Hope Cambodia - Day 11
 Saturday, August 11, 2007

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We met in the lobby at 5:30 am on Saturday morning to begin the long process of checking out and loading bags.  Keep in mind, this is 5:30 Friday evening for folks back home in Oklahoma.  That becomes important later in the story.  Spoiler: although it was supposed to take us about 30 hours to get home, it ended up taking more than 4 days for me & Eric, and 3 days for most of the rest of the group.  It was a tough trek home!  
 
   
 Here we are in the lobby with our sea of luggage. LaShonda & Suja looking impossibly pretty that early in the morning.
   

 Sam, Chom, Bethany, Lin, and Neth

 Jaime, Gretchen, Sarat, Sarah, Kelly, and Allison
 

 

Me with my friends Sam, Chom, Lin, and Neth

 
 One last strange sight from the van.

 

 Then we were at the airport.

 
   
Pastor Terry & Pastor David - racing for home. Actually we had a lot of waiting to do here.
 

 Joe, doing a little dance
 while we waited.
   
   
 I don't think I want to know what was going on here! Everyone needs a Joe to make them laugh. 
   
Our sweet interpreters stood outside the airport for 2 hours to wave us away. Malika - so glad to have her first cappuccino in two weeks!
   

  

 Waiting for our flight to Taipei.
 

 Goodbye Cambodia!

 
  On the tram at the Taipei airport where we had to change terminals.

 
A shot of our trek across the Taipei airport to our next gate. Here we are - ready for our 12 hour overseas flight!
  

 

  
   5 minutes before we landed in LAX the U.S. Customs
 computers crashed.  After a 12 hour flight, we were held
 on the plane for another 2 hours.  Then we were moved to
 another waiting area for 2 hours.  Then we were allowed to
 stand in a line for more than 2 hours.  Then we finally got 
 to the customs desk and on to our luggage.

 It was at this point we made the unhappy discovery that we
 were trapped in an area with no access to water or bathrooms.
 That was a LONG and miserable two hours.  

 Our flight had landed at 2pm on Saturday. (Pacific time - 4pm 
 Central)  It was nearly 10pm when we were finally freed from
 the arrivals area.  We had not had anything to eat during this
 time besides whatever snacks we had left after two weeks in
 Cambodia.  We stood in a long line to buy $6 hot dogs at 11pm.

 A few people called friends and relatives in the area and got to go
 stay with them.  The rest of us suffered in the LAX airport overnight.
   
   
Eric trying to get some rest, by this point he had started to get sick.
  		 They have a bunk-bed thing going with the hammock.
We didn't know those people.
   
 It was cold in the airport and the announcements were repeated 
 and repeated and repeated.  We were all up at first light.		 This is how we all felt, but we kept our attitudes as up as possible.
 
   

John was interviewed by
a local radio station.
   
   
 Around 11am we were able to get 1 hotel room.  Later that day we got 2 more. This is what pure exhaustion looks like.
   
 I headed for a lounge chair in the sun by the pool for my nap time.
 		 The decorative columns at LAX as seen from our window
on Sunday night - more than 24 hours after we were supposed
to have been home.
 

People got random flights home from Sunday evening through early Monday morning.
We were to be with the last group to leave at about 6am on Monday morning.  Unfortunately,
Eric was just too sick to travel.  We had to send our friends on home without us.

 
   
 

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