The Family Vacation: 2nd Leg: Elmira

Duration: Tuesday, July 25th - Thursday, July 27th

25th: Drove for 5 ish hours across the border into New York state. My uncle, aunt and cousin live in a little town of 20, 000 called Elmira. But first the border crossing. We waited in line for about an hour before reaching the officer. He yawned as we pulled up..My mom was nervous because she always has bad experiences when crossing the border.....Not this time. "Where are you going? For how long? What food items are you taking? Alright, have a good time!" He didn't look at the passports or anything - it pays to go around lunch time :) After getting into Elmira, we went to my uncle's house and had dinner. My cousin is really sick so it was was good to see her. I hadn't seen my uncle in 6 years and my aunt and cousin in 14 years.

26th: had breakfast with my uncle and then took a tour of his factory. We then went to the corning glass museum. It wasn't that bad. We saw a demo where the guy blew glass and made a vase and went to a workshop where we sandblasted glass (to make it frosted). We came back to the hotel and watched I-Robot on HBO (wasn't that bad of a movie, enjoyed it actually)! yay American TV :) that night we had Chinese food with my uncle and aunt at the only Chinese restaurant in the town. The town shuts down at like 5...There is NOBODY there. We say about 6 people on the street..That's it! Our family friend Nitin moved to Endicot, NY for some high class computer job. But small town = no fun. So he drove an hour and hung out with me and my sister. We got dessert, watched the Devil Wears Prada (wasn't that great, but he liked it more than we did! :S) and hung out at Denny's for a bit, getting back to the hotel at 2 am.

27th: Remember how we got back at 2am? Well, we left Elmira at 7am! On our way to the next stop - Ann Arbour, Michigan