Wednesday, October 19, 2011

More PNG journal

Read previous posts to see I'm still doing. I'll give you a hint: it starts with school.

July 12, 2011                                                                                                 (over) Seattle, Washington
Here we go!! My ears are just starting to pop (we are now over 10,000). Jeannie’s seat got switched and we’re not sitting together but I got a couple of decent pictures of the clouds for Emma. Juliette is soooooo cute! I should be right behind them on the next flight… I hope. The clouds look AMAZING. I want to get some more pictures but I don’t have the window seat. The guy who does is sleeping. I’m between two older guys. The one on the other side of me is listening to music and…playing air guitar?? Sheesh! Adults these days. I don’t think I’ll be using my etch-a-sketch now. I was thinking of all this stuff to say while we were waiting for our flight to board and now I can’t remember any of it. Jeannie bought a fish taco before we left and it smelled amazing, but I did NOT feel like eating.  I haven’t felt like eating since breakfast. Which is good because I have food in my carry on that I can’t get to. I’ll eat in LA.
               Later                                                                                                               Los Angeles, California
Have you ever been in an international airport? I have. It’s pretty neat. You really see people from everywhere. I saw: Muslims, Hindu monks, Philippines, tons of Chinese/Japanese/Korean ( you can’t always tell), German, Swiss, French. I love listening to all the different languages! And the British and Australian using American terms with their accents! The two hour flight was pretty good, except I got stuck between the two guys, and my ears really hurt on the way down. But it was discouraging to see how tired that little flight made me feel when I’m about to spend fifteen hours in roughly the same position. We had to go outside to a second building for our connecting flight. Jeannie wanted to use our layover to go downtown for fun. I was thinking, “That does not sound like a good idea.” I said, “Sure!” But the guy at the info disk told her the traffic was too bad and everything was closed at seven- oop! Time for takeoff!
               Even Later                                                                                                     [I have no idea]
It’s about 2:30 am or so according to my brain, which is about to be severely confused. Anyway, as I was saying, the info guy discouraged Jeannie form going downtown, but she still would have done it if we had a couple more hours to our layover. So, we went through security and went to find food. Well this part of the airport was LAME. There were two stinkin’ places, both ridiculously expensive: they had a decent sized ham sandwich for (brace yourself) $15.98. The other place wasn’t much better and it had a bar in it. So we went back to the non-security are so we could at least get McDonald’s for the right price. Man, the last days or two eating has not been my thing. It has become an annoying inconvenience. I’m really hoping that will go back to normal once I’m settled in with Amy and Joey because that was kind of a major hobby!
We watched Juliette figure out an ice cream cone. She is TOO CUTE!!! We went back through security at ten and I was startled by what I found out was just a drill (after it was over). They told everybody to stop moving for about 45 seconds. A little unnerving… anywho. Now we’re a few hours in to the big one. I think I’m gonna watch TV…or sleep? I slept for a little bit, woke up and thought we were almost there. Not sure if I want to pull out my etch-a-sketch or not…nehhh….I’ll wait till the guy next to me is sleeping. If he ever does.
               July 14                                                                                                            Over Australia
He did fall asleep, but so did I. Then I woke up. Then I fell asleep. Then I woke up, then I fell asleep, etc. There was a TV for each seat but the only movies I knew were ok were the kid ones. So I watched tangled. Had fruit and yogurt (or yoghurt, here) and a little raisin muffin. We never get free meals on planes in the states! And it was all pretty good! I <3 Quantas. Except, we were delayed, so our 15 hour flight got in late, and we missed the next one. But we caught one a couple hours later with jet star, who doesn’t serve free meals. So for lunch I had a pepper jack cheese stick and left over Quantas snacks (which were free, by the way). So that’s what’s happening now. We’re headed up to cairns from Melbourne. Then Mrs. Delong will take us to Tree tops, where we will swim, relax, and reassemble ourselves. Security in LA was way worse than here in Australia, by the way. This time tomorrow we will be in PNG!
July 15                                                                                             [In the air between Cairns and PNG]
There are the most beautiful clouds outside my window with the sun just coming up and shining on them. I could just sit and snap pictures the whole way! It looks like a whole other landscape…or sky-scape! We met Mrs. Delong and got our luggage right away once off the flight from Melbourne. Juliette was getting tired, We got our stuff taken to Treetops’ by about 3:30 or so. Then they took us to the grocery to get a few things. We had to wait for Mr. Delong to go get his daughter and take her home then come back for us. They only had one car and we had to work around their schedule because we missed the flight. So it was getting dark by the time we got back. No swim. But there’s supposed to be a nice pool at the hotel in Wewak. We had pineapple, a quarter of a chicken, salad and crackers and brie (an interesting cheese) for dinner and went to bed at 7, which was 2 a.m. to my brain. Oh, and I washed my hair, too. We wouldn’t want to forget THAT gripping detail. We got up at 3:40, which was (I think) 10 a.m. for my brain. Perfect. Juliette is most definitely a morning person. So cute!! Bro. Delong picked us up a little after 4:30 and now we’re on an hour and a half flight with Quantas again. I like these guys. I just ate a little tuna sandwich and passion fruit yogurt with real passion fruit, including seedsJ. I like those crunchy seeds. I’m hoping we’ll cross a clear spot soon so I can see the sun on the ocean.
Ps. I LOVE hearing little kids with accents!! Adorable. J
               July 16                                                                                                            Port Moresby
Ah, here we are in the land of the unexpected. Just, the wrong part of it (see above). Our flight out of POM was cancelled yesterday (we never did find out why…) and rescheduled for five a.m. the next morning. SO here we are at 4:23 in this non-air-conditioned room again. Not that any of the building is. After the announcement of the change of plans, Jeannie got in the eternal customer “service” line and I went over to reclaim our luggage. Luggage from more fortunate flights that had made it into the air we’re still coming in and while I was waiting, a guy who was dressed like an American and had no accent started talking to me. I did a little talking too. He was also on the canceled flight. He said he was raised in the states and is now a missionary (sort of) here. He offered to give us a place to stay but we obviously said we would wait and see what accommodations we would be provided by the airline. While waiting in the line for a couple hours, Juliette attracted (again) attracted the attention of some Japanese guys behind us. Did I mention how many people stop and say hi to us because of Juliette? A lot. I’m still not sure what those guys are doing on PNG but they were also on the cancelled flight. It’s pretty funny to watch how taken these people are with a little blue-eyed, curly-haired white baby. Anyway, let me pause and rewind for a minute. When we first arrived in POM (which is gorgeous from the air) I was  thinking how NOT fun going through customs would be, but we just slipped right through! We called and let everybody know we got there and started looking around for a shuttle to the hotel we wanted to have lunch at but we couldn’t find it. SO a tourist helper guy took us to a closer one and we ate there. Except I didn’t really. My heart was pounding and my heart was all flip-floppy. And it was hot and MUGGY, but the café was nice. The guy came and picked us up on 1. Our flight was supposed to be a 3 and right when we were supposed to board, they announce the cancellation. We ended up getting a voucher to stay at the Crown plaza hotel which is where we originally wanted to got to lunch. We were on a shuttle by 6 p.m. Met an Australian lady on the shuttle who had been to Seattle. We got dinner and went to our room for showers and bed. I had been worried the whole time we were waiting in line and when Amy called to check on us, I almost cried. So much for my test of faith. Fail. :/ When we missed our flight , it was fixed so quickly that I didn’t have time to worry, but standing in line and just waiting and watching other people struggle to get what they needed, I. Was. Scared. And a little cranky…eh, scratch the ‘little’. But the Lord took care of us again. Just like he promised and I learned (hopefully) a lesson. SO that’s that. IF all goes according to plan, we should see Joey and Amy in a couple of hours!

1 comment:

Sarah said...

Keep in mind that this isn't a good representation of New Guinea roads. That was the ONLY straight road I saw and I KNOW I didn't ride on it.