Made It To Jersey!

Well it's official: I've made it to Jersey! The last few days have been a whirlwind and it'll only pick up from here, so I better start recapping now...

The drive out here was, well, how do I put it? LONG. Like longer than the last minute of the last class of the school year long. I played through my T Swift and M Train CD's at least 10 times over each, and a plethora of random old country CD's I found about half that. And then the trip STILL KEPT GOING. However on the bright side, it was a beautiful drive and once I made it out of the Midwest I was awestruck at how beautiful the mountains are.

As I got into New Jersey though, I had the most harrowing experience of my trip (even worse than Chicago in rush hour, during road construction). I had to enter onto the Garden State Parkway. Picture this: you crest over a massive hill onto a huge bridge running over a bay. Beautiful right? Except suddenly you see that you are entering what is now 7 lanes of traffic, of which all drivers are way more aggressive than what Ms. Minnesota Nice is used to, and to top it off, it's rush hour and my GPS doesn't specify which toll lane I need to be in. I kept saying, "I can't do this, I can't do this, nope nope nope I'm done". But clearly I can't just stop so I committed and miraculously got to the right lane without dying. 20 minutes after that I was at my new home for the week.

When I arrived I met my host family, which is absolutely wonderful! I'm staying with Kathy and Simon, who I'll try to get a picture of later. They are active members of the church I was originally going to stay at alone, and they graciously opened up their home to me and have been great company. My first night they invited people over from the community and the church and we had a great feast. Everyone was so kind, friendly, and were eager to tell me about the community and which part of the shore to hit up! They also shocked me with some facts, like it's illegal to pump your own gas here (still can't wrap my mind around that) and there are "Jersey jug handles" which make you turn right on roads in order to go left.

At the end of the night I was exhausted and was out as soon as my head hit the pillow.

In my next post I'll tell you about my Jersey Shore experience!


Until Next Time,

Lisa