The Travelling Day

March 11, 2011

Thirteen youth and four leaders left at 6:15 am from the Church for our mission trip to New York City. It was good to have had such a good start since, we encountered some heavy traffic in Montreal. But we made it to the parking lot by 8:30. But it was still a maze to find the train station. (Whether I can find my car back will be an interesting question.) Thankfully we were able to preboard and have the last section of the last car of the train.

We left at 9:30, on time. Unfortunately, we did not arrive in NYC on time. Instead of arriving at 8:40pm, we came instead past 10:40pm. The reason for the delay was due to extra time at the border, but especially a broken down (train) snowplough. The food on the train was not great, but the space was fanatastic. It was a relaxing way to travel.

We arrived at Penn Station, waiting to be picked up. But no one showed up for a long time. There was some miscommunication about our delay and cell phone numbers. While we waited we were able to eat some food from the plenty of fast food places that were by the train station. Eventually, the people of NYSUM found us and we were loaded into three vans. By this time it was 12:30pm.

It took an hour to get to NYSUM--traffic was still bad at this time of night. So it was 1:30 am when we arrived. We quicked found our rooms--we have one womens' room and two guys' rooms. (We don't have to share these rooms with others.) By 2am, we were in bed, looking for much needed sleep, though it would be short as we were called to breakfast duty at 6:30 am. (More about that in the next post).

It was a long day of traveling. But the train was still an excellent choice. Having seen the traffic in NYC, Montreal is a breeze. I would not want to drive here, especially not a van. As well, the train allowed a lot of interaction within the members of the group. If only they could do something about the food...