first stop: NEWARK

May 21, 2009

11:52 am

Well here we are in Newark, NJ! I am flying with three of my girl friends: Katy, Sarah, and Jacki. We are all seniors at Georgia Tech and the three of them are all in the same sorority. We are already having a great time together.

So far this has been an interesting trip. And I have not even left the country yet! My whole family was so supportive and came with me to the airport to send me off. I have a such an amazing family. They had to wake up around 5 am so that we could arrive at the airport at 6:30 am to meet up with my travel buddies. My flight left Atlanta around 8:30 am.

When we arrived at the check-in counter, there was a problem. The weight limit was 70 pounds and my bag was 75! So I was frantically pulling out items and stuffing them into another bag so that I could have my luggage checked. Even still, my poor parents had to pay an exorbitant amount of money because the bag was over 50 pounds. Struggling to figure out the packing situation made my day start off on a little bit of an anxious and stressed out note. I weigh 100 pounds…. All my bags combined most likely weigh more then I do! That is concerning considering the fact that I have carry them all around Greece and Italy for 7 weeks.

Once the oversized and over-packed bag was out of my hands I tried not to think about it too much. We girls had some time to kill and a craving for Chick-Fil-A. Figuring that we would not have it for two months, we were determined to find one for breakfast. We went to terminal C, then back to A, then back to D in order to get CFA then arrive at our gate. It was such a great chicken biscuit.

A precious little girl and her family were sitting next to us waiting for the plane. Her name was Ava, and she was 14 months old she kept running around and exploring the sitting area of the terminal gate. She reminded me of the little boy, Cole, I watch every week when I am in Atlanta. I am going to miss him! Cute little families make me happy J

Once we stepped onto the plane, the four of us girls all looked to each other in shock. It was by far the smallest plane we had ever been on! There were only three seats across and thankfully we all had A seats, which were individual seats by the window. Before take off, I was asleep. The first 45 minutes I was sleeping, and then all of a sudden there was a scream that woke me up. There was a little boy sitting a few rows back from me that continually screamed and made exclamations and sound effects to the video games that he was playing.

To add to this, there were three men sitting in front of me. the one directly in front of me apparently had his laptop out, and the man sitting a person and a row over from him decided that it was his duty to tell the man with the laptop that he needed to move it. The laptop man would not. This escalated to the irate man dictating orders screaming across an innocent passenger and an aisle. He went on and on about how it was a danger to the other passengers and how in an accident it would act as a flying projectile and could injure someone. He quoted the rules on laptops having to be stored in a secure bag or an overhead compartment, stating that it was Federal Airline Law that has been in place since 1975, etc… He made a huge scene and finally the calm laptop user acquiesced and stored the computer in the overhead compartment. Who does that?!? He was not a flight attendant or anything he was just a regular passenger. So strange… did they even have laptops in 1975?

After that adventure we arrived at a small airport in Newark and are currently sitting in a circle, shoes off and computers out. We are huddled in a corner on the ground at some random gate because it was the only area we could find with outlets.

I am tired and not completely mentally prepared for this trip, and I still have so much school work to do to get ready for the presentations that we have to do once in Italy!

Soooo…. Enough procrastination and on to school work!