July 3. We’re Off!

July 3. We’re Off!

I’m sitting in O’Hare in Chicago. With this route, we managed to visit the two busiest airports in the world. Atlanta was fine, but Chicago might be a different story. We’ve been delayed for thirty minutes, which is 25 minutes more delay than we had an hour ago!

Oh for a trip where we were able to get ready and go! This morning, I had to go in to our East Campus to conduct an interview at 7:30. Jim was coming to our house at 8:30 to take us to Atlanta.

The interview went very well, and I managed to stay for most of it. Jeff came to East Campus at 8:15 and we were at our house by 8:30. Jim was already there and he had our bags scattered all over the driveway. Lisa and I had spent most of the night on final packing and I was relieved to see that she had finished while I was at school. She had packed Uganda bags for Jeff, herself, and me and one extra. These bags were filled with crayons, pens, pencils, toys, and all manner of other gifts from our sponsors. Jeff brought a dozen baseball caps to add to the mix.

Our drive to Atlanta was uneventful. A porter met us at the curb and loaded our bags on a cart. We walked straight up to the gate agent and she had us checked in within a few minutes. We left on time, and we all slept through most of the fight. Brusseles is a huge airport and it felt as though we saw most of it walking to our gate! But in the past when we connected here, we had to go out of the secured area and take a train to the terminal. That meant another round with security! This time, we walked a long way but we didn’t have to face the train or another security check.

But we did miss Belgian Waffles for breakfast! In all the walking, we passed a place to go into the real airport mall, but we didn’t because we weren’t sure about clearing Immigration. We thought there’d be places to buy breakfast near our gate. But there were only two small coffee places with pastries only. We took seats near our gate.

I got out my Blackberry Worldphone, which we had made a trip to Circuit City to have checked out. The man at Circuit City, the same one who’d messed up a card in my phone six months ago, said he needed to take my phone in the back to work on it. That should have told me something, but it didn’t. I let him take it and go to the rear of the store. He came back all smiles. “It is ready, sir,” he said.

“You’ve checked it somehow and you’re sure it will work in Europe and Africa?”
I asked. I wasn’t sure about this guy after last time.

“Oh, sir, I am certain. It will work beautifully!”

So we’re all sitting in the Brussels airport waiting for it to work beautifully. Instead, I got an error message: “Insert SIM card,” that is put in the very card he supposedly fixed.

After several tries, I got the toll free world phone help desk. I did get help, but the toll free part wasn’t so good: the phone wouldn’t call them unless I entered my credit card. So for no telling how much per minute, I got some great advice: the card is in upside down, so take it out and put it back. Good advice except our tweezers had to go in our checked bags with all our other terrorist implements (you know, scissors, nail files, etc.)

And so we wait!! They should call us very soon.