Man am I tanned!
I’m not actually tanned but I should be considering I had been in southern and northern California for nine days. Why was I in southern California? Well, as some of my long-time readers may know, I’m a member of the PLP (Performance Learning Program). You can read more about this on my Who Am I page.
A big part of our program are Field Schools. We have about one a year and this year we went to California to learn about the history of Silicon Valley and what specifically makes this place in California “disruptive”(Silicon Valley was nicknamed for the southern portion of the San Francisco Bay Area in the northern part of the state of California. The “valley” refers to the Santa Clara Valley in Santa Clara County, which includes the city of San Jose and surrounding cities and towns, where the region has been traditionally centered). Now this trip wasn’t all history and projects, we went to lots of really interesting and fun places, so that’s what I’m going to focus on in this post. We also created a book documenting our trip. You can see it bellow.
In this post I’ll be sharing information about my experiences in three of the cities we visited on our trip; San Diego, San Jose, and San Fransisco, as well as the activities we did and places we visited.
I originally started this post thinking I would focus on my: 1)favourite location, 2) biggest surprise, 3) the most useful place, and 4) the most comforting/safest feeling area. However. once I thought about it, I realized that these where all the same place. Let;s see if you can guess where it was by the end of the post.
We begin our journey at the Spirit of Haida Gwaii statue in the Vancouver airport at 4:30 am on a rainy morning in February. This was our class’ meeting spot for the plane ride. This was a really early ride but I managed to make-up for lost sleep on the first flight to our layover destination of Seattle.
After our second flight, we arrived in San Diego where we had lunch at Hodad’s Burger Shack. We went on to visit the Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve which is home to the Torrey Pine trees. The Torrey Pine tree is a rare pine species native to the United States. It is an endangered species growing only in the Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve and on Santa Rosa Island. We ended the day with we dinner at Miguel’s Cocina then checked into our hotel rooms. The dinner was really good except the line was incredibly long. Sadly we where late for our reservation but in the end we still managed to get in and eat a great meal.
Our second day was spent at the San Diego Safari Park. The park features over 1,800 acres of sprawling scenery that closely mimics the animals’ natural habitats for a great animal viewing experience. The park works closely with other zoos to achieve its goal to “end extinction”. When we fist arrived we where greeted by our tour guide who taught us about the breeding programs they have at the park for their elephants and tigers. During the day we attended many attractions such as the cheetah run, a 330-foot-long track that allows the cheetah to stretch its legs and reach an astounding speed of 70 miles per hour in just 4 seconds, as well as the balloon safari, a 400 ft high ballon ride which gives a great view of the park.
Our third day was spent on the USS Midway, a former aircraft carrier of the United States Navy. Commissioned a week after the end of World War II the USS Midway was the largest ship in the world until 1955. She operated for 47 years during which she saw fought in the Vietnam and the Persian Gulf. She was decommissioned in 1992 and is now a museum ship at the in San Diego, California. I was really exited for this visit because I love the military.
Once we arrived I understood just how big of a ship she is. At 1,001 ft she’s truly breathtaking. while on board we explored many different parts of the ship such as the enlisted mens quarters, anchor room, captains post, and many more. I thought that it wold be really cool to work on an aircraft carrier however Canada doesn’t own any aircraft carriers.
The next two days where spent at High Tech High. High Tech High ,or HTH, is a school based around project based learning, much like the PLP program. The only difference is that instead of being just an optional program, like at Seycove, the entire school is focused on the same thing. Well, four schools to be exact. Theres an HTH elementary, HTH middle school, and two HTH high schools. On the first day , we where given a tour of the school by our grade 9 buddies. Afterwards, we worked with our buddies to create a podcast together. You can see that podcast in the previously mentioned blog post.
On the second day of HTH we participated in one of their math classes. I should first say that their math is very different from ours. Unlike ours, where we do a bit of everything every year, they focus on one type of math every year. For instance, one year they might do only geometry then the next year they’ll do algebra. We also attended their humanities class. During this class we where to make a “zine” (short for magazine) about our personalities. If you want to try making a “zine” you can click the link to a Wiki How *here*. The last thing we did at HTH was follow our buddy students to their Xblock class. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find my buddy so I just buddied-up with one of my friends who was enrolled in HTH. He took me on another tour of HTH and so I had the chance to see many more areas that were not included on my first tour.
HTH was definitely an interesting experience. Sadly. it was our last stop in San Diego. Our next destination was San Jose.
Our first day in San Jose was visiting some of the major electronic industry headquarters such as Google’s Googleplex (where I bought a shirt and toque), Apple Park Visitor Centre, and the Intel Museum. Each stop was really interesting. I enjoyed the Apple Park Visitor Centre because the architecture was made to replicate and incorporate the same architecture as the actual Apple Park.
The three most exiting pieces of architecture in the centre were the stairs which were made out of moulded marble and only supported at the bottom and the top. The roof of the balcony allowed natural light through while totally blocking out the sun therefore allowing for the perfect picture taking lighting Lastly, the glass walls on either side of the centre which where built to rotate and allow wind to flow through the centre.
Our next day was spent at both the computer history museum and t Stanford University. The computer history museum had tons of gigantic early computing units. The really helps one understand how computers have evolved to be more and more useful for varying purposes.
In-between the computer history museum and Stanford University, we stopped at the Pizza Studio for lunch. I’m not really a pizza guy, but this pizza was amazing. I had mine on fire cracker dough with jalapeano peppers which tasted incredible.
After the pizza, we visited Stanford. In my opinion the Stanford campus is huge. It has water fountains everywhere which are all chlorinated so students can swim in them. They also have tons of clubs for every student’s interests. In fact. if you can get three or more students to sign-up, you can make your own club and be given grant money to progress it. One of my favourite parts of my visit to Stanford was getting a wind breaker from their merchandise store.
The next morning we took a train to San Fransisco. Unfortunately we missed our lunch that day so we I had to go over 12 hours without food. I was not happy. Lucky though our stops made it worth while. We first stopped at Twitter HQ. Twitter was probably the most interesting building we visited. It almost seemed like every floor had a different theme. One was industrial, another was log cabin based, another was forested, and so on.
We then visited Undefeated. Undefeated is a shoe store which sells some of the most coveted shoes for great prices. If you are anywhere in California this store is a must visit.
We also visited the Golden Gate Bridge welcome centre. I thought it was pretty cool. However, by this time the hunger was really getting to me.
On our last full day of California we took a Wild San Fransisco Walking Tour. This was a walking tour through many historically famous neighbourhoods of San Fransisco. We also as visited Alcatraz, and the the first American Super Max. The Wild San Fransisco Walking Tour was fun. We got to see tons of different neighbourhoods, each with its own historical value. Our tour guide, West, seemed really motivated and educated. He even played the guitar while we walked. I found it fun and educational as well as totally worth it for anyone who want to learn more about the city.
Our final stop was Alcatraz. Alcatraz was designed to hold prisoners who continuously caused trouble at other federal prisons. Most of the prisoners were notorious bank robbers and murderers. The prison initially had a staff of 155, including the first warden James A. Johnston and associate warden J. E. Shuttleworth. The staff were highly trained in security, but not rehabilitation. When we arrived we where given headsets with our audio tours on them. This was by far the best audio tour I have ever been on. It was Interesting and had many interviews with actual inmates and gave it the true feeling it deserved.
At the beginning of this post I said that one of these places was my: 1) favourite location, 2) biggest surprise, 3) most useful place, and 4) most comforting/safest feeling area all in one. That place was, DRUM ROLL PLEASE, Stanford University! It was my favourite because of its interesting and exciting campus. It was my biggest surprise because I had no idea what to expect before I arrived and had no idea I would like it so much. It was the most useful because it opened my eyes to the possibility of going to an American school. Finally, It was the most comforting/safest feeling because everyone seemed so inviting and happy to be there.
I hope you enjoyed this post and maybe it gave you some ideas of where to go if your taking a trip to California.