Day One, or “I’m Outta here”

Getting up at 4:00 am, flying out at 6:44 am, arriving and leaving from Denver approximately four hours later, and then arriving in San Francisco around 9:00 am Western Standard Time (about noon our time). That was the beginning of day one.

Day one saw the first “You’ve got to be kidding” moment from Mr. H. Trying to take a picture of myself leaving the Cleveland airport, I discovered that my 1970s style 40-pound digital camera no longer accepted floppy disks. Stupid ‘70s. No problem, because I still have memory sticks, but in order to repair my huge overly sized camera and get the floppy that was stuck out of it, I had to make my first major purchase of the trip.

$2.50 well spent, I say.

Still, I made it to San Fran relatively easy, got off the plane, and met the fellow FMFers (Fulbright Memorial Fund people). This is me looking rather sweet, waiting to get on the bus that would take us to the hotel to get oriented about the trip. Notice the dark shadows that make me look all the more intimidating. As if I need it.

At the hotel, we found out a ton of detail about our trip. From meeting the people in our groups to learning about certain cultural do’s and don’ts, to finding out that the picture of my face in the program is about four sizes too large for an actual human head.

Many people couldn’t even recognize me due to my real head being actual head-size and not the size of a watermelon like my picture indicates. Notice how much larger my melon looks compared to some of the folks in my group.

After meeting with numerous people and being told numerous things, it was time to go to bed. Hopefully my abnormally sized head will shrink in the mean time.