New York to Bloomsburg

Hi,

So on the Friday (27th August), I woke up early at about 7am so that I had enough time to back my things up, have a shower, have breakfast and then be on my way to Newark Airport. This meant taking the subway a few stops down the line to Penn Station. The Subway is fairly easy to use in New York. It is just a standard fee of $2.25 for a one way trip. Which makes it a lot simpler to use than the London Underground. When I got to Penn Station I just followed the sign for the New Jersey Transit. I looked up the night before how I needed to get to Newark Airport, so I knew already that this was the way that I had to go. I got to the right area of the station, and then bought my NJ Transit ticket and made sure that it included the AirTrain for Newark aiport.

It was quite a mission getting all of my luggage onto the train, as it was pretty narrow, but luckily I made it. The train then pulled out of the station and made its way through the New York suburbs. There was not much to see on the way over to the airport, but it was still quite nice to see some different parts of the city. The train journey didn't take too long, probably about 25/30 minutes at most. I then made my way to the AirTrain, which is basically just a shuttle between the diferent terminals of the airport. They were doing maintenance, so it took about 10 minutes for a train to come along. But i didn't matter as I had about 35/40 minutes till I was meant to be at the metting point anyway, and it was only 2 stops away.

Once I got to Terminal C, which is where we were to meet, I made my way to the Starbucks. I now probably had about 30 minutes to wait, so I got a drink and a lovely chocolate brownie to eat :). I met a couple of people who were also going to Bloomsburg and so started talking to them. It got to midday and we were starting to wonder where the bus was. However it turned up about 10 minutes later and it was all fine. Apart from the fact that we had to wait for another person to arrive. The problem was that her plane didn't land till midday. But it was fine, and gave us all time to chat and get to know each other.

The person we were waiting for then arrived and we were off. The driver told us that it would be about 2/3 hours till we actually got to Bloomsburg. So we just talked some more and the time passed pretty quickly actually. It was nice getting to know some people before I actually arrived.

The driver we had was really nice also. When we arrived in Bloomsburg he took us to get our student I.D cards. Then took us all to Wal-Mart so that we could get some stuff that we needed.

I couldn't resist buying this case of 24 cans of Coke for $6, it was too much of a bargain.

I will try and get around to posting again tomorrow. It's Labor Day here tomorrow, which means no classes, so hopefully I will get the time.

Jarvis x

Paris to New York

Hi,

Sorry for not posting for a while, have just been quite busy and not properly had time to actually sit down and type out a new post.

Once I got to the gate for my flight to New York it was probably about 10 minutes till we started boarding. which was pretty good actually, as I didn't want to sit around in the airport doing nothing. Especially as I didn't have any € on me, so couldn't buy anything. When in the queue for the gate, they check all your documents and give you the paperwork necessary. Annoyingly, because I am here on a student visa, they want to see every single bit of my paperwork, which meant I had to dig it out of my bag, this resulting in me holding up the queue, but hey it wasn't really my fault.

My seat was relatively near the back of the plane, so i took me a little while to walk down there. But luckily no body was in my row at the time, so the overhead compartment was empty, which meant I had plenty of space to fit my stuff in. However when I sat down it was annoying, the seat was really uncomfortable and my screen was in black and white for some reason. So me being me, I instantly complained to the flight attendant. He said that unfortunately the plane was completely full, so I wasn't able to change seats. However he did give me about 5 cushions to sit on, and assured me that the screen would return to normal once we took off, sure enough it did.

In typical Air France style we departed late. But the take off was fine and we were soon in the air. They soon started serving drinks, which was very nice actually. As this was my last chance to have a legal drink I decided to go for the champagne, wine and beer!! which amazingly they didn't mind giving me them all at the same time. Food was meant to be served straight after this. But we started to encounter some pretty bad turbulence. I loved every moment of this, because I am very weird and like the turbulence :). Once this was over they did re-commence the food service.

Now I wasn't really expecting much from this, as I had read some pretty bad things in the past about the service and food on Air France flights. But actually it was probably one of the best plane meals that I have ever had. There was plenty of it, including; past, chicken curry, soup, desert and then some nice camembert.

I then watched a couple of films, had a little nap and then we were starting to descend into New York. Now I didn't have a window seat which was rather annoying, but luckily I could still kind of see out of the window. On our appraoch I was on the left hand side of the plane, so was able to see the New York skyline including the Empire State Building.

Passing through immigration and customs was actually pretty easy. I was expecting it to take quite a while, but it didn't, so that was nice. I collected my bags, and then proceeded to make my way to the AirTrain and Subway.

It took me ages to get to where I needed to on the subway. I think next time I will definitely take the LIRR then the Subway, as it is meant to be a lot quicker, even though it is slightly more expensive. I found m hostel pretty easily after originally taking the wrong exit from the subway, but then a guy at a different hotel helped me find where I needed to go. I checked in, dropped my stuff off, grabbed something to eat, checked my emails watched some tv, then went to bed, as I knew I had to be up early in the morning to get to Newark airport.

Next time I'll let you all know about getting from New York to Bloomsburg.

Jarvis x

Home to Paris

Well as I'm sure most of you know, I left the UK on Thursday 26th August. I know that's a few days ago and I should have started this before that, but I have been relatively busy, and so just haven't had time, plus problems with the internet which I will get onto later.

So my parents kindly took my to Heathrow on Thursday. My flight was not till 12:50pm but that still meant leaving home at around 8am as I had to check-in at the airport due to not being able to do it online. We got to the airport fine with only minor hold up along the M25, which is to be expected I suppose. Check-in went fine even though it was a trainee member of staff and she got all confused when my booking said I was only allowed to take one item of hold baggage yet I had turned up with two. But after a while she worked it out and my bags were on their way to the plane. I then had Nero with my parents, said bye to them and made my way through security.

Security was surprisngly quiet at Terminal 4 at 11am, I was expecting to have to queue, but no I went straight through. Terminal 4 is incredibly boring. So I just spent the time that I had to wait watching the planes land on the south runway, listening to my iPod and saying goodbye to some people on the phone. My flight to paris was called over the tannoy at about 12pm so I headed to the gate and waited to board.

Boarding then commenced as scheduled at 12:25 and I went through onto the plane to have my first experience of Air France. The plane wasn't really the best, and was actually living up to all the bad comments that I had heard about Air France. Then for some reason, the guy next to me decided that he was going to make a phone call to a shop and purchase a TV right there and then. He even gave out his credit card details. He was just lucky that I wasn't taking down all the details and was going to use the card to make a load of purchases.

Heathrow itself was actually pretty busy on Thursday, so we ended up pushing back from the gate late and taking off about 40 minutes late. By which time I was starting to worry about missing my connection in Paris as I knew I only had 1.5 hours in Paris. I had a window seat on the plane, so it meant that I would not be bored and could look at the scenery on the way over.

Almost as soon as we were up in the air they started to serve drinks. Perfect time for me to have some alcohol for what may be 5 months!! So I took a bottle of wine and also a soft drink :). Along with some snacks that they were giving out. Then almost immeadietely the captain announced that we were making our decent into Paris. In total the flight was only 45minutes, so this saved us some time. Except when we then landed we were told that we were going to Terminal 2F as opposed to 2E where we were meant to be going, and also where my flight to New York was going from. Luckily it only took about 15/20 minutes to get there and go through more security checks.

So I am now in Paris airport. Next time I will tell you about my trip from Paris to the hostel in New York.

Jarvis x

Hi

Hi everybody and welcome to my blog. I will be aiming to try and update it everyday with information about what I have been doing. I will soon post my first posting with a complete update on my time from leaving the UK till now. So it will be a bumper edition, but bear with it, as hopefully they wont all be that long.

To make things more interesting, I will try to provide a piture with every post showing you something either related to the post, or exciting in Bloomsburg.

So I look forward to telling you all about my time here, and to also reading your comments and responding to them.

Speak to you soon,
Jarvis :)