After dropping my precious puppy, Deacon, off at his home for the next 2 weeks, I went to my parents' house to see my parents and grandparents before heading to the airport. I had my 3 large suitcases in tow (47, 46.8, and 49 pounds each) when I went to check in and when it took 20 minutes to get my boarding passes, I will admit I was getting a bit nervous that my trip was going to be over before it began!
Luckily, the issue was that Wichita wasn't able to print my boarding passes for the 3rd flight of the day leaving Brussels - something easily dealt with in either Chicago or Brussels. So, got everything checked in and went to visit with the friends (Holly and Brooke) and family (mom, dad, grandma, grandpa) that were there to see me off on this adventure!
Throughout these blog posts, you may see photos with a beanie baby monkey (seen here with Holly and I).
This monkey was one of 93 beanies given by Holly's mother, Lynda, for the kids in Uganda. As they were praying over the beanies and the children they would be given to, this monkey became designated for a boy named Michael. I decided that whomever this child was, that he should be able to see the journey that the beanie (and I) had been on in order to see him in Uganda. So I began to document in photos, the adventure we were going on!
After several minutes of laughing and praying, it was hugs all around, heading through security, and up to the airplane! My flight to Chicago was very quick and uneventful...the way flights SHOULD be!
I changed concourses in Chicago, grabbing a pizza on my way to the gate to meet the other 10 members of the team (1/2 of our team flew through New York and 1/2 flew through Chicago). I will admit I was a bit anxious about meeting these 10 people that I had only met via a 10 minute Skype chat or a paragraph of introduction via emial. I only had about an hour of layover, so not much time to get to know anyone well, just the cursory introductions and small talk!
I met Lexie for the first time...we had talked via Facebook and text, but never met in person. It was good to at least see a 'familiar' face.
So, once all of the team had arrived, we began to hear the boarding announcements for our flight to Brussels. Several of the first class passengers boarded when there was an announcement that the air conditioning on the plane was broken and needed to be fixed and there would be a slight delay (we only had a 2 hour layover in Brussels so we didn't have a lot of time for delays!). After about 15 minutes, the next announcement was that it was too hot outside for the workers to fix the air conditioning!
They had the first class passengers deplane and we all knew we were in for trouble! After about an hour, we boarded the plane and settled in. Most of our team was scattered throughout the plane with several of us surrounded by Belgium high school students that had been in the US for a senior trip. Oh my...45 high school kids on an 8 hour flight - I was not looking forward to that!
After waiting on the plane for 30 minutes or so, the flight attendants were having certain parties deplane in order to make sure they could get on different flights out of Chicago. Unfortunately, we were not the lucky ones! We were on the plane for about 2 hours before the flight was cancelled. After 2 more hours of trying to get flights rescheduled for 11 people, we were headed to a hotel for dinner (at 10:30 pm!) and a good night's sleep (courtesy of American Airlines) before leaving Chicago on Saturday morning to head to London instead of Brussels. I will admit, I was very thankful for a SLEEP NUMBER bed for my last night's sleep before heading overseas! :)
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