Travel Journal--Memphis to Amsterdam

August 19th, 2006 (I think...the days start to flow together during travel)

7:00pm: Sitting on flight 58 to Amsterdam. Note to self--DO NOT BUY A TICKET IN ROW F AGAIN!!!! It's a row of 4 seats, second from the end. I have a guy on the isle but so far nobody is on the other side of me. Boy do I hope this is an empty seat next to me, or this could be a long 9 hours! As far as I can tell there is NO in-flight entertainment. Rumors about Northwest may be true. =-(

Update: Sandwiched between 2 guys--both of them smell like beer and one is sweaty and needs deoderant desperately! He is taking both arm rests and my arm is getting saturated by his sweat (hope he's not reading over my shoulder as I write this)! I think I'll take a sleeping pill and not worry so much if I snore!!!!

Impressions of the people on the Amsterdam Flight: glam rockers...professor guys with black-rimmed glasses...natural girls without deoderant...hard spikey hair...big german-ish women...no personal space. [Note--can you tell that I'm in a little bit of shock at this point in my journey?!]

Update: 2 hours into the flight. Things are better. Me and the two guys I'm sitting between seem to have called a truce with the armrests. The guy on my left has stopped sweating and seems to have a good enough sense of humor (although I wasn't laughing as he watched my boobs bounce during take-off!). There is a TV after all. It's up by the bulhead seats about 25 rows ahead of me. Looks kind of like a 12" TV from here. No bother though--I've never heard of the in-flight movie ("She's the Man"). We're having fun at the moment as we fly through thunderstorms. Kind of unnerving to be NEXT to a thunderstorm instead of below one. The new camera/MP3 player is working out wonderfully! It's good for my attitude to be constantly reminded of Christ's love for me through my headphones! I was pretty unsettled when I first turned it on (due to the B.O., sweaty arms, boob-watching, etc.), but it's kind of hard to stay frazzled while "Let your Glory Pour down in this place" is pumped into my ears! Boy, I really hope that the guy next to me doesn't read sloppily-written English (he's got an accent). I didn't realize it, but I think I had hoped I would sit next to people who felt like chatting just a little bit. I don't think there will be much talking this entire trip. Everybody is "plugged in" (the universal sign for "dont want to talk to you right now!").

Next update from Schipol Airport...about the rest of the trip to Amsterdam!