Our Flight
From Boston, we traveled to New York's JFK airport. I can't walk through the Delta terminal without thinking of Jordan, one of our students, who was stuck there for 12 hours. He was appalled that "this is the first thing that some people see when they come to America! I really need Delta to get it together!!!" Amen. Thankfully, we didn't have to stick around.
We went to the Austrian counter where we discovered that they had switched planes on us and consequently messed up our seating: four random seats across a row of 8, and two loners. The man who would have sat in the midst of McFarlandom gratefully escaped to one of our aisle seats, as did the man sitting next to Sebi, so it worked out well.
It was a flight full of kids: there was a family with twin 16-month-olds right in front of us (loud and out of control, but you just don't care if it is going to deflect attention from you) and a Jewish family with five kids in matching yellow hoodies going to Israel. The father assured me that they had Benadryl to share if we needed it. They did fine except the part where their two-year-old barfed all over him in the middle of the night. The poor man was running around in his undershirt by breakfast. We offered him Rob's extra shirt because, well, we all packed extra clothes since at one time or another, we have all been barfed on or spilled a beverage all over ourselves, and because Austrian Air always plays luggage roulette with the bags. They are an absolute dream in the air, but on the ground it isn't quite so smooth.
Will played games as long as he could keep his eyes open. Maddie watched Inkheart at least twice. Sebi saw Surf's Up. Then all the kids fell asleep, more or less. Will stretched out on the floor. Maddie got three seats across and her legs on my knees. Sebi laid down across two seats and left Rob marooned without a seat at all. And Fluff fell asleep next to Maddie. So Rob and I got no sleep, which is what we were expecting. At some point Joss woke up screaming and Rob took him to the back where he let him play with all of the levers and buttons in the lavatory, filling and emptying the water and talking to the flight attendants. He found out that our favorite part of the airline -- the piping hot rolls they bring around to you -- is their least. They all had burns from reaching into the warmers during turbulence.
We landed. Got through customs. Got all 11 pieces of luggage. Found our contact. Stood around for a long while in the airport which has no air (lots of stale sweat and smoke, but no air). I was like those dogs in the Far Side cartoons who only understand the part with my name. I couldn't grasp what was going on or why we were standing there. Then we got a maxi van and drove to our apartment and all of us got horizontal and I woke up about 48 hours later just in time to serve dinner to twenty people for the first meeting of Study Abroad.
We went to the Austrian counter where we discovered that they had switched planes on us and consequently messed up our seating: four random seats across a row of 8, and two loners. The man who would have sat in the midst of McFarlandom gratefully escaped to one of our aisle seats, as did the man sitting next to Sebi, so it worked out well.
It was a flight full of kids: there was a family with twin 16-month-olds right in front of us (loud and out of control, but you just don't care if it is going to deflect attention from you) and a Jewish family with five kids in matching yellow hoodies going to Israel. The father assured me that they had Benadryl to share if we needed it. They did fine except the part where their two-year-old barfed all over him in the middle of the night. The poor man was running around in his undershirt by breakfast. We offered him Rob's extra shirt because, well, we all packed extra clothes since at one time or another, we have all been barfed on or spilled a beverage all over ourselves, and because Austrian Air always plays luggage roulette with the bags. They are an absolute dream in the air, but on the ground it isn't quite so smooth.
Will played games as long as he could keep his eyes open. Maddie watched Inkheart at least twice. Sebi saw Surf's Up. Then all the kids fell asleep, more or less. Will stretched out on the floor. Maddie got three seats across and her legs on my knees. Sebi laid down across two seats and left Rob marooned without a seat at all. And Fluff fell asleep next to Maddie. So Rob and I got no sleep, which is what we were expecting. At some point Joss woke up screaming and Rob took him to the back where he let him play with all of the levers and buttons in the lavatory, filling and emptying the water and talking to the flight attendants. He found out that our favorite part of the airline -- the piping hot rolls they bring around to you -- is their least. They all had burns from reaching into the warmers during turbulence.
We landed. Got through customs. Got all 11 pieces of luggage. Found our contact. Stood around for a long while in the airport which has no air (lots of stale sweat and smoke, but no air). I was like those dogs in the Far Side cartoons who only understand the part with my name. I couldn't grasp what was going on or why we were standing there. Then we got a maxi van and drove to our apartment and all of us got horizontal and I woke up about 48 hours later just in time to serve dinner to twenty people for the first meeting of Study Abroad.
Comments
Do tell how you go about serving dinner to twenty -- that's another thing I'd be clueless about. My uncle is the mission president in Albania right now and my aunt expressed surprise about how her job is a lot like running a bed and breakfast. I could have told her that, but I'm sure she's managing much better at it than I would.