A trip to the other side of the world: Take two (Part 1)

Last year, Alexander and I took a trip to the other side of the world, which was from France to Jakarta, Indonesia. This year, we took our second trip to the other side of the world, from Jakarta to Poland. We now live in a little town on the Oder River called Kostrzyn nad Odra.

Our trip started several weeks ago, when we left from the Jakarta airport on our way to Washington, D.C., via Tokyo. We arrived in plenty of time, thanks to our friends Helen and Andy, and quickly made it through the lax security and baggage check. Once we got to immigration, we were told we had to fill out a landing card. It didn't matter that we had already lived in Jakarta for a year, we had to fill out a landing card like someone who was just visiting for a few weeks. After getting over my frustrations about that, things went smoothly through immigration. Once we passed immigration, we had planned to find our gate and then get something to eat. Our gate was on the other side of more security, where there was no place to eat and no bathrooms. So, we started the flight hungry, frustrated and tired, since it was nearly 10 pm. Nevertheless, we decided to take a picture at boarding...and the camera batteries died.

It's incredibly disappointing that we didn't have a camera on the trip from Jakarta to Tokyo, because we were able to see Mount Fuji from the plane, so imagine that this picture was taken on a plane, by me:






Once we got to Tokyo, or Narita International airport, we were incredibly jet-lagged because I had the brilliant idea of not sleeping until our second flight from Tokyo to DC. The plan kind of worked, except for the fact that we had the most painful four hours of a layover. On the bright side, we got to eat Ramen in Tokyo and get a few (thousand) yen.

The flight from Tokyo to DC was about 13 hours, of which I slept about 6 hours. Needless to say, by the time we got to Dulles International Airport, I did not want to wait in line with Alexander, my non-American husband, for over an hour when I could have been out in less than half that time. But I waited with him, like a dutiful wife.

After we collected our luggage of two checked bags we decided to rent a car to get to our final destination in DC. Once there, we resisted the temptation to immediately sleep after our 24-hour trip and made some delicious burritos instead. Then we slept.

Continue to part two.