“The experience” (Story 1)

As I am told to get out of the car I see a large structure in front of me. As I walk with my family into this structure in front of me I see large steam forming, almost like a large cloud behind a glass. I am told by a representative at this structure that this is a natural hot spring or geyser that has formed. That’s right, no artificial heating. All of the steam from the water is natural from the earth’s core. This is said to be one of the most famous geysers in all of Japan. As I walked past the glass with my cousins and family the entire atmosphere changed. It was suddenly all hot and humid, like a tropical rainforest. As I walked closer and closer to the geyser I felt that hot steam touch my face, it was nothing I had ever experienced before. After inspecting the front of the geyser I decided to walk around it. While I was walking around the geyser the floor was wet as if it had rained that day. It was interesting to see and experience for the first time in my life. As I spent at least half an hour mesmerized by this I finally walked back to the tour bus amazed at what I had seen.

“The Ride up” (Story 2)

When I wake up in the morning in Taipei I realize that today is the day I go to a famous mountain in Taiwan. We first got into the car to go to the train station. As we get onto the train I fall asleep and when I wake up I’m at the other train station. It has been 2 hours. When I leave the train station I get into a car that is taking me to the Taiwan mountain known as Alishan. On the way there with the windy roads, I feel my stomach turning. The sensation of car sickness is one of the most painful things you experience. It’s not a fast pain that goes away fast but more like a slow pain that stays with you until you get to your destination. I ended up not throwing up but feeling extremely sick on the way there. When I reached the hotel I immediately checked into the room and waited for dinner. My family told me that we were going to see the view from the top of the hotel right before dinner. Not being very excited about views I still went anyway. When I reached the top of the hotel I saw the view and I was stunned.

“People take breaks in different ways” (Story 3)

I am at my grandma’s house in Fountain Valley. I am cramming in for a test the next day until I hear the sound of lightning. That sound of lighting reminded me that it was raining outside that day. I didn’t even notice because of how nervous and anxious I was for the test tomorrow. After studying for 3 hours I needed a break. I didn’t feel like playing video games because whenever I played I always got mad at a point in time that was the last thing I needed at the moment. So what I decided to do is to go outside and enjoy the rain. When I went outside I felt the cool air breeze touch my skin. It felt nice, not to mention the smell when it is raining, it is odd for me. For some reason every time I go outside during or after the rain there is always this certain smell that cools me down and just makes my worries go away… Intrigued, I went outside and just stood there. Probably for around 30 minutes. I needed a break. Now that I look back I’m not sure what made me stand out there in the same position just looking up at the clouds. That was the moment when I realized why I always liked and

“Exploration” (Story 4)

When I woke up from my 4th nap the tour bus came to a stop revealing our new hotel that we will be staying at. My family and cousins checked in and ate dinner while I and one of my cousins weren’t hungry and decided to chill in the room. We were pretty bored and he ended up asking me if we wanted to go walk around. Remembering the fact that we were in Japan it couldn’t hurt to see what this country has to offer compared to America. We got ready and went down the elevator. We started walking around the city of Kyoto and it was much more gray than we thought it would be. It wasn’t as bright as Tokyo but that isn’t stopping us from walking around. As we walked further and further the darker it became. We realized that we weren’t even in the city anymore. We weren’t sure what to do so I told my cousin to search for claw machine games nearby. At the moment I was obsessed with claw machines. I’m not 100% sure why but I think it might be because I am fascinated with winning prizes but still don’t know the reason to this day. My cousin found a place that we could go and it ended up being 2 miles away. It was getting late so we decided to run there. When we reached the destination and walked in it felt like heaven. SO MUCH GAMES TO PLAY I thought to myself while running around to see which game I wanted to play. The downside of going to this place was that it was getting late and I didn’t want to get scolded when arriving back in the room. We decided to play a few games and even won a few prizes. We sprinted back solely because of fear but I couldn’t run from the inevitable. We arrived back at around quarter past 11 and I knew what was going to happen.

“The walk” (Story 5)

While in the country of the cherry blossom and the home of the samurai and ninja when the tour bus finally came to a stop, I woke up and glared around me. I saw my cousins wake up at the same moment and looked back at me. We both knew we had to get out of the bus and walk around. When I stepped out of the bus I felt the cool wind and icy breeze touch my skin, it woke me up immediately and shocked me. But I was even more shocked to see where we were. As cold as I was I couldn’t feel it because of how much the location we were at shocked me. I gaze into the sky and locate beautiful rocks floating in a bed of water, similar to a rubber ducky in a bathtub. The view was nice enough that me and my cousins looked at each other and had the same feeling. Being in a perfect place to watch the sunset, it doesn’t get much better than this, I thought to myself.