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February 26th, 2009
11:54 pm
Well, I'm here in Poland.
I woke up at about 6:45am (local time) and decided to get on with life.
Interesting bits so far:
1. "Tak" is yes, "Nye" is no.
2. While there's snow on the ground and it's just above freezing, it's not nearly cold enough for all the cold weather gear I brought with me.
3. Traffic intersections in other countries take a while to parse -- especially when you're trying to reverse engineer them from a taxi driver's driving.
4. Polish graffiti looks just like American graffiti. Perhaps we could all learn graffiti and talk to each other through this beautiful common language?
5. Our Polish apartment is small, efficient, and to the point.
Travel was fairly uneventful. We (that is,  meerkat, her mom, dad, and me) got to the San Diego airport, got all her bags together (each of us was traveling with 1 laptop bag, 1 carry on, and 2 suitcases -- the maximum we could get the airline to let us on with. I was allotted 1 carry on bag for my stuff), and sent her through security.
While we were walking away, her mom got a bit teary eyed, so I mentioned that my feelings wouldn't be hurt if she cried now and didn't cry after they sent me through security. Nothing handles a bit of sorrow like a lot of humor.
Security and the flight to Chicago were uneventful for me. I was seated next to a genetic mutant who was having trouble fitting into his space, but I was on the aisle and don't need much, so it wasn't a big deal.
When I got to Chicago, I found my way to the inter-airport railway thing (cool!) and got to the international terminal. I made a couple of calls and located meerkat. We had roughly enough time to devour a Pizzeria Uno pizza (tastier than the ones out by us -- maybe there IS something to this Chicago pizza thing?) and get through security. That got us on the plane to Poland.
Stepping onto that plane was an experience. We were, I think, the only people who didn't speak Polish. It wasn't a problem -- everyone knew English and communicated with us. One of them had a PERFECT English accent. Like the sort you hear in recordings. Very strange.
The flight, as expected, was long. We ended up having a row in the middle aisle to ourselves, so we stretched out at one point and had a nice long nap. I ended up seeing a bit of a movie "City of Ember" that looked interesting. I'll have to put it on my netflix queue a bit later.
Did I mention that flight was long? It was!
We killed some more time playing cribbage. And the flight was still long.
We had another nap and it was still long.
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STILL FLYING HERE PEOPLE
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WAIT?!?!?! WE'RE STILL ONLY OVER THE OCEAN!?!?!?!
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lalalalalalalala, wow. Cabin fever anyone?
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Hey! Gameboy! MUST PLAY!
At some point after that, it became light outside. Additionally, we were over Iceland. After that we were over Europe. There was far too much cloud cover for me to see anything. This made me sad.
My first sighting of Poland was shortly before the airplane touched down. There was snow everywhere. meerkat was unhappy. I braced for the cold and...
and I'm going to go get breakfast right now. You mugs can wait for the rest of the post. Besides, you should be asleep now!
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![[User Picture]](https://l-userpic.livejournal.com/25307369/1087547) | | From: | lishd |
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| Date: | February 27th, 2009 03:54 pm (UTC) |
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i wonder how many other people in phil's phone book got crazy midday bored-assed voicemails? :D Only one other person got such a voicemail. That was mewyn who got a call to the effect of "Turn on the root tracker! I'm in Chicago!"
Only the *special* people got crazy voicemails. They weren't so much driven by boredom. 8) ![[User Picture]](https://l-userpic.livejournal.com/103190263/729195) | | From: | nekojita |
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| Date: | February 27th, 2009 06:16 pm (UTC) |
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Now you know what it feels to fly to Japan! I hate how they torment us w/ the 'you have xx hours to go' stuff on the movie screens during the flight.
Glad the two of you got there safe and sound! Yeah, that was pretty rotten. And when everyone on the plane crashed out, we pretty much had to stop playing cribbage -- I wasn't going to be the jerk who had the airplane light on that kept everyone up, y'know? ![[User Picture]](https://l-userpic.livejournal.com/6455693/1249401) | | From: | aatheus |
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| Date: | February 27th, 2009 06:59 pm (UTC) |
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My first flight to Germany was similar in its perceived duration. There really is a finite amount of ocean-gazing that one can do; after that, the human brain starts to turn into custard.
I hope that your trip to the Poles is enjoyable. Is the trip a pleasure trip, or are you workin'? And it's not even the delicious kind of custard!
I just posted a bit explaining to the people who are severely behind on my life why I'm in Poland. See previous posts if you want a post card.
Also, I swear I've mentioned this stuff, people! |
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