Friday, July 29, 2011

The very long flight there

I flew out of Bloomington on July 25th and got to New york around 8pm.  I stayed at Sara's apartment in Brooklyn.  She went to work in the morning and met me for lunch.  I dragged each of my 50 pound bags down the stairs to the cab that picked me up at 2:45 pm.  From now on I will try to bring only 2 checked bags!  It was so hard to manuever 3 plus a carry on.  I got to the Jet Airways counter in the international terminal at Newark airport and immediately saw other ASB folk!  The checking in process was long - they made you go to another area to pay for extra baggage then back to the counter for your boarding pass.  We sat at the gate and greeted each new ASB person who arrived.

We were supposed to leave at 6:40 pm.  They boarded us on time but then we sat on the runway for 2.5 hours - weather, crowded flight path, etc.  I watched an entire movie before we even took off!  The flight to Brussels was about 7 hours (added to the hours we sat on the tarmac/runway - it made for a very long leg of the trip) I couldn't sleep so I watched 2 movies, 6 episodes of How I met your Mother and 3 episodes of Two and a Half Men, ate two meals, read etc.  By the time we got to Brussels I was exhausted and had a headache.  We deplaned and were there less than an hour.  For the 8.5 hour flight to Mumbai I took a Dramamine - that allowed me to doze for an hour and a half- enough to get rid of the headache!  I read a lot on this flight and watched Rio and some more episodes of Two and Half men.  I had the same aisle seat in the back of the plane that I had on the first flight, but a new person sitting next to me.  He wanted his frined to sit with him so I traded. Dang me for being so nice!!  I ended up in the middle of a crowded row.  They lady next to me was really nice though and let me get up and stretch a few times and told me about her travels. The airspace around Mumbai was packed since we were late and we flew loop de loops over the Arabian sea.  It was cool to see that on the flight monitor.

The food wasn't too bad.  On the first flight I had a rice and chicken dish for dinner then a muffin for breakfast.  On the second flight I had lamb chili with veggies -it was delish!  Then they served a slice of chicken pizza right before we landed around midnight the 28th. 

The Mumbai airport was lively and it took quite awhile for all of us to get through customs and get our large amount of luggage.  A team of ASB people with drivers etc met us there and herded us onto the correct van.  I am living in an apartment building in west Bandra with three other new people.  Peyanka lives directly below me and Bryan lives directly blow her and Karen lives 3 floors above me.  Jane, the high school principal rod in our van with us and showed us how to get hot water and use some basic things in our apartments.  By the time she left, it was 3 am.  I crashed and slept like a rock for 3.5 hours.  I woke up around 6:30 am and couldn't go back to sleep because I don't have curtains on a few windows and it was light out.

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