USA - III

This is the first year our high school has done an exchange trip with the United States of America, specifically with Boston and New York. The students of “bachillerato” travelled with our teachers Carmen and Beatriz. On the 9th of October we began our travel at Delicias Station where we took an AVE to Madrid. From Atocha Station we went to BarajasAirport to board the intercontinental plane to Boston. The flight lasted almost 8 hours. We arrived in Boston and a bus was waiting for us to go to Quincy, a small town near Boston, where we were going to meet our American families. They were waiting for us with a banner that said “Bienvenidos” and, after we all met, each Spanish student went with his or her family. We spent the weekend with them and some students went apple-picking, others carved pumpkins and we all enjoyed learning about the American culture.

Throughout the week we went to classes at QuincyHigh School and we visited Boston: we walked part of the Freedom Trail, a path through Boston which explains the history of the United States. We went shopping at Faneuil Hall, a marketplace in the city center, another day we saw Boston by land and by water with the Duck Tour, an amphibious vehicle, and we went to the top of the skywalk observatory. In Quincy we visited the city hall where the deputy mayor explained a little bit of the history of Quincy to us.

QuincyHigh School was immense and it had a lot of rooms for interesting subjects such as drama, choir and orchestra. They also had an enormous auditorium where the whole high school could fit in. Every morning after the pledge of allegiance the high school broadcasted the news and interviews made by the students.

The second weekend we went with our American friends to a school football match. The following Monday we went to Cambridge where we visited HarvardUniversity. As a farewell all the Americans and Spanish students had dinner at QuincyHigh School and some went to a Boston Celtics basketball game.

On Tuesday we began our trip to New York. That afternoon we went to Ellis Island, to the Statue of Liberty and Times Square where we had dinner at the Hard Rock Café. Afterwards we went to a hotel in New Jersey.  The next day we visited the Rockefeller centre, on the top of it we enjoyed the great views of the entire city of New York. We also went to Harlem, Central Park, we walked along the 5th Avenue and we had dinner at Forrest Gump’s restaurant “Bubba Gump”. On Thursday before we went to the airport we went shopping at Macy’s, we visited the American National Museum of Natural History, Central Station, Wall Street, the Empire State, the September 11th memorial and finally we crossed the BrooklynBridge.

The truth is that we were sad to leave but we will see our American friends in February. It has been a memorable trip that we will never forget.

                                                                                              MARÍA ITÚRBIDE, 2º Bachillerato