A LONG, LONG TRAVEL DAY

A LONG, LONG TRAVEL DAY

Our day began as it normally would wake at 6:30 and getting ready for the day. One thing was different though, WE WERE GOING TO VIETNAM! Today was the day that we would travel to meet our girls for the very first time. My usual morning routine was to grab Dew and hop on the Internet to read the morning mail. This morning was not like others however. When I clicked on the Internet icon, it froze. I decided I would just restart the computer and get off to a new start. So I did, and when it rebooted I got the dreaded black screen of death! My computer was dead. I tried several times to restart but nothing just a black screen. Now on any given day this would have been a travesty, but today of all days when we were to get on a plane in less than 8 hours to travel half way around the world. What would I do? Computer withdrawal was not in our game plan. I have wanted to share this adoption journey with all our family and friends. Buying a new computer was not in the budget at this point, but if need be I would. I decided to give my computer a time out and see if things would just straighten out. While the computer was in its time out, I decided to double check my packing list just one last time to make sure we didn’t forget anything. I felt comfortable that everything was packed since we have been planning this journey for months now. My only concern was the camera and video cords. I remembered putting them out to be packed, but they are something I use on regular bases so I wanted to check just to make sure. I started looking and could not find a one. Had they been packed in the bags already? I decided I should check just to make sure they were indeed in the luggage. I could not find them in any of the 6 checked bags. Yes, 6 bags. We each can check 2 bags at 50 lbs per bag. Before you think, “Man, she is over packing a bit,” I want to explain that only 2 of the bags have our family’s essentials in it. The other four bags are full to the rim with donations for the children in the orphanages. I have been collecting new and slightly worn clothing for the orphanages for the last few months. I have also been fortunate to have been given money for medical supplies such as band aids, hydrocortisone creams, anti-biotic ointments, lotions for excima, to name a few. Most of the money and medical supplies came from our wonderful church family. Thank you so much.

So after looking for the cords and not finding them, I decided I should switch gears and return to my computer. Just maybe if I pause from searching for the cord it would come to me where they might be. So back to the computer one more time. As I entered the office P was working on the computer, and he was able to get it up and running. What a hero, although I think he had an alternative motive. He knew if I didn’t travel with my computer, his life would be miserable so he was desperate to fix it and he did. He also knew that today would be my last day of have my morning Mountain Dew and probably could not bear the fact of a month of traveling with me without a Dew and a computer would be h*ll.

So with the computer up and running and after of course I checked my morning mail it was back to searching for those darn cords. They had to be packed somewhere, but where? After going through each suitcase again I decided that I would just go buy another set of cords, and if we found them well then I would return the unopened packages to the store when we return. Off I went to three different stores. Just my luck each store had one cord but not all. By the time I hit the last store I had all my cords and I was ready to roll.

After returning home we started packing our bags in the Jeep to go to the airport. As each one was loaded I took a picture of it. Just a precaution from my last trip in which my 2 checked bags did not show up in Vietnam for 5 days. It was difficult standing at the airport lost luggage desk trying to explain as best I could to a very nice Vietnamese lady what my bags looked like. Well, it is a black duffle bag just like all other hundreds of black duffels in the airport that day. So anyway just a precaution that I hope we don’t have to use on this trip. We went through our paperwork one last time making sure we had everything the agency told us we should have. I went through the binders I was leaving family and friends, our itinerary, copies of VISA’s and passports, etc. Everything was ready. I looked at the clock and was ready to go. N would be home soon from college to say good bye and we would be off. Now I read and reread our itinerary, I sent it to P, family and friends so they would know our travel schedule. I had it in my mind that our flight left at 4 pm so we should leave for the airport a little after 2. So we had A in one Jeep with P and the luggage, N drove T and me to the airport right after they left. Everything was good. My computer was working, I had cords for my electronics, and I savored my last Dew for a very long time. We were off, off to meet our girls!

T and I meet P and A in the lobby of the airport where P was checking in the luggage. I was talking with A saying our good byes and P said M in that tone of we have a problem here. (P says he does not have a tone, but he does.) We had missed our first flight. How in the world could we have done this? I had no one to blame but myself. I had sent the itinerary out to many but as I have done many times before when P has traveled I glance at it and set it aside. All this time I had misread the fight time, I must have read it over and over and each time 4 pm posted to my memory. Even though we missed our first flight we were able to get on the 3:30 fight without a problem.

As we were sitting on the plane waiting to taxi I told P I hoped that we were getting all this out of the way so we could have a problem free journey from here on out. We made it to Dallas without any problems and headed to our gate. We had a short 30 minutes to grab something to eat, use the facilities and load the plane. As we scarffed down our food and headed to the gate it was just in time to see that do to circumstances in San Fran our flight would be delayed at least an hour in the terminal and up to 40 minutes on the tarmac. Not to panic we had a long layover in San Fran to catch out 1:30 am flight. All I kept thinking was just get all the difficulties out of our way before we meet the girls.

We made it to San Fran and noticed that although we had tickets, receipts and itineraries, we had no boarding passes. We went to the EVA travel lounge, since we could not find any EVA employees at the gate. The woman at the lounge took pity on us and helped us get booked into the flight, sent our baggage numbers down to make sure they had been transferred and told us where we could wait. Once the EVA gate staff got there, P went up to get boarding passes. He came back with boarding cards for T and P, but I did not yet have a seat assigned. As we were in line boarding, P went up and got me my seat. The EVA economy deluxe seating was well worth the money. The seats were comfortable and had foot rests. We were all able to sleep on the 13 hour flight to Taipei. We had a three hour lay over in Taipei before we flew to Vietnam. We used the time to stretch our legs and charge the computer and T’s game.

Arrived in Vietnam at noon on the 18th with all our Bags!!! The VN staff was at the airport and met us as we left the door.