I Wonder as I Wander…

We are back in Philly—for my convention this time. We had another ‘interesting’ flight out—it was especially memorial to Bob because he was upgraded to first class—and even got a meal! I was flying on a free ticket, so didn’t even get considered for an upgrade. Our flight was 45 minutes late leaving the Falls—and since we were only suppose to have 40 minutes in the cities, we wondered if we would make the connection. When we landed in the cities, we had 8 minutes before the next flight was supposed to leave. We started running for all we were worth—stopped and looked at one flight schedule board. The panel that had Philadelphia on wasn’t working—so we couldn’t tell anything. We stopped at the next panel and discovered that our flight was delayed for two hours—so we were able to stop running and even stop for a bowl of noodles (one of my favorite meals in the airport—Bob usually has a bourbon chicken and rice dish.)

We got to Philadelphia and discovered our luggage didn’t make it with us. So we had to wait in line and file a report—they said they would bring it to our hotel later that evening. We checked into the hotel—and the man at the desk said ‘hmmm, I don’t have any rooms available—we’ll have to wait until something opens up’. We thought ‘great no room’, but he found one—although it had two double beds rather than a king. Sleeping in a double bed turned out to be a bit of a problem, because both Bob and I were struggling with colds and one of us would have a coughing jag every so often—so ended up keeping each other awake during the night. We debated whether we should sleep separately in both beds, but we didn’t. I got to the room about 8:15 pm and had a meeting at 8:30—so I was a bit rushed.

I was tired, so went to bed around 10:30 pm. Bob stayed up waiting for our luggage. He finally went to bed around 12:15 am. He just crawled in and the phone started blinking. Our luggage had arrived. They brought it up, but I heard Bob say “That’s not ours—ours is two brown bags”. Yep, they had that downstairs, so 15 minutes later, we had our luggage!

The next morning (Wed), I didn’t have very much of a voice and I had to lead three 1 ½ hour breakout sessions. I was really nervous that I would go completely hoarse with all that talking. One of the men from the hotel stopped in my room and asked if I was all set or needed anything. I said “I might need a new voice by this afternoon”. So he brought me a cup of tea with honey and lemon. The next morning when he saw me, he brought me another cup. He was really nice!

That evening, the ACA Officers, Jennifer and I went to Maggliano’s for supper—it is a wonderful Italian restaurant right near the hotel and convention center. I had to leave a little early and get to another meeting that evening.

Thursday and Friday passed in a blur of Ed. Forums—we had five rounds with about 20 forums in each round. I was busy checking rooms and making sure the presenters had everything they needed. When the session was over I would gather the evaluations. The people from the Marriott were so quick to get in to clean up the room that I followed them in one room—there were still some people talking with the presenter. The cleaners walked in and picked up a stack of evaluations that were sitting on a chair in the back of the room and tossed them in the trash. So I had to rescue them from the garbage. The rooms we were in at the Marriott could be turned into a big ball room. It had many portable walls so the one large room could be divided into 13 different rooms. After the last round on Friday afternoon, they started tearing down the walls while there were still people in the room talking.


Part of our convention was in the Philadelphia Convention Center—it’s really a beautiful building—it covers a couple blocks and goes across a street. But, it was really expensive—we were charged for every table, chair, and trash can! We had some time for lunch a couple days and would run over to the Reading Terminal Market. It is a Farmer’s Market with fresh fruits and vegetables, plus lots of different kinds of food. They have a great Philly Steak place—the sandwiches were so big that we shared one and it was still a lot. I even bought some cucumbers and red, orange, and yellow peppers that I packed in my suitcase to bring home—the peppers were $.99 per pound—and we pay $3.99 a pound at home!

We had some great speakers--Christiane Amanpour and James Rubin were very diferent and quite funny. They are married and would make comments back and forth to each other as well as answer questions.

One of my favorite speakers was Amy Tan, the author of “Joy Luck Club”. She really has a wonderful sense of humor! I was laughing during her entire presentation—although she was the keynote speaker at our joint session with AACC and that session went more than an hour over schedule. That session was followed by a banquet and then our Hallmark Gala happened immediately following. It really made the schedule hectic.

We didn’t get a change to see much of Philadelphia other than the hotel and convention center. We left on Sunday for home—gave up our seats—so got a couple vouchers for our next trip.