Somehow I feel I have lost a day even though I actually gained one. Once arriving in Hawaii, my son and I woke up around 10 am with a short 4 and a 1/2 hours of sleep starting from turning the light off at 5:30 am. We had to check out by noon, so it was a hectic 2 hours to accomplish the "we made it okay for the first leg of the journey" phone calls to the islands and Alabama, showers and cleaning up tasks, and packing back up the few things we had a chance to take out of our suitcases before heading down to the lobby to check out for the day. Our flight wasn't until 7:20 in the evening, so we stored our luggage at the hotel and headed out for lunch, then an afternoon at the Honolulu Zoo. This was definitely the highlight of the day, especially watching my son get so excited to take pictures for his classmates of the animals they are studying for their research projects at school. He wants to print out the pictures when we return, put them on a poster, and share them with his classmates. He took the pictures based on the animals each of the third graders are studying for their individual reports. What a great memory he has! I wish mine was still that good. :) By the end of the afternoon walking around the zoo, the lack of sleep was kicking in hard for me, so we sat down for a few minutes and had an Icee, a big treat for an island born boy who resides in a place that does not have the luxury of an Icee machine in the local convenience store.
After such a relaxing afternoon and the lack of sleep attacking my brain, I foolishly thought we still had plenty of time to get ready for our 4:20 shuttle to the airport. Well, by the time we had our luggage pulled out of the storage area by the bell hop, turned in an ID to get a key card to the hospitality hotel room in order to change clothes and freshen up for the long night of flying, then actually getting to the right hotel tower, up the elevator, and to the room where we were going to change, we ended up with only about 20 minutes to take care of last minute details, get back down to the lobby with our luggage, return the key, and get outside to jump on the shuttle....well, almost as soon as we walked in the room, they were calling me to tell me the shuttle was there, albeit a little early, but there waiting nonetheless. I still thought we'd be done and down in 5 minutes, which was the time they were scheduled to pick me up in the first place. What I obviously didn't realize at this point is that the jet lag brain had taken over. I simply couldn't move any faster, and we ended up having to tell the shuttle to go on and pay about $20 more for a taxi because I couldn't pull it together in time. You'd think after so many years traveling back and forth, I'd have learned to budget that extra time for incidentals and such, but it just shows you can't underestimate the debilitating power of operating on a sleep deprived body and brain. :) Even so, we still made it to the airport in plenty of time, albeit a little poorer, and had a nice dinner with another friend who was traveling from Kwaj to the states to see family, such a fun dinner, in fact, that we had to run to catch the plane during the final boarding call. I know, I know...that's terrible, right? I believe it was fated to be one of those trips from the day we left this time...I started off in a huff of unpreparedness and stress and was just never able to shake it off. Chalk it up to just another personal experience to back up what I preach to others, but sometimes forget to practice myself..."when you are prepared, it cuts down on the stress for you and your students and makes for a much more fun and less chaotic experience." Hopefully, I will learn from this umpteenth international trip halfway around the world and have a smoother journey on the way back in a couple of weeks.
You're wondering when the day that I am writing about is going to end, aren't you...well, technically, it's still March 30 in Hawaii when all of this is happening, so I've gained a day, but somehow it feels I lost one since March 30 in Kwajalein was such a blur. I suppose March 30 actually ended somewhere over the Pacific Ocean or on the mainland between Hawaii and Houston, our first stop in the continental United States and the last one before Alabama. I don't care enough at this point to figure out exactly when, but the next 12 hours or so were spent either in the air or in a Texas airport, and March 31 really began for me upon seeing my sweet baby at his grandparent's house when we arrived there around 1 pm on the 31st. I've never seen such a big smile as the one he had looking out the glass patio door when he saw his big brother coming in. They were so excited to play together again that I received not much more than a couple of big hugs and a "me too" in response to the "I missed and I love you's
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