My mother and I went to Paris from June 30th to July 7th.

Our flight was with the airline Air Canada. It was a 7 hour flight. Since our flight was delayed with one hour, we arrived in the afternoon. We were greeted by my aunt who came from Sweden and my brother who came from Czech. Then we left for our hotel using the metro.

The metro system in Paris is well designed. To enter, first you have to buy metro tickets in a ticket office. These are small pieces of paper that have a line on the back, which makes them valid. After you purchase the tickets, you enter the metro by inserting your ticket into a slot on a machine. The ticket comes out another slot and, if the ticket is valid, you can pass through. After the ticket has been used, it is marked with numbers to prevent the person from using the ticket again.

There are many metro lines, so you can get anywhere in Paris with a combination of the metro and walking. There is RER, which is somewhat like a subway and a train combined. The tickets for the RER cost more. There are also trains.

With one ticket, you can switch between any metro lines as long as you don’t leave the station, unless you are going on RER or on a train.
On the roads there are buses, but its easier to take the metro, because the road traffic is slow.

I think this system is really well designed, because the tickets ensure that there are no forgeries. The windows are left open because, unfortunately, there is no air conditioning.

Our hotel was the Comfort Inn Saint Pierre, located on 10 rue de Clignacourt. It’s a small, four story hotel. We stayed in room 16 on the first floor. In Europe, the first floor is different from the main floor, and in North America it would be known as the second floor. The main floor would be the zero floor, and any sub levels would be negative numbers.

The hotel room was comfy, with beds, a bathroom, a cupboard, and a TV. The bathroom was equipped with towels, soap and gel. There was a window in the room since there was no air conditioning.

The closest metro stations were Anvers and Barbès Rochechouart, both about a block away from our hotel.  When we arrived, we got out of the station of Gare du Nord, since we used the train, but it was still pretty close.

After we got settled in the hotel, we ate some food that my aunt bought from the grocery store next door, and we went for a walk to Sacrè Coeur, which is a famous church.

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August, 2008

I went to Camp Kearney from July 25th to August 12th. I was in a group called Intro to Wilderness. Camp Kearney is part of S.O.E.S., the Scarborough Outdoor Education School. It is in the town of Kearney, Ontario, and it is close to the Algonquin Park area. It takes about 4 hours to get there by bus from Scarborough. I went on a coach bus.

When I got there, I was clean, my clothes were clean, my luggage neatly packed, and I had few mosquito bites. Things didn’t stay that way for long.

The lodge is the main building of the camp and is where the meals are held.

The counsellors were very friendly and really funny. They made camp an enjoyable experience. They were more like friends than they were like counsellors.

Sunset In The Hills

The cabins that Intro to Wilderness campers stayed in are the eco cabins. The eco cabins use solar energy and they are about 10 minutes away from the lodge. The campers’ bathrooms are not in the eco cabins but in another building nearby. They are in a barn-like building. They use solar energy and have a timer for the light. There are three stalls, two showers and three sinks in each bathroom. Right beside them is another barn-like building called the Straw Bale House.

This is the staff bathroom. Beside the bathrooms there is a volleyball court and a gaga ball court. The gaga ball court is wooden, shaped like an octagon. The rules of gaga ball are: if the ball hits your legs you are out, every time you hit the ball you have to say “gaga” or you will be out, if you hit the ball out of the court you are out and the goal of the game is to be the last person out. I really like this game and I won it a few times!

The nights were beautiful and the sky would be full of stars.

We would look for constellations. I would always be able to find the Big Dipper quickly, and after searching the sky a little more I would be able to find the Little Dipper.

As for meals, we received them three times a day; breakfast, lunch and dinner. Intro had breakfast with the Discoverers before the canoe trip. Since Intro is an older group, we had late meals. That meant we had our meals after the younger groups. For breakfast we had cereal and the main course. For lunch we had soup, the main course and dessert. For dinner we had the main course and dessert.

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