Canada, eh?

Hi all!

First post from abroad!

A little recap of my day:

I woke up at 5am this morning and headed to the airport for my 7am flight to destination number one: New York. I spotted my rowmates (19 C and D), a grumpy-looking old couple, who had evidently been in Nashville for the CMA Fest (as made apparent by their cowboy hats and other various music city souvenirs). Mr. Grumpy sat in the middle seat and proceeded to whip out his newspaper. I’ve never fully realized the unnecessarily massive size of newspapers until one was unwillingly shoved in my face. So there I am, clearly making an effort to squeeze myself as close to the window as humanly possible while the Grumpster proceeds to bump elbows with me every 2.5 seconds as he turns the page. After half an hour of this sort of thing, I’m about to go nuts. Then, a brilliant thought comes to me. Mr. Grumpy is OLD. Really old. And he’s wearing glasses…so if I shut the window and thus blocked the light, he probably wouldn’t be able to read his enormously large newspaper. So, I did what I had to do and shut the window….and BAM! Less than a minute later, the Grumpster folded that thing up and put it away! I mean, it very well could’ve been that he was finished reading it…but I like to think that it was my clever ruse that caused him to put the newspaper away. Then, the drink cart came around and Mr. and Mrs. Grumpy loaded up on coffee…and, to my shock and awe, they started chatting me up! Turns out that after a couple cups of joe, Mr. and Mrs. Grumpy turn into Mr. and Mrs. Not-So-Grumpy-After-All.

We landed in La Guardia airport, and I bid farewell to my rowmates. I had about an hour to make it to my next flight. Thinking that I was in the right terminal, I meandered around slowly looking for the departures screen. As I read through the departures, I quickly came to the realization that my flight was not on the list. I hurriedly went and found a security official whom I thought would be able to point me in the right direction. He pointed me in a direction alright—the WRONG one. Dumb security man sent me back to the terminal I had just left, ensuring me that it was definitely where I needed to be. As I’m standing in line to be re-checked through security, I decided it would be wise to make sure that I was in the right spot. The security lady was shocked to realize that her security buddy up at the front had given me the wrong instructions. She quickly sent me on my way toward the right terminal. After a little more running around like mad trying to figure out where the hell my plane took off from, I finally made it to my gate and made a mental note to never, ever fly through La Guardia again.

I felt completely relieved after we finally landed in Halifax. I’d even met a few people along the way that were also doing SAS! I got through customs in like 2 minutes and went to pick up my bags. From here on out, I was thinking it was smooth sailing (no pun intended). I excitedly picked up my first bag and waited for my second bag to come around the belt. I didn’t see it, so I waited some more. And waited. And waited And waited. And then the belt stopped. And there was only one bag left on it. Was it mine? Hah…that would’ve been too easy, now wouldn’t it have? Nope. Great. I soon learned that a bunch of other people had lost bags too. After a few hours of “where the hell did my bag go?”…the nice baggage lady informed me that my bag was in Detroit. DETROIT!? WTF?! I NEVER EVEN WENT TO DETROIT! Anyhow, I just received a call that my bag has arrived safely in Halifax and is headed to the hotel. Phew.

Currently I’m chilling in my hotel room with two girls that I met beforehand via Facebook and decided to share a room with. We walked to the nearby grocery store earlier and I picked up some toiletries and essential snacks, such as gold fish and Swedish fish. I board the ship tomorrow at 8am! I can’t wait to meet my roommate. Hope she’s not a weirdo! I’ll update soon! Farewell from Canada!