Please excuse me from all of my grammar and spelling mistakes. I was pretty tired when I wrote this.
4/15/03 – Tuesday 4:05 PM (Eastern)
Well, well. I’ll try to write what happened on 4/13/03 Sunday – the last day that I was at Houston.
Everyone got up late that day around 8AM because we wanted to eat some real breakfast and not the crappy stuff that FIRST provides. We all went over to a breakfast place near the hotel and ate a breakfast buffet. The food there was ok. They purposely tried to trick you. In the beginning of the food line they had semi-crappy food. Towards the end was awesome breakfast stuff. Not knowing this, I got a log of crappy food and then when I realized that the good food was further down, it was too late.
The breakfast made me very full! Everyone paid and went back to the hotel. We started to pack up our clothes and clean up the room. We wrote a small note of thanks to the cleaner and housekeeper and everyone pitched in a $3 tip ($12 total). We had tons of food in our room and had to get rid of it. Pat came in and handed out starbursts because they had a surplus.
A couple of people wanted to head to Fiesta (a supermarket) to buy some stuff so I tagged along too. I didn’t really want to get anything since there were going to be drinks and food on the plane, but I was looking at drinks and found sparkling mineral water. I never had mineral water so I wanted to try it out. I grabbed a bottle and went back to the group. They were looking at t-shirts (yes, they had t-shirts in the market! I saw these checkered shirts and I wanted to get one but they didn’t have any medium shirts. Checkered shirts are like my trademark shirts. I wear them almost all the time! The cool thing about the market was that they had Spanish things! (I.e. Spanish Coca-Cola, Spanish novels, etc.) Also, everything was CHEAP! They had like hand-sewn Mexican ponchos for $1! The materials used to make the poncho must have cost at least $5! They get everything from Mexico where child labor exists and people get paid like $5 a day. I was going to get this 10 gallon water thing that cost $6 just for fun (to shock everyone) but decided against it when it was too heave to carry ^^;.
We walked back. The earth was very muddy so it was difficult to walk on.
We got back to the hotel and dragged everyone’s stuff out into the lobby and turned in our room keys. The stuff was loaded on to a tour bus this time and everyone got on. Ms. Hale convinced the driver to stop at Boot City, some Texan store that sold boots. We all got off there and went inside. They sold a variety of things from t-shirts to shirts to cowboy hats, to boots, to stuffed animals, and other trinkets. I went around and looked at stuff but didn’t see anything cool. They had this $700 cowboy hat which I thought was ridiculous. Joe T. found these stuffed horses and placed them on top of each other and well “did stuff” when them while Jeff B. was videotaping.
They did have Dan’l Boone (Not Daniel but Dan’l) raccoon hat things. They were pretty cool but I hoped they didn’t really skin raccoons for that. They also had really small stuffed horses that whinnied when you squeeze them and mini horses with magnets on their hooves that could stick to metal.
I went back to the buss and everyone else slowly propagated back. One kid bought a tape with country music videos. We played it and kind of enjoyed it (while making fun of it).
We were dropped off at the airport around 1:30 PM and started the process to get to our gate. Baggage was checked, and boarding passes were received. We went through security next, and just to my luck, the metal detector went off on me! So I had to stand to the side and some guy questioned me about my name and who I was traveling with. I had to sit in this chair and a security guy with a metal detector started to scan me. There was a beep in my left cargo pants pocket. I was a bit confused. There was only a pack of starbursts there. Well, it turns out that the starbursts had the foil package wrapper that set it off. Then it beeped on my right left cargo pocket. I was like: “Oh yeah! ^^;” as I took out a handful of change J. They also had to rescan my backpack since they could not see though it. I suspect it was the English textbook I bought along that clouded the x-ray. English textbooks are pretty powerful. Don’t underestimate them.
Our flight wasn’t until 4:45 PM, so we had time to roam around. Everyone went to get lunch but I was still very full from breakfast. Therefore, I just got a small taco. Funny thing was, after I ate the taco, I became hungrier! But heck, I didn’t’ feel like waiting in line to buy more stuff so I went back to the waiting area, got out my log, and started writing. People were asking what I was doing so I tried to dodge it first, but if they persisted, I answered: “A log.” I had to correct people (Euge) who thought I was writing a diary. Give me a break! Only girls write diaries. I write logs of my experiences so I would never forget them.
I wrote for a while and then jumped into a Unix/Linux/Windows Server talk that my mentors started. I turns out that when our school switched from a unix to windows database server, there was a massive speed decrease, so they had to switch back. What I don’t’ really understand was why they used the Oracle database when they could have used MySQL or PostgreSQL. Come on, it’s just a school, not a Fortune 500 company.
Then Pat and Jeff came a-runnin’ up wearing caps. Everyone started cracking up. I quickly put on my glasses to see what was up and cracked up too when I read what the caps said. Pat was wearing “Rock Hard” and Jeff was wearing “Cocks.” That’s all I will say ^^;. They are actually college football teams. We took some pictures of them, and they went back to the store Lids to find better word combinations. They came back like 5 minutes later all excited. They wanted someone with a camera to take pictures of them. I followed them back for fun and they had something else funny. Then Pat had his picture taken next to a girl smiling sweetly with him wearing the cap: “Morehead.” Again, no comment from me. The owner of the store was looking at us all funny and in amusement. Hey, it’s Upper Darby, what do you expect?!
I went back to the waiting area and started writing again. Soon, it was time to board the plane. Our team sat to the back of the plan. I took an aisle seat with a window view of behind the wings. I sat next to Franco and in the same row as Pat. Since there was no room overhead to put my backpack (those girls filled it up), I had to put it under my seat (the flight attendant told me that 4 times even though it was under the seat. I took out my stuff and started to write again. I wrote until we were in the air (I stopped to see the takeoff which was pretty darned cool). I persisted in writing until my next started to feel crappy. For some reason, I can’t read, watch, or write in a moving vehicle like a car so I couldn’t do the same on a plane either. Another dumb thing was that the plane did not have TV’s or headphone jacks. That bored everyone except for those kids with laptops. Lucky them.
Dinner was served. It was *gasp* chicken burgers. Also included were a bag of chips, an apple, and a nut chew candy. The chicken burger was good until I put the honey mustard stuff on it. Then it tasted bad. Very bad. Everything else was pretty good though. Drinks were handed out (I got a coke) and everyone was content. Things were cruising smoothly. We would be back in Philadelphia earlier than expected (Something cool was that the hour had to be moved forward for the adjustment to Eastern Time). It started to get very dark outside and without my glasses on, all I could discern was a bunch of lights outside.
Franco then struck up a conversation with me about sociality, love matters, dating, and etc. Pat was fast asleep with his mouth hanging open so we snapped a picture of him.
About an hour passed and suddenly the plane hit the ground with a crash! (It landed of course) Since it was so dark outside, a lot of us didn’t even notice it descending. Finally the flight was over and everyone got off the plane.
We all crowded into this playroom at the airport to get a team picture. It was funny since we all stood on this tiny airplane (that I thought was going to break).
From there, everyone rushed downstairs to find our luggage. Since there seemed to be no security guards around, I went down the up escalator. I always wanted to do that, and it was fun J. We waited a while for luggage and then they started coming out. Suddenly, it stopped like it was finished. About half of us didn’t get our luggage yet so we were like: “What?!” But then it started up again and everything was good. The exit was right there and everyone went outside where our rides were waiting. I got a ride back to my house via Euge’s mom’s car.
When I got home, my sister started hitting me so I hit her back in the shoulder which hurt, and she started hitting me more ^^;. Questions were asked, and then my sister left to go back to the University of Pennsylvania where she is a student. I had my mom drive me to the school so I could pick up some of my books for spring break (my teachers piled me with make up work and homework). The mentors were there loading stuff into the school so they let me in.
At home, I ate a small dinner, took a shower, and then jumped on the computer to use the internet! w00t! I had 340 pieces of new mail. 338 were junk. 1 was a virus. That’s what I get when my email address is posted across 1/4th of the internet. I just relaxed after that and surfed for about a half hour before my mom booted me off and made me go to sleep. The end.