Monday, October 25, 2010

In Transit to Africa- Thursday, Day 6-The Farewell, The Hello

Today we got up very, very early in order to make it to the airport in time. It was a bout 2am when we peeled ourselves from our beds, and about 2:30am when we left the house. From there it was random story after random story as we made our way to the city. I still don’t know what possessed them to be willing to take me to the airport so early, but they did. I owe a HUGE thank you to them.
THANK YOU!
So anyway. Long story short I made it to the airport with little or no problems. Once I made my way to the check in area, I had to wait some in order to actually check in. Bla bla bla, I made it through though, and security went through without a problem. So I meandered my way to my gate, misplaced my ticket, found it again right where I put it, panic died down, peed, ate, and sat for some internet. Surprisingly, they had free internet, so that was very nice. I hadent time to write my posts at all, though, I had to email my momma and my sistah. Sorry, sistah is the only way I could get it to rhyme. Anyway.
Boarding the plane was…different. It was strange, really. Like stepping into another world. As soon as I passed through the plane’s door, everyone spoke in a English accent. Mannerisms were different, their eyes looked different, the figures of speech were different…everything was different. Very European. So I walked in and sat down at my seat, nearly the LAST seat on the plane. (Btw, the plane was a double decker, very cool) I sat next to an Irish couple, very nice accents. From that point it was flying for about 5-6 hours. I had a little screen thing for my seat with movies and such, and they brought nice food. At the end of it all, I was fine, and we landed in London’s Heathrow airport.
From there it was about an hour of worry as I couldn’t find the guy holding the sign with MY name on it! I paced, and worried, and wandered, and got lost, and stood, and paced, and worried, and wandered, and got lost, and stood… (etc, etc) Eventually I got the bright idea to call him. (Brilliant) So I gave him a call, and suddenly from the other line I heard:

“Are you alright?” (In a very English accent)
I have since deciphered that “are you alright” in London means “How are you?” in the States.
Turns out that Heathrow Airport is so huge, the international section has 5 terminals, and he had no idea what one I was at. Being at least a 10 min walk between each of them, he was beginning to worry. Aaaand of course, I was at the last terminal, number 5. So anyway, we met up and took off. Not by car, not by bus, but by foot. Long walk, short attention span, and lots of people.

2 comments:

  1. A similar situation happened to me at Seattle. Except without being surrounded by the koolie accents.
    A sister in the Japanese cong. came to pick me up at 5am IN THE MORNING. We'd only met once, while eating our lunch for the international convention! The two were far too kind! I was looking like a lost panicking little mutt about to cry (maybe not the crying). This of course made me a little uneasy because I was sure that all the "Mr. Creepies" and thugs were aware of the blatant expression on my face because I have completely lost my ability to somewhat conceal panic in my head.
    I was nervous (but a little excited too) because I had NOoo idea how I was going to find my around Seattle, let alone out of the airport. I thought I was just going to have to start living off the land (like that movie...The Terminal...I think).
    Anyways, I laughed about it later...in my head.

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  2. I hate those situations! But like you said, it is looking back that makes them fun. Btw, you havent posted in a while...(ohsnap)

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