The past week and a half has been a whirlwind – scrambling to check in resources, making sure my suitcase is packed, running to get police permission to travel. Finding out I don’t need police permission to travel. Running to another police station to double check – yes, no need for police permission if you take a Grab driver. Making copies of my passport. Printing off plane tickets, getting a COVID test to travel, printing off the COVID test results for traveling. Saying goodbye to all of my classes in back to back Google Hangout meetings, crying over all the people who left.

And then…travel.

Man, I haven’t been on a plane in a year and a half and I forgot how far Texas is from Malaysia. I mean, mentally, I know it, but experiencing it is just a whole ‘nother level. I knew I was in for it when I got off my eight hour flight from Kuala Lumpur to Seoul – not so bad, got to stretch and walk around Incheon airport for a couple of hours. Can’t lie, I felt a bit overconfident, like sure, we can do this.

Then came the fourteen hour flight from Seoul to Atlanta. You know it’s long when you’ve read a book, played video games, watched two movies, and you look at the clock and you still have four hours left.

Have mercy upon my cramped legs and aching back.

And then we get there early and have to stay in a holding pattern for twenty minutes. Not too bad, but….do you know what “stay in a holding pattern” feels like when you’ve been in the air for fourteen hours? As the BBC radio show, Cabin Pressure, puts it, “Scream if you want to go faster!”

But we got there eventually and I ran around the massive Atlanta airport, carrying my heavy carry-on until I started losing circulation in my shoulder because of the bag strap.

I ended up waiting in line to get on my last flight next to a guy who turned and told me, “I am too tired to be alive right now. I’ve been up since 4 o’clock this morning.”

I didn’t have the heart to crush his pride in being awake so long by mentioning I’d been up since 5 two days ago (sleeping on an airplane is more like closing your eyes and jerking awake in spasms trying not to let your limbs end up in someone else’s way). A little nod of sympathy went a long way and we got on board with no further sleep competition needed.

I’ve been trying to capture what it felt like when I made it off the plane – disheveled, aching, excited, exhausted – and saw my parents waiting for me.

A global pandemic. A half a world away. A year and a half.

The longest I have ever been apart from them. And all I kept having run through my head, as cliche as it sounds, is a line from a Christina Perri song:

You put your arms around me and I’m home.