I woke up this morning at 6:30 in a cold sweat. I realized that I would leave the home that I had grown up in my whole life, and I would embark on the journey of my life and leave for 10 months. I looked over and I saw my best friend, Kara, still asleep after our long night of playing cards and watching movies and having our last sleepover for the next year. I got up and finished packing some last minute items before I headed up to the airport. When I got to the airport, I waited for Kara to come up and say our last goodbyes. When she got there, we laughed and joked and had a good time until it was time for me to go through security. We then hugged and cried and she went her way and I went mine. It's hard to know that I will not see her again for the next year, but I also know that this year will fly by so fast that I'll be home before I know it. I made it through security, and I knew that my adventure was about to begin.
Excitement, sadness, nervousness and anticipation overwhelmed me as I waited to depart. My mom and I were getting a little hungry, so we decided to stop and get some food from one of the kiosks. We saw a smash burger shop and thought that would be good to eat. We placed our order, and they told us that it was a 7 minute wait. I started freaking out because our flight was going to begin boarding at any minute, and we were priority boarding members, so we were some of the first people to board. I thought that we weren't going to make it, but my mom was cool and collected and told me to relax. I realized that we were going to board after we got our food, so that helped me calm down. :) We boarded our plane, got to our seats, and when we took off, I looked down at the place that I had spent my whole life and I felt a pang of longing. I wanted to stay, but I also knew that I had the opportunity of a lifetime and I wasn't going to waste it.
The pilot told us that we were slightly delayed, but the flight would take about 3.5 hours (and I thought that I would die of boredom before we landed), but they would play a movie to pass the time. They announced the movie, and it was Iron Man 3 (one of my favorite movies), so I knew that I would actually enjoy the flight. :) My mom (who is blatantly against super hero movies) agreed to watch the movie with me. We shared a set of ear buds and she honestly enjoyed it. We had a pretty good flight because we were watching the movie. :)
When we landed in the Detroit airport, we looked at our boarding passes, and we realized that we had 40 minutes before our next flight took off. That meant that our connecting flight started boarding 10 minutes after we landed. We hurried off the plane, and we saw that our connection was in another terminal on the other side of the airport. We had to book it all the way across the airport. I was freaking out and talking about how we would miss our flight, but my mom was as calm as ever and kept talking to me and trying to calm me down. We finally reached our gate, and we see that our flight had been delayed by an hour. Well now we felt stupid because we booked it all that way just to have to sit there and wait.
We boarded our plane (again priority boarding) and it was a TINY plane! My mom and I were both tired after our frantic quest to get to our gate on time, so we decided that we were going to take a power nap. We slept for about ten minutes, and we woke up when the flight attendant was coming around with food and drinks. We got our snacks and drinks and we decided that we would play a card game together. We played a few rounds of Casino (the best game in the world) until we were getting headaches from the air pressure changes. We watched the landscape of West Virginia roll past and change into Virginia. It was breathtaking how much green there was. I could have watched the greenery fly by all day, but, of course, all things must come to an end.
We landed in the Dulles International Airport at 8:30 local time. We had to take a train to get to the correct terminal, and it was so cool! It looked more like a train station than an actual airport. We went to our baggage claim and had to wait for my massive bags to come around the carousel. We got my bags, went outside and waited for my family. They came up, completely embarrassing me and my mom, and we got in the car to leave. This is when I got my first view of the outside of the airport. It was magnificent! My mom and I got to the house and we snacked and chatted and got ready for bed. We had a pretty full day, and we have several days left ahead of us.
We head towards the National Zoo, and my mom was driving. We were trying to figure out where we were supposed to go (because the signs and the GPS were unclear), and we realized that we had missed the turn to enter into the zoo parking lot. We went up the road a little ways and we flipped around. We arrived at the zoo parking lot, and we payed for parking. We drove into the lot and we realized... there were absolutely no parking places available! We kept looking around for some, but there were not any available.We got down to the end of that lot and we found a couple of available spots, so we backed into one, and we were in. We gathered our belongings and we were off.
We got up to the entrance of the zoo, and we decided that we should purchase a few maps of the park so that we could know where we were going. We talk to the park attendant about the shuttle service that is offered, and she told us that there was a shuttle that would take us up to the top of the hill, right next to the giant pandas. We decided that that would be the best option for us since we were lazy and tired and Leigh-Ann couldn't walk up the hill. We waited at the sidewalk where the shuttle would pick us up, and when the shuttle arrived, we hopped on and rode it to the top of the hill.
The first two exhibits that we visited were completely devoid of animals. The female panda was on pregnancy watch, so she was not able to come out, and the male was no where to be found. The next exhibit we attended was the wolf exhibit. There was no wolf to be seen, so we assumed that it had taken cover under the shade of the den that was created for it. We were beginning to become discouraged because we were 0 for 2 in the animal department. But we started getting lucky. After that, there were only a few exhibits in which there were no animals to be seen. Because of that, we got to see so many exotic animals, and we spent the entire day at the zoo. We were slightly upset because there were barely any available at the big cat exhibit. We did see 2 female lions in their pen, and there was a tiger asleep in its den, but those were the only cats that we got to see.
My favorite part was the small mammal house and the great ape house. I made a new friend at the big ape house and I got to see some big and small monkeys, which are my favorite animals. After we were finished at the zoo, we went home and went to dinner at this tex mex restaurant which was actually not bad. We went home and we all had a quiet evening. Tomorrow will be a busy day, but it will be fantastic as well.
