Day Three..Yippee!

Today was our San Francisco City Tour. It was great! A four-hour coach tour of the complete city. Our guide was Nicole who is the OSC or On-Site Coordinator of ITMI. She is a wonderful tour guide and a great example for us to emulate. Most of us couldn't imagine being that knowledgable about the tours we will be leading. But she has done it many times and so has had lots of practice. San Francisco is a beautiful city with a rich history and seeing it with someone who had so much knowledge and a flair for description made it all the more fascinating.

To add to the color of the day we had an experience that demonstrated one of the concepts we had already learned...that is, that unexpected things happen on tour and part of the tour directors job is to figure out how to deal with them. We were heading for the Golden Gate Park
http://tinyurl.com/4v9o8, when Al, the coach driver was making a hairpin turn on a narrow street and there was a car illegally parked on the right side at the curve. Most of the bus got thru but when Al realized he wasn't going to make it without taking out the back rear quarter of the car about 5 or six of my classmates got off the bus and literally picked up the car and moved it over about 6 inches so the bus could pass thru. I got out of the bus too, but not to pick up the car...to take the picture!
It's one of those things that makes a trip even more memorable.

After lunch (seafood bisque in a sourdough breadbowl) at Pier 39, http://tinyurl.com/65kfyn, the second half of the day was a repeat of the same tour, except Nicole sat this one out and we each took a turn in the tour guide's seat. The hardest thing about this was not knowing what the hell we were supposed to be describing. So there were some pretty funny improvisations. We were told that it wasn't as important that we didn't remember what to say but how we handled the microphone and moving around a moving bus without killing ourselves or the other passengers.
Well, I haven't been expelled from school yet so I guess I did ok.

After the tour was over, I went to Chinatown with Emily, one of my classmates from MI and then to a sushi restaurant to gain strength to make it back up the hill to do my homework.

More to come...