Safe and Sound

One day I think I was teaching my CAE class about sayings like "safe and sound." It's kind of a strange thing to try and translate. Anyhow, I just thought it would be good to inform everyone that we are now in America. We had a bit of a time getting here thanks to the blizzard that hit the Czech Republic right about the time we were leaving. The drive to the airport was rather harrowing. We left at about 11 and were in flying snow the whole way, but arrived in plenty of time to have a bite to eat and say the ever difficult goodbyes. Definitely not an easy thing to do, but we made our 5:55 AM flight with no problems.
Of course we then sat in the plane for more than an hour while the de-iced the wings. It was a pretty serious event actually. We were rather amused to watch it all, and thankful that we had a couple hours scheduled between our flights in Frankfurt.
When we got to Germany the airport looked decent. There wasn't much snow and things seemed to be moving pretty smoothly. They were a bit intense at the security check, freaking out over drinks we bought inside the Prague airport and making us chug them, as well as doing a special check in a separate room of our wireless keyboard, but we passed the inspection and got easily onto the plane. Only to sit there for more than two hours. That's right, two hours of just sitting on the tarmac waiting for them to de=ice the wings. And the pilot originally told us it would take twenty minutes. As our four hours layover in San Francisco began to dwindle I was a bit worried that we'd have a tough time making our connecting flight as well as making in through customs. Hard to hold on to the truth that God is in control, isn't it?
The flight was long. I think it's even longer when you're 6'4". They don't make it easy for tall men, and the plane we were on was kinda ghetto. We're talking seatbelts from I don't know when, and the old TVs in the middle of the aisles. The one closest to us happened to be going out and had a strange red glow around it. People wearing pink on the screen were wearing red on the functioning screen up the way. Ah well. One way or another we made it to San Francisco.
I tried to chose a decent line for Immigration, and failed. We ended up being almost the last through, even though we went there as quickly as we could. But we passed through it in really no time at all. All our papers were great and they didn't even look at us as we went through customs. In the end, we had an hour to breath and make some phone calls before heading over to catch our plane.
So after a whole lot of stress, the trip itself went as perfectly as possible. There was no running in airports, no lost luggage, and no strange questions along the way.
We were happy to meet my parents, get a little food in our bodies, and head off to bed.
There is definitely some jet lag in there, but at least we're through the process. Today we're taking it easy. We met up with my nephew Ryder for brunch at Shari's so Mark had his first big American breakfast, as well as seeing his first yellow school buses in person. It's so strange as I'm seeing all these familiar things and he's seeing EVERYTHING for the first time. It's literally like an "American" dream. The scenes from the movies are suddenly right in front of us. Rather surreal for him.
This afternoon we're hoping to see Jessie and then tomorrow we're hitting the road for Idaho.
Thanks to everyone for your prayers for safely and we'll see what the next chapter has in store for us here on this side of the world.