As many of you might already know, I'm back down in Florida for the next few days to participate in a conference pertaining to my field of study at my university. In all honesty, I wasn't exactly ready to leave the comforts of southern Indiana and head back down to the Florida humidity quite yet...but as luck would have it, the conference is going on right now, and of course it only happens once a year. I made it through my day of traveling with minimal hassle, but I forgot how tiring getting up early and traveling all day on airplanes could be. Only when I finally did arrive in central Florida did the headaches begin. Due to the three conferences going on at the university all during the same period of time, everything at the airport and throughout the city (including traffic) was backed up and very busy. It took nearly two hours for me and my colleague who is attending the same conference to get our luggage, get a taxi, and finally make it to our hotel. We both nearly fainted when we learned that it was going to cost us nearly twenty dollars to take the taxi cab from the airport to our hotel. On top of that, it was a van taxi...which meant that there were four of us in the cab and there would be three separate stops. Luckily, we were given a flat rate charge, but still twenty dollars sounded pretty steep. We were thankful that our taxi driver was a very sweet woman who surely kept us entertained with funny stories about her past cab driving experiences while we made our way through the traffic of Gainesville. Our hotel room turned out to be OK for the amount of money that we actually had to pay for it, and it was relatively close to where we needed to be (as we would find out later). I had been to Gainesville several times before, so it was my job to be the tour guide and navigator. The only problem with the whole navigation thing was that I really didn't know where everything for the conference was going to be taking place, short of the fact that it was happening somewhere in a six story student union on campus. When we finally located the student union, we learned that no one working there had any idea about the whereabouts of the preliminary conference proceedings, so we resolved that we would get some food and look for the rest of our Hoosier compatriots after we successfully refueled. So, this is the part where the cash only comes in. We headed to a familiar place to me that we used to have up at school in Tallahassee called Fresh Food on Campus. We were so hungry and looking forward to getting some food. We walked into the little restaurant and learned that this campus does not take any form of debit card or credit cards for payment. They only accepted the university's meal card or cash. Well, for those of us who are used to using our debit card all the time, having cash on hand is kind of a pain. So, we both had to venture around and look for an ATM in order to get cash so that we could eat. There went some more wandering around in the heat. We finally met up with our group although we were thoroughly exhausted. We then had to venture back the mile or so to our hotel in the evening heat. Luckily when we stopped for some supplies at the convenience store on the way home, we were able to save our cash and use our debit cards to make the required purchases. I suppose that having cash on hand takes a little bit of getting used to, especially since I always feel that I spend cash a whole lot more quickly when I have it on hand. Who knows what other adventure this little trip will bring over the next four days...but I'll be sure to keep all of you informed!