And off we go

December 27th
I arrived first at the airport with the vigor of a new adventure. Of the 16 students that are on the trip, I had only meet 5 prior to arrival. After the first hour I had a feeling that this was going to be a good, fun group to travel with. How the 10 flatteners, triple convergence and “Being Indian” will play into this trip and the dynamics of the group I have no clue at this point.

The start of the trip was very uneventful. MSP to Chicago no problem, (the standard Indian answer). O’Hare however lived up to its reputation of being a painful place to fly out of. International flights from O’Hare leave from a separate terminal that is only accessible by the train. After ticketing we turned the corner to go toward security and our gate when we hit the feed lot lines. There was over 500 people in line waiting to go through security. With the thought that we could eat on the other side of security, I spent the hour and a half in line getting yelled at by the TSA agents. Not haven eaten since 8 am that morning and as most of you know I never miss a meal, it was 5 pm I was famished. The only place on the other side of security to eat was a single kiosk that I spent $7.40 on a soggy marble rye chicken sandwich.

A small incident that was witnessed by Harvey and Rajiv I now classify as international incident Number 1. The incident centered around two Indian men fist fighting in line at the ticket counter. Even though no one from our group was involved, it was a person to person conflict that we witnessed.

When the Air India plane finally arrived, they added an extra 10 to 12 roles of duct tape to the turbines to keep them attached to the wings, we were off ( we were on a 747, and it must have been 30 years old). We went from Chicago to Frankfurt Germany and 7+ hour flight. We were served Indian Food that was actually very tasty. With some reading and sleep the time went well.