And we are off!

February 7, 2008

4:00am

Arise and shine. Boy was it early. I only managed to get an hour and a half of sleep and I had to get up and get ready to leave already. My sister came over and her, me, my mom, and boyfriend Josh loaded the car and headed for Omaha.

6:30am

Carly and I arrived at the Omaha airport with our families. After saying our last goodbyes we got onto this tiny little plane and flew to Chicago, IL.

9:30am

We had about a 2 1/2 hour layover in Chicago, so we got something to eat and just chilled. Nothing too exciting happened, except that I managed to spend $12.00 at Starbucks. I didn't want fast-food, so I thought a sandwich would be a good choice. So I get up the counter, order my frappochino and hand her my sandwich. When the total came up $12.00 I asked her how much the sandwich was. $7.40!!!!!! Before I could say that I didn't want it she had rung it up and swiped my gift card already. Oh well. At least it was a good sandwhich!

12:30pm

This time we got to ride in the BIG plane (pictured above). The plane held about 250 people if I remember correctly, but I read on the screen at the airport that only a little over 100 were flying, so that was nice because then it was less crowded. I'd never been in a plane that big before. There was the first class seats in the front that had the most room and there seats all lots of gadgets and could lean back. After that was business class I think it was called. They also had plenty of room and seats that leaned back. Then there were 2 more sections divided up, in the middle and back of the plane, but as far as I could see they were pretty much the same. Each seat had their own tv screen which was nice. We also got a blanket and a cute lil pillow. I was pretty excited when I saw we got to watch movies. Too bad pretty much all the movies were dumb ones. I did however watch Rush Hour 3, "I'm gonna slice you up like a California roll." haha. That was my favorite quote. Anyways, after the first 6 hours on the flight I got pretty bored. I resorted to working on a sudoku puzzle and trying to take a nap. After realizing that there wasn't really any way I could fall asleep sitting up I walked around the plane a bit and found 2 empty seats next to each other. I took my pillow and coat and used that to rest my head on, threw my blanket over me, curled up in a ball, and fell asleep! It was wonderful.

Finally, after 12 hours I think was the final count, we landed in Japan. About an hour before that they served us dinner on the plane. I figured I should probably eat. At first the hot turkey sandwich was good, but by the end my stomach started hurting. Then we got to add in turbulance and my stomach was REALLY not feeling good. I was so scared I was going to throw up. The combination of the bad food and being incredibly scared that I was actually gonna land in Japan and be there for four months, was not good. Thankfully we landed pretty smoothly and I did not loose my dinner. Welcome to Japan!

At some point in there it turned into Friday Feb 8th.

(I plan to update this almost every day if possible. I have a big of catching up to do and this post is getting long, so I'll write tomorrow about my first day in Japan!)