At 5:00am on Tuesday, May 21st, Brett dropped me off at the Swaid (our building at Harding) where the majority of us packed all of our bags into two vans. The plan to begin the hour drive to the Little Rock airport was slightly delayed when Jake, Mr. Chance's son, forgot his malaria medication and had to run home to get it before we could leave the parking lot. While we waited, we talked about the games we packed and how exited we were to finally be going on this trip. Even though it was early in the morning, everyone was awake and ready to go.
Photo Credit: Kacie Chung
After we arrived and unloaded all of our bags at the airport, Mr. Chance asked if anyone had seen his carry-on bags. Turns out, his bags were never loaded into the vans and were left behind in Searcy. As you can imagine, our team leader needed the things that were in those bags and he immediately called to have his cargo delivered. Long story short, the bags were not delivered on time and we left without him! Mr. Chance and Jake had to book another flight.
We had a quick layover in Atlanta where Elizabeth joined our group. I had just sat down to eat my lunch when I saw I had a missed call from Haley Rees. She was one of the four who was meeting us once we got to New York. She was there with all of her luggage by 10am while we weren't going to be there until after 2 that afternoon. I called her back to find that her name was not on any of the hotel reservations. She was told that she would be able to check-in to the hotel while she waited for us but instead, she was stranded in the lobby. As her roommate for the night, I was able to call the hotel myself and add her to my room.
The flight from Atlanta was perfectly smooth except for one small incident. When the flight attendants wheeled their carts down the aisles to distribute drinks, the drawer slid out from the cart right beside me, splashing a can of tomato juice on my jacket and dress. I didn't even realize what had happened until I looked up and saw red juice dripping down the back of the seat in front of me. The flight attendant was much worse off than I was, but I was still bummed since that was the outfit I had planned to wear all day in NY. Thankfully, Ashley had a handy-dandy Tide To-Go pen and I was able to get most of the stains out.
Soon enough, we were in New York! Dr.Meeker called in multiple taxis to transport us and all of our luggage to the hotel. We held our breath as cars weaved in and out of the tiny spaces between bumpers and children rode bikes on the busy roads nearly crashing into the front of our car. The traffic was bad as expected and ended up taking us 40 minutes to travel 13 miles.
We got situated in our hotel rooms at the Hilton Garden Inn in Queens and were joined shortly after by Katrina and Delaney. They and Elizabeth did not go to Harding, but graduated a few weeks ago with their masters in speech pathology. We have been skyping them in to our meetings throughout the past semester so it was fun to meet them all in person.
The rest of the night was ours to explore as we wished! Four from the group went to see a show and the rest of us wanted to see Manhattan. Tessa, one of our four clinical educators (CEs) told Haley that we could take the hotel's shuttle to the air train and from there get to Manhattan. The 11 of us walked down to the shuttle stop just in time to see Mr. Chance, Jake, and Mrs. Gina, another CE, getting out of the taxi. Their traffic was even worse than ours, taking 1.5 hours to travel the 13 miles. We then jumped on the shuttle and waited at the air train for the newly arrived fellow group members to join us.
None of us (out of our group of 14) had any idea how to get a metro card for the subway system. We asked for help from multiple people, including some who worked there, before becoming even more confused. Eventually, we figured it out and were able to visit the reflection pools and Freedom Tower.
We grabbed a slice of pizza at Joe's for dinner and then made our way to Times Square. At that point, it was difficult to stay in such a large group so we split up. My little group even found Paris Hilton taking selfies behind a hot dog stand.
Photo Credit: Kacie Chung
Photo Credit: Carrie Arendale
On our way back, we felt like pros navigating the underground world. We made it back to where the shuttle was supposed to pick us up around 12:30, 1:00ish. The shuttle is supposed to come every half hour, but we kept waiting and waiting. Haley and Kacie both called to see the shuttles ETA before we realized we were waiting at the wrong end. I had my pepper spray ready the whole hour we waited in the windy tunnel but alas, the shuttle arrived and brought us back to our comfy beds.
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