Halifax

After a 4.5 hour flight from Orange County to New York, and then a 3.5 hour transit time, and then a 1.5 hour flight from there to Halifax, I finally arrived to the place of my departure, and the beginning of my adventure. I was tired, hungry, and a bit worried about how exactly I would reach my hostel. Fortunately, I meet a really cool guy from Albany, Noah, who was also going on SAS. We chit chatted and found out we were trying to take the same shuttle to our places of residence. On the shuttle, we meet a few girls going on SAS, and after a 40 minute drive, I finally got to the Hi Hostel. After checking in and dropping off my 4 "ton-heavy" bags I met up with Noah again at the MV Explorer's Docking station. That was the first glimpse I got of the ship that I would be calling home for the next 3.5 months, and boy did it feel awesome. We then, belly starving, attempted to get to a supermarket near-by by walking through the chain link fences in our way. That unfortunately did not work out, so we have to take the long way around. The super market was quite big, and reminded me that this would be the last "super" market I would be in for a long time. From there, we dropped off our snacks in my hostel room, and proceeded to fill our empty stomachs. After walking another mile or so and 15 minutes of arguing of what to eat, we decided on getting Thai food (although the Subway smelled really good), since we would not be visiting Thailand, and Noah had never had Thai food before. After, what he called, a delightful meal and experience, we continued to just walk around and check out the city, although there was not too much to do, for just half a day at least. We walked through the city's restaurant and social area, the docks, and made a number of stops at my hostel to check our emails and what not. The weather was not amazing, overcast and sprinkling, but at least it wasn't hot. We met a number of other SAS students here and there, since the city seemed to be half full of SAS students and parents. The night was capped off by a visit to a comedy club right next to the dock and my hostel. The show was amazing and I did notice a very diverse audience. People from the US, other parts of Canada, Newfoundland, and even a man who was released from jail just 3 days before for an alleged B&E (the comedians of course joked about him.... a lot). The Indian comedian did propose an interesting thought: could you get away with freezing all your liquids when you go through security at the airport? Probably not for me, but them non-brown folks could maybe get  away with it. As it was getting late, and I had to wake up early the next day for embarkation (8am), I decided to call it a night. And now here I am, soon to go to sleep, ready to start this crazy adventure tomorrow. Hopefully the weather is better and more pleasant than today. Can't wait!!!

-Nimish

Thursday, August 26, 2010