Warning: Kind of a lot to read; boring to some, interesting to others but it gives you a taste of our lovely travel days on the World Race
At 8am on Sunday March 11th we started our journey from Haiti to Romania. Strange route to take isn’t it? That’s basically what everyone we met along the way said as well – but I suppose that gave us an opportunity to talk about what we’re doing on the World Race.
Anyways. We were supposed to be up at 4am to leave the beach compound but at midnight on Saturday we found out that our scheduled flight no longer existed and so we were put on the later flight to JFK New York. When we got to the Port au Prince airport, after a 2 hour bus ride sitting on the top of a seat in a jam packed school bus, we were informed that our 3pm flight was delayed an hour. And then it was delayed again, and again, and maybe even again.
Did I mention this was Daylight Savings Time…well for everyone else except the Haitian. BUT supposedly the government made an announcement on the news the night before saying that Haiti was actually going to start using Daylight Savings Time starting this year. Considering there isn’t all that much electricity or televisions hanging around in Grand Goave, the word didn’t really get out – and it really seemed to mess up the way things were running in the country. NO KIDDING.
Anyways, we hung out at the PauP airport until our flight finally departed around 7pm. At this point we were completely unsure what was going to happen since our flight wasn’t scheduled to arrive in JFK until 15 minutes or so before our connecting flight to Istanbul, Turkey was scheduled to depart. Oh how silly any of us were in previously thinking that we’d have 4-5 hours in the U.S. airport to enjoy some comforts – now we were not even sure if we’d make our flight.
Thanks to a considerate team of Turkish Airline employees, we got to JFK and booked it through customs and to another terminal while they held the plane for 47 World Racers. Little did we know everything wasn’t all fine and dandy yet.
We arrived in Istanbul on Monday March 12 around 6pm after a 6 hour time change and a severe lack of sleep. But the journey doesn’t end here. Walking swiftly to our next gate we realized our flight to Bucharest was already boarding so off we flew, landing in Romania at 8pm. Interestingly enough our bags did not land in Romania – they were still in New York! Lovely.
So we did what we could and headed to the train station with only our daypacks on our back in order to begin our 10 hour train ride to Radna. Around 10am on Tuesday March 13th we were greeted by Mihai, our ministry host for the month who drove us another 15 minutes to the small village/commune of Sistarovat where we are living this month. Home at last.
Note: We did receive our luggage 2 days later and it was delivered right to our house. Thank you God. Nine more months without my backpack, tent, sleeping bag, air mattress, etc. is not something I’d like to experience.
