PDX airport Tuesday, August 7th

     I got to the airport at 7:00 in the morning meaning the few friends I had over the night before and I had to get up at 6:00. And did I mention we were up till 4:15 the night before? Beating Super Mario on the Wii, playing M.A.S.H. and of course counting down the minutes. Anyway we got up at 6:00 and started getting ready. The house was kind of like a bus station, the friends I had asked to come to see me off at the airport arrived around 6:45 and I was running around making sure I had absolutely everything.

     Finally we were off, except Kamron, who was late! But lucky for him Harley was nice and waited for him. Our little entourage arrived at PDX just passed 7:00. Then was the real test, to see if my suitcase which had been packed and unpacked and repacked about fifty times would fit the weight limit of 50 pounds. I put it on the scale and it came in at 49.6 pounds. Big sigh of relief. I went through the line and got my three boarding passes, my friends and I probably took up a good five feet of the line. We also bet Barbara my youth exchange officer in line and next all twelve of us headed off to find some breakfast.

     My last meal in America consisted of a berry smoothie and a blueberry muffin. I had time to take some crazy photos and skip around the airport (literally) until I needed to get into the line at security. That was the hard part. I hugged each of my friends and mom and grandma and I didn’t want to let go.  I told myself I wasn’t going to but soon my eyes stung with tears. I finally pulled away and got in the security line, but it didn’t move right away so I just stood there, everyone else just a few feet away looking back at me and already that was too far.

     I filed through the line zig-zagging my way towards the security, at each end of each zig-zag stood half of my friends and family to keep my company. I wanted one last goodbye before I crossed through the metal detectors but they ushered me through so fast I didn’t have a chance. The security people opened my bassoon and looked at my reed pliers but decided they were fine. (They were taken from me later in Frankfurt.) I turned one last time to see everyone all waving and calling my name before I had to make myself walk away holding back the tears of sadness and excitement. I was so far from them all but not close enough to my next destination.