Da Plane! Da Plane!

How exciting! I have 4 followers, yay! I've always been a wannabe writer. So, yesterday we checked out hotel apartments, and today we had our medical check. Tomorrow we are scheduled to be fingerprinted and have our police check.


So much to say, and yet I feel I have so little time. Many folks have asked about the flight over. It was long. The service was excellent. Since it is Ramadan, food was served in plenty throughout the night. During my 14 hour flight I received 2 meals, a snack bag of crackers, and a Klondike bar! Sandwiches were offered and drinks distributed often.

We had a monitor on the seat in front of us. We could track our flight from Chicago to Abu Dhabi. There were a variety of views. I was pleasantly surprised to see Jackson, MI on the flight path. I didn't realize until we were beyond Jackson, but I could have zoomed in for a close look as we flew over. Pretty neat!

I lucked out. I chose an aisle seat in the back near the bathrooms, so I had room to get up and stretch often. And, as luck would have it, the two seats behind me were not occupied. Thinking ahead before take off, I asked a flight attendent if I might be able to move if the seats were still empty at take off. She replied that there was only supposed to be one empty seat, but she would let me know, so I wasn't too hopeful.

Well, a little man quickly spied an opportunity and planted himself in the empty seats. My lovely flight attendent immediately supplanted him out of the seat and directed me to the double empty spot! I loved her for that. Prior to moving to my roomy spot, a nice young Pakistani man in the seat next to me initiated conversation. He was very pleasant to chat with for a few minutes. I was a little bit worried that sitting next to a woman would make him uncomfortable. Apparently not.

There were movies and games and TV shows to choose to watch and play and radio and music. I was delighted to be able to watch 2 episodes of Big Bang Theory that I hadn't viewed before. Other than that, much of the flight was a blur for me. My mind was pretty numb and I felt much in a daze. I honestly don't believe that I slept at all, except for the last 15 minutes of some movie that I hadn't seen before, so I backtracked the movie and tried to watch the ending, but alas, it was time to land. I'll just have to be left with the unknown. Sigh.

I was very glad to note that my arm didn't swell from my lack of lymph nodes, and my ears didn't plug up like they normally do when I fly. But, best of all, I didn't collapse into a blubbering blob of emotion on the plane. I thought for sure I would have been a wreck. My mind keeps going back to the final moments at the airport when I clutched my carry-on to my chest and hugged and kissed Mom and Dad and Sadie and Em and Jesse and Doug. I felt myself turned in circles hugging and consoling the sniffles and tears and choked back sobs. I totally felt like Dorothy clutching Toto and saying goodbye to the Cowardly Lion and Scarecrow and Tin Man. Good-bye! Good-bye! Well, I'm not in Kansas anymore.

So, the flight was fine. We were met at the airport by ADEC people and handed our VISAS and herded into one line or another. The first stop was a retinal scan, some one told me it may have been to check for HIV, although I wouldn't want to say that was for certain. Next, we were hustled through customs and our carry-ons were X-rayed. Our VISA's stamped 2 times and then off to collect our luggage. We pushed our bags through hallways and by-ways at some point receiving a rose, until we exited the airport building to a HOT, humid, muggy, evening. We loaded luggage onto a truck and boarded busses to take us to our hotel.

Once again we were herded into a room, collected our room keys after turning over our PASSPORTS, but we had been forewarned about that, so I was okay with it. At that point porters and all available clerks began the task of unloading all the luggage from the truck. Zoom, zoom, zoom! It reminded me of the poor valets collecting keys and cars for our mass exodus from the national Reading Recovery conference last year. Those folks were hopping! I identified my luggage and went to my room. Sleep was a huge priority for me at that point, and I was not disappointed!