Day #1

After 36 hours of travel, (or more...who's counting anymore) we have finally arrived at our destination!!!! We are in beautiful, balmy Oradea, Romania! I can't wait to post pictures, but I only have a brief moment to blog and let you know we arrived and give you some highlights. Our trip went well. Flights were smooth (even the puddle jumper which is NOT my favorite thing in the world). This all-around smoothness did make the other passengers wonder why James Rios was screaming with his arms in the air at take off and landing. :) The 9 hour flight from O'Hare to Warsaw included dinner and breakfast...dinner was good...breakfast was leftovers from dinner. Kinda weird. Not yucky, just weird. Then in Warsaw we had a couple hour layover. The inside of the airport was all we saw of Poland. We ordered lunch at the only venue available, having no idea how much each item cost...found out later, we spent about $325 on lunch for the group of 17. Not exactly what we had banked on, but what can you do? :) Arrived in Budapest a little bit late, but not too bad, so far so good. The bad news came when the luggage belt stopped moving and the doors went down and most of us still stood empty handed at baggage claim. Took us about 45 minutes to report our lost luggage and mentally run through all the things we would NOT be doing, or would be doing less efficiently with no luggage. Ironically, of the luggage that DID make it, most were bags we packed for the Finks! After claiming that their prayer system was better than ours, we locked them in a room and commanded that they pray until ours arrives (hopefully Monday). Among those who will be wearing their own clothes (and sharing with similarly sized people) today are Sam and Josh. That's about it!

We made a quick stop at Burger King...we almost lost Kari and Josh, but they couldn't even pronounce the menu items (video footage on that later). So knowing their shots of making employee of the month were shot, they decided to journey on with us. The next stretch of our trip was the 3 hour drive to Oradea. Our 3-vehicle caravan turned into four when a Hungarian stranger pulled up behind Mrs. Fink and managed to communicate that he didn't know the way to the border. Sooo...he pulled in between and caravaned with us for a couple hours, much to our amusement. Made it a little awkward though...the two vans behind us had no idea what he was doing there, and we had no means of communication, and we didn't want to stop. Some good laughs.



We finally crawled in to bed last night around 4am (well, this morning, I should say). Pastor Pete called an 11:00 church service, but it's 11:30 right now and the house is quiet. We don't think his alarm went off. So we're going to go wake him up, get churched, and see what the rest of the day has to offer!



Thanks so much for your prayers!