Okay, so I’m not really packing up as I write this – I’m sitting in the Portland airport waiting to catch my next flight.

I read the post I wrote when I was heading to Japan for the first time last summer. I was anxious, full of excitement, extremely apprehensive, and ultimately, absolutely terrified of what I was going to find and what was going to happen to me when I got off that plane on the other side of the Pacific Ocean.

This time around, things are different. It’s a little bizarre to think that I’m taking less things even though I’m coming for a much longer period of time.  I packed two giant suitcases on my first trip over; this trip I’ve brought just one giant suitcase and a smaller carry-on-ish sized one.  There was no frantic packing.  If anything, I procrastinated.  I sat around on my computer finding more exciting things to do than pack and attempted to will my things to get into my bags (it didn’t work very well, for the record).

I arrived in PDX this morning to find my flight to SFO had been canceled – canceled yesterday, in fact.  Why I wasn’t notified I have no idea, but I headed to the ticket counter and stood there half-asleep while four equally stumped women tried to re-book me.  I just let them deal with it, enjoyed my standing nap, and walked away re-booked, bags re-routed…so now I’m waiting.  And debating whether I want a nap or a coffee.

Riveting action here, folks!

With any luck, sometime in the next few hours my luggage and I will be on a plane to Narita.  Let’s keep our fingers crossed!

This blog post has been brought to you by boredom, sleep deprivation, and PDX Wi-Fi.  I’ll try to be more coherent in the future.