The Lifelong Learner :: Do what you can, with what you have, where you are -Roosevelt ::

I like college towns. There is something about them that interests me. It must be the young people — plenty of them — looking to learn. Or it must be the “education” smell. I’m not sure. I just like college towns.

State College is the home of Penn State. It has a nice, lively downtown adjacent to the college. It is filled with young people. Beatiful girls. It feels rich. It feels safe. It’s very clean.

What more can you ask?

My college experience was different. I went to NJIT. It’s a technical school. We had 80% of guys (or even more). Not too many nice girls. College guys like to have fun. We tried. After visiting Penn State, I wished I had gone there. It would have been a lot of fun.

All students seemed to be proud of Penn State. You can feel it. It’s great.

We went to Providence, RH, home of Brown university, last year. It has a different feeling. It seems smaller. It also seems that people study a lot more at Brown. Really, everybody was studying there. At Penn, it seemed that people were just enjoying themselves.

In any case, State College is a nice place. Worth visiting for a day or two. Plenty of food choices, a lot of hotels. You can walk around the university — it’s huuuuge. Well worth a second visit for my wife and I.

We woke up very early on Thursday morning. It was 5 o’clock in the morning. This time, I wanted to be at the airport on time. I had my clothes packed, papers checked. We were ready to go. We left at 5:40AM. At around 6, we arrived at the airport. On time. I said to myself, it’s good to be on time and not to rush. We had some time left before our 7 o’clock departure. Since we did not eat breakfast at home, we went for coffee and a croissant at the airport. We still had time. So I thought, let’s walk around the airport, since they have so many new stores. Really, Newark airport has a lot of new stores now. It was 6:45, when I thought we should go to the gate and the boarding area. Not so quick. The screening takes a considerable amount of time now. You have to take off your shoes, belt, etc. It took almost ten minutes to go though all of that. Finally, we arrive at the boarding area. It was 6:55. Everything is all-right, I thought. However, there was something weird. I see a sign for Phoenix, AZ, our layover, and it says 7AM and “on time.” I thought to myself, how come there is no people in the area. There was no plane at the gate. Weird, I thought. Well, maybe the flight is delayed. I should get something to eat, a snack or something, I thought. So I went to get it from a nearby newsstand. When I got back, it was 6:59. I hear, “Kubasek, Kubasek.” So my wife went to the lady and she said “you missed the flight.” We missed the flight. That’s great. The plane left 5 minutes ahead of time.

We were lucky. We took an alternate flight, via Las Vegas, and got to San Diego half and hour before our original flight. Hey, we got to see Las Vegas. The desert city with all of the casinos and hotels looked good from the distance. Very good. I was very happy to see Las Vegas. There were slot machines inside the airport. I tried. No luck.

We left the San Diego airport at around 2PM. As soon as we stepped out of the building, we thought we are in another world. Close to 80 degrees. Sunny. Palm trees all over the place. Just beautiful. San Diego is really nice. Where else do you get a mild whether all year? It would be nice to move here.

Mexico. We crossed the U.S.-Mexico border. Right away, something strikes you. I knew Mexico was poor. A lot of people know that. We were driving through Tijuana to Baja. I got to see Mexican people, their houses, driveways, streets. I’ve seen some poor areas in Poland, but Mexico is different. Mexicans are messy. There is garbage all over the place. So the first impression was not good.

However, as we moved closer to Baja, things improved a lot. Nice houses. Beautiful views of the Pacific ocean. Different life. Why? It turns out a lot of Americans live here. Or at least they have their vacation houses here.

So how was Mexico? Mexicans might be a little messy, but they are very friendly people. I didn’t know that. Food is great as well. Lobsters, fish tacos, tortilla chips with salsa. Everything in Mexico testes better than in U.S. (I wasn’t a big fan of Mexican food in NJ.) The views from the house we stayed in were amazing. The house is right on the ocean. We stayed at a 5-star hotel, basically. And it was for free, since our friend invited us to the house. Can’t beat that.

Going Back. We wake up fairly early on Monday. It’s time to go back. We go through the border without any problems. It took us twenty minutes to drive pass it. As soon as we get to the airport and get our boarding pass, I check the boarding time. I don’t want to make the same mistake. We had a layover in Phoenix. We have over an hour of time to kill. What is there to do? We go to get some food. We kill some time. It’s 3:15 and our boarding time is at 3:30. We should go there, I thought. As I look at the monitor to get the flight information I get nervous. I don’t see our flight to Newark, I only see a 7PM flight. I go to the counter, it turns out it’s 4:15. We forgot to adjust our clocks. We missed another flight! This time my wife got a little upset. However, I think this was as much my fault as it was her. We got home around 2AM. What a trip.