In June of 2015, I went on a trip to Jacksonville, Florida with my two aunts and uncle to go to my cousin Cole’s graduation party. I was honestly so excited to go, because I’ve never been out of Wisconsin before except Minnesota.  At the same time, I was nervous because I’ve never been on an airplane either.  I remember waking up at 6:00 a.m. to get ready, and ate some pancakes and bacon for breakfast with my mom before I left. It was hard to say goodbye to my mom, because we are so close and I wouldn’t be able to see her in two weeks. We left at 7:30 a.m. to go to the MSP airport.  While we were driving away, I was crying a little bit in the car, because I was worried about my mom.  She was very sick and I didn’t know what would happen to her when I was gone, but I didn’t want to miss this opportunity to go, because who knows when I’ll be able to have this opportunity again.

We got to the airport at 9:00 a.m. because we were stuck in rush hour traffic most of the time. When we got inside of the airport there was a ton of people that I could see a mile away and I was cluttered.  It took us a lot longer than we thought it would to get through the security, and the bag check. After all that, we were all hungry, so we decided to go to Dairy Queen to get a quick meal before we got on the plane.  After we got done eating, we went into the terminal we were supposed to go to.  We waited for a half hour to get onto the plane. When we finally got on the plane I was very nervous because I didn’t know what to expect while being on a plane, and I always had a fear it would crash. We were on the plane for a good two to three hours, and most of the time I just looked out the window of the airplane, and took pictures of the beautiful sky, and when we started to land where you can see the ground while everyone else slept.

We got off the plane at 3 p.m. and right away it was very hot like usually. We walked around trying to find the front desk in this huge airport. When we finally found it we talked to this lady to see if our rental car was out in the parking lot. We walked out of the Jax’s Airport to our rental car, and started heading to my cousin’s house. While we were driving there, it started raining really hard and the roads got flooded really quick, but then the rain started to drain a few minutes later. It flooded on and off the whole time we were driving to my cousin’s house.  When we got there we had to talk to a security guard, because they live in a gated in community. We finally got to my cousin’s house, and I was soaking wet from the rain, but I didn’t mind.  I was so happy to see them.  The rest of the day we visited with my family, played games, and later in the afternoon it finally stopped raining, and we got to swim in their pool that they have in their back yard.

The first few days we mostly just stayed home, spent time together, and order out Arby’s, Domino’s, Chinese food, went to movies, and swam in the pool. On a Friday night we went to Cole and Kyle’s baseball games which was really fun, and went to Orange Leaf after the game to celebrate both of their state win. The next day was Cole’s graduation, so what we did for his party is we got up early, and went shopping at Pac Sun, Rue 21, Claire’s, and American Eagle.  Then we got to meet some of Kyle and Kayla’s friends named Chris, Ashley, and Mitchell, and friends of my aunt’s family.

Saturday morning, we went to St. Augustine where we went to the beach, and spent hours there getting all sunburned, swimming in the ocean, playing beach volleyball, and playing baseball on the beach.  In the afternoon, we checked out the city, and its history which was very interesting. I got an St. Augustine shirt, and we all went for their homemade ice cream there which was very tasty, saw castles, and cannons.  The next day we went to a zoo in downtown Jacksonville.  We walked around for a few hours on a hot humid day, and we saw a lot of giraffes, elephants, zebras, seals, flamingos, loins, and so much more. We ended up talking to a lot of random people for no reason I don’t know why, but we did, and we got some ice cold slushies.  Later that day, we ended up going to the alligator farm, and we saw a ton of alligators plus crocodiles.  We got to feed them which was pretty scary because we thought they would kill us or something, but they didn’t.  We took some pictures together with the baby alligators which ended up peeing on me, and it was really gross.

The last night we were in Jacksonville, Florida my cousin Kayla, Kyle, and I went to their community pool they had, and I got to meet some of their friends. We mostly just swam, and talked the whole time.  They had an enormous outdoor tv where they put on a movie called Marlee & Me for all of the people there. Later that night, we went to see a movie theatre called Insidious 3, and it was really good, and scary but I didn’t like the ending went.  Then after that we went to Starbucks to get some coffee, and it was at 10 p.m., and then we dropped their friends home, and went home ourselves.  We watched a movie together, and played some Wii, and then we went to bed at 2 a.m.

The last morning, we had all got up early and got ready because we were going to go back home to rural Wisconsin, and they were going to go back to Connecticut, and see my aunt’s husbands side. We all got ready by 8 a.m. then went to Starbucks for mocha cappuccinos, because we were all tired, in an attempt to wake ourselves up. Then we got to the Jacksonville airport, and went through all the security and returned our rental car.  We had to walk all the way to other side of the airport to get to our seats, and we we’re all going to leave at the same time, so that was nice. Then we gave them our tickets, and waited for our flight, later the airport called us to get boarded on the plane, and leave. We all said goodbye, and cried because we were going to miss them a lot, and we all had a great time, and didn’t want to leave.

We got on the plane, and we got back to MSP at 3 p.m.  I ended up staying at my aunt’s house for a night, and went back home in the morning.