March 31, 2009
Day Two:
Woke up late. My room mate set two alarms but neither one went off. Fortunately we had a random alarm set for 6am. We had to be down in the lobby to leave for New York at 6:30. I was supposed to meet some girls for Starbucks at 6, but I totally missed that since I had to get ready and get everything together.
Down to the lobby. Paid for the bell hop and bus help. Gathered with our bus groups and tied purple string to our luggage; a Peace Corps tradition. We waited around for about 20 minutes and started to load the bus. My luggage is SOOOO heavy! I totally cannot wait until I am able to unpack. Took about a two hour bus ride to New York, JFK Airport. It was the first time I’ve seen the New York skyline…it was really cool. I definitely would like to visit NYC in the future.
We got to JFK pretty early. We had a two and a half hour wait until we could check in. In the meantime we got breakfast and hung out. During this time we had a bit of a freak-out with the luggage allowance situation. We were told by Peace Corps that we could have two checked pieces of luggage at 50 lbs each, and one carry on, no weight restrictions, and one personal item. Well, one of my fellow PCVs was speaking with an airline worker and was told that we were allowed the two checked bags at 50lbs exactly, we could not go over, and a checked bag of only 10lbs. So, everyone was frantically trying to get their carry on luggage weight down so that they wouldn’t have to check their bags. The charge for additional weight and/or checking a third bag is $200.00. Meanwhile one of the girls here called our country director from staging and asked if he could talk to the airline, since we’re PC and all. Turns out that he was able to smooth things out with the airline and no one was charged for anything. (I didn’t even have my checked bags weighed.)
We waited around for another hour and half before boarding, spending time eating lunch and hanging out some more. Then we loaded the plane for Frankfurt. I have an aisle seat. Thank goodness! The seats are kinda hard and there is a crying child next to me. Well sometimes he cries, but for the most part I guess he’s pretty quiet.
Dinner was served. Choice of chicken and mushrooms or pasta. I hate mushrooms! I had pasta with tomato sauce, Caesar Salad, bread, cheese, some dessert cheese cake thing, and a glass of red wine.
This flight is totally full to the brim. A few seats are left open, but not many. My seat mate had to move due to lack of space…which of coarse created more space for me. Right now an in flight movie is going, “The Secret Life of Bees” I think is the title. I’m totally not interested. So I’ve been reading my Economist and visiting. I’m getting slightly sleepy, but not too much. At home it’s 7pm. In Frankfurt it’s 2am. This time change is realllllly gonna suck. We’ll have another 5 hr layover in Frankfurt before we head to Kiev. They will be serving us breakfast on the plane as well…wonder what that will be.

Love!