Thoughts on Air Travel, etc.

I’m sitting in a sunny airport gate in Munich, Germany. It’s midmorning, and I just disembarked the first of two extremely long flights that will carry me to Delhi. I can’t sleep on planes, not really. I’m kind of exhausted. I wanted to grab some Benadryl from the pharmacy here at the airport to help me sleep on my next flights, but then I realized I don’t speak German and I don’t understand European pharmaceuticals.

However, aside from being tired I’m also incredibly excited! Not only am I IN GERMANY (a goal since childhood), but I’m on my way to India for my first study abroad experience. I’ll (hopefully) be documenting that experience here on this blog, so you can all follow along with me.

Let me catch you up on where I am so far.

I’ve been really nervous about this trip for months now. Of course, I’m the type to let nervousness spiral out of control, so I got to the point where I was dreading the trip. And I hated that feeling. I’ve always wanted to travel and I love languages, and this is my first real chance to travel abroad to study a language in depth and improve my fluency. I didn’t want it to suck, but I couldn’t shake the gloomy raincloud that appeared every time I thought about spending 9 weeks in India.

Luckily, that storm cloud has dissipated (so far). The trip is finally here and I have no need to be anxious with anticipation anymore. For now, I am having a blast listening to Hindi speakers in the airport (and talking with some of them!). Also, I’ve always been a huge fan of air travel in its own right. Airports are so awe inspiring. They’re massive and hella expensive. It’s pretty interesting to be in a building that cost millions (if not billions) to build, and to look out the window and see dozens of gigantic planes. I also love the variety of languages you hear in an airport. Even when I was young, I loved to be in places where people were speaking lots of different languages, and I would challenge myself to guess what they were speaking. Grand Central Station is another example of a place that I loved as a kid for this reason.

I also just really enjoy the experience of flying. Sure, economy seats are super cramped, the food is meh at best, and it’s REALLY hard to sleep. But every time I get on a plane I’m just so inspired by the ingenuitity of humanity. The fact that we are able to fly is really a miracle, and a testament to the human spirit. It’s also an exercise in trust. When I board a plane, I am entrusting myself to the engineers who designed the plane, the mechanics who built and maintain it, and the pilot and copilot who fly this incredibly heavy metal bird-contraption which is able to soar through the air against all logic. I don’t know, when you place yourself into the hands of other humans like that, it really makes you realize how incredible and capable and intelligent people really are.

Not only that, but you get to see the planet in a unique way. Our flight took us up near the coast of Greenland. We were so far north that the sun never really set; it hovered just below the horizon for hours, casting an eerie pink glow against the dark clouds and sky. When you’re close enough o the ground, you can really appreciate the differences between different parts of the world just from the aerial view. For example, taking of from Houston the view was very large and regular. Neighborhoods were big and square, with aquamarine pools in every other backyard. Highways were big and straight, and agricultural fields were huge and orderly. However, flying into Munich was a whole different story. The fields were smaller and bordered with rounded, squiggly lines. Towns were irregularly-shaped clumps of buildings. It was a real testament to the relative age of the towns in Germany compared to the Houston suburbs. It really made me think about what it’s like to live in a German city rather than an American one. When I fly into Delhi it’ll be nighttime, but I still hope I can learn some things about the city from the air.

Also, I’m just going to take a second to talk about clouds. Clouds are, without a doubt, my favorite part about air travel. Like, we live on a water planet. And part of living on a water planet means we have huge collections of weightless water just floating high in the air in various formations. We get so used to it, but seeing clouds from a new angle really makes you reconsider how amazing they are. The really fluffy ones (cumulo nimbus? Katie would know) remind me of giant sleepy animals, like slow-moving whales. Sometimes they look more architectural to me, like towers or citadels or just enormous palaces. They are just so big! I don’t think I’m conveying this well in words. Suffice to say that I think our planet is beautiful and flying makes me appreciate it so much more.

I’ll sign off this post with a Bible verse sent to me by my friend Mandi shortly before I departed from Houston.

Perhaps this is the moment for which you have been created. Esther 4:14.

I really do feel like this – travelling the world and studying languages – is what I was made to do. I hope I’m right.