We arrived just after 6 am at Heathrow. I got some good sleep on that flight. Dinner shortly after our takeoff was either beef or fish and I heard good things about them both. I had the beef and mashed potatoes, then put on my eye shade and faded away. I woke up with a slight headache halfway through the 8.5 hour trip. I got some water from the crew and went ahead and took my daily meds, malaria prevention and some ibuprofen for the headache. Soon I was back to sleep.
We had to go from Terminal 3 to Terminal 5 just as we had on the way to Kenya. It involves several escalators and a 10 minute bus ride. We got through security with little difficulty and began our 5 hour layover. We each freshened up and then we took turns watching our luggage as Kevin and Cynthia did a little more shopping and I had a large black coffee and an egg salad sandwich. The little box breakfast before landing wasn't the most terrible thing, but it was just a granola and nut bar, a little banana bread slice, crackers and cheese and some yogurt. I skipped the yogurt because I'm taking antibiotics for malaria prevention and am already balancing that with acidophilus. I got a big laugh when I loudly told a cabin attendant that it had been the best breakfast of my entire life as he was cleaning up the aftermath before our landing.
At Heathrow, I tried and tried to connect my smartphone to the wifi with no luck. I only needed several minutes to publish blog posts and send emails to let Austin friends, family and our church know that we had made it to London OK. Cynthia and Kevin had no issues with their phones, so I finally gave up and had Cynthia send an email for me. Pretty sad, I'm a computer tech and couldn't connect. The cobblers children have no shoes!
We just finally took off around 12:20pm London time. Our flight will be about 9.5 hours, but with the time zone difference we will arrive in Austin around 4pm. I'm hopeful that we can zoom right through Immigration and Customs and ride right home. So far, my new lucky red travel shirt has done pretty well. Come to think of it, maybe it had something to do with our great photo safari yesterday. Hmm...
We will be served lunch soon. My eyes are already heavy, I'm pretty sure I'll be down for the count after eating. I've already alerted our crew to wake me up for lunch if I don't make it that far. I've blown it before and meals are quite a ways apart, although I always bring some snacks and International flights usually have a stock of goodies.
All right, the food carts are on the way! I guess they won't have to poke me with a stick after all. Whoops, they nearly ran out of lunches so I could have chicken curry or I could have chicken curry. Glad I like it. It came with rice and peas, a salmon salad, crackers and cheese and a Belgian chocolate cup. Very filling. I had some after meal coffee to try to stay awake a bit longer. I'd like to get just enough nap time in so that I can go to bed sometime after 9 pm once we get home. A great idea but not easy to execute on. 8 hours difference of jet lag will take a few days to overcome. It's harder when you come back than when you go on a mission trip. I think it's partly because we design our weekend activities on these trips to blast you into the new time zone and when Monday rolls around, ready or not we have to do what we came to do. Coming home, it's a little easier to be a bit lazy about adjusting, especially if you're self employed like I am. It is what it is.
That's it for this post. I'm sure I'll get all of the posts since the last one I was able to publish before our travel out to the blog this evening. Please keep coming back as I add a photo album, more stories and a final set of reflections on what this mission meant to us and to Pipeline and the community we were blessed to serve.
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