This post covers days one and two of my trip, mostly because 1) the lines blur together as to where each day starts and ends because of the time change and 2) I have no pictures of these days. Probably best because if I looked like I felt, pictures are highly unnecessary.
The journey began on Thursday, January 20. Our team of 23, family, friends, and drivers all arrived at church around 11am where we fairly quickly loaded the trailer, said a prayer and goodbyes, and headed on down the road to Los Angeles and LAX. My parents drove one of the vehicles, so I didn't have to say farewell yet. The trip was pretty easy, minus the part where the vehicle in front got off on some random exit and started driving away from the direction we should have been headed. Thank you, iPhone, for setting us back on course. We all descended upon In N Out right next to LAX and had one last familiar meal before leaving the US. After what seemed like forever, but probably really wasn't, we loaded ourselves back in the vehicles and drove about 1 more mile to the airport, unloaded fairly smoothly at LAX (considering we had 60+ pieces of luggage among us), and got in line to check in with the airline. Again, smooth. Said my so-longs to mom and dad, and we were headed through security. A few people got randomly chosen for extra screening, but other than that, smooth sailing.
We arrived at our gate about 4 hours early, so we had a bit of time to kill. Our resident Rec(reation) guy, Chris, led the team in some calisthenics, much to the entertainment of the few other people populating our gate. We sat, and stood, and sat some more before it was finally time to board the plane. I was pleased to find out that I had nobody sitting next to me on the flight, especially since I could stretch out a little and go to sleep on the all-night, almost 12 hour flight to Zurich.
The airline fed us dinner, which was a decent tortellini with some sort of tomato sauce, and then I settled in to watch a movie. I watched Charlie St. Cloud, which was pretty good, and then started The American. I think I watched all of 5 minutes before I got too sleepy to keep my eyes open. Sleepy? Yes. Actually fell asleep? No. I almost drifted off a few times, but something always woke me up. There was only one instance when I actually, literally started to doze off sometime in the middle of the night. Just as I was falling asleep the flight attendant was shaking my arm to wake me up (you can imagine how happy I was). Apparently the woman in front of me was traveling with her two kids, who had fallen asleep across all three seats. She wanted to sit in the empty seat next to me. I was unhappy and incredibly tired, and that was the only time I almost fell asleep. After what seemed like many sleepless hours later, the rest of the plane began to wake up and we were fed breakfast. About 2 hours later, we landed in Zurich, where it was around 4pm. We deplaned and congregated as a group, trying to figure out our plan. The dilemma was that the airport does not assign gate numbers for flights until 1-2 hours before departure and we had about 5 hours to kill. On top of that, the gate the we entered required us to take a train to get to the other gates and passport control. We took the train to the main terminal and found a place to park the crew and our luggage. We surveyed the food landscape and decided that Burger King was our best option to eat as a group. Finally our gate was assigned and we headed off to Gate A, which required us to go through another security checkpoint. After a bit more waiting, we finally boarded our plane and took off for Slovenia.
The flight was just about an hour long. Again, we deplaned and headed to baggage claim, where our baggage came off the plane almost faster than we could grab. Praise God that everything arrived with us! After deciding that everyone had all of their bags, we caravaned out the door, following the signs, and ended up outside the airport. We still don't know if we missed customs, or if it just wasn't there? We quickly loaded onto our bus, but needed to wait a bit for another flight to land that had missionaries also headed to the same conference and were riding on the same bus. Unfortunately for them, we had comandeered all of the baggage room below the bus, but we made it work.
About two hours later, now nearing midnight, we arrived at our hotel/conference center, unloaded the bus, got checked in, received our room assignments, received our orders for the next day, and went to our rooms. Upon arriving in my room with my roommate (and friend) Courtney, we quickly learned that the mattresses on our beds were like boards. It jarred you a little bit when you first sat or laid down. Not the easiest thing to get comfortable on. As I learned throughout the week, though, I must not have been tired enough that first night, because the bed became more comfortable as the week went on and the more exhausted I became. I ended up falling asleep around 4am, which I was especially thrilled about when I had to get up at 6am.
The End.
(Ok, that's where this post ends. I'll continue the chronicle later...)
