This morning I continued chatting with the stewardesses. It was a beautiful but very short night. The moon went down. The sun came up. Fast. I ate cookies that one of the stewardesses made, and taught them better English while learning a little bit more Taiwanese. I also spoke with a nice lady who used to live in Tucson but now lives in Saudi Arabia since her husband works for Hughes. Just a few hours after the sun set, it was time for breakfast. One of the stewardesses indicated to me that I should sit down if I wanted to eat. Up until this point I had been putting off going back to 27A because I had to crawl over a strange man and my mother to get there. At this point, however, I awakened mom and jumped over the guy. Suddenly I was asleep. I have no idea how much later (but probably just minutes) mom woke me up to let me know that the food was here. That would be probably 7ish AM whatever local time it was, or like, just after midnight Taipei / China time. Good hashed browns. Good sausage. The eggs tasted nasty. Fortunately, yoghurt was also included.
I tried to sleep more but it wasn’t coming. I noticed "Monsters, Inc" was playing, so I put on my headphones but unfortunately (for me) it was in Japanese so I didn’t get much out of it except the basic storyline. When the movie was over I cracked the window shade and saw land. It looked like California, but I thought we were still a good hour north of there. Then the movie ended and the TV screen flipped to the moving map and LO AND BEHOLD, it was indeed California, and just 150 miles north of LAX and 29 minutes out. Life was beautiful. It felt good to see my home country again. I could see a DC-9 or something several thousand feet below us on a parallel track into LAX; I watched it for a few minutes before I got bored. Our pilot was sort of aggressive on the controls so it was fun coming into LAX, but it wasn’t long before we were on the ground. Then we had to sit for like, 10 minutes on the ramp before the gate was open for us. I was so zonked that I wound up being the last one off the plane. One of my new stewardess friends gave me a deck of cards. Mom and I waited for about 10 minutes in the immigration line. Then we waited 5 minutes for our bags at the baggage claim. Then we waited 10 more minutes in the Customs line. No issues at any of them. Then we walked a good 10 minutes from Terminal 4 where our 747 arrived, to Terminal 1 from whence Southwest Airlines would be departing. On the way I realized mom had ILLEGALLY IMPORTED FRUIT. Yes, there was a Chinese apple in my backpack that she had put there unbeknownst to me. 8P We checked in at the Southwest counter, then went through security. It’s funny how nobody in Asia looked twice at my jar of tea, and here just about every vaguely-official looking person was like "what is that?" hehehe The lady at the security checkpoint must have thought it was weed or something, because when I said "it's tea," she said "drink some." So I did. She kind of looked at me funny but told me to go ahead.
We got to the gate about 45 minutes before boarding, stood in line *again* for another 10 minutes to get our boarding passes, and then I sat down while mom went off to buy coffee. Then mom came back and we sat for a while and finally boarded. Then I passed out in my seat and pretty much woke up right before we landed in Tucson. My good friend Linda met us at the gate, but she couldn’t talk. Through her muffled speech, we determined that she had just had her wisdom teeth out. I said "Wow. You’re a really good friend to pick us up after having had your wisdom teeth out just 2 hours ago." Then she drove us home, and I gratefully climbed into my own bed. The trip was over, but the jet lag was just beginning...