Full Speed Ahead

Ayyo!

Please excuse the lack of blogging recently, the past few weeks have been quite the whirlwind. Now that I'm back at PSU, I'm hoping that I can figure out this whole routine thing soon and get back to a normal schedule of being a real person.

Sooooo my time in Cape Breton was absolutely wonderful. I spent a week with the MacAskill crew and we had a great time catching up (while I've visited with my family, I hadn't been to Nova Scotia in a few years) and exploring different parts of the island. The seven days were full of scenic hikes, road trips to the beach, lots of visits to chip trucks, and some interesting nights on the town in Sydney. It was a great way to end the summer.

By the time I got back in Erie, I had one-and-a-half days to get my life together to move back into school. I basically just threw a little bit of everything in a bunch of laundry baskets and boxes, packed up the Jeeps, and headed out to Happy Valley at 4:30AM last Thursday. We made it to Atherton Hall around 8AM and were happily surprised to see that we were the only people moving in during that time, so the craziness of dodging 7,000 people on move-in day was avoided. After putting a couple of loads of all the things I bought in India into the new room, I was off to a THON meeting before putting the finishing touches in my lovely dorm.

There was no time to relax after unloading and setting up everything because the Reilly's were then off to the Big Apple for the weekend. We had lunch at the Corner Room in State College (ahhh, delicious!) and did some shopping downtown before the drive to our hotel in New Jersey. We basically went to bed as soon as we got there (it had been quite the long day) and woke up the next morning to head to our hotel in the city. Our hotel for the weekend sat smack-dab in the middle of Herald Square; its location right in front of Macy's was absolutely fantastic.

We spent Friday exploring monuments and museums. We took the boat out to Liberty Island to visit Lady Liberty, then visited Ellis Island to explore. It was fascinating to go through the halls and rooms  where so many people entered America and the history nerd inside of me loved reading all of the stories and side-notes written throughout the entire place. I took my time wandering around (my parents at times were trying to pull me along) and it was a really great visit.

The next stop on our tour was the 9/11 memorial and museum. I had visited the memorial before, but the museum was not completed the last time I was in NYC. We spent hours going through the extremely well-done exhibits and taking everything in.

After a little shopping, people-watching, and grabbing some food in Times Square, we headed back to the hotel as some super tired tourists. We got some sleep before an early start Saturday morning. We decided to browse through Macy's before hopping on the Subway to Yankee Stadium, which resulted in us getting separated and slightly lost in the mass chaos that is the world's largest store.

We finally gathered ourselves made it to the stadium and into our seats with the Gannon group and enjoyed a beautiful day of baseball. We watched Jorge Pasada number be retired and the Yankees earn a victory over the Indian. What a great afternoon for a sports fan.

Next came some more subway surfing, wandering through stores, a trip through Central Park to see the bridge from a scene in my favorite movie, Made of Honor, and trying to dodge the masses of people. I have to say that crossing streets was actually a breeze compared to crossing streets in Delhi, so the traffic was not a problem whatsoever.

After scouring the shoe department at Macy's (you couldn't pay me a million bucks to work in the clearance rooms in that store), it was time to hit the hay. While I was so pumped from the awesome weekend spent in the city, I was pretty exhausted and fell right asleep as soon as I hit the pillow.


Sunday brought a visit to the giant Toys-R-Us with Coach Rei and a  last-minute trip to Macy's (I was trying to find a shoe that had gone missing from the clearance room) and a longgggg ride back to Penn State. I finally made it back around dinner time and had time to reunite with some friends before trying to organize myself and get back into school-mode.

This week has been nuts. Between classes, working in the basketball office, trying to start the planning for next summer's adventure, and just staring at my schedule for the next few months, I'm in major need of a huge nap... and it's only the fourth day. I guess that's what I get for only having five days at home since July 5th...

While I'm sad that I had to say good-bye to my amazing summer of adventures, it does feel pretty great to be back at the best school on the planet and getting back into the swing of things with my pals.

If things weren't super crazy, life wouldn't be any fun,
Kirst