Travels

I post today from the fabulous city of Los Angeles CA. I'm attending a conference for NAFSA, the Association of International Educators, which is the largest forum for my career field. There are currently 7,400 participantsin LA for this conference and the attendance is down from the 12,000 who attended the conference in Washington D.C. last year. I didn't go to that conference because of Callum's arrival. Anyway, it is always amazing, overwhelming and uplifting to do anything with NAFSA. The trip here was alright although I hit a few snags. My flight from Cincinnati to Los Angeles was oversold and guess who didn't have a seat? Yup. I managed to get on after the airline offered up vouchers for other travelers and they re-routed a few people. Normally I would have given up my own seat but since I was traveling for business, I figured that I'd better just get there already. But I didn't get the joy of perusing the airport and eating breakfast after my stupidly early 6 a.m. flight from Harrisburg. I had to stalk the ticket booth to make sure that they didn't forget me! Then I got onto the 6 hour flight to find out that all food, other than a microscopic sized bag of peanuts, must be purchased! Drinks were free- how generous! My past couple of long flights have gone abroad and it must be an FAA rule to feed people so I've never gone hungry. But yesterday I shelled out $2 for a bag of M&M's. Pretty sad. After my 50 minute shuttle ride from LAX to the Westin, I was about 3 hours early for check in so I had to lug myself from the hotel to the convention center. It looked a lot closer when I was riding in the shuttle. I wouldn't have walked with my laptop and purse if I would have realized that it was at least 10 blocks away. I did manage to get into my hotel room early which was a blessing, especially since the hotel oversold and were turning people away. Gotta love how the travel industry treats customers. One tip that makes a difference if you are traveling- sign up for the priority card with the hotel before getting there. I was able to skip a line of 10 people to check in simply because I had the little plastic card. All in all, things are going well although it would have been great to sleep in past 4:34 a.m. Jet lag can be brutal and totally uncontrollable. Iain and Callum are fairing well through my absence but I have a feeling that once I get back Callum won't let me out of his sight for a little while. Separation anxiety is a stage that he just doesn't seem to outgrown. Anyway, I miss my guys and look forward to my uber early flight home on Friday. Like Dorothy always said it best, "There's No Place Like Home!".