[speaker001:] um what have been some well I'll start out with some of my my vacations um
[speaker002:] okay
[speaker001:] 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
[speaker002:] oh boy you're a real world traveler here
[speaker001:] 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
[speaker002:] all right oh yeah um emperor or yeah
[speaker001:] uh The Last Emperor yeah that was filmed in the Forbidden City so we had to see that when we went anyway
[speaker002:] yeah that was a well my wife and I are right now saving for a trip to to England
[speaker001:] oh that sounds fun
[speaker002:] we would like to stay about a month uh
[speaker001:] you'll need to save for that unless you have some friends there you're going to stay with because
[speaker002:] 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
[speaker001:] uh-huh
[speaker002:] 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
[speaker001:] uh-huh
[speaker002:] 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
[speaker001:] uh-huh yeah they're not too far from here
[speaker002:] 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
[speaker001:] uh-huh
[speaker002:] here in Texas we live in the middle of Texas it's hard to get out of Texas on a driving trip
[speaker001:] 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
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] 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
[speaker002:] 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
[speaker001:] uh-huh
[speaker002:] it was by the end of that week we felt like everybody was out to get us
[speaker001:] uh-huh
[speaker002:] and that sort of thing and we weren't having the fun we thought we would
[speaker001:] 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
[speaker002:] 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