Landing

So, airports are interesting environments in any country. When you get off a 16-hour international flight, you have a certain smell. And so does everyone else around you. You stare at the little brat that hollered the entire time the lights were out because he was bored. You decide you don't hate the other tyke that moaned in the seats in front of you every time the brat shut up long enough for you to catch a few z's. The tyke was just having nightmares. You even decide you like the sleepy little thing, who just stares blankly at you, wanting some honest shut-eye just as bad as you do.

You trudge along with your travel-weary fellow adventurers (looking more like refugees, really), until your mate realizes he left his hat aboard the plane. You can't get back on, because it's a safety concern, so it takes the efforts of 3 stewards to figure out which seat was 36-D, then find the hat. Well, hey, at least it's not lost.

Pass your health form to the man behind a big table who looks at you like you're supposed to give him something. He rambles to you in a language you've only just begun to grasp, so you just smile and nod. It works, and he welcomes you to his country. Hooray.

But just under it all is a seed of excitement, of completion, that's just beginning to germinate.

And it immediately gets hit by a flash-frost as you settle into the still-long line to go through customs. Your feet and legs suddenly have very strong opinions about the lack of leg room, and could give care less about this crazy notion of 'travel excitement'. But your mate is there with sleepy kisses and half-hearted attempts to rub some life back into your back, and you try to figure out what questions you'll be asked in the new language, and how easiest to answer them.

You're in front of the bored lady scrutinizing your passport for 30 seconds, and wonder how the hell, with 8 other people doing the same thing she is, that the line managed to be an hour long.

Hooray! You FINALLY get to wait for your checked bags! And the praying for their safe arrival resumes in earnest. The brat is trying to ride the turnstile. You wish you could bottle his energy reserves and market them. For one dark moment, you imagine that your new country allows that kind of thing in the case of brats. Then you catch sight of your little tuckered-out tyke, curled up around his sleepy sibling, out cold. And you remember that you didn't set out on an adventure to plot evil schemes against little twerps. "You came here to sleep, right?" your legs, hips, and fogged brain demand. "Sure," you mutter, out loud. Your mate gives you one of those sidelong glances that means he thinks he probably imagined you talking to an imaginary friend.

It's then that, like mana from heaven, the luggage begins to fall onto the turnstile. By the grace of some higher power, you and your mate find your luggage, all of it, in 5 minutes. There's a currency exchange booth next to the turnstiles offering to rip you off in the convenient proximity of your luggage. You look at them cross-eyed, and they tell you pointedly that you're welcome to try to find better rates outside. "Thank God," you respond.

On to the scanning of the luggage. Is this also customs? Helefino. You try to load your things as quickly as possible and get rapid-fire instructions (questions, maybe?) in another language from the security personnel. You look at them with all the confusion you honestly feel, and they load your luggage 'properly', shaking their heads. "Gracias!" you say, poorly but whole-heartedly.

Outside, indeed, are currency exchange stations that are far closer to the actual exchange rates. Good, even. "Well I'll be damned."

The ride from the airport that you arranged with your new landlady doesn't show up. Figures. Never, ever take a random taxi from the airport. You know this, so you head into the main entrance of the airport, watching the soccer team that was 6 aisles ahead of you trudge along in their uniforms. They REALLY should have brought coats. It's 46 farenheit!

You find the taxi "station" that is run directly by the airport. Bingo! They print out a full receipt for you, and a porter immediately takes your bags. The price is cheaper than the driver that the landlady was going to send out to fetch you. Nice.

Half-hour cab ride, and the fatigue is overwhelming, but the germinating seed of excitement just got a burst of the morning sunlight that you're watching wash through the cab window. The streets are strange, the music is strange, the smells are strange, and you realize, finally, that you've landed. Exhausted, worn, irratable and more than a little confused, you still feel ready for the adventure.

Then you blink too long, and wake up in front of your new home, half the new city that you meant to watch unfolding before you already passed. But there, on the doorstep to your new pad, is your roomie from your home state, and you're home.

It's a Hard-Packing Life

36 staight hours of cleaning. Of packing. Of trips to Goodwill to drop off all the things we couldn't sell at our garage sales, the things we couldn't give away to friends or family, and things we couldn't bring ourselves to throw away. Trips to Halfprice Books, carting 3 times our weight in the precious written word of literary geniuses. And the occaisional bathroom hilarity book. Genius.

I'd been packing for weeks by the time the 36 hour stretch began. Thomas and I kept ourselves running on coffee and small snacks. 5-hour energy shots were our friends. We were nearly delerious with fatigue and stress, the weight difference of a few pairs of socks in our checked baggage giving us cause to chew nails. An aside- airline restrictions on luggage gave me my next sprinkling of gray hair.

2 carry-on bags and 2 checked bags was the sum of my worldly possessions as I boarded the plane to Argentina. And still, I thought of things I could have left behind, and things I should have brought instead. Even now, I miss my eisel.