Look how cool it is in there!
( ^^ those are shampoos!)
For the time being I will leave you with the exercise I wrote for this week's creative writing workshop. Perhaps my full update tomorrow will be spectacular, seeing as I'm drinking Absinthe tonight. It's regarded as the muse of artists and bohemians, and is one of Picasso, Van Gogh, Oscar Wilde and Hemingway's favorites! Things are gonna get weird.
"Virgin Airlines"
At 4:30am, I sat with a freshly showered set of puffy morning eyes in the back seat of my mom’s car, running on only an hour or two of sleep. My parents were driving me to Hartford to catch a shuttle to JFK in New York City. I had spent the last night uncomfortably, as my boyfriend and I shared our last hours together squeezed on top of my cot-sized bed. We tried to stay up all night and cherish our last moments before I left to New Zealand for the semester, but we fell asleep - well he did anyway. He snored into my ear loudly while my legs ached to stretch. My arms were awkwardly tangled together, and I self consciously breathed into his face. The bed was not built for two, barely built for one.
In the middle of waving a final goodbye to my parents, the shuttle driver slammed the door closed between us. I was a bit annoyed that he would cut such an important moment in my life short like that. I reconciled that he obviously didn’t know this was to be my first big trip, my first plane ride. My first time out of the country; First time out of New England. The fact that he didn’t bother making small talk on our two hour trip to the airport oddly got him back on my good side.
When we arrived at JFK I rolled my luggage through the automatic doors. Excitement fluttered through my body and was climbing up my throat, begging to escape in the form of some embarrassing shriek. I managed to keep it in. It would have been nice if that bottled up excitement had a longer shelf life though, because after checking my bags I had eight hours until it was time for me to board my plane. Eight hours. I shifted from bench to bench and tried to sleep away the time, but failed. I looked around at the other people in the airport and tried to imagine what sorts of important things they had to catch flights for. I wondered if anyone looked at me and thought the same thing. I wondered if anyone could tell I was such a travel rookie.
What an interesting feeling, though. Knowing, as I sat there with only a backpack filled with books and journals, that all my personal belongings to live for five whole months were neatly packed into two suitcases that I no longer had to think about until I arrived on the other side of the planet. What a weightless feeling. Bobbling around in some sort of middle area between my stationary life in Massachusetts, and the rest of the world.
When I finally got to board my plane, I realized I had the window seat; A blessing. I took pictures out of my tiny submarine window. Pictures of the wing of the plane, still grounded. Pictures I would later, after twenty-two hours of flying, be bored to look at.
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