Tucson, Arizona—Chicago, Illinois—Greenville, South Carolina—Day 300 (THREE HUNDRED!!!)

My brother Simon and my mom dropped me off at the Tucson International Airport with plenty of time for my 1:42pm departure for Chicago. I said goodbye to them and to Tucson but felt refreshed from a good time back home.

Since I was the only one in the American Airlines line, I didn’t have a problem checking in. The airport buzzed with passengers who did a “stop-over” Thanksgiving like me—in one day, out the next. I went through security (again amused at the almost anal-retentive security staff) and milled through various magazines as I waited for my flight to start boarding.

Now that I have been permanently upgraded to “Group 1” I got to board first and soon we were on our way to Chicago. The flight was fine—I had an entire row to myself and worked non-stop on my Portuguese lessons (muito bem!) before we landed in snowy Chicago at 6pm. I looked outside at the frost on the ground and felt glad that I had spent my holiday in Arizona snow-free.

I then had to wait it out in the Chicago airport for my flight to Greenville, South Carolina! Whohoo! What a place! The only reason I am flying to Greenville was that I could get a frequent flier ticket on American Airlines for Thanksgiving and that was the closest airport (that AA flew to) to Columbia, where the hippos are. So I had to fly to Greenville, then in the morning would rent a car and drive myself to Columbia.

I waited in the small terminal for the “really tiny planes that only go to small airports” after grabbing a salad from some “corner market” store in the airport, noting that it was not a market, nor was it on a corner. We boarded (there was only a “general boarding” call since there was hardly anyone on the plane) and flew to Greenville. Again, the flight was fine (I think I have become permanently immune to flying now) and landed into Greenville/Spartanburg. I located my bags and the courtesy phone to call the hotel to come pick me up. I was happy that the hotel had a shuttle and that it was so near the airport. It was 10pm (8pm Tucson time) and I was ready for bed.

I got to the hotel, checked in and did some emailing before I crashed, knowing that the 6am wake up call would come far too soon.