Well this morning we met at the school at 4:00 AM. We managed to get all the doors of the three vans to close over the luggage and we were off by about 4:45. We eventually made it through customs (imagine the engineers explaining "Triple Play" to a customs officer...) and were on our way by 5:30.

In our car (Paul Magri, Dave Peter, Ms. Bruette, Amber, Kristen, Andrew, Deniz) everyone basically slept until around 9 AM, but I heard the other cars were more rowdy. The only city we actually came within visual range of on our way to Atlanta was Dayton, Ohio (I think).

The landscape around us changed from what we were used to once we got into Kentucky.

See the video of us making our rest stop in Kentucky at a gas station!
(19MB, .mov format)

Eventually there were hints that we were in Tennessee, and within a couple hours we were also seeing signs of Georgia approaching.

See the video of our lunch stop at Burger King in Tennessee (I think)
(27MB, .mov format)

I missed the "Welcome to Georgia-ish" sign, but I got the next best thing. The visitor information centre! We made it into Georgia, and Deniz was laughing with excitement.

It started in Ohio, but became more and more common as we got farther South. The Waffle Houses, Cracker Barrels, and IHOPs were appearing at every exit and as often as possible in between (I'd say we could see one of the three at least every 3 minutes in the last couple hours).

Once the "Atlanta 135" sign came up we began to get excited. We were just a couple of hours away from our destination. Eventually we turned a corner and immediately saw traces of Atlanta (the outskirts, anyways).

Before we knew it the "Fairfield Inn" sign came up on our left and we were here! Our (Andrew, Mohsin, Phil, Deniz) room has a great view of the Atlanta skyline, which includes the Georgia Dome.

See the video of room 508's occupants checking in.
(13MB, .mov format)

We were mostly unpacked by 6:30PM and we left for the closest mall by 7. It didn't turn out to be that exciting of a mall but good fun was had.

And so we say good night to Atlanta, Georgia. We will see you bright and early for complimentary breakfast and homework time!