Greetings, all. I survived the plane ride, and now I'm here in beautiful Hikone, where I just got back from an exhilarating bike ride through town. (And it's 6 PM over here, so no, I'm not crazy and riding around in the dark.) It's about as big as Columbia, so it's a size I'm used to. And get this...they have a McDonald's, a 7-Eleven, a YMCA, and a Starbucks. I was so happy to see those signs...
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Flying wasn't too bad at all. I actually enjoyed the ride to Detroit, and even the one to Osaka, although I was sick as a dog the first four or five hours. The lack of sleep finally caught up to me, and I got one of those killer migraines I get. It's like someone's putting a jackhammer to my head, and I'm sure I'm gonna blow chunks, and I know the only way to stop the migraine is to sleep, but of course I can't sleep because I'm so sick and finally I have to medicate myself so I can blissfully lose consciousness...
Then I'm physically weak for like 12 hours after that. Not fun. Especially when I still had a train ride and taxi ride after getting to the airport.
This is how my trip went:
I started off at Columbia Metropolitan. I almost missed my check-in because there was an accident at the interstate. Luckily, my flight was the first of the day, so the terminal wasn't busy. I had to say goodbye to my family immediately so I could go through Security and get right on the plane. I choked up a little bit, but I sucked it up.
I was a little bummed cause it was pouring, but when we took off and all I saw was white, it took my breath away. You couldn't see a thing but clouds, but those were some pretty clouds. It cleared up pretty quickly once we got some distance, though. I had window and aisle seat, so I got to watch us land in Detroit. It was so freaky seeing trees and houses like little toys, not to mention the little cars speeding down the interstate...
The Detroit airport is huge. It's so huge there's a tram to get to the farther gates on either side of the terminal. There's so many stores there that it's like a mini-mall. I ate at a Chili's. In the airport. They had like 10 different restaurants, including an Internet cafe, several clothing stores, stores for gadgets and magazines, duty-free stores, a store that sold Motown stuff, and a store that just sold Ford paraphernalia...
So you can believe your dear friend Liza got lost. Come on, I didn't make it to 2 of my classes my first day of classes at college. I can't even give decent directions to my own house from I-20. I ended up getting out of the main airport somehow, and I had to go back through Security. On the plus side, I got to see pretty much the whole airport. There was a freaky tunnel connecting the concourses that played this weird music, and the tunnel would change colors with the music... It was so weird.
They had this thing called the Religious Reflections Room. It was nice and dimly lit, and I spent a good bit of time in there freaking out a little bit and praying for peace and a safe journey.Anyway, the international flight was almost posh, and I was just in coach. They gave us all headphones, and we could pick a channel and listen to different genres of music or listen to the audio of the movie that was playing (although I missed pretty much all of them because I was slipping in and out of consciousness at the time). They played Take the Lead, Ice Age: The Meltdown, RV, and She's the Man. The food was actually good; dinner was a three-course meal (although those were some teeny courses...). When we arrived in Osaka, I was exhausted and still slightly sick...but I still had a ways to go.
*takes a deep breath* But that's all for this time. I'll write more later.
No comments:
Post a Comment