So here I am again, sitting on the other side of the world, wondering what I got myself in to this time...
The departure day (Sunday) started off with a nice run, followed by a delicious breakfast at Alana's (yummmm.....) where I told Mike that it was a great place to have my "last meal." I then proceeded to run around the house like a chicken with my head cut off trying to get everything done in time. The whole time, I am silently cursing at myself that I should have been more prepared. I finally got all of my stuff in bags and, openly, was cursing at myself for, yet again, packing too much (despite the fact that I was purposefully trying to "pack light;" however, for anyone who knows me, you are probably laughing right now as this is not a feasible thing for me to do...). En route to SFO, we saw a Google vehicle that was driving itself. Literally. It was so cool! When we passed by on the left-hand side, the "driver" held up her hands to show us that she was not, in fact, actually driving the car. Crazy. It's pretty amazing, the things we see living in Silicon Valley...
I made Mike come in to the airport with me, despite the fact that it always makes the goodbye more difficult in the end. I didn't want to leave to go through security, but it's a good thing I went when I did. The security line was ridiculously long. I only had time to get through, walk to my gate, and they were already calling final call for the flight. I made my last minute calls, boarded the plane, and set down for a 15.5 hour flight to Dubai. Talk about a long time on the plane!! Luckily, the seat next to mine was empty, so I had a little bit more space to spread out (though by the time we actually got there, my legs and feet were super swollen and stiff...). The flight was overall pretty uneventful, though I did have some good views of SF at take-off.
And we flew almost directly over the North Pole. How cool is that?!? The plane had a video affixed to its bottom, where you could watch it on your screen, so I could see all of the ice caps and everything. It was really neat.
My plane arrived in Dubai when it was already dark outside, so no exploring for me. Hopefully we can go out and see the sights when I pass back though with Mike on our trip back. The good things about flying Emirates was that they put me up in a hotel for the night during my 12-hour layover. It was great to get to stretch out and (attempt to) sleep on a real bed. Then it was off to the airport again, to complete the final leg of my journey.
As a final note, I don't have direct internet access at the time of the writing of this post. I was reminiscing about my experience last year and was reading through some of my old posts from Nepal last year. As I was scanning though the titles of my posts, I noticed an interesting pattern. I find it quite ironic that the first date of this year's adventure is March 12th, and the last date of last year's adventure was March 11th. I guess it's destiny... =)
The departure day (Sunday) started off with a nice run, followed by a delicious breakfast at Alana's (yummmm.....) where I told Mike that it was a great place to have my "last meal." I then proceeded to run around the house like a chicken with my head cut off trying to get everything done in time. The whole time, I am silently cursing at myself that I should have been more prepared. I finally got all of my stuff in bags and, openly, was cursing at myself for, yet again, packing too much (despite the fact that I was purposefully trying to "pack light;" however, for anyone who knows me, you are probably laughing right now as this is not a feasible thing for me to do...). En route to SFO, we saw a Google vehicle that was driving itself. Literally. It was so cool! When we passed by on the left-hand side, the "driver" held up her hands to show us that she was not, in fact, actually driving the car. Crazy. It's pretty amazing, the things we see living in Silicon Valley...
I made Mike come in to the airport with me, despite the fact that it always makes the goodbye more difficult in the end. I didn't want to leave to go through security, but it's a good thing I went when I did. The security line was ridiculously long. I only had time to get through, walk to my gate, and they were already calling final call for the flight. I made my last minute calls, boarded the plane, and set down for a 15.5 hour flight to Dubai. Talk about a long time on the plane!! Luckily, the seat next to mine was empty, so I had a little bit more space to spread out (though by the time we actually got there, my legs and feet were super swollen and stiff...). The flight was overall pretty uneventful, though I did have some good views of SF at take-off.
And we flew almost directly over the North Pole. How cool is that?!? The plane had a video affixed to its bottom, where you could watch it on your screen, so I could see all of the ice caps and everything. It was really neat.
My plane arrived in Dubai when it was already dark outside, so no exploring for me. Hopefully we can go out and see the sights when I pass back though with Mike on our trip back. The good things about flying Emirates was that they put me up in a hotel for the night during my 12-hour layover. It was great to get to stretch out and (attempt to) sleep on a real bed. Then it was off to the airport again, to complete the final leg of my journey.
As a final note, I don't have direct internet access at the time of the writing of this post. I was reminiscing about my experience last year and was reading through some of my old posts from Nepal last year. As I was scanning though the titles of my posts, I noticed an interesting pattern. I find it quite ironic that the first date of this year's adventure is March 12th, and the last date of last year's adventure was March 11th. I guess it's destiny... =)
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