Chatting above the clouds

One thing I appreciate about the trip to Honolulu is that this time, I wasn't alone. I was travelling with a fellow PhD student, Chanthakhone, who's enrolled in Thailand. For the first time, I had a companion, and she's one chatty lady at that! We weren't seated adjacent to each other in the Manila-Nagoya flight, but we were seated next to each other in the next two segments. With a friend along, the usually boring lay-overs became not so strenuous anymore.

Aside from her, I also struck up an interesting conversation with a teacher from Saipan (I didn't get her name, though). She's left her job back home to go to Missouri for military training... she's a member of the reserve corps of the US army, and she was to be deployed for a year someplace. She has two children, whose pictures were in a gadget that looked like an ipod but contained pictures only. And then, she plans to study for her PhD in leadership or in a course that can provide the skills needed in being a boss in school. She was also one chatty lady. It's a wonder how easily people tell their stories to strangers in airplanes!