Crossing the Mason Dixon line!

Before heading west, I ended up having a last minute trip up north to visit some graduate schools I've been accepted to! (oh, and I'm super new to this whole blog thing, so it might be super boring!)

Seriously, this trip came out of nowhere. On Thursday I was eating lunch with my mom and grandmother around noon, and we talked about how I'm having to decide where to go to school. At that point I had already visited VCU but had just found out I was accepted to the University of Maryland in Baltimore, a place I've never been before. So by 4pm we were on the road headed to check out Baltimore! Crazy!! Because I don't handle spontaneity very well and tend to get stressed out... not to mention I was still recovering from being sick ALL week! But....on we went!!! Sadly enough we had two GPS's, a road atlas, and internet access and still managed to get lost a time or two. But, we had some good laughs!

My grandmother, me, and my mom!

It was quite the adventure. Thanks to my mom's friend we discovered how easy it is to get hotels on priceline.com for much cheaper! Yeah!!! That's what I'm going to do now for my trip out west. We were able to stay in some pretty nice places for a good price! The first night we only drove about 5 hours and ended up staying here:

Friday we met my uncle as we were going through Richmond and had lunch with him. We finally made it to Baltimore around 5 something, checked in to the hotel, and then looked around town/campus a little bit. The hotel here was right downtown and super nice!!! I'm not used to having little bell guys taking your luggage up to the room and all that. Seriously, sometimes on this trip I really felt like we were just like the Beverly Hillbillies, haha!!!

The city of Baltimore has its nicer and rougher parts, but it seems like a neat place with a lot to see and some fun things to do. Of course since this was such a short trip we didn't have time to do much, just drive thru and see what was all around. The main campus of UMD is actually in College Park, MD, but the professional schools are in Baltimore. So there isn't a huge campus like at a normal university, and there are just various buildings in the downtown area that make up the campus. It seems like a nice enough place, and if I go there I wouldn't live right downtown but probably a little way out from the city/downtown area.

And then the school: (but these don't really show the campus, oh well)

I'd be around a lot of students who are doing their professional studies, which isn't a bad thing!

Even if I don't end up going there, I would definitely like to go back some day and see and do more around the city!

oh yeah, this is also considered home to Edgar Allan Poe, so we happened upon the Westminster Hall and Burial Ground where he was buried. Here are pis of that:

Okay, to add to the craziness, as we were driving on Friday I found out online that I had also been accepted to the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn)! Crazy!!! I really wasn't expecting this because I felt like I bombed the interview. I was completely surprised! So since Philadelphia is only about 2 hours away from Baltimore we decided to go on up there to check out the campus! It was beautiful! Even if I don't go there (and the only way is if I'm able to get some serious financial aid from the school) I am soooo glad we went to check out this city and campus. It was well worth the trip! Here's some of the city/campus:

it's like a blue golden gate bridge

love this!

beautiful!!

of course we loved the peace sign

Took more pictures but too tired to put them up here. There are a lot of walk ways and trees on each side etc... the building my school would be in isn't the nicest building, but hey, can't complain considering the rest.!

So... bottom line, we had a neat trip, but I still don't know where I'm going!! Still have to figure out a few things before I decide.... but the trip for sure helped me get a better idea!!! We went about 1500 miles or so. Can't believe I'm going to be driving double that starting next week.....!