My morning started off by waking up at 4:45 to catch my 6:00 AM flight, but even still, I thought arriving 45 minutes to the airport was too early. Memphis is not known for its passenger terminals, meaning that the airport is almost always deserted. Last year, when I arrived that early, my parents ended up waiting around with me for 20 minutes because there was no one in line for security. Apparently, all the heavy flight traffic is at 5:30 in the morning.
I was worried because now, 45 minutes did not seem like enough time to get through security, but thankfully I got to skip one of the lines since my flight was about to leave.
As perusal, I got patted down because my “back was suspicious.” Classic racial profiling. Also, only people of color got stopped and had their bagged searched. An old white man walked up and asked “do I need to take my shoes and belt off” and the worker looks at him and goes “no sir, just put your electronics in the bin.” And guess who got yelled at for “not properly putting their electronics in the bin?
Hint: it’s me.
But other than that, it was smooth sailing to Jersey. It’s a shame my layover is so short, because I could have totally popped by to see Anushka, but oh whale.
Other than being racially profiled in Memphis, I had a really smooth flight and arrived at the airport a few minutes early. I waited for some friends to at baggage claim and we took an uber to the hotel. It was $50, but splitting it three-way was not bad at all.
We got lucky and were able to check into our hotel rooms early. The rooms are super nice and spacious. Someone joked about how much money the state department could save if they didn’t put us in a super nice hotel in the middle of downtown DC, but I’m not complaining. The beds have tons of pillows and are really soft. I guess I’ll have to say goodbye to that when I get to China.
After we checked in, we ran into other CLS-ers and went to get lunch at a crape place. 10/10 would recommend. When we finished lunch, we parted ways and headed back to the hotel. I wanted to do some sight-seeing, but I also needed to charge my phone. I ended up watching some youtube videos before heading out to explore DC by myself. I walked to the White House and the Washington Monument, which turned out to be further than I expected. It was nice to see the city though.
By the time I made it back to the hotel, I was able to retrieve my folder, meet a few new faces, and then head back upstairs. Around 5:45, we walked to the Carnegie Endowment Fund for International Peace to eat dinner.
I met someone who did NSLI-Y Summer 2016, and it turns out they went to Nanjing as well. We bonded over the city and activities we had. Turns out their group didn’t get to eat in the lunch room. We got lucky with that one.
We also did “introductions.” Basically, one of the program directors would ask a question, and if it applied to us, we had to stand up. One of the questions was “Stand if you’ve just completed your freshman year,” and it was shocking to see only about seven people standing. There are a few graduate students, and I’ve been told that there’s someone on the program who’s 37. It’s really cool to see how diverse we all are.
They even mentioned the fact when they said that everyone came from different majors. It’s funny to a film major amongst a sea of international relations and international studies. I’m still shocked they chose a freshman film major, but I’m please none-the-less.
After the reception, I got to meet my roommate and hang with some new friends. One of the guys we hung out with is Isaac, and he mentioned that he did NSLI-Y 2014 and 2015. I said I went to Nanjing with NSLI-Y less than a year ago (which is weird to think about), and he asked if I went with American Councils. It turns out that he was one of the panelist that spoke at my PDO last year. It's a crazy small world.
Me, my roommate + Dianna and Daniel walked to Shake Shack so Daniel and Cayleigh could get dinner. I ended up getting a milkshake and bonding with Daniel over Fire Emblem. I was shook when he mentioned he liked Fire Emblem, so I told him I was making him play Brithright on the plan.
The joke of the day has been how are we going to bond once we have to start speaking only Chinese, which lead to Daniel and I having a brief conversation about Fire Emblem in Chinese. We managed to say our favorite characters and that’s about it. 火象征是我最爱的电脑游戏!
I also learned that Cayleigh has played the original Ace Attorney trilogy, so I’d say today has been a pretty awesome day.