Hello! It's me! After 20 hours of flying, I have arrived safely in Hanoi, Vietnam. The flight...sucked. Hard. It was ten times worse than the US to New Zealand flight. Here is why:

When you fly to NZ, you typically leave the US between 9 and 11pm. You get settled on the plane, maybe watch a movie. They feed you and ply you with wine, and then they turn off all the lights and basically tell you to go to sleep. You then magically arrive in NZ around 6am. And it is good.

Flying to Asia, I discovered, is a bit different. The series of events remains unchanged. Board the plane, movie, food, wine, lights off, go to sleep....however...my flight left the States at 11am. This essentially means that they turn off the lights and tell you to go to sleep at noon. While this may work for some, it did not work for me. I'm a pretty good sleeper, but for the life of me, I could not sleep. What did I do? I watched six movies back to back, which I believe might be a record for me. I am officially movied-out.

The good news is that I am safe and sound in Hanoi. There was a lovely man holding a card with my name on it as I exited the airport, and I will confess that I was so happy to see him that I almost kissed his smiling face (and no, he did not have cake). He spoke zero English but got me to the guesthouse where I promptly passed out for six hours. It is currently Wednesday, November 16 at about 7:35am and I am awake, showered (that is a whole other story!), and ready to go. Am I slightly afraid to go outside? Not gonna lie, yes, yes I am. However the journey has begun so I better get cracking. Miss you all. See you soon.