Start of the Trip

Jan 14th official start of the journey
To start off the trip was a crazy day to the city. I got up after a lovely night of debauchery with some of my best friends and took the 6:55 train to NYC to retrieve my elusive student visa. ( I say elusive because this thing was ri-dic-u-lous to get!) Alas our trip to the city was two fold though, I had received a most wonderous gift of a photography camera from my parents and Aunt LeeLa (an inspirational professional photographer and world traveler in my eyes) Barry Brown (Father) and I were enjoying a lovely train ride in on a frigid day when we were told we had to switch at Summit train station. We switched trains and about ten minutes in to train ride two I realized I had left my camera on the first train. I sat in utter panic as B.Brown went to talk to the conductors. After sitting in silence and honestly prayer for the next long half hour we got off the train and focused on the visa after filling out a missing item report and calling NJtransit. We arrived at the visa office and within an hour I had finally gotten my visa yay! (granted I missed a day of orientation but hey what are you going to do) Then we decided we would go to Hoboken to see if the camera was turned in. So we walked and subwayed our way to the Path train which takes us directly to Hoboken. As the train pulled up I got an email saying that NJtransit had indeed retrieved my camera and my 21 year old self actually ran and jumped into my 53 year old fathers arms in joy that I had not ruined my hopes of creating this blog and disappointed my impeccably organized father of mine who has worked so hard to make this trip happen. So we went to Hoboken picked up the camera sprinted a couple avenues to get a lens for the camera at Band H which is the most intimidating place for someone that does not know cameras very well and or would not consider herself a technology buff. And then B. Brown and I took the train out of the city just before 1. My flight was at 6:30 that night so we cut things pretty close.