And they're off!

5-23-09
We left our house around 945am. Dropped Obie off at Joanne’s and then headed to meet Boyd. We rearranged our luggage and then sped down the interstate. We had to make a couple stops along the way to fix our tarp(it was raining) to prevent it from blowing away. This made us a little later than we wanted. “Oh well”, we thought. We got in the long, long international check-in line and waited. As we got towards the front, there were Delta workers trying to get people on their international flights on time. We got overlooked because we were flying to San Francisco first. There were others flying straight to an international destination….but as the time kept ticking away we told another worker that we were indeed an international ticket holder and she got us right through. We had 2 minutes to get our luggage checked in. The ticket guy typed so fast but only got 6 of our 7 bags checked in…which was OK because the smallest was a carry-on size. WHEW! This was 1:15pm. Our flight is at 1:55. So the race began to get through security and then to our gate. Thank goodness the plane was late arriving so we got there with about 10 minutes to spare! I prayed so hard while waiting in line that we would make it. We figured if we missed this one hopefully we could find another flight and still make it onto our Philippine Airline flight later that night….but we didn’t have to do that thankfully!

here we are getting ready to take off in Atlanta! we are excited to finally be on our way!

this is the PAL-Philippines Airline plane. we each had personal TV's! and that is a can of their "diet coke"....and we got to have to whole can! Not just a cup....there was so much food on this plane...it was so nice! and we didn't have to pay extra for it!

So Nate just asked what time it was “here”. I have no idea where we are or the time. We are cruising at a very high altitude somewhere between San Francisco and Guam. The flight takes 11 hours and when we get to Guam it will be around 2:30 am and noon-ish in Manilla. We get “gasoline” and then head back out for Manila which will take another 3 hours. The clock on the computer says it is 720am so if we got on the plane 130am we have only been flying….sigh….6 out of 11 hours. I hope I can go back to sleep!
So anyway….when we got off the flight my lower back was aching!! The seats on the ATL flight didn’t recline much so my lower back was pretty tight from sitting upright for 4 hours. Oh and we were right against the toilet so it smelled like a nursing home 76% of the time!

waiting in San Fransisco airport...about 10pm. we are all pretty tired!

Lola came in about 7pm(she flew in from South Carolina) and then we headed over to the Philipine Airline ticket counter. It was funny to see all the Filipinos there. All the boxes(you are allowed 2 per ticketed passenger)…people just like us taking over gifts or whatever to their families. It was fun to just sit and watch the different people. There were 2 American men waiting to get tickets. I wonder if they were on their way to get their “pen pal” bride.

Since we were a connecting flight we didn’t have to wait long to get our boarding passes-we already had waited in a horrifically long line in ATL! Whew. Anyway….then we made our way to our gate and waited. To kill time (we had 6.5 hours to kill) the kids and i rode the escalators. Also the running treadmill-like things. They were getting pretty good at going in the wrong direction. If Trudy was here we could have recreated part of the baseball scene from Twilight.. .where Victoria and James and that other guy come sauntering in from the woods…love that scene!! Anyway….the time is almost 10pm…which is 1am to us. The kids are starting to show signs of fatigue. Sophia is the first to go. Nate seems like he could play for another hour and I marvel at how well they have done with little sleep…they have done SO well today.

(Richard and Lola waiting in the Manila airport for the shuttle to take us to our next flight....this is where the police dogs sniffed our luggage and they asked a bunch of questions about what we had....and to speed up the process we had to bribe them with chocolate....but that didn't work so Lola gave them some money...which is common in the Philippines)

We finally get to board the HUMONGOUS airplane that has like a million seats. There is even a second level! We are pretty excited about this plane because each seat has its own movie screen where you can watch movies(Twilight is one choice!) or TV or listen to radio or play video games. It is RADICAL! So we get situated and I test out the reclining-ability of these seats….it is better…but I can tell I am going to have a very hard time falling asleep. My legs got restless and I couldn’t find a comfortable position…did not realize how hard it would be to sleep vertical! The kids were able to ball up in the seat but I tossed and turned as much as you could in a very small seat. I finally dozed off and feel pretty rested now(i believe it must have been 6 hours into our flight when i wrote this)….but would love to take another nap before whatever lies ahead. Sophia has slept the most which is good. She has the lowest tolerance for fatigue. Well that is all for now. I am going to watch a movie and hopefully get a nap in before we land again.