Flying and Waiting

5/4/10
Location: various airports (Minneapolis, Denver, LA, Auckland)

Getting from point A to B is not so simple when point A is thousands of miles from point B. Today is the first day of the May seminar of six countries in 25 days, and today is the longest leg of the travel: Moorhead, Minnesota to Wellington, New Zealand. I got up at 3:30 AM this morning to depart Moorhead on a bus bound for Minneapolis at 4:45 AM. Four hours later, I was in the Twin Cities getting my boarding passes for all of my connections: Minneapolis to Denver, Denver to Los Angeles, Los Angeles to Auckland, and finally Auckland to Wellington. All together it’s about 15-16 hours of flying, plus all of the layovers in between. The flying and the layovers is really the same though. It’s all time spent waiting. It’s long hours of waiting for the sights and adventure yet to come. It’s frustrating to go through security again, to eat airplane food again, and to have your feet fall asleep again because the monotony only adds to my feelings of anxiousness and impatience.

The waiting in airports and the sitting in planes has created a limbo of sorts. This trip still feels surreal to me when I am stuck in airport hell and I don’t think it will feel 100 percent vividly real until I am out of the Wellington airport. This trip almost feels too good to be true, too enormous, and too awesomely spectacular for it to be happening to someone like me. But yet I know deep-down that it is, that it will, and I feel incredibly blessed and lucky to have the experiences I’ll gain on this trip. I know that not many people ever travel abroad, and even fewer travel to multiple countries overseas and experience the sights and activities that I will. Part of me feels somewhat selfish since my own parents haven’t and probably will not travel like I am, yet they have supported me so fully every step of the way. But then, part of me feels like I can do this trip and I can use it to make myself a more well-rounded, globally aware and culturally sophisticated person and that’s something that will not be kept to myself—that is something I will share over and over again.

Getting from point A to B is also not so simple when there are so many people involved in making sure you get to point B, and get there safely with all of your stuff intact. It’s amazing to me how many people I have to trust just to get to Wellington. I have to trust Concordia’s Global Education Office and Swain Tours booked all of the right flights. I have to trust the May seminar leaders, Professors Scott Olsen and John Steinwand, know where to go in the sprawling mazes of the major airports. I have to trust all of the airlines to transfer my luggage to the right places and not to lose it or send it to the wrong place. I have to trust the pilots to know how to handle the aircraft in any kind of weather or turbulence. I even have to trust all of the other passengers on the plane to not have any terrorist motives. You get the idea. It’s not just me going on this journey, and it’s not even just the Concordia group of nine college students and two professors: it’s an entire complex network of people and machines moving us along, across the globe, to New Zealand. If one person makes a mistake or one machine errs, then my whole trip can be thrown off balance.

One other thing that can and has been thrown off balance is my sleep and eating schedule. We’re skipping May 5, 2010 entirely since we are crossing the International Date Line, and I’m already so worn out and tired. I’m not sure what my body’s actual time is when the past day has been so abnormal from my normal routine. I cannot wait to get to Wellington and sleep in a horizontal position, take a hot shower, and change into fresh, clean clothes—provided my travel network doesn’t lose my bag.