After a day of traveling and no sleep I arrived in Lisbon at about 6:30 pm (10:30 am PST). My first flight was nine hours long and every time I fell asleep one of the ladies I was sitting between would wake me up...not on purpose but would still wake me up. I had a little old Hindu Indian woman on one side of me and an older Swedish woman on the other side (her name was Britmarie...I think the name is beautiful and I think I may name my first child after the random lady on the plane...). There was also an older British guy in front of us with his very old mother in front of us and they constantly had their chairs up which was really difficult for the Indian woman when she was trying to get out and even after we asked politely for him to move his seat up just for a second the woman could get up he said no because the seat in front of him was reclined. I thought he was very rude especially when he was trying to help his mother out of her seat and ended up ramming the seat in front of him and sending the older man in that seat flying forward. I think someone needs to teach that British man some manners!!!!
My first flight landed and I had a 4 hour layover in the Heathrow airport. The airport is complete insanity!!! It is so huge that you have to take a bus or subway to each Terminal. So when I got off my plane at Terminal 5 I had to take a subway and a bus to get to Terminal 3 where my following flight would depart. The airport also made me feel extremely poor! The little shops that they had at the airport that you could go walk around in were Hermes, Burberry, Gucci, and every other high end store that I would never be able to afford in my lifetime. Luckily while I ate my lunch at the airport I got to talk to this really kind older British couple who were heading to Cape Cod. They were talking to me about tennis, which I don't know anything about, and also about some jazz player. When I told them that I don't know tennis players very well and that I don't know the jazz player they informed me that they would were going to teach me about America! hahaha! Heathrow airport also likes to do this fun thing where they don't tell you which gate you are departing out of until they open the gate for you to board! Once they told me where my flight was departing out of I then had to run to the gate hop on a bus and go out to my plane. I think when Heathrow was created they thought "how can we make people feel crazy when they are flying?" All I could think was thank God the airport was in London and not in France or something.
My flight from London to Lisboa was awesome! I felt like a kid in a candy store! I luckily had a window seat and I was stuck to my window like white on rice. When we approached the airport we circled around and our approach was exactly like a dream that I had a couple days before I left. As the plane landed I seriously had to hold back tears because I didn't want to look like a big dork crying on the plane! I was so overwhelmed with joy when they plane landed I couldn't believe that something that I had dreamed about and planned for the past 7 years was happening! I finally got to meet the Fairbanks face to face and we had a nice chat about the area and what I would be doing as they drove me to my new home.
For the next 3 months I will be staying at the Portuguese Bible Institute, GEM actually helped start the school and many GEM missionaries have taught at the school. I have a roommate named Regina (pronounced Hegina) and she is from Brasil. We have decided that she would teach me Portuguese and I would teach her English. So far she knows alot more English then I do but it hasn't even been a whole day yet. Tomorrow night, Thursday, I will be having lunch with the youth leader at the church I will be working with so I am very nervous about that.
Well, I am going to go explore the village I am in and hopefully get some pictures for my blogs!
peace out!
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