Sunday, July 20, 2014

Finding Nemow

"Nemow" at El Cerrito High School
For some reason, my alarm didn’t go off this morning for 1:30 AM. If my dad hadn’t woken up at 2:30 AM, I would have missed my flight. Unexpectedly, there was enough time for me to eat and to arrive at El Cerrito High School before 3 AM. 


When I arrived, I noticed that most of the girls for Women and Leadership were already there. Don gave me name tags with my name and phone number for our bags and weighed my check-in bag. My check-in bag came out to 32 pounds, which doesn’t exceed the maximum 50 pounds that we are allowed to take. 

Then, Don reminded us about the rules that he went over in the past six months and passed out snacks for us to take to our trip. Jenny made each of us little goody bags with sweets that she bought during her Columbia trip this summer. We took pictures at the school and started putting our luggage into the shuttle bus until we realized that the bus was too small for the ten of us. Guantanamo Don was mad because only nine of us fit in the shuttle bus when we ordered a bus for 10 people. No worries. Don kindly offered to bring Jenny, our chaperone, and the rest of our luggage to the airport. 


It seemed like saying good-bye for the last time was the most difficult for our parents because they kept coming to the bus to take pictures. The bus was pretty chilly because of the air conditioner but it woke us all up from our sleep. In the bus, Thao told us about the group name that she came up with, “Nemow.” Women spelled backwards in Nemow. All of us liked the idea and decided that’s what we want to call ourselves from now on.
Checking in our bags at the SF Airport
The pretty view from inside the airplane



Once we all got to the San Francisco airport, we said our goodbyes to Don and weighed our check-in bags. I realized that I left my wallet hanging on my check-in bag after they took the bag. A very friendly and kind worker went to the back to look for my wallet. When he came back, he looked upset so I thought he couldn’t find my wallet. But he was only kidding and handed the wallet back to me. When we were getting our bags checked, some of us had TSA PRE written on our boarding pass, including me. The ones with TSA PRE went into a much simpler examination of our bags and body. At the airport, Jenny bought us ham and cheese sandwich and Peet’s Coffee. As soon as we got off the plane at Chicago, we took the connecting plane to Rhode Island. We made it just in time to get a seat.

When we landed, we looked for our luggage and took a shuttle bus to Brown University.  We received our ID’s and keys for our dorms at the main office. We had to walk a lot of blocks from the office with our entire luggage to get to Perkins Hall, our dorm. On our way to the dorm, Cynthia and I stopped to help a girl, named Luiza, who seemed lost. Coincidentally, she was going to the same dorm as us so we helped her with her luggage and with finding the dorm. Although it was a struggle to carry our bags for a couple blocks, we ended up laughing about it at the end. When we got to Perkins Hall, we had only enough time to drop off our stuff in our dorm because we had to go to dinner right away. After dinner, we went to get fans for our dorms because the weather in the East Coast is much more humid than California. We got lost, but we eventually found our way when a tall man offered to help us.

Back at the dorm, my roommate, Molly, was waiting for me with her friend Abi. Molly is from North Carolina while Abi is from Maine. I thought that they were really friendly and nice as soon as I met them because they offered to help me get unpacked. But before I got unpacked, I had to meet up with my RA outside the dorm to discuss policies and information about the campus. As soon as that was over, we finally got a chance to shower. Lastly, Maria, Thao, and I all hung out at Maria's dorm to work on our blogs until late at night. I can't believe that the day is finally over and I can't wait for my first day of school!

1 comment:

  1. You wore me out just reading about everything you crammed into one day. Thank goodness you can got to class and relax.

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