The last day was spent in travel, and as you noticed, no, we didn't get a chance to write from Houston. By the time we had claimed our bags, gone through customs, re-checked the bags, eaten, and gotten to the gate, we only had about 30 minutes till flight time, and honestly, I was way too wiped out to worry with getting the computer out and setting it up! :-)
I had gotten a little bit of a sore throat the night before, and by Houston, I felt like I had quite a cold/allergy attack (never know which!!) and was doing my best to take my Sudafed and be nice to everyone!
I have uploaded all the pictures I have to Snapfish, and will try to send a link to everyone soon! I know, you've seen all the good ones anyway! But, these are much better quality, and of course it's easier to print from there too! Plus, I could only send about 12 pictures maximum each day, and there are about 800!!
We had lunch Monday at the McDonald's in the airport in Tegucigalpa, which was interesting. I got an all Spanish Happy Meal, as did Amanda. I brought the box and toys home to the kids. They were reasonably impressed. :-)
We got to gate 4, which you have to travel through the Latin Duty Free store to get to, only to find out that we had been moved to gate 5 back on the other side again! (Or maybe that was vise versa!) They loaded us down some stairs and outside to find that they load this plane from the back!! I never heard of that before!
Then, another surprise was that the flight attendant was American! They all were! I'm not sure why this was such a shock, but when she started talking and I realized I understood everything she said, I actually almost hugged her! Odd, and luckily I didn't!!!
We got seated and decided rather or not to swipe a credit card for an $8 charge to watch movies on the back of the seat in front of you. Sam and I turned his tv on, and he plugged in his IPod earphones, with us each taking one. But he wanted to watch Promethius, a scary aliens movie, and I quickly handed him back his other earphone!
Just about the time they shut the back plane door, people started murmuring all over the plane, "Oh! This is that really crazy take off!" and "I forgot, this is a wild take off, wait till you see!" I was sitting between Sam and Ronnie, and Sam was already giggling at me.
Ronnie informed me that "Oh yeah, this is the number 2 most dangerous airport in the world. You should look it up when you get home." I looked at him and as calmly as possibly said, "I don't like roller coasters." Then I grabbed on to Sam's hand. Ronnie says, "Well, this is pretty wild." Super.
Basically, there is about 6000 feet of runway. You know it's bad when the pilot turns left when there is less than a parking lot length of runway in that direction, and you realize it's so he can back up to the very very edge! They hit the gas, several of the guys yelled, "Topela Papa!!!" which even had me laughing, and then they take off down the runway at a zillion miles an hour, and almost instantly tip back at a crazy angle and blast nearly straight up!!
It wasn't as bad as I was prepared for. But it did feel a bit like being on the Space Shuttle for a second. :-) {Just as a side note: Back at home we went to Bible Study and told this story to Patty, who informed us that they used to catapult her planes off the end of the aircraft carrier. http://science.howstuffworks.com/aircraft-carrier3.htm I do not intend to experience that.) }
Ok, so that's not really us. It's a picture off the site "fearofflyinghelp.com" It is explaining that a steep take off isn't dangerous. If you say so...
The flight from there was very uneventful, and as I mentioned the most exciting thing in the following airport that happened was customs. Although, I will say Courtney had a bit of a snag when they made her walk from customs all the way back down to the checked baggage area to put something back into her luggage that she had actually bought in Duty Free in Honduras. We all thought that was kind of crazy.
Once we had eaten and were finally at the gate in Houston, we found out that due to a combination of bad weather out East and maintenance issues in Texas, lots of flights had been delayed. Our own still showed up as on time (7:45pm) but they announced it would be delayed. After another 30 minutes, about 7:40 maybe, they finally boarded our plane.
We had to walk out a door, down a long hall, through another door, and outside. Then we climbed onto what I thought was much too small a plane. It was only 3 seats across!
We all got settled and just before they were going to shut the cabin door, a man in bright orange security gear came onto the plane with a clipboard and asked Ronnie, I guess because he was the first person in our group that he came to, if he knew Nichols or Jackson. I actually didn't register the names because we had been calling them both Mark.
Ronnie must have thought the same thing, because he didn't answer at first. The man, who I thought looked a bit like Einstein, said, "Are you with the group of 17?" (btw there are 20 of us, so don't ask me why he said 17.) Finally it kind of clicked and we all said, yes, we knew the two men.
He said, "well they aren't on the plane and we are leaving." With that he turned around and walked off the plane. No one moved at first, but then suddenly we understood what they were telling us and everyone started asking Shawn to call Mark Nichols, because we knew he had Mark's cell phone number.
He, correctly I might add, pointed out that he was the last person that should call Mark. They had been pranking each other and joking all week. He said, "he'll never believe me!" Sure enough, Mark pretty much figured it was a joke and was ready to hang up on Shawn. Amanda got on the phone and said, "really, it's not a joke, we are on the plane!" But he must have thought she was in on it. Finally someone, I think Amanda again, got Mark back on the phone and said, "Seriously, where are you? We are leaving!!" Bad news was, that by this point it was too late. Right at that moment the flight attendant slammed the cabin door and kind of nonchalantly shrugged and walked away. A man in front of Ronnie said, "It's too late now, they aren't allowed to open the door again once it's closed."
I don't think I truly believed it. I kept expecting Mark and Mark to come running out the outside door or someone to radio the plane. But neither thing happened. The plane started rolling.
By this point, once there was truly nothing to be done at all, people started nervously laughing, and eventually making jokes. Oh man, I felt soooo bad for them! Someone later said they had gone to get ice cream or something once they had told us the flight was delayed. I think we won't really know what happened until Mark tells us himself, however at this point, he may never tell!!
Anyway, Ronnie talked the flight attendant into getting a picture with Shawn laughing together as if they had caused the whole thing, which surely Mark knew was a big joke. But, they did text the picture to Mark.
When I went to the Dominican Republic (I know I say that phrase every couple of days, sorry - it's the only other mission trip I've been on!!) we got stranded for an extra 48 hours because of a missed flight! It was so upsetting to us. We had prepared ourselves to make it through to that day, and when the airport told us that our flight was cancelled - due to a volcano in Puerto Rico if you can imagine - we just melted down. :-( So, that's what I was thinking about when I finally knew that Mark and Mark had missed the flight.
I heard last night that they finally got home the next afternoon at 1pm. Not sure if that's correct, but man have they got a story to share later!!
Ok, I have one more picture to share. If it looks totally black, you may have to look in dimmer light. The big white thing is the moon. :-)
This is the best I could do trying to take a picture of the incredible scene out the window on the way to Louisville. There was a thunderstorm below and low clouds above us for some of the trip, but for a little while the full moon was glowing down onto the fluffy white clouds below. It was amazing. But my camera could only see blackness. Finally, I found a setting on the camera called, Starry Night. It holds the shutter open for 15, 30, or 60 seconds. I took lots of pictures using this, but as you can imagine, the plane was bouncing like crazy over those clouds. So, this is the best I could do. :-) The clouds must have been whizzing by pretty fast. They just look like streaks. I couldn't help wishing my kids could see it, and finally resolved to look at it really really good, and then describe it later instead.
It looked like an ocean with white fluffy foam floating along silently. The blue/white glow of the moon combined with the dark grey highlights from the shadows of the night gave the whole thing a fresh snow kind of look. But had it been snow, the surface would have been flat. But not this! These clouds were like thousands of shining puffs drifting along.
Thanks for keeping up with us during our trip!! I got an envelope from the missionaries just before I left Honduras, from the little girls at House of Hope. It was full of pictures they had drawn and letters they have written. Finally, there is a picture titled, "The girls are dancing for the Lord." I will try to scan them in sometime and pass them along.
Bye!!
Haven't I commanded you: be strong and courageous? Do not be afraid or discouraged, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go."
Joshua 1:9 (HCSB)
Doo Wop Shop
No comments:
Post a Comment