Sunday, March 3, 2007

We are home!!! We got to DFW Saturday night at 6:30. We were met by Debbie, Susan, Laura, Frances, Ronnie, Dena, and Oakley! They had roses, big signs, and red white and blue star necklaces! What a great welcome home! We had been up for 24 hours and had been flying 21 hours. We really were not very sleepy. We all went to eat Mexican food and then Debbie drove to Waco.

We were told to be at the Chisinau airport at 3:45 Saturday morning for a 5:45 flight to Frankfurt. We got there and the airport wasn’t even open! They began checking people in at 4:15 and we were first in line. In true Moldovan form they had not put Preston on the passenger list. He had a ticket but just wasn’t on their list. After getting all that settled we said good- by to Alex and Vadim and headed to Frankfurt. What good friends to get up very early both Friday and Saturday to get us to the airport.

When we were in the Chisinau airport we met a man that had been teaching at the Moldovan Bible Institute. He was a member of the Delta Crown Club so he took us to their club room in Frankfurt where they arranged our boarding pass and we had a very comfortable place to wait for our flight. He travels all over Eastern Europe teaching in various Bible colleges. He was a very interesting person and had some good suggestions about teaching in Moldova. Interestingly, he never told us his name. We asked him if he had a business card and he said he doesn’t carry cards because he goes places where he doesn’t want people to know how to contact him. Preston did give him his card and asked him to contact us with information about having textbooks translated to Romanian and Russian in Moldova.

We also met a couple, Jim and Elaine Hamilton who had been in a village north of Chisinau conducting a medical clinic. As we talked we found that they had also stayed with Alex and Lucia in Chisinau a couple of years ago. They go to Moldova every three weeks for a week.

Our flight from Frankfurt to Atlanta was very pleasant. We didn’t have seats together but Preston did have a bulkhead aisle seat so he was very happy! Plenty of leg room! Genie’s seat was near the back of the plane. The seat next to Preston was vacant so we don’t know why they didn’t give us seats together. A lady with a baby was in the window seat by Preston. He asked her if she would mind if Genie came to sit there or if she was going to use the seat for her baby. She said it would be fine so we did get to sit together. Several times during the flight we helped take care of the baby. She was a really good and we enjoyed her. They were traveling from Frankfurt to California!

We had 90 minutes between flights in Atlanta and thought we would probably miss of DFW flight. We had to go through customs, get our luggage and then have it re-checked. It was a much easier process than we had thought it would be and we got to the gate in time. In fact the pilot was late so we even had a short wait.

The plane to DFW was a very small plane (Delta Connection) but we had bulkhead seats again so we were comfortable. Even though that flight wasn’t the best, if we ever go back to Moldova we will try to fly Delta if we can get a flight with the same type aircraft we had from Frankfurt to Atlanta. Also the Frankfurt airport is much better than the Vienna airport. We also found that we could fly through Rome which would make a great place to take a couple of extra days layover!

We slept until 10:00 this morning and feel good. We are hoping that we will be able to adjust quickly to Texas time. We really like flying in daylight! The only time it was dark was about an hour from Chisinau to Frankfurt.

Thanks to all for you who have followed our Moldova adventure through our blog and for all your e-mail messages to us. E-mail made this trip so much easier for us! We loved hearing from everyone!