Our team arrived here in Cape Town around 5:30pm local time this evening. (That's 10:30am Nashville time). We were supposed to arrive around 4:00pm, but we were delayed out of New York's JFK Airport for two hours.
I like the travel itinerary of JFK to Dakar (for re-fueling) to Cape Town. I did not like the Delta jet that we were on. Anyone who has traveled even one time internationally knows about those small, but important amenities that make a 16-20 hour flight more bearable. Two of those are in-seat screens with on-demand viewing of tons of movies and TV series and multiple meals. Delta offered neither.
Now I realize that being a mission trip, one should not complain about such things, so consider this an observation more than a complaint. I am told Delta is upgrading all of their international jets to accommodate the in-seat screens.
Regardless, the trip was rather uneventful except for a flight attendant who wanted to know if I was from Kiawah Island (my hat) because she was from Charleston, SC. Go figure.....
We walked off the plane here in Cape Town to 58 degree weather, cloudy and windy.
Customs was a breeze, and Gordon, our combi driver greeted us along with two members of a current large team here from California. We loaded our stuff in the small trailer and headed to this lovely place called Sundollar where we are staying for this one night until The Team House is vacated tomorrow morning.
Our dinner this evening consisted of cauliflower soup and some kind of egg dish - interesting meal after being on a plane for 18 hours. Shane and I chose to compliment our tasty meal with a Yum-Yum sandwich - (that's South Africa version of peanut butter)
I then left the other members of the team here at the Sundollar while I went to the Team House to meet with a few members of the California team as they told me all about what they had been doing these past two weeks. I will elaborate on that in a separate post.
I forgot how much I love The Team House - it will be great to move there tomorrrow. In addition to that being on our Thursday agenda, we will set-up for our workshops at Belhar, and then have dinner at John & Avril Thomas' home tomorrow evening.
Thanks for praying for us - getting here is a fairly big deal, and getting here in good spirits is even a biggger deal.
For now, I need some sleep, so more blogging tomorrow......
