Hey guys, sorry it’s been about a week since I last blogged, but trust me, I have a good excuse why I’ve been a little disconnected from the world.
Anyways, if you remember from my last update, I was in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, with my squad for our last few days there. As you probably recall, the next country on my list is Thailand. The question is, how does one get the 63 people on my squad from Haiti to Thailand? Well that’s an excellent question and I would love to answer it by telling the story of how it all happened.
Wednesday, October 31, 7am: J-Squad (all 63 of us) piles into 3 vans and 1 old school bus with all our packs and luggage for an hour drive to a large bus station
8:30am – arrive at bus station (we hit a few delays) and wait for our bus to arrive at its scheduled time of 11am
2pm – we finally load up onto our big bus (as usual, nothing really runs on time so we sat around the bus station for a little longer than we expected). We prepare for the journey across Haiti to Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic.
5pm – cross over the border into Haiti (nothing too exciting – the water from the hurricane had receded to the point where we could drive over the small bridge connecting the two countries)
11pm – arrive at the Santo Domingo airport
Thursday, November 1, 6am: finally board our flight for Miami (I was able to get 2 hours of sleep in the airport so I’m [somewhat] refreshed)
7am – finally leave the airport (plane wasn’t working so a mechanic had to come fix it)
9:30am – arrive in Miami and head to customs
10:30am – finally get out of customs and find out that our next flight leaves in fifteen minutes. We still have to run and grab our checked bags and haul them across the airport. Since I was one of the last ones, I literally was sprinting across the airport hauling all my gear
10:50am – board airplane for Los Angeles (out of breath, but relieved, nonetheless)
1pm – arrive in LAX airport, collect all our bags once again (except for my guitar which didn’t make it and was coming on a later flight – not surprised anymore) and head to the international terminal where our flight leaves at 1am
8pm – after heading to a local mall to purchase a new computer (the last one was abducted by some enterprising Haitian thieves), enjoying the last American food I will taste for 9 more months, experiencing a small amount of culture shock at the mall by seeing more wealth in a 1 mile radius than I have for the past two months, and hurrying back to the airport – we finally head to the terminal
Friday, November 2, 1am – board flight (was able to pick up another hour of sleep at the airport – exhaustion starting to set in). Get ready for the 14 hour flight across the Pacific Ocean
Note: after this, I’m unable to keep track of the time as we have now crossed over 10 time zones
We arrive in Hong Kong sometime on the 3rd – I was able to get 5 hours of sleep on the flight (slowly getting better)
After a 4 hour layover, we board a flight to Bangkok
Arrive in the Bangkok airport, collect all our baggage – once again have to go on a search for my guitar which always seems to end up in a different place than the rest of my stuff
All 63 of us get on 6 different “taxis” (they more resemble pickup trucks than the ones we are familiar with) and head to a large bus station and get there sometime around 3pm.
We get on a very large bus around 8pm (got another hour of sleep in the station) and embark on our 10 hour journey to Chang Mai, the city where we will be working in
The bus stops at 12am at a market along the way and I practically sleepwalk in. We grab a quick bite to eat and we all file back in the bus to finish our ride to Chang Mai
Sunday, November 4th, 6am – arrive in Chang Mai, get on another local “taxi” for a drive to our ministry location
So, anyways, that’s a quick summary of one of the more eventful few days of travel that I’ve had.
5 days, 5 countries, 4 flights, 10 time zones, 4 bus rides, 5 airports, less than sufficient sleep, and one God protecting us on the way and making sure that we all made it safely. Seriously, God gets the glory for keeping us all together and safe. There were some moments when I wondered if it would all come together and it did. I can confidently say that it was quite an adventure and it makes for quite a story.
It’s just a quick taste of what it can be like when 63 missionaries leave one country and head to another one halfway around the world.
More to come as we get settled in here! So far, I’m loving Thailand and the people here are so amazing.
Thanks so much for following!
