I woke up at 4, groggy and anxious and sure I was forgetting to bring everything important with me.  I kept trying to convince myself that this was actually happening, that I actually was leaving and wouldn’t see my family for a year.  I wasn’t particularly successful, save for bits in flashes while I was hugging my sister or dad goodbye.  I’d said goodbye to my brother the night before, and while he didn’t cry (though I did) his stuffed duck Fuzzy had told me not to go repeatedly.  I asked Jamie what he would like me to bring back, and listed some things like Buddha figurines or elephant figurines or Thai pants.  He asked if I could bring back a baby elephant for Fuzzy and I thought Oh.  A stuffed elephant for a stuffed duck. okay.  And was picturing a little stuffed elephant toy.  As I said sure his eyes LIT up and he exclaimed “Really? A real elephant?” I told him no, but then we make believed what would happen if we did get a baby elephant and kept it in the horse pasture.  Our horses mostly spook when they see the llama across the road, let alone an elephant.  They would be stampeding all around and then the elephant would stampede too and it would basically never end.  And it would be very loud and dangerous.  As well our horse Olie would never stop nibbling it’s ears!  When I said goodbye to Sana it was shorter, she was quite sleepy.  She murmured plans to get up and pack now so she could come with me to Thailand for the year and was just very cute.  After that I slept and mom slept in my room with me.  When we got up in the morning at around 4:30 dad had made breakfast and then I said goodbye to Daddy Eric and we left.  In the car I juggled things in my carry on bags and finally decided they would not fit and that I would just check my large carry on and take some things in a cloth bag as my second carry on.  We got to the airport and I was kind of panicking.  I didn’t want to not see them after this moment for a year.  It was an eternity and I could not conceptualize to time, try as I might.  My siblings would be so grown up when I came back!  I needed to be there as that happened!  My mom and me would not always be around each other! My friends would have a full school years worth of dram I would not be party to and I would not be there to watch two of my ships finally happen (Literally they hooked up days before I left).  So I went to the security line with not a single muscle not clenched and walked through the line and waved to dad when he kept sneaking back to try to wave to me.  I’m not sure that he saw me though.

Going through security is always suuuper anxiety filled for me.  This time was a little better, since last time I flew I had a tub of yogurt and nuts in my bag and security was super chill about it.  They said I could go eat it on the other side of security or chuck it, but there were no big alarms, no one was mad or aggressive, it was all good.  So this time I wasn’t as worried about accidentally crossing one of the security rules, but I had several minutes of fear when I saw how small a one liter bag is, and the little sign that said one bag only per flyer.  Once I finally got a bag however, it was all good.  Everything fit (just barely) and I was off to the races.  At about a foot a minute.  Maybe that was just my nervousness reflecting onto it though.

After I got through security I went straight to my gate, in case my flight was early or my gate was at the very, very end of the airport.  It wasn’t.  My flight was on time, all was good.  I filled my water bottle, bought some gum, used the restroom, and came back to find that my flight was loading.  I think it did end up being early because I probably only spent a half hour in the airport.  That being said, I did play on my phone and read some, which can eat a lot of time.  I had tried to connect to the airport wifi as well, which my phone was having none of.  This meant I couldn’t tell my mom and dad that everything had gone alright until I reached Vancouver, but I wasn’t worried about it.  The flight was mostly unremarkable.  It didn’t take very long, barely enough to have warranted opening my bag and getting things out really.  From there I wandered the airport, trying to find my gate number since it wasn’t printed on my boarding pass.  None of the boards however, listed my flight.  Uh oh.  Then I checked the flight departure times and realised that mine was about 45 minutes off the board.  I had approximately 7 hours of layover, you see.  So, I hung out in one lounge for a while, feeling quite antsy, then went to the help desk to see if they could tell me what my gate number was before it showed up on the board.  There wasn’t anyone at the desk, however, so I sat on the stone lip of a ring around a big fancy metal wall in the middle of the airport.  There was what appeared to be a guitarist setting up on the lip/maybe bench thing a little ways away from me, but I waited there a while and he never started playing so I don’t know what was up with that.  Eventually someone went behind the help desk and I jumped up- only to see them file some paperwork and start to leave again.  I grabbed my things and scampered over to ask them, but all they did was look up at the board and tell me what I already knew: that it was too early to see my flight on the board.  From there I decided to wander instead of sitting awkwardly with airport staff chatting and complaining nearby.  I found this really cool candy shop not too far away, and went inside.  I had been very lowkey looking for food because I stress eat crappy food when I’m at airports, and this was perfect.  It had bulk candy dispensers at the back, with everything priced the same so that you could mix and match all in one bag.  I got an assortment of jelly beans, some marshmallow bananas, some little stars-with-eyes-aliens gummies, two gummy crocodiles, some gummy grass snakes, and various other things.  I also got a box of nerds.  This would be what I used to sooth my nerves and sustain me through my trip.

v  (This happens later.  Wups.)

Mom included in an email instructions to eat some real food though so I got a chicken pot pie that turned out to only have defrosted halfway when they microwaved it so there was ice in some parts.  It wasn’t very good.

This is where I am going to end for now, I will update this post more later. 🙂