On this Thursday, I might be having the worst vacation. I mean I did not go on vacation. I mean it’s complicated. This has been the week of everything going wrong. It seems as if Murphy was coming on vacation with us. It started when I got out of school a week ago. My mom and I were supposed to stay at a nice ranch in Ecuador. We would have an amazing vacation seeing volcanoes and the incredible city of Quito. Obviously this did not happen or else I would not be writing this.

It all started last Friday, at 5.00 AM (ick). I graduated from sixth grade the day before and felt so amazing. But Friday was not so amazing. Once we got to the airport ticket counter, the Copa Airlines officials said “You need to have six months till expiration date on your passport. Just go downtown and you can make it to the next flight.” Sounds easy, right? (My mom said shame on Copa Airlines for not checking passport dates when she booked the reservation.) So after going all the way downtown, we first went to the wrong building (the passport office had moved) and then had to go to yet another building to get a photo.

We got in a giant line. After thirty minutes, they told us we had to go back to the end of the line because we had the wrong form. (Give me a break!) We decided to just go back to our house and search for a new vacation. After looking at several places, like Barcelona and Havana, we realized it would be too expensive to go anywhere in the world last minute that was cheap and did not need six months on your passport.

The next day was no vacation either. After searching thoroughly for two days, nothing worked. The vacation was just beginning to be ordinary summer days. I did a lot of my math homework (meaning almost half in the first few days!) and read a lot, but nothing else really happened. During the rest of the vacation, almost every restaurant we went to did not have the best food. Nothing went right until we went to Starved Rock State Park.

On our 2.5-hour drive to go to Starved Rock, we took the doors and top off the Jeep so the wind was blowing all around. It made the ninety degree weather seem cold. After our bizarre ride, we went on a 15-mile hike that day. The hike was not too bad at first but became tiring at the halfway point. (It was tiring mainly because of the weather and walking up a lot of stairs!). We saw two snakes (they freak me out!) and after walking past them, I realized that they are not so bad. So, after the long hike, and drinking warm water, we finally had cold water and freezing Gatorade that tasted amazing in the warm weather. The trip was probably the best thing on the vacation because it felt like we were actually on vacation.

The rest of the vacation was not as exciting as that one day. I finished two books, 1984 and Animal Farm, which had very interesting messages, and read about sixty pages a day. I even finished my summer math packet. (Yes, all 30 pages.) The last day I went to a concert in Millennium Park. We listened to some sort of jazz songs and I had fun.

Although we had a few good days, I realize that it would have been a lot better to spend my vacation in Ecuador. But, the vacation was not wasted. I still had fun, and I had a lot done that I wanted to. I still went to some nice places in Illinois.