Journals--Day 2 Girls

Today was an awesome day!!  Let me tell you about today….This morning we woke up at around 7am and got ready before 8:30am.  We ate our breakfast.  Some of us ate bagels and some of us ate cereal. 

The boys group (Mike, Jon, and Richie) were working on the asking of questions and getting a lot of information that we need to know more about.  We went to see Columbia River, Bridge of the Gods, Bonneville Dam, Salmon fish ladder, Hydroelectric power house (we went inside!!), fish hatchery, and interviewed a Park Ranger.  The girls groups (Lymarie, Angelina, and I) were working on the visuals.  We went to the van and I wrote about the log stuff like what was the mileage, weather,meals, temperature, and price of gas.  

My group talked about the comparison from Washington to Connecticut.  We compared it:    We saw a lot of hills and no plains, and I am sure Nancy (our teacher) loves when she sees it because she hates the plains so much.  We saw a lot of lumber.  Washington also has many rivers.  I noticed Washington has signs that have a face of George Washington on it with road numbers on it.  We also noticed that there were a lot of curvy roads.

Now we are in Oregon. Barbara was driving to everywhere and she is the best driver ever!!  We went to the Columbia River, it was so beautiful.  I can’t imagine how it would look if I never had seen it.  It was such a huge river and it was so deep when we stood top of the bridge.  It was so natural!!!  We went to see the Bonneville Dam, it was so awesome to learn about it.  We met a guy named Ranger Jon, he was with us and showed, told us about it.  He is a nice guy.  We also asked him a lot of questions.  We went to inside the hydroelectric power house and it was so huge. Ranger John talked all about the generators. Ms. Nutt teased me about the magnet. She told me to be careful with it because I have a cochlear implant that has a magnet on me (Ha-Ha).  We stood on it and we could feel the heat.  He told me it was spinning 70 times in a minute.  Then we went to see salmon fish ladder. 

We also went to a place that where we can see the fish view area.  Ms. Nutt was obsessing about the lampreys with Lymarie.  We see all the cool fish because we can see that it was hard for the fish to swim where they want to go.  But they seem they can’t because the water was pushing them so hard.  We ate our delicious lunch.  We ate sandwiches and I can’t eat all of it because when I ate it, I saw the lampreys and it was so hideous!  It makes me think of eating lampreys.  We went shopping but we didn’t buy anything. 

We went to see the water falls.  I’M TELLING YOU IT WAS SO BEAUTIFUL!!!  I loved it and we loved it too!  It was so tall and it looked like water was flowing hard into a lake.  We took some of nice pictures of us near the water falls.  Barbara liked to walk in the water but it was so cold!!  It was not long staying there.

 We went to back to WSD (Washington School for the Deaf).  All of us except teachers were cooking for dinner.  We cooked spaghetti and made salad.  Richie is the boss of us.  I cooked meatballs and I am a good cook!!  Then we had a nice dinner and chatted together.  The teachers told us that we will be going to get desserts and it is ice cream after we type our journals!!  I had to do my journal then I have to do log stuff.  AND I AM SURE WE HAD A GOOD AND GREAT DAY!  WE ALSO LEARNED A LOT OF NEW INFORMATION!

OTR Second Day

All I have to say is today was an amazing day and I enjoyed myself. This morning I woke up at 7am, making my own breakfast. I ate Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal and after that I was getting ready to pack something what I need to bring to Bonneville Lock and Dam and we were ready to GO!

First, we went to Bonneville Lock and Dam. It is actually huge and beautiful place to see so many things there. I have learned so many new things explained by the Ranger Jon who works there. By the way, Angelina, Jessica and I have our own responsibility today to be the “Visual Journalists”. That means we are required to take lots of pictures and the video camera to show what we see there and what that place has. The boys group, Richie, Jon and Mike, are the “Journalists”; asking some questions needed to get some information from Ranger Jon. He also showed us so many things like the 8 generators. Ranger Jon explained to us of how it works and when was it built. It actually was built in 1930’s. Also we learned it took 10 years to complete those 8 generators (that is way too long!) He explained a variety of information about these generators. They are used to run the electricity for buildings and houses in the towns in the area.

After we were done seeing the those generators, we went to the special room that the people could see a lot of fish swimming around and fighting to swim hard to be able to get up the fish ladder. But before that, Ranger Jon explained to us that the fish come through the locks and dam area. He explained how the fish are able to be safe by traveling through one special huge tube that lets the fish go in and “ride” to get out and be free until  they are ready to swim back to where they were born and die in that place. They have to swim back and of course they struggle to go back through the fish ladder. That part is very interesting to me. The fish ladder is pretty big and I’ve seen the fish struggle to swim back off the fish ladder but it was cool to see it.

At noon, we ate our lunch (sandwich food with chips, bananas, Snapple drinks and water bottle as well.) At the same time, it is Noon Picture Time; Angelina, Jessica and I took some pictures of us eating our food and with Ranger John too, which was pretty cool.

When we were done with our lunch, we enjoyed walked around to see outside, the river, fish ladder and then we were gone to see the beautiful waterfalls. Barbara kept driving around and let us see lots of beautiful trees, several waterfalls and finally we arrived to the CrownVista House which is on the top of the mountain. We stayed there for awhile and it has been wonderful and very enjoyable day for us!

When we done at that place, we went back to the WSD dorm. Angelina, Jessica and I were helping Richie to make the dinner; Ziti with meatballs, salad and homemade garlic bread. Wow, I have to say Richie did a wonderful job to make this dinner so delicious!

Journal day 2:

Wow what an amazing and exciting day we had today! We went to the Bonneville Lock and Dam. It was huge but not big compared to the Hoover Dam.

Well, first I woke up at 7 AM and got ready to eat breakfast. For breakfast I had Honey Nut Cheerios. We made our lunches and then we all waited until it was time to drive to Bonneville to see the dam. We left about 9:30. On the way Jessica noticed that the symbol meaning route in CT is different here…here they use George Washington’s face to show that it is a route. It was really interesting; we got a picture of it after like 10 tries. Jessica and I went crazy trying to get the picture. But we got it heeheehee!

When we got there, it was exactly 10:00 the time that we were supposed to meet the ranger that was giving us the tour. His name was Jonathan and he grew up and lived in Boston, Mass. then he moved to Washington six years ago. Before he moved and started working at the dam he was in the Navy.

Anyway, when we got there the staff had to use the restroom so we waited until they were done, and then he explained to us about the different parts in the dam and the history of when it was built. Originally, there was only one island and two dams built in the 1930’s. Finally, in 1972 to 1982 the third and second island was built. The second island was man made. They had to dig out the land but leaving a little so the water won’t run through. When they were finished, they dug out the rest of the land and let the water run through.

After he finished explaining most of the history, we went to see the fish ladder. It was so cool and interesting to see what the fish had to climb to go upstream. When he talked briefly about that, we went to see the generators and how they worked. They had 8 generators that stayed on all the time and did everything automatically. They can do from 500 to 1000 megawatts and that can give full electricity to 500,000 homes. We went to see one up close and boy were they huge! It was amazing!

When we finished with the generators, we went to look more closely at the fish ladders, then we went to see what it was like under the water in the fish ladder. It was amazing to see all the fish: Sockeye Salmon, Chinook Salmon, Coho Salmon, Lampreys, Steelhead, American Shad, and White Sturgeon swimming upstream.

After watching them for a while, it was noon so we had to take out noon picture. We took the picture in front of the underwater fish ladder so you can see what it looks like underwater. At fish ladder, we can watch the fish all day and it is “better” than TV, it is so fascinating. After we took the picture, we all ate our lunches. Then when we were finished with that we went to look at the Native American section of the dam.

After that we left the dam, we went to look at the Horsetail Waterfall…it was sooooooo beautiful! I loved it! I love all waterfalls! We stayed there for about 15 minutes and then we went to this house called Vista House. We looked around and looked in the gift shop…I bought more postcards and necklace that had the symbol of the raven.

After that we came back to the cottage that we are staying in and cooked dinner. For dinner we had ziti with meatballs and salad. Now we are typing in out journals telling you about our day. Well that is all that I have to say about today...until tomorrow, GOOD BYE!