New York Trip

Shawn and I went on a field trip to New York Yesterday. It was truly bittersweet. We arrived safely, after a very stressful 4 hour ride with a very questionable driver and bus. The first clue we had that he wasn't right was when he hit a toll booth in Baltimore on the way to New York. The various cars honking at him for swerving in and out of lanes was another clue. He could not see his mirrors, so when changing lanes he would either ask someone to look if the next lane was clear, or he wouldn't ask and he would just change lanes. He floated between two lanes and we finally asked him to pull off and check his bus' steering. He did, said that he fixed it and we went on. Things got progressively worse and we had to alert him just in time to the 18 wheeler he almost slammed into. We were all praying and when we made it to the ferry, we explained that we would not be getting back on that bus and would either need a new bus, or this one had to be fixed for the trip home. The first thing we did was take the ferry to Ellis Island. The National Park service has done an amazing job restoring Ellis Island and we learned so much about early immigration into the U.S. One of the things the kids were most anxious to do was see if they had relatives who entered the U.S. through Ellis Island. I did not prepare anything to research this, but I am very curious now myself. (I will be checking with Karena, who is an amazing family history researcher) The museum was so full of neat information that in three hours we only got through about 25% of it. I would love to go back and spend a lot more time there. We also saw Liberty Island. I am always filled with gratitude when I see Lady Liberty, but after visiting Ellis Island, and having been reminded of the early immigrant struggles to come to America, seeing the Statue of Liberty was especially meaningful. I love US History and am so thankful that we value our history enough to preserve important places, including Ellis Island. After getting off the Ferry from Lady Liberty, we were to re board the buses. After being told that our driver did not have a mechanic look at our bus, I became very nervous and distrustful of the driver and I asked how he thought we would all be safe riding with him on this bus, the driver's response was that we all had God on our side and God will protect us. I have Faith in God, and my faith tells me that God's grace will come into play after I have worked hard and made good choices, so me, and everyone else, opted to get on a different bus, sharing seats and squishing together. After a squishy, but safe, two hour ride, We stopped in Delaware, where the bus company sent us another, brand new bus. We were all relaxed and about to began our journey when our same, very unskilled driver, got on and continued to drive us. Since this was a new bus, we thought we would be ok. We began to feel the sudden jerks and swerving of the bus that we had felt earlier in the day and we were once again paralyzed with fear of not making it home safely. It became apparent to us that the driver was sleeping so one of the parents woke him by yelling and made him pull over...defiantly, he did so, on a bridge, on 95. At this point, we had had enough and we were left with one alternative...we had to make him start the bus again to get off the bridge, and we had to make him pull over at the next exit. We were nervous that if he started driving again he might defiantly keep going, putting us all in danger again. One dad stated to the driver that he was concerned for this bus full of kids..the driver retorted by saying that he wasn't concerned about the kids, he was concerned with himself. This dad made it clear to the driver that the driver was going to get to the next exit and pull over, the driver,with the help of this very big dad standing beside him, finally seemed willing to acknowledge that he was indeed putting everyone at risk and he did pull off at the next exit and we all got off the bus and waited until another driver was sent. We arrived back at the school about an hour and a half late, but in one piece.

UPDATE: the bus company sent out a very nice "we are sorry" letter to the community, they took full responsibility, and will personally screen and handpick any drivers who will be taking our school kids on field trips...I think we all feel a lot better!