Day 1: Leaving The Country...Today was a long long day. Probably one of my longest. First of all, I pulled an all nighter with Emily. Good idea Michelle? nope. So when we got to the airport at 5am, we found out that our flight had be cancelled due to weather conditions in Atlanta. Ricardo and Tasha tried to work out a couple different options to get us all to the Dominican and it came down to this...the only way we could get the whole team to the DR was to drive down to Charleston airport. Ok cool, right? Not too too far? wait. it's 5am and we have no way to get down there. Everyone got dropped off, no one has their car, and yea it's 5am, who is awake at this hour on spring break? So we called some people. Ricardo called the Neeves and they were willing to drive us, they are so awesome and Emily's parents were willing too. EMILY'S PARENTS ARE AWESOME! So Emily's Mom and Step-Father drove us all the way down to Charleston airport. I rode in Wally's truck with Christina, Sarah and Ricardo, everyone else went with Emily's Mom. We weren't able to head down to Charleston until around 7:30am. We had to make it down there by 10:30am. Well we made it and when we got there we all realized we had to split apart. Because of our original flight cancellation, the airline could only send 4 of us to the DR today. So Tasha, Vanessa, Heather and I, split from the rest of the team to fly to Miami, FL while the other 6 flew to New York for the night. They have to stay over night in NY and fly out to the DR in the morning. So we are already a day behind, since half the team will be getting there late. And so the team split. We all said our goodbyes. Our flight to Miami didn't board until 11:30am so the 4 of us grabbed some breakfast in the airport and just hung out. I was really super bummed to split up from everyone but at the same time I was nervous about getting to be one of the first in Santo Domingo. Well we made it to Miami on this really really small plane. The turbulence was really bad. My ear's hurt from the pressure. When we got off the bite sized plane, we had to take a shuttle to get us off the run way. On the shuttle, we met this lady who was on the plane with us. She had a dog in her arms that rode with her on the plane in her lap. The lady worked at MUSC and the dog was a therapy dog. It was pretty cool. Once we got into the airport, we had dinner of course. We all got chinese food and a lot of it :) I started to get nervous because of the weather conditions in Miami. There were tornado and thunderstorm warnings. It was raining on and off too but it calmed down by the time we got on the plane. I guess we all looked like nice Americans to talk to in the airport because we met another lady! Go Figure. She was heading to the Dominican too. She was really cool to talk to. She is Puerto Rican, from New York, and married to a Jamaican. When she was talking to us, you could hear every little aspect of the Puerto Rican, NY, and Jamaican! It was fun to listen to her talk. I pray that her and her family are blessed with good health and safe travels. Sooo the plane ride to Santo Domingo wasn't as bad as the one to Miami. We were on the plane for about 2 1/2 hours. When we finally got into Santo Domingo, I felt like an outsider. It was this new world that I had never seen before with a new language, new environment, new culture.....and boy was it hot! I don't mean warm....I mean, like standing in the airport, in a sweatshirt with no circulation, in about 95 degrees waiting on our luggage. yep. As we walked out of baggage claim to find our people from SCORE International, there were dominicans lined up just watching everyone get off the planes. It was crazy!! It was like being a celebrity, walking down the red carpet! Well we finally found our Score people and they took us to our hotel. We are staying in a hotel instead of at the score complex because there are so many mission teams here this week, that they couldn't house all of them. Anyways, driving to the hotel, my mouth was hanging open as this whole new culture was opened to me. I am out of my comfort zone, but I LIKE IT!!! Our hotel is really nice which makes it seem like we are on a leisure trip but we need to keep our focus on Him. I am in a room with Vanessa tonight and Heather and Tasha are in the other one. When the rest of the team gets here, rooms will be as follows...
Room 301:
Michelle
Vanessa
Sarah
Room 306:
Emily
Lindsay
Christina
Room 307:
Tasha
Margo
Heather
Room 316:
Ricardo
I cannot wait for the team to come back together tomorrow. I miss them soooo much and we've only been apart from them for like 15 hours! I keep texting Sarah, Ricardo and Emily. ughhh! I love all of them and I cannot WAIT to see them tomorrow! I hope we can go pick them up at the airport. I pray that they all have a wonderful night together in New York, and I pray that this split up will bring better things to our team. I am excited for what's to come. All thanks to Him.
