Some Bright Morning when this Life is Over…
There are a lot of people at Atlanta-Hartsfield International Airport. Folks idling, triple-parked outside the terminal dropping travelers off; serpentine lines for check-in, ever changing as inappropriately queued passengers suddenly realize they need to re-queue somewhere else; blended nationalities and ethnicities all united for the purpose of waiting for a morning coffee; and, of course, engulfing masses anticipating the eventual opportuity to pass though the scanning and wanding of the TSA. A lot of people.
We arrived around 8:00 am with plenty of time to join each of those masses of people and make our way to the end of the international terminal. At our gate, I found an abandoned ticket from earlier in the morning LEX to ATL…. departure timed similarly to when we left Uncle Jim’s hours before. I bet that passenger found far fewer people and far fewer lines in arrival than we. Next time I think we’ll pay the extra $200 and board in Lexington, although for this time it was worth it to spend the evening with Lisa’s uncle.
The Airbus designated for our daylong journey with South African Air definitely fit the bill. Each seat was equipped with a video on demand system, so since I was unable to sleep for most of the ride over, I passed the time watching the flight map (which can get old quickly), Chicken Little (which was excellent), and three or four other rather unmemorable feature films (which were, obviously, unmemorable). Lisa watched The Motorcycle Diaries and found the story of the young med school student’s remote excursions appropriately inspiring for the flight over. We swapped out the crew and refueled on the Isle de Sal, midway through the journey, though we were not given the option to deboard there. This was clearly a bit of a disappointment to some of the more vocal passengers, as Delta/SAA had de-facto issued reboarding passes in Atlanta. We had in-air lunch, midnight snack, and breakfast before arriving at the Jo-burg airport roughly 17 hours and thousands of miles of ocean since we left Atlanta.
The layover in Johannesburg was longer than the prop-plane flight into Manzini, where the international airport is an ornate building with two arbored doorways onto the tarmac… one marked “arrivals” and one marked “departures”. Lisa helped a Chinese woman in filling out the entry card, which was a small ordeal without the assistance of a common language. We then proceeded through the immigration/customs booth, which became another small ordeal with a common language when explaining the medical donations sent with us from Prof. Fahringer. We were finally allowed to pass though after signing a valuation statement of some kind, although we were only granted 30-day visas at entry rather than the 60-day visas suggested by the Lonely Planet guide. If we don’t find the office that is supposed to grant us the extension, would someone mind writing the jail occasionally to check in on us?
We arrived around 8:00 am with plenty of time to join each of those masses of people and make our way to the end of the international terminal. At our gate, I found an abandoned ticket from earlier in the morning LEX to ATL…. departure timed similarly to when we left Uncle Jim’s hours before. I bet that passenger found far fewer people and far fewer lines in arrival than we. Next time I think we’ll pay the extra $200 and board in Lexington, although for this time it was worth it to spend the evening with Lisa’s uncle.
The Airbus designated for our daylong journey with South African Air definitely fit the bill. Each seat was equipped with a video on demand system, so since I was unable to sleep for most of the ride over, I passed the time watching the flight map (which can get old quickly), Chicken Little (which was excellent), and three or four other rather unmemorable feature films (which were, obviously, unmemorable). Lisa watched The Motorcycle Diaries and found the story of the young med school student’s remote excursions appropriately inspiring for the flight over. We swapped out the crew and refueled on the Isle de Sal, midway through the journey, though we were not given the option to deboard there. This was clearly a bit of a disappointment to some of the more vocal passengers, as Delta/SAA had de-facto issued reboarding passes in Atlanta. We had in-air lunch, midnight snack, and breakfast before arriving at the Jo-burg airport roughly 17 hours and thousands of miles of ocean since we left Atlanta.
The layover in Johannesburg was longer than the prop-plane flight into Manzini, where the international airport is an ornate building with two arbored doorways onto the tarmac… one marked “arrivals” and one marked “departures”. Lisa helped a Chinese woman in filling out the entry card, which was a small ordeal without the assistance of a common language. We then proceeded through the immigration/customs booth, which became another small ordeal with a common language when explaining the medical donations sent with us from Prof. Fahringer. We were finally allowed to pass though after signing a valuation statement of some kind, although we were only granted 30-day visas at entry rather than the 60-day visas suggested by the Lonely Planet guide. If we don’t find the office that is supposed to grant us the extension, would someone mind writing the jail occasionally to check in on us?
(full post - permalink) posted by Blue November
1 Comments:
Good morning! It was so good to hear from you two. I have been anxiously checking my email everyday looking for something that might be from you. I have read and reread your blog trying to picture it in my mind. It sounds really depressing but I guess I expected that. It also sounds very challenging. It will probably take a while to get the hang of things so be patient, Lisa. You can do it. Other things, how is the house that you are staying in? Have you had a chance to venture out anywhere? Miss you. Love, Mom.
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