The farthest I’ve been from home.

Prior to this trip, the farthest I’ve ever been from home was the Dominican Republic. Although the DR is another country, it’s actually really close to the States.  So boarding the plane to London, then Bahrain, I knew I was about to go a long ways away… And it FELT a long ways away.

After slight panic trying to figure out how to get to Houston with 7 bags so we could make our flight, we managed to arrive with a few minutes to spare. This is about to be the farthest I’ve ever been from home.  This is the largest plane I’ve ever been on, or maybe even seen.

It wasn’t long before I started noticing, everyone on the plane seemed to resemble my dad.  It was comforting. I thought I was crazy in thinking this but Wafiq said the same thing.. If you notice the little heads in the picture… all white 🙂

Cute right? Made me feel ok, maybe I was headed to the homeland.  Needless to say the flight from London to Bahrain looked a little different.

I wasn’t able to sleep the 7.5 hour flight to London, but I had plenty to keep me occupied. Wine, steak dinner, cards and Gossip Girl easily filled up my time. Looking at the flight journey map and realizing where I was going and how far, did make me feel waves of sadness though. Especially leaving London on the flight to Bahrain. I felt so far already in London, and I was about to go even farther…

In London, I was delusional. So tired and out of it. Lots of people everywhere. Talking. Moving around. Wide awake. The complete opposite of how I was feeling, zombie status.

I felt sick and I wanted a bed and quiet. Once we boarded the plane in London, I passed out and didn’t wake up on the 6.5 hour flight until landing in Bahrain.  When I opened my eyes and looked at the map showing the planes journey, it was a little shocking to see Iraq and Iran on the map and our plane flying right in between. Like what happens if we get shot down!? Or a bomb gets dropped right below/on us!?  OR how sad all the bad things that could be happening right under our plane! I mean there’s still war going on right?! I wanted to get off the flight with marine gear on and prepare for war. Miss Dramatic right here.

This was obviously my brain embarrassingly slipping into stereotypes as quickly as I could think. When we landed there was visibly 10 times less security than America.  Way more laid back than any airport I’ve been to.  There was a long line for people to get a Visa if they weren’t a citizen of Bahrain, but I went with Wafiq (Bahrain citizen) through his line easily enough. Like I said, they were laid back.

I thought it was funny, when we got to the security check there was a tiny machine, probably from 1950 for us to put our carry on items through. The line was long. A pilot (who obviously has been to Bahrain before and knew how laid back they were) went in a line that wasn’t open and threw his bag through a machine that was not even on.. He walked right through kind of laughing. No one said a word, he didn’t even get a look from anyone in security.

If he has nothing to worry about acting that way, then I surely shouldn’t have any problems…