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Voices of ACES Blog

Day 1: IBIP New Zealand

Students listening to a presentation

Today was day one of our trip, filled with travel. Most of the group met up at the ACES Library at 10 am to ride the bus up to O’Hare together. The mini buses were spacious, and we spent our time excitedly chattering about the upcoming trip. After a few hours, we met up with the rest of the group at the United check in counter to get our boarding passes and begin our journey.

We made it through security safely, and had some time to grab a bite to eat before catching our flight. The flight to San Francisco was uneventful, but clear enough that those with window seats could see the ground the whole time. We successful landed in California, and changed terminals for the big flight.

Picture of the wing of the plane         

Once we boarded the Air New Zealand Boeing 777-300 (a massive plane), we settled in for our long 13-hour journey across the Pacific.  Using the screens on the seats in front of us, we created an IBIP group chat to communicate while in flight.  They served us dinner an hour into the flight (with free New Zealand wine!), which was quite scrummy.  After dinner everyone had a wide variety of movies to choose from, and some even managed to get some decent sleep!

Outside of a plane