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The amateur vacationers​ .

So my family took the first family vacation ever. I haven’t really gone to much vacation myself…because I haven’t really had much of long term jobs to take a vacation from. But our recent surprise came from my wife Hope’s recent full-time job…they decided to give her a bonus! And Hope insisted that we take a family vacation since 4 of us never taken one before. It was kind of hard to find where we want to go. First, we were planning to go to Montreal, Canada. Then we found out that we need passports to enter Canada…then we realized that it will take 3-4 weeks to get passports. Also, Montreal was perfect because we don’t have a car. We could take a train and it would be a beautiful ride. Oh well…

A friend gave me a recommendation for Whale Watching in Rhode Island. When I told my kids about it, their eyes lit up. We all got excited. They had one of those photos of a whale jumping in the air on the home page of their website. We planned everything around the Whale. We got 4 tickets and found the Holiday Inn with an outdoor swimming pool! Psyched psyched psyched!!!!!

Day one: Leaving New York was very smooth. A very present train ride and within a few hours, we arrived at Kingston station. We got Lyft…although took like 30 minutes to show up. I wanted to have a nice family dinner on the first night on vacation, so we googled some fancy seafood restaurant on the beach. It was a high-end tourist restaurant and the food was not so good. But we bitched and giggled and managed to have an ok time…I need to explain about our kids. Our younger son is Autistic, and the older one has multiple food allergies, so ok time is a really ok with us.

Day three: We kind of had a disaster…When we woke up, it was pouring rain and heavy wind. I saw a large umbrella submerged in the pool. We were supposed to go on the Whale Watch. I noticed that they sent me an email early in the morning that they are canceling the tour due to heavy wind and rain. so we decided to go to the Shopping Mall in Providence, RI and spend a day in the door. The first hour was kind of fun. Since we don’t have any malls of that size in Brooklyn. Then we decided to eat in the food area that has many mall foods. we usually go for something we can clearly see ingredients because of our son’s food allergy. We saw a sushi place and we decided to go for it. My younger son wanted Popeye. Oh boy, it was the worst sushi I have eaten in the USA ever. Occasionally we order sushi from our neighborhood which is usually pretty bad. I know that in Japan, it will take 7-10 years to become a sushi chef. But this one blew everyone in Brooklyn fake sushi and became our choice of the worst sushi ever. But anyway, this was not the disaster. I will skip how exactly happened but on the way back to the hotel, Hope (my wife) sort of shouted that she lost her phone. I called her phone but it wasn’t in the cab. Then she sort of remembered that right before we got in the cab, we were sitting on the public bench…and her phone was one of the small bags that she put the phone in. She left it on the bench. We didn’t go back because it would take another 2 hours. Spend the rest of the evening canceling phone chip and trying to remember her Apple ID.

Day four: We booked the glass blowing class at New Port. It sounded kind of interesting. It was in the afternoon so we took Lyft to the beach first. We did enjoy the beach. then it was time to go back into the town for the glass blowing. We packed our stuff, then I called Lyft. I waited for 20 minutes for cars to show up in the app. Nothing…It has been like this every time we use cabs. it is not like New York. Time was running out fast. We had to walk back. according to Google map, it was 30 min walk. When we were walking back, I have realized that no one walks in Rhode Island and many roads don’t even have a sidewalk. Anyway, we got to walk by many rich people’s houses, made me really annoyed. But I got to say the glass blowing was fun! We walked around New Port before we head back to Holiday Inn. Suddenly it came to me that I have not seen any people of color. Not just today but since we rolled into the town. I had the same experience in Vermont. We moved to Vermont and I was feeling very strange when we went to the capitol. I couldn’t pinpoint what it is. Then when I was in line for a cash machine in the bank, this young Asian woman walks in, suddenly everything became clear. Holy crap, there is nobody but white people in Vermont! So we called Lyft and got a black woman driver. This feeling stayed with me a little while longer.

Day five: Finally the day came for the whale watching! They rescheduled for us. We were still so psyched. We took 40 minutes Lyft ride and rolled into the town of Narraguntti. It was a really hot day. We all got into the ship may be capable of holding 100 people. We sat outer deck on the side of the boat. We had one of that seasick bracelet. The boat was packed. We were so excited, I was making the gesture of whale jumping, just like the picture on their website. Everything changed when the engine started. It was like someone started excavating street right under your bedroom window on early Sunday morning. It was the continuous grenade explosion. Then the captain started yelling over the loudspeaker. “Well come…..”. It was similar to watching John Zone’s guitar orchestra. Patrick (younger son) started putting hands on his ears and yelling “I want to get off. ” It was too late, we took off already into 4 hours journey. We had a bunch of high school students with us and they were running around the boat. The captain didn’t stop talking for 4 hours. in about half-hour into the trip, they started firing up burgers. It was not a nice burger smell, It was a burning bad meat smell. I saw earlier they were bringing a huge bag of grey frozen burger meat on the ship. in about an hour and a half people started getting sick. A young woman who was staring at the ocean at the front of the boat started gagging and threw up that burger in the air. we were all hanging on the rail of the boat looking for whales. Suddenly I felt mist showering over me… at the same time, the captain was kept screaming that he saw something at 9 o’clock or 3 o’clock, We saw a large shark swam by, I mean really large. Then about 2 hours later, they finally shut the engine and started the flow. He lowered his voice but kept on talking. And suddenly it was a big splash with a tail flip, it kind of looked like flipping a bird. Then disappeared. I and Hope saw it but our both sons were sick laying down on the bench, didn’t see it. perhaps most of the people didn’t see it. We were point finger and screaming, “There! There!” Gone. I heard the cap was giving an excuse for whale are not coming around lately. He kind of suggested global warming. Nonetheless, you can imagine the relief we felt when we got off the boat. 

Well, my conclusion for the first family vacation was success nonetheless. We did everything together, fun and torture. We got more understanding of each other. Someone said that it is more like a family trip rather than a family vacation.  
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