Adventures Across the World

My two connection flight to Singapore turned into one of the craziest adventures of my life. I flew Northwestern and every single flight they scheduled me for was either cancelled or delayed. I'm not sure why God put me through all the stuff I've been through over the past week, but I'll go ahead and write it down for your reading enjoyment.

I started from Springfield, Missouri and had to go to Detroit instead of the previously scheduled city, Minneapolis. When the plane arrived at Detroit there was a lightning storm over the airport so the plane flew around in circles for an hour before it began to run out of gas and was landed in Fort Wayne, Indiana for a fuel up. After finally landing in Detroit, I missed my connecting flight to Tokyo so they told me they were going to reroute my plane through Paris and Amsterdam and I needed to spend the night at the hotel Pontchartrain, an extremely luxurious downtown hotel.

The next day I went to the GM World Headquarters and looked as some cars and was a cheapskate and I needed to find a computer part so instead of taking a taxi I rode the city bus through inner city Detroit in order to get to the airport. I flew all night to Paris and I had a four hour layover so I rode the train into Notre Dame and walked around, took pictures, and ate pastries. I went to the French McDonald's, home of the famous Le Bigmac.

When I got back to the airport my flight to Amsterdam was delayed, so naturally once we finally took off I missed my connecting flight to Singapore. The airline was terrible sorry for my predicament so they paid for my meals and put me up in the Hotel Ibis for the night. They also bumped me up to first class. I woke up and met some rich businessmen, Bart and Raddick, from Poland in the hotel lobby. They asked me what I was doing and I told them sightseeing downtown. They were doing the same thing so they invited me to come along.

We went downtown and looked at some expensive diamond shops, saw the outside of a royal palace, walked through the red light district (it was one in the afternoon, not much was happening), and toured a museum that showcased torture devices from the middle ages. The rich guys went to go get stoned (it is legal there, but I didn't join them) at the Bulldog Cafe, and I walked around and took a few pictures and watched a guy who could swallow fire, another who bounced soccer balls on his head while climbing light poles, and another who did impersonations of Garfunkel. I met up with the rich guys again in an upscale restaurant after they got the munchies and had bought themselves $60 a plate stakes. They still kept their word to let me go with them in the cab back to the airport. I didn't have to pay a dime and they were insulted when I offered.

I flew first class into Singapore, enjoying heated mint hand towels, four course meals, unlimited beverages, free candy bars, and a personal video screen that played movies on demand.

Now I have jet lag.

If you're the praying type, please ask God to give me the grace to get past my tiredness and, now that the adventure of getting here is over, focus on preparing for the school year.