Departure

I miss all you guys at UCSB and Mercer Island! Sad to be leaving but also stoked to get to India and have naan-stop non-stop.

I am leaving today at 7:45 pm for Delhi, India from Seattle via London Heathrow. I think it's like a 28-hour flight. So all you whiners about having to drive to Norcal this weekend, please....

June 17--Flight
I got 3 hours of sleep. I spend the entire morning online, updating my contacts on outlook, setting up a blog, and setting up email lists...you can thank me later! At 5:45 the fam drove me to Sea-Tac and I checked into my British Airways 9-hour flight, went through security, and waited for Sarah York's flight but it turns out she wasn't on it, but I saw Greg Trowbridge. I waited and took a picture of myself. The people on the flight were pretty much all British...fun with tea and crumpets. The movies didn't work for a while, they offered wine to the lady next to me but not me (WTF), and there was a big post in the middle of my legroom. JAL and KLM are much better. I slept and ate and watched The Pink Panther and Freedomland...nice movie selection. The British woman next to me stole my armrest on the aisle seat. When we neared Heathrow it was 1pm, and cloudy. I could see central London on the north side of the Thames with its modern skyscrapers, and then the winding Thames curving south and traversed by the beautiful London Bridge. We touched down and got off the plane. Since I had until 5, I went through British customs and immigration. The officer looked at me weird and was like, "Ok..." but then stamped my passport and I left the aiport walking down the street and on the highway and roundabouts towards some random neighborhood, not really knowing what to do. My allergies killed. The first people I saw was an Indian family socializing and playing cricket in their backyard...typical. Britain is definitely diverse. I walked down the street further, past soccer fields, little schools, social clubs, pubs, houses, and small cars (many with English flags coming out the window). I tried going to a pub, but they didn't take Visa. Boo. I walked back to the airport and waited in a massive probably 800-yard line for security. About 50% of the passengers were white, 49% of the passengers were Indian, and 1% were half-Asian. I thought they’d all be Indian. I’m leaving civilization for six months! The food was all Indian, great because I won’t get enough of that as is. I drank wine! The plane passed through Poland, Kiev, Georgia, Armenia, Caspian Sea, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, before reaching the Gangetic plains of north India. It was hazy (mmm, pollution), most of the buildings were small and light and square and four or five stories tall and clumped very closely together. There were open fields, mostly brown and dusty. The city is huge in terms of population (12 million) and size. There were some modern skyscrapers and some poorly-made slums or squatter towns.