The Chaotic Adventures of Traveling

            In the few weeks of my winter vacation before my flight on New Year’s morning, I spent a lot of effort organizing my packing list, packing my bags, and weighing them over and over again. Despite all of this preparation, the day of departure for my study abroad still came very quickly and kind of left me sitting in my room on New Year’s Eve thinking: Wow, I won’t be back in this house until late May, and Oh jeez, I packed too much in my suitcase. After a last minute scramble to keep my suitcase from exceeding the weight limit and my overhead suitcase and carry on from exploding with things, I was ready to go. Well my overhead and carry were still exploding, and I still had to say goodbye.

            I really hate goodbyes, especially when it’s with my little sister since we are so close. After about 6 separate hug sessions, my parents and I had to get going. Once we actually left the house, I started welling up like I do, and my mom threw me a pack of Kleenex* and eventually I chilled out. We stopped once to have dinner with my oldest sister and had another difficult goodbye, and we finally made it to Philly and checked into our hotel for a very low-key and kinda pathetic New Year’s Eve celebration. We were basically going in and out of sleep with Dick Clark’s New Year’s Eve on and really only payed attention for the ball drop. HAPPY NEW YEAR! It wasn’t until we got to the ticket counter at 3am that things went wrong, like, very wrong. Ok, let me outline it for you.

            You cannot get a visa to Hong Kong (where we are flying to) or Macau (our final destination) until you are there. That's it. You can’t. Absolutely not possible. Now, my fellow Macau trip classmate, Connor, got his tickets no problem. However, the different ticket lady who was “helping” me insisted that I needed a visa to board despite the sheer impossibility of that request. After half an hour of explaining this concept, her being on the phone, her disappearing, her apparent lack of concern for my position, preventing my mom, my dad, and Connor’s mom from committing assault and possible murder, and showing the fact that Connor, who is on the exact same trip as me, has his tickets in his hands, we finally reached a solution; which was to go on line again and get my fricken tickets from the woman Connor did. Surprisingly simple and effective.

            With that out of the way, we rushed over to security where I was not only clueless as to what was going on, but also depressed because I feel like I didn't get to say goodbye to my parents properly. It was rushed, and though I knew we’d get separated at this point, the time came so quickly that I didn’t get my standard minimum of 15 seconds per hug. It still makes me sad as I write this. The Kleenex may have been the most important thing I’ve packed 😭.

I have, like, 10 more of these.

            Well, anyway, enough of that, let’s get to the exciting part: my first plane ride! It was honestly pretty fun; it was kinda like a rollercoaster at some points and having a window seat for the flight to Dallas was great! I literally had my nose up against the glass for, no joke, 20 minutes after take-off just staring at lights below me in the dark. I saw the sun come up and the clouds go by and I loved it, and the activities tablet blew my mind. After layover in Dallas for a couple hours, we got on the 16 hour flight to Hong Kong. I made friends with the random guy sitting next to me, hi Solomon. Unfortunately, I couldn't see much outside the window since Connor got the window seat and we were right on the wing of the plane 😓. I completely missed seeing Canada, but I was able to take some pictures at an angle of mountains of snow in very north Alaska.

            Once the first 8 hours of the flight was finished, I was starting to get antsy. How could this flight only be half over? I didn't really want to watch another movie, the TV shows didn't seem interesting and I couldn't sleep very well. In fact, the highlights after this point in the flight comprised of walking around the plane to stretch my legs, going to the bathroom, and chatting with one of the flight attendants. The time seemed to stretch more and more slowly, and eventually I slept for an hour or two, but by the time the final hour rolled around, I was ready to skydive out of this plane. I just could not stand it anymore, I started to feel slightly nauseous, the questionable breakfast was playing on my stomach, and playing Tetris simply wasn't cutting it.

            But finally, like a beacon of hope, the plane graphic on the flight map was just inches away from Hong Kong and the end was in sight. Everything was looking good, we were told we would be landing momentarily, but this was not the end of the madness. Because the pilot went past the airport and flew in circles three times 😑. This definitely wasn't helping my motion sickness, and I was just about begging him to just land the plane in the ocean if he had to. But luckily he didn't, and I got to go and gaze at the brand new world that I had never seen before, where it was dark, cloudy, and frankly a little depressing looking 😅. At this time, it was about 6pm in Hong Kong and we had to wait in the airport until the 9pm ferry to Macau. 

Victory photo!

The first look of my dreams...

            The airport was pretty cool. I was able to get my first taste of a foreign country by looking at the different stuff they carry in their 7-Eleven** and that there are two flush buttons on toilets to get your optimal amount of flush. I played a card game with Connor and read while we waited, and eventually we got onto the hour long ferry ride where I learned that gambling as well as smoking is prohibited on board. When we got off, it was about 10:15pm and we were all very exhausted. But the journey was far from over. We now had to get a taxi to take three people with a large amount of luggage to UMAC (University of Macau), and none of them speak English.

            We were at the taxi area for half an hour trying to talk to anyone and to get them to understand where we wanted to go, despite the fact that I had written down and shown them the characters for UMAC and the specific residential college we had to go to. Thankfully, a woman who worked at the ferry terminal translated and negotiated with two of the cab drivers to take the three of us over, and I was so happy that we could actually leave and get to our rooms. I said too soon.

            The taxi driver didn't seem very nice. Of course, we wouldn't be able to understand each other if we spoke so I can't say this for a fact, but he seemed very annoyed and angry. Also, the taxi had a seat belt strap, but no buckle. Apparently that's common. Anyway, so as we treacherously drove around Macau, I got to see a lot of the casinos and buildings lit up in their glory, which was pretty awesome. I don't have any pictures, but I'll get some soon. We got to the campus, but the taxi driver couldn't take us to our residential college, and so our hike around the big and foreign campus while tugging all our luggage began.

            Luckily, we ran into a couple of graduate students that helped us carry our stuff and showed the way to our college and by this time, it was well after 11pm. My room is a little small, but manageable, and the bathroom is... and my bed is... you know? I think I'll save that for later. This is so very long, and if you made it this far, congratulations! At this time, I've completed my first day of orientation and there is plenty more to talk about that as well because it was quite honestly an amazing day. Expect it to be about this long too, sorry. For your convenience, I'll be putting a one sentence synopsis under every post as you can see in the blue below, just in case it's way too long. Feel free to comment and ask questions and maybe I'll answer them in a future update! Also subscribe with your email to get notifications every time I post!

再见！

*I'm not sponsored by Kleenex.

**I'm not by 7-Eleven either. 😄

TL;DR: Goodbyes are hard, Mean Lady was mean, plane rides are rollercoasters, I squeal from seeing things outside of planes, Solomon was a cool dude, you can't gamble on the ferry, and don't expect seatbelts in taxis.


Want to see more photos? Visit my Traveling to Macau album! See my Gallery page for all the pictures I've taken throughout my study abroad!