It's Been A While

I'm slacking on this whole blogging thing. Last week was long, especially the days. Well, they went by fast, but I left for the office at the usual time 6:30am but stayed in the office later, like 6pm, so that means catching a later train which leads to me not being home until somewhere around the 8pm marker. Oh, well. I'm getting my hours in at least which I'm excited to report is somewhere in the 120 range! Pretty impressive if I do say so myself!! It's going by so much faster than I would have ever expected. Being busy while I'm at the office definitely helps.

Since the last time I was on here I've taken on a few more projects at Nautica. On Mondays, not only do I run the track rw reports, but I also update the markdown recap, which I taught myself how to do. Again, I'm pretty impressed with myself. The markdown recap is a report of all the season lines that are out that are then broken down into departments, ie. outerwear, dresses, knits, wovens, sweaters, denim, pants, shorts/skirts, etc. It lists the retail price, the WOS or weeks of supply, EOW (end of week) inventory, & any other special markdowns taken to a certain department or style. All of that information, with the help of some numbers from the track rw reports, calculates to the average price the garment is actually selling at & how much build the company is making. Then it sent to everyone in the office as a reference to how well business was over the past week.

Another sweet deal I get to take part in is line review. Line review means I get to go to the Nautica office uptown where the HR, marketing, & design teams are & preview the sketches & ideas for the upcoming season. Tomorrow will be my second line review meeting for summer 2011. It's really cool to watch the designers walk through their ideas, sketches, & boards & hear the explanation behind everything. Once line review is done, line adoption will take place later this week where the line will be accepted & the buyers will start to gear up for another season of assortment & buying. I came to Nautica at just the right time to catch a glimpse of the entire process of seeing a new season beginning & the middle of another getting ready to be bought. It's been an eye opener that's for sure. I love being involved in all the meetings, too. Most people think of coffee making when it comes to the fashion intern world, but Nautica is giving me a chance to be hands on & I couldn't have asked for a better place to complete an internship.

Now to the fun part of what I did today! While I was out doing my research for my competitive shopping project, I decided to skip on over to a little place that some of you may or may not have heard of-Kleinfeld. Yes, home of the TLC show 'Say Yes to the Dress'! The best part about it is it's only about 2 blocks from my office!! Awesome! I don't know why but I was so excited when I headed back to the office with all my Kleinfeld pictures. I wish I could have went inside, but you have to have appointments & stuff so I'm not for sure how that works. Regardless, a very cool experience. Maybe someday I'll get to go back & actually go inside!!







Tomorrow is Wednesday already! I'm telling you, the weeks fly by. This weekend I think I'm going up to New Brunswick to Rutgers University to visit a friend who is a Sig Kap there. I can see part of the campus from the train on my way home from the office every day & it's very pretty. Making it through the weeks have been my main focus for the most part. The sooner August gets here the better.

Tasks of the Intern

So, it's been about 2 weeks at Nautica. It seems like just yesterday I was taking the train into NYC for my first day. Anyways, that's probably enough reminiscing. In the past week, I've been getting more involved with everything that's going on in the office. Every Monday from here on, I get to run the Track RW reports. These are basically a run down of every division & product & how it's selling, what it's selling at, & how many weeks left of inventory we have left. The reports are pretty long. By the time I get all of them printed it's about 70 pages, give or take. Everyone on the women's team, (& I'm sure several other teams), use these reports to see how sales are going & I will also use these reports to do the Mark Down Recap report every week. I'll be putting numbers into excel sheets to calculate inventory & the price points at which everything is selling. All in all, I'm leaning WAY more than I have ever learned in the classroom at school. I'm not sure if I haven't taken the right classes yet, but being an intern in the women's buying office has opened my eyes to so many different things.

Another exciting thing that I got to do at Nautica, was be a part of the assortment building. Usually, the associate & assistant buyers sort out all the CADs for the season that is being worked on. They put them into certain delivery date schedules & then the senior buyer watches the other 2 buyers explain the flow & selections made for that particular season. Lucky little me was assigned to sweaters. I went over the numbers from the previous year & analyzed which styles would work best in the upcoming line. I really enjoyed looking over everything & seeing what products sold best.

I've been keeping pretty busy for the most part. When I have down time, I enter names & email addresses into an excel sheet so that a database can be formed to send future promotions to the customers in the database. And when I'm not doing data entry, I'm busy keeping track of the fall 2010 product samples that will be used for the upcoming photo shoot to promote the fall line.

This week, I will be working with several other areas in the Nautica offices, like planning & ecommerce. My mentor, MB, is doing a really great job at giving me a well rounded experience during my time in NYC. I know I'm also going to be learning how to use In Design this week so I can work on the holiday style guide. Pretty cool huh?! I think so anyways.

In other news besides tying to be a super star intern, I think NYC is starting to grow on me. I'm not sure if it's all the rush & busy people every where or just that it's not as hard to fit in as I had imagined. But whatever it is, even when I'm ready to go home, I know another part of me will miss being out here on the east coast & in NYC every day for work. I still have a long "to-do"list before I leave though! Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building, Central Park, Brooklyn Bridge, etc....oh, did I mention Kleinfeld bridal store is literally right down the street from me? Yeah, & for someone like me who loves "Say Yes to the Dress", I think I'll be making a little walk to take some pictures because let's face it...this blog gets boring without pictures!!!!

It's June Already

Where did May go? Seriously, it's already June. I'm having mixed feelings about it all. I feel like it went so fast, but at the same time I feel like this summer is off to a slow start. Ughhhh, my emotions are getting the best of me today. I guess this is my day to miss everyone.

Besides my emotions, my day turned out to be pretty good for the most part. 5am wake up call is getting easier. Same routine, shower, lotion, dry my hair, make up, clothes, & breakfast if I'm feeling extra spicy. Today it was a protein shake. Special K Vanilla is my pick for the next 4 days. I'm not big on breakfast. I'll eat if someone cooks breakfast, but I'm not going out of my way to make pancakes, bacon, eggs, toast, juice, & biscuits & gravy, or b's & g's as my boyfriend would like to call it!

I made it out of the door at 6:30am to catch the 6:54 express train into NYC. As luck would have it, I turned on the wrong road & drove for a few minutes before realizing it wasn't where I needed to be. Oh well, it's my first day on my own so I'm allowed 1 mistake right? Now I had to make sure I was at Hamilton Station in time to park & get my June train pass before the 7:05 express. Look at me! I already know my top 2 choices in express trains into the city! I think I can pull this off for a few weeks.

My timing was perfect. I was sitting on the train, window seat is once again my top pick, when I realized I forgot my umbrella. Great, it was suppose to rain today. That was mistake number 2, but the world wasn't going to end over an umbrella, but I had to laugh at the possibility of getting caught in the rain today with my white shirt on.



The train was on time. I was surprised at how easy I found the walk to 11 W 19th this morning. I walked past FIT again & the church that's now a market. I actually took my camera into the city with me today so I have real pictures & not just ones from my BlackBerry. (So, enjoy the random shots of buildings & taxi cabs & the little church that was turned into a market.)

I'm the first from the women's team at work as usual. It's about 8:30am. I needed to put the final touches on my trend board for the summer 2011 development. It was cluttered with tears from last week & I needed to make each trend more individual. They were all running together. Chambray, sequins & sparkle, tie dye, vibrant bright summer colors, & knits. Those are my choices in trends. So, after about 15 minutes of rearranging, I have my trend board set up just the way I want it.

It was about 9:05 when everyone else started rolling into work. The assistant buyer is off today moving into her new apartment in Williamsburg. It's just me, the associate buyer, & the senior buyer. We had a touch base meeting at 9:30 to get scheduled for the week & discuss meetings & projects for the next 4 days. My projects for the week include the competitive shopping & trend diary that I will be doing every Monday for as long as I'm at Nautica. Competitive shopping means I get sent out on 5th Ave to take pictures of the store fronts for Old Navy, J. Crew, Banana Republic, & Gap. I also go into the store & take notes on what promotions are being pushed for the week & what other key items & looks are in the stores. When I get back to the office, I put all of my pictures & notes into an Excel sheet so I can track the trends from week to week & see how & if the window displays & store fronts tell the same story as inside each store. I also go to all the retailer's websites & add the women's opening page to my trend diary to compare the story consistency on all levels of retail.

My other projects for the week include the big ideas for spring 2011 board, which I already completed when I first got to the office this morning, so, that's done. On Thursday, MB, my senior buyer & mentor, wants me to start working on the Compass Holiday Style Guide. The Compass is Nautica's look book for each season. Spring, Summer, Fall, Holiday. I'll be dropping CAD images into Adobe Illustrator & adding the style numbers, colors, descriptions. And then Friday, I have intern orientation from 9:15am-Noon uptown. I'm looking forward to Friday. I'll be close to Central Park & that gives me an excuse to explore & take more pictures!

Since, the assistant buyer was out for the day, MB & the associate buyer had to run the other reports for the beginning of the week. I'll be running the Track RW report once my computer gets set up. That report basically shows every department & style for the women's division & reports how well it's selling & all that good stuff. But today, I have to add descriptions to the merchandise samples list since we're receiving fall 2010 samples for the upcoming photo shoot. Updating the merchandise sample list means that the fall samples are starting to come in! I can already tell that this is going to be one of my favorite things to do. When the samples come in, I'm responsible for checking them off, folding, & hanging the clothes.

In the afternoon, we had another meeting to discuss markdowns & what products are going to get the dollar sales up for the next few weeks. I'm still trying to play catch up on all the terms & abbreviations that are used in the women's buying office. Hopefully by next week I will be able to at least follow around even if I don't have much to say about a subject. I will say that I have learned WAY more about the merchandising side of things like numbers & parts of the buying process than I have at SIU. I don't know if it's because I haven't taken the fashion math yet, but this internship at Nautica is really going to give me an edge back at school.

The rest of the afternoon was spent beginning to arrange the top, middle, & bottom door boards for the spring 2011 buy. All of the CADs I printed & cut out last Thursday & Friday are starting to be pinned to the boards so the buying process for spring 2011 can start. I'm looking forward to getting into the details of the buy & I'm really excited about getting to work so closely with the team on everything.

I made the 5:30pm express train back from NYC surprisingly. I had to practically run, but I made it. It's relieving to be headed back. I'm exhausted from the lack of sleep the night before & I could feel my eyelids getting heavy, but I still have about an hour before my train arrives in Hamilton, so I decided to read some more of my book that I picked up while in the Indy. It's called "One Fifth Avenue" by Candace Bushnell, & I forget if you're suppose to italicize or quote book titles, so I'm just going to leave it quoted. Bushnell is the writer of Sex & the City, Lip Stick Jungle, & several others. I forgot how much I love to read. That's another quality my maternal grandma instilled in me.

Thankfully, I made it back to the house in one piece...physically anyways. Like I stated at the beginning of this post, it's an emotional day for me. I miss everyone. I had to call my mom to vent & get it all out so that tomorrow can be a better day. And so June continues.

My 1st Day at Nautica

5am. Wow, not used to that. But that's how it had to be since the train leaves at 6:54am from Hamilton to get to New York. Still doesn't feel like I'm actually on the east coast & since I'm from the central time zone, it's really 4am.

Showering always wakes me up, but the problem is once I'm in the shower I never want to get out. I can get my showers done in like 10 minutes, but the hot water & steam keeps me from leaving. But not today, no, because I can't be late. I don't even know what to wear! I need to use every precious minute on that Wednesday morning to make sure all the details are just right: hair, make up, clothes, accessories, everything. I have this preconceived idea of what New Yorkers are like & I'm sure I'll stick out like a sore thumb if I'm not properly dressed. I decided on my darkest skinny jeans and a black top. Simple but nothing crazy or too over the top for my first day, plus I can dress it up with accessories. I'll base the rest of my choices after I see what the other women at the office are wearing.

I'm dressed. Next on my list is coffee. I have always loved the smell of coffee. I never really started drinking it until I came to college though & even then I started off slow with the fancy Starbucks with the flavors & whipped cream on top. It wasn't until I moved into the Sigma Kappa house that I really started drinking coffee, & even now I use a french vanilla creamer & sugar. I like sweet.

I guess I should explain where I'm staying before I start mentioning the "we" & "them" "they." I don't need everyone getting confused. One of my alumna from the sorority is the Director of Planning & Distributing for Nautica. Yes, it's how I got the interview with Nautica in the first place, but I'm not ashamed of that. After all, it's not what you know, it's who you know. So, I'm staying with her & her family which consists of her husband who works from home, her son & daughter, a cat, & a dog. They're all very nice & I know we'll get along this summer.

We left the house at 6:30am that morning. I had to buy tickets for the next 3 days, so we left early to get it all taken care of. $90 for 3 days. The cost of living is high out here, I was told that, but what other choice do I have? With a swipe of my card I was ready to board the NJ Transit. Hamilton to NYC. The train is on time which surprises me, but I guess when thousands of people take the train every day for work & school it has to be. The two story train cars are nicer than the Amtrak cars back in Illinois. It's kind of pathetic. It's also an express train, so we're flying down the tracks, & I'm also going into the city backwards. I'm guessing the trains never turn around but it's not something that's going to bother me.

Once again, I find myself people watching. There are men in business suits & women dressed for the office wearing sneakers. It looks funny of course, but it's understandable. Women who commute don't want to walk from NY Penn Station to wherever there jobs are in the city. That's pure insanity & painful when it comes to blisters. It's a good thing I have on flats for my first day. I'm not exactly sure how far my office is from Penn Station. I was also so nervous that I forgot I'm staring at people & someone makes eye contact with me. Woops, I had to focus on something else. There was no better time to check all of my emails & Facebook. There was nothing exciting to read into that morning on Facebook & no emails that required a response. Well, it was after 7am eastern time & 6am central time, so I decided to text my boyfriend. I knew he was already at work, but it never hurt to try to get a few messages in before my day started. I wasn't for sure if I would have the chance to talk to him during the day & truth be told, I was really missing him. I always miss him when we're apart. It's like part of the day is missing when I can't see him. It sounds completely cheesy & cliche but I don't care.

All of the sudden, the train is in a dark tunnel. We're going under the Hudson River! I guess that was the reason my ears popped. It made me wonder where the world would be without amazing engineering. This was cool. Before I knew it, New York Penn Station. I was about to see what the Big Apple was all about as soon as me & the other however many hundred people got off the train & up the escalator.

It was a gorgeous morning. The sun was bright & the temperature was still only in the high 60's. I could already tell that walking to the office was going to be something I enjoyed. The buildings were tall. It is a city after all & the taxi drivers definitely aren't afraid of gunning it at the last minute to make the light if they need to. After being in Carbondale & walking out in front of whoever in the cross walks or streets whenever I want to, I'm going to have to learn to look both ways before I cross the streets in NYC. That's all I need my mom to hear. "Hey mom, I got hit by a taxi on my way to work today." She'd be thrilled & I would most definitely be coming home. But back to my walk to the office. My alumna & I came out of the train station on 7th Ave, aka, Fashion Ave. Well, that's fitting. The Fashion Institute of Technology, FIT, is on 7th Ave & I walked past it on my first day. Who would of thought a small town girl like me would have an internship in the Fashion Capital of the United States?

It's about a 15 minute walk to the office from Penn Station. On the way there, I walked through the flower district where the shops all have tons of fresh flowers & plans on the sidewalks for sale. I inherited my love for flowers from my maternal grandma, which is something I'll always remember & thank her for. Roses, Gerber daisies, tulips, orchids, & my all time favorite lilies line the sidewalks. It smells amazing & it's just like the movies, except better because I can smell everything.

There are mini farmers markets & stands selling breakfast items on just about every corner. There is also an old church that has been renovated into a little shop & outdoor market. The way buildings were constructed hundreds of years ago are just breath taking with all the intricate details. I wish I had time to take pictures that morning, but there was no time. Hurry, hurry, hurry. No time to stop & smell the roses, literally.

The entrance to my office building has glass doors & gold handles. It's very simple, but classy too. In the elevator I discover that there are 10 floors in 11 W 19th Street. Tory Burch has an office in my building which I find pretty cool until a few women who work there walk into the elevator. Skirts, heels, full make up. I feel out of place & my office is 2 floors below theirs which means I have to squeeze past them to leave the elevator. More glass doors wait before entering the Nautica offices. There are 2 couches & a little set up of mannequins under a cabana; Nautica's current window display set up in all their stores. I walk through another door & see the partitioned rows of desks. My alumna who works there, takes me to her own personal office. It's decorated in sea shells & lighthouses which is of course the Nautica theme.

The woman I'm interning for wasn't going to be in that day, so I was waiting for the other 2 girls I would be working for to get there. The assistant womens buyer arrives first. She's young & only a year out of college. She finishes giving me the tour around the office & introducing me to people whose names I'm sure I won't remember. The assistant buyer is wearing a short gray dress with wedges & gold jewelry. She's not too overly done up, which I'm happy to see because I don't want to have to rock heels to work for the whole summer. The associate womens buyer arrives shortly after. She's very petite & dressed in cropped dress pants & a cute ruffle tank with heels. I think I'm going to have to step up my wardrobe picks for tomorrow.

Since my computer isn't set up for me yet, I'm assigned to start doing tears of trends that I think the womens division could use to incorporate for the summer 2011 development. The designs for spring 2011 are already under way & almost complete. I'll be working on the buy for spring 2011 with the rest of the division this summer. I'm nervous as what I should pull from the stacks of magazines & Women's Wear Dailys, WWDs, that are sitting on my desk. Chambray is catching my eye in about every magazine, so I pull those.

In the midst of my tears, the girls tell me that I'm going to take a camera & do some competitive shopping for the online trend journal. They want me to go to Old Navy, Banana Republic, J. Crew, & any where else that I want & take pictures of the store fronts & then go in & take notes on what's being promoted, what's on sale, & how/if their window displays are telling the same story as what's inside the store. I was told to take my time & explore for an hour & a half. My first day & I'm already roaming the streets of NYC on my own. This should be interesting.

I make my way to 5th Ave to start my competitive shopping. I went to all the stores I was assigned & took pictures & notes. I even snapped a few shots of women on the street who were wearing trends that are popular right now. Finally, my people watching skills are put to a good use! But the stores in NYC compared to the stores in the midwest are so different. Of course, New Yorkers are different. They live, eat, breathe, sleep, & most definitely shop differently. Never the less, the stores are fabulous! If I wasn't on a tight budget, I would have done a little competitive shopping of my own.



On my way back, I see more old buildings & churches that I'm sure no one notices on a regular basis. I think they stick out so much to me because I'm clearly not from New York. I like that I can appreciate the little things right now. It makes it worth while & I guess it's part of the experience. As I get closer to the office, I realize I'm getting back a bit early & maybe I can explore a little bit more. I continue walking north on 5th Ave. There are so many different kinds of shops & stores & restaurants, & each has it's own elements & environment that makes it stand out.









It took me a while to realize what I was looking at next, but then it hit me. Empire State Building. I wasn't standing right next to it by any means, but it was close enough for me to take a quick picture. I'm sure I looked like a tourist, but who cares, I'll never see these people again anyways. I will have to take a day to go into NYC just to sight see. I've never been to the east coast before so I might as well take advantage of it! Seeing & going up to the viewing deck on the Empire State Building is on my list of things to see along with the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, the Brooklyn Bridge, Central Park, & all the other top tourist sights in NYC.

I ended up walking all the way down to Madison Square Park. It was here that I decided I should snap a few more pictures for myself & return back to the office for my lunch outing with the 2 girls in my division. There a a lot of little parks like this in NYC. It's funny how you can go blocks & blocks of just buildings & businesses & cars & then all of the sudden, a park. I'm also happy to return to the office because it's about 90 degrees outside & the air is muggy in the city. Humidity is not something I enjoy.

Back at Nautica, the girls decide we're going to go to lunch in a mini attempt to let me see more of the Big Apple. We grabbed salads at Medina, which is a little sandwich, wrap, & salad restaurant on the way to Union Park. We found a table in the shade & the 20 questions started. By now I don't mind the questions, so I gladly answer & talk to the girls while we all eat our lunch.

My next task at work was going through the Nautica Compass book & taking an inventory of what Summer 2010 product samples are in the show room & which ones are missing. One of the things I like about this task is about an hour of quiet all by myself. Even though I hadn't done much during my first day at Nautica, I guess I was feeling a little overwhelmed & not to mention tired. My body & brain were still adjusting to my 5 am wake up call.


5pm rolls around & it's time to head home. It's been a long day & I'm ready for some dinner & bed. Instead of walking back to Penn Station, we take the subway. It was an interesting first experience, but nothing that was completely shocking. It's not creepy either like they show in the movies. I'm sure it might be late at night, but around 5pm it isn't bad because everyone is heading home from work.

Once again on the train, I'm people watching & eavesdropping. Two women in the aisle over discover that they know the same person. One woman is a sister & the other works with her brother at AIG. It's about then that the train comes to a stop, the lights go out, & the AC shuts off. There was no power on the train. After sitting on the train with no air for 45 minutes, someone comes on the intercom saying the train has broken down & everyone should begin filing towards the front car in order to get off & board another train. 40 minutes & a short walk down a few railroad ties later, I'm standing on the platform in Rahway waiting for the train that's coming to save us all. It's still hot & several people are on the phone with NJ Transit complaining about the poor service they have encountered. I find it funny that even though these people are yelling at the customer service representative, they're still going to take the train into the city every day for work.

I made it through my first day at Nautica. This was the start to my summer on the east coast.

The Flight

Alright, I told everyone that I would blog while I was out here on the east coast for my internship, so here goes nothing.

It all started on May 25th. I, of course, hate packing for anything so, I woke up the day of my flight still needing to pack. I'm running around my mom's house looking for all of my clothes & shoes that ,in the last 4 days of being home, seem to have found new places to hide like behind the dryer, under her bed, in the boy's closet, & basically anywhere besides my suitcase. Great. I have to be at the airport at 10am & here I am running around like a chicken with my head cut off.

I finally manage to get my suitcase to zip, which is a miracle because I don't know how to pack light. This is my carry on that looks like it's about to burst open if slightly tampered with. Just to clarify how horrible I am at packing, I had to put clothes in the bag that carried my laptop. Yeah, it was bad. But everything was packed, I was showered, and ready to get on my flight.

I've never flown out of Indy before. I have been there to drop off & pick up family when they have visited, but whatever, an airport is an airport, right? And then my mother asks about parking at the airport. She thought she was going to walk me in & then hug me & tell me goodbye for over half the summer. No offense to my mom, but when she came to school to move my stuff out of the Sig Kap house, she made me cry then & all she did was hug me. I'm a sap, I know, but I didn't want to be crying while I'm going through security, so I told her she could pull up, help me get my bags out & then be on her way. No need for the water works so early in the morning.

Airports are interesting. It's a very good place for people watching, which I must admit, is a guilty pleasure. Some people are just so odd. It's usually better to do when you're wearing big mysterious sunglasses, that way no one knows you're people watching, but hey, I'm probably never going to see any of these people ever again, so commence the people watching. My favorite becomes this elderly woman who is sitting across from me. I don't know why, but I'm always amazed when I see people in their senior citizen years who have cell phones & laptops. I guess it's because I could never imagine my maternal grandparents ever answering their cell phone or Googling something. This woman's phone is blowing up more than mine & I consider my BlackBerry, even in the midst of our love-hate relationship at the moment, an extra limb. There's a half hour left until boarding & I think I'm fully aware of the life happenings of this woman's children & grandchildren.

First flight from Indy to Chicago Midway is not totally booked, thank goodness. Arm to arm with strangers can be awkward. There's a seat in between me, in my first choice of a window seat, & a man who's in his late forties in the aisle seat. It's about time to land & suddenly he's interested in where I'm going, where I'm from, my school, my major, "Oh, wow! An internship in NYC! That's great!", & just about everything besides what my blood type is. It always surprises me when random people start up conversation. Everyone now a days seems to be so reserved because of the crazy stories you hear about weirdo stalker type people & the lack of trust amongst the human race. I'm polite & ask questions in return so we're not just talking about me. Think what you'd like, but I hate talking about myself. He tells me about his kids & his wife of 16 years, who he's known since high school, but didn't start dating until they were both 26. "Do you have a boyfriend?" That's the question that startles me. Yes is my answer, which is followed by more questions about the boyfriend, his major, the long distance thing, how we feel about it, & how long we've been together. Construction management, we spent last summer away from each other it's just farther this summer, I'm bummed about this summer but it's good for both of our future careers, & a little over a year. The reply I receive from the man, who's name I can't remember because I'm bad with names, tells me that it's just for the summer, it'll go fast & if we've been together that long we've probably talked about "things", I'll let you think what you like on that one, & that it's only a summer compared to forever. I smile & surprised that my new acquaintance has faith in my relationship that would normally mean nothing to the average person. He's a romantic which is a quality I appreciate & also share with this man. But honestly, what he just said was the best thing I'd heard in days. I've been worried about being away from the boyfriend & not having the opportunities to visit like I did last summer. Anyways, our plane landed, he sincerely wished me the best of luck, & I will remember the man who gave me hope in life & love.



Even though my flight from Indy landed in Chicago early, I still had to run from one gate to the next to get my connecting flight, which was already boarding by the time I got there. This flight from Midway to Philly was packed. I should have picked an aisle seat this time because the man was not only snoring but wearing a cut off t-shirt, which I feel is not acceptable on an airplane but not acceptable for his age either. Thankfully, that flight landed early as well & I was in Philadelphia at last. The City of Brotherly Love. But, this was only a minor stop on my way to my final destination, Hamilton, NJ, my home away from home for the summer. So, I headed to baggage claim, (because yes, I ended up checking my carry on because once again, I'm horrible at packing), & headed outside for my next leg of the trip. New Jersey.