The Journey

You don't realize how long 15 hours is until you're on the edge of making a huge life change, you've just said goodbye to your dogs and left your home for at least 4 years, you're sitting next to your husband who is leaving you in a foreign land in t-minus 2-weeks and you are in a tiny, cramped little space. 15 hours, is a long time. I feel like the course of the plane's journey, almost mocked my own.

For those of you who have not been on a plane to Asia from the USA, the flight path takes the shortest route, which is north through Alaska. We start heading north right out of O'Hare at around 4pm. This meant we would be flying in front of the sun most of the time, as days get longer the further north you go. The land is green, but flat, speckled with reflective lakes and rivers. My emotions were fairly smooth. It was familiar ground as we glided over Wisconsin and Minnesota. Then we started over mid- northern Canada. Beneath us was water scarred land, few trees and the green that was visible was nearly brown. I started to feel alone and drained, myself. The weight of my decisions was hitting me. Gradually, the water scarred landscape turned into foothills which drastically grew into mountains covered in feet of snow! Glaciers and snow rivers, mud rivers, bare rock, shiny ice peaks reflecting the bright sun, images I have never seen before, glared at me from below. I lost it. I was on a one- way flight to a place I had never been, to start a program I hardly know anything about and I left my dogs! I felt the mountains. I felt the layers of ice and snow and mud. But as the plane kept flying, I kept going. We cleared the mountains of snow and turned south, over the calm waters of the Pacific.

As the darkness caught up with us, mine started to brighten. The lights of Hong Kong gently lit up the sky, and I prepared myself for our descent into my new life, my new home, my new reality.