Chile Plus3: Day of Travel (Post 1)

After a late night of last-second packing, I was hardly able to roll out of bed to prepare for my 24 hour
journey. I am not going to lie, I had some concerns about such a long airplane
ride with people that I hardly knew. I was concerned about things such as leg
space, food, the passenger next to me, etc. I simply had no idea what the heck
I would be doing while sitting in the same seat for 10 hours...     
My travel plan was as follows: 10 am flight to New York and a 2 pm flight to Atlanta with a four hour layover
until the flight to Chile--it might seem like a bad itinerary, but it most
definitely beat the 6 am direct flight to Atlanta with a very long and lonely
12 hour layover.    
After eating my last meal of quality USA food (McDonalds), I was greeted by some of my fellow Pitt Panthers.
Sure, it was a little awkward, but eventually we started to talk to each other,
kind of; guys talked to the guys and the girls talked to the girls. None the
less, it was a step in the right direction. On the flight, I passed the time by
watching movies; one airline provided film and the other a choice of my own,
the God Father part ll. Out side of the approx. five hours of film, I attempted
to sleep. This was not at all a success, at most I got 30 minutes of quality
sleep and two hours of an odd and confusing partially-conscious state. After
throwing in the towel and removing my awesome pillow and eye mask, I looked out
the window to see the sun peeking over the mountainous horizon of Chile. Until
this point, I have never seen anything like it, and apparently neither have the
Chileans--the flashes of their cameras were at times blinding. The mountains,
some appearing as high as the plane, looked like simple piles of sand as though
we were flying through a giant sandbox. With this odd sight, I knew that there
would be many more to follow and that this Plus3 experience was going to be
like none that I've ever had before.