A Very Long Day

My am I exhausted. Today has been very long indeed.

I’m not sure where exactly it started. Probably at 7 AM, when I woke up my suite-mates Adeline and Neha and the three of us stumbled sleepily down to the gazebo to see two of our friends off. We had all stayed up far too late the night before, and so everyone was perfectly happy to take a collective nap together in the Hartley suite after the 7 AM send-off. At quarter to 9 I shook myself awake once again to make the rounds and give my goodbyes to everyone before heading down with my luggage to meet Mrs. L and the rest of the cohort. Our duo of taxis took us down to Mrs. L’s hotel, where we stashed our luggage before hopping on the subway a little ways to Rockefeller Center. Although I’d already been before at night, the view from Top of the Rock in the daytime was spectacular, exchanging the glamour of bright city lights against inky black for breathtaking clarity and detail in the sunlight.

A stop at Magnolia’s quickly followed, with me investing in a small cheesecake (delicious!) that I ended up eating on the plane. Then our last subway ride, a trip over to Central Park, where we had a lovely lunch at the Boathouse before leisurely strolling through the Park back to our hotel. A shuttle took us to the airport, and I kept dozing off even in the midst of the cacophony that is New York traffic. We grabbed dinner at the airport cafeteria after checking in (I ended up checking two bags instead of one, and bringing two others on the plane with me) before boarding about an hour later. We had thought that our flight was delayed because the announcement board had been claiming so, but we ended up boarding early, leaving a little early, and arriving in the Bay Area airspace earlier than the flight had intended. I cat-napped a bit on the plane in between reading chapters of the AP Lang summer assignment book, Fast Food Nation, which is so far a very interesting read based solely on the type of language and word choice that the author uses to bring home his point about the evils and dangers of fast food.

Because of the fog in San Francisco we had to wait a very long time before we could get a runway; so long, in fact, that the plane made a quick pitstop at Oakland airport to refuel. When we landed all of us were very happy to see our families come greet us: I was glad to see my parents, and even my brother. Our drive home was filled with (of course) political conversation, with me being able to bring the legal side of thing to the table thanks to the Constitutional Law class. That right there made me realize just how much I got out of this course and this experience, and how grateful I am that I was a part of the class and the Ivy League Connection program.