The Plane Ride

The night before I left, there were guests at the guest house – a friend of my niece’s and her mother, for a sleepover. After a busy day, the kids were in the guesthouse watching TV and the adults were in the dining room, reading the newspaper. The mom asked me how I was so calm the night before I was leaving. I replied that being on hold had become the norm, so that it almost didn’t seem real…and then I said I would miss everyone…and then I started to get emotional. The mom took her daughter and left (they had stayed the night before so it wasn’t as if the sleepover was cut short) and I spent a little time with my nieces; Valerie got up early the next day to play Careers with me, and the late-sleepers in the house all got up! I went on an early bike ride – I may not get to ride a bike again for a while (Metro Manila is not the place for one – people keep telling me not to even walk, because of dangerous traffic and pollution). My sister and brother-in-law drove me to the 9:30 jitney, and then I was off. Easy travel – the jitney has an airport connection stop, and Tony picked me up and brought me to JFK.

I checked in and was told to weigh my luggage – too heavy. I was prepared for that, and prepared to pay the overweight charge, but I was still over and had to take things out of my bag. If I had known, I’d have brought the extra bag I bought in Bali when the same thing happened! I pulled over to the side and started to figure out what to take out when I saw someone else doing the same thing. He looked like the picture that he had emailed, and I said, “you must be Charlie,” the other PCRV on my flight. Love at first sight – he’s great. He went to buy extra bags for us while I waited with the luggage and then he brought them over to be shrink-wrapped into little cocoons. I will definitely have to lighten the load on the way back – if not part with the green suitcase entirely and buy something smaller. Off to a good start already in terms of the unanticipated! The bag had a broken zipper (so did his) brand-new – but nothing to be done about it (mine arrived with everything else, at least – his arrived just as we were leaving to go to our sites three days later).

The 2:00 pm 13 1/2-hour flight was long but tolerable – as I suspected, travel in Morocco made it seem not so bad. I didn’t sleep much. I read some of Culture Shock, but I felt a little brain-dead. I was on a 777, with an individual screen on the back of the seat in front of me, and I found Bejeweled, a video game that I played over and over. There was an empty seat next to me, and Charlie came over and we talked for a couple of hours (I further became enchanted when he mentioned that on the screen next to him there was a reality show that took place in one of his favorite places, Mohonk. One of mine too!). We were fed lunch (or maybe it was dinner), snack and then breakfast. And then we were in Tokyo!

We went over to our new gate for the layover and were joined by Mary, from New York but flying from Los Angeles, and Mercedes, flying from San Francisco – their flights from the West Coast to Toyko were almost as long as ours, and they didn’t have the nice 777 touch screen! Hm. The 4 ½ hour flight to Manila left around 7:00 pm. I read Mary’s Culture Smart Philippines (I am going to switch from Culture Shock to Culture Smart if I am in this situation again – similar info but more concise and readable) and the rest of Culture Shock (and am now prepared to share interesting cultural tidbits). We were picked up by some of the Peace Corps staff, who herded us through immigration, baggage claim and customs and brought us to the pension in downtown Manila where the PCVs all stay when they are in town. They stay in a dorm room with bathrooms down the hallway – we had two air-conditioned rooms with ensuite bathroom – with hot shower. At the airport we had been joined by Jonathan, who flew in with a different connection, and at the pension we met Drew, who had arrived earlier. We all got soft drinks and sat and talked for a while. And sometime in the early morning – afternoon according to our body clocks (12-hour time difference from EDT) – we tried to get some sleep.