It's not living in Mexico that scares me. It's Customs, Baggage Check. Hopping the wrong plane. Losing my ticket. Losing my passport. Urgh.
The plan was that I leave Wednesday. Brilliant. My ticket would be paid for by the agency and would be extracted from the money I made the last time I was there.
I haven't got paid yet. That sounds disturbing, but waiting six or seven months to be paid for a job (even the smallest of them) isn't that out of the ordinary for a model, especially not for international work. Though it is disconcerting. The money has to go through so many different hands before it gets to you, and most time the method that it travels is confusing and backwards. The agency can not pay you until the company pays you, and the company may wait until the campaign or event or commercial has been run and become profitable or they need to be reminded etc. There's got to be some way we can streamline the process, because right now, it only just seems to work.
We had been pretty sure that I'd be leaving Wednesday, but having not heard from anyone about it becoming concrete, I kind of assumed that wednesday wouldn't happen. I really should know by now that nine times out of ten the ball will start rolling at the last minute and if someones says something will happen, even if you don't hear from them again, it will. I get a call on Tuesday at 6:00pm that my flight will be leaving from the SMF airport on Wednesday, 6:00am. I was packed, ish.
Advice to any traveler: Never assume anything. We spent the night packing like fiends, downloading useful apps, setting up a home-share, loading a coffee card, and reviewing currency exchange rates. To top it off, no matter what I did I could not check into my flight.
That should have told us something. We were told not to worry, but to leave for the airport at the scheduled time.
Neither my mother or I got any sleep.
We left at 3:00. I was probably in a right state. Totally panicked. I had left everything up in the air! I had no idea what to do. I was horribly unprepared.
Even though we had flailed throughout the night, somehow we were on time.
In the end it really didn't matter. The flight wasn't paid for. The seat was reserved, but not bought. It came down to a mistake in authorization through the agency, but by the time someone had realized it, it was too late.
I was so tired that I had a hard time explaining myself to the lady behind the desk at the airport. It was even harder with my parents prompting me: '"Speak up, she can't hear you"', '"Girl, c'mon. Be more assertive, act angrier: people react when you're angry"'.
Really though, in these pressing circumstances, after driving me about an hour to the airport at 3:00 in the morning to find out we might as well drive back home, my parents were extraordinary. Both of them, especially my dad. He is someone who very, very much likes things to play out as planned. He likes perfection, which is beneficial to a graphic designer and makes him a pretty organized and sane guy, but in this case, perfection wasn't possible. My mom is pretty used to the last minute changes and confusion that my job entails, having traveled with me to most of the castings and jobs last time I was in DF.
I tend to internalize things. So while my stomach was in the middle of a roiling tempest, I probably seemed serene, even just a bit sullen. The rest of the day I felt jilted. Like I had been standing on the edge of a cliff with nothing but cold air buffeting me on all sides, only to be jerked back off my feet, picked up, dusted off, and turned back around. I couldn't tell whether or not to be relieved or disappointed. I had been so scared to go, so panicked. Now I felt unstable. And I had a notion that I had thrown my parents under the same bus. This felt worse than an 18 hour delayed flight to New York that my mom and I once had to deal with.
In the end, this false start turned out to beneficial, for me at least. Don't go asking my parents, because I'm sure they'll say different, as they had to drive me to SMF at 3:00am a second time. But in my case, I came to the airport prepared, wide awake with a full night's sleep, pre-packed all my loose ends tied. The worst had happened already, so how bad could traveling to Mexico be after that fiasco? I breezed through the baggage check, I got my coffee, and after a surge of caffeine, everything seemed possible. I'm not saying that telling my parents goodbye was easy. I think, though, that it helped that my mind was preoccupied with a destination.
When I finally stepped into the flight entryway, that snake tunnel that gives you a sense that you're not getting into an airplane, but a spaceship on its way to the moon, I made sure to do a little victory dance when no one was looking. Though if anyone had, I don't think I would've cared. Making that first flight, solo, without a hiccup set me down on cloud nine.
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