India Travels Day 1

I spent the night at Docs and we finished packing. She was up all night packing and trying to finish up some paper work. I dozed off on the couch for a few hours and got up at 3:45am. Our ride to the airport arrived at 6:30 and we loaded up and took off. We checked in the luggage and got a bite to eat. Then it was time to go through security. We all stood in line and it was moving rather quickly. I sent my stuff through and got sent to a secondary pat down. A woman patted me down. Then a man brought my laptop over and said he needed to scan it again. He scanned it once more and it was handed back to me. Then another man was going through my carry on bag. He toook everything out of it. They put my liquids into another ziploc bag. I had most of my pills and liquids in a ziploc already but I had forgotten about the things in my purse. They discussed that I was only allowed one pint sized bag and not two but that i didn’t have to put the pills in the bag so all the liquids I had would have fit into one bag. The rest of the other 5 people I was traveling with were through security and waiting for me. They started taking pictures of me sitting in security as I was there for what seemed like at least 10 minutes. They rescanned my bags again. Then the security guy found a box of Junior Mints that I had brought along. He asked what I was doing with them. I replied I had brought them to eat. Then he said something to the effect of I didn’t really need them and he could take them for me. I laughed at him and he proceeded to help me repack my bag. After putting everything back into my bag the last thing he put in was the Jr. Mints. We had another laugh and I was on my way. Doc and I stopped at teh Gadget Store and she purchased an inverter that she could use on the plane. Then we were joking that I had one too many gadgets and that is what the hang up was in security. We met back up with the rest of our group and it was about time to board the plane. We took a few pictures of us all and I posted one to facebook.

We started lining up to board the plane. Doc tried to hand them the wrong boarding pass, the one from Chicago to India so she had to step out of the line to find the right pass. We all found our way onto the plane and took our seats. I ended up sitting next to a young guy named Daniel that was from San Diego but going to Chicago to see his girlfriend graduate from something. He told me he was going to propose to her and showed me the ring he was carrying. We chatted for a bit and then we both started to listen to our ipods. The flight went by fairly quickly and we landed very smoothly. After deplaning we walked around for a while. Then we went to restaurant to eat. Ended up that we ate at Macaroni Grill. Next stop was the book store and then we walked back down and met up with the rest of the crew. There are 27 of us total. Rahit came from San Fransisco and he was the only other west coaster. Many are from Dallas and Iam not sure of the other places. I was introduced to Macguyver who I will call M. He is an anestesia tech. I met a few more people and then it was time to board the plane. We boarded the plane everyone got loaded and then we sat. They came on the loudspeaker and said were were too full and overweight so they asked people to volunteer to get off for $800.00. the found 3 people to get off. Then we waited some more for them to find their baggage,..in total we were two and half hours sitting in the plane before we even went down the runway. Take off finally happened and we were in flight. 14 hours and 5 minutes was the estimate.

We made it into India. Went through the customs line. We checked through with our passports and a form we had to fill out on the plane. we got our bags...the other team brought 36 boxes. We ended up bringing 4 total. Then came going through the customs checkpoint. Sherri took all the guys to help carry the boxes and they ended up getting stopped. After waiting a while on the other side we went to the hotel. Doc stayed behind to make a phone call into a friend of hers whose father has some sort of political clout. Its now 5am and I am catching up on the journal. We actually got to the hotel at about 2am.This is all local time. In california it is 3:30 pm on friday and here it is Sat 5am...I jumped forward a day! Got a text from Doc and said they are on the way to hotel. at 4:45.