Day One! Travel Day! Rotary International VTT 2014 - Kampala, Uganda

{This is a series in posts about our trip to Uganda for the Riley/Rotary Vocational Training Team. To start at the beginning, go to this post. Check out the team blog at rileyinternationalheartmissions.wordpress.com. If you visit the team blog, please leave a comment! The team loves to hear your encouraging words!}

Thursday morning began our long trek to Kampala. 

I spent the morning after dropping Jack off at preschool by running a few errands and really just killing time. I was very prepared from the night before! I picked up our surgical hats (pics to come - they're really cool!) and went to the bank and into the office, washed and vacuumed the car and then went back to get one lone hat left at the printing place. 

At 11:15, we pulled into Steph's driveway (my neighbor, friend and Rotary accomplice on this trip) and took off from there.

Our second stop was Riley to pick up trunks full of medical supplies for the surgeries this week. We also had money from our last grant left over and were able to purchase equipment for UHI (Uganda Heart Institute) to leave with them. 13 trunks in all! In addition to our personal luggage which also had supplies. 

Next stop was the airport. Tom dropped us at the door and we said our goodbyes. Steph says this is one of the most stressful parts of the trip which would be great if true because it's over now! The great trunk shuffle began while trunks were weighed, items were moved, re-weighed, assigned and re-assigned. I was pretty impressed that we got by with only one or two extra bags and only one which was overweight. That's not bad at all for as much stuff as we had!  

One of the benefits of this trip for me is that I get to travel with very experienced travelers! Many of these people have done this same thing four times previous to this trip. They must have known there was an extra luggage scale on the far end of the check-in. That was nice. 

 Next, we started checking in – we were slightly rushed on this part. More bag and supply shuffling had to be done.

The first group who had the earlier flight took off through security before the rest of us made it through so we only have a partial picture. Hoping to get a full group photo in Entebbe.

Once that group was off, the three of us remaining (me, Steph and Dr. Turrentine) were able to relax and finally stop sweating! We took a quick flight to Detroit where we had a layover before leaving for Amsterdam. 

I spent the 35 minute flight to Detroit clearing out all of the texts on my phone since 2009. I’ve never deleted anything and my storage was getting very full. I could hardly keep 100 photos on it at one time. A bit of a trip down memory lane and I found this text I sent out only a few minutes before Jack was born.

The flight to Amsterdam left at 8:45PM EST or so and got in at 9:40AM local (3:40AM EST). I snapped this picture of the plane. The lady looks like she’s smiling for the camera and her husband looks like he’s cracking up. I had no idea. They had two cute little Dutch boys who were remarkably well behaved for the trip.

Here’s a picture of my feet. Got to check out Economy Comfort on this one! 

I had full intentions of changing out of my jeans and into leggings but never did. In fact, I’m still in jeans while writing this on the next flight. Surprisingly comfortable actually.

My grand plan was to sleep the best I could on this flight which was really nighttime. Well, that didn’t work AT ALL. Maybe 30 minutes. Finally, I just gave in and started watching TV again.

So, went into Day 2 with not much sleep, but got in a few movies and reading and phone clearing. Plus, we’re now officially on the way!

The journey continues here!