Day 4: Palmtrees, more Whiskey and Lynx

When I woke up that morning I felt like dying. As always it was 7 am, I could hardly breathe and felt every bone. So I took some medicine, showered, packed my bags and left a note for Alan and John. Alan actually got up to say goodbye, Jon did it the night before. I had a good time at their place!

But now it was time to leave so I went out in the rain and went to west 4th street, the metro station of my trust. I have to say if there´s one thing that really gets me out of my comfort zone it´s the New York metro system. I do hate it but (some) people were nice and gave me directions.

I took a plane to Charlotte, North Carolina. A lot of things at the airport are very different from Europe and it took some time for me to figure everything out. I was tired, sick and because my phone had no service I didn´t know where to sleep yet. That put me in a very bad mood. We than got offered drinks on the plane. I ordered tea and got ice tea, which would be totally cool on a normal day but as I said I was miserable. Just in that moment a very precious song started playing on my headphones and that was about enough to make me cry. On an airplane, between two strangers while staring at a cup of ice tea. It actually makes me laugh now but I felt horrible.

The funny thing is that, as soon as I arrived in Charlotte, things changed and I can´t really tell you why. Our flight was late so I had 10 minutes to run through the whole airport and board my plane to Orlando. I arrived last minute and some nice older lady decided to talk to me. She informed me that the plane was overbooked and that we might have to stay here for a night. At this point I didn´t really care anymore so I just waited and got lucky. On the plane I changed seats with a child and as a reward the flight attendant gave me free snacks. From that point on things got better.

Orlando airport is easy to understand, I got my bag very fast and then went to look for the public busses. As I found the station I decided to inform myself how things work and started talking to a guy. This way I actually made a friend within the first few minutes. His name is Chino, he works with cellphones and in his spare time he and his buddies put GoPro´s on cars and film drifting stunts.

As the bus pulled over a very interesting part of my journey started: Public transportation in Orlando. It took me 2 hours and 2 busses to get from the airport to "somewhere near the place I should go to" and the funny thing is that they don´t announce the stations. They also sometimes don´t stop at them and they don´t write the names anywhere near so my only hope was, again, that people would help me. And they did. Everyone was just so sweet I could hardly believe it. One lady even got off with me, took me to McDonalds to get some wifi, borrowed me her phone (mine had no service) and then described the whole way to me. Turned out I was only a 20 minute walk away and soon after I finally arrived :)

(it was about 8pm but you should see the place by daylight, it´s pretty rad)

Ashley, my host, is a very sweet and smart girl and I think we connected fast. I got changed and then we left for a birthday party at a friends house. 7 people and one crazy but adorable dog. I actually enjoyed it a lot, playing "Cards Against Humanity", eating cake and getting to know them a little.

Ashley, a friend of hers and me then got downtown to drink cheap whiskey and dance. It was fun. We then went on a little club hopping and ended up on a rooftop. After that we went to "Steak ´n Shake" where you can get breakfast 24h a day so I got myself a 99cent breakfast burrito! YES!

Great night but I was pretty happy when I finally got to sleep on the big couch in the living room and coughed myself to sleep!