greener pastures

I wrote this over the Atlantic Ocean, along with many other moments during my 20 hour journey to Edinburgh. 5 airports and 4 airplanes and 6 hours of layovers to be exact. almost. these came in random thoughts...

I am currently 39,000 feet over North Carolina getting ready to cross the Atlantic to Europe. It hit me. I'm going. That trip you've been talking about for the past year? That adventure you've been psyching yourself up for to everyone you know? You're on it! You're there!

The Dallas and Raleigh flights weren't bad. I pretty much cried the whole way to Dallas after leaving my family at the Springfield airport, but once I landed in Dallas, I was fine. I was ready to start Kelsey's Most Excellent Adventure. I only cried one other time. When we took off from Raleigh to head to London. Good-bye America, I said to myself. Good-bye home, familiarity, comfort. I'm going away for awhile. I'll miss you American soil.

There's a little girl crying a few rows back on the flight to London. She sounds a lot like Syd. I miss her already. "I blove you Aunt Telsey" she said when I saw her last.

The man sitting across the aisle from me, I think I heard, is from Sweden. That's where I'm going, right Grant? Anyway, I think he is a stereotypical European senior citizen. He looks like Bilbo Baggins' twin brother. Maybe his extra in the Lord of the Rings. Thick bifocals with slim gold frames, big bushy orange eyebrows, monsterous nostrils, and a cute old man smile. Kind of fidgety. I like him. He's reading a book about war.

We just flew over Ireland. It's black outside my window since it's actually 5:30am. I can see a lighthouse on the coast and I see it's light shine every few seconds as it turns to my side. There are also a couple boats out there. They look like they are taking advantage of that lighthouse. Kind of cool that even I can see the light from 30,000 feet up.

When I sat down on the plane in Springfield waiting to leave Missouri for greener pastures, I was exhausted from thinking about family, tears, crying, snot, blah blah blah. I put in my iPod to drown out my anxiety and sadness. And Marcus, get what song was the first on the list in my shuffled music? St. Patrick's Day by John Mayer. Oh gosh. I couldn't listen to it. I couldn't even get through the first verse. I switched it to something less sentimental :)

There's an old hippie couple sitting behind me. I think they live in London. He looks like Jesus got lost at a Beatles concert. Except they keep mysteriously trailing off to the lavatories at the same times. I don't think that's Jesus after all.

6:07am signals my very first European sunrise. I'll post pictures later.

There's this super thick layer of clouds over England, except every once in awhile I see a patch of clarity which reveals a bright orange glowing city beneath the Big Tylonel. I see these fast moving skinny slivers of light, which I soon realize are trains. Don't see many of those in the Midwest. And yes, even from the road I could tell. The cars are on the wrong side! Ooops...the other side.

Good morning, London.