WARNING: This post will make your brain hurt; do not read unless you are willing to exercise your powers of mental visualization and comprehension. If this does not sound fun to you, skip the first paragraph and read on from there. :)
We are finally here in Nagpur. I am so exhausted. We flew to Newark NJ, where we had a 5 hour layover, and then boarded our Continental airplane at 8:30pm. Our tickets told us that we were to arrive in Delhi at 8:15pm Make sure you read that right: leave at 8:30pm, arrive at 8:15pm. A fourteen hour flight? We knew that couldn’t be right, and we knew it had something to do with time zones, but it wasn’t until we got onto the plane, and I saw the flight maps that it made sense. On a map of the world, we were flying from Florida to Delhi, that is, west to east, or left to right. The “darkness” of night which covered half the earth was in the smack dab center of the map. We were on its shore, about to cross into it. If the shadow were stationary, then we would emerge on the other side of the dark ocean, in India’s “morning” (these terms all become so relative when you see the grand scheme of things…hahaha, I guess that’s why its called the theory of relativity, read on to better understand). However, because the shadow on the map was NOT stationary, this would not be the case. As we would travel east/right across the map, the shadow would be traveling west/left. So looking at the map, the “night” and us on the plane, would be “crossing paths” so to speak, moving in opposite directions. We would be flying (literally) through the night, in affect, racing against and through time. By the time we got to Delhi, the shadow would, not only have passed across the US, but all the way around to the other side of the earth, to meet us again, right where we left it, in a way. That is, we left America, staring into the shadow of night, and arrived in Delhi in the exact same position. We had traveled through a twelve hour night, and missed another twelve hour day, in 13 hours—in affect, we time-traveled :). I know this is all very confusing, and I wonder if it will make sense at all reading it, without a map/diagram/3D model to illustrate my words. It will at least give you something to think about.
[For those of you who don’t want a head-ache, this is where you start reading].
The affect, from within the plane was this: we left as it was getting dark. A couple hours later, I was getting ready to sleep, by my regular schedule; but of course, Anna and I stayed up talking (the first of many feasts of fellowship). I also watched a Bollywood movie-which was amazing! I loved it :). So finally, after it had been dark for maybe five hours, I decided to try to sleep, I dozed off and what felt like moments later, light began to shine through the windows. It was so strange! Then, when we arrived in Delhi, it was night again. Add to this the disoriented children, a strange-out food schedule (breakfast for dinner), and a living space that might have rivaled Chinese forms of confinement torture. Hahaha, ok, it wasn’t that bad, but there were times when it felt like it—especially since it went on for 13 hours. We didn’t stop in Europe at all, as I have for other trips across the Atlantic, but flew straight to India. We had been up for 26 hours, with nothing more than a few hours each of shallow sleep. In all honesty nothing has, and I don’t expect anything in India will, been more uncomfortable than that lengthy flight…but it was totally worth it :).
*Note: We are 9 and 1/2 hours ahead of Eastern Time. So, if it is 10:00am in Florida, it is 7:30pm here.
We are finally here in Nagpur. I am so exhausted. We flew to Newark NJ, where we had a 5 hour layover, and then boarded our Continental airplane at 8:30pm. Our tickets told us that we were to arrive in Delhi at 8:15pm Make sure you read that right: leave at 8:30pm, arrive at 8:15pm. A fourteen hour flight? We knew that couldn’t be right, and we knew it had something to do with time zones, but it wasn’t until we got onto the plane, and I saw the flight maps that it made sense. On a map of the world, we were flying from Florida to Delhi, that is, west to east, or left to right. The “darkness” of night which covered half the earth was in the smack dab center of the map. We were on its shore, about to cross into it. If the shadow were stationary, then we would emerge on the other side of the dark ocean, in India’s “morning” (these terms all become so relative when you see the grand scheme of things…hahaha, I guess that’s why its called the theory of relativity, read on to better understand). However, because the shadow on the map was NOT stationary, this would not be the case. As we would travel east/right across the map, the shadow would be traveling west/left. So looking at the map, the “night” and us on the plane, would be “crossing paths” so to speak, moving in opposite directions. We would be flying (literally) through the night, in affect, racing against and through time. By the time we got to Delhi, the shadow would, not only have passed across the US, but all the way around to the other side of the earth, to meet us again, right where we left it, in a way. That is, we left America, staring into the shadow of night, and arrived in Delhi in the exact same position. We had traveled through a twelve hour night, and missed another twelve hour day, in 13 hours—in affect, we time-traveled :). I know this is all very confusing, and I wonder if it will make sense at all reading it, without a map/diagram/3D model to illustrate my words. It will at least give you something to think about.
[For those of you who don’t want a head-ache, this is where you start reading].
The affect, from within the plane was this: we left as it was getting dark. A couple hours later, I was getting ready to sleep, by my regular schedule; but of course, Anna and I stayed up talking (the first of many feasts of fellowship). I also watched a Bollywood movie-which was amazing! I loved it :). So finally, after it had been dark for maybe five hours, I decided to try to sleep, I dozed off and what felt like moments later, light began to shine through the windows. It was so strange! Then, when we arrived in Delhi, it was night again. Add to this the disoriented children, a strange-out food schedule (breakfast for dinner), and a living space that might have rivaled Chinese forms of confinement torture. Hahaha, ok, it wasn’t that bad, but there were times when it felt like it—especially since it went on for 13 hours. We didn’t stop in Europe at all, as I have for other trips across the Atlantic, but flew straight to India. We had been up for 26 hours, with nothing more than a few hours each of shallow sleep. In all honesty nothing has, and I don’t expect anything in India will, been more uncomfortable than that lengthy flight…but it was totally worth it :).
*Note: We are 9 and 1/2 hours ahead of Eastern Time. So, if it is 10:00am in Florida, it is 7:30pm here.
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