I wonder when it’ll hit me!
Anyway, our travel day from San Jose, Costa Rica to Malaybalay, The Philippines consumed 3 days of my life. This is my run through of what it looked like, but if you want some sweet details, check out Keryn’s blog, The One With Six Airports.
Left the house we were staying at in San Jose in the late morning on Friday, Dec. 31. I was pretty tired because I didn’t get more than 2 hours of sleep the night before – bad bad choice. Flew to San Salvador, then to LAX. We landed in LA in time to countdown to midnight (we had to guess where the 10 second countdown began and got to zero a little early, but that was ok 🙂 and yell and scream and jump around in a very empty LAX. We were free entertainment for the workers though! I hope they enjoyed our jetlagged excitement!
We were in LA until about 10 or 11 am the following morning. I did NOT sleep. This was also a very unwise decision…because while it might have helped my jetlagging a bit, it added to my exhaustion. I did not leave the airport either. So I was technically back in the United States but my feet didn’t touch LA ground. Just the airport 🙂
We left LA with Hong Kong as our next destination. That flight was 14 hours if I remember right…it might’ve been more or it might’ve been less. It’s hard to keep track! It was one of those giant planes that had all sorts of movies, games, and tv shows on a little computer screen right in front of you to keep you entertained – I won’t lie, I watched a good chunk of the 6th season of LOST. Yes, friends, yes I did.
When we landed in Hong Kong, I was borderline delirious. I might’ve slept 2 hours on the plane but other than that had been awake. There just happened to be a starbucks in the airport, so I had a soy steamer and a scone.
Starbucks was a slight culture shock.
After a few hours we hopped on another plane that would take us to Manila. It was a pretty short flight. We landed in Manila and found out that some of us needed to get to a different airport to fly to the other island Mindanao. Our wonderful contacts had arranged rides for us and told us in the parking lot that “Your bags need to be at 15 K! We’re leaving here in 10 minutes, so get out anything you don’t need and lets head out!”
Remember, we’re ridiculously exhausted, delirium has set in, and we’re in a new country with people we just met. We have to trust these people with everything – our lives and our stuff – and get in a couple vans and rely on a driver who speaks a little english to get us to another airport somewhere down the road.
It was a little chaotic, but we somehow got to the other airport and started the process of getting our bags weighed. And this is where I’ve got a pretty cool little story:
Our weight limit for 33 of us (I think we’re a group of 33 anyway 🙂 was 465kg. We’d just dumped out a lot of our weight from our bags into our head contact’s car, but I really didn’t know if we’d make it. I figured my bag, for sure, would still be over.
They totalled up the weight of our bags, and guess how much it was?
465kg.
Exactly.
Not one over, and not one less. We all breathed a sigh of relief and gratitude, and I heard a number of us say, “Thank you Jesus!”
We got some Cinnabon on the way to our next flight, and since I didn’t have enough time to eat it before we got on the plane, I stuffed it in a plastic bag and threw it in my backpack, climbed into the little jet that would take us to our next “home” and tried to relax a little.
We landed on our island around 6am, got on a bus that our contact Jeremy got for us, and went to Mcdonald’s and Starbucks. The ride was about 2 and a half hours or so.
After I made a “quick” trip to the grocery store for some team necessities, I slept. I slept from about 3pm through the night and didn’t wake up till 7 the next morning if I remember right.
I live right next to an orphanage. Our current projects involve shifts there watching the kids and taking care of them as well as planting “sod” in a soccer field. We gather sod with our hands and shovels at some sort of farm about 30 minutes away and dig holes in the field, throw in some fertilizer, and throw in little squares of sod before burying it. We’re making slow progress, but it’s definite progress.
