Panama Day 1: The Flight

I woke up this morning at 3:30.... that means 3 hours and 30 minutes of total sleep for me last night.
My dad drove me to the airport. halfway there, my mom calls me on the phone crying to tell me that she loves me. it was very sweet ^.^
my dad and i talk a little bit on the way there....
I'm one of the first 4 people to show up. all of us are tired, half of us have coffee in our hands (not me, unfortunately) and we're all waiting for the last person to show. Turns out to be Jesse Stretz. (God worked a miracle here: he didn't have an alarm set and just happened to wake up early enough to get to the airport on time.)

The team moves to an aisle separated from everyone else since we're all a group. We were blessed to have a good luggage guy; he didn't charge us the $100 we owed for the four extra bags we brought, and he was quite the jokester. he told me that my bag was 25 pounds overweight!!!!! needless to say i started to freak out a little bit, trying to figure out what in my bag i could get rid of. He let me {and the leaders of the team} suffer for a few minutes before telling us that he changed the numbers as a joke and my bag was actually fine.

We made it pretty easily past security, and we all got starbucks as a final treat before heading on the plane. turns out that our pilots had to take a mandatory 8 hour break before flying again so our plane was about a half hour late taking off. It was a smooth flight, though. we watched horton hears a who. ^.^ they served us chex cereal as breakfast... it was decent , if nothing else.
we landed in houston and made it through those security checks pretty fast, too.

Before getting on the plane, our team got to meet it's two missing memebers, Ugo and Chris, who live in the UK. it was pretty cool meeting them for the first time. Both seemed very quiet but very smart, typical of a doctor, is what i thought. (i'll find out later how wrong i was!!! both were so much fun to be around!!!

We got our passports back from Jerry and boarded the plane.
We were served beef sandwhiches with salad, carrots, and milano cookies. it wasn't the greatest but i've heard worse stories about plane food...
Houstons' ariel view was so beautiful!!! lots of trees, lakes, and rivers... and flying over the Gulf was awesome too. Looking out the window, you couldn't tell where the sky ended and the water began!!! it was so amazing!!! Best of all was flying over Panama. it was so lush and green, a huge different from the sandy las vegas desert i'm used to.

We could feel peoples prayers as we went through the security in panama. it was supposed to be a huge deal getting through secrity, and it was so easy!! they didn't even look in the bags!! no one had any problems, thank the Lord!!!

Outside the airport was waiting for us one very happy Pastor David. throughout this trip, he is our pastor, tour guide, translator, and entertainer. (this man is hysterical!!!) we quickly learned that his favorite phrase to say is 'you un-duh-stan?'
He talked to Jerry from the time we left the airport to the time we got to our hotel. I think it was safe to say that Pastor David was very excited that we came to panama...
The Hotel was pretty nice, too. stayed in Hotel Lisboa. (room 504!) Our room had such an amazing view of Panama City!!! (I'll post pictures when I get them uploaded.) The only downside was that we were on the 5th floor, and had to carry our luggage up the stairs because the elevator was so small!!! (the boys took all of the really heavy stuff up for us, but almost all the luggage was heavy thanks to the medicine!!) We were rewarded shortly after when Pastor David treated us to McDonalds. I have to say that I like Panamas' McDonalds a lot better that those in the US. the food actually has flavor there, it's very nice!
I stayed in a room with Ana and Laura. it was fun, I learned a lot about them that night. They're the best of friends and they do practicaly everything together!! they were telling me all sorts of crazy stories about the pranks they've pulled and the places they've been. they were a lot of fun to be around. They kept me up till a little after midnight, though. oh well. I can sleep on the bus tomarrow.
Devotions that night was cool, too. everyone met in our room, and we discussed the things that were going to happen the next day, how blessed we were today, etc. it was nice to look back and see how God and Prayer helped us through the day.
I was also suprised that the night was so cold. thank goodness for blankets!!!
I'll be looking foward to my 7 hour drive to Yaviza toamrrow....