If you read my last blog you know that I was scared out of my mind to get on a plane to California because I thought it was going to crash and I was going to die. The good news is that none of that happened, and that I live to tell the tale of my California adventure.Â
I was freaking all the way out when I was getting on the plane, and it did not help that I knew I was gonna be stuck in the middle seat of a full flight. THANK GOD the two people I was sitting in between were the most lovely people on Earth. The guy to my right was a Holy Cross grad so we chatted for a while, and it distracted me from the fact that I was 30,000 feet in the air. Luckily, it was the smoothest flight imaginable, and everything went perfectly. The second I stepped out of the airport, I felt like a vampire who hadn’t seen the sun in years. It was SO BRIGHT. As I was ubering to Stanford’s campus, I could not get over how pretty everything was. I don’t even think it was a particularly “scenic” drive, but I was just so amazed to be in California for the first time.Â
One of the biggest “culture shocks” I had was the amount of hugging. I have never hugged so many people in my life. Every time I met someone new we would hug. It was crazy. At least in my experience, this NEVER happens in New England. Every time I saw anyone, we would hug hello, and THEN we would hug goodbye too. I’m not saying this is necessarily a bad thing, it just caught me so off guard because it is not what I am used to at all. I hugged more people in the 4 days I was in California than I have in the past 4 months back home.Â
There was truly not one bad part of this trip. Every single person I met was SO SO NICE, and everything Nellie (my friend) and I did was INSANELY FUN. The food was amazing, and our day trip to San Francisco was absolutely incredible. In short, I’m obsessed with Stanford and I love California.