August 25 - The Flight....s

At 3am, after only 2 hours of sleep and a miserable time packing the night before (classic Rebecca), I had to wake up to head to the airport. I got to the airport, checked in my two 50lbs. bags, went to my gate, curled up in a ball, and went back to sleep. At 7:10am my flight departed to Chicago. Luckily, it was American Airlines - thus an empty plane and I had the whole row to myself. One nap later, I woke up in Chicago. I transferred gates and boarded my flight to JFK two hours later. (I had my last fast food ever - Mmmmm McDonalds!)

On my flight to the Big Apple I was sitting on the asile seat stuck in the middle a 6 member middle eastern family. It was quite awkward because the way they were acting was as though I was rudely interrupting "family time". Thankfully, I fell asleep quickly and slept the whole way. When I got to JFK I had about an hour and a half before my final flight to Switzerland.

Unfortunately, the plane I was on to Switzerland was the kind that had the 12 inch mini screens on the ceiling of the center aisle of the plane, so there wasn't much of a chance I would be able to watch the movies that they played (which I later found out that I had already seen), so I changed my seat to a window seat with hopes of sleeping. When I got on the plane I realized that I was sitting next to a huge man...who smoked. He smoked so much, he actually bought two cartons of Maroboro on the plane even though he wasn't allowed to smoke them. I guess he thought he could absorb the nicotine via osmosis. Either way, I was able to fall asleep right away. About an hour later I woke up, opened my window...and we were still in New York. Apparently we had missed our turn in the take-off lineup and had to wait until there was time. Fortunately it wasn't much longer and I was on my 8-hour way. I slept pretty well on the plane the whole way, which was awesome. The food wasn't...horrible, but I wouldn't say it was good either. I enjoyed the brownie lots though!

Once I arrived in Zurich I waited in the customs line (in the Swiss Citizen line, of course), which only took about 15 minutes and when I got to the baggage claim my two bags came right out, one after the other! I walked to the greeting hall and my cousins Andy and Liliane (ahem...Estella), and my Aunt Gaby were there to pick me up!