Journals--Day 1 Girls

Wow, what an amazing start to this trip! It started out a little rough, but it could have been worse. All the students that were going met at ASD yesterday at 7 PM and slept over. We had to leave ASD by 2 AM to make it to our flight on time! Some students stayed awake and others went to sleep. I am one of the students who stayed up until it was time to go. I slept most of the way to NJ but it felt so long.

When we got to the airport we went to check in our bags and our bags had to be 50 lbs or less. Guess who was the only person who had to take some of their things out because it was 64 lbs???? It was me! I was the only person who had to take things out of their bag. It was nuts! My makeup bag went into Mike bag because I had nowhere to put it. But now I learned not to have so much stuff. It was either take things out of your bag or pay $25, and there was no way I was paying $25 for 14 extra lbs.

We had 2 hours to spare before the plane had to take off, the plane was scheduled to take off at 7 AM. We had our breakfast there, Dunkin Donuts that I believe Nancy Zurek bought for us the night before, and relaxed until it was time to board the plane. When time came we all went onto the plane and got settled in. But somehow the plane had some trouble and we had to wait until 9 AM. When we got on the plane the second time we had to wait another hour and a half before we finally took off. BOY was if a long flight! Five hours!

On the plane I was asleep and awake off and on. When we arrived at Oregon Airport we were all excited. We went to find our luggage and then rent a van. The van was big but we had a lot of luggage to fit in it plus nine people. After about 15 minutes putting the luggage in the van we all got ready to leave for Washington School for the Deaf. But there was one problem…we couldn’t figure out how to get Anne Nutt’s seatbelt to hook in so she can buckle up.

Finally we were off to WSD, the Washington School for the Deaf! It was about 10 minute drive to Vancouver, Washington. When we arrived at WSD we got settled in the dorm. Then everyone was hungry so we went to Igloo restaurant to eat. While we were there we figured out a menu that we would use to buy at the store for what we will eat while we are here. Now that is all the update of what we were doing today while you guys waited on the other side of the country wanting to know what was happening. Talk to you all tomorrow!

Events on the FIRST DAY of the trip to Washington:

This morning, all of us six students (including me) and teachers (Nancy Zurek and Anne Nutt and also Barbara French) woke up at 1am and felt very exhausted but we all got prepared and ready to put our things in the small ASD bus and get ready to go New Jersey at 2 a.m. We had to get our plane there and it left at 7 a.m. But before that, last night at 7 p.m., all of us meet at the front of ASD and we all went to the Butterworth dorm and stayed up until around 10 p.m. Most of us slept for only 2 hours until 1 a.m.

So back to what happened at the airport in New Jersey, we all carried our things and meet at the Check in Your Bags to check how much our things weights. The funny part was that Angelina got over 50 lbs which couldn’t allow her to get on the plane, she had to take some things out and make the 15 pounds off instead of 50 lbs. She decided to take a box of make-up and few bottles of flavor water and everything was fine. If she couldn’t do this then she needs to pay 25 dollars for it!

So after all, we also put our things through the metal detectors and after this we waited for a while until the plane is ready so we came in the plane and all of a sudden there was some error in our plane and it needed to be fixed better before we left. We waited, waited and waited until 10 a.m. and finally we got off and ready to go on way to Washington! We actually complained so much because it had been almost 4 hours to wait.

We were very thrilled about it, looked outside to see clouds and chatted with friends, took lots of pictures of us and etc! Until around noon, Richie and Angelina were responsible to take some pictures of us. They decided to take pictures of Nancy, Barbara, me and others who were sleeping or look tired so we can make the power point with the pictures of us to remember it. Afterward, mostly of us got so tired, sleeping and kept fidgeting to make ourselves comfortable in the seat. It was LONG ride for almost 5 hours and 27 minutes and we kept patient and waited to land in Washington State!

I don’t go to the American School for the Deaf anymore. I moved to another school. A few months ago, American School for the Deaf invited me to go to Washington State with them. I was so happy and excited because I can see all of my old friends and teachers. I also never went to Washington State before and I can see all the cool stuff that I saw in all the information Ms. Nutt and Ms. Zurek gave to me. I read most of them.

On June 20, 2006 all the kids who are going to WA met the teachers at night. We had to discussed and review stuff and everything to get ready for tomorrow. We had to get up at 1 a.m. and to be on the bus.

The man drove all the way to New Jersey from Connecticut. We were waiting to get on the airplane. But we had to get check in first. We went to put all our bags check in and put them in X-rays. I went to airplane with Lymarie, Angelina, Jon, Richie, Mike, Ms. French, Ms. Zurek, and Ms. Nutt to fly to Oregon.

It was a bad day but it was funny because we supposed to be flying at 7 a.m. but they postponed to 9 a.m. because they had a problem with the door that won’t close on the airplane. So we were waiting until 9 a.m. then they had postponed again to 10 a.m. because they have bad weather. We were waiting again, but finally went to flying. We were flying for about 6 hours. We were so tired. We were sleeping a lot. But not so comfortable!!!!! We finally arrived to Oregon and all of us saw some mountains. It was so awesome! We took some of pictures of them. We saw some of the mountains, Mt. Hood and Mt. St. Helens. They are around 12-14 thousands feet high.

We arrived to Oregon. It was interesting because some of us are talking about how to compare from here to Connecticut. We compared them—Washington has signs that are blue but Connecticut has signs that are green. WA has a lot of forest and they are SO GREEN. WA is so clean and no litter and Connecticut does. I also think WA has a lot of nice flowers, plants, and forests and Connecticut don’t really have a lot of them like WA. But I think most of them are similar.

We went to get a rental van. Unfortunately, we have to be careful with mileage because if we drove over our limit we will have to pay extra. We drove to Washington School for the Deaf and that’s where we are staying at the cottages, which are dorms. The dorms are so nice!!! We feel like we live here.. Ha-Ha. We went to out for lunch. We ate at Igloo. It was a small restaurant. We went to back to home from the restaurant. We were relaxing and discussed about the things that we are getting ready for tomorrow. We also had to agreement about the food that we want for menu. Right now, we are doing our journals.