Week 1 (Travel and Orientations)

Hello everyone. This week’s blog will mostly be about my travel adventure to the Philippines.

It all started in New Orleans, Louisiana where I’m from on June 4, 2023. I had to wake up at 3:00 AM to get to my flight at MSY for 5:48 AM. I made it to the airport at around 4:30 AM and bordered my flight at 5:30 AM with Chrishana.

**My first flight from New Orleans, Louisiana to Tampa, Florida**

Once we landed in Tampa, Florida we only had a 40-minute layover so we rushed to find our next gate but to my surprise, it was right next to the gate we just exited from. So it was an easy and quick layover! We bored our next flight and headed to Chicago’s O’hare International Airport!

When I landed in the ORD airport I went on a mission to see how to retrieve my luggage from Southwest Airlines and transfer them to Etihad Airways. This was a very stressful process because Southwest told Etihad that my luggage could not be located so I ended up having to leave my luggage in Chicago, Illinois so I wouldn’t miss my international flight. But the journey must continue!

**Jessica and I on our flight to Abu Dhabi before we took off**

**I thought the welcome message was cute because it included our seat numbers**

**My first meal on the plane was a delicious vegetable Alfredo pasta! The drink to the right was mango juice.**

**The second meal was a sandwich. My drink of choice was Apple juice this time!**

**The touchscreen had lots of different options like music, movies, and live summary of where we were and the time in both the place we just left and the place we were traveling to.**

**The third meal was vegan rice and mango juice again because it was really good the first time!**

**Me and Jessica getting ready to get off our flight in Abu Dhabi!**

Front to back: Me Chrishana and Julia
We were leaving the Abu Dhabi airport

A cute collage I made of us at the Aloft Hotel in Abu Dhabi

Bottom left (left to right): Jessica Navarro, Jessica Isaac, and me

Top right of collage (left to right): Jessica Isaac, Chrishana Simon, and Jessica Navarro

Our layover in Abu Dhabi was about 16 hours so when we got to the hotel we decided to explore it and found the pool area where we attempted to take the jump picture above in the collage at the bottom left.

We also discover a rooftop restaurant but it was closed so we took some pictures like the one with me and the curved building in the background and the picture in the top right of the college.

**A collage of us at the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque**

While others were taking a nap like all of us should have done. Some of us decided to go to the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque. It was pretty easy to get there by cab and it wasn’t far from the hotel. When we got dropped off at the Mosque we were confused because the entrance was so far from the Mosque. To our surprise, we entered and went down an escalator that took us underground where there were lots of clothing shops and food. We bought the appropriate garments to enter the Mosque and it was a long journey with lots of flat escalator platforms to help us get closer to the Mosque quicker. I thought it was pretty cool that we had to travel underground to get to the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque. Once we arrived I was in shock by how beautiful the Mosque looked at night. There we lots of lights, pathways, and photo-stopping points. The glasswork in the big windows was something that continue to catch my eye as we journey through the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque.