If You're Reading This It's Too Late

I tumbled into bed after midnight last night, and although my alarm wasn't set until 7 AM, I woke up at 5:30 AM and couldn't go back to sleep. Although it was frustrating to know that I needed more than five hours of sleep, I realized that it just wasn't going to happen, so I got up and finished packing. 

I could go into packing but I won't because that's boring and who cares? (Nobody) So just jump forward a couple hours to breakfast, where I smuggled out two apples and a muffin. That's the most excitement for the day, folks.

So after breakfast I had to return all my Cornell keys. These keys obviously include the room key and the mailbox key, and I thought they included the ID card as well. I turned them all in, but some other members of the cohort kept their ID's so one of us is wrong. Oops, awkward. 

Anyway, after a smooth room check-out, I met up with Thao, Julie, and Shanti by about 9:00 AM and we took a taxi to the Statler Hotel. We were just storing our stuff there until later in the day when the shuttle would arrive to take us to the airport. Hotel Management had their graduation early, and since mine was an hour later I managed to get a good 40 minute nap in before walking to Kennedy Hall for my graduation. 

Graduation was quick and simple. Our group was the first to have their certificates handed out, so as soon as that happened we could leave. Since Hotel had started earlier, as soon as I returned to Statler they had just finished so it was perfect timing. We stored our bags in Alfredo's hotel room, then went to Collegetown Bagels for lunch. (Patrick Ewing, again) Nothing exciting was going on during this, so there's not much to expand on here. One cool thing is that we accidentally got an extra smoothie. Wow, cool. 

After lunch, we flew back to the hotel on a private jet and watched Pirates of the Caribbean in Alfredo's room for half an hour. It was Dead Man's Chest, and I've watched all the movies at least twice. Johnny Depp is just great. No contest. After charging phones for a bit, we took a large bus to the Syracuse Airport. I slept for about an hour on the bus, and woke up sweating for two reasons. One, I was on the sunnyside of the bus, and two, the bus driver apparently loves the desert because the air conditioning was curiously absent and it was hotter than the Mojave. (okay not that hot)

I'm also going to have to mention again about how my camera's screen on my phone has a smudge over it so any photos I take are blurry. I promise to put photos on tomorrow's blog, but for now you'll actually have to read only words for your evening entertainment. Look at some of the other blogs and pretend those photos are mine. 

Anyway, Syracuse airport is tiny and adorable. At least compared to San Francisco Airport. It was about the time that we walked through the airport doors that I realized how exhausted I was and how I really just wanted to be home. This is also the moment where Chan-Law got the notification that our flight to Chicago was delayed thirty minutes. This is a problem because our flight from Chicago to San Francisco was scheduled to take off 45 minutes after the flight from Syracuse was supposed to land. That time has now been cut to 15 minutes. 

We boarded our flight from Syracuse to Chicago for leg one of the journey. The plane was small, which is good and bad. It’s nice because there are less people and it’s less of a hassle getting on and off, but I actually prefer the larger planes because they just feel safer and more familiar to me. But to set the record straight, all planes are terrible - I just have preferences over different types of terrible.

Our flight was fine. I slept. That’s all I can tell you. We were stressing a lot about making our connecting flight, but were, at first, relieved to hear we would be landing 45 minutes before the departure of the other flight. However, time began ticking as we didn’t get off the airplane until 30 minutes before departure. Then, we undertook the world’s longest walk through the terminals ever, and arrived at Gate H17 with (literally) four minutes to spare. But hey, we made the connection and didn’t have to stay overnight in Chicago so I’m not complaining at all.

Flight two, the final leg. First off, American Airlines is pretty cool. They have fancy blue lighting in the cabin, and TV screens that come down from the ceiling to show movies/announcements. The flight actually showed Avengers: Age of Ultron on the TV’s for free, so that’s how I spent a solid two and a half hours. This was the third time I had seen the movie, by the way. Hawkeye is definitely the best.

Our flight was around five-six hours. It was long. I wanted it to be over. The exhaustion from only getting five hours of sleep, and being awake for over 18 hours was finally setting in. Landing in SFO was lovely. Getting bags? Not so lovely. But it’s all part of the plan.

Don somehow managed to hook our cohort up with an actual limousine to take us from the airport to school. I don't know how that works but it was pretty cool. I was planning on enjoying a quiet ride home on comfy seats, but apparently that was not on everyone else's mind..

My patience level is pretty good during the day. It is not good at midnight (3:00 AM in New York..) when I want to sleep. I love everyone in my cohort, and I did love the comfy seats in the limo, but I can barely stand sexist, derogatory music during the day, much less at midnight, that was playing for the whole ride home. I would go on a rant about why (some) rap music is derogatory and insulting to women, but I'm exhausted. Literally about to drop off to sleep. Before I collapse, I must tell you how incredible and future-changing this experience has been. It is something I never thought was possible. Thank you, to everyone involved.

Home. Over the past month that has been a reference to many different places. D.C., Atlanta, Ithaca. But there is only one place that I truly call home instinctively. And arriving there was bittersweet, but a sigh of relief as well.

The summer at Cornell University is over.