check in area to make sure that if my brother can’t board, none of us will board the ship to Alaska.

All the adults were talking about alternate options if my brother can’t board the ship. All of us kids and cousins were worried that our vacation was going to take a hit.

At the last minute of check in, the crew luckily found the person who used my brother’s ticket to get on the ship.

The crew checked the room number registered under the ticket and went to the room and found the person. He was brought down to the check in lobby for questioning and was later escorted of the ship.

Me and family were finally stress free and my brother was able to check in. As soon as he was clear to board, the captain yelled into the microphone, “all aboard.”

Soap Operas in the Cruise Ship

“This is insane!” my younger brother indicated.

“Yeah we get that because you told us that twenty times already.” My older brother yelled.

I on the other hand was in a completely different world. I was just amazed by how in one ship, there was so much to do. There were a lot of sport facilities like tennis courts, basketball courts, indoor mini soccer courts. There were around 5 ballrooms in this place where everyday a special event would take place for the guests. One large community swimming pool on the deck of the ship with water slides at high elevations. A bar and patio, a dance floor, buffet right in the middle of the ship which was the only places open 24/7 on the cruise ship. This place was like heaven to me.

With all these places kept in mind I decided to pick up a brochure to see what all events were happening on the cruise ship for the seven days that I was staying there. I decided to tell my entire family about these events. I honestly didn’t mind if they were coming with me or not. I was excited to go for each event myself or with them.

During dinnertime I decided to ask my entire family, “Hey, I decided to go for this bingo session tomorrow in afternoon at the ballroom. Do y’all want to come?”

As my mum and dad were about to answer my cousin interrupts me, “Listen the cousins are deciding to go and hangout by the jacuzzi in the afternoon. The weather also looks great for tomorrow so you should definitely come.

I hesitate and say, “But the bingo event is tomorrow.” My cousin sighs as she tries to convince me to go to the jacuzzi with them.

“Okay I’ll come tomorrow. Just text me when you guys are ready to leave.”

As I go to sleep that night, my brother texts me saying that my all the cousins are gathered at his room, and he texted me to come if I wanted to.

I really wanted to go for a morning swim with my parents, but I just decided to put my needs away and go meet them.

As I enter my room, I see my cousin and my younger brother yelling at each other. Me and my older brother decide to take control of the situation and settle everyone down before the argument went out of hand.

“Guys calm down. It was just a joke. Just apologize to one another and get it over with,” my brother said.

“I won’t apologize until your younger brother does first,” my cousin stated.

These arguments kept going back and forth between my cousins which made me think about two lot of things. Why am I here? Why should I be the one sacrificing the vacation I want for the vacation they want?

The minute I realized this, I said, “Listen, solve this problem today because I didn’t come here to listen to y’all arguing. Either solve it now, or don’t see me for the rest of this vacation.”

As soon as this happened I left the room and decided to have the vacation that I designed to have for myself in the cruise ship.

Ketchikan, Alaska

“Ladies and Gentlemen, we will be arriving shortly at our first destination of the cruise, Ketchikan,” the captain stated.

The stop and Ketchikan was only for 5 hours as the cruise was running on a strict timeline. It was also the most crucial stop for my family as we were going separate ways. My parents and younger brother went on a boat ride and my brother and I with the rest of the cousins and uncles went ziplining.

I was super excited because me and older brother were always fond of doing dangerous things.

As we step outside to get a feel of Ketchikan, Alaska I feel a gush of wind just breezing through my face. It was cloudy day with not a lot of people outdoors. We could see a lot of snowy mountains at a distance and we could feel the chilly weather on the coast. It almost felt like Christmas in August.

As my parents and me go our separate ways, my brother and I were talking about how excited and macho we were going to be when we went on those ziplines.

“I really am trying to think of pose to do when I’m on the zipline,” I said.

“Don’t think about it so much. You’ll figure it out in the moment,” my uncle replied. “I remember doing a superman pose but that almost caused a problem midway.”

When we reached the place we got briefed by a guy named Alan. He was going to be up there with us with his colleague Peter. They were giving us safety measures and instructions on what to do when ziplining. The main takeaway however, was the fact that he said that the ziplines were 120 feet in the sky.

I immediately gasped as I did not expect that. As I was putting on my harness, I felt a rush of blood. I was nervous when we were climbing stairs, riding the gondola, and finally panicking when we reached the first peak. I was the last one to ride the first peak of the zipline.

I could hear my brother from the second peak screaming, “don’t be scared.”

But it barely helped me. Every moment in my life started rushing through my brain as I was terrified of riding that zipline. I never thought that I was afraid of heights until that very moment. As I was trying to calm myself down, Alan’s colleague just gave me push and I was on the zipline.

I was screaming for the first few seconds, but everything after that felt so calm and cool. I felt like I did something that not everyone in this world can do. This made me so happy and after that every peak was like smooth sailing.

This part of the trip was by far my highlight as I thought I could never do something that dangerous.