London!

WE ARE IN THAILAND!! And we are loving every minute of it! God has been SO good to us every step of the way these past six days! So much has happened and there is so much I want to say, but this blog post would be much too long to try and describe it all in detail, so I figured I would let some pictures do the talking. I tried to get into my blog a few days ago, but for some reason it was locked. Once I was able to get in, I found that it was all in Thai and I had to reset my whole blog. Thankfully, I was able to get it up and running again! I will have to back track a few days so you all can see where we have been. Get ready for some pictures!!

Starting from the beginning...
 

On Thursday May 24, we departed from DFW airport on our 8 hour flight to the Heathrow International Airport in London.

We arrived in London at 8:45am on Friday, May 25. We had about a 13 hour layover in London, so we left Heathrow on the Underground to do some sight seeing.

                  Riding the Underground! 

We got off at Green Park and one of the first things we saw was the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace! I have a video that I will post as well.

From there we went on to see Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, the Thames River, Parliament, and The Household of Cavalry! By then we were hungry, so we went to a cute little Pub in town and ate some fish and chips. After lunch, we went to a park that we walked through earlier that day, and ended up napping and soaking up some sun for about an hour and a half. It was glorious! It was interesting to see the large crowds of people that were also out in the park enjoying the warm weather and sunbathing. It was a prime "people watching" spot. :)          

Buckingham Palace!

It was really crowded around the palace because of all the construction preparing for The Queen's Jubilee!!

Big Ben

It was a beautiful day!

The Household of Cavalry  

The Underground

Ready for Lunch! 

Fish and Chips!

Our  bill

We each had to get the classic phone booth photo.  :)

Enjoying the afternoon in the park. 

After our nap in the park, we started to make our way back to the to airport by way of the Underground around 4:30pm. Because of some major delays and technical difficulties with the trains, our train and route were terminated and we ended up getting stuck at a train station for about an hour trying to catch a train to the airport. Because there were SO many people trying to get to the airport and only a few trains, there were angry mobs of people all trying to pile on the only train that was headed to the airport. In attempt to board a train that was pretty full, Brittney, Becca and I were literally pushed out of the train, while Rachel and Emily were able to safely scoot to the back. So the three of us had to wait at the station for another 45 minutes before a train heading to the airport showed up. Once it did, we experienced a pretty bumpy ride back and our train ended up staling in a tunnel 3 different times. Needless to say, it was an adventure that kept our adrenaline pumping!

We ended up reuniting with Rachel and Emily and making it back to the airport just in time to catch our (10:05pm) 11 hour flight to Bangkok. I only got about an hour of sleep on the flight, but it still seemed to go by fast. We arrived at the Suvarnabhumi International airport in Bangkok at 3:20pm with only a 2 hour layover to rush though passport control, baggage claim and security, find our departure gate and board the plane. Talk about madness! :) BUT because God is SO GOOD, He got us to our gate just in time and we were among the last people to board the plane. The rest of our trip was nice and peaceful and we had a relaxing, 55 minute flight to Chiang Mai. At 7:30pm Saturday night, we landed in Chiang Mai Thailand!! We were so excited to find that all of our bags made it!   

All of our bags made it!! Praise the Lord! 

 Laura, the volunteer coordinator at Agape picked us up at the airport and took us back to the volunteer house that we will be living in for the next 10 weeks. We live right across the street from Laura and inside a gated community. The neighborhood is very nice and our neighbors are friendly! We are looking forward to getting to know them better! 

My 36 hour trip halfway around the world was a success and nothing short of an adventure! I only slept about 2 hours the entire trip but I didn't really feel it until 2 days later. :) In my next post, I'll tell you where we spent our weekend! 

Stay tuned for more pictures!