The Holy Land Experience and The Beach Experience

Two days, my family went to a strange theme park that was based around the Holy Land. Most of it was quite boring, though there was quite an interesting model of Jerusalem. Anjuli wanted to climb on it of course, but that course of action was quite strongly discouraged by the owners. Some guy there gave a presentation thingy about it, and that was boring, though the person himself was quite interesting. He had traveled extensively, spent quite a bit of time as a missionary, and knew 5 or 6 languages (half of them dead languages, but even that is sorta cool). Naturally, my dad stayed an extra 15 minutes talking, though everyone else wandered off in short order. Rather annoying, because that was the last thing we were doing at the park. The day was not a complete loss however, I spent most of my time there listening to The Restaurant at the End of the Universe written and read by Douglas Adams, and that was pretty good. I also listened to it during the three-hour car trip back to my Uncle Fred's.
Yesterday, we got up early and went to the beach. I have now decided that going to the beach without any friends with you is really quite boring, and hope to never do it again. The trip was made worse by the fact that Anjuli was scared of the sound of the waves crashing on the shore, and was terrified by the water itself. Justin and I tried to play some frisbee, but the constant wind blowing in from the sea made that difficult. And to make matters worse, I had forgotten my book, and so was bored in the car on the way back to the house. NOT a good trip.
Today was rather satisfying, however. Though it did not start out very promising (I woke up a bit early, went into a very green pool, and dealt with an unhappy baby in said green pool) by afternoon everything was going well. At one oclock in the afternoon I started reading the Butlerian Jihad, and as I was only 100 pages into it, and still had almost 600 pages, I did not really believe I would finish it before my mom went to the library to return. By 6:30 however, I had finished it and was able to return to the library. Happy day.

Florida

After an 11 hour car trip I have finally arrived in Florida. It is hot and humid, but fortunately there is often air-conditioning to combat the heat. Unfortunately, some buildings rather overcompensate.... Ah well. Such are the dangers of being in America. Yesterday I worked to set up my uncle Fred's internet connection, and due to a mysterious problem with the password, was forced to call tech support. Very embarrassing. The person at tech support was fairly competent, though she went through the individual steps in mind-bogglingly precise detail, which drove me nuts. Oh well, at least it worked afterwards.
My nine year-old cousin came to visit yesterday. She has now grown out of the stage where she feels comfortable jumping on me and doing other similar actions, and instead acted quite "civilized." I was rather bored when she came over, and I found it amusing to treat her to several discourses, on various random subjects, and she eventually labeled me "weird." Ah well, such is life. I rather suspect that most, if not all, of the readers of this blog have termed me weird at one point or another. Another interesting thing that happened yesterday was a trip to the library. After spending about an hour looking through, we finally picked about thirty, and then proceeded to try to check them out. No go. Apparently, my mom's library card had expired. Since they needed some proof that we actually lived in Florida, we were forced to return home. My mom then attempted to borrow my uncle Fred's library card, but his had been suspended. So eventually we just went back to the library, and tried quite hard to get the card renewed, and in the end the librarian took pity on us and gave us a one-month renewal. Very useful, because we intend to be gone well before the month is up. So we went home happy.
Today, I was forced to get up very early to go to church. We had to leave by 7:15. So of course my mom wakes me up at 6:30. Very annoying, as I had hoped to sleep until at least 6:50. I can never quite figure out why she imagines it takes us as long to get ready to go as long as it takes her. So anyway, I get up, eat breakfast, change, and read my book for about 20 minutes until we finally leave, and then I get another hour and a half to read my book as we head to church. When we get there, Justin and I decide to skip the first service and Sunday school, so I get another 2.5 hours to read my book. Though the service wasn't too bad, I can't really say it was worth the wait. Oh well. After the service, we got lunch at a fairly nice restaurant, and then headed home. My dad had planned to drag us to the evening service, but thankfully there was enough time between lunch and it that he managed to drop Justin and I off. Very fortunate, as the idea of staying out till 9 didn't really appeal to me. A very packed two days.

America

Well, people have finally convinced me to start blogging again. As everyone who reads this will no doubt be aware, I have recently traveled to America. It was a 24-hour trip, very unpleasant, but fortunately I had no difficult with jet lag. What I did have difficulty with was catching up on sleep, as I was woken up before 8 every morning by a rather loud niece, who has a tendency to run around jumping on people.
Since coming to America, I have done rather a lot of reading, as I have little else to spend my time on. In addition to several Discworld novels, I have also read The Diamond Age a very complex, confusing, but rather interesting book by Neal Stephenson.
On Memorial Day, I went to a rather boring picnic, where everyone managed to forget their frisbees. The day was not a complete loss though, upon returning to Jeremy and Ruth's I played Carcassone with Jeremy, Justin, Dad and Azar.
Another interesting event occurred yesterday, when I went out with my youth group to play whirlyball, which is now probably my second favorite sport, after Ultimate. Since it is difficult to explain exactly what whirlyball is, I will not attempt to, but if you want to find out you can google it.
That pretty much summarizes everything that has been happening to me lately.