"Flight Attendants, Please Prepare for Take Off!!"

Hi and welcome to my blog! I am sure you already know by now but I am a flight attendant for a U.S. carrier! I have been flying a little over a year now and the people I have met and places I have gone have changed my life. After sharing bits and pieces of my adventures with friends and family through facebook and phone calls has inspired me to start a blog and share them with the world! First, I'll start  by telling you a little about myself.  I am from a very small country town in the southern part of the states. I went to college at a SEC University and becoming a flight attendant was the first job I got out of college. Being a flight attendant was always a dream of mine.  I had a close family friend that was one and getting to watch her life and hear her stories always intrigued me! I would always watch the company I currently work for website to see if they were hiring. One day while sitting in my college class I decided why not check out to see if they were hiring. To my surprise they were! If you were hired you MUST be willing to relocate to New York City! How much fun would that be!!? So I applied. A week later I received the "Thank but no thank you" email from them because I did not have my passport. My birthday was just a few weeks away so I asked my family to give me cash for my birthday so I could get my passport. After spending all my birthday money having my passport expedited, I reapplied. Several weeks went by without hearing anything about my application. One day while shoe shopping with my boyfriend, I received a email on my phone saying I needed to take a "personality test" which could take up to three and a half hours! My boyfriend and I left the store immediately and went home to take the test. It sure did take me the whole three and a half hours to take the test! After I was finished, I received a email saying I successfully passed the test! The email also said that the hiring process takes several months and to not contact them, that they would contact me. Two months went by without any contact from them.  By this time I had almost given up on getting the job.  As graduation from college was getting closer and closer, I decided to apply for my first credit card so I could build some credit. I started getting a lot of phone calls from unknown or blocked numbers trying to get me to sign up for all these credit cards. One morning, I got a call from "unknown" about 9:10am (in college, that was SUPER early for me!!). When I saw "unknown" on the ID of my phone I got so mad because these dumb credit card people had woken me up so I answered the phone in a very ugly "helllooo?". The response I got back was not the response I was expecting!!! "Hi, this is Josh with [airline carrier]" I quickly  jumped out of my bed, turned on my southern belle voice and begin to apologize! Fortunately for me, Josh was very understanding and started laughing. He told me he was calling to do my phone interview and asked me some very different questions.  Since I have never worked for an airline before I wasn't familiar with how things worked and all the questions were situational "what would you do if..." type of questions. After asking a couple of questions he put me hold. He came back about 5 minutes later and said he would like to fly me to the headquarters for a face to face interview and that he would be emailing me my itinerary! I was shocked! Could not believe it! Two days later I received my email with my flight information and interview packet! That day I went to Ann Taylor and spent almost all of my savings on a suite!! Yes.. an Ann Taylor suite! Boy, it was sharp! The night before my interview, I stayed with my best friend! I knew we would stay up all night giggling and being around her always makes the worries of the world disappear. We went to eat dinner that night and just split a order of loaded french fries. I love spicy food!! So we ordered a lot.. and I mean A LOT of jalapenos on them. We to her house after dinner and giggled all night over a glass of wine and talked about how much fun it would be to live in New York City! Morning came early. Got up and got ready. My best friend drove my car to the airport. As we were pulling into the airport we got stopped at a red light. We sat there talking about how nervous I was and all of a sudden my car started making a really loud "ROARRRRRR" sound an shaking. My best friend had one foot on the break and one foot on the gas!!! We sat at the light and laughed so hard!!! She dropped me off and off I went! I got to my interview and there was about 50+ other people their interviewing as well!! wow.. Almost ALL of them were employed by a different airline or had experience. I had nothing... Most of them were 30 years old or older... I was barely 22 years old... I stood along a wall by myself and watched as everyone else talked and mingled. I stood there for about 25 minutes by myself an no one had made a effort to come over to talk to me.  As other people were arriving, this tan, well dressed, handsome young man walked in and looked right at me.  He came straight up to me and introduced himself as "Kevin Lden".  Little did I know, Kevin was about to be one of my new life long best friends. Kevin and I stood there talking and telling each other about our lives and where we came from. Kevin had previous experience with a mid-eastern airline. I just knew he was going to be hired. As we were about to start the interview process, I felt my stomach burning. One word came to my mind. JALAPENOS... I don't think I need to go into details what happened next. Use your imagination-- The interview process took several hours and hours and hours! But by the end of the day, six other people (including Kevin) and I heard the words "Welcome to the [airline carrier] family!!!" Little did I know how my life was about to change with those five little words!!! I will try my best to share some of my favorite and worse experiences with you, stories that I have been told, food that I have tried and people that I get to met!..... As the captain says..."Flight Attendant's Prepare For Take Off!!" Or in this case.. "Reader's... Prepare For Take Off!!"