A little hiccup...

So we hit a little hiccup today when we arrived at the airport in Portland. The friends we were traveling with discovered that one of their passports was valid 5 days too few. The airport authority would not check them through to Nairobi and snce Jeremy and I had already checked ur bags there was no turning back for us. - We got on the plane without them!

We arrived in Amsterdam almost 10 hours later, tired, sore and ready to be off a crowded plane. Schipol, for that is the name of the international airport in Amsterdam, is large, and very different n a lot of ways from American airports. The signs are different, the recorded messages that are played over the intercom are in Dutch, and there were people speaking a multitude of languages everywhere!

We asked a lovely blue suited KLM agent what gate the KLM flight for Nairobi would be taking off from and she gave us directions, letting us know the gate was F3.

Here's another odd thing about Schipol, there is a casino, two hotels, a shopping mall, (including Victoria's Secret), a library, and an art museum, all in the airport! Hence, it would seem that many of the gates have their own security, as we found out when we reached gate F3. My CamelBak bottle, which had just been so nicely filled with bottled water by the stewardess on the last plane, had to be emptied before going through security spat the gate! That meant I had to find a "Toilet." Off I went, finally locating one and then being more confused when I got in there then I had been trying to find it. There was grass and glass and the toilet stalls had floor to ceiling doors on them. I couldn't figure out how the flush the toilet until I touched the in wall LED screen. Then when I came out, I couldn't figure out how to get the sink to turn on! An adventure to say the least!

Once we got aboard our KLM Jumbo Jet we settled down in a row near the back with just two seats in the row. We were very impressed with KLM! All the KLM staff were friendly, helpful, and took very good care of us. The seats had personal entertainment systems complete with movies, games, music, tv shows, you name it! They also fed us well! They gave us a snack of smoked almonds, then we had lunch, which included a vegetarian option, and the most amazing raspberry, merengue-yogurt dessert with a graham cracker-like crust. - It was really delicious! The they gave us ice cream later and still later they came through with supper, which consisted of personal artisan pizzas, fruit salad, a couscous salad, and yummy little wafer cookies which are evidentially a Christmas tradition in The Netherlands.

All, in all, we were very well fed!

We landed in Nairobi in a thunderstorm and then spent at least an hour trying to get our visas. Once we figured out what forms we needed to fill out, which line we needed to stand in, and finally got our visas we were afraid our baggage would be gone. It was not and we were able to pick it up without incident.

Now to find Aprille's parents which we hadn't seen in some time and didn't know if we were recognize them or not. As it turned out, they recognized us! :)

The trip to Maxwell was an adventure in the dark, with vehicles going the opposite direction we're used to, honking, flashing their lights, and generally, NOT staying on their side of the road.

So now I'm getting ready to sleep as much as possible before church tomorrow. Sleep well!