The England Journal-Day 1

          I am right now sitting on the family room couch in my pajamas (which I haven't taken off all day), snuggled in a blanket with the cat sleeping peacefully next to me. Today was the official start of spring break, hence why I have indulged in the pajamas all day. As you can guess, since I have managed to have an entire day to my self doing all the odd jobs on my "I'll do it over spring break list," it finally hit me that posting about England would probably be a good thing to do while I have the time and was feeling motivated.
           To be honest, I am kind-of glad that I have waited this long to share about one of the major check marks on my Knot List. I have had 3 months to process everything that has happened and the bad things don't seem as bad while the good things have taken on a dream-like quality. I will be sharing from the journal that I kept while I was on the trip (a gift from wonderful Nicole) and I will also be sharing some memories that I didn't put in journal (mostly because of laziness, not because the memories were not meaningful).

My England journal and other things in my very crowded lap on the plane

Journal Entry 1
December 13, 2011- 6:08 pm

          We are almost on our way! I am sitting next to Pearl right now in seat 24A, a window seat :) There is no one sitting in front of us so we opened the two windows closest to our seats. It's dark outside so all I can see are the airport lights with the airplanes shrouded in hazy shadows. 
          Dr. M and Nicole are sitting in the seats next ours with the isle in between. I can hear children talking to one another behind me about how this is their first flight and how excited they are :)
          Me, Pearl, and Nicole arrived at the airport at around 3:40 this afternoon. My Mom and Dad dropped us off  using Nicole's car, which is going to be parked at our house while we are in England. 
          The flight attendant over the PA  said that the type of plane we are on is an Airbus 3300 (or something like that). The engines are starting to hum louder and I can feel the floor vibrating slightly! I can't believe we are actually doing this! It is 6:21 right now so we will be taking off any minute. 
          We're moving.... :)

          Since this was only my second time out of the country, going through check-in required a lot of explanation from the people at the desk (who knew just swiping your passport could be so complicated). But I managed to get my bag checked without too much trauma involved. Security took a lot shorter than I thought it would (about 20 min when I was expecting an hour) and I had to get scanned by one of those new techy security devices. All in all, everything went very smoothly.
          We met Dr. M at the gate and it was wonderful to see her. It had been quite a while since all four of us had been together. She had been waiting there for  several hours because she had a friend drop her off early. She was still her gentle, soft spoken self in spite of having to wait for so long. Dr. M is the type of person who finds the positive and  makes friends no matter where she is (as you will see in future entries :)
          Nicole and I wanted to buy something to eat before we got on the plane, so we rushed around looking for food and still managed to get back before our plane started boarding. I wasn't sure at first if security would allow me to take a salad on the plane (though I don't know what could be dangerous about lettuce and tomatoes), so I asked a couple of guards at the gate if bringing food on the plane was permitted. One guard answered me with a straight face, "Only if you share." I laughed and held up my southwest salad to him. He let it pass :)
          Our gate was close to a German airline and I had fun listening to a lot of tall, blonde people speaking German. They all looked so sophisticated. Dr. M got into a conversation with a British woman about the Nazis bombing churches during WWII (I seriously did not make the connection between the German airline and Dr. M's historical conversation until now! I doubt she realized it either :)
          We were some of the last to board and I wouldn't have minded except that my bags were heavy. We got to our seats with relative ease (about as much as ease as you can get on a plane). I quickly ate my salad before the flight attendants could say anything about it and settled in for what I thought was a long flight to London Gatwick Airport.