When we departed last Wednesday for Boston, we all knew there was a possibility we wouldn’t make it back on Sunday as we planned due to the blizzard that intended on rolling its way through the East Coast. What we didn’t expect, however, was the surge of media that would follow us.
We made it to the Boston Globe, CBS Baltimore, the Carroll County Times, and two television stations, here and below:
It was rather entertaining seeing all the media outrage over us–I hadn’t thought that it was really a big deal, but it was fun seeing everyone talking about us.
We found out on Sunday morning (around 3AM, for those of us who were still up after the delegate dance), that our flight out that evening had been cancelled. A lot of people on the trip were really distraught about missing class, but teachers were quite reasonable about making assignments up. One teacher even offered to skype a student into class!
I personally was ecstatic to be stuck in Boston. Don’t get me wrong; I love my classes and I was kind of sad to be missing my chance to pitch a script in screenwriting, but two free days in Boston? I’d take those any day! I decided there was no use in complaining and that I’d make the most of the extra days. I rarely saw snow growing up and I’m still quite naive when it’s just fallen, so I threw quite a few snowballs and was just generally happy to be around this magical powdery white stuff.
The biggest issue was that the hotel we were staying at had WiFi that was limited to the lobbies and public areas, which for me meant that when I skyped friends I had to talk in public spaces. I’d already downloaded a lot of the assignments I needed to do and various articles for research. However, it was kind of cool, too–on Sunday night, I skyped my friend in Michigan, who is thinking about moving to New Zealand, where I grew up. I promptly started talking in my Kiwi accent, as I do when I think about home, and the people sitting next to me turned and stared–it turned out they were from Australia, and we got to argue for a while over which of our countries is better, as us Aussies and Kiwis do. There’s nothing cooler than talking to international students about their experiences.
My favourite part about the conference was getting to meet people from all over the world, and some people from much further away were also stuck in Boston. I made a friend from Colombia who had to stay an extra night, so I got to hang out with her. Additionally, a friend of mine who I met in high school was at the conference. He goes to school in Ohio and also got stuck the extra two days, so I got to spend some time with him as well.
While flights were cancelled, the subway system, commonly referred to as the T, was only down on the Sunday we were there, so I was still able to access all of Boston and explore.
The group of UN students–we can handle a bit of snow!
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