Moment:
Monday, June 17th at 3:50pm BST
“Do airports have fast passes?”
With 13 pieces of luggage loaded up into two minivans, my family and I left our house to fly to India: me for business and them for pleasure. My brother decided to start a vlog (is it any wonder we’re related?) and meticulously documented 43 minutes of footage of us relaying our caravan of luggage from the curb to check in, going through security, and trekking across the airport.
On the flight to London, I wound up talking to the girl next to me for practically the entire plane ride, learning about her experiences living in Africa, Indonesia, and London. Ironically, she said her craziest stories were from when she moved to Texas! It was fun to talk to her about her travels and teach her some things about Indian culture (Indian memes are the best memes!)
She asked me if I was excited to study abroad, and noticed when I hesitated a little. Not because I’m not excited, but because it didn’t actually feel like it was really happening until this morning when I got my boarding pass at the airport. I definitely had a crisis of “Are you crazy? What are you doing??” when thinking about leaving my family and friends behind to live in another country for five and a half months, even though that country is the place that my parents and everyone before them called home. But despite that moment of doubt, I know it will be a wonderful experience and I will treasure this trip for the rest of my life.
In the morning, she headed off to her 10 year high school reunion while my family took a bus to our connecting flight terminal for a five hour layover. My mom said she would spend the time sleeping, and being the expert biologist that I am, I told her that taking such a long nap would throw off her sleep cycle...then I proceeded to sleep the ENTIRE time. Jetlag: 1, Sunitha: 0.
About an hour before our flight to Hyderabad (my new home for the next semester!) we all woke up and groggily trudged across the London-Heathrow airport to our gate. We got in line to board behind a family with three kids, and one of the kids asked his parents, “Do airports have fast passes?” They told him that unfortunately, no there aren’t fast passes because there aren’t rides like there are at Disney World, to which he responds, “YES THERE ARE!”, hops on his rolling suitcase, and rides it right up to the boarding pass scanner. At least I assume that was the plan, because he wiped out about halfway there. He definitely had the most fun of anyone at that gate though, so kudos for bringing the Disney magic.
We arrived in Hyderabad at 5 a.m. and it was only 68°F (23°C), which, for a country known for getting into triple digits, was an actual miracle. On that note, shout-out to the public education system for teaching me the Fahrenheit to Celsius conversion equation even though I thought it was completely pointless at the time, because I’ve definitely used it at least a dozen times so far.
We got to my aunt's house around 7 a.m. after once again taking two vans. I took a 10-hour nap (Jetlag: 2, Sunitha: 0), then my cousin took me around Hyderabad, and on our way back, we ran into my family at the phone stand (where you can get 2 GB of data a DAY for 3 months for only 650 rupees ($9.36 USD)!) so my brother rode the scooter home while the rest of us enjoyed the fresh air. Well, except for my grandma, who just kept reminding him not to crash. Overall, the 24 hour journey and our first day in India went without a hitch. We made it to the motherland!
