The Flight across the Ocean

Ok, so how do I talk about my flight from hell? Well, let's start with the fact that it was delayed a day because they overbooked my flight. It happens. Then I had my long overnight flight to London Heathrow. I didn't sleep a wink. I tend to not sleep on planes, and mine was pretty full, so this was no exception. It was sort of annoying, but not too long.

However, I have yet to mention that I was sick. Like, terribly ill with a really bad sinus infection. I was on my 5th week of sickness from chile, told by my doctor it was the remnants of bronchitis turned to infection, and I was on a z-pack, after antibiotics. So, you can imagine how badly my head and ears hurt the whole time. But the landing made it even more fun. On the way down, my head was so packed it was impossible to equalize my ears to the pressure. I am one of those fortunate souls who can easily hold my nose and blow to get the pressure right, a trick my dad taught me, but when your head is full of bright, lime green snot the pressure is impossible to build up and you can't get your ears to get to normal. So I arrived at London, unable to hear through one ear, having it be painfully and very palpably packed with pressure. I had a 12 hour layover.

The annoying thing about international flight is that the gate never opens until 3 hours before, so when I got to london, I wanted to go site see, but I didn't feel comfortable leaving when I had no idea how to get back to my terminal, or how the connecting check in process worked once I left. Heathrow is an incredibly uncomfortable airport, with wood benches only, and three coveted couches. One of which I eventually commandeered and managed to sleep on for 3 hours. I couldn't buy anything to eat because I had no pounds, and my credit card was only approved for India. Sadness.

When I finally reached the time I could get on the plane, I was of course not surprised to find myself on a plane full of India people in traditional clothes with lots of babies. I got to my seat and...SCORE I had three seats to myself. I was set. After dinner I was setting myself up to lay out and go to sleep, when some guy sits down in the outer seat. And i was like, what? it wasn't his seat, he was just wanting to use it. He then proceeded to befriend me, but he didn't speak english. He kept putting blankets on me, and it was sweltering in the plane, so I kept taking them off. He even tried following me through customs. So I once again did not get any sleep. I did however, manage to get my ear to a more comfortable level of pressure by the time we landed. My next post will be about customs, a whole other story, but this of course, should foreshadow my life in India pretty well.