by AL, San Mateo
When I was in the 4th grade I had went on a field trip to the Oakland Zoo. The year before in 3rd grade, I couldn’t go because of my absurd behavior. Surprisingly I was actually able to go this time and it had actually turned out to be a fun experience.
My day had started like any other, I had woke up around 7:30 in the morning and started getting ready. I showered quickly and brushed my teeth and then got dressed and was out the door on my way to school. It normally took me about 20 minutes to get to school, and that was by walking. This time I had gotten to school on time and had about 10 minutes to eat breakfast at school. It’s crazy that I even remembered what I had to eat. It was a little box of mini-wheats with some milk and a yellow pack of some mini blueberry pancakes provided by the school. After I got done eating my breakfast I started walking to my class. Everybody was there already and there were two chaperones. We sat for a while and waited until they told us to line up. After 5 minutes we lined up and started walking towards the cafeteria so that we could pick up our lunch for the field trip which was a peanut butter jelly sandwich, chocolate TruMoo Milk, an orange, and some cheese and peanut butter crackers.
We then got on the bus after that and started going on our way. The ride over there took a light year, I felt like the bus would never stop. I remember that there was a lot of traffic that day. And the whole time I was just looking out the window, trying to find some nice cars, but I found none.
When we had finally arrived at our destination, we stretched and got off the bus. When everyone got off, my teacher started taking attendance to make sure everybody was there. Once we got settled down, we went inside the zoo to meet some zookeepers who were going to tell us about the zoo and also show us around. I remember that it was two young women and I’d say they were probably in their early twenties, and they were beautiful too. Anyways, after we all introduced ourselves, we were given name tags and then we started touring around the zoo. They had a lot of sections of various animals, my favorite ones were the gorillas.
That day was also my first time going to a zoo as I forgot to mention. I was taken aback by all the animals I was seeing. I got to see a lion, tiger, giraffe, tarantulas, various kinds of snakes, and also monkeys. Everyone got real scared when we got to the snake section. I seen all types of snakes, the one that I really liked was the anaconda. I had seen an anaconda in movies, but had never seen them in real life, them things were huge. And when we got to the tiger that’s when I got excited. When I saw the tiger it made me think of Scarface, when Tony Montana had a tiger in his backyard. The zookeepers told us not to try to put our fingers into the holes on the edge, and in my mind I was thinking “who’d be dumb enough to do that?” After we got done looking at the tiger, we went on to go look at an elephant. One was a baby and the other one was a female. They told us that their father had died earlier that year unfortunately.
By the time we got done looking at the elephants, it was time for lunch. We went to meet up with the other groups and started eating our lunch. When we got done after thirty minutes, we met up again with the zookeepers, who asked us if we wanted to see a show about animals. The show was stupid and I didn’t like it for some reason. The show went on for almost an hour.
Once it was over I asked my teacher if we could go see more animals and she asked me if I wanted to go to the gift shop. I told her I had no money, but she offered to buy me something. I declined at first, but I guess she really wanted to buy me something, so I went with it. At the gift shop they had stuffed animals, shirts of the zoo, toys, and other stuff. I had picked out a shirt with a lion that appeared to be in Africa and I also got a keychain that said Oakland Zoo on it.
(To be continued)