Our Return to Romania

Hmm, where to start? At the beginning, I suppose...
     Monday, Dec. 16 -- The day started as a normal work week. My little sister, Bridgette, stopped by to borrow a Christmas themed novel to read to her first class during the "first week before Christmas" of her first year of teaching. Emily and I both wants to stay in bed. I was running late as usual. Emily had EOCs and final exams. Frequently throughout the day I asked myself why I thought I should work the day before leaving for Romania... After school I had to run a few errands. I stopped at the bank to deposit some lovely donations from some lovely people. I opened the back of my car to get out the jar of change that a sweet friend had donated and the backpack I was taking for my carry on was missing! Remember my little sister borrowed those books...well, she thought I was nice enough to put them in a backpack for her to carry!! LOL I quickly called BB to find out that she was at home and yes, the backpack was at her school, Jones Cove -- about a 45 minute drive away. Needless to say my awesome little sister quickly jumped in her car and took off to get the backpack (and the change jar -- which ended up being almost $34, Velma!).

Later that evening on her 24th wedding anniversary, my awesome big sister, Trish, came to my house to help us start packing (yes, less than 15 hours before our flight). We started with the most important part -- our Christmas gifts and donations for the kiddos! Some of you may remember, for her 17th birthday in May Emily asked for toy donations for the children in Romania instead of gifts for herself. We had planned to ask a volunteer if we could pay their luggage costs for them to bring them over. Then Emily decided that she must return to Romania. When she got that idea in her head there was no stopping her! We held on to the toys and started figuring out how to get back to Romania. Now we have a 50 pound suitcase full of Christmas gifts!

Our second suitcase, which we borrowed from our friend Tonja (hi Tonja) is also filled with donations and some lovely Christmas surprises. We also packed peanut butter crackers for snacks (thank goodness because that is what we have eaten for the past 2 days!! -- more on that later).

Our 3rd 50 pound suitcase is filled with our clothing, plus additional donations :)

Anyway back to Monday night, with each item Trish tried to shove in my stress level grew... Even though we bought one of those cheapo luggage scales I wasn't convinced our suitcases would meet airline guidelines.

Finally around 11pm we had everything packed and started getting together our carry on items.

Tuesday, Dec. 17 -- Once again I had errands to run. Another bank trip to make and a last minute Christmas gift stop. Finally I met Emily at my mom's to say our good-byes there. We enjoyed a late breakfast chatting with my mom and then the rush was on. We had to drop Emily's car at Randy's Customs to get repairs done from her minor accident in August. Then rushed to Trish's house to begin our journey to the airport.

McGhee Tyson -- Trish made it to the airport in record time! We walked in a little before 12:30. We were the first people at the United counter and all our bags were under 50 pounds! :) smooth sailing!
There was no one in line at security so we sailed through there as well... I should have known something was up! LOL we had a small lunch at the Ruby Tuesday's in the airport and the waited for our flight. An hour and a half later, here comes trouble... It was a gorgeous blue sky day and our plane has been delayed..instead of leaving at 2:32 it would now be leaving at 3:10... cutting our layover time in DC in half -- our Munich flight would be leaving DC at 5pm and boarding would start at 4:30...less than 20 minutes after our arrival.

God was watching out for us though and even though we were supposed to be delayed until 3:10 they rushed and got us on the plane earlier and we actually headed out around 2:45.

DC Dulles -- we arrived at gate C18 and were leaving from gate C1... We had about an hour until the flight actually left so we waited patiently for the plane to empty and let others who might miss connections go ahead of us. We walked quickly through the airport so we could get to our gate... I wish I had a pedometer in because gate C1 was a lot farther from gate C18 than I would have imagined! Once there I went up to the gate attendant to see if we could possibly get seats together. Guess what? Emily must have just been a product of my imagination because according to their records she was a no show on the flight to DC, which in turn canceled the rest of her reservation! Luckily, a nice lady, Lourdes Torres, was able to change her information in the computer -- after telling me that she "didn't know what they were smoking in Knoxville". Honestly the plane should never have left the ground because Em had checked baggage and you can't put baggage on a plane and not show up...something about bombs?! LOL

Anyway, Emily was finally *poof* in DC. We were among about the last 20 to board the plane. Doesn't sound like a big deal -- you already have a seat right? BUT you don't have luggage space!!! Finally we found a spot for our carry-ons, got the guy beside me to switch seats with Emily (she got to sit in the middle by a cutie-patootie guy too!) and we were on our way.

I watched World War Z (only movie I can recall ever saying was better than the book!) and read (Frank Peretti's book Illusion -- I love his stuff but this book did not impress me! More sci-fi than Christian spiritual warfare.) Emily watched several movies and we both dozed off and on.

Wednesday, Dec. 18 -- Munich -- arrived in Munich early...which turned our 5 hour layover into a 6 hour layover... We were very tired. Although it was 7am Munich time our bodies thought it was 1 am East Tennessee time. We did walk around a bit, used the free internet access to chat with family, mailed a few Christmas postcards, and checked with the Lufthansa service center to make sure our tickets were good to go (just in case!)! The girl at the counter insured me they were fine and even wrote the gate number on them. Finally we both took turns dozing until it was time for boarding. Munich has a really neat way of boarding planes. Instead of handing your boarding pass to a person you just scan it yourself. Well, we scanned Emily's and guess what... no ticket! UGH... once again -- by now I was beyond angry! I honestly was proud of how I had handled myself through all the other minor mishaps but this time I HAD checked with the airline 5 hours previously and now we were going through the same thing. Poor gate checker lady who asked if we had checked luggage and then had to tell me Emily's bag was not there. I proceeded to tell her that I had checked with the Lufthansa Service Center 5 HOURS AGO and was assured everything was fine!!! Finally she said it was fine she had found the bag. It was not one of my finest hours but it was honestly still better than it could have been on a normal day. I just had to keep reminding myself I was here on a mission from God and everything would be fine.

Finally Emily's ticket was re-issued and again we were some of the last people entering the plane. We were terribly far apart on this flight I was in row 6 and Emily was in row 31 or 33 or somewhere near the back..and I just wasn't happy! I just prayed and asked for God's hand on everything -- literally everything!

We arrived in Bucharest a few minutes late.  As we waited at the luggage claim, at least I kind of knew in advance that our bag would probably be missing, we finally found 2 of our bags then I asked a man who worked there where our 3rd bag was and he replied "fini" and pointed to the lost baggage area. :-) We filled out a lost bag claim, the girl was very sweet and told us our bag should arrive by 10 am the next morning. Lucky for us Trish insisted we pack a change of clothes in our carry-on! ;-)

About an hour later we finally went out to meet our taxi driver for the hotel.  Bless his heart, he said "finally!" Then we ran through the airport to the car. Turns out he had almost no time left on his token to exit the airport. We made it out with 30 seconds to spare -- he said, "Now, we can slow down and relax!" Welcome to Bucharest and rush hour traffic! It took us at least an hour to get to the hotel if not longer (we forgot to bring a watch!).  We drove through parts of Bucharest I do not remember seeing before and it is truly an amazing city. They have up enough Christmas lights to rival Pigeon Forge during Winterfest and I hope to get some pictures to do them justice! We are staying at the K+K Elisabeta which is on a small side street near the University. The front desk clerk was very welcoming and was excited that they had a room for us on the 7th floor so we could look out over the city. Even though it was only 6:30 or 7pm by the time we got here we were both exhausted and ready for bed.

Thursday, Dec. 19 -- Bucharest -- Breakfast at the hotel was FABULOUS! I am excited to eat it again tomorrow! LOL After breakfast we ventured out into the city to see the Christmas Market. It was COLD! No idea what the temperature truly is but I do know that I will be wearing my winter coat even if it does scream American (it is bright lime green!)! We had a mini-adventure trying to navigate the round-abouts while looking for crosswalks to get where we wanted to be but finally we were successful only to find that the Christmas Market opens at 11 and apparently it wasn't 11 yet. We walked on down the street, bought some snacks at a mini-market, then walked back -- still apparently not 11. So we decided to go back to the hotel and rest. We thought we would venture out to the Christmas Market around 1 or 2. Well, we fell asleep and slept almost all of the day away! Today has been a good day for relaxing and trying to get our bodies acclimated to losing 7 hours!

As promised our missing luggage was here when we arrived back from our walk around the city!

Our new plan is to visit the Christmas Market tomorrow afternoon. Wish us luck!