1. It was Friday the 13th
2.I was attending a medical missions conference (see example)
3. I was flying Delta (which bears the moniker "Don't Ever Leave the Airport")
Bad weather caused us to miss our flight from Atlanta to San Diego. There was another flight leaving later, but it was overbooked. Our trusted travel guru classmate Ryan tried to use his "Medallion" status to pull some strings and called hotels.com to arrange accomadations for the night, but it was to no avail. There were no more flights out and no available rooms in Atlanta. We were going to just have to spend the night in the Atlanta airport.
Looking way too happy for preparing for a stay in our "comfy" beds
We scavenged the airport for a good place to sleep and found some non-armrest chairs in the international terminal. It actually wouldn't have been too bad except for the wonderful pre-set recording that woke us up every 20 minutes or so to remind us to keep an eye on our luggage at all times and to not accept baggage from strangers. Bleary-eyed and showerless we caught the next flight out at 8:30 and arrived in sunny San Diego around the middle of the morning.
Though we missed the first half of the conference, the rest of the day and Sunday were great. It was my first non-Christian medical missions conference, but it was still worthwhile. I learned, and find it amusingly ironic, that many of these people sacrifice months and years of their lives and money spending time learning the culture and language of the people whom they serve, tirelessly giving of their talents to help better the lives of others. On the other hand, many Christians don't learn the language and culture and throw away thousands of dollars and one week of their time to help better the lives of others and call it "sacrifice." Just something to think about but I'm not tackling such an issue here. Needless to say, it was a very informative weekend and it was nice to see that others share in the vision to provide healthcare to those who need it the most: the impoverished, the oppressed, the ones who don't have the fortune to live in this country.
Of course, no trip to San Diego is complete without a trip to the San Diego Zoo. The super-cool, soon-to-be-famous Matt (not Lee) Brown left his famous movie friends in LA to hang out with me, and we went to the zoo with my classmate Elizabeth. It was a good thing that he did come see me, or else the Zoo might be minus one panda. I really wanted to take the little brother of this guy home with me. Why can't Pandas be as numerous as dogs?
Can I take him home with me?
This is a picture of us sitting on almost an exact replica of myself. How thoughtful of the Zoo people to create such a stunning likeness of yours truly! (just kidding)
Matt and I atop a hungry hippo!
Looks like someone's lawn ornaments got loose!
Elizabeth and I explored some more of San Diego Sunday night and Monday morning before flying back to the South and our "exciting" lives as medical students. In short, the moral of the story is always take advantage of opportunities to travel to places you've never been, take time to visit old friends, don't fly on Friday the 13th, and always be prepared for the unexpected!!!
"As the traveler who has once been from home is wiser than he who has never left his own doorstep, so a knowledge of one other culture should sharpen our ability to scrutinize more steadily, to appreciate more lovingly, our own." -Margaret Mead
5 comments:
(first pic)
Must have been the beginning of the night...but sleepiness makes you glow! At least when I saw you.
Yup, you do glow in that first pic.
Why do you compare yourself to a hippo?
Yeah weather was really bad in Atlanta on Friday. It was raining so hard at times, I could barely see 20 feet in front of me on my way down to Panama City Beach for Gulf Coast.
a man in Tanzania once told me, quite proudly, that his wife was a hippopotamus and his infant son a baby hippopotamus. i think you and Sweetbert must have never seen real hippos. man, they are huge!
sounds like an adventurous trip. i'm trying to figure out how to get my school to pay for me to spend the summer in Honduras... any advice?
grace and peace,
kent <><
ps - welcome back
The hippo comment is yet another one of my amusingly ironic statements (shame on you if you actually think I resemble one :-P). You see, hippos are big (except for the pygmy hippos), mean, and excellent swimmers. Considering I'm not really big, mean (unless you steal my brownie sundae from Marble Slab-then I might have to try out my brown belt karate skills on you), nor even an average swimmer, the odds of me winning a "Looks Like a Hippo" contest are slim.
I think I'd better stick to studying "drugs" and "bugs"
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