A night in an airplane- June 10, 2007

At about 4:10 AM in the current time zone I started my first blog at 550mph at an altitude of 31,000 feet and -36° Celcius. I was in an airplane and I decided to write my first entry into a journal which will constitute the postings that I place on this blog. My name is Pedro Briseño and these blogs will record my trip to Brazil.

The flight actually started June 9, 2007 were I and seven other CSULB students took off on a flight to Atlanta, Georgia. From there we were supposed to catch a connecting flight to a large city in Brazil and then reach our final destination- a 40km island located in a southern coast of Brazil.

As our group of seven arrived in Atlanta we were notified that our flight would be delayed about half an hour. Yea, well half an hour turned into over four hours of delay, giving my group time to watch Legally Blond 2 on a portable DVD player and opportunity to talk to other passengers traveling to Brazil. Most passengers seemed Brazilian and the ones who spoke English were rather willing to talk to our group of Californians. One thing a Brazilian student mentioned was that Florianopolis (our final destination) was a beautiful place were numerous Brazilians take vacations. Not only did other boarders know of my destination but also thought it was one of the best places to go in Brazil, I was thrilled!

Unfortunately, a new sense of uncertainty filled my body as we boarded the plane. Those four hours of delay meant we would not catch our next connecting flight and undoubtedly I was to spend the next nine hours on my economy class seat. What's more, the Portuguese language- Brazil's official language- was already soaring through the air. A confusing language which I knew few of.

After airplane dinner I relaxed with the complementary earphones of Delta while I watched a movie positioned above several seats. At the end of the movie I took a look outside the airplane window to see nothing but a vast darkened sea below and a star lit sky above. I started writing in my journal wondering how people trust these enormous fleets of machine to travel from continent to continent. In truth, I found it hard to trust and airplane so much while knowing so little about how they work. As I wrote, the television screen which previously showed a movie now displayed specific information such as height, speed, and geographic position over which we flew. It was amazing how we cut across the Dominican Republic in about 20 minutes. At last, sleep began to take me over and at 4:30 AM I finally decided to fall asleep. "Everyone seems asleep and I'm the only moron with a light on..." I wrote, "...This was my first entry but now I too will trust this soaring piece of metal..." I took one last look out the window and fell asleep.