Today! It happened! I woke up at 4 in the morning and showered, brushed my teeth, took a shuttle to the airport, got on a plane, flew to Dallas, and now I'm staring at the giant metal tube I'll be trapped in for the next 14ish hours. 

This is what I looked like this morning

I'm going strong on 5 hours of sleep in the last 48 hours. Remarkably I haven't been miserably exhausted because I'm running on pure adrenaline and coffee.

This is a picture of take-off 

And then I proceeded to pass out cold. which is not entirely a figure of speech as the plane was an arctic tundra and I am very happy I wore my winter coat. In other news, I ate a really gross mustard sandwich. It was not advertised as mustard, but as it made up 90% of the meal I have re-named the sandwich accordingly. 

So on to other business, I'm not sure if the subscription e-mail thing is working, some people say they get e-mails but others do not, soo if you subscribed below and received an email update when I posted this then please let me know it worked in the comments or email or something. If you don't tell me it worked I will assume it does not work and proceed to be annoyed and try to fix it. 

On to the next stretch of the travel day. Thank you to everyone who sent me encouraging texts, video messages (Shout out Dina), emails, notes, and all other ways of communication. You have no idea what your words mean to me. Saying goodbye to the wonderful people in my life was very difficult, but I know you are the type of people who are genuinely interested in me and my successes and failures. I love you all very much and I want you to know I know how blessed I am.

Okay it's boarding time! Next time you hear from me I'll be in Japan!