I'd never thought of flying as something I would ever actually want to do in my free time until my family bought me what's called a ‘flying experience day' as a birthday present. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't like some of my friends, who would start shaking with fear at the thought of going in a plane of any size. I'd actually always looked forward to flying off somewhere on holiday, especially that feeling you get when the plane's just taking off. But flying a plane was something other people did, not me.
I started researching the experience day online straight away. The little aircraft I was going to fly in could only go up to 3. 000 meters, which is quite low when you realize big jets fly closer to 10, 000 meters. I found out there was a half-hour talk from the instructor(教练)about safety and the controls. This seemed more than enough to me, as I was only going to be in the air for about the same amount of time, which I couldn't quite believe. My parents were amazed that something like that was available for a twelve-year-old girl, but I'm very pleased it was.
On the day, I was quite nervous but Sheena, my instructor, was very calm, which helped a lot.
She took the controls as we took off, of course. It appeared to take ages to get high up, but it was only actually a minute or two, and then I took the controls. I was so excited, I wasn't really listening to what Sheena was saying. I was hoping to see my house but it was hard to work out where everything was from the air. Even though we were flying at 280 kilometers per hour, you could hardly tell we were moving when you looked down.
I'm now so into flying that I'm considering it as a career. I'll need to get a pilot's license, of course, and I'm happy to save up for more classes to do this. It was such fun that I'd love to do it every day and get paid for it, too. The company that organizes experience days keeps sending emails about train driving and other things, but I only want more of one particular kind of experience now!
