Sunday, October 1, 2006 & Monday, October 2, 2006
Two days of traveling -- wow! Sunday was a long day. My flight from Dayton left at 6:00 a.m. I flew to Chicago and then to San Francisco. I've been meeting new people all along the way. One thing that's nice is that everyone is a stranger, so that means we're all in the same boat. We've all had to quickly meet one another and begin to make friends.

We had orientation sessions all afternoon on Sunday. Sunday ended with an orientation dinner. By the time that it was over, I was very tired. It was after midnight Ohio time. I went straight to bed and slept hard all night.

On Monday, I got up and had breakfast and then it was time to go back to the airport. The plane that we boarded for Tokyo was a 747. It's the largest plane I've ever been on. It even has two levels. I was lucky enough to have a seat in the first row of the economy section which means that I had extra leg room. I was also by the window. This wasn't quite as nice as being on the aisle, but since we had to extra leg room, I wasn't too unhappy about it. I sat next two two Japanese-American women who were about eight inches shorter than me. They spoke both English and Japanese, and they were very friendly.

On the flight, I watched three different movies: Cars, X-Men (the third one), and The Devil Wears Prada. This really helped to pass the time because the flight was about ten hours long. I also read a book and listened to my iPod. I tried to sleep, but wasn't able to because I was too uncomfortable. I felt like the flight went on forever. I couldn't wait to land in Japan!