well its been a week and a half since ive been back in Alaska but this past week has been pretty busy to say the least, im going to share a little story of my trip from Haiti to Alaska and my next post should be a clearer look at what my time in Haiti was like.
so we left Haiti the morning of the 19th of may, starting the night before there was a team from Kona Hawaii that was doing a 24 hours of prayer and worship and so pretty much I decided im not going to go to bed because we are probably going to leave around 4am, so i spent the night in between the prayer room and the main dining hall area reading my bible, so i'm not sure how smart that was but im pretty sure God gave me energy because i really wasnt that tired until the next night. so we left around 5am on our drive to port au prince. it was a beautiful drive on the countryside as the sun was rising, we made it to port au prince, the city really had a different feel from the last time we were there more tents up, seemed more developed in ways, but still looking at the "tents(cardboard, little pieces of tarp, etc.)" that they were living in really gave us a good look at how much longer Haiti is going to be in rebuild. well we got to the airport and we cleared all that, got some of my snacks confiscated, and made the horrible mistake of saying "you too" to the person who checked my bags and then said "enjoy your flight" haha we both had a laugh, i said i meant "have a nice day".
got to Miami almost a hour late, had 40 minutes to clear immigrations and then clear customs and then get to our next plane.so i start going through immigration i get into a relatively short line and proceed to the counter, i tell him i was just in Haiti and now im on my way back to alaska where i was before, i show him my one year entry form(little paper thing on my passport saying i can enter the US for a year), he says it looks good but he doesnt think its the right form for me to enter from Haiti, so he checks and then tells me yes it is infact not the right form and so i should go get the right form and come back and he will have his supervisor and he will stamp it and i can be on my way. so im traveling with a group of 5 others and they all are long gone by this point. so i hurry to fill out a form that looks exactly like my old one. go back to the counter, no supervisor. he hands me all the stuff i filled out and my passport in a red folder and tells me to follow someone to this backroom so i go thinking oh maybe his supervisor is in there ready to stamp my form but no here is a room full of people like 100 people mostly from mexico or cuba. so i proceed to wait and wait and wait, until most of the room was empty there was me and 3 other white people, i'm praying that the rest of my team has left on the next flight after the one we were supposed to be on, and they did. so i wait for 4 1/2 hours at 4 hours they finally talk to me, they give me the usual run down where are you going why are you volunteering ? whos supporting you? how do you survive? are you sure you dont want to go back to canada and find a job instead? they send me back out and then call me back in a little later give me my passport and tell me i can go. so now my passport is a mess they put a wrong stamp on crossed out another one of my stamps and gave me a 6 month form instead of my year which was already almost 5 months used.
so i get through and then down to the re booking desk, they rebook my on a completely different flight path i mean it ends up in the same place but instead of flying to chicago i fly to seattle the next morning and so i was like well im going to have to sleep at the airport by myself (because i found out the rest of my team was on way different flights) but no they were at first just going to give me a discount on a hotel because it really wasnt there fault that i got held up but then i told them that my first flight was a hour late and i dont even know if i could have gotten to it and so they gave me a free hotel room, and after sleeping in a tent with 3 other sweaty smelly guys a huge bed to myself was really nice. so i got a room at the marriot in miami for free and also met like a whole bunch of other guys traveling alone and sitting at restaurants alone, it was cool i met a guy who had been to both alaska and winnipeg and another guy who had just been to winnipeg and who was working on designing earthquake proof windows for Haiti. then the next morning i proceeded on a 6 hour flight across the country and then a 3 hour flight to finally go across the continent and into alaska.
the end
more news soon, hopefuly i can get back into blogging mode and actually keep this more up to date.
God bless
chad
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