Keepin It Cajun: Time Travelers

I'm sure that at some point we've all wished that there were extra hours in a day. Well today, our group traveled back in time, gaining an extra three hours, and I can assure you that it was exhausting, but worth it. We left Norfolk, VA at 5:15am EST, and after catching a connecting flight in Charlotte, we landed in Phoenix shortly after the East Coast hit noon...but in our new time zone, the day was just getting started at 9:10am.

The flight itself went pretty smooth and provided some excellent views from above. When we arrived in PHX, we were greeted by a surprise welcoming party - one of my students, Lindsay, is from Arizona and her mother and grandmother were there to greet us! Not only did they greet us, but they made us "welcome baskets" too, showing us some great southwestern hospitality.

We then picked up our rental car (Dodge Journey), checked into the hotel, and hit the road for ASU. There we met up with Suzanne, who is the Operations Manager & Program Coordinator for PTF. I had been in touch with Suzanne over the last few months and it was nice to finally meet her. She made sure that we got hooked up with our sweet volunteer shirts, and then put us to work. Myself and Marisa worked as greeters who directed people traffic, while Joelle and Lindsay worked the bib-pickup table. We worked from 2 till 7:30, and got to meet a lot of kind people. The PTF staff was delighted to hear that we'd be coming back tomorrow to work all day from the late morning until 2 am of Saturday.

It's getting late though, and I'm looking forward to a full night sleep, so I'll leave you with some pictures. In short, we got an extra 3 hours today, got ourselves situated, started to scope the lay of the land, and most importantly, already have our hosts raving about this small public University in southeastern VA. Not bad for our first day's work.

Also, I almost forgot to mention that we got interviewed by Phoenix's News 12, who wanted to cover our story. Use this link to check their website, as the story should be going up at some point tomorrow.