We Made It!

---

We boarded the plane January 18th and arrived here in Tanzania on the 20th. By far it was the most eventful, tiresome trip we have ever made.

It started out with the cancellation of our first flight, which was to leave at 1:30 from DFW to Chicago O'Hare. Everyone who was going out on that flight began searching for another flight there in the terminal. After seeing the huge line I decided to leave the terminal and go back to the ticket counter and with luck we were able to get tickets for the 4:30 flight to Chicago O'Hare. Now it gets even better, because they reissued our tickets we became some sort of a security risk, which meant that all of our hand bags had to be gone through and swabbed, and we had to be patted down, even the kids. Since Madesha and the kids had already been through security and were waiting in the terminal, I had to go through this special security, get Madesha and the kids and then go through the special security again with them. It was fun, and to put icing on the cake I had to repack several of the bags because they couldn't figure it out. So after all of that, we made the 4:30 flight which would have given us time to catch our flight from Chicago O'Hare to London, but we were delayed on the tarmac for two hours and delayed in the air for a bit which meant by the time we arrived at O'Hare our British Air flight had already left for London. So once again we were running around trying to get another flight, which we did, and because they reissued our tickets we became a special security risk again and had to go through all that cotton swabbing, patting down stuff again. By the time we got our tickets and got through the special security the plane was just minutes from leaving, so I left Madesha and the kids, grabbed as many hand bags as I could, and ran and ran and ran and ran some more to the terminal to hold the plane until Madesha and the kids could make it and they did and off to London we went. (In the mix of all of the delays and cancellations the kids hadn't eaten for about 11 hours).

We had a good flight to London, but again because of the delays and cancellations we missed our hotel booking in London. So we found us two nice rows of seats in the airport terminal and celebrated Levan's 8th birthday.

We left London that evening around six for our final flight to Tanzania and again we experienced about a two hour delay but arrived safe, sound and tired. After arriving in Tanzania we went to get our bags and guess what, not one bag showed up, all 13 bags and one car seat were still in the good ole US of A having never left Dallas. As bad as that was for us, it turned out to be an encouragement for those around us who had only lost one bag - they clearly realized they had no reason to complain. Anyways, our bags did show up a couple of days later. Now on top of all of that I began to get sick the night we arrived, with fever, body ache, headache, cold sweats, hot sweats, terribly weak and an awful cough which lasted for about eight days. Of course I passed it on to Madesha and the kids who experienced the same symptoms. Out of all of us Madesha seemed to have it the worst and when we finally made it to Chimala that next morning the doctor came up and put her on an I V. I am happy to say that we are doing much better now. We are getting settled in and back to our old selves.

---

Comments

[Randy]

Glad you are there
Sorry to hear about all the delays and confusion. Thank God that you are there, safe and sound. God bless you and we will talk to you later and update you on things around southern Indiana.

[Lisa]

Talk about determination!!!