We had a number of last minute items to take care of the day we left Canada. The main one was selling our car. God worked it out so a friend of ours that we had been climbing with at TWU and his dad wanted to buy the exact same kind of car that we were selling and after about an hour in the insurance office we got everything sorted out and the car was sold! Praise the Lord! We had our last supper with my family and a very emotional good bye with my brother (Andrew) and his lovely girlfriend (Robyn)! There were many tears shed. I felt bad for the random guy who walked up our driveway to try to sell us on cleaning the gutters or something and we are all a teary-eyed mess. I couldn't help but laugh. Then my parents drove us down to Seattle where we spent a couple hours awake at my best friend Janna's house before we all attempted to sleep for a few hours.
Matt's alarm went off at 3:30 am and we were out of the house and off to the airport at 4:00 am to catch our 6:20 flight. We decided to take one extra checked bag (bringing our total up to 5) plus our two carry-ons each. Our extra bag only cost us $100 because we purchased our tickets before July 1st (on or after July 1st it was $200 for each additional bag). Praise the Lord that none of our bags were overweight. We actually were able to weigh our bags outside before actually checking them. We found out they were each a few pounds under-weight with the exception of one that was 49.5 pounds. So I was able to put a couple more things from my carry-on in the checked luggage. We had an even more emotional good-bye with my parents before heading through security. I am so grateful to my parents for driving us down to the airport, sacrificing sleep and storing all of our stuff at their house. (By the way if you need a kitchen table, they are selling ours. It's really nice, solid wood a light maple colour and has six chairs... $100. I am sure they would love to sell it soon). We had a pretty uneventful first flight from Seattle to Atlanta (about 4.5 hours). We got to watch TV and free movies the whole way. I slept for about the last hour of that flight. Once we got to Atlanta we had to navigate the terminals to find ours but made a little pit stop in the food court. When we stopped to look up from our much needed caloric intake, we realized that we were surrounded by various missions teams. They were pretty easy to spot as they had matching shirts but it was so neat to see Christians going so many places. There was a team going to Uganda and Ecuador as well as a couple headed to Moldova. Our second flight was delayed by 15 minutes, which really wasn't a big deal to us. The reason was that there was a group whose first flight was delayed so they just made our flight even with the 15 minute delay. This team was from a church in Michigan (possibly Highland something or another church near Flint). The gal that sat beside me was a joy to talk to. This was the first time I have ever carried on a real conversation with the person sitting beside me on a flight. We ended up giving her our prayer card and she's going to be following along as we take part in this wonderful adventure! The team is going to Southern Colombia (near Leticia), where Colombia, Brazil, Peru all meet at the Amazon. They are going to be doing various service jobs as well as going down the River for a few day trips and/or multi-day trips to minister to the people in the villages. They are here for another 7 days or so before heading home. During our flight I was watching our progress on the moving map. It was neat to see when we were going over various islands and places I want to visit as well as places I have visited. Once we arrived in Bogota and our plane parked, we were shuttled to the terminal by a bus then waiting in the longest line of my life! There had to be multiple planes that unloaded around the same time because there were many hundreds of people making their way through immigration. We stood in that line for around an hour and a half! We were joking with the missions team that it was like being at Cedar Point (a rather large amusement park with huge roller coasters) you are in line for hours for a 30 second ride. We stood in line for 1.5 hours for a 2 minute experience at the window. We only had a couple communication issues. We made sure to show the immigration officer our visas so that helped. Our luggage was already waiting for us so we just had to track down all the pieces, Praise the Lord they all made it. Now we were told that if we have more than two pieces that we can flag down a worker with a cart. We tried for a long time to try to get someone to help us. I mean we had five bags and only one of them had wheels. So we had almost 330 pounds of luggage and only 49 of that didn't have to be carried. So you get your luggage, then go through another check point. At that point we ran into another minor challenge. There is a spot on your immigration card that asks how much, other than your ticket and vacation package will your trip cost. We had no clue so we left it blank. So we had to figure out what the lady was asking as well as come up with a number while trying to carry our luggage through a metal detector then onto another x-ray belt. Thankfully a lady behind me spoke English and helped us out. After all of our bags went through the x-ray, we got to haul our bags outside to find the ECA sign. That part was easy, the getting our bag to the curb was challenging. I think Matt carried 190 lbs on himself. Good thing he's so strong! The two people who picked us up didn't speak any English but the other teacher (from the US) they picked up spoke spanish, so we were ok. We waited for them to go get the cars (praise the Lord there were two cars). We loaded all the luggage into one car and the people into the other one and we were on our way. It was a nice cool evening (I was quite comfortable, Matt was a little cold on the drive, with his jacket in the other car). We were told we were suppose to go stay with a teacher but then ended up at a different teacher's house. I guess the first teacher (Jenn)'s water was turned off so they didn't think that was the best option for us. We love where we are staying and are hoping to get an apartment in this same complex. Anyways, our flight landed around 8:44 and we got to the complex around 11:30 pm. One more time we got to move all of our stuff but this time there was an elevator and we were on the third floor. We were pretty close to our load limit on the elevator but again, we made it. Basically we crawled into bed and were told to sleep in as much as we wanted. I'm not sure if Glenda (a teacher at ECA, been here for 16 years, and a wonderful lady who lives down the hall from her niece Melody whose apartment we are staying in) really knew what she was letting me do. I slept till around 10 then we had the process of getting ready. One of the best things we did during our packing process was made a list (colour-coded of course) of everything that we packed and in which bag. That was a long process but it has made the last few days way easier. Plus I mean I packed everything I would need for the first couple of days minus toiletries in my carry-on. So we knew exactly where the things were that we needed. It was still an hour long process. She came over around 11:00 or 11:30 to make sure we were still alive. We went to her apartment for 'breakfast' then headed out to catch the bus to check out the school.
I really want to give the rest of this post some justice but I am so tired and we have a big morning tomorrow... long story short, I'm going to bed and I'll finish this post tomorrow! If you want to know about the school and all the other adventures we've had so far, you'll just have to check back later! Enjoy your night, sleep well. God is Great and greatly to be praised!
God is indeed good! Glad the process was painless, other than the muscles that were strained carrying all that luggage of course.
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