We took off from Cincinnati and landed in Chicago to catch our flight to Narita. The international terminal in Chicago looks really cool with all the American flags, so we had to take a picture there. But it was so busy, we almost got knocked over trying to take this picture!
Once we got on the plane, the kids were amazed by how big and modern it was! Every seat had its own TV screen and they could watch as many movies or TV shows as they wanted. There were tons to choose from. But one of the coolest features was the window. Usually there is a little shade you can pull down to keep it dark at your seat, but this window had a little control button that you pushed to make the window darker or lighter.
Except when you couldn't control it at all because "they" were controlling it for you! When it was meant to be "night" so everyone in the plane could "sleep" (ha, good luck with that!), the window made it look like it was dark outside and Ellie couldn't change it at all. Which was a bummer because before we left, she had a hypothesis that as we flew west toward Japan, it would never get dark because we were always heading toward daytime. It was really hard for her to test it, but she worked really hard to find the sun, and she was finally able to! So, even though it was tough to test her hypothesis, she was able to see that for the 12 hour flight from Chicago to Narita, it never actually got dark outside.
Here's a picture of my class parrot, Omu-kun, watching the safety video at his seat. Very fancy.