We're here! After months of talking about it, then more months planning, we're finally here. I had my doubts at 5:00am Thursday morning when we were told at the United ticket counter that we couldn't enter Singapore without a ticket leaving within 90 days. Our original ticket had us leaving in May, of course we're not planning on staying in S'pore straight through to May, we're planning on going to Vietnam in four days, but we hadn't purchased the ticket as we were told it would be much cheaper here....Anyways, we just changed our return date and the lady at the counter took pity on us and didn't charge us the change fee on that end (changing it back however...) In spite of the counter agents pleasantness, I'm not impressed with United Airways. The plane was older then the plane we flew in on last year on Japan Airlines, and the seats were horribly close together, 18 hours spent with no leg room! Luckily on the flight from Atlanta to San Francisco and the flight from Hong Kong to S'pore we had emergency exit seats with abundant leg room, or it would have been 25 hours with no leg room. Also not a fan of the reservation system for United, i.e. the unexpected change of planes in Hong Kong, of which there was NO MENTION when we booked the flight, and the lack of notification that we would need to have passage beyond S'pore within 90 days before getting to check-in. 30 hours straight traveling is not fun. Last year we spent a night in Tokyo to break up the trip coming and going, I think that is really the smart way to do it.

Leaving the states one of the last images we saw was the beautiful Golden Gate bridge stretched out in the San Francisco bay. Nice image to have as a keeper. Actually from the plane we saw a lot of interesting landscape including some icy mountains in the Aleutian Islands.

Overall, my spirits are definitely better now that the move and the goodbyes are behind us. Now we just need to concentrate on what we have to look forward to. So far, I'm glad to be here.