Tuesday May 11-Wednesday May 12
Our flight plan was to travel from Salt Lake City to Minneapolis/St. Paul to Amsterdam to Entebbe. With international flights, we had to arrive early and we're glad we did, because not only did we not have to worry about getting through security and the mindless happenings of getting to our gate, but we also ran into a minor issue. Apparently I didn't read the fine print from Delta, but we were supposed to have brought the credit card with which we bought our tickets for security measures. Um, we didn't bring any credit cards. Ok, well, just 1. But not the one with Collin's name on it. My bad. So, it took a few extra minutes to get around that road block, but it was a success!
Our flight left on time at 10:50am and the first leg (SLC to MSP) we smooth sailing. Didn't last long at all. Then again, it was only a few hours. Our second leg was a different story. For no reason (or at least not one good enough to explain to the passengers), the MSP to AMS flight was delayed for about 45 minutes. But once we got in the air, it was a fairly painless flight. Even though it was the longest flight either of us had been on, it seemed to go by with ease, except for the tiny voice in the back of my head that worried about our luggage and whether we would get to AMS in time for our connection to EBB. Shortly after the plane got in the air, the captain mentioned over the P.A. that we would be extending the flight about an hour to make a detour to avoid the Icelandic Volcano situation. During part of the flight, we opened our window at the most perfect time. We saw the sun set over Greenland. It only went down for a half hour or something so it was still fairly light even when it was down. The colors were so vivid and gorgeous though. So, I guess we saw both the sun set and the sun rise.
While we were in the MSP airport before we left, we saw a European family with a cute 3 year old girl. She had the most adorable accent. We got on the plane (keep in mind, this is our long one), and her family was on the same row as us (we were on the side and they were in the middle row). She screamed all the time. And then she'd cry. I felt sorry for the little girl, but this made for a difficult time sleeping. We got through it by watching a bunch of movies (Invictus, Leap Year and Sherlock Holmes). We watched more movies on the plane rides than we have this whole year at home.
We arrive in AMS with just about 1/2 an hour to spare before our departure time for the 3rd and final leg to EBB. Luckily they had someone with a paper saying where all the connecting gates were, so we read that bad boy and booked it through the halls to our gate. We made it, and our last leg went by really quickly too. The final anxiety set in about our luggage, especially since 2 of our suitcases were full of food and such for Lou and Jeri. We got into Entebbe and it only took about 2 minutes at "customs" for a lady to look at our visas/passports. The luggage started coming out, and after only 3 minutes all 3 of our suitcases came out! What a relief. We walked around the corner, and there were Lou and Jeri waiting for us! (funny sidenote: before we deplaned, the flight attendant told us that picture taking was prohibited inside the airport, but right when we saw Jeri, she was taking pictures of us walking through...haha. loved it)
It was a joyful reunion, and I'm so glad we went, because Collin was elated to see his parents. It was about 7:30 pm on Tuesday evening by now, so we loaded our luggage into the Mission Van and the mission driver, Godfrey, drove us from Entebbe to Ntinda where L&J live right outside the capital, Kampala.
The drive was dark, and we couldn't see everything the towns and the landscape had to offer, but we could tell that people were everywhere. And tons of cars on the streets, even late at night. I gazed out the window, catching small glimpses of the lives of Ugandans, that would come to change my life.
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