The Last Day of the Trip!

In the last day of this awesome trip, we got early and took a ship to a little island called Alcatraz. That is an island of a jail. We went in, and had an audio tour which introduced what the jail is like and things happened there. 

After that, we went to Pier 39 again for lunch and a little free time.

Then, we took the bus to the really famous golden gate bridge. We walked from one side to the other side which is 1.7miles long. It was really long way but view from bridge was so pretty. 

Then we came back hotel and we had a little free time to get dressed up for party. Belo staff had a summary of this wonderful 14-day-trip. We voted for 12 “the most person” and then had a dancing party.

Written by Ayaka Isozaki (Japan) & Edwin Jiang (China)

San Francisco!

Hey guys! We are in San Francisco!! This morning we headed to down town. Everyone was on time! Well good job guys! :D First, we were dropped off at Pier 39 where we had shopping and had a dinner yesterday. Today we walked to the point to get the cable car. It was awesome and it was like riding a roller coaster when we up to the hill.

Mati, Marley, Toni, Laura, Sophie, and Hanna at Bubba Gump's

Pier 39 with Alcatraz Island in the distance

The view from top of the hill was amazing!!!  The hill is the top of Lombard Street, the world's curviest street. We started to walk to Union Square. We saw many nice buildings, and people walking through the streets, and it was fun to experience the city beyond the bus' window. We had fun with shopping in there. Yeah that was fun!

 

 

After we walked around down town and ate lunch, we rode on the bus with a tour guide lady, and headed to City Hall. She knew many facts about San Francisco and we enjoyed learning about it! After we visited there, we went to Twin Peaks! OH MY GOSH! The view was so awesome and beautiful!! Normally in San Francisco, it's foggy and not very hot, but today was sunny and a nice day, so we could see all of San Francisco including the Golden Gate Bridge (except for when the fog finally came)! :D

Then we headed to The Haight-Ashbury district which is noted for its role as a center of the 1960s hippie movement. We walked around and had shopping in there. There were many unique shops and people!  There were lots of vintage stores!

Then finally we went to the china town! China town here we come!! :D we looked around and shopped in there till dinner. There was a bunch of Chinese stores and it was cool! Of Course we ate Chinese food as a dinner!! We used chopsticks. Although some students didn’t know how to use them, they learned how to use them and we enjoyed having dinner!

Six Painted Ladies

Chinatown

Tomorrow is the last day of- this trip!! Time passes so so so so fast!!

Writer : Chika Ohashi (Japan), and Wakaba Otani (Japan

Yosemite National Park!

Today we went to Yosemite National Park in California. It was beautiful. There was lots of wildlife, like deer, squirrels, coyote, and American bears.  The nature was beautiful as well. We hiked up to the top of the waterfall and could enjoy the amazing view from up there. After the hard part to hike up, we had to go down, which was hard, as well. Because of the weather, everything was wet and slippery.
After we arrived at the bottom, we spent some time eating lunch, recovering and talking. We took the shuttle bus to the rental station, where we rented some awesome bikes! Actually we wanted to raft, but unfortunately we couldnt because of the weather as well, the water was too low.
The bike trip was still fun. We were a big group and biked aroung the national park and enjoyed the nature for about 2 hours. After the bike trip, we went to have dinner. We got a dinner ticket which was worth $19, and we could decide what we wanted to eat. They had lots of different options , like pizza, of course burgers, and lots of other delicious food. The weather wasn’t the best but we still had a lot of fun in the national park.

-Joaquin Mateos (Spain) and Philipp Lange (Germany)

Yosemite National Park is one of the most beautiful and diverse natural environments in the United States.  Yosemite is internationally recognized for its spectacular granite cliffs, waterfalls, clear streams, Giant Sequoia groves, and biological diversity. Almost 95% of the park is designated wilderness. The Yosemite village is located in a valley surrounded by steep granite canyons. Today we had the chance to have a great adventure in the park. We started the day with a 2 hour hike to the Water Falls. The trail was steep and wet, but the view was stunning. We passed by enormous pine trees and giant rocks covered by moss. We sensed the fresh air filled with steam coming from the waterfall. The higher we got, the more tired we became, but the view overdid the tiredness. In the afternoon after lunch and taking a walk in the village we had the chance to go for a bike ride. Everybody grabbed a bicycle and we hit the road.  We were biking in the nature on the trails for two hours, taking various routes. After we had an abundant dinner then we left the Yosemite Park, but I am sure most of us will return.

-Viktoria Nemeth (Hungary)

Beverly Hills!

Hello everyone! We checked out of the gorgeous hotel at 8:00 in the morning.  The first time on this trip it was cloudy, but fortunately the clouds disappeared by noon. The first thing we did was visit the Griffith  Observatory in the hills over Los Angeles. We got a good view on the famous  Hollywood sign and the city and therefore could take some good pictures.  After a well spend half hour we jumped on the bus and went to Beverly Hills.  We had a vote on how much time we want to spend there and we decided to stay  until 1:00 PM, which turned out to be a little too much time. We  took pictures at the big Beverly Hills sign and then went on our own. Basically, we watched many expensive cars and took  pictures. There are many rich people and expensive shops,  so we were kinda excited to go there, but there are not many special things. We went to Starbucks and played cards. It was such a good time. After we returned to the bus we started a long journey to the North, where the town of Merced is  located. We traveled almost five hours through the beautiful California  landscape. We watched one of the best movies in the history of cinema: Forrest Gump. Unfortunately most of the people missed this excellent movie because they decided to take a nap instead. After that we watched the Hunger Games.  We didn't get to finish it because we arrived at the Round Table pizzeria  where we ate our dinner. WE HAD PIZZA FOR DINNER!! We could decide between many kinds of pizza: from pepperoni to vegetable. After a delicious dinner we had  a short while to check out the bookstore that was right beside the restaurant. After that we continued our travel to the hotel. We arrived at 7:00 PM having a lot of free time to enjoy the pool, the gym or watch tv in our rooms.

-Yosuke Shimomura (Japan) and Jim Husak (Czech Republic)

Juri, Yosuke, and Alex on Rodeo Drive

Yosuke in Beverly Hills

Disney Land!!!

Hello world!
We are tired but happy after an action-packed, 11-hour visit in Disneyland and California Adventure Park! We had a great time with each other as well as several famous Disney characters, reaching from Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck to actors like Johnny Depp!! There was a premiere for his new movie "The Lone Ranger." Many of us got to see him walk by on the red carpet, and some of us waited for 3 hours just to see him and to take pictures. Sebastian even got an autograph! Thanks to special tickets we got to switch between the two parks whenever we wanted to and therefore got the most out of both of them. There was a lot to see! Highlights included the Space Mountain, the Cars Ride, the Indiana Jones Ride and the fireworks by the Disney Castle in the end. We all were amazed by the colorful and musically accompanied spectacle.

Show Me Your Mickey Mouse Ears!

 To be honest, the whole day was amazing! Disneyland is definitely NOT only for little kids but for everyone who still has not lost the inner child entirely. Due to lots of waiting and walking around, we got really tired but we still kept our enthusiasm all the way till the fantastic firework show. Unfortunately Kristy, a Belo staff member who had been helping everyone during the trip, had to leave today. Thank you Kristy for being there for us during this fun week! Tomorrow we'll all get to meet Laura who will take her spot. Now we have to get some sleep to be ready for another exciting day!

-Minami Nakata (Japan) and Lukas Mueller (Germany)-

                                                   
                                    

                 

Hey this is Sebastian from Germany! I want to share my experience of meeting Johnny Depp since I was the only one from the trip who did. I was in the third row behind the red carpet and as people left I was able to get closer to where Johnny Depp would be. When he finally arrived (after waiting two hours) I was able to take close pictures of him. When he was about 20 meters away everyone was going crazy and when he came up near me I said "Hi Johnny." He replied with "Hey how are you doing?" And he signed an autograph for me! That was a once in a lifetime opportunity and for the first time in my life I was patient enough (standing still for over 3 hours) to get this experience!

-Sebastian Pfennig (Germany)-

We started this day with an amazing breakfast at the Holiday Inn; at 8 am we rolled off towards downtown LA. It took us quite a while to get there because of bad traffic, but finally the famous Hollywood sign appeared on the horizon. 

Hollywood Boulevard was actually a lot smaller and less spectacular than everybody expected but it was still a great experience. On the sidewalk on both sides of the street there were the famous stars with all the celebrities’ names on them. We had an hour to walk around the streets, take lots of pictures and buy a bunch of souvenirs. Another highlight was the hand and footprints of various actors and actresses in front of the Chinese Theatre.  Robert Pattison’s feet are huge! 

Later we all met and went to Madam Tussaud’s wax figure museum. It was amazing how real all the celebrities seemed like they might jump out and scare you to death any second. Meeting stars like Leonardo di Caprio or sport legends like Tiger Woods was one of the highlights of this day. Hollywood Boulevard was definitely worth a visit! 

Around noon the whole group took off in the bus and we drove for around 1 ½ hours to get to Huntington Beach. 

At the time we got there, the clouds from the early morning were gone and the weather was just awesome! Everybody changed into their bathing suits, put sunscreen on and went down to the Pacific to swim and/or play Frisbee; and the lazy ones just laid down to tan their bodies. At that time the flood came in and the waves got bigger and bigger, making it very difficult to not get wet above your knees. But at one point nobody cared anymore and jumped right into them. After we got out some of us went into town to eat lunch. With new energy most of us picked up the Frisbee again. Personally, I did nothing else until it was meeting time when we went back to the bus to finish the day at the Italian restaurant “Buca di Beppo”. It was funny to watch Mati get all excited  to finally eat “real” bread from her home country again! And after this delicious journey to Italy, we were ready to head back to the hotel.

Written by Marley and Sebastian from Germany