The plan for the weekend is to embark on Thursday just after lunch and drive 515 miles to Columbus, Ohio. Friday we will be attending an accepted student event for Julia to see how she likes it here. Then Saturday will be a free day around the town. Sunday we will drive home.
Of the 515 miles, the only difficult part was 78 in New Jersey, which has a 30 minute backup just 20 minutes from home. Thankfully I knew those roads well so we took a detour and got most of that 30 back.
The drive, otherwise, is uneventful. Crossing into West Virginia then Ohio, we see the Ohio River is spectacularly flooded. While not Mississippi-level flooding, it is rather intense.
Just into Ohio we stop at a Panera and grab a quick bite for dinner, then we hit the road again.
The drive is easy enough overall.
The next day we wake up early and grab breakfast at the hotel, which is a Hampton Inn. I often stay at these, as they are a Hilton chain and they always include breakfast. It’s passable.
We head to the Ohio Union student center for the event. We grab our registration stuff and a cup of coffee as they had lots of food & drink out. The first session is a general talk in a huge room, which is similar to the North Jersey event they had a few weeks ago, and it even includes some of the same people who were there that night. It’s ok.
The next session is an exploratory major session which is really, really good. I feel like this made Julia feel better about ending up at OSU.
For lunch, we leave the student center and go to Raising Cane’s chicken. This is the same place we went to last year when we visited Tennessee. It’s fast food, basically chicken fingers & fries. We share a table with a family from North Carolina whose daughter is also considering OSU. They’re very friendly and talkative (like many people on this trip).
The first afternoon session is another exploratory session and the guy who ran the morning session said it was a waste of time to go, as the content was the same. When we signed up, we had no idea this would be the case.
Instead, we went to get a coffee at Coffee Underground, which is a coffee shop in the basement of a church. This immediately rises to one of the better pour over cups I have had and there is a 100% chance I will come back here. Fantastic cup.
We head back for the next sessions which are on housing and the meal plans. There’s some good info but there’s also a lot of questions the people can’t answer. Still, it is an informative session. The last session is a medical-based class which Julia has decided is not her direction so we skip.
And go back to Coffee Underground for another awesome coffee.
We head back to the hotel to rest up a little bit, then head down the road to Moda for dinner. Our waitress turns out to be a junior at OSU and we talk to her a bit. We find out that she went to SDSU her first year, then transferred to OSU. She said she had a lot of trouble fitting in there as she was not into the Greek Life. While it was really nice weather, it never felt right to her and she said that moving back to OSU was a great move for her.
This conversation was probably the straw that broke the camel’s back to push Julia to decide on OSU over SDSU in the end.
We start with some pretzel bites and I get the Korean salmon for dinner. It is fabulous.
After dinner we head up the road a mile to the volleyball center and take in the game against Marysville. It is a blowout, and they easily win 3 games. `
After the match we head back to the hotel and watch the Iowa-UConn women’s tournament game. Iowa wins.
Traveling Normandy 