Some adventures are experienced with others, and some are experienced alone. I didn’t feel that adventurous going to the airport with my family, but as soon as I hugged them goodbye and walked around the corner to security check, I might as well have been in Narnia looking at the lamppost. The girl behind me only spoke Spanish, so I had to help her understand the English instructions for what to take out of our bags. I ran into her again as we boarded the plane, and I told her when it was her turn to board, and then finally I saw her again after we’d landed.
I sat next to a lady who was on her way to Africa. She didn’t want to chat much since she had a second long flight in her future, and she needed to sleep. The weirdest part of the whole flight was that they served dinner at 1 a.m. Now, I’m fairly used to midnight snacks. Since I’m usually up until 2 or 3 in the morning, I gotta eat late. But this was the whole shabang: salad, bread, chicken casserole, and a piece of pie from the Cheesecake Factory. It was delicious.
The plane was so big that it hardly felt like I was even in a plane. When they finally collected the food plates, I drifted off to sleep around 3 a.m., only to be awakened again around 5. No, I don’t want coffee. I just want more than two hours of sleep! Oh, well.
I somehow managed to navigate the ginormous airport and get my luggage back, so after brushing my teeth right there in the airport bathroom, I just sat down in the lobby to wait for my friends. Every time I send a text message, I practically have to chop one of my fingers off and donate it to science. So I wasn’t really sure when they were going to get there.
In the meantime, I was amusing myself by imagining all the incredible things these people passing me in the airport are here to do. If I saw a guy with a sports jacket, I imagined he’s competing in an Olympic event, and I tried to guess which one, knowing that it may very well be true. I saw a group of tall girls with Bahamas shirts on and matching luggage—volleyball players, perhaps?
Then there were tons and tons of people there in uniforms with nametags similar to mine. As I passed them, we exchanged glances or small smiles of acknowledgement. Will I be working with these people in just a few short days? Again, it’s entirely possible.
When Shannon showed up in the airport, I was really happy to see her. And then phase two of the London adventure began.
No comments:
Post a Comment