um
what have been some well i'll start out with some of my my vacations um
okay
um when i graduated from high school um my uh band my jazz band and we visited Europe i visited Germany and Austria um Italy
uh Switzerland
and that was pretty fun i also have visited South America
and just this last summer one of my favorite vacations is i went to China
oh boy you're a real world traveler here
so uh i i we my wife and i when we went to China we visited the Great Wall and uh the Forbidden City
um
the Forbidden City is uh right there Tiananmen Square is right in front of it and so that's where all the
killings occurred not too long couple years ago and uh also the Forbidden City if you saw what was that one movie that was really famous
all right
oh yeah um emperor or yeah
uh
The Last Emperor yeah that was filmed in the Forbidden City so we had to see that when we went anyway
yeah that was a
well my wife and i are right now saving for a trip to to England
oh that sounds fun
we would like to stay about a month uh
you'll need to save for that unless you have some friends there you're going to stay with because
well we do have some friends that we can stay at their place for a while or as long as we want actually but it's you know it's in the southern part so but we want us to go all over the countryside
that's our next big vacation we've got planned and just a few days in the London itself is all we're interested in there
but mostly to this date uh our vacations have been more like uh anywhere where there's not too many tourists
uh-huh
i hate resorts
and things like that i like to go where you can get out by yourself in the mountains done a lot of camping in New Mexico and uh Colorado
uh-huh
and one time we even toured Iowa my wife is from Iowa
but actually the southern part and uh she'd never really seen a lot of the different northern places and just the lot of the little towns and so we drove around went to the Humana Colonies things like that
uh-huh yeah they're not too far from here
we really i think she enjoyed it a a lot because she knew more of the history than course than i did of Iowa but
it was uh it was interesting
uh-huh
here in Texas we live in the middle of Texas it's hard to get out of Texas on a driving trip
yeah got to go a long ways uh yeah we also don't like to particularly go to tourist spots fact we usually choose to go places where
we at least for part of our trip will be visiting someone and uh even when my wife is well
and my graduate program that i was in we knew some people who were in Beijing
and so uh
we were able to stay with them for part of the time in fact they spoke English very well and and helped us around to see some of the places
and even when we went to South America uh
uh
we knew there were people contacts we had there
yeah
so
uh
but most people that i that i uh met you know at the university and so uh
it makes a big difference to us we like to go for go on a trip with someone who's from the area because i don't know i've i'm afraid especially if i don't know the language
right we had had a we went to Mexico City once by ourselves
uh mainly because it was just something we could afford to do and
we heard it was interesting well we just had a real awful time because we didn't speak Spanish i don't think that would have helped us any anyway
it was just a miserable vacation and we decided you know we'll never go anywhere where they don't speak English or somebody that can't help us
uh-huh
it was by the end of that week we felt like everybody was out to get us
uh-huh
and that sort of thing and we weren't having the fun we thought we would
yeah
it really makes a difference because i know even when we went to China when we crossed the border we went over to Hong Kong we were so relieved it was so fun to be uh
you know it seemed like returning to civilization and where a lot of people spoke English and uh just the general living conditions were were somewhat higher also so it was uh
yeah
yeah
our last
major vacation was uh well we had to go to Iowa to see some relatives because sickness in the family so we took that in for a few days and then we went to a uh
to a Shaker settlement in Kentucky
and uh it's a it's been rebuilt and we stayed there for three days and it was just kind of neat because we really like Shaker things and we were able to take our dog with us and he stayed with us and
it was just the thrill of our life to it was early fall and Kentucky was beautiful that time of the year anyway
