My plane was flying out of Chicago at 4 PM. I checked online to make sure the flight was confirmed, because I don't like making phone calls, and in English I'd have suffered with it way beyond measure anyway. We arrived early, but at the wrong building – arrivals instead of departures. Fortunately, there's a surface metro running between the buildings, so it didn't become a problem. I checked in at an automated machine kinda like an ATM, so as not to stand in line. The machine didn't recognize my passport on its own, so I had to enter everything manually. After that, I weighed my luggage and got upset. It turned out that my super-economy class only allows 20 kg, and I had a whole 30. I had read about this beforehand in one place, but hoped I'd get away with it, because other sources either contradicted this or kept quiet. Nevertheless, it was true. Beware of the economy restricted label on tickets! The overweight fee was 50 bucks. Not to say it's a whole lot, but I'm no Rockefeller, so I pulled everything out of the boxes, and crammed the rest into my carry-on. I put my jacket on, which looked weird in the heat. All this junk in my carry-on later made my life much harder at the customs checks. They thoroughly checked me every time, asked me to take everything out and explain what it was, and explained to me that it's not recommended to carry such things in a carry-on. In short, it was a hassle. On the bright side, I was flying home, already had experience roaming around airports, and all of this made my movements much easier. Even so, I almost walked out of the security zone through an employee exit once, but turned onto the escalator just in time.
The officials, however, were always polite. Funny enough, one complimented my boots, and the second was surprised by the small size of the electronics [censored] that I was carrying. This didn't stop them from forgetting to take the departure form out of my passport. Don't repeat my mistake — if you don't hand it in, they might not let you into the US later. If you did repeat it, listen up. From what I managed to find out on the US border patrol website, you don't need to mail it anywhere if you left by plane and not by sea. What you do need is to keep the boarding pass, to prove that you flew out of the US before your authorized stay expired. Then, if you fly to the US again, you just take it with you.
On the way back in the American Airlines plane, I sat at the very, very back of the cabin on the right. Right next to the emergency exit. So I read the instructions on how to open it even twice, but there was still something I didn't like about it. Which means they could have made it clearer. I also watched the movie “Secondhand Lions” for the second time, a very good kids' film. I listened to the airplane radio a lot, where they were talking about something like cancer treatment and charities. For example, one that fulfills the dreams of dying and severely ill children — a guy from there asked to donate anything you can, especially free airline miles, because there's never enough of them, as sick kids love to travel. I'm generally not particularly healthy myself, and a kid at heart, so you'd be better off donating miles to me — I love traveling too.