redux

we are home!
home sweet lovely home. sleeping in my bed was amazing, i tell you.

jetlag is sort of lingering - i think it hit us really hard yesterday, particularly due to the 40ish hours of travel... but more on that later.

let us just say that the trip home was highly eventful.

beginning at the beginning: the church van we had chartered for 5:00 am was unavailable due to the driver's last-minute family emergency at 4 -- we had to scramble to Changi Airport in two smaller cars, courtesy of Pastor Wei and Chee Chiew our police friend. this was but the first in a series of "unfortunate" events...

after a breakfast at an airport Burger King, we caught our flight to Hong Kong smoothly. upon arrival, halfway out the airplane-exit-tunnel (if there's a real name for it I am ignorant of it), I noticed I had lost a camera battery and ran all the way back into the plane to search for it. the stewards and stewardesses were extremely helpful, and about five minutes into the frantic search one entered the plane and said that my friend had it (Andrew)...turns out Jeremy had seen it drop when entering the plane, and forgot to tell me. disaster averted, I thanked everyone profusely and embarrassedly before dashing back outside.

our HK-LA gate was crowded when we got there, a mix of Asians and an enormous crowd of South African teens in yellow-and-red outfits. we chatted and found out they were headed to LA for the Performing Arts World Championships. (pretty brilliant!)

in a few minutes we were bussed to the plane in crowded shuttles. upon boarding we were then greeted with a pleasant announcement from our (American!) pilot: due to volcanic activity in Alaska our flight had to be rerouted and thus extended, for approximately one hour...

...which turned out to be just long enough to make us miss our LA-Philly connection, as we discovered upon landing in Cali. fortunately, we were awarded $15 food vouchers from Cathay Pacific, our airline.

we had to claim our baggage, then cart it across several terminals -- outdoors, since LAX is hugetastic -- to be re-registered under US Airways. after this, we bussed back and forth until we reached a terminal that would accept our vouchers. we had a delicious meal of burgers, beef dips, quesadillas, and grilled cheese. :)

between this point and our final flight we all found ourselves dropping off at random points. (you know, when you're sitting down and decide to close your eyes, and then decide to keep them closed, and it feels good and slightly restful...and then you suddenly jerk a few seconds later and hope nobody saw that?)

finally. we boarded our 8:30 plane (8:30 LA time, that is) and took off for Philly, with a Las Vegas stop in between. Las Vegas looks really pretty from the air, lemme tell ya. we slept most of the trip.

and then we got to Philadelphia at long last, around 5-6 am EST.... and from there all was glorious!

Mr. McMullin picked us up in the van and we trekked down to McDonald's for a True American Breakfast...the capper to an amazing and unforgettable trip. Praise God we and all our luggage stayed safe even despite the bizarre "mishaps"...and the 30-40 nonstop travelling hours!

it is so great to be home, and we look forward to seeing all of you our faithful blogfollowers soon. to those in Singapore: we miss you guys already and demand you come to visit someday! :)

signing off to take care of some jetlag now. take care folks!

cheers,
Dan