Leaving on a jet ... You know, I never really liked that song... 1-2 Jan

Well, I'm off. Flying isn't as great as it's made out to be. All it's done for me so far is make my ears hurt and give me a headache. Ok my first embarrassing moment, I didn't know what to do for security. There was just a pile of bins and I had to know what to do with them. So I asked the lady in front of me. She was very nice and explained quite well. Second embarrassing moment, I sat in the wrong seat. Not seeing the seat numbers, I thought I was supposed to just pick a seat. Then a family came by, speaking onyy Spanish and tried to explain I was in one of their seats. I figured out what was going on quite quickly because I was afraid it was going to happen. My first flight, from Omaha to Chicago was in a tiny little thing. There were two seats on one side of the aisle and just one on the other. I was lucky enough to get the single seat in front of the emergency exit. The wing was just behind me, so I had a nice view. The landscape was pretty cool, like a piece of white vinyl stretched over the land with cotton lightly scattered over top. The towns and the hills and such looked like they had been gently etched into a canvas. Sister Eileen would tell me it was a GOD moment.

After landing in Chicago I headed straight for my next flight. The only problem, there was no gate number on my boarding pass. Starting to feel slightly panicked, I walked. I didn't have any idea if I was going in the right direction or not, I just picked one. Luck was with me because I found not only a restroom, but also an arrival/departure board. Plus, my flight was in the direction I had been walking. It wasn't hard to find the gate once I knew where I was going. When I turned in my boarding pass, the lady took it to another counter and brought me a new boarding pass. To myself I thought, oh no, I gave her the wrong pass. She told they had moved my seat and was I ok with that? I said sure since she was putting me in the exit seat, which has more leg room. And it's a good thing she moved me. My original seat had been clear in the back of the plane, while the new one was right as we entered. As I was settling into my new seat, a couple that had been split asked if I was willing to trade them seats.  Since I'm not too picky, I told them it was fine with me. So I flew from Chicago to Manchester in the exit seat near the middle of the plane. It was nice because I wasn't right next to the main door, nor was I clear in the back.

Once I landed in Manchester, I had to go through all the hoops again, plus some others. I had to go through security, again, my boots set the alarm off, apparently there is enough liquid in contacts to trigger an alert, then to top it off, the lady at the UK Border desk and I did not communicate with each other very well. She had to find me at the gate in order to straighten everything out. Waiting for my final flight, it hit me how far I was from home. Nowhere in that airport would I find a Nebraska accent. Maybe an American one, but definitely not Nebraskan. By the time I got through the gate and somehow managed to get my carry-on in the overhead, I was ready to be done flying. I had been sitting for so long, I wasn't sure I'd be able to walk again. I once thought it would be fun to be a flight attendant, but today has made me realize that job is the wrong choice for me. Just three flights in 15 hours and I'm ready to keel over. One of the cool moments during the flight from Manchester was the clouds. They were like a secret landscape that was simply beautiful. It looked like a piece of cotton had been given to child who was allowed to pick and pull at it however the child pleased. Going over the clouds and seeing that definitely made the the last leg of the journey easier.