SA: I peed on a plane.

Really, there’s no possible way a person could hold it for that long…so i experienced my first trip to an aircraft toilet facility. Wow, they’re small. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me tell you about my longest day of traveling in the history of my life…

I got to the Kansas City airport around 9:30am on Wednesday (March 12) to meet up with the rest of my team. (Well, everyone except one. My friend Crystal, my IHOP sidekick, had brutal kidney stone attacks at 2AM that morning that caused her so much pain that she had to back out of the trip last minute, which was super disappointing. Read her story here.) I was blessed to have my parents take the day off from their jobs to drive down to KC just to see me off! We went through all of the check-in processes, waited around..the usual while in an airport. Finally we were headed off to Washington D.C.! The flight went pretty fast compared to what was coming next.

After eating a late lunch during our layover in Washington D.C., we boarded a jet that would contain us for the next thirteen hours! We got our stuff all situated and everyone was excited to find out that the flight was pretty empty! Woo hoo…time to stretch out and have a party! In fact, I was stoked because I had an aisle seat in the middle section of the plane that had 4 seats in the row!! All to myself!! My good friend Meg and I were scheming about how I could set my stuff all over the seats so that no one would make a move at my fabulous four seats that i had claimed all for myself! We had collaborated and had great hopes and dreams for these four seats! We would switch throughout the flight to let the other lay down and sleep. Seriously, i was ready to throw a party on aisle 55. Ok, i dont remember the aisle number, but let me tell you, those four fabulous seats were the best things since sliced bread! Until….Sherri, another teammate of ours, came over and asked if the end seat was taken. (You realize this now put me down to 3 seats, and if we were really honest about it, we know that no one cuddles up next to a stranger..so that put me down to 2 seats. No one is small enough to lay down on 2 seats unless they are a midget.) And so, I started considering the ways I could get her to choose the 50 other seats available in the plane. She got closer, thinking maybe i didnt hear. “Is that end seat taken?” She asked again. I can’t possibly straight-up lie to her. She’s on my own team. She’ll see me laying here and know that I lied. That wouldn’t be good. And so, I begrudgingly said “no…its not.” And that’s when all hopes of a rockin’ plane party died. 

But in all honesty, the flight over to South Africa was really not bad at all. Like I said, I had an aisle seat with two empty seats beside me. Across the aisle there were two seats on both sides. And I was lucky enough to have some great people around me to talk with for a lot of the trip. And of course, taking sleep medicine and being unaware of the rest of the world for several hours was amazing and helped the trip go a lot faster! 🙂 Finally, we made it to Johannasburg!

We didn’t have much time in J’Burg before we hopped on another plane to get to Port Elizabeth. By that point, one more 2 hour plane flight did NOT seem bad. We were all so tired, no one really cared. I was beyond tired and into the giggly stage. We entertained ourselves by watching the comedy show on the plane tv’s and reading the South African news papers where we read this story about a woman from Kansas getting stuck to a toilet because she sat on it for two years! Did anyone hear about this story!? I can’t believe this is how we are known around the world. LOL.

Finally…and trust me, i was praising Jesus the entire way, I walked down the steps of the plane and set my feet on South African soil. Ok…so south african tarmac…but same diff.

I dont even remember, but I think it was around 7pm South African time…on Thursday. We had FINALLY made it to our final destination!