A recount of the last 4 days of my life.
So it starts out in Atlanta, GA at 8am on Wednesday (9/9). From there my squad and I jumped on a plane to Chicago, IL where we spent 10 hours waiting for our next flight.
Upon arriving in Chicago, I discovered the zipper (along with my lock) on my airporter (basically a large duffel that protects my pack from damage) had been completely ripped off. So my pack, tent and anything clipped to the outside of my pack was exposed. I wasn’t too happy about that, but I figured “whatever, it’s not a huge deal”. So I decided to rig it shut with a carabiner (pictured below):
I then decided to file a claim with United Airlines to be reimbursed. (I found out yesterday that I was denied because they don’t cover that). So I went about the rest of my layover deciding to be positive and actually had a really enjoyable time because of that decision. I learned to play Spades, ate McDonalds for the first time in years (because it was the only thing available), ate at pretty legit Mexican restaurant for dinner, and just having a good time overall with my squad.
So then we boarded our first flight to Istanbul, Turkey, which was about a 9 1/2 hour flight on this massive plane. We each had our own TV’s where we could watch recent movies, TV shows or play simple games (such as solitaire or Sudoku). I spent the entire flight trading off between watching Terminator: Genisys, sleeping, watching Tomorrowland, more sleeping, and watching How It’s Made.
We then arrived in Istanbul on Thursday, where we had about a 50 minute layover before catching an hour and a half flight to Sofia, Bulgaria. So we got off the plane and went through customs and went and grabbed our bags. Well you remember how my airporter was damaged? Well I found my Eno Hammock (that was originally clipped onto my bag inside my airporter) about 20 feet from my bag, and when I finally got to my bag my tent was missing. Even more fun! Not. So I then had to go through the process of filing a claim which took about maybe 30 minutes. Unfortunately the lady told me that it was very unlikely that they would find it since it wasn’t very large and it had no baggage claim ticket on it (since it was tucked inside my airporter), but I do believe the airline will reimburse me for the price of the tent. Thankfully I am not in need of my tent this first month of the race.
After all that craziness my squad and I traveled to town and spend the night in a Hostel. The next day (Fri.), my team and I spend the day just bonding and seeing the sights for a few hours and then hop on a bus for 5 hours to Skopje, Macedonia. From there we catch another bus that took us to our final destination (about an hour away) to Tetovo, Macedonia.
In my next blog I will tell you about what we’ve done since arriving at our Ministry host’s home and what we will most likely be doing for the month so that you can be praying for us and for the City of Tetovo.
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