A Not So Great Start...

The trip began this morning when I rolled out of bed at 5:30 AM. I was too groggy to really realize what was happening. We had a drive down to the Pittsburgh airport before I had to go through security checks and everything to board my plane. After some confusion going through different check points and everything I finally made it to my gate a couple of hours early and sat and read until it was time to board. The first plane was tiny. There weren't more than 50 of us on it and it was shaky and made me really sick. I didn't know what was actually going to happen when we were landing because it felt like we were just going to crash into the ground. I got to Toronto for my connecting flight and went through customs and dealt with relatively unhappy people and finally got down to my next gate. I only had about a half hour until that flight boarded and was happy to discover it was a regular commercial airplane with first class and everything. I was lucky enough to get seated awkwardly between two older guys and sat there uncomfortably the entire time, trying to take naps but waking up abruptly frequently.

Finally I made it to Halifax ready to see Aeriale and her family and some familiar faces. I sat down at baggage claim because I knew there was no use fighting the crowds to get my luggage first. After a little while I stood up and looked around and realized my luggage still hadn't come out yet. I stood there awkwardly as everyone else grabbed their bags and departed on their way. At the end, I was standing there along with two other girls who had Pens shirts on and I assumed they had flown from Pittsburgh with me. They asked a man where our baggage may be and we realized that it wasn't coming. The two girls were also going on Semester at Sea with me and we had to report our lost luggage. We went in and talked to a guy in the baggage department and he told us great stories of how there are girls going on this ship that got here two days ago and still don't have their luggage and how Pittsburgh must never fly people to Canada and everything else to make us feel even better about the trip. The three of us kind of came to the realization that everything we had for this trip may not be coming with us.

I walked out to the seating area and called my mom to try and have her make me feel better. She talked to me about it and got the phone number for the baggage department that we were supposed to call as I sat and waited for Aeriale and her family. It was nearing 6PM Halifax time when they arrived because none of us had any idea that there was a time difference. They came in to see me with no luggage, but their optimistic attitudes definitely helped my mood. We took off and headed for the hotel. After we checked in, we headed down to check out the water and see if we could get onto the parent's reception onboard the ship. We walked along the water and realized that it is a lot colder in Halifax than we expected it to be. Later we went in to check out what was going on with the reception to discover that Aeriale and I as students were unable to board so her family went ahead and we went to dinner with two kids we met while standing there.

We drove around aimlessly for awhile until we finally found a place called the Shoe Shop to eat. We exchanged typical conversation and all expressed our shared feelings of being overwhelmed by the entire thing. Eventually we made our way back to the dock area to pick up Aeriale's family where we got to hear stories about how amazing the ship is which definitely built my anticipation.

Overall, the experience today was definitely not the smooth start I anticipated, but I feel as though it won't matter. I'm more excited than ever to set sail and even though I'm going to be sleeping in jeans and my shirt I wore around today, I know that everything will be fine. We board the ship at 8:20 AM and have to go through a number of customs and baggage checks and everything before we can actually get on and then we're having lunch with Aeriale's family before we have to leave at 3 PM to board the ship for good. I'm not sure what actually goes on tomorrow evening, but we take off at 5 PM to start our long voyage across the Atlantic. I'm really excited to see what the next few days will bring. I think it's going to be more overwhelming than I anticipated...Bon Voyage!