We've finally managed to survive the craziest day of the trip: the first one. It started off with having to be ready to leave Pitt by 6:00 AM. After a night in Tower C, on the same floor that I lived in all of last year, we all met in Towers Lobby with all of our bags, ready to go. I definitely wasn't looking forward to the bus ride. I assumed we would be taking a Port Authority 28X to the airport, which would take an hour, but I was so glad to be wrong. We walked outside to see a huge coach bus waiting for us, which was so much better than any Port Authority bus.
After a 30 minute ride, we arrived at the Pittsburgh International Airport. After checking our bags, we managed to take a secret shortcut through the airport. At the airport, there's an alternative security checkpoint that never has a line. This was perfect since it was so much faster than the regular security checkpoint would've been, especially considering how many of us had to go through. Once we made it to our gate, we had two or three hours to spare. Luckily, I managed to use that time to finish my individual report of Vietnam that was due that day before we had to board. After a few hours, we finally boarded and were off to our first destination: Chicago.
When some people think about Chicago, especially the people that love food, they think about deep dish pizza and Chicago-style hot dogs. Fortunately when we got there, we were hungry. The first thing that we thought to do was get some deep dish pizza. Unfortunately the pizza there wasn't the really popular Chicago deep dish with the sauce on top instead of the cheese, but it was still a deep dish and it was still amazing. After that, we were ready to board our first international plane to our second destination, Hong Kong. While we were boarding, I was stopped for the first time. Why? Because they thought that I could've been some guy who leaked some of NSA's secrets on account of us having the same last name. Luckily, I don't really look that much like Edward Snowden, so there wasn't much of a problem.
Once we made it onto the plane, we had a 16 hour flight to look forward to. At first, I thought it would be alright and I would be able to sleep through the majority of it, but I was so wrong. It turns out that I was pretty dehydrated during the flight. I didn't realize this until I passed out. I had got up to go to the bathroom and while I was waiting, I started to feel really weak and lightheaded, of course accompanied by a really clammy sweat. So while I was standing there, I passed out, hit my head, and had to be helped up by a nearby passenger. I came to after a few seconds with a weird headache and didn't remember a thing; he had to tell me what happened. That was definitely the weirdest part of the day. Afterwards, I realized that the best way to get through the remaining nine hours of the flight would be to watch nonstop movies. Fortunately, the plane came stocked with a bunch of movies that I didn't have the chance to see back home. After four more movies, we landed in the Hong Kong International Airport, with a few hours to spare. I was really looking forward to trying some Chinese food and the first thing that I ate there was an authentic chocolate chip muffin from the McDonalds McCafe in the airport. After the wait, we boarded the next plane for a two hour flight to our final destination: Ho Chi Minh City.
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