So our journey begins when Ryan Davenport, my roommate, and I arrive in the Dulles airport on May 8, packed and ready for two weeks of adventure. After a quick goodbye with our fathers, we meet up with the few other members who were there as early as we were. When a majority of the group arrived, we got in line to check in. The last of the group to arrive was Chloe, who we gave a hard time to, but not too hard since it was her birthday. Now it was time to get in the security check line, which by this time had wrapped around a majority of our part of the airport- it was huge. It moved rather quickly, however, and within 30 minutes we were all through security and were just chilling in the little gate lobby.

After a delayed boarding (some problem with a generator on the plane- oh great, that would be my luck!) and pre-flight time, we finally got up in the air. I was in the last row of VT students, sitting next to Amanda K. and some kind of strange German man.

The flight was long-8 hours- but it definitely could have been worse. The in-flight movies were all enjoyable, and I actually liked the pasta dinner. While taking a stretch break towards the back of the plane, I met a freshman architectural engineer from Penn State, Raffi, who was on a connecting flight to his home in Lebanon. After a long, interesting conversation with Raffi I dedicated the rest of the flight to sleep, which was fine with me.