Africa Day One...Travel, Travel, Travel

I am going to take the updating nice and slow, mainly because I'm still jet-lagged and feel pretty lousy.

Day One was mostly travel. We left Bham around 3:00 on the ASA flight to ATL. Our flight attendant yelled at us (yes, yelled at us) to be quiet and listen to her announcements so we could get moving. Seriously, does anyone listen to those safety announcements? Giving her the benefit of the doubt, she was probably on her fourth flight of the day and was tired. We were noisy and excited about leaving. Not a good combo.

After changing concourses in ATL, we sat for a while before boarding. The plane we were travelling on was delayed coming in from China so we started out an hour late. Not cool for my nerves. :-) We all get boarded and go through the motions of leaving. We taxi to the runway and then the pilot comes on and says our radio is broken and we have to go back to the terminal so the mechanics can repair it. Then we'll refuel and be on our way. Refuel? We went all of half a mile. Are you sure this plane will fly 8000 miles without refueling???

So anyway, after the drama, we are finally underway. For the first couple of hours, I'm doing good. Not too crazy, dinner was okay and I tried a movie. Couldn't get into "Confessions of a Shopaholic" but "Beverly Hills Chihauha" was okay. I tried to sleep some with a little success. After 12 hours or so, I was starting to get antsy. Our flight attendants had disappeared and didn't reappear until it was time to serve some sort of nasty pizza around with beverage service. After 15 hours or so, we landed in Jo-burg.

After landing, we had to go through passport control and temperature scan. Everyone is worried about swine flu. We all passed through and made it to baggage control. Thank the Lord and Delta, all our bags made it. :-) Our rag-tag crew made it to the lobby and found Steve and Susie Lawley there waiting. We got everyone in a vehicle and started the journey to our home for the next nine days, Alabanza. We topped our LONG day of travel with a wonderful bowl of warm chili and headed to bed.

More later...