3-30-08 Are We There Yet?

My day started out pretty well. I woke up and went about my business, doing last minute packing and running errands. Then I suddenly found myself getting ready to leave my house. Homesickness washed over me as I realized that I wouldn’t see my house for 22 days. I gave my sister and kitten a hug good-bye and gathered up all my stuff and left for the airport. When we arrived at the airport only Jacob was there. After a couple of quick calls everyone was where they were supposed to be and ready to roll. I gave my mom one last hug and we parted. The security wasn’t too bad, but everyone went into different lines so it took us a while to find each other. We had about 30 minutes to blow off so Sydney, Jacob, and me went off in search of a smoothie place. Luckily we found one, but to our dismay it didn’t’ have any more fruit. By then we only had about ten minutes left and the other smoothie place was on the opposite side of the airport so we were not going to give up. But after we got our delicious smoothies we realized that we only had five minutes to get to the gate! So jogging at a somewhat speedy pace, we made it to the gate and got onto the plane.  We successfully made it to our destination and thankfully it was a pretty easygoing plane ride. After watching a couple of movies and doing a little bit of homework, our plane began to descend into New Jersey.  The lights made the city look like a starry sky from the plane. Just before we landed, Tim and I began to make polite conversation with a gentleman next to us. As it turned out he worked for Microsoft and was there for business. Also he had a wicked British accent.   It was about 11:45 pm when we left the airport. We rented an Explorer from Hertz and uncomfortably all filed into it. We only stopped once for a bathroom break and snacks and the rest was all driving. It was actually quite funny because we had a GPS monitor that was giving us directions to our hotel. As a tradition we named the GPS - Samantha. When we would drift off to sleep, we would be woken up by “Please take a left on…” and we would all yell shut up! After a long ride in which we went through 3 states, we finally arrived at the hotel. We each barely made it to our rooms. It was like sleepwalking. All I really remember was tossing my pajamas on, brushing my teeth, and hitting the bed.