Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Our travels so far

They don’t call PNG “the land of the unexpected” for nothing.  We arrived at the airport in Madang around 6am and checked in and waited for about 1 hour before they told us that lightning had hit the runway and cracked it and we wouldn’t be leaving that morning.  They told us to come back at 1pm so we headed back to our NTM center where everyone was confused to see us J  We realized that this setback was going to have us missing our international flight the next day in Australia so Geoff made lots of phone calls to work things out.  Several hours later and a whopping additional $3400 poorer, we had all our connections changed, bringing this one way ticket home to an unheard of grand total of $7900 (our family can usually fly round trip for that much)!  Geoff then called the airline again around 11:30 to see if our flight was going to be finally leaving Madang and they said to come on down around 1pm.  We arrived only to find out it wasn’t going to happen but they assured us that they could get us on a flight in the morning and would put us up at the hotel for the night including meals.  So we accepted that offer and headed to the hotel.  We ate lunch and put the girls down for their naps and enjoyed the air conditioning for about 2 hours, actually dozing off a bit ourselves, when the airline called and said the flight was going to be leaving after all and we needed to get down there right away. They said that they were holding the plane for us! We had already cancelled our hotel in Port Moresby so we asked if we could still just leave in the morning per the second original plan. The lady checked with her boss and said they really wanted us to be on the afternoon flight and that they would pay for our hotel in POM.  So we woke the girls up and raced back to the airport.  This time we actually made it on our flight but we were rerouted to Wewak (another city in PNG) which we didn’t actually know until we were descending.  As we flew over Skyler said “we should call the water God because it’s everywhere!!”  Too cute.  So after a short sit on the plane in Wewak we were finally on our way to POM and then arrived around 7pm.  One of NTM’s government reps met us at the airport with our passports and helped us figure out the hotel situation.  It took almost 1 hour to sort it out but they put us up at a hotel with meals included.  All of the nicer hotels were totally booked so we weren’t sure what to expect.  On arriving at the hotel we were shown to a room about 7 feet x 12 feet with one single bed.  The security guard quickly realized that was not going to work for us and arranged for us to have a larger room (here, the security guards help out with some of the work in the places they protect… so at the hotels they’ll often help with luggage and stuff and at stores they’ll actually help you find things you’re looking for) So anyway they moved us across the hall to a room with a double bed and a single bed which was much bigger.  This hotel was a much bigger step down than what we’re used to… A MUCH bigger step J  We were happy to have a place to sleep though and were able to sleep okay and were off to the airport early in the morning.  We made our flight to Brisbane, Australia without any further delays and the girls were really well behaved on the flight.  Maddie slept almost the entire way and Skyler just loved everything about the plane.  So we are now in Brisbane where we will be until tomorrow morning (Thursday our time) and enjoying comfortable beds and fast food again J  The plan now is that we will arrive in Phoenix around 7pm on Thursday so we hope to see some of you then and the rest of you not long after.  Please pray that the rest of our flights go smoother than the first, for more good behavior from the girls and a safe arrival in Phoenix in 2 days.

 

Thank you all for your prayers for us!

The Husas

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