Plane Ride!

April 28, 2009

What an adventure it has turned out to be. Currently I am sitting some where over the Pacific Ocean. We are flying on Cathay Airlines. I have five hours and forty five minutes left until we get to Hong Kong. It has been a very tiring adventure so far. We started out meeting at the Salt Lake Airport at 5:30 pm. We checked in and all was well. After we checked in we started the waiting game. Our flight from Salt Lake to LA was just after 8 pm. That flight was uneventful. It was not a full flight so Sherstin Creamer, one of the BYU directors, sat next to me. Once we got to LA we had to switch to the international terminal. More lines and more waiting. It was nice to sit and chat with the different people going on the trip. Once we got past security and to the gate we still had almost three hours before our plan left. More waiting. It was kind of fun being in the terminal.


We were all sitting together in a group. Even though we were just in LA it almost felt like we had already left America. In the international terminal we were a minority. It is a funny feeling. We counted at least 7 languages being spoken. It was crazy. I noticed one thing. Americans are loud. We don’t know how to be quite. Our group of 20 sitting in the terminal was quite noisy. At 11 o’clock we had class in the terminal. That was an adventure. All of us dead tired and trying to have a discussion while there were constant boarding announcements in 3 different languages. We didn’t have a very long class. It was fairly hard to be productive. After running up and down the terminal a few times we boarded the plane.

The flight as you could imagine is long. I tried to stay awake as long as I could but I kept dosing during the first movie. Then once I tried to sleep it was less than amazing. I would say I got 3 our so hours down. The highlight of the plane ride has been while I was waiting in line for the bathroom. I talked with a man from the Philippines. He was from the southern part, Cebu, so he didn’t really speak Tagalog. It was really fun to talk with him. He was actually a minster for another church and has lived in America for many years. It was fun to hear his perception of the church. He made comments on how all of our missionaries learned his language. He talked about how beautiful all of our churches are and how many there were down in his area in the Philippines. He told me that he originally moved to a same town close to Nauvoo so he knew a lot about. He said whenever people out come and visit him he would take them to Nauvoo. It is so fun meet people from the Philippines and just have the special connection with them. The flight has seemed long but it hasn’t been that bad. Just five more hours. I think I can… I think I can. I am so excited to get this trip rolling be there.