Since we still had a bit of last minute items to do, I woke up at 2am to take care of last minute packing, weighing and re-weighing the suitcases, sending items from one suitcase to another, trying to get them as close to 50 pounds each as possible (we later found out at the airport that 1 was at 50 pounds, and the other two were at 49 pounds). I took care of some last minute financials and left a special note for my daughter Kaylyn in our Mommy-Daughter journal under her pillow (hoping she finds it soon).
Bob woke up just before 4am (on his own!) to take us to the airport. Normally it's extremely difficult for him to wake up on time, so I'm not sure if that's because he was eager to see us go or if he got that bad of a night's sleep worrying about us and our trip. We got to the airport around 4:30am for our 5:45am departure, checked in, said our goodbyes to Bob and headed through security. He waited for us to get all the way through security before heading back home. I kept him up-to-date with each part of our travel process, to try to ease his worries (pre-1st flight, our layover in Atlanta, our arrival in Tegucigalpa, and reassurance that Norman WAS at the airport to take us to the orphanage). Noah called Bob later that evening as well with all of the news of the day.
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| Leaving Appleton - Noah is such a jokster! |
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| Our layover in Atlanta - we had enough time for the kiddos to fill their stomachs. |
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| Noah pointing to the plane that would be taking us into Honduras |
Noah's comments while our plane landed in Tegucigalpa were priceless. First he noted that the plane is putting on its brakes awfully hard, and then he looked around at the streets outside the airport and said that he didn't realize that "all the signs would be in Spanish too!" He was talking about store signs and billboards.
Our arrival into Tegucigalpa went well. Norman met us as we exited the final security checkpoint and asked us to wait for some other passengers that would be riding along with us. As we waited, I purchased the standard basic phone I usually get (since I left my phone with Doris last year) as well as an extra chip for my USB modem so that I can post these blogs for you (and for me to reflect back on as years go on).
When we arrived at Orphanage Emmanuel, the girls were just finishing up cleaning our room...and it was girls we knew very well. I let Alina get out of the van, and they got SO excited, shouting, "Alina! Alina!" When we got everything moved into our room, we headed to the big girls' yard to see Doris, then to the tienda to pick up a beverage and some chips, then to the Toddler house. Noah and Alina played with the toddlers for a bit before it was time to walk them to supper. They now eat at the big dining hall with the older children as well. We saw Michell in the dining hall and said 'hi' to her. After supper, we headed back to our room so that we could unpack a little and Noah could call Bob, to let him know how Day #1 went. While calling home, Michell (who is in the medium girls' house right next to us) came over as well as Lilian and Doris. We chatted a bit while things were settling down and the medium girls were getting ready for bed for the evening. When we went back in our room and locked up, I explained closing the windows and curtains to Noah and why we do it (to prevent bugs from crawling into the room in the middle of the night), and a gecko came out from behind the curtain, so Noah got to see his FIRST gecko. He heard them a little bit later in the evening.
We had purchased a few games from the Dollar Tree to keep us occupied when the children are locked in for the evening (door-locking is an absolute necessity for safety in countries like this). Alina, Noah and I played two card games of golf (Grandma Wendt would be proud), but because we were super-exhausted, we went to bed right after that.
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