Getting There

On the morning of January 5th bright and early I woke up with excitement, enthusiasm and a little bit of fear. I had finally come to the realization that I was on my way to a foreign place where I would have to live and totally cope on my own. The time that morning seemed to go a lot faster than normal and in no time I was ready with suitcases at the front door. My mother and grandmother dropped me off to the airport giving their last bit of advice of which I had heard repeatedly over the Christmas time, “be careful”, “stay focus”, “make us proud”, “do well”. As I entered the Nassau International Airport my stomach was filled with butterflies and the lines were long and moving ridiculously slow. Finally I got to the front of the line, got checked in and of course was charged $50 for one of my suitcases being overweight, but I would rather be safe than sorry. To my surprise along came Mr. Russell came to wish me luck and to give me some kind words of advice. For a moment I got a little excited thinking oh maybe I don’t have to travel all the way by myself, but then I came back to reality.
I arrived in Miami International Airport along with a friend from home whom also was catching a connecting flight, got a quick bite to eat after getting lost in Miami’s rather large and newly renovated airport and was off to gate E to wait for my flight to Toronto. I was a little bit worried when I got to the gate because back in Nassau at the airport Mr. Russell told me that Berylyn had a little problem with her flight but it was fixed, however I was in the airport for a quite some time and had seen no sight of her. All that was going through my mind was how am I going to do this all alone and finally right after that thought I spotted her from a distance how coincidental was that? This flight was delayed as well I guess that just was not my day, but all is well because I made it safely. The plane ride was 3 hours, but I slept for most of it so it did not feel long to me at all. Finally the plane landed and we got into the airport filled with mixed emotions. The baggage claim was our next stop, I found my bags rather quickly one right after the other, this was rare, travelling on Bahamas Air this was never the case. Berylyn on the other hand was in a panic because I had collected my entire luggage but one of hers, the biggest of them all seemed to be hiding. However after a few minutes of panic I pointed out the bag and we were on our merry way to the Canadian Immigration where we found out that we should have brought our acceptance letters to Brock University so knew that we were not trying to smuggle our ways into Canada. We did have some documentation showing that we were in correspondence with the university and by God’s good grace we were allowed to continue on our journey. Finally we got to the lower level of Toronto’s airport were we booked our tickets to St. Catharines. The bus ride was almost two hours long and by the time we arrived at Brock University it was about midnight. Thank God for Stella, a Brock student whom we got to know on the bus on our way to school, she was a great help at helping us get our keys and showing us where we were staying. Oh did I mention how cold it was walking around with two big suitcases in the middle of the night around a rather large campus, it was horrible but worth it.