Mid Flight

I thought about sleeping. In truth, I surely will sometime before this flight ends. It's been about three hours or so and the sky has finally darkened. It was really quite a beautiful sight (I have a window seat) - as we flew northeast up through Canada, the sun set magnificently behind the plane. Perhaps it's sleep depravation, but it struck me that there are so few people who have ever seen something like that. Think about it - 100 years ago no human had ever seen the floating sea of clouds from above. How crazy is that?

           

Travel has been fine so far. I just had one small snafu at the check-in counter in Columbus: my bag was too heavy. Now, being the plantastic person that I am, I weighed my bag at home and it came out to exactly 47.5 pounds (and I measured twice). Of course, at the airport the same bag weighed exactly 52 pounds. Anyhow, I just threw some of the stuff from my huge duffel bag into my carry on, and took out one sweatshirt. Since then, it's been smooth sailing. I've had to check my carry on bag on both flights, at no charge, simply due to lack of space on the planes. No big deal though.

Sweet stuff happened at the Chicago airport. First of all, there were like 10-15 Miami students on our flight from Columbus, so it was cool to just like form a pack. Everybody is really nice. It seems as though putting a bunch of people in the same situation, where everyone has had the same fears, makes it easier to connect with people right away. So anyways, I'm standing outside the restrooms, and some lady walks by with this huge trophy thing - you know the one that looks like an angel holding up a big sphere? Yeah, an Emmy. Turns out some airline was just transporting it, and they let us get a picture with it! So yeah, I touched an Emmy, no big deal.

This Lufthansa flight that I'm on right now is actually very nice. I mean, I'm talking personal entertainment units in each headrest, 18 different movies to choose from, radio stations galore, and a decent meal. Guess what I had for dinner on the plane? If you said, "Chicken" (a la Tommy Boy) you are correct. I had the chicken, rice, orzo pasta, brownie, cheese, and roll. Not too shabby. Also, should I have so desired, they were serving wine. For free. To people under 21. I can't say I was surprised, as this is a cool, European airline.

Ok, back to the culturally academic stuff. Culture shock incident number one: the plane goes through all of the instructions in German first, then English. Also, I found it interesting that when the flight attendants walk around to hand out peanuts and drinks, they first assume you speak German. When you fail to respond, they instantly transition into English. It fascinates me that being multilingual is so common in Europe and so rare in America. I mean, it makes sense geographically, but there is no animosity about it. It's not like anyone was walking around with a sign saying, "This is Germany, speak German!" Anyway, I'm exhausted, it's 0239 Luxembourg time, and I'm going to try to sleep.