"The Water Blends in With the Ocean"

September 13, 2008
These are the awe inspiring comments you say when you have the amount of sleep Becky and I had last night. This particular one came from Becky while flying from Dallas to Miami. My alarm went off at 2:20 a.m. this morning. That has made for a fun day. My eyes were burning and tired but I got up anyway and got ready, The airport shuttle picked us up at 3:45 a.m. and by then we were feeling relatively awake. I don't remember anything from the flight from SLC to Dallas. I slept the whole way. It was a sad moment at 8:30 a.m when I realized it had been 6 hours since I'd gotten out of bed. Once in Dallas I gratefully looked out at the flat green expanse of land, breathed in the thick humid air, and smiled with relief at being in my home state. Man do I miss Texas. Upon exiting the plane we first bought the exact same Texas souvenir t-shirt. It was $9.99 and we couldn't resist. Then we rounded the corner and ran into Dunkin Donuts. Hello breakfast, they definitely convinced us with their 99 cent donuts. In Dallas there was quite a bit of rain but it looked like Hurricane Ike wouldn't hit until a couple of hours after our flight left. We didn't have any problems as far as the weather goes. I called home to make sure my family was still out of harm's way in San Antonio, I'm curious to see how hard they got hit since afternoon flights to San Antonio and Austin were canceled.
We did end up being delayed for quite a while in Dallas as maintenance checked out a tire, I also don't remember much of this as I was sleeping. The whole day has been made up of waking up on a plane, looking out the window for a few minutes, stretching my poor neck, and falling back asleep. I've actually been awake for about 30 minutes now I think and it's the longest I've managed to stay conscious on the plane all day. We arrived very late to Miami, and we half ran to our connecting flight, we arrived 40 minutes after boarding had began. But we got on and I even had time to dig out my carrots and peanut butter which brightened my mood immensely.
Now we are on the plane flying from Miami to Guayaquil. We are flying over the Cayman islands and Panama. Unfortunately the sun went down so I don't see very much of anything. Earlier, I think we did fly over where the Mississippi empties into the Gulf though and that was pretty fun to see from the air. I'm extremely excited to arrive, meet our manager Johnny, and get to my apartment. When we e-mailed Johnny to confirm he would be at the airport to pick us up, he responded telling us they are very excited for our arrival, that our apartment is ready and they had bought us some food. That was very considerate of them to think of buying us food since we would be arriving on a Saturday night. Becky and I are both very excited for church tomorrow. We are slowly creating a list of all the things we want to do while we're in Ecuador. So far the list includes: go to institute, go horseback riding if possible, visit a banana plantation, learn to dance, visit the port and fishing docks, make lots of friends, and volunteer at an orphanage. Well, hopefully we'll land soon in Guayaquil. We've been traveling for 14 hours already and I'm ready to get there already.