Ethiopia - Day 1: A Plane ride of Caged Animals

Now I can't promise that I'll keep these coming everyday but hopefully they will form a pattern. I had all these great plans of blogging while I was away. Wonderful, interesting, and well-written blogs to stimulate your mind and release the congestion in mine. But on day 1, when I hadn't slept in about 30 hours, I realized that intelligible talking was a task in itself, much less writing! So the entire trip, I reverted to just journaling little points to remember, so I may need to bring my writing up a notch to share with all of you to keep you from leaving me on Day 2 after you are bored to tears .... The never-ending plane ride. Oh... my.... goodness.... How do some of you take multiple world-wide travels a year?? At one point, on meal number 3 of our flight, one of the other passengers asked, "don't you just feel like caged animals where they just keep throwing you food, whether you want it or not?" At hour 16 of my traveling day, with very little sleep the night before due to excitement, my roommate and I were pretty sure that we were at the stage of sleeplessness where you start to loose your mind! And to add to the insanity - the planes are now equipped with t.v. screens over-head set up with GPS which let you see exactly where your little plane is on God's big Earth. Nice. Not. It is pretty much finger-nail-pulling torture to look up every 3 minutes and see you are still over the never-ending Atlantic Ocean or Sahara Desert and Ethiopia is still thousands of miles away!!  My first flight out of Charlotte had been delayed 2 hours. Four hours alone in an airport before your first ever out-of-country experience does wonders for your nerves..... But, I did get to Washington 20 minutes before my time to meet my party so all was well. Especially after I stocked up on chocolate in the over-priced gift shop. How could I have forgotten to pack minature Snickers?? Ready to go!! Once we got to Ethiopia, we stumbled into our hotel and collapsed into wonderful, actually pretty cushy mattresses and pillows.... The next morning, our trip leader gave us the run-down with the following quote which will always stick with me (thank you, sweet Mama JoAnn) "You are not here by accident. You are here for a reason. For you to have come to Ethiopia, at this time, this year, in 2009 - not last year, not the year after - is not an accident. God has his plan for you. Remember that."  The River Nile. The Ethiopians are proud that all rivers run down into Africa from their country. We were also told that the oldest human remains, "Lucy", were found in Ethiopia and that it is called the "Island of Christianity" as it is surrounded on all sides with Muslim countries.