We have arrived!!!

We have arrived!! After more than 32 hours of travel we have arrived safe and sound and EVEN had a decent nights sleep in a beautiful hotel!


After arriving in the LA airport we were making our way through security and just about to push our bags through the security belt when everyone (all the workers) started screaming CODE RED (or some other color- I honestly blanked out)...my immediate reaction was to duck...not sure why, but I managed to just stand still. Everyone was told to stand completely still and we had no idea what was going on....I am about to have a heart attack and look over and Ang is doing that shaking, quiet laugh that makes her entire body shake. I gave her the evil eye, but she didn't stop. She was of course laughing at my bugged out-scared eyes and my body movements towards ducking under the security table. Soon everything was cleared...but we were both giggling about the fact that this was 15 minutes into our trip!

We flew for 17 hours from LA to Bangkok- where (much to Mel and Kalp's dismay)...I took one ambien and Ang didn't feel like that was quite enough, so she took 1.5 ambien! We actually slept decently well..imagine that?! Thai Air is hilarious to fly...and there is CONSTANT motion with the flight attendants. You can barely open your eyes and they are making sure you don't need water, or food or anything else. It is GREAT service....but also hilarious in the middle of the night.

Arriving in Bangkok seemed normal- since we have been there before--and we just walked around for a short while and had some coffee. We had a one hour layover and headed to another 5 hour flight to Delhi. Although we tried not to sleep on the flight...Ang was out for most of it...and I dozed on an off.

Unfortunately we had a 6 hour layover in Delhi before flying to Chennai. We started to observe some of the chaos that I think we will learn to be part of our everyday life. At one point there was a garbage can leaking (a disgusting liquid I may add)...and although one guy found it and had started to clean it up....there were soon 3 guys in white business shirts observing the cleaning , and soon another guy also helping to clean up....in addition, to the one American girl that couldn't stop staring. It seems like maybe it takes a lot of people to do one job....this was observed many times throughout our 6 hour layover.

At one point we were getting food and Ang was about to sit down in a chair..when an Indian man ran over and said "are you going to sit there?"....I almost died laughing, because it was so obvious that she WAS actually sitting there...but I guess it was worth a try for him to get a seat.

We were both really tired on the 2.5 hour flight from Delhi to Chennai.....and lucky for us a baby and 2 year old sat behind us and screamed and kicked our seat the whole time. I have never been so happy to get off a flight!!

Our hotel picked us up--the hotel is wonderful and beautiful! (Thank YOU Mr. and Mrs. Yost!)....and we slept well last night. We woke up at 640 a.m., took our malaria medicines (which advises NOT to eat any dairy products) and promptly headed down to breakfast and ordered coffee with milk. Within minutes we were both not feeling very well--and I have now officially thrown up twice on my first morning here. Note to self...medicines warnings are real.

We are off to roam around Chennai, before heading to a wedding at 4 p.m. No worries that the wedding doesn't start until 7 p.m.....but the guy who is going with us (old co-worker) wants to leave at four. I can imagine this says something about traffic.

We are both so excited to be back in travel mode!!