Welcome to the Jungle Book

I woke up a little later than I had hoped today, but after a nice quick freezing shower (my favorite way to start all my mornings off), my mom and I headed down to El Cerrito High School.  In the car ride down, I quadruple checked that I packed everything; I was really afraid that I would have forgotten my travel iron, and since the whole cohort was depending on me to have it, I had to make extra sure that I didn’t forget it. I didn’t expect to be back to El Cerrito so soon, since I only just finished junior year there on Friday, but here I was, waiting outside in the not-as-cold-as-I-expected weather.  Our whole cohort was able to get to ECHS by the expected 2:45 arrival time, and our bags were quickly weighed by Don.  We almost escaped without having to take the dreaded 3 in the morning picture, as Don was all too happy to get us out of his hair as soon as possible, but right before we boarded the shuffle he remembered, as you can probably tell by the picture of 6 tired, disheveled teenagers in Don’s earlier post.  I hugged my mom goodbye, and Brown Session 1 was on its way.

We got to SFO before I could fall asleep, and for those of you who haven’t seen me in a moving vehicle when I only got 3 hours of sleep the previous night, that usually takes me about 2 to 3 minutes.   We had to wait for a half hour at SFO to check in, since Southwest only did check-in at 4:30, not the 4:00 check-in time we were told.  Not much happened on the flight, most people slept but I was still excited, and so wrote down my order for a Nardelli’s sandwich we’ll be eating tomorrow. After great deliberation, I settled on a Buffalo chicken sandwich with no olives, which I’m looking forward to about as much as our Yale and Wesleyan tours we will have tomorrow.  For anyone who has struggled with sarcasm in the past, that is as good an example as you will get in a long time; while I am looking forward to that sandwich, I am absolutely ecstatic about the Yale and Wesleyan tours.

On the way to Providence, Kelly, Emily, and I watched Good Will Hunting, one of my all-time favorite movies. That was really all that happened on the plane to Providence, overall the planes weren’t too exciting, we didn’t meet anyone from Cirque du Soleil, unlike last year with Cornell.

We headed over to Avis to rent our cars but found that they only had 1 car for us instead of the two we were expecting. While we did get a gigantic Suburban for our one car, it still took all of our combined Tetris skill to pack the car. The ride over wasn't too comfortable, since despite all the luggage you can see jammed in the trunk, we still had a couple bags and 4 backpacks to squeeze into the already cramped backseats of the Suburban. Luckily, it took a lot less time to unload the car than it did to load it in the first place.

We got to the hotel about 30 minutes after loading up the car, and Ying-An, David and I were glad to see that our room happened to be the “Rudyard Kipling Suite”.  At first glance all 3 of us were terrified, since we saw only the couch shown below, and after I had spent the last few minutes explaining how much I kick while I was asleep, David and Ying-An were not looking forward to try to share that small pull out bed. Then we turned the corner and saw that in addition to the room shown (which I claimed, since I can sleep pretty much anywhere and don’t need an actual bed) there was another full-sized hotel room, with 2 queen size beds.

My new room for the next few days, and yes, I did spend
about 20 minutes trying to straighten out that lamp

We walked around Providence and had a bite to eat at a Cuban restaurant, the Cuban Revolution.  We made our plans for tomorrow which involved waking up at 6 in the morning Eastern Time, which I know is necessary but that doesn’t mean I’m looking forward to that aspect of tomorrow.  

Downtown Providence