Leaving, on a jet plane...

SOMEWHERE OVER THE ATLANTIC - So here I am: in a plane, over the ocean, in seat 26C, between a woman who doesn't speak any English and a man with excruciating body odor. I'm tired, I stink, and at the request of the flight attendant staff, I’m not to wander about the cabin for no reason in particular. At this point in my life, I’d be happy never sitting down ever again.

It's been two hours.

I really don’t know how much longer I’m going to last. I mean, this flight is like 10 hours long, and a solid 2 hours worth of the in-flight entertainment is watching Nicholas Cage try to act interested in this National Treasure he’s supposed to be looking for. For food, they’ve put a corpse of something (smells kinda like chicken) in front of me, leaving me with 8 more hours of snacking on Sprite and pretzels.

However, I think it's worth it. In only a few hours, I'll land in Amsterdam, jump off one plane and onto another bound for Milan, and get on a bus for a five hour trip to our final destination. We'll settle in, I’ll look around, and realize that yes, I am in Italy. Wow.

To be honest, I only became really excited about this trip in the last 2 weeks. Since I got back from Peru, all I could think about was heading off to Kenya and how I would make it through the rest of the school year with my sanity intact. But in the last few days, really, I’ve began looking more and more forward to touring the region I've studied so hard this semester.

But we still have a long ways to go. More flying, another flight, and a five hour bus trip await me still. That's a solid 12 until I am free. I better get comfortable.

-cw