From Luxury to Lingering

I was starting to think that this trip was not going to start off nice for me. This foreboding came from a problem with blogging the night before on my new laptop. I was worried that I would not be able to blog for the trip because my computer refused to let me post anything on Blogger. After an emergency trip to my house by Don Gosney at 11:30 or so last night, we figured out the problem: Internet Explorer. From now on, Google Chrome will be my source of internet in order for me to blog. All is well.

After a mere three hours of sleep, it was time to get up and get ready to meet at El Cerrito High School. Don weighed our luggage and gave us the borrower items we needed for the trip. Before we said our goodbyes to our parents, our ride to the airport arrived. No, it was not a large, bulky van like we expected. It was a luxurious, white limousine. We would be riding to the airport in style.

It was surprising how many people were flying out of SFO on United just like us. It makes me wonder where they’re all going, and what their story is. Though the check-in lines were a bit lengthy, going through airport security was quick, and I set off no alarms this time.

After a breakfast of Burger King, it was time to board the plane. All four of us sat in different rows, each granted with the pleasure of a glorious view from a window seat. However, the one flaw with that seating arrangement that Julia learned, was trying to leave your seat for a bathroom break. Since I didn’t have much time to sleep the night before, I was out in a heartbeat when I sat down in my seat, and didn’t wake up for a couple of hours. I honestly don’t even remember taking off.

Because we had a connecting flight to Atlanta after our arrival in Chicago, we tried our best to reach our next gate in time. However, there was no need to rush. We could’ve crawled on our hands and knees with all of our heavy luggage, and we still would have made it to the gate before our plane took off. We were supposed to leave around four, but our plane was delayed about an hour and a half because of a broken air conditioning system in the plane. As we sat, we talked to a business man waiting for the same plane. When we told him about the colleges we would be visiting, he congratulated us on our successes, and added in that he loves Georgia Tech (which we’re visiting tomorrow). Julia and I decided to pass the time by trying our her new transportable toothbrushes called Wisps.

Stepping off the plane at the huge airport in Atlanta, I was ecstatic. We are finally here. Our trip has finally begun! Driving around in our new rental car, staring and squinting at the buildings in the dark, trying to spot our hotel was an interesting experience. What’s cool about our hotel is that it’s attached to the CNN center, so there are newscaster signs and CNN logos everywhere. I hope we can tour the center before we leave Atlanta. We think we also saw Emory and Oxford colleges from the car. I thought it was strange to see them in downtown Atlanta, and not set to the side in a sort of suburban or less populated area. But we’ll see what the campus looks like tomorrow morning on our tour.

Though the time difference here in Atlanta is only three hours off from the time back home, I am utterly exhausted. Even though I pretty much slept through 90 percent of all the air traveling we did today, I am ready to sleep and awaken to a day of college exploring tomorrow.