Here I Am, Send Me

For the week that I have been back, I have been trying to come up with how to document the trip here on this blog. There is so much to talk about and so many pictures. I have had a hard time coming up with just how to approach it. I have finally decided that I will take a tip from my pork-loving friend and talk about the trip day by day. It may take me a few weeks to get through it all, so bear with me.

Day 1 and 2 (9/30 - 10/1) - Travel

In the week leading up to departure time, I faced many obstacles. I had a strep throat/mono scare and had to go to the doctor and get on antibiotics, I hit something on the way to work one day and blew out a tire and lost a hubcap, I turned an age that is closer to 30 than it is to 20 (but I had an amazing birthday celebration both that night and on Friday in Delaware), and I became so dizzy and nauseated that I couldn't move for a night or two. I feel very strongly that I was being attacked in order that I would lose my focus. I would be lying if I said I was not scared. In actuality, I felt as if I might not come back. This fear was debilitating. I cried, a lot. However, God is good and prayers work and as soon as we reached the Dulles airport on Saturday afternoon, my fear was gone.

Our first flight was about 8 hours and took us to Amsterdam. We each had our own interactive screens with over 50 movie options, tv shows, games (including group trivia that you can play with anyone on the flight!), and music. We watched movies (Nacho Libre and Take the Lead), played games, and were fed every two hours. By the time we got to Amsterdam, it was Sunday, about 9 am local time, and we had not slept at all. The Amsterdam airport was an interesting place, to say the least.

Please note the item on the bottom left:






After a seemingly endless 3 hour layover, we boarded a plane headed to Nairobi, Kenya. Little did I know that it would be the worst flight of my life. As if being in the very last row of the entire airplane was not torture enough, the person with a ticket for the seat next to me was a half-conscious, extremely smelly, very drunk, middle-aged, European man. Luckily, the flight attendant was able to convince him to switch seats with one of my teammates. Later, I felt bad for moving Ashley to the absolute worst row of the airplane. We smelled stale urine and airplane food for a full 9 hours. Moreover, I was on the aisle. Meaning, the line for the bathroom caused people to stand with their BUTTS in my FACE for hours on end.



That above photo is the last you will see of me with blow-dried, halfway normal looking hair. Not having a hairdryer was much worse than I ever expected it to be. But moving on, we landed in Kenya after flying over miles and miles of desert (awesome! but I was on the aisle so have no photos of it). It finally started to hit me that I was not in America anymore and Africa would be a very different experience. We had a 2 hour layover and met some friends from the Sudan. They shared their stories and we discovered that they were both Christians. This was our first opportunity to pray for specific people and their specific requests.

A couple hours later, we finally landed in Entebbe, Uganda at approximately 11 pm. We stood in line to get our passports stamped, picked up our luggage, and went through customs. We met Brooke (our American friend who helped organize our trip through Christian Life Ministries) outside the airport and she passed out our schedules for the two weeks. As you may or may not have known, we had no idea where our schedule for the second week in country was going to send us. I flipped immediately to week 2 and read, "Team travels to Gulu and stays at the Invisible Children guest house." We jumped up and down and rejoiced. We were going to the North, the war-torn region that drew me to Uganda originally. I knew it was going to be an amazing two weeks and I could hardly wait.

After about 24 hours of travel, we were finally on a bus headed to Kampala, where we would go straight to bed: