Well Worth the LONG wait!

Sorry for the delay in an update: Here's how the journey went down :)

Here is a breakdown of my journey with Turkish Airlines. What’s that you say, you thought I was flying Cathay Pacific?  Well, so did I, until about 5 days before I was supposed to leave.  It turns out that our reservations for that flight were not made before the seats were taken (“Seat’s taken…Forest Gump”) Anyways, the people at the school got it all figured out, and the four of us ended up being split up, so I only traveled with Danna, and we traveled east instead of west from the U.S. 

Chicago to Istanbul 10:20 p.m – 9 a.m. (of course, there’s something like an 8 hour jump ahead in time zones, so it was around 5 p.m. in Turkey when we landed)

Layover in Turkey for about 5 hours.  Nothing exciting happened, except I taught Danna how to play the card game Tick.  Although we went through security again, after leaving the plane, which we thought was weird, since we didn’t leave the airport.

12:40 a.m. - Istanbul to Singapore 10 hour flight. The funny thing is that we thought it was only a 3 hour flight or so, according to our looking at the map.  Luckily, on this plane the monitor in the seat in front of me worked, so I watched a few movies while I wasn’t sleeping. I wasn’t as lucky on the first long leg of the trip, from Chicago.  I was able to sleep a good portion of the trip, thought, so that was good.  We also thought it was direct from Istanbul to Jakarta, but apparently there’s a stop in Singapore.  At first, we were afraid we had gotten on the wrong plane, or wouldn’t know where to go once we got off the plane, since neither our boarding passes nor the itinerary mentioned the existence of this stop.  It turns out they just sent us to a room next to the gate where we landed with a plastic “boarding pass” to get back on, so we just had to go through a quick security check.  It didn’t take long, either, because it ended up that we just had time to go to the bathroom, go through the security, and then we were loading back onto the plane. 

Singapore to Jakarta was only 1.5 hours, which seemed super short, compared to the other flights.  This flight was not full, so there were many empty seats, and unfortunately that is how Norbert, my penguin pillow pet, met his demise.  I had been carrying him through all of the other airports, on the other planes, and then when we stood up to leave the plane in Jakarta, I put him in an empty seat next to me.  I didn’t even realize that I had forgotten him until we were through immigration, waiting for out luggage.  It was a sad day for Norbert, but I hope someone claimed him instead of just throwing him away. 

We finally arrived in Jakarta around 6 p.m. local time, and the sun had just set…sad when I was just getting used to enjoying the long, summer days back home. 

There was a contact that the school had set up, so he took our passports and visas (I already had my business visa, and Danna needed to buy a Visa On Arrival.  All of that went very smoothly, and I’m SO glad that the school took care of that situation, especially since I was in no condition to be interrogated by Indonesian Immigration officials, which is fairly common, I guess, especially if you’re getting a business visa.  Then, we got our luggage with that man, and we met Miss Jane and two other women from the school.  We rode in the school’s van back to our apartment.  It’s very nice, and across the street from a huge mall (seriously, it’s like the Mall of America, minus the huge rides in the middle).  We dropped off our luggage, then went to the mall for dinner with Miss Jane and Miss Ira.  We tried to buy phones, but the stores close at 10:00 p.m., so we were too late by the time we finished eating.  I realize this is a weird place to stop, but I will continue later.