Monday, June 13, 2011

On my way :)


After a hectic morning, I am finally all settled in..in the airplane!  The seats are all bright and lime green, each with its own pillow, blanket, eye mask and toothbrush. Sweeeeet! Check-in made me extremely anxiety-ridden, for my “carry-on” bag was too big and they made us (thanks mom and dad!) pay $70 bucks to check it. Seriously? And of course the guy spoke no English and we didn’t understand it at all; we basically just checked it because it wasn’t worth an argument and more frustration.  After waiting in line and getting our bags finally checked after almost two hours, we headed towards the gates and said our good-byes. Anna and her mom, of course, started crying which made all the other mother/ daughter duo’s get teary-eyed. Almost all of us girls were then handed notes from our moms and told to “read it once we get on the plane”.   I just read mine and had to hold back tears; all the kind words from my mom about how proud she was of me, and how she was so excited for me and knew all the kids were going to absolutely love me.  It made me even more overwhelmed with emotion of excitement, anxiety and joy.  I wish my parents could be here with me, but without them here this is truly my experience and I’ll be able to grow in myself.  This experience is going to open so many ideas, feelings and concerns in my life, and for that I am truly grateful.  I cannot wait to gain a new perspective on life and my fortunes, and have the gates to my future be revealed from this trip.
Anyways, enough with the deep philosophical talk.  So, I had my pack of candy in my carry-on, which had to be checked, so I only had 2 packs of starbursts that I had put in my backpack. I’m sitting here, waiting 30 more minutes for the plane to take-off, and I was craving some chewy’s; red and pink, obviously.  TOTAL BUMMER when I opened them and one pack was both yellow, the other pack was both orange.  Apparently they feed us like crazy on this flight, so I’m not too worried. And Anna has packed a great amount of goodies so I’m set! Between Anna and I, we have almost 10 magazines and over 30 dvd’s. I’m almost excited for the plane right, now! But not really.  We will be flying straight to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia for 12 hours and then another 5 hour flight to Malawi! We will be arriving at about 2:30 their time which would be about 8:30 am our time. This is so surreal!!

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