May 16, 2003

My Boston Field Trip

My class usually goes down the street on a field trip, but this time we traveled out of state. This was my first field trip out of Connecticut. We rode to the Boston Science Museum. Some of my favorite displays were two monkeys, chicks hatching, and a grown up, but tiny, owl. I love animals, so of course these would be my favorite exhibits. One part of the trip that I hated was losing my backpack! This nearly ruined my trip. The part I absolutely loved was the bus ride on the coach bus. It was amazingly comfortable. The Boston field trip was exciting, scary, and interesting all in one!

There were thousands of exhibits on the trip, but my favorite ones were the monkeys, chicks, and the very puny owl. The owl was so small it is hard not to say the word "baby!" When you think of the word adult, you think yeah, right! That’s impossible! It looks like it hatched out of its shell on hour ago! I know, you think I’m exaggerating, but I’m not! This owl was about a total of six inches tall and wasn’t going to get any bigger! Probably, if this owl had a baby, you’d have to use a magnifying glass to see it! If I was comparing this owl to a baby owl that was a different species, the main similarity would be their size! The difference would be the color of their feathers. An adult owl has darker feathers than the baby owl would have.

The hatching chicks were amazing! Some of them were black and some were yellow. A few had already hatched and a few weren’t going to hatch for a week or so. There was one hatching chick that was pecking a hole in its eggshell and would probably be out by the next day. The monkeys were dressed in lovely fur coats, white, brown, and black. They were beautiful! Both monkeys had brown backs, black faces and hind legs. The rest of the monkey bodies were all white. Their tails were brown and extremely long for little monkey tails, about ten inches long! One of the monkey’s tails was coiled in a little ball and when the monkey finally stopped climbing and sat down, it let down or unrolled its tail. It’s like what we would do if we’re trying to help a friend if he, or she, were hanging off a cliff, we would "let down" the rope. It was really neat! If I could have, I would have watched these animals for the whole day!

Although, the animal exhibits were all really interesting, losing my backpack wasn’t. That was the scary part of my trip. After I noticed I had lost it, I was walking very quickly, almost running, at the same time. I had a lump in my throat the size of a walnut that was floating, so I couldn’t swallow it! I didn’t care about the walnut. All I cared about was finding my backpack. "I have to find it!" I said to Mrs. Rogers, my chaperone.
"You gotta, gotta, gotta, hold on to that," she said, helping me follow my footsteps. The main thing I was worried about wasn’t my backpack, it was that my house key was in it! Also, my name was on my backpack, so someone could have looked it up or something. The whole thing just made me nervous! What am I going to do? I wondered. If someone finds it before I do, I’ll never be calm the whole rest of my life! Mrs. Rogers and I started to head back to the group. When we had almost reached them, Mrs. Rogers pointed out something down towards the group. "Look!" she said. I saw Mrs. Hoblin holding up my backpack! The lump grew smaller. I raced down the escalator. I was so focused on my backpack I started going down the up escalator.

"Oops!" I said and then turned around and rode down the right one. I took my backpack and the lump completely dissolved. Mrs. Hoblin told us that Courtney remembered I had left it at the science park. Now I knew what I was going to do. "Thanks Courtney," I told her.

"Welcome. Remember we took them off to climb on the rope?" she replied.
"Oh, yeah," I remembered. I was glad I had finally found by backpack and had made it through the scary part of the trip. The exciting part of the trip was the bus rides. It was one of those traveling coach busses. It had this really cool spotted and dashed material. The dashes and spots were yellow and red and the outline was blue. This material covered the seats, floor, ceiling, and the outside of the bathroom door. The back of the seats were fuzzy and gray, and the ceiling had a couple of T.V. sets. There were only two seats in each row, but I wanted to sit next to William and Alisha. So, I did, except I didn’t exactly have my own seat. I was partly on William’s seat and partly on Alisha’s. It was more comfortable than you would imagine. We even switched places for a few minutes and we all liked it, including me. Only when one of them hit the button to lean back and the other one didn’t it wasn’t comfortable. I also brought a camera. I was a little bored on the first ride, so I took one picture of William and then I gave him my camera and he took a picture of me.

"That’s a good picture," William told me. On the way back I had ten pictures left, so I decided to fool around with it a little bit. My camera ended up with zero pictures left. Riding with my friends in a comfortable coach bus, what could be better!

So, that was my Boston field trip, exciting, interesting, and scary. The bus ride was exciting. The exhibits were interesting and losing my backpack was scary. I loved all of these except for losing my backpack! I think this was my favorite field trip so far this whole school semester. The exhibits of those tiny monkeys, chicks, and owls were so cute. The bus ride was cozy and friendly, and losing my backpack was scary and horrible. Someday I wish I can go again and have a whole new adventure to write about. I can’t wait until that day comes.