Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Greetings From Providence

Today was the day. The one we’ve all been waiting for. Our group met at 3:30 AM in front of El Cerrito High School to take a shuttle bus to the Oakland Airport. After I woke up from three hours of sleep, my mother drove me down to the school. Everyone had already arrived with their belongings. To my surprise, everyone, even I, was wide awake. There were no drooping eyes in sight. I grabbed my loaner items from Don’s table of everything, and Don weighed my suitcase to make sure it wasn’t over 50 pounds. I was a bit nervous because to me, it felt really heavy. I guess I’m just weak because my luggage weighed only 39 pounds, the second lightest of the bunch right after Erinn’s 37 pounder. Don gathered us around and gave us a list of contacts and the combination for our laptop security cables. As always, we took a group picture before we left. We then said our goodbyes and hugged our parents. I won’t see my mother for more than a month. I sure will miss her cooking—and her of course. Our shuttle left at around 3:45 AM, 15 minutes earlier than expected because we were all on time. I’m so proud of us.
To sum up our plane trip: it was tiring and tedious, or arduous, like Andrew would say. Personally, I despise airplanes. I have the tendency to get air sick, an extreme misfortune if I want to go to college on the East Coast. I appeased my air sickness by sleeping most of the time. I could never read or even do homework on an airplane like the other four did. We transferred at the Chicago Airport, where we rushed to grab lunch and board the airplane once again. When we landed in Providence, it hit me that after months of planning, we were finally here, in Rhode Island, ready for an experience of a lifetime.
The hotel we are staying at for five days, Hotel Providence, is nicely adorned and has great service. I share a room—a suite actually—with Erin and Erinn. Erinn won the fight for the pullout sofa bed and left me and Erin with the two regular beds. We dropped off our belongings and headed out to dinner. We went to a local restaurant near the hotel called Local 121. We sat around a comfortable round table and enjoyed “locally harvested food and drink”. My cumin flavored carrot puree with cilantro infused sour cream really hit the spot. The dinner was a great way to wind down from an exhausting day.
Right now, we’re sitting in our room working on our blogs while watching “The Voice”. Since we are experiencing trouble with Wi-Fi, only one person can connect to the Internet at a time using the sole Ethernet cable. We’ll turn in soon to get ready for the long day ahead of us tomorrow.












2 comments:

  1. Kathleen,

    HA! Double HA!

    How many of you said to yourself that Don was full of c**p? How many of you told each other that carrying around that Ethernet cable was a waste of your efforts? And now you're fighting over who gets to plug theirs in and connect to the Internet. The next thing you know you'll be laughing when I offer to loan you a switch or a router so you can all work at the same time. You know, of course, that just like all of the other goodies I have those to loan out as well.

    I've been reading all night about Local 121 and it sounded like a nice place to eat. The you described that carrot puree stuff and it sounded too much like new age baby food and you really put me off my feed. My stomach's still churning.

    Sorry about the flights and your inability to properly relax. My body is so large and the seats are so small that it really is uncomfortable for me to cram myself into those seats. Even for a commute run down to LA it's uncomfortable but for a flight across the country I'm afraid that I'd be bouncing off of the walls. Not a pretty sight, Kathleen.

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  2. Oh, internet problems. They can be a giant pain when you're trying to post your blog and get to bed. Always listen to Don, especially when he gives you advice about technology!

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