Sunday, July 26, 2015

When Reality Sets In

I woke up today at 8:00 AM to pack for my trip back home. I heard people leaving in early in the morning today and it seemed so unreal. The hallway was so quiet and I couldn’t hear the laughter and liveliness anymore. As sad as it is, this is reality. Time flies and people have to move on. My roommate woke up the same time as I did but she was leaving later than me. Luckily for me, I can contact her when I go to China since we live in the same city there. I said bye to my RC for the last time and some of my floor mates before I had to leave. "This is the last time I will talk down this hallway" I thought to myself before heading outside. 


Last time I will hold these
I saw the cohort outside the Quadrangle and it was like day one all over again. People were running around getting their luggage into their cars. I returned my keys back and waited for Mr. Hillyer with the cohort. Mr. Hillyer came at about 10:15 AM and we had our luggage loaded onto the taxi. When we arrived at the airport, Mr. Hillyer took us inside to check in our luggage. One by one, the luggage was weighed and then put on the conveyor belt. When I saw that my luggage was overweight by 5 pounds I was really surprised. I had to quickly take some stuff out of my luggage and transfer it into Rudy's luggage bag. Rudy saved the day and my luggage was 5 pounds lighter. Justeen offered to take my pillow and put it on her carry on case and I was forever thankful. Jun was the only person who got TSA pre-check and all of us had to stand in line.


We went to go eat at a famous restaurant chain in Philadelphia called Chickie's and Petes. A lot of the food was seafood based, which I had no problem with. I ordered a lobster roll and it was really good but had a little too much salt. After we were done eating, some went to go buy souvenirs and others sat down by the gate. At 1:30 PM, we started to board the plane. I sat next to Justeen and we slept through almost half the flight. After I woke up, I turned on my computer and wrote my room description. By the time I was done, Justeen woke up and I asked if she wanted to watch a movie. We watched How to Train Your Dragon 2. When little kids walked past us, they would stop for a second to see what we were watching, probably because we were watching a kid movie. Shortly after we were done with the movie, the plane started to descend.


Going to Oakland
We landed in Phoenix, around 4 PM local time (7 PM in Pennsylvania's time)  and it was 108 degrees outside. Although there was air conditioning inside the airport, I still took off my Penn sweatshirt. Mr. Hillyer took us to a Mexican restaurant for lunch/dinner. I shared a sandwich with Justeen because I wasn't too hungry. We still had an hour left before we had to board our flight to Oakland so some of us walked around the airport to see what there was. I went back to the gate and tried to find an outlet to charge my computer. Unfortunately, all the outlets were taken and I could not plug my computer. We boarded the flight at around 5:45 PM. The flight was around an hour and a half to two hours. This time I sat next to Chiamaka. I slept for thirty minutes on the flight and then watched another movie on my computer. The flight did not feel very long and before I knew it, we were landing. We arrived at Oakland airport around 8 PM local time (11 PM in Pennsylvania's time) and left the airport at around 9 PM.

The first person we saw was Don and then the parents. Parents ran up to their children and welcomed them home. Don took one final group picture of us and I knew that this officially concluded our trip. All of us were very sad that we couldn't spend more time with each other but we agreed to hang out once more later next week before Jun and Justeen start school. We said our goodbyes and gave each other a hug. The bonds we created with each other are very strong and I don't think that it will get weaker. I believe that we are more than friends; we are a family.

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