On Our Way

3pm EST, Sunday January 15

Well, here I am, sitting in the Newark, NJ airport watching the Peruvians board their flight to Peru, the Chinese to Hong Kong, the Swedes to Stockholm. And me, an American, to France, to Paris! I haven’t posted on the Internet yet about my trip because I don’t like to say where I’m going before I leave. Just in case any bad guys try to rob our house. But be warned bad guys: Part of my family is still at home with a very strong, capable male along with a guard dog, security system, and guards posted around the perimeters. J My Dad, Emily, and I are actually on our way to Africa, but we have to fly through Europe to get there so we just decided to take a couple day lay over in Paris.

As I sit in the airport it amazes me that I’m about to take the same trip many immigrants took, yet it will take me only 7 ½ hours to fly from the US to France. I actually flew near Ellis Island as we landed. Millions of immigrants over the last hundred years have taken that trip (the opposite way), by boat. They spent their entire life savings on boat tickets to bring them and their families to a new life. Often they left family members, never to see them again. They left lands of famine, drought, and starvation. Yet, I’m taking the trip in less than a day, and I’m leaving a wonderful home. I will see my family again in a matter of weeks. Times have changed.

*Emily here, I would like to take this time to state that this blog post has been highly embellished and is historically inaccurate. Anna saw a sign for a flight to Sweden, therefore she assumed that everyone in the nearby vicinity was Swedish. She made this same assumption for the flights to Hong Kong and Peru respectively. Also, during our flight we were in the general area of New York City. Therefore, Anna made another (faulty I might add) assumption that we must have flown directly over Ellis Island. While this post maybe entertaining, do not assume that any of it is actually true. Signed your editor, Emily.

**Anna here again. Okay, perhaps I embellished things a bit, but not as much as Emily suggests. There are Chinese people milling around, no I did not check their passports to see if they were Chinese but they sure looked it, same with Sweden and Peru.  It just sounded better that way. And maybe we didn’t flying directly over Ellis Island, but we flew right next to New York City and I could see where Ellis Island would be if we were just a little bit closer. Trust me, it was there.