I woke up this morning around 6:30 and could not fall back asleep because I immediately began to think of all the last-minute things I needed to take care of before I left the country for a month. I made one last trip to Walmart, got ready for the day, finished packing my carry-on, did a little cleaning in my apartment, and was ready to go…two hours early. I was getting pretty nervous- not about the flight or the traveling, but mostly hoping I hadn’t forgotten to take care of something important, hadn’t forgotten to pack an essential item, or hadn’t OVERpacked.
Bryan kindly agreed to drive me from College Station to George Bush InterContinental Airport in Houston. Along the way we stopped for lunch in The Woodlands and had enough time to walk around a downtown area’s main “square” and see the variety of restaurants and shops. From The Woodlands it was a twenty minute drive to the airport.
I saw some other students from our trip going into the airport, so Bryan dropped me off outside my gate, and then I was on my own. I checked my bag and received my boarding pass fairly easily…minus the fact that my nice friends Carson had to put some of my shoes in his suitcase because my bag was over the fifty pound limit and they were going to charge me sixty dollars! I don’t think I ever actually took enough stuff out of my bag to reach the acceptable weight limit, but finally the lady at the ticket counter told me it was “close enough.” I’m just glad I knew someone who was checking their bag at the same time I was, and that he happened to be a boy with plenty of suitcase space to spare.
After a short meeting with Dr. Mac, the professor leading our trip, my roommate Jessica and I stood in line to go through security. It took us about an hour to pass inspection and finally make it to our gate. Even then we had to wait two more hours until we were allowed to start boarding our flight. Jessica and I had fun using this time to begin getting to know the other 75 or so students on the trip, and making our last calls to our family and friends.
Finally at 8:00 we began to board the airplane, and were on time with our 8:45 departure. This is the biggest plane I’ve ever been on, and it has a variety of fun entertainment options (such as episodes of The Big Bang Theory- Matt would have been excited), but I’m hoping to get some sleep since we land in London at 5:45 am central time (10:45 am local time)!
(Also, I'm at an internet cafe because our hotel in London is the only hotel we'll be at that doesn't have free wifi. I can't seem to upload pictures to the blog right now but as soon as I can, I will try to post a few pictures from each day. :) )
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