TMI

I’m glad I got a chance to Skype with my parents early on Sunday morning. Apparently Delta/KLM hadn’t updated the flight status of my previous flight from Dar  Amsterdam, and it appeared that my flight had never arrived. Even the people working at Delta couldn’t tell my parents where the plane was.

Anyway, after a brief chat with them I got on the plane and found my seat. I immediately started feeling a little ill and tried to fall asleep and let it pass. There were no air vents to adjust, and no signs of sleepiness either, so I tried to just relax and let it pass. Unfortunately I waited too long, because by the time I decided I had to find the bathroom we were already taxiing. I had to ask the person sitting in the aisle to get up for me, but she told me we were about to take off so I shouldn’t get up. I hesitated and she refused to budge, so I rebuckled my seatbelt and tried desperately to mentally power my way through.

After about 1.5 more minutes I decided there was no turning back. I didn’t take no for an answer this time, and made it all the way to the bathroom door when the stewardess at the end of the aisle directly in front of me got on the over head speaker and said, “Ma’am, return to your seat immediately.” I had thought ahead enough to have a motion sickness bag in my hand and figured that waving at her should be enough of a clear sign. Of course, it wasn’t. She said “No. Return to your seat. No. Go sit down. Now.” With her stupid Dutch KLM accent and a very don’t mess with me tone, it was clear that I had better return to my seat.

I fortunately had just enough time to sit back down before losing my kibbles. I was hoping to make it until the plane started taking off so the loud jet noises could cover for me, but of course the plane was called back at the last minute because the fog lights weren’t working properly. We had to sit there for 20 more minutes before getting the green light and taxiing back to the runway.

No one came to see what was wrong for me or anything. My seatmate just sat there the whole time reading her newspaper and ignoring me. I was too exhausted to move, but finally mustered up some strength to find a trash can after about half an hour. On my way, I found a flight attendant. I told him I was pretty sure I had food poisoning or something, so he gave me a bottle of coke and some Imodium. Another flight attendant was nice enough to ask my seatmate to move and give me some room to lie down. It was a tight squeeze, but I was appreciative of the breathing room.

Unfortunately for me, I spent the remaining 7.5 hours of the trip with a fever and never-ending nauseousness running back and forth to the bathroom, bag in hand. I was rather struck by how unfriendly everyone was. The only person who would even talk to me was a Registered Nurse from Nigeria.

I finally made my way to the back of the plane to ask the flight attendants about getting some water. Unfortunately I came across the lady on the loud speaker and had to apologize to her about our little encounter. We actually got into an interesting conversation. It included everything from her advice on food poisoning, to warnings that I could be quarantined upon my arrival, to her extreme delight that I knew that her home country, Suriname, is not in Africa. Apparently I’m the first American to ever know where her home country is – thank you Georgetown SFS.

Anyway, it was a pretty rough flight for me up until the very end. When I finally got off the plane, I pulled myself together and headed as fast as I could to Customs. I managed to get past with little trouble, pick up my bags, and phone my parents (apparently my phone can hold a charge after 3 months. They didn’t expect me to get out so quickly, and were apparently sitting in the Starbucks letting a man from Jerusalem use their computer.

I was thoroughly exhausted from the flight and was so relieved to see them and collapse into a big group hug. As for this random guy from Jerusalem, my parents have apparently picked up an appreciation for hospitality after giving me up to the Tanzanian community for the past three months, and were already getting started paying it forward. It turns out this guy was an economist who spoke 5 languages (Hebrew, Arabic, English, French, and Russian….all fluently except for Russian) and was on his way to a conference to meet Obama the next day. His hotel was in New Carrollton, so after helping him find out its exact location on the computer, they offered to give him a ride.

On the way back I asked my parents to stop by Georgetown to say hi to a good friend and grab some frozen yogurt at my favorite place in Du Pont. I was a little overconfident with my newfound second wind, but it didn’t prove to be too much of a problem. We gave our new friend a quick tour of things on our drive back through the city and had a great time laughing and learning more about each other.

When we finally got to his hotel I went inside to find a bathroom before hitting the road again. After about 5 more minutes of being on the road, my dad asked for his phone – he is a little obsessive about checking his phone messages. It was nowhere to be found, and as we tried to work backwards in time to figure out who had it, we realized I had been talking to my sister on the phone when I walked into the hotel bathroom. I called 411 within 10 minutes of leaving the hotel, and when I finally got a hold of a member of the hotel staff they told me they couldn’t find the phone. Way to go, Chelsea.

When we got home, I waited up for a bit for my sister to get home and then passed out in my bed for the next 10 hours. I woke up the next morning feeling infinitely better and oh so happy to be home. I called Verizon, found out that someone had been using the internet on my dad’s phone earlier in the morning, and had therefore definitely been taken from the hotel bathroom. Welcome to America. We have old phones lying around the house to transfer numbers too in exactly these circumstances so it ended up being no big deal.

I’m back to normal times and forms of communication now and will be working on some sort of calendar for my last 5 weeks at home. Can’t wait to reconnect with everyone in between walking the dogs and family bonding time!