Friends, I am so proud of myself. I survived (and thrived?) at a three-day social studies conference in Nashville with two colleagues who feasibly could be my children. It was touch and go at times, but ultimately it was a good experience. Let’s explore.
Day One was horrible. It started with the hotel emailing to say it would cancel my reservation unless I provided the credit card number I had booked with back in April. I could not, because four months earlier, that particular Visa had expired. I eventually resolved it, but in the process discovered that neither I nor my teacher friends had actually registered for the conference! We are very smart women, but somehow this one not-so-small detail had escaped all of us. Good lord. By the time we had sorted the mess and got on the road, I was particularly frazzled, knowing full well these things come in threes — or in this case, fours.
Five hours and one sketchy Taco Bell run later, I realized that I had Google mapped us to the wrong hotel, but only after we had lugged our suitcases, winter coats and my 20-pound weighted blanket through a questionable parking garage and up a flight of stairs. And when we finally arrived at the correct Residence Inn, our grant money debit cards were unceremoniously declined.
Luckily, the trip improved significantly after that, and I was able to enjoy the conference, downtown Nashville and some beautiful, pee-my-pants giggle fests with my millennial compatriots.
I mean, I still had to be in bed by 9 p.m. every night, but I survived. Even thrived!
Peace out.
