Flying into the future>>>


Bags. Check.

Passports. Check.

Camera. Check.

Goodbye to family. Check.

St. Louis Airport

Off and up into the clouds. And over the clouds! And above the clouds for hours...

This is my first flight and it was amazing. Four hours passed by and the lights of the big sprawling city of LA lay below us. From one side of the horizon to the other, we could see nothing but city lights - like a Lite Brite the size of... well... Los Angeles.

Since St. Louis was a really nice airport I was expecting even more from LA. I'm thinking restaurants galore, grab a bite to eat and wait for the plane. Flying west into the pacific time zone should be flying into the future so maybe it will even be like the Jetsons or something with smoothies and meal pills. But to our dismay, trudging down the carpeted halls of LAX we realized we must have gone into the past, because the 80's called and they want their airport back. It was dingy, covered with old carpet, and we couldn't even find any place to eat, with the exception of one tiny cafe, the line stretching down the hall, and the prices reaching Californian proportions. This IS California, so I guess it was to be expected.

Eventually we loaded onto a HUGE plane, the kind with an upper deck and wings the size of a small whale. We whiled the 10 pitch-black nighttime hours away attempting to sleep. As dawn was about to arrive we saw islands dotting the ocean, and the plane swooped below the clouds. We had landed in Fiji. The sun rose over mountains as we awaited our next flight.

We sat next to an Indian-Fijian woman on her way to visit her sister in Auckland. She had never flown before and was terrified. We chatted for 3 hours (we have things in common - we both love trees and this was our first adventure on airplanes) and I showed her pictures of the clouds we were flying over, because she was afraid to look out the window.

Before we knew it, we saw them. Islands.

We were finally about to land in New Zealand.

Auckland aerial view.

I held her hand as the plane floated down, and finally stopped. Parting with my new friend, we stepped out of the plane and into our new lives in our new country that we will call home.