Minneapolis to Manila. Travel Day.

By: Nate Hemann

Since we are about 14 hours ahead of all of you back home, I'm writing this about a day late. We left Minneapolis at 11:30AM with a slight delay for deicing. We proceeded North from there to cover Canada, Alaska, and the Arctic Circle before our decent over Russia. I was intrigued that we hardly flew over the Pacific at all. It took us just under 13 hours to land in Japan's Tokyo/Narita Airport. On the flight many enjoyed watching movies, reading, sleeping, and Gina's personal favorite, getting to sit by our flight's version of Django. Django was a nice country looking man with a killer mustache and about enough cologne to make her have a little nausea, and of course he traveled from Minneapolis all the way to Manila with us. After departing Narita, Japan at around 6:00PM we landed in Manila at around 10:00PM. We rode in a massive, double decker plane from Japan to Manila that was 10 rows across. Once in Manila we collected our baggage, and the man from Immigration asked if Gina was my mother (clearly my height of 6'5" and German features of blonde hair and blue eyes gave it away that she was in fact my mother). If I hip-checked Gina, I would probably break her neck because of how short she is... Anyway, we met our friend from the school of Mary Johnston, Bhebe, outside after getting our bags and she led us to our bus that would take us to our home for the next two weeks. The traffic in this city is UNREAL. No Minnesotan would survive having inches if not less between each car, the honking (we need our little Minnesotan bubble at all times), or the disobeying of general traffic laws, including red lights. Nonetheless, the bus driver was patient and phenomenal at getting us to the college. Once arrived, it was after midnight so we all crawled into our little twin beds (that of course my feet hang off the end by about 6 inches) for a very short night of sleep.