As I suspected at the beginning of the week, this morning was great. I woke up and for the first time I did not feel sick, of course it was the day we were leaving. I am not entirely sure why, but we had set the alarm to a quarter to 6. It must have been to give us plenty of time to pack and still get down to breakfast before everyone else. However, I had packed up the night before (with the exception of pjs and toiletries) and did not need to get up so early. When the alarm went off, I tried to deny it and go back to sleep, especially since I didn’t need to get up that early, though my roommates had other plans. One of my best friends, and also the person who I shared the bed with, tried to get me up by ripping the blankets off of me and it almost worked, but I still wouldn’t get up. Eventually she threatened me with something (can’t remember what) and I finally got up, but I was too tired to talk to anyone. After getting dressed and making sure that both my suitcase and backpack were 100% packed, I fell back onto the bed waiting for the knock from Mrs. S to go down to breakfast.
After my biggest breakfast all week, which was still small even though I was feeling okay, we headed back up to the rooms for all of us to check every nook and cranny for anything we might have left behind. Mrs. S picked up just the four of us (since we couldn’t fit all nine of us and luggage into the elevator) and we headed down to the bus. Luckily we got the elevator, which we weren’t too sure about since everyone needed it, and for a few floors it stopped at every one with a group waiting for the elevator. When we headed back up to our rooms we took the stairs as we didn’t have anything to carry, though we were on the tenth floor. We were expecting to be kind of winded at around floor 6. Yeah, not so much, already by floor 3 we were starting to feel pretty tired. As we still had half an hour to wait before we needed to load the bus and we had nothing to do we decided to relax and turn on the T.V. And because we are who we are, we decided to watch Mickey Mouse Club House which resulted in “debates” as to what the right answers were to the questions that Mickey asked us, and a day wight he theme song stuck in our heads.
It was pretty sad actually to leave the hotel which we called home for the week, but we still had one more stop before the long, sad, trip home. We were going to the Museum of the Moving Image located in Brooklyn, for two reasons. One was because, well we are the Humanities program, and we have studied similar things in class, so it only makes since. Two, was because they thought that everyone needed a trip to Brooklyn. Everyone in my group was joking that we were ahead of the game and had taken a cooler way down, too. It was a very cool place to visit with being very interactive and having actual props and equipment from movies. Though, I do admit I probably could have done without the trip because, as it was the last day in the city, I wanted to spend it in the city. Going to the museum felt too much like a normal school day, we were in large groups, we had no freedom in what we saw and we couldn’t even see everything while what we did see we couldn’t really spend much time looking.
Though I had plenty of time to look at the side of a highway on the way home. It was an alright bus ride. Even though I had managed to spend the whole ride sitting in the middle with my friends, I had honestly liked the ride going up to NYC, even sitting in the front with only 1 friend. This is probably because of the whole fact that the first ride we were going to New York and the excitement was building and this ride we were leaving the city and we were coming back to reality and had some work to do. After about the first hour we stopped for our last meal together at a rest stop and it was fun to be in the midst of everything again and to talk with one of our amazing teachers for a while. Once we got going again I started to work on our NYC booklet (which in the end no one really cared about) and science (which was due Monday). When I finally finished I joined my friends’ conversation, but there was the awkward feeling when you join in the middle of the conversation, so I spent a lot of the time just listening. In the last hour or so I turned to my best friend sitting next to me, who finally decided to give up on sleeping, and we chatted and played some pen and paper games, it was the best part of the ride. All too soon we saw our (very) mini-sity of Washingtonian.
We got off the bus at school, and instead of realizing that I truly missed home like I thought that I would have, I only missed New York more. It was kind of like coming home from a trip to Disney, only worse. I hung back with my friends after realizing that my dad was not at the school to pick me up. I felt kind of bad, because the teachers had really emphasized that our parents needed to be there on time so that our chaperones , who had already sacrificed so much of their personal time for this trip, could go home. Though, it was kind of nice because I was going to the Magruder homecoming game and my parents had told me before I left on the trip that if we were going to make it to the game on time, we would have to rush out on Friday; that was something that I really didn’t want to do. A friend of mine and her dad stayed with me until my dad showed up. Once the area had cleared up I started to feel really bad because 1) my dad still wasn’t there and 2) because I couldn’t find Mrs. S and I had wanted to say thanks and bye for the last time in person. I was convinced that she had gone home, I started planning on writing her an email. I knew that it wasn’t the ideal way, but probably the next best thing, but she came back out front he school and came over to where my friend and I (and both of our dads) were standing. I was so relieved that she hadn’t left yet and that my dad didn’t force me to rush to the high school. The three of us chatted for a little bit and it was a really nice way to close off the trip.
Going to the football game was alright, it was very cold and windy, I still hadn’t been home and I was tired, and I missed healthy home-made meals, so my dad and I left at half-time. Though I kept seeing and hearing Mrs. S and the others in my group at the game, though I knew that they weren’t actually going to be there. Both the ride over to the school and during most of the game I was spilling over all of the stories and memories of the week, even though I was debating how much to say considering that I wanted to keep some just for me and the group.
The weekend right after the trip, I’ll admit, was hard and I had actually gotten a little mad. Sorry Mom and Dad, but I missed the city after coming back than I missed my parents while in NYC. While we were in the city it felt as if we had so much independence and we could call the shots. Okay, I realize that we probably didn’t have that much and there was still a fairly strict calendar of things that we had to do, but it was just different. We could do things the way we wanted and the timing on each activity was usually up to us. However, upon coming back the weekend was pretty packed again. The weekends leading up to my departure we had weekend after weekend jam packed with stuff that I really didn’t want to do and I was starting to get so sick of it. When the weekend after a week where we were in charge most of the time, or at least felt more like that, where my two options seemed to be dragged places or stay at home by myself, and most of the time not actually having that option I just couldn’t take it and I got really frustrated. It’s really confusing though because when asked what I want to do, I don’t really know, just not what we have to do. What I really want, and got in NYC, was to go with the stride to figure out what to do when we got there instead of making a plan and being committed to it only to decide that you no longer want to do it. One thing that I liked in the city was you could just walk from place to place and just walking in itself as fun and interesting, something that is just not the same in the suburbs. Though people keep asking me if I really liked the city, yes I did, but the thing that I really liked was going with my friends and the set-up of the trip. The city just allows that set-up to work with logistics. Going back to New York, though it will still be fun and have many memories in it’s own ways, will just never be the same. I have gotten over the anger, but I am still a pretty sad that the trip is over. I have practically been looking forward to this trip for 4 years and in one short, but long, week it’s over. Even though I can still picture so much from my experiences as if the trip was yesterday, I know that I’ll eventually begin forgetting bits and pieces and that honestly makes me kind of frustrated and upset, even if I’ll always remember the impact. That’s part of the reason why I wrote this blog, I realize that there is lots of detail that most people won’t really care about as much, but this is also a place for me to put down all of my memories that no photos could capture.
Thank you so much Sh, M, C, H, A, V, Sa, and Mrs. S for such a wonderful week. I really couldn’t have asked for a better experience and I cannot wait for the future plans that we have made!
Leave a Reply