Home Sweet Home

June 4, 2013

The flight from Accra to Amsterdam was relatively uneventful. Because we had to take the bus out to the plane, there was no mad rush to get on as there was on the flight to Accra. After we made it to Amsterdam, we had a short layover and no chance to get any coffee. This meant I was already running on empty a little bit, and now had a daytime flight the entire way to Detroit.

Because it was so bright, I was unable to sleep on the way to there. Instead, I watched both of the Hangover movies that were available, and tried to work on this web site some offline. The problem was, I was already tired, so building a site was not going very well.

I was then nervous that in Detroit, we would have to go through customs and then have our bags checked again to get to Chicago. We only had a 2 hour layover, so I as worried that between customs and having our bags checked, it would be another time running through the airport. Once we landed, we got to the customs line and it was backed up already. It was one of those situations where they list out the instructions about 100 times, but every third person seemed to be utterly surprised about what documents they needed to present. This was confirmed when I made it through in 2 minutes, and the average had been about 5 minutes per person. The customs lady was almost relieved that I actually could read directions.

There was then a special baggage area just for international flights, so Scott and I were able to find our bags with no problem. We then headed to get them checked again, only to find there was a special check-in area by the international terminal for this situation. I was able to hand them by bag and go through a quick security checkpoint without any problem.

Now having over an hour before boarding, we decided to get some food. I saw McDonalds for the first time in almost two weeks, and after all the great local food we had for the trip, my stomach turned at the idea of eating that. I decided to go for some pizza instead, but wasn’t great, but didn’t make my stomach upset.

An hour flight later, we were in Chicago. We met up with the group that came back earlier and were on our way to Iowa City. We got back right around 5 at the church and I got to give Rebekah and the boys all a huge hug. I am pretty sure I had been running on adrenaline for the last few hours, mainly because once I saw everyone, I got really tired real quick. I realized that I had slept about 4 hours in the last 40, so Rebekah made the wise decision to drive to dinner, and then home after that. It was great to get the boys to bed and start sharing some of the stories with Rebekah.