We boarded the plane in Jackson around five o'clock Tuesday evening. We flew overnight and all slept a little. Where I was sitting, an air vent was blasting on me but was too high to reach, so I didn't sleep well because I was so cold. When shifting weight around in the suitcases in the airport in Jackson, I had pulled out the warm merino sweater I had knitted a couple of years ago because there wasn't room for it I the suitcase, and I was so glad to have it on the plane. That was what enabled me to get the couple of hours' sleep that I did. Once the sun started rising (around one Texas time!) trying to sleep was a lost cause. That was the first time I had ever actually witnessed losing time because we were flying east as the sun was rising. It was quite an eerie feeling.
We landed around eleven in the morning Amsterdam time, so when we entered the airport I had gotten about two hours of sleep, and Woody and Griffin had only gotten five or six, at the most. Walking through the airport with such little sleep in a foreign country and on the way to an even more foreign country was like being in a dream. My senses and body didn't work quite right; I felt slow and confused by simple things.
For instance, I stood in line in the ladies' bathroom waiting for a stall. I was at the front of the line for a while because I didn't see an open door to go into. Then I heard, “Hallo? Hallo?” coming from the attendant, and I realized that there was an open stall that I had overlooked. Everyone in line behind me waited patiently.
Eventually, we found a cozy table near a coffee shop and anchored ourselves there until it was time for our flight to Dubai. Before that, however, I did manage to buy some nice chocolate and spend $18 on one Hot Wheel car for Griffin ($.97 back home).
The flight to Dubai was the hardest leg. It was only six hours (short compared to the nine hour flight from Memphis to Amsterdam), but the seats were small and close together, and it was too sunny for Griffin to fall asleep, so we had to entertain him the whole time, and we certainly weren't at our best with such little sleep.
After he broke down crying on the plane, “I want to go home to Texas!” I pulled out my secret weapon. It was a Leapster Explorer (an educational video game player) that my mom had bought for his birthday but we were hiding until the flight. He really enjoyed that, and it kept him busy for several hours on the plane. Also, I let him listen to my mp3 player, which had his favorite songs saved on it.
Finally, we landed in Dubai around eleven o'clock at night. As soon as we could see the city's lights from the air, Griffin said, “Mommy, are we in Dubai?! Is it still my birthday?!” We had told him that he could get new toys for his birthday when we got to Dubai, and he remembered.
We were met in the airport by a woman from a greeting service to walk us through customs and pick up our luggage. She was nice and tried to make conversation with me, but I was exhausted, and it was midnight in Dubai, not to mention how little sleep I'd gotten in the last two days. I just wanted her to stop talking to me and let me daze into space while Griffin ran circles around my legs.
She brought up the wonderful food and how I'll still be able to get my hamburgers in Dubai. Because all Americans love hamburgers, right? Just please stop talking to me, woman. My conversational skills and manners are somewhere over Iceland.
When we stepped outside, it took a few seconds to realize that the sensation I was feeling was heat and humidity. I'm a Southern girl, but I've never felt anything like this. It was like being on another planet. It enveloped me and clung to me almost intimately as I moved.
We finally made it to the hotel where we ordered room service and quickly fell asleep. We left Mississippi at five P.M. Tuesday and arrived in our hotel in Dubai around one thirty A.M. Wednesday: a total of about twenty-two hours of travel. (That's the same amount of time I was in labor with Griffin, come to think of it.) Woody and Griffin acclimated to the time change in just a couple of days. It didn't catch up with me until about a week and a half later; then I had some late mornings.
We've been here for three weeks now, and traveling here is already a foggy memory. The fact that we'll do it all over again when we go home to visit next summer looms over me. Maybe traveling this far is something that people get better at the more they do it. Or maybe that's why they serve free beer and wine on planes.
1 comment:
I do believe that is why they hand out spirits on planes. It doe not get better, trust me. You get better at packing and hauling it all and catching those lay over flights, knowing where the coffee shops are in each airport, but that's about it. I once had a nonstop back to Dubai and stood in the back of the plane with a group of 6 or so talking and drinking for 5 hours. None of us could sleep or stay seated for 14 hours, Then we did stretching exercises together. It really helped pass the time. Most were engineers or service men on their was to Afghanistan so the convo's were interesting.
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