The Beginning

January 3rd (Saturday) and January 4th (Sunday)
We dropped the kids off at Grandmommy and Grandaddy's and had dinner with them before leaving. There were lots of last minute hugs and kisses as we could hardly bear to leave the kids, even knowing they were in such good hands.

Grandma and Grandpa took us over to Orlando and dropped us off at one of the nearby hotels. We crashed early, as we had to catch the 4:30am shuttle to the airport. Boy was that shuttle crowded! Lots of people leaving on early flights. We managed to make it through checkin and security with plenty of time to spare and then went out to our gate. The big gold nametags we got from EO were a dead give-away on what other souls were joining us on the trip. Our fearless leader was Dr. Bob Tuttle, one of Daryl's favorite professors, and Bob and Judy Tillman (Bob works in Adminstration at Asbury). Some folks joined us in New York as there were 43 people on the trip from all over the US (current Asbury students from Orlando, Kentucky and Internet campuses; alumni; and "friends" of Asbury). We spent six hours hanging out in the Kennedy airport before boarding for Cairo which gave us more of a chance to meet folks from the trip. Unfortunately two couples missed the Cairo flight because of bad weather where they were coming from.

The flight was over 11 hours from NYC to Cairo and since we're used to short domestic flights that was a long time to be cooped up in an airplane. But since we flew mostly at night, we were able to catch some zzzz's. And they did feed us a hot dinner and breakfast!