In New Orleans!

As most of you know, I have an interview in New Orleans this Saturday which meant that I had to get on a plane for the first time… Well that was yesterday and this is how it went:

I spent Tuesday night going over all my last minute stuff like laundry, packing and my schedule for the interview. At about 11pm I drove to a Wal-mart up the street from California Clare and got a few hours of shut eye, but by 4am I was awake and in search of coffee. At 5am I let myself into Clare’s, she and Juan woke up about twenty minutes later, and we all piled into the car in sub zero temperatures. The combined facts that it was at most 4 degrees and that it was 5:30am shows you just how awesome these two really are to drive me to the Worcester Train station.

So I caught the 6:30am to South Station in Boston and was there within an hour and a half. Found the Silver Line bus shuttle to Logan after some searching and was at airport security by 8:30am, well ahead of schedule. I’m not sure what to make of airport security. Everyone had to take off their shoes, even the little old lady in from of me, we had to take all sorts of things out of our bags to be scanned separately, like laptops, electronics, toiletries, and jewelry. I was there early so it was a quick process and I was off to find my gate. We boarded at 10:30am and I like to think that I at least looked like I knew what I was doing. Would you believe that my first time on a plane and I got all three seats to myself? Talk about luck, and then came lift off… I’ve decided that this is not my favorite part of flying but the view of those clouds as the plane gets higher was something else. After my morning I was asleep within the first twenty minutes and woke up to the announcement that we would be landing in Charlotte.

From Charlotte to New Orleans I was sandwiched in between an older woman doing Saduku and a businessman. I slept off and on but kept walking up as my head tipped forward, which must have been amusing for my two neighbors. The crowd was definitely different from the one out of Boston. One guy had bought an extra seat for his Bow Fiddle, a women had a violin, people were pretty friendly and talkative.

Touchdown in New Orleans at 4:30pm eastern time (the switch is going to throw me off) and I made my way to the airport shuttle. The driver was a gentleman of about 70 who kept calling me baby. My hostel is in the garden district and he was heading to the French Quarter, so he suggested I catch the next one. I told him that a tour of the city would be fine and he took that much too literally. We drove around letting everyone else off first (at their very swanky downtown hotels) and then he called dispatch to tell them he had hit some traffic and would be a bit longer. He gave me a personal tour of the French Quarter and the garden District pointing out all the cool landmarks, then he gave me a tour of the neighborhood he grew up in, which happens to be the same neighborhood that my hostel is in. Before I got off the bus I had to promise him that I would stick to main roads and not wander around at night. I am apparently staying right on the boarder between the good and bad parts of town.  You might say that I am the railroad track.

So that was my day. I read a lot (the Kindle came in handy) and went to bed early. Today I am doing nothing but reading trashy novels and drinking fruity beverages and tomorrow is my interview. I’m exhausted.