Gateway Camp

You would figure that of all the flights going to La Guardia and of all the people that will fly there in one given day, the chances of meeting someone you know or could potentially know would be very, very slim. I guess fate played its part and I ended up meeting another AFSer on my flight from Chicago to La Guardia. As if fate hadn't already done it's part we sat in the same row right next to each other. Who would have thought.

The night before I got about 4 to 3½ hours of sleep so I was already tired enough. The AFS USA gateway camp had plenty planned for us. It came complete with a schedual and name tags. Staying at St. John's wasn't really anything special. The dorms wouldn't have been so bad had you time to lay out a rug and bring your own bedding. The food wasn't terrible but the elevators were packed. In fact I think we were able to get a good 12 people or more in one of them.

The most fun we really had was hanging out in the hall way to the lounge. The lady, Janet, who ran the program was kind of boring and too serious. We did some skits, but she would suck all of the fun out of it by talking about 20 minutes on each one.

The camp wasn't anything I expected. They never really tell you the specifics so I went thinking there would be all the Euro students there. In fact only the students going to Denmark and Norway were there. It seem like as soon as everyone got there we all hit it off. It's hard not to when all of us shared a common interest.

The final and really only second day at the camp was spent packing and traveling to Newark. Yes, to all of you who didn't believe, I left from Newark not JFK. The drive to Newark isn't great in distance but you have to drive straight through New York city and the traffic is terrible. You have to been in a good area I think to appreciate New York. What we saw from the bus was dirty and ugly. The most spectacular site was, interestingly enough, a cemetary. Never before had I ever seen such a large expance of tomb stones.

The check in process was fairly easy. On the down side our terminal was very boring though. Only had one store a small little cafe, if it can be called that, and a currency exchange place. We exchanged our money and then proceeded to wait a few hours for our flight which would prove to be very, very long.