Flying out of Warsaw

​The in-flight entertainment system cycles through maps of our intended route, which looks extremely familiar. We're flying, in eight hours, over the route Carrie and I will re-track in the opposite direction. Minsk, Moscow, Novosibirsk, Ulaanbaatar, Beijing. It's all there.

My seat-mate, Katerina, has only flown once before, so she asks me questions about what's normal. Is it always so hot inside an airplane before you take off? Can we watch movies on these screens? She won't let me take her picture, because I threatened that she'd show up on my blog and she didn't put on her make-up. She's pretty anyway, and like so many of the Katerinas and Katherines in my life, she's outgoing and friendly. She's off to spend a year at a university in Tianjin, studying Chinese language and literature. We hope nothing else will blow up while she's there. (But it turns out that her name is Karolina.)

This is a first for me, too; my first flight on a 787 Dreamliner. I like it, for the comfortable cabin, quiet engines, and a very smooth and quiet takeoff. I'll miss most of it though. I'm planning to sleep.