Saturday afternoon I boarded a plane into the unknown of what my next year would be like. Well, literally I flew to MIami and met my squad. I landed around 11 pm and next flight was not until 7 am Sunday morning. So we found a darker corner and attempted to sleep for a few hours. That was easier said than done. The nice lady announcing what time it was every 15 minutes kept me quiet awake. The only thing going through my head was, what can I take out of my pack to make it lighter! A 50 pound pack is not going to cut it.
So, we flew out of Miami at 7am to Mexico CIty. We had a 5 hour layover so we were able to grab some food and play catch phrase, yes I brought it. When it was time to get through security I realized I had left my pillow outside of the money exchange place. This is when the reality of being in a foreign place hit me, I do not speak Spanish and no one can understand me. I am so thankful for my teammates Kira and Katie, who were able to be my translators and locate the lost and found. In that moment God gave me peace and spoke to me of how He is going to take care of all details and be my provider. All was well and I learned my lesson.
We loaded a greyhound-style bus for an adventurous twelve hour drive ahead of us. The fun has just begun though! Two teams had to stay in Cancun and wait until the next morning for a bus because there weren’t enough seats. We were lucky because our bus ride was through the night. When we were thirty minutes outside of Palenque our bus broke down. The fun part was no locales got even the slightest bit phased by it. No worries! I was watching spiderman iii in spanish, so I was pretty entertained even though we were stranded. Three hours later we caught some taxis into town. I was in my easy going, it will work out attitude, so it didn’t seem too stressful to me. But apparently it was a stressful situation…who knew. So after long travel days we made it to Palenque on Monday afternoon. The two remaining teams didn’t get in until this morning.
I might sound crazy saying this, but I am thankful (not literally…but for the understanding) that we did have such crazy and unexpected travel plans. It was just a reality to what this trip is going to be like. One crazy ride with Jesus.
