The beginning of an amazing adventure

The adventure began 6/24/10at about 5:15am PST. Moira and Sebastian escorted me to the airport and we hung out there until it was time to head through security and to my gate. Amazingly, as nervous as I've previously stated, by the time we got to the airport all nervousness had faded.

The first plane ride to Minnesotta was short and uneventful. The second plane ride was to Amsterdam and took forvever and a day. I sat next to a Swedish man who was born in Sweden, on his way to Sweden but was a graduate student at Oregon State University ( what a small world). He remarked at how amazing it was that me, having never been out of the country before chose Uganda, Africa as the first stamp in my passport.

When we first got off the plane (after 7 long hours), I was in a whole new world. There were so many languages being spoken, things were in Euros, and the signs were in a language that I had no idea of. The scariest part for me was that I was in a foregin country by myself and could not call my mom and sister for comfort. I made my way to the gate and since I saaw no one I recognized I went to the bathroom to buy some time (you know how you go to the bathroom cause you don't know what to do and don't want to look like a total loser?). Happily one of the ladies recognized me and took me to meet the rest of the crew.

There are a total of 7 of us. Becca is the leader, Beth is her sister, Todd is Beth's son and will be turning 18 while we are in Uganda, and there's Monita, Vicky who first introduced us to the trip and then Kyle who I go to U.P with.

At first everything went smoothly in Amsterdam and we got on the flight to Entebbe (Ugandan airport). While we waited on the plane, it was announced that there was a problem and that it should be fixed within the next half hour. 2 hours later they made us get off the plane and relocate to a new plane and a new gate (all the way on the other side of a huge airport). By this time we had been up for about 24 hours and as a result Kyle and Todd fell asleep in the middle of the airport floor (pictures to come later). Finally we got on the plane and another 7 long hours later we were in Africa!!

Happily there were no real problems at the airport. We got all 24 of our bags (yes there were 24 bags between the 7 of us and yes they all fit into the van we drove, pictures to come later as well) and I got the first stamp in my passport! We headed to Jinga, after it taking an hour to load the bags into the taxi, which is about 50 km from the airport and it took 2 hours or so. We arrived to our home for the next 2 weeks at about midnight Ugandan time. After about 33 hours of travel, sleep was well appreciated!

P.S. Uganda is about 10 hours ahead of the Pacific time zone, in case you were wondering