Yesterday morning I got up at 4:30 so that I could quickly get ready, then catch the bus, that took me to where I could catch another bus, that took me to the airport. As recommended I got to the airport about an hour before boarding for my flight was to begin. And thank goodness! The line to get through security wove through all their fancy little marked off paths, then went across the room and behind a row of seats. Fortunately it moved pretty fast.
My first flight took me to Salt Lake City. When I got on the flight they were completely out of room for carry-on items in the overhead compartments, so I had to store my under the seat in front of me. Now, you wouldn't think that would be a bad thing. However, it meant that I had even less room than is normally provided in coach. I was happy when the flight was over!
I was also happy when the flight was over because I had a four hour layover, which meant I got to spend some time with family! :D Mom and Anna where there to pick me up, and we went to Jessica's where I got to chat with her and watch Liriel and Derrick try to kill themselves by falling off of their bikes onto the pavement. It was a lot of fun! Then Mom and Anna took me to Marriott, where I got to talk with Emma and Cassidy for a good while. We had a lot of fun there as well! Then it was time to go back to the airport. It was sad, as goodbyes always are, but since this is already the third time a conference has taken me to see family in Utah, I'm fairly hopeful that this will become a not too infrequent occurrence. :)
After waiting in another long security line, I finally got to my gate and then started boarding the second plane. They informed us that it was a full flight, so they wanted volunteers to check their carry-on items. I decided that I would like all the leg room I could get this time, and they said that they would return the bags too us at the gate as soon as we got to Seattle. What they failed to mention was that in order to do so, we had to specifically request a pink tag for our bag. I didn't request a pink tag, so that meant they put a white tag on mine. It was a nice flight, but when we got to Seattle, the nice man told me that since I didn't have a pink tag, I would need to go pick up my bag in baggage claim. I did so, and then waited in the security line for the third time that day!
Fortunately I made it to the gate on time again, and was soon on a flight to Honolulu! The flight took quite a while, and by now I was pretty tired. I tried to sleep, but I have always had difficulty sleeping on cars, trains, planes, etc. Anyway, by the time I got to Honolulu it was around 9:00 pm local time, which meant it was like 2:00 am the following day in Texas. So, needless to say, I was ready for bed! Since that was the case, I decided to forgo the hassle of trying to find a way to get exact change for the bus, and took a taxi instead. Um, it was expensive!
But at last I was going to be able to go to sleep! Well, not quite. I'm staying at students dorms at the University of Hawaii in order to conserve money, and the dorms are great. But the electronic key they gave me didn't work, so I had to go back down from the 9th floor to the 1st floor, and wait another 10 minutes or so as they tried to isolate the problem and fix it. Which they did. Then I was able to go to bed! :D Of course, these dorms don't have AC, so although I slept, it was a rather fitful sleep. And my internal clock would not let me sleep past around 4:00 in the morning, no matter how much I begged.
So, I got up, went and took a shower in the communal shower place (luckily it was so early that there were no other guys or girls in there, so I was able to enjoy some privacy. Ironically, this is my first time in a dorm, and definitely my first time with a public bathroom shared by males and females. Well, so far so good. After showering I decided to walk the two or so miles down to Waikiki beach. There they have a store where you can purchase a 4-day unlimited use bus-pass, so I wanted to pick one up. No more taxis, thank you very much. Well, I got a little lost on the way, so instead of walking for approximately an hour, I wound up walking approximately two hours. But I did find the store and get the bus pass, and I also stopped by a well-known local chain and picked up a couple masaladas (sp?), which are basically Portuguese doughnuts. They were very good!
Then I hopped the bus back to campus, changed, and went to help out with our booth. As usual, we had quite a bit of interest in our booth, which was great! Then we had a nice boxed lunch and then it was our turn to present. There weren't as many people in our presentation as I was expecting, but it went very well and everyone seemed very interested. Then I went to a few other talks, two of which I really liked (they were about using video games in the language classroom). When I was manning the booth and after one of the talks I even had a lot of people come up to me who wanted to hear about the work I'm doing with gaming, so I was able to have several nice chats on the subject. Then I changed and hopped the bus back to Waikiki beach. There I went to a little arts and crafts farmers market type place and browsed around for an hour or so. It was nice and relaxing and actually reminded me a lot of Germany for some reason. I found gifts for the kids and some Hawaiian candies for myself.
After that I grabbed the bus back to campus because by now it was dark outside and I didn't want to go swimming with the fishes in the dark. And now I'm here.
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