Day 1

I have been planning a trip home for quite some time and May 1 Wes and Laurie put me on a plane to Joburg South Africa. I had never flown by myself  and was pretty nervous. I flew from Lusaka Zambia to South Africa. (3 hours)  then to England (9 hours) then to Dallas (12 hours). The trip was long but uneventful which was a good thing. My peeps had prayed for God to send people to help me so it was very cool when they showed up. Before I even got on the plane in Lusaka an American man saw me  and made a bee line to sit next to me. I smiled and thought "here comes angel #1." He was very nice and had been in the Congo working so had very interesting stories to tell. I went straight to my gate in Joburg and very few people were there so I HAD to take a poll to see if I was in the right place. In the process I met an older couple from the US. We were having a nice visit when two more Americans heard us talking and joined us. We just had a party right there. We had a blast talking and laughing. (More angels) The older couple sat right behind me on the plane. (What a coincidence ;) I was the only only one on my row so I invited my new friend to come sit by me and we chatted for hours. I didn't have any trouble finding my gate in England so had several hours to kill. The flight to Dallas was jam packed so I got to know a very nice lady from Sweden pretty well. She didn't speak English very well but we still managed to trade stories about our families. She was headed to Wichita Falls to meet her husband. We touched down and I nearly lost it. I was on American soil for the first time in 15 months and when the guy at immigration said "welcome home" I did tear up a little. I would probably have gotten a lot more emotional but he marked my paper  with a big red A flagging me for an agriculture shake down to make sure I wasn't bringing back any unwanted African "stuff"  on my shoes. My bud Janice picked me up and we finally made it out of the airport.  I did lose it. My mind was not used to processing the images my eyes were sending it. Lanes and lanes of traffic, strange houses and soooooo many white people!Our first stop was Dairy Queen for a blizzard YUMMMMM then on to Walmart! Janice had to keep me focused on what we needed because I just wanted to look at everything. So much food! Sensory over load.

Forgotten sights, sounds and smells began to make their back to my memory over the next few days. The feel of soft carpet, rocky road ice cream and micro wave popcorn for breakfast, hot water any time of the day....or night, clean neighborhoods and current episodes of NCIS.

 

23 hours on a plane makes one a bit goofy