The longest flight

I was fortunate to have a whole cadre of family to see me off. In addition to Ben, Mom, Dad, and Thomas (not pictured) drove me to the airport. They even came into the airport with me while I checked in. Which turned out to be a really good thing because the lady at the AA desk told me my bag was two pounds too heavy. Mom helped me madly rearrange everything so that my backpack was two pounds heavier and my checked bag was two pounds lighter. I fail to understand how this helps them in anyway... those two pounds are still going on the same plane.

 Anyway, I did make it inside. I will admit that there were a few tears that were valiantly not shed. As my brother Thomas said... I wasn't sad so much as just overwhelmed by the awesomeness of it all. Yes, those were tears of awesomeness.

 I love how shiny and new everything in the international terminal is.
Unlike our plane. Which apparently was having mechanical issues. Here's a crummy interior shot.

 We sat on the tarmac for two hours  while they did something to the right engine. The plus side was that I got to watch Pirates! Band of Misfits while we waited. Funny movie. There was even a song by Flight of the Concords. Ironically, it was about not crying. Which, of course, I didn't do.

I love that you get your own video screen on international flights. On both of the legs you could pull up this nifty map and see exactly what you were flying over.

 Here we are flying over the Atlantic Ocean.

And thee pictures below show our descent into London.

 And this is traditional English Pub fare. Now, Ben and I did a road trip and I had true Yorkshire pudding. This was not true Yorkshire pudding. I can see why British food gets a bad rap. If this was my only experience with British dining, I would have a pretty low opinion too.

 On the upside, Coke uses real sugar in the UK which is what I got on the flight. Real coke with REAL sugar. I also made friends with the British lady next to me (sorry no picture) who was going to India to visit her son. She had a pretty strong cockney accent so I wasn't really sure where she was going in India. There's a general rule that if you have to say "What?" More than twice, even if you didn't get it the third time, you smile and nod your head like you did.

 So here's the descent into Delhi. It was early morning and pretty foggy out. Or hat might be smog. Also, they came through the cabin about thirty minutes before we landed and sprayed air freshener up and down the aisles. It was very odd. I've been told that Delhi has a particularly pungent odor (which so far sitting in the airport I have not experienced) but if that's why they were spraying down the cabin, it seems like a pretty futile effort.

This lovely lady helped me with a sim card for my phone. My Hindi actually came in handy finally because none of the four people that worked there really spoke much English. She told me her English was about as good as my Hindi. Which made me laugh. Her English was definitely better than my Hindi.

And I don't have a picture of where I'm sitting now because it's a "napping lounge" and I don't want to disturb the other passengers. I have one more leg of my trip to go. Thank goodness because I've been traveling for over 24 hours now and I got a grand total of about five hours of sleep on the plane. I can't wait to get there and then go to bed.