As I mentioned the other day, the computer has been broken, but I think it's fixed now :) I know that Mom has filled you in on some things, but I'll just go ahead and upload everything that I had typed up before the computer problems..... Here we go!!

Where to even begin??? So much has happened in the past couple days. My mom drove me and Sarah to the airport on Friday morning and we said our goodbyes to Nora and told her that we would see her in only a few short hours in Toronto. Little did we know at that point that we wouldn't see her or the other four girls for nearly two days!! To keep this story relatively short, I'll briefly tell you what our original flight plans were followed by what actually happened.

We were supposed to leave Chicago around 11:00 am and go on to Toronto where we would meet up with the other girls. From there, we were supposed to make a short pit stop in Montreal before making our way across the Atlantic Ocean to Brussels. And then from Brussels, we were supposed to directly fly to Entebbe, Uganda. Simple, right? Well, here's what actually happened.....

Sarah and I did make it to Toronto as planned, but we were told that our checked luggage did not make it. So at that point we were a little bummed out, but we were trying to keep our spirits up because we were still super excited to get to Uganda. While we waited for the other girls Sarah and I stopped to have lunch in the Toronto Airport because we weren't sure when our next (free) meal would be. While we were enjoying our delicious hamburgers we got a text from Nora telling us that their flight was being delayed a couple hours and that they would not make the connecting flight. We proceeded to go talk to the Air Canada counter (our next flight carrier) at our gate and tell them about our problem to see what the other girls could do. The gentleman assured us that they would all make the flight that was heading to Montreal that left a half an hour after ours, so we felt much better. Before we knew it, it was our turn to board the air plane and make our way to Montreal. Once again, it seemed to be smooth sailing (or flying) for us. However, once we made it to Montreal and re-boarded the plane our journey began to take a turn for the worse……

Everyone was seated and ready to go, but then a passenger near us noticed that there was smoke coming from the floor of the plane and it smelled like something was burning!! I'm not sure if I've ever mentioned to you guys, but I'm not one who typically enjoys flying. I'm the kind of person who starts saying Hail Mary's the moment the plane begins to taxi on the run way until the take your seat belt sign comes off (no joke….). So this mysterious smoke really freaked me out. Anyway, long story short, we ended up sitting there for approximately two hours before they fixed the "mechanical error" and we waited for bad weather to pass. Before we even left North America, Sarah and I knew that we would not be making our connection in Brussels. Despite our problems in Montreal, our flight across the Atlantic went very smoothly. I felt very pampered because we each had our own personal T.V. on the back of the seat in front of us and we could pick to watch as many movies as we wanted to from a list of about 30 titles. We were also served a warm meal (which was delicious!!) and complementary wine! We weren't sure if it's always complimentary or if it was just because of the inconvenience the airline caused all of us. Regardless, Sarah and I sat there and sipped our wine, watched movies, and even caught a little shut eye.

Upon landing in Brussels, we were greeted by several Air Canada representatives who had already made accommodations for all of us who had missed our connections. We had about a five hour layover there, so we decided to take full advantage of our meal voucher and ordered as much food as possible. After lunch, we met a very nice man from Texas and we ended up talking to him for a few hours. We told him about our journey so far and filled him in on what we were going to be doing in Kyarusozi. He was kind enough to let us use his cell phone to call our parents to let them know what happened to us. I felt bad because I completely forgot about the time change and I think I called Mom and Dad around 6:00 in the morning! We said our goodbyes to our Texas friend and boarded the Egypt Air airplane that would take us to our next destination, Cairo!!!!

When we began this journey I didn't really think about issues we could run in to while traveling, and I definitely didn't anticipate going to Egypt!! Although we were only in the country for a little over an hour it still makes for a good story. At long last, we finally boarded the plane that would take us to Entebbe, Uganda!! We were so tired that we ended up sleeping for most of the flight, and then we finally touched down in the country I will call my home for the next six weeks!!

We got our Visas and then headed to the missing baggage desk to make a claim because neither one of us received our luggage. Keep in mind that we arrived in Entebbe around 3:00am, so we were very tired and the last thing that either one of us wanted to do was report missing luggage. Anyway, we finished everything up and found our driver to take us to the Central Inn where we were staying for our class.