The Journey Begins

Here I go again!  I am starting another chapter of my travel journal!  This time I'm going to Japan, which is number one in my list of countries I want to visit.  As you can imagine, I am absolutely thrilled!

My companions this time are seven other students from my college and four adults.  Dr. H (our professor) is the leader of our group.  I actually graduated last semester, but Dr. H said I could still come on the trip!  And I'm still even luckier because the scholarships that I would have used this semester if I hadn't graduated agreed to let me use them for the trip.  I received enough money that I am not paying anything for this!  My trip to Japan is free!  I feel like the luckiest girl in the world!

Dad drove me up to the school yesterday and my friends/ex-housemates, Emily and Bee, stayed up until 4:00am with me, even though they both have class later.

I met up with my group at four, and we drove to the airport in Albany, NY.  From there, we flew to Newark, NJ and we had a layover for about an hour and forty minutes.  So far, I've been hanging out with Kristen, Eric, and Becky.  They're really nice. Tim's really cool, too, but he went off on his own in the airport, so I don't really know him well yet.

Now I'm on the plane to Narita Airport in Tokyo.  We're 6,432 miles away from our destination, going 562 mph, at tan altitude of 32,000 ft!  According to the map on the airplane screen, it seems we're just starting to fly over Canada.  It looks like we're going tot fly over Canada and Alaska to get to Japan.

I'll update again when I get to Japan!