aka, Katie is bored in an airport and a wild internet appeared so she captured it and wrote a long, boring email including musings on the nature of modern technology as it applies to her life.
Dear Family, Friends, Random Acquaintances, and other sentient lifeforms,
I am sihaptshmmmm hours into my glorious European adventure, and currently camped out in front of gate E6 at the Boston airport. For those of you who are curious, it is actually 7 hours since I walked out the door this morning, and I have successfully completed the first leg of my trip.
Despite the Delta people being disappointingly unhelpful about my attempts to change my flight and seat, the day has been going rather well. I did discover that my kindle cord was pretty badly messed up, but they have these cool little Best Buy vending machines in the airport, so I was able to replace it before I left territory controlled by the USA. The flight was very quick, we had a tailwind that cut 30 minutes off the flight, but made for one of the most unpleasant and turbulent landings I have ever experienced. Before this however, the flight was generally pleasant. I started reading Good Omens, did a bit of a crossword, and Delta was generous enough to show Shark Tank on the screen and feed my frankly unhealthy addiction to a reality show about investors. Oh well, it’s not as bad as the shows Nicole watches. My only other complaint was that I was seated next to a couple that had an infant in arms, but the child (and the infant in front of me! I swear!) were both practically saintly and did not make the flight noticeably more miserable.
Upon my arrival in Boston I learned that the.... kind and highly intelligent beings... who constructed this airport made it impossible to get from the regular terminal to the international terminal without exiting through baggage claim and returning through security. However I got a hot pretzel, which sort of made everything better.
Fortunately my flight arrived early, and I walked to the international terminal with plenty of time to spare. This is especially true since (unsupririsingly considering the drama that’s been going on up here lately) my flight has been delayed. Last I checked my flight was pushed back half an hour, and I hope it won’t be more considering it is noticeably warmer here than it was in Atlanta. Oh well, there’s a Starbucks in this terminal, so if all fails I can go get tea.
I know that this is probably waaaaayyyyy tmi, but normally I would just text my parents about my adventures, however, sadly, My Preciousssss (the official name of the iPhone I am so seldomly seen without) was left behind today. The tech people have to do some jigglty-pokery to it to make it work in Europe and I have sacrificed it for the next 72 hours in order to be able to use it for the rest of my time in Europe.
The downside of course, is that I am currently phoneless. I know that most of you think that I am probably too attached to that thing, and you might be right, based on how I am feeling right now, but this separation (currently at almost 5 hours) is actually quite tough. I mean, my phone functions as a lot of things in my life. I have games, reading material, directions, photos, and much more on that phone. In addition, I use(d) it as my watch, leaving me totally dependent on clocks to get the time, which, on a travel day, is kind of frustrating. It has also occurred to me that I have no way to set an alarm, thus ensuring, for example, that I do not oversleep on Wednesday morning and miss my train. I don’t think I’ll do that, but the inability to set an alarm is worrying nonetheless.
I know it’ll all be fine. I, like many others, have survived without a phone before and will do it again. I have a kindle stocked with awesome books, a computer on which I can write emails to you on Microsoft word while I don’t have internet, and on the next flight there will be a screen that I can play with. It’s just interesting, because last time I went abroad I didn’t have use of the phone functions of My Precioussss, but I still had the phone with all its games and information and contacts and pictures, and now I lack all that too. This summer, not being able to call people was frustrating of course, but not too difficult. I don’t actually talk on my phone that often. This total separation, however, is much harder.
All my love, besos y abrazos, and I’ll try to get back to y’all later!
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