Flying to Puerto Rico

I do have pictures, but not the cord to upload them. So till I get back to Qatar, you'll have to settle for my words. On Thursday morning Lyssa dropped me off at the airport to begin a long trip to Puerto Rico where I'd be presenting at the Puerto Rico TESOL conference. The first leg of my journey was flying to JFK in New York (about a 12 hour flight). Fortunately Qatar Airways gives you plenty of movies to watch, so I entertained myself watching the following:

G.I. Joe: You know, this got awful reviews, so I had pretty low expectations. I actually found it moderately enjoyable (largely due to the fairly cool ninja characters).

Transformers 2: Also got bad reviews, but I figured G.I. Joe wasn't so bad, so I might actually enjoy it. I've got to be honest though: I think this is one of the worst movies I've ever seen. I found it offensive and boring at nearly every level. I hate every detail of this movie: even the character's names (Sam Wickity? Seriously?).

Up: Having finished with the guilty pleasure movies, I moved to things I actually wanted to watch. I found this one really delightful and thoughtful. It's also a very good-looking movie. I could have just stared at those colorful balloons all day.

500 Days of Summer: This movie is still pretty formulaic as a rom-com, but the leads were very likable and I could really relate.

Dr. No: So Qatar Airways has every single James Bond movie in their catalog. Having exhausted all my other options, I decided to start with the very first Bond flick. The production values are pretty low, but Sean Connery makes it all work somehow.

In a lot of ways I feel like James Bond, traveling from the Middle East to the Caribbean. At various points I had to ask myself--is this really my life? Is this actually what I do? I've got to admit I'm incredibly lucky to have these kinds of opportunities.

We landed in New York where I saw something I hadn't expected--Autumn. Now this may not mean much to you, but I haven't seen fall since 2007, and I gotta admit that as we flew over Brooklyn and I saw all the red and brown leaves and the light drizzle of rain, tears definitely swelled up in my eyes.

I had plenty of time to soak it in, since I had about a five-hour layover. That may have been enough time to go out and do something, but since I hadn't thought about it before I didn't bring any warm clothes with me. So I just kicked it for a while. The Jet Blue terminal has free WiFi so I got to talk to Lyssa a bit. But it was late there, so she went to bed. I wandered around the terminal half awake, since my body thought it was much later. I was honestly surprised to look at a clock as I ate dinner to see that it was only 7pm. I was worried that it was like 10pm, and I had missed my flight. Needless to say, by the time I finally got on the plane, I had no trouble sleeping on it.

We got in to San Juan around 1:40am. I made reservations at the airport hotel, but I had to wait at least 30 minutes at the baggage carousel. When I finally made it up to my room, I got a few things together for the morning, chatted with Lyssa for a minute, and finally laid down to sleep for about 4 hours so I could then pick up my rental car in the morning, and make the drive to Ponce, where the conference was being held.