Packing was a disaster… I ended up having to leave behind several beloved items (ranch and nutella), and my mom was worried that my packed-to-the-max suit cases would burst open before making it to China. We left my house late and I was stressing that I would not have enough time for all the airport shenanigans. Racing there, we stopped to pick up my sister-in-law, and I had to say goodbye to my niece and nephew again. Benjamin cheered when he realized that me leaving meant that we could talk on the computer again. Then as we were leaving, he tried to jump in the truck saying that he wanted to go to China too.
The airport proved to be nothing shortcoming of a second catastrophic disaster. Not only were my bags both overweight (of course) but one was too heavy to even put on the plane, thus I had to move 13 pounds from one suitcase to another to even out the weight. You should have seen us in the airport pulling random items out of my suitcase and finding a new home for it. Luckily (and I don’t really know how we did it) I did not have to leave behind anymore beloved items.
Finally, the bags were packed, I said my quick goodbyes before my mother lost it in the airport, and I jump in the security line. I don’t think I moved 5 feet before they shut down security and airport security announced that something had set off a fire alarm in the airport and that security was closed until further notice, but no worries, she assured us that if we missed our flights, they would have to reschedule us to the next flight out. I checked my watch… 2:45 and my flight was at 4:05. Fabulous – I told myself that if I missed my flight, It wasn’t meant to be.
About thirty minutes passed before they reopened security, and shortly thereafter, I made it through undetected. I met up with another girl from my school at the gate named Anna. We were only able to chat for a minute or two before we had to start boarding the plane around 3:40. I was told that the plane was packed to the brim, and an additional 400 people were waiting on standby to get on that flight because their plane had broke down.
You cannot imagine my disappointment when I entered the plane and discovered that it was one of those old planes with one big screen TV in the front of each cabin. You could say that I am spoiled to flying Korean Air, and I am accustomed to having my own personal entertainment system on the back of each headrest for movies, TV shows, games, music, etc which kept me entertained for the whole flight. A moment of panic rushed through me as I realized that I did not pack my iPod, a book, or any crossword puzzles. What the heck was I supposed to do for 14 plus hours? I found me seat, put my stuff away, and popped some Benadryl. If I did not have anything else to do, I was going to put myself into a drug induced coma to survive.
For one reason or another, the plane was delayed, and we sat on the runway for more than two hours waiting for the rest of our food to arrive on board. Thankfully, Benadryl always wins and I took a little nap right there before we even left the terminal. When we finally took off, the flight did not get any better. The flight attendants were horribly rude and mean and there was like 100 of them because we also had to take the flight attendants from the previously cancelled flight. The entire flight was completely unorganized and a total cluster fuck. One of the cabins lost power, so they were without lights and a TV the whole flight and they did not have enough food for everyone. I had the bitchiest attendant in my section. She told an old lady in front of me that she wouldn’t help her put her bag away, she yelled at another lady behind me for spilling her drink, she hit me when I was sleeping and woke me up to tell me to put my seat forward, and she yelled at everyone who even thought about stepping in the aisle while she had a cart. I took more Benadryl and went back to sleep…
When we finally arrived in Shanghai, I was sure my bags did not make it. I waited and waited, but they finally showed up on the belt. I grabbed my stuff, found the teachers from my school waiting for me, and headed to the hotel.
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