Two nights ago, I found myself in the world of dreams. This hasn't happened for quite a while. In fact, I can't recall having any dreams since I got out of school.

I was at school and we were going on a field trip. We got onto a bus - but it was no ordinary bus. The interior was more spacious than your ordinary school bus, and the seats, instead of being lined up in two columns, were against the walls. We had chosen where we would sit beforehand by marking places on a chart. I had gotten the direction mixed up and sat at the right edge of a black bench at the back of the bus. I was supposed to sit on the left side, where two friends were. But since the bus was moving and I thought it would be troublesome to ask everyone to scoot over a bit so I could take my rightful place, I decided to remain where I was.

Then I noticed one of my friends was taking a picture of me using a device. I'm not sure how I knew, but I knew it was a camera. It looked very strange, with yellowish-orange and black colors.

Eventually we got off the bus and arrived at a place that seemed to be a recreational center. We all went to a room that looked very much like my language arts classroom. The teacher said to get our sleeping bags ready for later. I realized with a jolt that I had seen "sleeping bag" on the recommended items for the trip, but I had deemed it unnecessary and forgotten about it. I hadn't expected us to actually have naptime on the trip.

Then I left the classroom and began walking around. I recall walking on a grassy hill, and I think there were some fenceposts here and there. I eventually decided to go the bathroom. I saw someone I knew there. When I was exiting the bathroom, I went out the wrong door and found myself facing a swimming pool. There was a banner of some sort put up near it. The girl that I knew came out that way too. I was going to go back into the bathroom and exit through the correct door, but she said, "You can just walk around to the front." So that's what I did.

I don't remember much else of the dream. I think I had woken up from it by then. But I do recall having seen one other person in that dream - probably while I had been walking around the grassy hill. I've seen that person in another dream, too. It's been a long time since I've been able to talk to that person. I wish we could be friends again. Like we used to be.

Labels: bathroom, bus, camera, classroom, door, dream, field trip, friends, past, people, recreational center, school, sleeping bag, summer, swimming pool

I thought up this title because I've had a lot of dreams and would like to write them down before I forget them. Perhaps I should keep a diary of sorts, except of my dreams, not daily life. (But I won't make this an official dream diary, because I do want to talk about other things here, and I usually don't remember my dreams...Except for recently) Whenever I hear the name Dreamland I feel like it sounds familiar and that's because I used to play an online multiplayer game called Toontown.

I kind of miss playing Toontown. When I was younger, quite a few years back, you could get a free trial, and you could go to the other lands. You can never get very far with a free trial since it's only like 3 or 4 days but at least you could see the other neighborhoods (there are many different places you can go in the game). But then they changed it so you have to subscribe to go to the other lands. I decided to subscribe during the summertimes. I actually got quite far on one of my accounts and I'm proud of it. But I didn't subscribe this year and I feel strange not having played it. (I know I wouldn't have had much to do in the game besides maybe fight the really tough bosses, but just nostalgia, you know?)

Anyhow, on to the dreams, since they are already starting to slip from my mind. I'll go in chronological order (as in, when they happened). They did not happen in the same day, mind you.

- The first one was that I was at a pool. It's not like most swimming pools you'd ever see. It was indoor, except the walls were high and they were held up by columns. The pool was sort of like a lot of rectangles stuck together which made it look like a blocky zigzag, I guess. My mom and I were swimming in it and we were wearing wetsuits and snorkels and things like that. She and I had split up and I had swam deeper in the water to go into what I thought was probably a tunnel somewhere but it was just a dead end pretty soon. So I swam out of it and was going to go to the other side of the pool, but a shark was blocking my way. It swam back and forth in a straight line like those video game enemies you sometimes see. It noticed me and started turning around in a tight circle, watching me. I thought it was going to attack so I began back paddling furiously. The shark was going to lunge as I was pulling myself out of the water. (Luckily the dream ended because probably I would've had my legs stuck in a shark's mouth...Whoa.)

- The second one was quite short and simple. I was taking my vitamins and I was only supposed to take two of each kind but I started eating too many of them, so I overdosed on vitamins. It was freaky. At least I think it was an accident in the dream and I wasn't trying to kill myself.

- The third one was just last night, in fact. I was probably younger than I am now because I was on a trip led by my fifth grade teacher, Mr. Blaker. But the people with me were not necessarily the people who were in my class then. Just some random folks, some from the YMCA daycares, or from middle school, or something. So we were on a field trip to Los Angeles. There was a small bay there and we were on a huge white ship. (I don't know if Los Angeles actually has a bay, but in the dream someone said it was Los Angeles) All us kids got on some swim suits, life jackets, swimming goggles, that sort of thing. We went swimming in the bay. I don't know if the water was cold, but it was very clean and blue. And there were a bunch of white sailboats and fishing boats and stuff docked. You could see some tall buildings but not as much as you would expect from a big city, and the sky was quite clear. Eventually we stopped swimming and went up on the ship for a while, but then we were given the option to swim one more time if we wanted to before leaving Los Angeles. So I went down this ladder (it was quite a short one, I mean, you could jump from level to level if you wanted), and that area of the ship was really crowded what with people running about talking or going down and up the ladders. So I put on my gear again and I was going to go swim but it turned out that the only way down to the water this time was climbing! You had to climb down this tall, squishy sort of blown up thing. It sort of resembled the weird things you sometimes see at car dealers, you know, the long squishy ones that flop in the wind. I climbed down it carefully and I thought I was going to fall off because of my weight, but no, I didn't. Sometimes I had to climb onto a blown up dolphin, and I don't know what that was for... Eventually I got all the way down and swam for a while before going back up. There, a guy (whom I actually recognize as someone who goes to my school currently) showed us his bookmark collection, which had various quotes written on them. He took out a book as well, a small white one which I mistook for The Mysterious Edge of the Heroic World by E. L. Konigsburg but it wasn't. Mr. Blaker took the book from the guy, found a page, and started reading. The story was set in the medieval times. There had been a legend, which I don't remember clearly, but it involved some important holy man who walked up some stairs and his key got tangled around his legs (maybe the key was on a chain or something). A man walked up some stairs and this happened. He had been invited to the home of two people who wanted him to marry their daughter, and he didn't want to get married but he thought he should be polite. Anyhow, the people who invited him gasped upon seeing that the key got tangled around him. I don't remember more since I had woken up by that point. (What a complicated dream! One of my longer ones.)

Labels: bay, bookmark, books, danger, dream, dreamland, field trip, key, legend, los angeles, neighborhood, online, overdose, shark, ship, summer, swim, swimming pool, toontown, vitamins

*WARNING! POSSIBLY LONG POST!*

That's rather blunt, and it might hurt people's feelings, but it was true. For me anyway. We went to the Tech Museum of Innovation. The first bad thing is that I've already been there so many times, most of the exhibits, I'm already familiar with. It was just the temporary exhibit about Leonardo da Vinci that made us even visit the museum, I think.

All seems to be going well in the beginning, but then when we're walking to the buses, I feel like jumping onto the wooden benches and walking on those instead. Bad move, because one of the teachers doesn't like that. (Actually, last year, when I didn't walk home, I walked on top of the benches. No one caught me) Feeling subdued, I board my bus, but it's really crowded and we have to squish three mostly-still-growing kids onto each seat. The students all talk a lot. Loudly. Even though the teachers stand up to yell at them, as soon as the teachers sit down again, the kiddos return to their jabbering.

I feel more hopeful when the museum actually comes into sight, but after we get off the buses, it turns out things need to be settled (like whether everyone needs the special tickets for the IMAX movie we're going to watch or if just the chaperones need them, for example). So we have to wait outside in the cold watching cars go by until we get let in. Since we're not the only school there, it's pretty crowded in the museum. I end up watching other people make virtual roller coasters until it's time for the IMAX movie. That was one of the better parts, except it made me a bit dizzy. The movie was called Adrenaline Rush and it was about how people like to take risks and such. Mostly we looked at people skydiving or jumping off cliffs. Pretty nice view, but my head hurt from it. And I couldn't look down, since I would just see the rows and rows of seats below me. When I'm in an IMAX theater, I feel like I'm going to fall down and tumble over the seats until I die.

Lunch was okay but I was really thirsty so I had to go to the bathroom to use the water fountains there. The men's and women's restrooms both have fountains, but the women's fountains don't work very well, since the water doesn't shoot as high as the men's. So I ended up drinking from the mens' water fountains since they work far better.

It turns out we ARE allowed to visit the museum gift shop after all. I was really upset because I thought we weren't going to go and ending up leaving my cash back at home. I just looked around until it was time for lunch to end. Ms. Crowe, who was supposedly our chaperone, put R in charge of us. I managed to keep not too far from him to try and not get lost for the first minute or two, but when I was looking at an experiment he went off somewhere. I tried to find the rest of my group but was only able to locate two girls in my group. I couldn't find Ms. Crowe either, so I just paced restlessly back and forth for a while before I found friends who were in other groups. I wandered around with one of my friends for a while and then struck out on my own.

Since I hadn't visited the Renaissance Gallery (a special exhibit, related to Leonardo da Vinci, I'm sure) and had nothing to do, I managed to spot one of my other friends. Unfortunately, she was not having fun either, because she lost her camera. She was fretting about it, so she, her friend, her Language Arts teacher, and I began searching for it. But we didn't find it, so I decided to leave her to go find my group. Luckily, they were waiting by the trash cans in the "lunch area", and at last we were all reunited.

I was glad that the day was over, up until I realized the bus was late while we were lingering on the outside of the museum. My feet started hurting from standing so I just ate sour Skittles from one of my friends and tried using magic to summon the bus. No such luck at first. A rather odd boy (who happens to be my mom's friend's son) was collecting name tags, so I gave him mine. Finally the bus came and we got to go back to school, but by then school had been out for quite a while. I was really upset at being late and I rushed to the classroom to pick up the backpack I had brought (even though it turns out I wasn't going to need it).

Not only was the teacher shocked that we had even brought our bags, but once I finally packed up everything and left the classroom in all haste, the school was even more deserted than before. (Still the odd folk here and there, and some cars in the parking lot, but that was it. No afterschool rush anymore.) I walked home without seeing my grandma the whole time. It's nice to be alone, but that was really strange. When I got home, she said she had panicked when I didn't come (even after she saw three buses come and go; I was on the last bus to come back) and quickly went back to my house to call my mom. I was frustrated because she started scolding me (she said "It was the school's fault, right?" but she sounded like she still blamed me) and called my mom to complain.

It's good that tomorrow is the only other school day this week. The rest of the week, I'll be gone to Las Vegas. I probably won't get to use the Internet during that time, so don't expect me to post for a while.

Labels: family, field trip, school, vacation

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