Things Don't Always Work Out

The day started out with one hour of sleep. I got up at 2:30 A.M. and ate one and a half slices of bread; it was not enough food. I got to El Cerrito High School at 3:05 A.M. and saw Rudy and Justeen. Next to them was Don and a table full of different sheets of paper and luggage tags. Don had prepared five luggage tags for each of us. I only had one carry on and one luggage for check in so I used two luggage tags. Don insisted that we take the ones that had our names because he would not have any use of them. Don weighed my bags and my worst nightmare came true, my luggage was over weight by four pounds. As I took some stuff out of my luggage, Rudy was kind enough to offer to put some of my stuff into his luggage since his bag weighed much less and just like that, my luggage weighed 45 pounds. 

Don went over what he expected our blogs to look like and the quality it should be. After that, we took a couple group departure pictures. 

Our shuttle arrived not too long after and everyone helped to load luggage onto the car. We said our goodbyes to our parents and hopped into the shuttle. It took us about 20 minutes to get to Oakland Airport (OAK). We checked in our luggage where we were dropped off. Then we went into the TSA line. The TSA line went by moderately fast. I had to take off my shoes and laptop out of my backpack and place them in separate bins. We then walked over to our gate and waited around for 30 minutes until we boarded our flight. I sat next to a girl named Kailani who was from Albany and informed her about the ILC. 

Still dark outside!

The flight to Houston was suppose to be 3 hours and 50 minutes long except we had to divert to Austin because of the thunderstorm in Houston. Everyone was very disappointed and angry about this news. We knew that this could mean that we would not be able to make it for the tour at Rice University. When we were near Austin, there was also a storm so we had to go to San Antonio to fill up the plane's gas tank and stay there until we were clear to go to Houston. We were in San Antonio for about 15 to 30 minutes. I spoke to the flight attendant about the situation and she said that in the 10 years she has worked for the airline, this was the first time that we had to be diverted to another airport because of weather conditions. I told her that I was going to visit Rice University and she thought it was great but knew that we would not be able to make it for the info session and tour. 

After 34 minutes of flying from San Antonio airport to Houston airport, we were finally there. By this time, it was already too late to join the tour at Rice University. We picked up our luggage and took a Super Shuttle to the Hilton hotel we were staying at. The Hilton hotel was extremely nice. Everything was all clean and sparkly. I roomed with Jun and Chiamaka. We dropped off our stuff in the room and went downstairs. We have not had food for the last 12 hours and were starving. It was raining hard outside and we couldn't go out and explore so all of us sat down and ate at the restaurant in the lobby of the hotel. I ordered a Steak Sandwich and it was good considering how I have not had food for the 12 hours. We asked Mr. Hillyer about what would happen in the next couple days and he told us that we will need to meet up at 5:30 A.M. in the lobby tomorrow morning for our flight to Atlanta, Georgia. If I survived the day with only one hour of sleep, I can survive the next day when I  wake up at 5:30 A.M. 

Room with only 2 beds. We need another one. 

To burn off the calories that we had just consumed, we decided to tour Rice University by ourselves after seeing that the storm calmed down and it was sprinkling. The campus was really nice and it reminded me of Stanford University. There was a lot of lush green grass all over the campus and everyone was admiring the grass because we had not seen super green grass in a long time. Animals such as squirrels, birds, and rabbits ran around the campus and did not seem to be scared of humans.

Welcome to Rice University after a stormy day

Mr. Hillyer guided us around the campus even though he had never been here before and he was pretty good at it. If I did not know that this was his first time here, I would have thought that he's been here before. He guided us into the MBA admissions center and there we met Joshua Lunow or Josh. He gave us a map of the college and Mr. Hillyer informed him about our situation and where we were from. We asked him about the admission rate for the college and although he was unsure and told us that it was 40%, it gave us some reassurance even though we don't know if the information was valid or not (turns out the acceptance rate for Rice University is 14%). As we exited the MBA admission office, I couldn't help but notice how beautiful the architectural design was. It was very elegant and modern, it was a mix of UCLA and Stanford. Seeing how everyone was tired, we started to head back to our hotel. Tomorrow is another day and I hope that no matter what happens, we will still think positively and hopefully, there won't be storm in Atlanta.