Trip to the Beach

still on vacation till June 6th, but in the meantime here's another (Retrospection)

This was a "What I did during Summer Vacation" essay I wrote in 8th grade. Like most students, I hated these essays, partly because my family never seemed to do anything exciting. All my other classmates would write stories about trips to the Grand Canyon or Mexico or hiking expeditions. This was apparently the best story I thought I had from that summer:

"One day, during the summer, I went to the beach. My cousins, and my family also came along. We drove an hour to get there. We were going to park right by the beach, but the parking lot was full. We parked away from the beach, and had to walk one mile to get there.

At first everyone went swimming. Then gradually, one by one, we got out of the water.

We made a sancastle in the sand. First my sister made a pile of sand and then smoothed it out into a dome. Then one of my cousins dug a moat around it. Then while other people were adding other details, I made a little tunnel so the water in the moat could flow into the castle for the little sand people to drink. I got a little carried away, and before I knew it I had hollowed out the whole inside of the castle. Pretty sooon the castle caved in.

After a while we decided to bury my youngest sister in the sand. We buried all of her except her head. We kept on piling sand on her util she couldn't get out. We would have left her there but my mom made us dig her out.

After that we walked on the pier. Some people were jumping off of the pier and into the water. I wanted to, but my uncle wouldn't let me, and he was the only adult there.

We did a little more swimming, then we walked back to the car and went home.

Useless Wikipedia Fact
The Japanese refer to their country as "Nihon" or "Nippon". The English name "Japan" is believed to have been acquired by the Portuguese from southern Chinese languages via Malaya in the 16th century. In southern Chinese languages, the name of the country is pronounced as "Yih-pun" or "Yat-bun", which literally means Sun Origin, referring to the country's location on the east coast of Asia, an equivalence of Japanese "Nippon" in kanji. The name was exported to Southeast Asia through Chinese merchants. The earliest European form was Marco Polo's "Chipangu" which later became Japan.

Link of the Day
Shooting to Kill on the Border