airplane travels

My flight from Indy to Chicago was great. The flight itself was so short (only about 45 minutes, sure beats driving 3.5 hours) so that was nice. I sat next to a very interesting lady named Jana on the plane. She spent 7 years in West Africa teaching women there how to read and write in their native language. Crazy, right? She did it through her church missionary group. Now, I don't particularly like missionary groups. (You might not know this about me.) Actually, I am not a big fan of globalization in general. Leave people alone. Leave their beliefs alone. That sort of thing. Also, I believe that if you are going to try to "do good" in the world, you should start at home. (There are plenty of people needing help in your own city!) However, if that's what you want to do, fine. And she was pretty passionate about it, which is great. Anyway, we had some really interesting conversation about that sort of thing. I ended up telling her about our Knitting for Nets project at school and she thought that was great. She had had malaria several times, and it's actually what forced her to come back to the States. She was hospitalized and her church people basically told her that she should come home. I guess she would have stayed in Africa forever if she could have. She was traveling to Missouri for a reunion of the people she went to Africa with and other people involved in that time of her life. Now, after being back in the States for 3 years, she's a registered nurse.

The second flight was less exciting. I was really tired and tried to get some sleep and epically failed. This made the flight last forever. They played Mall Cop on the TV, which I had already seen, so I listened to music and watched the TV without the sound on. Then I found out that TVs on planes now show regular ads just like normal TVs. I can't remember if I knew this before or not (I mean, I just flew in January! That's not that long ago). So I watched some Charles Schwabb commericals, and then there was a Nothing But Nets commercial! So it was kind of like Africa day for me. I sat next to a guy from Toronto, but originally from Iran, on that flight. We didn't talk too much because we were both trying to sleep (he really did sleep--the entire flight!).

As we landed, I got to look out the window. And to my surprise, the entirety of what I could see was clouds. Clouds! There were hardly any cloudy days at all last summer! And these clouds looked like rain clouds. What the heck? I went 3 months last summer without seeing a drop of rain. So the landing, which should have been sweet, was cloudy and I could barely see anything. I couldn't even see the ocean, which is only a couple of miles from LAX. Crazy. 

Anyway, the landing was great, and our bags came out really fast. I took a taxi to the condo, like last year, but it was more expensive than last year. I took a different company (the company I took last time wasn't there). The driver kind of looked like he was part of the Italian mafia or something. Kind of scary but exciting too. Not friendly at all though.