SLC-Chicago-Miami-San Jose

Sunday morning we woke up ridiculously early to get to the airport for our international travels. I keep telling Scott all these tips about international travel, and I think he’s starting to think that I’m making them all up because nothing has happened as I said it would. A good friend took us to the airport, and we must have arrived before major crowds because it was a breeze to check in. No one really checked our passports, there was no extra procedure for us to go through, and we easily found our gate. Scott looked at me when we got to our gate an hour before boarding, and said, “You sure we needed to be here so early?” Then he pulled out his travel pillow, asked if it looked like a neck brace, and fell asleep.

The flight from Salt Lake was uneventful, though I have to mention that it had the worst food options of all the flights we were on all day. My parents so graciously helped us with mileage tickets to Costa Rica, and most of the seats on our trip are first class. I know! My parents ROCK, as my niece Meghan would say. But would you believe that in first class from SLC to Chicago that they served a fruit cocktail cup, dumped into a glass bowl to look fancy? It was accompanied by a plastic travel cereal bowl.

The flight to Miami was more of what I expect of first class. When we walked to our seats, there were fresh, new pairs of earphones waiting for us. Excitedly, I opened up the in flight magazine to see what we would be watching during our flight eastbound. I have to admit that I was glad because of the timing of the flight, that we never got to start the movie. You must be thinking, “Ooh, I bet it was rated R.” or “Maybe it was a masculine action film.” Yeah, no. It was Letters to Juliette.

I know that there is at least one other person in the blogosphere who shares my opinion on the movie. I recently rented the movie from Redbox. I had relatively low expectations but thought it might be cute and at least I’ll be watching beautiful Tuscany. Well, the Tuscany scenes were the movie’s only asset. In fact, I would probably more enjoy a two hour documentary of Tuscany. The writing was horrible. Who wrote the lines “Girl: Can you move? Boy: Only my lips.”? Probably the same person that made the main girl look completely unintelligent by writing like and awesome in every other sentence. The acting was worse, in my opinion. I expected better of the main and supporting actors. And note to the music editor, you cannot play an upbeat song, pause for said girl to break up with boy, and then start the upbeat song again where you left off. Not cool. If you liked the movie, ignore my comments. Unashamedly, I am entertained by Under the Tuscan Sun. But for me, Chicago to Miami was so much more enjoyable because they played 30 Rock instead of a film.

Miami – Wow! What an airport. I felt like I was the only person who didn’t dress up to go on my flight. Either that, or the only people without dreads. When we first walked to our gate, I thought, “Wow. We are going to be the fairest of them all on this flight," that is, if you exclude the couple who were wearing Bride and Groom mouse ears. It was then that Scott reminded me that we were again, an hour early before boarding, and the flight everyone was waiting for was going to Jamaica. So instead, we watched football in another boarding area, possibly Scott’s favorite part of the trip so far.

The flight to San Jose, Costa Rica was the best of all though. The flight attendant had an accent that was a mix of the guy who does action movie trailers and Enrique Iglesias. His rendition of Costa RICA! and American Airlines were to swoon over. Plus they kept offering us chapagne, like this was a moment to celebrate. We obviously kept refusing, but it was the thought that counts.

We arrived in Costa Rica, with no trouble getting through customs, and are now at our Home Base with CCS. The weather has been great so far. It was warm and sunny this morning, with rain in the afternoons. Every paper that I pick up here seems damp. We are pretty tired, but anxious to get enough sleep tonight to start our placements tomorrow. I probably wont have too much time to blog, what with volunteering, culture/language lessons, and my MBA work. But when we do we'll share stories and pictures.