See You Later, USA!

Bryant family selfie before departure :)

What a whirlwind! As I’m sure you may have deduced, I am in Egypt! My flight left on Thursday evening (late, of course) from Sioux Falls. As we were approaching the Chicago airport, I noticed three planes on the right side of the plane and two on the left also waiting to land. It seemed that my flight was at the bottom of the totem pole as we hovered for about 15 minutes above Chicago until we were cleared to land. This, in addition to Chicago being a bear to navigate meant by the time I went through customs and security at the international terminal, my trans-Atlantic flight was already boarding. I literally had time to pee and I was clamoring into my seat preparing for takeoff. I sat next to a lovely Colorado native (shot out to Molly and Josh, my favorite CO residents!) and we talked for the first hour of the flight until dinner was served. After dinner my seatmate settled in for the long (ELEVEN HOUR) flight. I, unfortunately, was too pumped up on adrenaline to even sit still, let alone sleep. I spent the next 6 hours trying to find a semi comfortable position to rest in while listening to my music (thank goodness for the LOTR soundtrack). After a fitful day/night of flying, we were served a surprisingly good breakfast prior to landing in Istanbul.

Shockingly enough this flight was also running late, and the Istanbul airport is quite a feat. We meandered around the tarmac for nearly 20 minutes (and my connection was only 50 minutes) before deboarding on the actual ground, not through one of those tunnel things (I’m sure they have a name, but excuse me and my jet lag). We had to wait for everyone to get off the flight and onto a teensy tiny bus to get to the farthest terminal (again, international departures). By the time I made it through security and to my gate, my flight was supposed to have taken off. Thankfully Egyptian time is not exactly precise, so my flight hadn’t even started boarding yet! What a happy accident J

My flight to Cairo was rather uneventful in the scheme of things (just wait for what’s to come). We had a nice dinner and I listened to a couple of pick me up tunes to get me hyped for my arrival (and carrying my mountain of luggage through customs). I landed in Cairo just after the most potent red sunset I’ve ever seen to a dark metropolis! I quickly collected my carry on and purse and headed to the nearest bank to buy my visa. Upon collecting my visa, I began to wait in an abnormally long line to go through security and get my passport stamped (I’m kind of a passport junkie now). While I was waiting, the security officer decided to open up two more lines randomly and it was hilarious to see him wave and turn on the light and then see hordes of people running to get to the front (cutting is socially acceptable, apparently)! After that I went down a couple escalators and showed my passport about 8 more times before arriving at the baggage claim. Here’s where it gets interesting. I waited for nearly 2.5 hours at the baggage claim because 1. They were slow as heck loading the bags 2. My bags were nowhere to be seen. You can imagine that after 17 hours of plane time and two nearly-missed connections I was not a happy camper. But the odd thing is, I wasn’t as upset as I thought I’d be.

Without my bags I went through customs and found my school people. We tried (and failed) to find out where to report lost luggage together, and I actually had to go backwards through customs to find the kiosk. Here I waited in line for another hour to get a slip of paper with my claim number. After a LONG day of travel, I collapsed into my not-very-comfortable bed and slept like a rock for a solid 7 hours! Thank goodness for jet lag (on this occasion anyway)!