Chrisssss

July 19, 2009
I am sitting in Atlanta airport waiting for my flight to Buenos Aires. On my flight here from Indy, I sat next to the nicest lady in the world. She was from North Carolina and was reading a book in German. She had gone to Europe after she graduated and she worked in Germany for 6 months. When she got there, she couldn’t work so she had to travel for 2 months before she got a job. Can you imagine? That would be an unpleasant surprise! Planning on going to work and finding out as soon as you get there that you can’t. So it could be worse.
Both of my flights are on time which means I will get to Buenos Aires at 8 tomorrow morning. I am looking forward to the stupid croissant on the plane. That’s the usual breakfast.
I have seen a lot of people who look like students that could be in my program, but I don’t know them. There are two girls waiting right now who look like they could be in it, and another girl sitting across from me, but who knows. There are lots of chances they are doing something else. But still. It’s kind of exciting thinking we might be going the same place.
Right before I left, I was so scared. I had hyped myself up for the first few moments I would be alone, but I kind of broke at the last second. I think it was because I talked to my brother Stephen on the phone, and he took me through my first flight even when we went to Spain so I wished he were with me again. But I left my parents, walked to security, and this lovely black man named chris saw that I had been crying and said something like, “hard to say goodbye?” and I said yeah because I wouldn’t be back until Christmas. So he pulled out a Kleenex box and put it on his little counter, and said he kept those for occasions like this. So I figured if I didn’t know anybody, at least I had chris. I wanted to hug that poor man! That’s probably against security guidelines, though, so I didn’t.
And thank goodness Indianapolis is so chill: it was super fast to go through security, maybe like 10 minutes. And then I was walking through the terminal by myself. I walked past the glass art, and in that tiny little transition hall to concourse A, I took my first steps of this journey.
A few peanuts and a sweet tea (ATL USD1.92) later, I am feeling pretty good. I got my lamb Ella, my traveler’s checks, and a whole lot of optimism for what lies ahead. Or beneath, considering Argentina’s location. Hehe. Scary movie, that one.