Leaving Phoenix, flying into the future

Monday, Aug. 19 was my travel day, flying on Etihad enroute to Abu Dhabi, UAE. I left out of Phoenix that morning. The night before, Mandy stayed over at Abbey's and I finalized my packing (Abbey and I had taken my luggage to American Airlines the day before to practice weigh my three checked bags and carry-on and found three out of the four to be overweight) and we ate pizza and watched Eat, Pray, Love :)

Abbey and I were a little testy with each other over the weekend. Over stupid stuff. Like curling irons. She also got on me about spending my last weekend wisely (I.e. with people, making memories) and I chose to argue with her about that for some reason. Coping method? I told her there were things I needed to get done (like packing, weighing my bags, setting up my magicJack, etc.) in order to be able to enjoy my time with people I love. So silly. Anyway. Everything got done, and whatever didn't, I'll have to figure out now that I'm here.

So, said goodbye to Mandy Monday morning from Abbey's when she left for school. She cried. I was touched. Tears were shed all around. I showered, had some cereal and Abs drove me to the airport around 7:30 a.m. We parked and she helped bring my bags to the American Airlines check-in. Check in went smoothly, the woman barely glanced at my bags or the scale weighing each one in at 49, 50 and 51 lbs respectively (she weighed my rolling carry-on, which was 16 lbs, but said nothing and did nothing with my personal item (backpack) - whew! She just charged my $137 for my third bag (expected expense) and sent me on my way with a smile. I signed up for their frequent flier club - going to rack those miles up (free flights, hey!). While checking in, a colleague of mine from the Balsz District came up at the desk next to me. Good to see a familiar face. I also bumped into a guy I "met" through the Facebook 2013 EMT group when he called my name out to say hi (said he recognized me from my pictures on Facebook. Whew. Otherwise that could have been creepy.) and asked if I would watch his luggage for a minute.

Fast forward a few moments, to my goodbye with Abbey. Last night I broke down midway through Eat, Pray, Love and my second piece of pizza. Both Mandy and Abbey encircled me with hugs and words of encouragement. Mandy cried then, when she saw me start. Abbey remained strong and said she didn't want me to think she wasn't sad for me to leave (and that she had had many a tearful moments in the week leading up to my departure), but at that moment she just felt excited for me and felt a sense of calm surrounding my impending departure. It was ok, I cried enough for both of us.

So, back to Monday morning at Sky Harbor. I wasn't expecting her to cry, but when we hugged I could feel her start to shake. I pulled back and sure enough, my baby sister was crying. My eyes started welling up seeing her sad. We hugged tightly and I reminded her that I would see her again soon and that we'd be able to talk all the time. Not sure how soothing that was, because after she left she sent me a text saying how much she loved me and how hard the goodbye was. It was more difficult that I imagined watching Abbey walk away. It reality checked me and was my final farewell before the magnitude of this trip/move began to sink in.

After Abbey left, my colleague and I walked up through security and to our gate, where we met up with a guy named Jimmy (suitcase), a girl named Lorie and a guy named Nick, who were all with TeachAway (I am with a similar company called Footprints). It felt good sitting at the gate with a group of people who were in the same boat as myself. Felt like family.

On board the plane, I chatted up my neighbor, John, only to find out he was with TeachAway as well. His father has been living in Abu Dhabi and teaching for ADEC for the past two years and John had decided to join him. He had traveled to the UAE once before, so I peppered him with questions about the culture, city and people. I fell asleep for the second half of the flight and woke up twice with a jolt, panicking that I had forgotten an important document. Worst feeling ever.

Once we landed in Chicago, my phone stopped working (maybe Verizon shut down services a day early?) which left me feeling isolated and unable to communicate my safe arrival to family and friends. Luckily, a few people from my group let me use their phones to communicate with family. Security in O'Hare was flawless, wasn't stopped or searched over the regular amount. We started heading toward our terminal (we had received boarding passes for second leg in Phoenix), but were stopped at the Etihad check-in (black and gold everywhere - so elegant looking!) and told we needed to check in with them before moving forward.

They were stricter on carry-on allowance as one woman manned the carry-on metal basket that we all had to put our roll-ons and backpacks in to prove they were small enough. I also heard her say roll-on carry-ons had to be seven kgs (which I knew) and personal items had to be four kgs. What?! I did not know this and mine definitely weighed more than 4 kgs. Preparing myself to have to shuffle items from my backpack into my roll-on and pay a baggage overage fee, I stepped up to check in. The gentleman who checked me in had the longest eyelashes I have ever seen on a man and was very poised and polite.

After giving him my boarding pass and passport, he asked me to put my roll-on on the scale. Seven point three kgs. He smiled and said, "Perfect." He said nothing about my backpack. I was checked in with no drama over my personal item, but some mercy of God. We made our way to our gate, stopped first at a currency exchange vestibule. Jimmy and Nick exchanged dollars for dirhams, and the rest of us were out of luck as the teller ran out of dirhams after Nick (how is that possible?). We talked with people at our gate, walked around, tried to avoid sitting down, borrowed several people's phones to update my family and notify banks of my international residence for the next two years (I couldn't believe I had almost forgot to attend to such an important detail!)

At 7:30 p.m., Etihad started boarding. Our gate was packed - so many languages, cultures and clothing. Our plane was gigantic! Walking down the tunnel, I caught a glimpse of my guy who checked me in and he smiled and waved. As I entered the plane, I was greeted by two female flight attendants, in the traditional Etihad uniform (gray skirt suit and hat with attached white, wispy scarf) who directed me to the right toward Coral economy (coach). I snuck a peak to my left before I turned and saw the same pods the girls in Sex in the City II sit in! Welcome to Oz, right?

The seat configuration in Coral was three-four-three and there were at least two long sections filled with this seat arrangement. The seats were a bit wider than normal domestic flights and had a fleece blanket (which I took with me), padded headphones, an eye mask, socks and toothbrush/toothpaste wrapped up for each passenger.

Each of us had our own TV screen filled with free shows, movies, music and games. I watched Bridget Jones's Diary, had a delicious dinner (chicken breast, roasted vegetables, a cucumber salad, bread and apple pie) and sampled some Arabic music, listened to Alicia Keys' and Michael Jackson's collaboration album.

I got through the first 10-11 hours of the flight with no trouble, but the last few hours were a little rough. Despite getting up and walking around a few times, my legs felt swollen and tingly and I felt tired and uncomfortable.

I fell asleep on and off, watched "42" and soon enough, we were told our descent into Abu Dhabi was minutes away!!