Day 1
We left Bay Path around 8am. We had a bus take us to Bradley International, where we caught our first flight to Baltimore. We had about a 2-hour lay over before our next flight, which took us to Little Rock, Arkansas.
Nothing terribly exciting happened during the flights. On our first flight, though, we had one of the most entertaining stewardesses I’ve ever had. She did a bunch of different accents and sang little songs she made up over the intercom. She also had a race between a package of peanuts and pretzels during take off. She put them both at the front of the plane and narrated like it was a horse race. The pretzels won, by the way.
After we all collected our checked luggage, we headed out to our bus. It’s a huge bus. There are 5 flat screen TVs and a bathroom. There are plenty of seats for everyone to have their own, but some people are sitting together.
We drove for a long time to Heifer Ranch, where we were to spend our first night. When we got there, it was pitch black. It didn’t seem like anyone was there. A car followed us in, and as it happened, it was the people who were in charge of the ranch, as of that day. They were just arriving themselves and had no idea we were coming. We got a little nervous that we wouldn’t have a place to stay because they didn’t seem to know anything about our group, but it worked out. It was just a minor miscommunication.
The ranch was interesting. We slept in rooms with bunk beds. Some rooms had 8 girls. My room had 6. It was Shakira, Nita, Sam, Jen, Chelsey, and myself. There was trash, crumbs, what I can only assume was pubic hair (gross, I know), and white stains on my blankets. Everyone else’s beds seemed to be okay, although my roommate the next night told me she found a dirty sock in her bed, too. Our shower was broken too.
We left the ranch and went to get some dinner. All the places we wanted to go to were closed, but VP Hobin managed to get a place called Bonanza’s to stay open late just for us. They had really good food and everyone was really friendly (most people down south seem to be really friendly).
When we finished dinner we all headed back to the ranch pretty exhausted from a day of travel. When we got there, the man who had just taken over the ranch explained a little bit of what Heifer International is all about. It was interesting but we were really tired and he was more than a little bit rude at times (contradictory to what I just said in the previous paragraph, but hey, there’s always an exception). When he finally stopped talking, we all went up to our respective rooms to clean up and go to bed.
