(Rail) Road Trip!

I travel light.  

But not at the same speed.

~ Jarod Kintz

Now that our foster daughter has turned 18, the great state of Florida considers her an adult and has "cut her loose", so she can join her extended family (aunts, uncles and cousins) in New York.  Over the weekend, we journeyed there together, by train.  

It's a 24-hour trip by train, and I just wasn't up to trying to sleep all night in a coach seat, so I sprung for the "roomette" - which is a private "room" that has 2 day seats (facing each other) that fold down and connect to form a lower berth and an upper berth that slides down from the ceiling, to give us bunk beds!  It also has a toilet and fold-up sink - although there is no privacy screen, so one party must leave the room if the other party wants to use these facilities.  

As you can see (above) our foster daughter does not share my problem with sleeping in a coach car!  ;)

We spent most of our time in our private room.  We ate 3 meals in the dining car and took showers in the shower "room" (I'm not sure, but this may be where the British coined the term "water closet").  

Watching out the window, as we progressed north, she asked me, "Why do the trees look like they are on fire?"

I passed time by reading a book on my Kindle - she passed time by doing teenage girl things - painting her nails, plucking her eyebrows, putting on her make-up, ironing her hair and using her smart phone to post selfies and chat with friends on Facebook...  ;)

We met up with her Facebook boyfriend in NYC.  Despite almost daily Skype-ing with him for months, she was nervous about meeting him face-to-face for the first time.  She kept asking me what she should say and I kept proposing ridiculous things that made her laugh, but I never managed to do more than temporarily relieve her nerves...  

So far, I'm afraid she's not a big fan of NYC.  Remember that she came from a very small village in Honduras and thought that Lakeland, Florida was a pretty big city.  "Lake-what, Florida?" you may be thinking to yourself.  Consider my point made.  ;)

Later that night, when we spoke on the phone, she was crying and said it was ugly and she hated it and it was the worst mistake she ever made in her life.   

My husband reminded me that I cried too, on my first night with him in our first place, in a new city, far away from everyone and everything I knew...  Now, 31 years later, I hadn't even remembered...  

I told her that story so that she could know that, no matter how she feels today, it;s not actually the end of the world and everything will be better with time.  :)