Welcome to Orlando - by Shweta

TODAY IS NOVEMBER 9, 2014. Today is the day following a red eye flight in which all (or at least the most) of us kids and teachers (except Ms. Kenkel, with her skillful plane sleeping abilities) stayed up, unable to sleep on a red-eye flight from Sea-Tac International Airport to Orlando International Airport.  And while a few of us may have caught some z's in there, I know I couldn’t sleep. But I turned this struggling into a positive by buying wi-fi to use on the plane - so it wasn’t completely a total bust of time! In addition, I was grateful to have given myself a good solid whole night’s sleep the night prior to the flight, which helped. A LOT.  I realize now I prefer daytime flights over red-eye flights.  I personally find it really hard to sleep on buses or planes, or just anything that I can’t use as a bed. Plus, I feel more awake in the day (for obvious reasons), and I find it’s generally easier to be productive on daytime flights. Well, maybe "productive" is the wrong word, but during the day there is least the opportunity to socialize, and get to know your group better.  No one frowns on you for the constant chatter, and enthusiasm is encouraged, instead of stifled while you try to respect everyone attempt to fight for those few previous minutes of sleep that they can get.  But I feel really disoriented on night flights, like how one would feel after waking up from an afternoon nap. Nevertheless, it was a very tiring, but any experience required to get us to Orlando was well worth it

We hit the ground running when we landed, and let me say that entering the park was so surreal.  I was literally a zombie as we came through the gates. But sleep exhaustion aside, we jumped right into the fun (in an effort to help kick-start our adrenaline so we wouldn’t collapse onto the ground). The park we explored today was Hollywood Studios, which had some similarities to California Adventure Park in Disneyland (though Hollywood Studios is much smaller). I won’t go into a huge compare/contrast of Disneyworld and Disneyland because I’ve been to only one park here in Florida so far, and I don’t know enough about the former to criticize. But, that doesn’t mean they both don’t radiate the same magic!  I'm looking forward to seeing what the other 3 parks here at the magical World of Disney have to offer!

I swear I will not recite my whole day today, but I did want to mention that I spent half of it with Mom & Dad, (Mr. & Mrs. Becker), and Mama Kenks (Ms. Kenkel). It was time well spent, and definitely going to be continued over the near future. I love getting to spend time with teachers.  Getting to now them and enjoying time with them from a non-academic yet academic perspective (I hope that makes sense - if not, I blame it on the fact that I brain-turning-to-mush level sleepy) is really fun, and really, unlike any other fun you can enjoy.

Tomorrow, we’re going to go and explore the past and present of manned space flight, learn about engineering and other super cool stuff at NASA, and not to mention MEET AN ACTUAL ASTRONAUT, the one and only, Captain Winston E. Scott!! THE EXCITEMENT CANNOT BE CONTAINED.  I guarantee you a much more detailed story of that experience to come.

Now I am going to recharge my mind’s fried batteries. Stay tuned for more of Shweta's jumbled thoughts tomorrow!