Journal Entries

                                                                                                                        8/23/12
Sitting at my gate in MSP can’t quite believe I’m finally headed out!                          
So a lady just walked by and asks the guy walking beside her “Are you just saying that because you’re a leader!?”, he’s like “nooo”.
There is a tall Asian lady walking around here!
*****************************************************************************************                                                                                                    Several Hours Later
Somewhere over Reindeer Lake in Canada.                                                              
  I found the girls and one of their brothers in the Chicago airport. Chicago went REALLY well. All those prayers meant something! : )
  I ended up in the middle of the middle row on this plane, not quite my plan but I’m still happy with it. Will be sooo nice to just plain be there though. I’m so tired. I had like three and a half hours of sleep last night.

By the middle of the flight I was beginning to get upset with the young Korean man who thought he had to fall asleep and lean waaay over towards me. I was pretty sure I was going to have a permanent twist in my back from scooching away from him. By the end of the trip I was very very happy to just be off the plane already. I only slept for about half an hour the whole twelve hour flight. 
 On the other side of me where two sixty something year old Asian ladies who Grandmothered me the whole flight, that was lovely! They spoke just enough English to be able to talk a little, and ask me “how much they charge you?”  : ) I paid the same as one of the ladies, and a little less that the other. “about two thousand baht less, I not buy from them the next time!” 
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Somewhere over Russia, when we passed Alaska it made me wish I could just land there. (I’ve always dreamed of going to Alaska, and I was sick of the plane by then).
  I opened my computer a while ago and my picture of Lance and I came up. I’m gonna miss him a lot. Four months suddenly seems like a looong time!
            
One of the girls just passed me and gave me a big wink. I think she’s gonna be fun. I think maybe Sara is a quite girl, not really shy, but quite.
There is still another FIVE HOURS till landing! : P
“I think I can, I think I can!"
***********************************************************************                                                                            In Seoul waiting for the next flight.
We are at our gate, sprawled on the floor sleeping.I couldn’t sleep anymore though. There is a little taxi car thing that drives around in here playing Fur Elise of all things. And they were playing Tchaikovsky on the plane.
I wish I could sleep the other girls look so comfortable!
 It feels weird to be the odd one here. Koreans all over the place! :  ) Which makes sense, considering we are in Korea!
A flight just unloaded and there are floods of people walking past staring at us. These people don’t mind staring. The people here who are not Korean are European, judging by their clothes.
Tacked in here I had the comment “I had brown rice tea on the plane, quite something I tell you what!”.
(We found out later that our gate was directly above us, someone stopped to double check that we knew what we were doing).
*****************************************************************************************                                                                                                                          8/25/12
In Thailand! Got in around midnight last night. Browns picked me up with  “Hi! Welcome! Welcome home!” Was sooo nice to see someone I  knew, even just a little bit.
I slept till noon today and am tired now. But I’m going to stay awake till tonight.
Sara and I walked down to Mae Wahns to see the babies, they are napping so after they are up we will go get them and bring them back here.
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And while we wait to go get them, I write. : )
The people who said that it is hot here were right, Sara even said that it is hot today though. We are hiding in her room, away from the heat.
I’m seriously considering sleeping some more, which is a dumb idea, because I'll never get back on schedule if I do.
Dru’s get here in a few hours to pick me up and take me to their place. They are on some sort of school trip. Can’t wait to see them.
  Listening to piano music, can’t quite fathom not having a piano for this long, oh  well. Lisl has a guitar, maybe I can learn to play that.
I should get off of here, Sara is puttering around.
Till later! ~Francis~

There is a bear in that closet.

There is too, I'm not kidding. Every single time I clean there it startles me, and I used to kinda gasp, not just jump. It's a very scary bear.
It is about the size of a cub. It's very black, very fuzzy, and it doesn't smell like a bear (and it doesn't growl). But I still jump.

There are mice in all mouse traps. Dead mice, (dead things are millions of times scarier than live ones). And I always jump, and shudder... I don't care if it's a brand new trap. There are always dead mice in mouse traps!

Caterpillars are horrid, three foot long, fuzzy, green slime filled, Frank magnets.
 And they have a great liking for my shoulders. These do in fact, make me feel somewhat hysterical.

Knifes are horrid instrument of death, causing blood, and for anyone in close proximity to me when someone is handling one foolishly, they can cause loss of hearing. I have a deep surging fear of knifes. I can name at least four people who have had me in tears because they were playing with a knife, pretending to stab themselves, someone else, or me.
  I will stick up for myself on this one, perhaps fake bears, and caterpillars, and mouse traps, can not cause death or injury. But knives can, and do, and they do accidentally at times. That fake stab at your best friend could kill him if someone bumped your elbow coming around the corner. *Steps slowly off of her soap box, she really could say more on this one.*

Drop offs that are farther down than four feet do not belong beside roads. They give me a great urge to crawl under the seat and plug my ears and squeeze my eyes tightly shut. I don't care if that is something only three year olds do. I don't care if it is completely unreasonable, and I don't even care if it doesn't change the fact that the drop off is still there. I can no longer see it, I hopefully can't hear the screams when we go over it. And the fact that I'm under the seat with out a seat belt hopefully insures a quick and painless death.

All water that is over my head has horrible man eating fish, or worse, in it.
 I immediately start feeling cold clammy things grabbing my feet and I feel myself being pulled slowly under, my head aching from lack of air. And then I envision my hair floating on top the water, marking the spot where I died. Gruesome huh? :)

And last, but not least, I'm scared of the Chicago Airport. Not in a gruesome way, not in a frantic way. But in a calmly terrified-of-getting-lost-and-missing-my-flight way. I have visions of myself standing in front of those big airport screens trying to figure out where to go while the minutes go tickity-ticking past.
 Or of myself standing in front of very tall airport people with "I'm horribly busy" looks on their faces. Trying to get them to pay attention long enough to tell me where to go. That's happened to me before. Not cool.

So though there may not be any bears or caterpillars or mouse traps or deep water, and I certainly hope, no knives. I would very much appreciate your prayers for my Chicago Airport layover!