I finished up work around 6 a.m. on 6/3/2012 and then took a couple hour nap at the house before I needed to wake up and finish packing and get everything ready for a day and a half of travel.
My first flight left KCI at 2:35 p.m. and arrived in Dallas around 4:15 p.m. There were several students and one of the graduate assistants from my program on this flight so when we arrived at DFW we kind of traveled in a small pack to get to the international gates.
I was able to text message a few people and talk to Jason and Cara one last time before I needed to suspend my service with Verizon. Suspending my service was actually a lot easier than I thought and was completely automated. I was a little concerned because I wasn’t able to find my new Argentinian number on the packaging once I opened my new SIM card, but all of that has to be handled once I am in country.
The flight from KCI to DFW was packed, but I still was able to have plenty of overhead bin space. I went to the website seat guru to check out the best options for seats. Some have electrical, more leg room and some don’t recline at all… so I wanted to make sure I got a good spot.
The flight from DFW to EZE (Buenos Aires, Argentina) was pretty full, but the two rows in the center next to me only had one guy a piece – which meant they got to completely lay down to sleep. The international flight had just as much space as domestic flights. They played The Vow when the flight began and then food service was at about 8:15 p.m. They provided a drink, your choice of a microwavable chicken or pasta entrée, a roll with butter, crackers and cheese… something that could loosely be called a salad (mostly just lettuce, two slices of tomato and dressing and a snickerdoodle for dessert. The movie is played on a 12” screen and there is once screen in the center of the plane about every 5 rows. The food was alright and actually probably better than expected – but I learned a valuable lesson… you wait until food service is complete before going to the lavatory… I watched a woman who had to wait about 20 minutes following the food cart to get back to her seat because she didn’t make it out of the lavatory before food service began.
This is a picture of the video screen from my seat on the plane. Luckily I already downloaded The Vow onto my Nook so there was no need to watch it from afar.
Breakfast was served around 6:15 a.m. local Buenos Aires time and it was a little bit of yogurt and a breakfast roll of some sort with jelly. We arrived at the airport and had to process through customs. First little shock was that the entrance fee for Americans had been increased from $140 that was published in our packets to $160 dollars, so that had to go on my Visa.
My luggage arrived safely, although one girls didn’t. Apparently this is relatively common and they make it a habit to just deliver it the next day when it magically appears again.
We all were taken on buses to our host families house. I will post more about what types of accommodations I have later because this entry is already getting too long. We are on the top floor of our building and so I will leave you with pictures I took from our balcony.
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