Let me just tell you real quick about my latest travel day.
It all started at one in the morning March 5th when I woke up from a not so restful sleep. It was probably just nerves from preparing to leave India, but I was awake from one until five. I still managed to get one last rough hour of sleep before I had to get up. It was a normal morning of walking up to breakfast, but today it was raining. After breakfast we made it back down to the dorms to finish our final deep clean, make sure everyone was packed and load up the waiting bus. Our bags were pilled on top of the bus getting a little damp from the rain, but it wasn’t too bad. The best part was riding in the very back of the bus, where there was seven or so seats against the bus wall. That’s the bumpiest part and Gil, Lil, Nate and I had a blast! At the airport we said our final goodbyes and made it to our gate with plenty of time to just chill for a while. We then boarded our plane and had the quickest take off I think I’ve ever experienced. This was only a three hour flight, yet it was the longest three hour flight ever until we are in Delhi. Once we finally arrive, and go to board our next flight. For some reason, they won’t let us go up to check in yet. So we couldn’t get food and coffee before we boarded our second flight. By now it’s nine o’clock at night and we still have a sixteen hour flight; the only reasonable thing to do is get some coffee, but we can’t! Then, checking in was a pain because our visas were expired by less than an hour. Customs took forever! The airport is the busiest I think it has ever been. There were so many people who were all going through customs and security. By now our flight boards in ten minutes and we are in a line that would take over an hour. I’m a little (a lotta) nervous that we will miss the plane. We finally make it to security and a squad mate is on the other side yelling that it’s the final call, so we do our best to tell the people that we need to get to the front in order to make our flight. Some really nice people let us go in front of them! Our bags were going through the X-ray machine in an unusually slow pace and they decided they needed to pull mine out… shall I remind you? – our plane is supposed to be taking off at that very moment! The guy searching bags was just slowly taking his sweet, delicate time. I said, as nicely as I could, that our flight was boarding and was announcing their last call. The lady at the X-ray machine starts laughing at me as I was doing my best not to break down in that moment. When the guy decided to bring my bag over he pulled every little thing out of every little pocket while he was telling me that there is a lighter. I was like “Sir, there is no lighter! I don’t have one of those.” He kept pulling things out, my camera was in a bin not even together at this point, and I was like “Sir, I don’t smoke. There isn’t a lighter.” To which he replied “Ohh! You can go.” At this point, nothing was in my bag. We put my stuff in three different bags, that weren’t mine, and we start running. It was like that scene in Home Alone where they almost miss their flight. Luckily, we made it because they held the plane for us!! Now that we were finally on the plane, they told us that the Pakistani airspace was closed, so our sixteen hour flight became a twenty-one hour flight, which meant that we would barely be in the US. However, that’s okay. You’ve gotta be flexible…. I may have had a slight anxiety attack, but it’s okay! A few hours into the flight, we stopped in Dubai to fuel up and then we headed off to Chicago. So that was my latest travel day that all started March 5th, at one in the morning.
Your girl,
CG
