Saturday, July 30, 2011

In-Flight Blog Post

Blog Post 072911
So, the first blog post for the Poland missions trip 2011. I'm writing this as we hurtle through the air 37000 feet straight up, traveling at roughly 550mph.
Well, we got to church at 9:00 this morning in order to sort out all the luggage and all related baggage weight issues. All in all that went as well as could be expected.
We started off our trip to Poland with a bit of a road trip, driving from Rocky Mount down to Charlotte, North Carolina to fly out of Charlotte Douglas International Airport. My ride down was actually quite enjoyable. We stopped at a Cracker Barrel an hour outside of Charlotte to have lunch, thus avoiding exorbitant costs for food at the airport. I ate hearty knowing that it might be my last chance for a decent meal this week.
We continued our trip, and made it to Charlotte an hour or two a head of time. We lugged our suitcases to the closest shuttle stop, and waited for ten minutes in the blistering NC heat for the shuttle. The first thing I noticed about said shuttle once boarding, was that the glass box, with "break glass in case of emergency" printed across the front, had already been broken. Great, what glass were we supposed to break in the case of emergency.
This is jumping ahead of myself a little bit, but I noticed on the plane, they give the instructions first in German, then in English. If there's a real emergency, and the pilot needs to make an announcement, what is he going to do, give it first in German, and then the rest of us Americans can wait and listen for the English version? I guess it might pay to be German.
We made it to the Charlotte terminal, and drug our suitcases off the bus onto the sidewalk, to this message "May your flight be better than your bus trip to the terminal!" "And have better safety equipment, I thought.
We then got our boarding passes and proceeded to security. Although they made me nervous by running my backpack through the X-Ray machine several times, we made it through without incident. No knives this year! Several of the members of our team did go through the full body scanner. Apparently Doug, Joseph, and Mr. Andersen look extra suspicious.
We proceeded to our gate, and the Carters, Joseph and I staked out a spot behind a kiosk that had a power outlet. Joseph went to buy a Dr. Pepper, and Amanda and I followed. We found an amusing toy dog rolling around on the floor, which Amanda, always the compassionate one, promptly untangled from it's leash. I said "Amanda, it's a toy."
We then continued into the staging areas and, from there, onto the plane. Takoff was smooth. We weren't ten minutes into the flight when Mrs Andersen, sitting several rows up turns around and yells "Tanya, you doing OK back there?" I enjoyed a great documentary on Google. Having so much fun!

No comments:

Post a Comment