Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Post #7: The Trip Home (July 4-5)

We woke up early so that we could go to the kids Monday morning assembly and the staff devotions. After that we got ourselves and our cabins all cleaned up. We packed our van, said our goodbyes, and headed off to the airport. There were many tears in the van as the teens did not want to go. But Lisa and I were both smiling as we were anxious to get back to our homes and families.

God was very, very kind to Lisa and the team as we seemed to run into more animals as we traveled to the airport, more than we saw during our actual safari. We saw many zebra and elephants. And then when we arrived at the airport, we noticed a big wart hog enjoying some grass on a little island area in the parking lot that had grass growing in it. When we got into the airport, we were told that the flight was overbooked by 7. This did not make Lisa happy. She began arguing why we had to be bumped. As the attendant began explaining I saw that although this is a little inconvenient at first, we were still going make our flight at Johannesburg. It’s just that we were going to have to take a different route to get there. So I got Lisa to back off and accept our fate. I only had one stipulation: we need some free food! So he let us get anything we wanted from their snack shop.

We ended up having to take 3 different flights to get to Johannesburg! The cool thing was that the last flight we had was a very tiny plane! It only had 8 seats in it! We were excited to be traveling on this tiny, little private jet. Soon after getting to Johannesburg airport, we were loading up on the big plane that would take us back to the states. Of course, we almost didn’t make the plane because Natalie and Olvia were shopping and got caught up with a very slow cash register attendant. But we all made it on safely. On the way home I watched a ton of movies as I was unable to fall asleep for any extended period of time. Here are my ratings on what I watched:

Must see: 13 Assassins, The Adjustment Bureau, and Win/Win!

A fun movie: The Green Hornet

Just Awful: Paul

Once we landed in Washington D.C. we were all off to find food! Almost all of us were dead-set on Chipotle. We had to go to the complete opposite side of the airport but we managed to find it. That meal was like heaven to us. We enjoyed every single bite as we reintroduced our stomachs to the fine cuisine of American food!

Just as we were about to board our last plane to take us back to Cincinnati, I was told that my little dog just got hit by a car! So the ability to relax and breathe a sigh of relief was gone. In fact, I found myself getting a little emotional thinking that I might be putting one of my dogs down later that day. Once we landed in Cincinnati, we got all of the teens to their families and I took off in Lisa’s car to go see my family and help with figuring out what we were going to do with our dog Buckeye! Luckily, with some surgery, he will hopefully return to normal in the weeks and months ahead.

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