The travel

Day 1. Hello all, the purpose of this blog is to hopefully share with you what's goin on with me while I chill on the other side of the world. However since I am traveling literally to the other side, it takes quite some time to get there, and at this point I am nearing the end! I am on the last leg of the flight from Istanbul to Bangkok and getting to this point was relatively smoothe. I was actually dreading this long travel time alone and had extremely low expectations, so it could only be better than what I was anticipating. JFK check in was pretty easy, rly long line, but when it was finally my turn I got this rly sweet guy to help me, who I asked if I wanted to be upgraded to business class. Little did I know the following question would be if I wanted to pay for it too. After explaining that I could not afford business class at this stage in my life, he handed me both my boarding tickets with the second ticket telling me I was in row 9 #elation! That row is way too low to be coach. Anyways, checked my bag, went thorough security, and headed to the gate. Rewind about an hour or so to when I was in my house and had my iPad and iPhone both plugged in to my laptop. What I had INTENDED was to put only music on my iPhone and only videos on my iPad. But I misread which was which, consequently taking all the music off my iPhone! #buggingout #firstworldproblems but after reminding myself that I'm going to be working with teenage victims of sex trafficking I recognized that the music coming off my iPhone is rly not a big deal. However I did try very hard to fix it at the gate! Got about 4,000/6,000 songs on there before I was the last one to board. I usually have severe flying anxiety for those who don't know, I think it' s hereditary, but I knew if I was traveling alone for 24 hours that wouldn't rly fly. #nopunintended so I tried to squash that from the get go, starting with being the last to board #livinontheedge. As my good friend @sfgross had told me, Turkish air is a baller airlines! Super old school in the sense that they actually rly want to help you! The craziest part was that there was free wifi on the plane from New York to Istanbul! I was blown away as to how a) that's even possible b) delta and American charge you like 20 dollars to use wifi from ny to Florida. But my laptop was dead from all that iPhone/ iPad catastrophe plus I was rly tired so I didn't even take advantage of it. I passed out before I could even take an ambien which is both great and not so great bc my sleep was not deep enough to carry me through the whole time. Which is why I woke up with about 3 hours left and played candy crush till I ran out of lives (this has actually been rly good practice for me bc I can't buy 5 more turns since I'm not connected to the Internet and I actually need to work on beating the levels) so I played candy crush the commoner way and watched (oh I fell asleep watching identity thief w Jason Bateman and Melissa McCarthy, that movie I actually laid down my line and refused to see bc it looked too bad for even my standards. And it was just as bad as I knew it would be, which helped put me to sleep. I didn't even get to hear the song from the trailer that I saw 7,000 times "bad girls die young, bad girls do it well" oh well) but to finish out the flight I watched, eh I'm not even gonna tell you. Way too embarrassing. Ok fine "the clique", please don't judge Turkish air's movie options on what I watched. They have an excellent selection, I've either just seen them all, and I need something rly light to watch when I fly. But yay, landed in Istanbul! I was also told that the Istanbul airport is a hugee mess, and just as I anticipated it was. The messiest part: no air conditioner! How do you not have ac in a thousand degrees when most of the women in your country cover everything in black gowns except their eyes! So I got off the plane, went through security, and bc my flight would not be for another 3 hours my gate was not even close to posted. I found a nice comfy seat and was soon joined by an American family, one girl in crutches and a mom and her other daughter. Forget needig to watch anything, they were the most entertaining trio I've ever seen. For starters, the crutches girl realized soon after she sat down next to me that she left her kindle on the plane #icouldtotallyrelate and started crying, and her mom was pissed. I was so tempted to interject and tell her that its ok and I too lose things but I didn't wanna get on the moms bad side if I'd be sitting w them for 3 hours. THEN the mom left her daughter w me while she went w her other daughter to buy McDonalds. So she comes back and tells her kindle less, wheelchair bound daughter that they ran out of chicken on the third salad (all 3 of them were large) so she got her tofu instead. When her daughter asked what tofu was since she'd never heard of it, the mother told her she had no idea and to just eat it! She rly was pissed at this child. This was the second time I wanted to interject and explain tofu but again I held back. (Oh in this time, I completed putting all te music back on my iPhone) the woman finally acknowledged me so we chilled. I told her abt my trip, and this family was moving from Florida to London bc they needed a change and their husband/ father was waiting for them there. That's quite the jump! I honeslty don't know this family well at all but my first impressions tell me that London may not be the right fit for them. I tried to calm them all down and told them I went to London this past summer and what a fun city it is. I then proceeded to reach out to wheelchair girl since my heart rly went out to her and asked her what happened to her knee. Literally her mom went into a 25 minute explanation of the details of the surgery and bones and tendons and ligaments in the knee. It's beyond me that she knew this, but never heard of tofu and didnt know what it was! #classicamerica . I kinda had it w this family after the woman must've told me she's never flying without her husband again 20 times so I went to see if my gate was posted. It was! So I headed there Boarded the second plane all excited bc I thought I was heading to my business class seat, but row 9 on this plane is just simple economy! Why did my "friend" in JFK tell me he upgraded me? And why did he tell me Istanbul to Bangkok was only 3 hours? Was he in desperate need to please someone and feel good about himself even though it was all bull? Must be! So I got settled in for my second 9 hour flight for my final destination. My first movie was "the first wives club" I thought it was about time, since for an entire summer me and my friends used to respond to our counselors orders "you don't ownnn me" #mature . Anyways, the movie was great! I found it in the "classics" section on Turkish air right next to phone both starting Colin farell, which I'm not so sure is a classic. Also found "new years eve" in the drama section and "we bough a zoo" in the comedy section. I think the Turks have it a lil backwards. But watched that, took an ambien before supper was served bc I was soo tired and needed to sleep! And then passed out. I woke up a bit ago with about 3 hours remaining, and chose to watch "bee season" with Richard geere starring as a husband who immerses himself training his daughter for the spelling be to distract himself from his failing marriage. I specifically looked it up on rotten tomatoes before take off and they gave it a 23% so I'm not sure why I chose it despite it's horrible reviews. Anyways this movie sucks and that's why I decided to take out my phone and write to you (and bc I need to wait another 20min till I get candy crush lives). One thing I will take from this movie, is that Richard plays a college religion teacher and teaches the class about tikun olam in the movie, which is exactly the purpose of the trip I am doing. So was nice to get a little crash course. #hollywoodissojewish (first wives club had a husband named Mordy and a lot of leining in shul, so basically my movies were super Jewish). Anyways not too much time left till I finally finish this lonely 24 hour journey and land in Bangkok! I'm super excited for what lies ahead. I actually don't rly know what lies ahead since I haven't read the pamphlet yet, even though I made all my siblings read it Friday night, so that's how I'm going to spend the next two hours. Finding out what I'm doing when I land. Bc I still DKwhatimdoinginthailand Love to all! Ps: sorry if this post was more of a movie review of horrible films than anything else. The next one will be more exciting, I promise. Pps: I haven't written this much since Wurzweiler. Actually I don't think any of my papers were this long #deansscholar Pps: I will be offering a prize to the 100th person who makes a joke about me having my passport. Wer at about 70, so keep it up, it could be you! #not