Days 1 and 2

23 July 2011

And so the journey begins. My mom my brother, his daughter and I drove to LAX. We stopped at the Universal City Walk to kill some time, because we had left Nipomo a little after 9am. Once at the airport, we found my gate and tried to get my boarding passes. The flight was delayed and the computer system wouldn’t let me print out my boarding passes, so I had to stand in line for awhile. But, as it turns out, Ben wasn’t able to print his out either. Ben is a friend of mine with whom I lived in Kaleidoscope House last year, so I knew him. A friend of his also came with us on the flights to Italy. Her name is Isabel. Isabel was able to print out her passes at home. Curious. Everything worked out, though, and we all said goodbye to our families and headed into LAX to wait for our 12:05am take-off.

Now I’m on the plane ascending, writing everything in my notebook so I can transcribe it all to this blog at a later time. I was going to take pictures, but I made the silly mistake of getting my camera ready during take-off and I dropped it. I didn’t find it until everyone was getting off; it was at the very back of our section of the plane, against the wall. Phew.

It still hasn’t totally hit me that I’m leaving the country, but these days I’m pretty slow. As we take off, I am bound to my window seat, leaning my forehead gently against the glass, trying not to drool at the absolute beauty that is the glow of grids of tiny lights. I will sleep soon, as it’s already 12:20am and New York is three hours ahead, but I had to record my favourite part about traveling! I’m so used to driving the 101 to 405 and vice versa at night to and from school at UCI, but the best part is always coming over the hills just before a big city and watching to slow transition from utter darkness to the glistening dots pouring from every nook and cranny of the city. But this! LA is just radiant from up here! Gorgeous! I can see why The Matrix movie compares the world to the inside of electronics; there’s hundreds of grids packed with millions of gleaming lights and they’re all neat and geometric and completely organized, unlike the feel and sense of the city while you are knee-deep in the hustle and bustle of it.

A P.A. announcement was just made about closing the window covers if we decide to sleep out of courtesy once we reach what will be sunrise in NY. I battle with myself: close the cover and try to get as much sleep as I can before a full day of NY walking and another flight? Or leave it up and hope the sunrise wakes me after I’ve fallen asleep in the sheer splendor of the night sky? After all, the man sleeping to my right will still be blocked by my gigantic body covering the window as I gawk at more of God’s Creativity!

And wouldn’t you know it, I have no window cover! It’s completely gone! Well, decision’s been made.

I’ve been told recently that the new finding of what causes jetlag is actually dehydration. I know we’re supposed to drink half your body weight in ounces a day – this includes any liquids, although some like coffee dry us out, so you need more to compensate – and we need to drink even more at higher altitudes, which I’m pretty sure would include flying in planes. So, I’ve been drinking tons of water. Which, of course, means I need to pee a lot! But I really don’t want to wake the sleeping people to my right. I hate that part. But I love the window seat for the view, of course! Well, about an hour before we arrive in NY, I can wait no longer. So, I reluctantly wake the people next to me and go to the back for the stall. Upon my return, there were two flight attendants and a bunch of people looking at my seat; they were all concerned about how my window was the only one still up in our section. It would have been pretty dark had it not been for my window. But it’s sad that no one confronted me about it. I would have told them I would gladly have closed my window if it had a cover to close, but alas it does not. I’m the one who had to sleep next to it guys.

Then I got some more water and some more ‘restful’ shut-eye (after a long night of waking up every hour or so).

Next stop NYC!

P.s. Normally the big dipper is right above us. Well, it’s directly to my left! Haha!!

26 July 2011

Yesterday, Ben, Isabel and I arrived at JFK around 9am. Turns out, Isabel’s checked baggage went there instead of going to Florence, the final airport on our trip. Yikes! So, we spent awhile finding her luggage; we arrived in Terminal 3 and went to Terminal 2 and finally found the luggage, then we took it back to T3 and re-checked it, this time for Florence. We even made sure that’s where it was going. Then we went to T1 for the Luggage Storage place. Not bad; $10 bucks for both my carry-ons. They each had one carry-on so it was only $4 for each of them. I always travel only with carry-on. I never really thought about it until this trip because it was just the norm in our family. We’ve flown to Oregon once or twice, to SLO for another flight to NY a couple of times, and when, on the rare occasion that we actually take family vacations, we always just brought a backpack for inside the car or at our plane seat, and a smallish bag for the overhead compartment or for the backseat.

So, I was set with my two carry-ons and Ben and Isabel both had one checked bag each.

In New York, after we figured out the bag issue, we took the AirTrain and Subway to Times Square and explored! We found a cute little zebra-print carry-on for Isabel and I found a Statue of Liberty keychain. I’ve always wanted one. Actually, I’ve always wanted a Statue of Liberty lighter like in the Tim Allan movie Jungle 2 Jungle.  J But no luck. I wasn’t sure if I could bring it on the plane anyway.

On the Subway to Times Square, we saw the graffiti’d building that I think is popular for it’s various graffiti! When I was in NY with my good friend Katie and my mom Summer of 2008, it was completely different! It’s so cool to know that it keeps changing, but that the city allows it to stay there. What a great way to allow locals to express themselves. That’s how I choose to look at it.

We arrived in Times Square and explored a little.

In the Times Square Information Center, they had some actual Broadway costumes set up. Of course, when I saw the Little Shop of Horrors apron, I had to take a picture of it for you, Mommy. My mom is Props Mistress for Sorcerer Production’s Little Shop soon. Go see it; it’s a great show!

Also in Times Square is the Elmo! My sister Rachel took a picture with him when she went to the East Coast, so I thought I’d give back and take this for her. Love you big sis.

And then it started raining!! It didn’t effect our flight though, thank you God.

And I finally got my square pizza from New York, even though it was from the airport.

That’s it for now. There’s no internet in my room and the internet hasn’t been up downstairs yet, so my first few blogs may be a bit late, but I’ll post them when I get a chance.

Last night, I was beat! But a new friend asked if I wanted to do some yoga with him, so another new friend, he and I went on the top of one of the buildings where it’s was amazing to see all the dazzling lights of the city and the cathedral and some more buildings that I have no idea what they are, and we did some yoga until about 11:30pm. Went to bed, and actually slept pretty well! Woke up a few times, but that’s normal now for me.

Go figure, I woke up at 6:45am rested and ready to start my day, so I heated up my rice pack and got an ice pack for my wrist and chilled on the terrace for a little before coming back and starting my blog. I’m going to love it here; I already do.

(A view from my room.)