I'm in the USA

From this afternoon:

I am sitting in the Detroit Michigan airport. So far, it looks a lot like Brisbane. I was hoping it was be more specifically American. All I know about Detroit is from Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine, and that makes me nervous. The people at the airport seem fairly harmless. Plus I remember from somewhere that some cars come from Detroit.

It’s still Sunday. It has been for about a week, now. We flew from Hong Kong to Narita Airport, Tokyo, at 8:20 on Sunday morning. That took four hours. Then we flew to Detroit, OVER THE NORTH POLE. No sign of Santa. The flight was very crowded, and I’m sure North West have done a lot of testing to determine the absolute minimum amount of space in which you can keep a human alive. I’m sure parrots have been smuggled in more generous conditions. Since I can sleep absolutely anywhere, any time, that was my main entertainment. There were no individual entertainment screens, which was a real bummer, because the big screen was miles away, and there were no little drop-down screens, and I couldn’t see through the man’s head in front of me, and they showed the same two movies on both legs of the trip! I didn’t bring a book, because I’d decided to veg and watch movies.

Enough whinging about the trip. We’re here in the USA. Going through customs is always a bit nerve-wracking, but I feel nervous and guilty whenever I walk past the lady who checks your bags at Kmart. We went through the new machines – the full body scanner, or something like that, which LOOKS THROUGH YOUR CLOTHES!!!! You don't want to see THAT video on the internet.... I thought about putting my hands over my face. As usual, I set off the bipper when I went through the metal detector. This time, though, when I took off my bangles, it didn’t bip the second time. The customs people were very polite. Security is a very serious business here.

We went and ate at a sort of Tex Mex chili-burger place called Chilis, which was a bit like a downscale Cactus Jack’s.

The big excitement is that tomorrow, we have the whole day free, and Nancy (a teacher from school) and I are investigating going down to New York for the day. It’s a three hour trip by road, but I think it’s worth it. I also found out that Boston is only one hour away by road, so that’s also an option. I hope we get to go to New York.

Later..

I'm in the hotel. Nancy and I are donig the train tomorrow, and will probably get on the hop on/hop off bus to zip around and visit some of the big spots. With only eight hours, I think that's our best bet!!!! It's not as cold as I expected, thank goodness. Off to bed now:)