Best Laid Plans

July 10-17th, 2013
The internet connections were no good at the places I stayed this past week, so now that I am back in Texas I will recap in a few posts what I did. First of all, I did receive and accept the offer to work in Grand Prairie ISD for this coming school year! There are so many things to get done before school starts and it is overwhleming! Thank you to those of you who prayed for me and encouraged me along the way.

Now for the trip...
One of my college roommates, Linley, and I were taken to DFW on Wednesday July 10th. Long story short, there was a ground stop in Boston where we were flying to and our flight was delayed for three hours! While this was somewhat inconvenient, I was glad that we were safe and able to relax. The staff for the JetBlue airline were friendly and fun (giving us snacks, drinks, and decks of cards to keep us occupied). Once we took off at 8 p.m. Texas time, we landed in Boston Logan airport at 12:20 a.m. local time. After collecting our luggage, we waited for a bus to take us to Alamo to pick up the rental car we had reserved. That went smoothly but it was nearly 1:30 am local time...we missed our turn in the tunnels and ended up going west when we needed to go north. As the navigator, I was trying to get us back to a highway, but that is easier said than done....in the dark, in a new area, in Massachusetts. If any of you have visited New England before, you know that it is NOTHING like Texas in its city planning or business locations. There are turnabouts and trees everywhere. The trees line the highway so there are no landmarks. The turnabouts mix up your sense of cardinal directions. Despite the scenic route we took, we made it to our hotel at 3 a.m. and were exhausted. But wait, there's more......our room was not clean, even though we were assured that it had been cleaned! Linley and I were fed up with it all, so we asked for more towels and new sheets, changed them ourselves and went to sleep at 4 a.m.!! Not a great way to start a trip. I guess you get what you pay for, but at least the room should be clean!

After being up so early, the things we had planned were all messed up. So we found food in a small town nearby called Andover and drove into the city of Boston. Our hotel was 30 minutes outside the city in Methuen, but luckily our rental car had the ECO feature. It became a ritual to find a new small town for each meal. We visited Lawrence for Mexican food, Lowell for pizza, and Andover for italian deli. On Thursday afternoon we were able to take a student led tour on the campus of Harvard. It was beautiful but very humid that day. Learned lots of cool things about the school and of course I bought the cheapest item as a souvenir :) The Boston native Liberty Mutual Insurance agent that I sat next to on the plane was right in saying that it was a bad idea to drive into the city (we really had no other option on our first day until we figured out the subway system). The parking bill was $28 for less than 6 hours. Ugh. Shot to the heart. Friday was much better. We drove to the subway station outside the city, parked for $7, bought an all day pass for $11, and made it to the 10 a.m. tour of historic Fenway Park! It is the oldest baseball park and has lots of great things to appreciate by all baseball fans, no matter who you cheer for. They were setting up for a Jason Aldean concert so the field was covered up, but we saw the stands, Green Monster, cafe area and the press box! I took lots of pictures and I hope to post them soon!! The only place we ate in Boston was called Sweet Caroline's, named after the tradition within the stadium of playing Neil Diamond's song Sweet Caroline before every 8th inning. Friday entailed a lot of walking and riding the subway. We followed the Freedom Trail, stopping at King's Chapel and Burial grounds, the Old State House and site of the Boston Massacre. Finally we went to the Old North Church where the lanterns were hung by Paul Revere.

Saturday was our day to drive up through New Hampshire and into Maine for the "main" event :) Kate's wedding!! Separate post will begin shortly...