Day 5 - The final journey

Beth drove me down to the airport at about 10 minutes till 6AM, and arrived around 6:20ish. She had wanted to get me there by 6AM though, so we were "late".

The airport looked really busy, but there was only one line to get in and get bags checked. 2 sets of doors and one big turnstile, but only 1 door was actually being used. Well, for the most part. About 15-20 Lebanese and other Arabs decided all at one time to leave the line we were in and just cut infront of everyone by going thru the other door and turnstile. Just like their driving. If they want to get infront of you (driving or in line), they just do it. No respect for the fact that the people already infront of you have been waiting longer.

At the bag check-in area, I asked where Iraqi Airways was and the guy told me, "The other side, over there" pointing about 100 yards away. I wandered down past each desk, not seeing Iraqi Airways anywhere. I asked someone else at the other end and she said she thought it was on the other side (the side I just came from). I walked back halfway and asked someone else, he didn't understand what I was asking and looked at my boarding pass and pointed towards where I started. One last person asked where I was headed and pointed me to the right area. It took about 1.5+ hrs to finally get thru all the checkpoints till I finally got on the plane for Baghdad. I wasn't sure if I was going to make it in time, but I did.

During the flight, the guy next to me (who spoke decent-broken English, whose main language was Arabic) started talking to me. We conversed on and off for the majority of the flight, and I tried to help him with his laptop as he had a wireless issue.

Since a lot happened today and since I never went to sleep, it feels like today will never end. I can't believe it's only 9:45PM right now. I'll try to shorten the rest of this post.

Arrived in Baghdad, took a while to get thru customs, got picked up by Chris Catranis, and headed off with his driver under almost VIP treatment. Sometimes the security guards didn't bother looking at my passport because of the Iraqi guy with us.

We drove to a few places and then stopped at the helicopter pad where we were to take the chopper to the base. There were 14 people there to get flown to various areas, and with only 2 military choppers, they only took 12. Guess who got left behind? Chris and myself. We had to wait for the next chopper, which they said wouldn't be till the next day. While we were trying to make sure we had a spot on tomorrow's flight, one of the pilots said he'd try to make one more trip around 7-8PM. This meant Chris and I only had to wait 5 hours with basically nothing to do.
We did fall asleep for an hour or two in the chairs there though.

Finally, the choppers came back, picked us up and flew us to the base. Woooo, final destination complete. Met up with Peter and Michelle, got some food, drove to a couple places real quick and headed back to the trailers. End of story for today, I think. Going to fall asleep for a long long time real soon.