The most interesting travel day so far…

On Sunday we geared up and after a full night's sleep loaded our packs and stuff into our contact's car and headed to Subotica's train station at about 10.15am (start the clock). A relatively simple ride and border crossing (no gun smuggling or anything as interesting this time) and we arrived into Budapest at about 3pm. A short ride to the hostel and we were free until the next day, so Michelle, Ann and I saw the city including: the Houses of Parliament, whose architecture is apparently the same design as our own; St Stephen's Basillica, from the outside at least; a whole load of other beautiful buildings that we passed; many impressive structures and bridges viewable from the Danube river, which we paddled our feet in; a memorial to Jews killed in Hungary during Holocaust times; and some of the general shops, as well as meeting a Krishna Consciousness monk and having a conversation with him in the street. 

The next morning, after having had a breakfast in McDonald's (don't judge me :-p) we loaded our things onto a coach and headed to the airport. There, following a lot of waiting (as is usually what happens in airports…), we boared our short flight (less than one and a half hours) to Warsaw. 

This kind of layover really only leaves you with enough time to get off of the plane, across the airport and onto the next one, although security was doubled because we were arriving into New York on the one year anniversary of Bin Laden's death, so I guess they're a little touchy that someone might try something retaliatory. We were a little disappointed with our flight because all of our long-haul flights so far have been kitted out with personal screens in the head of the seat in front of us, loaded with a wide variety of music, films, games and tv shows to make use of. This plane was older however and only had one projected image in each section, and the projector in our section was broken. Oh well, it's not like we don't know how to live on less 😉 

We arrived into JFK at about 10pm and weren't flying out again until 5.45am (although we had to be met up and ready again at 1.45am) so myself, Dusty, Tim, Britni and Jess (the one from my old team) headed into the city. On our way in we met a guy from Somalia who is a Muslim and had a conversation with him about Jesus and the Quran and so on. And then we were in Manhatten! Yay! We got to see Times Square, which is so bright and colourful even that late at night (the city that never sleeps I'm told); we had pizza and soft drinks; and then we headed to see ground zero, which is quite eerie because there is just a noticeable gap in the skyline where you really feel something should be (although the freedom tower they're building next to it IS huge and getting bigger). We headed back, I tried and failed to sleep (I can't sleep on planes either because I can't sleep sat up) and then slowly but surely went through customs and back checking again. 

Our layover in Miami was the same length as Warsaw though, so off, across and on again and off we headed. This flight had been, and the next was, about 2 and a half hours. 

Finally we arrived in Guatemala city, gathered our things and handed them to the three bus drivers who secured them on the tops of their respective buses. Some of us had to wait around a little longer as two of the AIM staff were flying in to join us and once they arrived we climbed onto the last bus and took the drive to Antigua and our hostel for the next few days, arriving at around 1.45pm. 

So, we left at 10.15am on Monday, and arrived at 1.45pm on Wednesday, with an eight hour timezone change. 59.5 hours since we left our ministry location and arrived at our debrief location. Longest so far by that regard, but it involved a lot of scheduled stops. 

Having been out for lunch (and me being on just under 40 hours without any real sleep) I went and lay down at about 3.30pm. I promptly decided to skip dinner and have now woken up at 3.15am. I think I'm caught up on my sleep. Funny things is this isn't really because of jet lag, but just the sleep deprivation, so as long as I stay up until a reasonable bed time today I should be back to normal. We shall see. 

Hope all is well with everyone, thanks for following 🙂