I Made It!

Hello everyone,
Long time no blog, I know! But I am back and I will probably be full of blog posts over the next few months! I have finally made it the Chaing Mai to begin my semester of studying abroad at Chaing Mai University! I must say, I am very happy to have arrived all in one piece! It was quite a process to get here!

I flew out of Detroit on Sunday, Jan 7th at 8pm. I arrived at La Guardia airport in NYC where I had to transfer to JFK for my flight that would leave the next morning. You would think this would be simple...this was not the case. When I finally arrived at JFK, I found out I couldn't actually enter the airport until the next morning because I had to check my bags again and the China Southern counter wouldn't be open until the next morning. Nonetheless, I survived the night and got all checked in and on my flight to Guangzhou, China successfully. However, the flight was delayed by about an hour and a half.. which was more than my layover time so needless to say, I did not catch my connecting flight to Chaing Mai from China. So unexpectedly I spent the night in Guangzhou, China- just another stamp in the passport right? Thankfully, China Southern put me up in a hotel for the night! And I got to eat my first real Chinese food! Not really sure what it was...some sort of chicken and rice. They spoke 0 English, so I just pointed to something on the menu that looked yummy! The chicken was not great it had lots of weird bones in it so I pretty much just ate the rice.
This morning I headed back to the airport and hopped on my flight to Chaing Mai! All of my luggage was there thankfully, I was pretty nervous about that! I met a few people who are in my same study abroad program in line to board the plane, so I was very glad to know I wasn't all by myself anymore. The 2.5-hour flight seemed like a breeze compared to the 15-hour flight from JFK to Guangzhou!
We arrived at our apartments and got all checked in. I am all unpacked and settled in! Here are a few pictures!

My room

My room and part of the living room

living room

my closet

A group of us went out this afternoon and wandered a little bit and got a bite to eat. My lunch of chicken and noodles only cost 45 baht (about $1.5) I can get used to that!

the restaurant where we had lunch

Tomorrow and Friday we have orientation all day and classes start on Monday!
I'm super excited to see more of Chiang Mia and get started with classes!