The Guy Behind Us

It's pure luck who sits near you on the plane. You could get stuck next to that crying baby. The snorer could be snoring in your left ear. Someone with a bladder disorder could be sitting in the window seat to your aisle. You just never know.

For a 15 hour flight, it's really important whom you get stuck next to and near. Luckily on this flight that we just took from Chicago to Hong Kong, there were 169 seats available (I didn't count - I saw it on the monitor before we left), so Matt and I got our own three-seat-row, and so did the guy behind us. We had no crying baby. We had a snorer, but with headphones, it wasn't too disturbing. We had nothing else, other than this really annoying guy behind us. He drummed on the windows. While the whole plane slept in darkness, he opened the window shade into bright, white tundra about twice an hour. When he stood up, he used the backs of our chairs for support, including grabbing my hair while grabbing my chair. He drummed on the tray table with his glass. He talked really loudly to his friends in other rows, and I think he did not sleep a minute. Sucks for him. Sucked for us also. We did ask him not to use our seats for support to stand up, but the rest sort of just comes with the plane ride. Could have been worse...

Other than our pretty uneventful plane ride, all has been well in the last week (another delayed post...). We have basically just been hanging with family and friends. We had two wonderful seders, one with the Birnholtz clan and one with the Hildebrandt clan. We had our annual visits with relatives and friends, running from one to the next, but enjoying each one. We had special visits with Jill, Josh, Harry, Shana, a few other friends and so many cousins and grandparents.

The tough part of this trip is that we don't know when the next time will be that we're in the states. We're pretty confident that it will not be next Passover (and this will be my first Passover not with my family - and second not at home!), and it might not be until July 2011. Hopefully that will not be the case, but we just don't know yet. Gorgeous 70 degree and sunny weather did not help our motivation to get on a plane and head back to HOT HOT HOT Singapore. But, we did it, and now we're only 5.5 hours away from being home, and only 14 hours away from returning to work.