Flying High

I am so grateful to have the Cherrington Global ScholarsProgram--the study abroad program at DU that allows students to study abroad at no additional cost to their regular Denver tuition, meaning all financial aid carries over and extra expenses, like visa fees, are covered by the school. This also means that DU will spring for your round trip plane ticket, but unfortunately they will not spring for you to fly first class—trust me, I tried.

Sitting in coach in a 767 next to Rachel, who was lovely and agreed to fly down to Santiago with me, with about 3 square feet of space, I settled in for a 10 hour journey to South America. I reviewed the recommended in flight exercises—deep vein thrombosis is a growing epidemic amongst the privileged—and did a quick practice run of my ankle rolls, forward flex, shoulder rolls, and knee lifts. After noting my nearest emergency exits and lavatories, I slipped into my neck pillow, which I think does good things for the inevitable mouth-hanging-open that comes with my sleeping on planes, and plugged in my headphones in anticipation of watching the classic Journey 2: The Mysterious Island—excellent choice, American Airlines.

A note about sleeping on planes—I have yet to find a person who can gracefully sleep on a plane. I doubt that the child of Jackie O. and Gene Kelly would even look good sleeping on an international flight.

Fifteen minutes into watching The Rock, pardon me, Dwayne Johnson make his pecs dance, I was out like a light—Bummer, now I’ll have to rent Journey 2. I woke up at 5 a.m. with my right foot numb and with a crick in my neck—serves me right for blowing off my scheduled plane exercises. But what shook me was that suddenly the announcements and television commercials were in Spanish. That was when I realized that I was going to actually be speaking and understanding a completely different language for the next five months.

We landed at 8:10 a.m. and successfully navigated entering the country and going through customs—with a near catastrophe of having an apple in my carry on. So far so good!