Christmas boats

Hi kids!

We spent today in Charleston, South Carolina, where were fired the
first shots of the great rebellion. We got off the boat and walked to
a mail box so Angel Jen could mail some letters. She writes long
letters to her mother about where we are and what we are doing (so
she'll have plenty of evidence against me if she needs it, she says).
We walked all over town looking in shops. We didn't find anything we
liked. Then we walked to a college library to do our Christmas
shopping. We took our lap top computer along, jived some computer geek
into letting us on their wireless network and shopped online. Man, do
we ever love the Internet!

It felt so good to take a walk! We had been on the boat for over a
week. On the boat you can only go a few feet in any direction before
you run out of room. We walked for MILES!

The houses down here in Charleston are grand. They are really big, old
and have huge porches. The porches are because in the summer it's so
hot people don't want to be in the house. They want to sit put on the
porch and have a mint Julip and watch the neighbors. They don't just
have one porch. They have a porch for the first floor, another on top
of that for the second floor and another on top of that for the third
story, all with big columns. Very nice.

They have palm trees, too! We were surprised.

When we came back to the boat we took our dinghy out through all the
boats in the harbor and we saw this boat all decorated for Christmas.
I took a picture because I thought it looked nice. I love Christmas. I
love the decorations. I love the shopping. And I especially love
singing along with the Christmas music. My singing is really good. It
cheers people up. And it gives them energy. At least whenever I start
singing along with the Christmas music, Angel Jen gets extra energy
and starts walking really fast. Sometimes so fast it's hard to keep up
with her.

Well kids, you be good and listen to the teacher because1) she's
always right and B) if you shut up and listen you just might learn
something.