"A few hours in Houston..." Houston by Maria_75

Well, I haven't actually been to Houston, I have just been at the airport for a few hours. But these hours are really stuck in my brain so I just had to write them down...

First we had been more than 10 hours on the plane from Amsterdam to Houston. Before that we had to take the plane 2 hours from Oslo to Amsterdam and when we arrived at Houston we still had one more plane to take, before arriving at our final goal of Mexico City.

I tried to sleep on the plane to Houston, but the %&)# flightattendant came and woke me up the whole time. One of the times she came with some different forms we had to fill out before entering Houston. I had no idea which one of them to fill out since we were just going to change the planes, and the really unhelpful woman didn't know either. But it seemed like we got it right in the end.

When we left Oslo we were told that all of our luggage would go directly to Mexico City so we didn't think about the luggage in Houston. There were loads of controls and check-ups everywhere, and after having waited in line and passed through many of them, we were stopped by a woman that asked us for our luggage. Apparently we had to pick it up, carry it through the customs and then leave it on the other side. We didn't know this so a securityguard had to follow us back through all of the controls, find our luggage and then guard us through the controls again before we could leave our luggage and continue through the rest of the controls...

Finally we got to the "big checkpoint" where we had to deliver the form we had filled out on the plane. The queue was enormous and it took forever to get through it. We started to worry about catching our next plane, and looked at the clock the whole time. When we finally got to the counter they scanned the iris in our eyes (I think...) and took our fingerprints along with the forms. Then we could finally go to our gate. All this just because we were going to take a plane out of the country a few hours later!

After more than 10 hours on the plane I was very ready to get some nicotin-refill again. But was it allowed to smoke at the airport? Oh no... Then I had to go outside. But concidering all the time we had spent getting through all of the controls, I figured there was no way I could make it outside, take a smoke and then pass through all of the controls again before the plane left. So I just had to wait some more hours....

I never really liked flying, but I have never been so scared of it that it has stopped me from travelling. When I saw the plane we were going to take to Mexico I got really scared. It was the size of a shoebox and the wings seemed to break if you stared hard at them.

The flightattendant told us there would be some turbulence on the way up. Okay, I sat down and started preparing. I started doing some yoga-breathing-exercises and started writing in my travel-diary.

The plane was shaking and jumping on it's way up. It was bad, I was scared - but I was prepared. I was focusing on my breathing - focusing, breathing, counting, focusing, breathing, counting... Trying to write in my diary, but it was shaking so much that it was impossible to write. I started reciting my favorite poem. Everytime I'm afraid of something I always try to say this poem, so I can focus my thoughts on something else. I was chewing chewinggum. I was inhaling my Nicorette-inhalator like it was my last piece of oxygen. But nothing worked...

I always thought the seatbelts on planes were a stupid idea. If you crash, what kind of help will they be anyway? But on this plane I understood it. Without it I would have bumped my head in the roof and the walls many times. I was so scared, so terrified. It was one of the most horrible times of my life.

After a while I was closer to a nervous breakdown than I have ever been before. I grabbed my boyfriend, and was shaking him as I was screaming "Get me some pills! I can't take it anymore! Ask the flightattendent for pills! Why can't it stop jumping soon?!?".

But somehow I survived. I always survive in the end. But I didn't like it nothing. I was terrified about taking all the planes home again and started thinking that maybe I could take a boat back to Norway... But I don't like boats either, so it wasn't a good solution anyway. But I got safely back to Norway again after the travels. Once again I survived. I always survive somehow... ;)